Pinky Promise
Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater, but I kick myself for not thinking of the idea...
It's been a week since Kid, Liz, and Patti were in the hospital. Maka hasn't seen that nurse since then, either. She told Soul about where she'd seen the woman before, but he just raised an eyebrow and gave her a weak smile, thinking she just needed some sleep.
"Will you guys be okay by yourselves for tonight?" Maka asked her hospitalized friends one night, the first night she and Soul didn't sleep in the room with them.
"We'll be fine. Now you two go and get some sleep in a comfortable bed," Liz replied. Maka nodded and left, Soul following behind.
When they returned to their hotel room, they were surprised to see a new maid was cleaning their room. She had curled bleach-blonde hair that reached to the center of her back. She was facing the other way, so they couldn't get a good look of her face. After she finished scrubbing the window, she packed up her things and left without a word. She kept her head down, so her face was always hidden from sight.
This had been going on for a few weeks now. Eventually, Kid, Patti, and Liz were discharged from the hospital, meaning they could all continue their search for the kishin. A couple weeks passed, then a month, but there was still no sign of the monster. They were all beginning to believe it had left.
One afternoon, the blonde-haired maid was cleaning Maka and Soul's room while they were there. She was there for about an hour, but Maka never caught sight of her face. It seemed she was being very careful to keep it that way, too. She always turned away when Maka came too close or made sure her hair was covering her view. She never talked either. If Maka or Soul spoke to her, she would nod or wave without turning around or making eye contact. The only noise Maka heard from her was when she accidentally hurt herself while cleaning the bath tub. And even then it was a quiet Ah!, barely audible. That afternoon, though, when she was leaving, she dropped a towel from her supplies cart. She didn't notice, so Maka went to pick it up. She and the maid both bent down to pick it up, and as they did, Maka caught a glimpse of her face. One thing in particular made her heart pace quicken.
Her eyes were orange. The same color, size, and shape as those of the nurse and the woman in the ally. The maid grabbed the cloth out of Maka's grasp, threw it on the cart, and left. Maka was still kneeling on the ground, too shocked to move. Soul noticed.
"Maka, are you going to get up off the floor or just stay there like a weirdo?" he said. Maka blinked twice, then slowly lifted herself from the floor.
"Who isshe?" Maka thought. "Is she following us? She can't be a nurse and a maid, can she?"
Maka sat on her bed, trying to remember the name on her name tag.
"Helen? No, Haley? No..." She put a hand on her forehead, trying to concentrate. "Harriet? No...Oh! Hayden! Hayden...Marshall! Hayden Marshall!" Maka smiled, proud of herself for remembering the name.
After that day, Hayden never came back. Maka went down to the front desk to see why no maid was coming to clean their room, and to find out where this 'Hayden' was.
"Hayden Marshall? No, you must be mistaken. She hasn't shown up for work in weeks," said the woman at the counter.
"Are you sure?" Maka asked, very confused.
"Positive. Is this the woman you are talking about?" The woman turned her computer screen to face Maka. Maka gasped at what she saw.
The woman on the screen didn't have blonde hair or orange eyes, instead she had green eyes and was a red-head. Freckles lined her pale nose and cheeks, but Maka was sure that the woman who had been cleaning their room was slightly tanned and had almost flawless skin. Now Maka was extremely confused, and a little frightened.
"Th-Thank you," Maka said, already backing away from the desk.
"I'm sorry for the inconvenience. A new maid will be-" Maka didn't hear the last part of the sentence. She was running up the spiral staircase to her room.
"Something's not right. Whoever that woman is, she knows where we live and I'll bet she has our medical records too," Maka thought. Maka remembered giving blood at the hospital for Patti's surgery because they had the same blood type.
"Not good! Not good!" she kept repeating to herself. Once she got to the hotel room, she slammed the door open and rushed to Soul.
"I have to tell you something," she said, slightly out of breath. Soul stopped eating his sandwich and put it back on its plate on the counter.
"Okay, go ahead," he said, confused by her tone of voice and the fact that she was breathing a little heavily.
"Do you remember when I said that nurse was the same woman I saw in the ally? Well, she was our maid too," Maka said. "Please believe me."
Soul looked into her eyes. They looked scared and puzzled and worried. She was serious.
"Okay, but I'm going to need proof," he said. Maka nodded, grabbed his hand, and pulled him through the room and out the door. She led him down the staircase, causing him to stumble quite a bit, and stopped at the front desk.
"Could you show me the picture of Hayden Marshall again please?" she said to the woman. Baffled by their behavior, the woman still did as she was asked. She typed a few words, clicked something with her mouse, then turned the screen back towards the two. Soul's eyes widened a little and his eyebrows furrowed.
"See! I told you! Something's up with this woman!" Maka exclaimed. Soul rubbed his chin, thinking about their situation. She was right. Something is up. Something wrong.