A/N: It's been a while, but here is the latest chapter. It's another relatively long chapter, but, most importantly, it's the first chapter to really focus on Sakaki in quite some time.
Sakaki sat at her desk, alone in an empty classroom. Thanks to her leg, which did require stitches after all, her mother insisted that she drive Sakaki to school so that her daughter wouldn't put any undue stress on the wound. Because of her mother's hectic work schedule, Sakaki was now at school long before anyone else with nothing to do and no one to talk to. Usually it wouldn't have bothered Sakaki that much to sit alone with her thoughts, but now it seemed to really annoy her. Not because of having nothing to do, but because today and possibly for a few days to come she wouldn't have a chance to walk to school with a certain pointy-eared girl.
Sakaki let out an exasperated sigh as she stared out the window next to her desk. Maybe it was for the best... for the time being, anyway. If the media showed up again, and she got seen with Kaorin, her mother would be more than a little angry with her. The whole situation was somehow distasteful, and, for some reason she couldn't quite grasp, it really got under her skin; the fact that she didn't understand it herself only made it that much more maddening.
The sound of shuffling feet and the door sliding open brought Sakaki from her reverie. Chancing a glance at the door she only spied a studious-looking girl she couldn't even name. Of course, the girl took one look at Sakaki and immediately became alarmed at the cool girl's obvious cuts and bruises. She didn't mention anything though, probably due to a lack of courage to approach the standoffish girl. Sakaki didn't pay it much mind though. The awkward situation was easily dismissed as Sakaki continued her daydreaming as she stared out the window again.
That same situation repeated itself several times as more students arrived. It took a few times before Sakaki realized that she was actually waiting for someone, and every time that someone didn't appear, she found herself disheartened. It didn't take long for Sakaki to stop gazing out the window and instead focused her attention on the door as she anxiously awaited a familiar face.
Thankfully, it didn't take long for a familiar face to appear, even if it wasn't the one Sakaki wanted to see most. Instead a diminutive, red headed genius entered the classroom. After dropping her bag at her desk, she scanned the room and quickly found Sakaki. Chiyo extended her arm in a wave as she greeted her tall friend. "Good morning Saka-Ah!" she began to greet Sakaki, but stopped short as soon as she noticed the apparent condition the tall girl was in. "Sakaki-san! Are you all right?" the short genius fretted as she quickly approached her friend.
Sakaki gave Chiyo a slight nod. "It's not as bad as it looks."
"What happened?" Chiyo enthusiastically inquired.
The tall girl couldn't help but to think back to the incident in question. Of course, out of all that happened, the one thing that stuck in Sakaki's mind was that last cat they failed to rescue. "I hope he didn't get hurt," Sakaki inadvertently mumbled, eliciting a worried twitch from the young genius.
Before Chiyo could recover and make some sort of response, the door slammed open revealing a grinning Tomo and an exasperated Yomi. "Good morning!" Tomo boisterously announced to the entire classroom while Yomi just groaned. "Whoa, Sakaki-chan!" Tomo marveled as she noticed the obvious bruises and scratches on the tall girl. In a flash the wildcat was at Sakaki's side. "Did you try to pet a tiger or something?"
Yomi shoved Tomo out of the way before Sakaki got a chance to respond. "Ignore her," she dismissed. "That looks pretty bad... are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Sakaki asserted, though it was doubtful that she was heard.
"What the hell?" Tomo exclaimed over top of Sakaki's reply as she shoved Yomi back.
The two girls quickly descended into an all out brawl while Chiyo did her best to bring peace to the quarrel. Sakaki, on the other hand, didn't pay much mind to the chaos. After all, hardly a day went by that those two didn't get into it. It was just how they got along. If anything, the usual commotion of her friends helped Sakaki to put her mind at ease. It was strange how something so loud and crazy could bring peace to her, but the antics had somehow become a reassurance to her. Letting out a contented sigh, the tall girl once again gazed out the window, this time without anxiety prying at her mind.
It didn't take long for Tomo and Yomi to stop their squabble. While Tomo walked off with Chiyo so she could copy homework off of the genius, Yomi stuck around to make sure Sakaki wasn't overlooked. "Are you sure you are okay?"
Sakaki lazily gazed back to Yomi and offered a small nod. "I'll be okay."
"But are you okay now?" Yomi pried, "If something is wrong, you need to speak up."
Sakaki shook her head as a small smile appeared. "I'm feeling…much better now."
Yomi sighed as she gave up on getting Sakaki to open up. "Just remember that if there's any trouble, you can count on us for help," Yomi assured before reluctantly returning to her own desk.
As Yomi sat down, a great clamor sounded from the hall. Instinctively, Yomi cast a glare in Tomo's direction only to find the wildcat as bewildered as everyone else. The bespectacled girl followed everyone else's gaze to the door just in time to see it burst open revealing a panicked Kagura. The athletic girl sprinted into the room, dashed behind the podium, and did her best to hide behind it. Just as Kagura got behind the podium, a large group of students seemed to instantly coalesce in the doorway. All of them all seemed to have the same thing on their mind, and they all spoke a similar request all at once.
"Where's Kagura-san?"
"Is Kagura-san here?"
"Has anyone seen Kagura-san?"
"Did Kagura-san come by here?"
"Which way did Kagura-san go?"
All the students that had shown up so far simultaneously looked from the rambunctious group of students to Kagura's flimsy hiding place. Kagura was looking even more panicked as she put a finger to her lips symbolizing silence as she frantically shook her head.
Either Tomo was too stupid to understand the obvious gesture, or, more likely, she just wanted to cause Kagura grief. The wildcat stood up and pointed at the athletic girl. "Kagura's right-mmph!"
Thankfully, Yomi had quickly run up to Tomo and clasped a hand over the boisterous girl's mouth, silencing the mischievous fool. "She ran by that way!" Yomi asserted, as she pointed in the same direction Tomo was pointing. The large mass of students readily bought the feeble lie. The door to the room slammed shut after a few quick and insincere thanks, and their footsteps could easily be heard running off. "What the hell was that?" Yomi mumbled as she relinquished her hold on the wildcat.
In response, Tomo accosted Yomi for ruining the potential chaos, and the duo descended into yet another fight. This time, Chiyo didn't pay them much mind, instead finding Kagura's situation much more intriguing.
No sooner did the unruly horde leave, did many of the students in the room get up and rush over to Kagura. The podium suddenly tipped over as Kagura fled the mob by dashing over the overturned object. The sporty girl then rounded the perimeter, coming to a stop behind Sakaki.
"Hide me," Kagura begged as she feebly tried to make herself invisible by crouching down behind the tall girl.
"What is this?" Sakaki questioned as she kept an eye on the crowd, still gathered round the fallen podium.
"Everyone's gone nuts!" Kagura hissed as she kept a wary eye on the crowd. But the crowd faltered at the even more imposing than normal sight of Sakaki.
Hesitantly, the students dispersed and returned to their desks as Chiyo, Tomo, and Yomi all returned to Sakaki's desk. "What the hell is going on?" Tomo irately demanded. "How'd you get so popular all of a sudden?"
"How am I supposed to know?" Kagura retorted.
"Why is everyone harassing you?" Yomi seriously inquired. "Did something happen?"
Kagura shook her head. "I didn't do anything," she asserted.
"Then what does everyone want with you?" Chiyo spoke up.
Kagura heaved her bag onto Sakaki's desk and pointed to it. "This," she explained as she worked the buckle. The bag suddenly burst open with so much energy that the flap swung up and over, smacking Sakaki in the face.
"No way!" Tomo indignantly shouted as she saw the contents. Her bag was stuffed to the brim with white, red, and pink envelopes.
"Are those all…?" Yomi wearily asked as she pointed to them.
"I dunno," Kagura replied with a sigh. "It's not like I've never had a letter in my shoe locker before, but this is crazy! I literally had to dig my shoes out!"
Tomo dramatically pointed to the bag. "It's not fair!" she flamboyantly shouted at Kagura as she moved her accusatory finger in the athletic girl's direction. "What the hell makes you so popular?" Tomo angrily demanded. "Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!"
"I told you I don't know!" Kagura insisted.
"You're just keeping it a secret so you can have all the attention for yourself!" Tomo accused.
Kagura growled as she started to get fed up with Tomo. "I don't want it!" she argued. "It hasn't even been ten minutes, and I'm more than fed up with everyone hanging all over me!"
"So what are you going to do about it?" Sakaki calmly asked, taking the bickering girls off guard.
As Kagura finally took note of Sakaki, she noticed the obvious wounds. "Um…" Kagura stumbled as she was taken aback at Sakaki's condition and her own stupidity at not noticing it. "What am I going to do?" she dumbly repeated the question.
"Ignore them," Yomi offered. "They'll leave you alone eventually."
"That won't work," Sakaki asserted. "If you ignore them…they won't stop bothering you."
All eyes fell on the wounded girl as they all realized that when it came to idol worship, there wasn't a soul in the school with more experience than Sakaki. "Oh! You must have an amazing technique to keep everyone from bothering you, huh?" Kagura marveled.
Sakaki shook her head. "I just…ignore it," She admitted, never having come up with a better solution herself.
Kagura visibly deflated. "What do I do then?"
Before she got a response from anyone, the school bell sounded just as an exhausted Yukari dashed into the classroom. "Safe," the frazzled teacher mumbled aloud as she walked up to the podium and flopped down onto it…or she would have if it had not been turned over. Instead she fell face first onto the overturned object. She recovered with inhuman speed and sent a death glare at her class. "What the hell?" Yukari shouted as she pointed to the fallen podium. "Whose idea was this?"
"Kagura did it," Tomo unscrupulously ratted her friend out as she pointed towards Kagura, who was at this point trying to sneak back to her desk without detection.
If possible, Yukari got even angrier as she brandished a book. "I'll kill you!"
While Kagura received an excessive beating, courtesy of Yukari, Sakaki couldn't help but notice that not all the class had arrived. Osaka wasn't there, although that wasn't strange. Osaka was often tardy. What bothered Sakaki was the fact that Kaorin hadn't arrived. She immediately worried that perhaps the media had gotten to her again and this time no one was there to rescue her. Or possibly she tried to avoid them by going over the wall again and fell and sprained her ankle. Sakaki's imagination ran rampant all throughout the morning, constantly thinking up worse and worse scenarios that could have befallen Kaorin. Finally, she came to the ludicrous situation that perhaps her friend had been kidnapped by a secret government agency and they were doing inhumane experiments on her to discover how she came to be a catgirl. And then maybe they'd make a whole army of catgirls and try to take over the world with the cuteness!
Needless to say that come lunch time, Sakaki had not only effectively missed all of her morning classes, but she was a nervous wreck too. As soon as the lunch bell sounded, Kagura shot over to Sakaki's desk. Predictably, all of Kagura's admirers faltered at seeing her next to Sakaki. "It worked!" Kagura exclaimed with a smile, more than a little proud that she had outsmarted her legion of fans.
Sakaki didn't pay Kagura any heed; in fact, she hadn't even realized her presence. The second the teacher left the classroom, Sakaki whipped out her cell phone and, with the courage of unrelenting panic, she dialed Kaorin's cell. Unfortunately for Sakaki, the only response she got was a standardized message informing her that the phone was turned off. Sakaki started shaking as she imagined a mysterious and scary government man turning off Kaorin's cell phone as she was dragged away into the shadows.
"I didn't think it sounded that bad," Kagura mumbled as she folded the note and stuck it back into its envelope. While Sakaki was distracted with her own thoughts, Kagura had dug her bento out of her bag and had begun to absentmindedly read some of the letters aloud as she ate. "They all kinda sound the same though," she complained.
"Here," Yomi offered as she placed a wastebasket next to Sakaki's desk.
"Eh? What's that for?" Kagura inquired as she managed to tear open another envelope with only her left hand.
"You don't plan on keeping all of those, do you?" Yomi rhetorically asked as she pointed to the note.
Kagura reluctantly looked to the trashcan. "I guess not," she mumbled. "But isn't it kind of mean to just throw them away?"
"It's your call," Yomi dismissed as she held up her own bento. "Tomo-chan, Chiyo-chan, Osaka and I are going up to the roof to eat lunch, since the weather is going to be bad for a while. You two can come too."
"Wait," Sakaki called out to Yomi as she turned to leave. "Did you…I mean...," Sakaki stumbled.
"What?" Yomi prodded as she cocked an eyebrow.
Taking a deep breath to collect herself, Sakaki tried again. "Do you…do you know what happened to Kaorin?"
Yomi took a glance at Kaorin's seat before shaking her head. "Haven't heard anything," Yomi informed Sakaki before making her way out of the classroom.
Sakaki sighed as she reluctantly produced a bento of her own. As the tall girl began eating, once more ignoring Kagura's incessant rambling, she glanced around the room looking for the one person who might know something. Sakaki spotted her almost immediately. Even though she had barely taken two bites of her lunch, Sakaki set her chopsticks down onto her bento and stood up with vigor. Although Kagura asked what she was doing, the words were unheard by Sakaki's one-track mind.
"What's with her today?" Kagura mumbled aloud as she went to open another letter. As soon as it was open and she went back to eating, Kagura was suddenly filled with an urgent sense of dread. Looking up, she saw a most terrifying sight. She was surrounded by a horde of admirers! "Sakaki! You traitor!" Kagura shouted, although she couldn't be heard over the squeals of delight and admiration.
"Chihiro-san," Sakaki spoke up as she approached the girl in question.
Chihiro pried herself away from staring at the horde that had surrounded Kagura to the imposing figure of Sakaki. "What do you want?" Chihiro spat with as much disdain as possible.
Sakaki was taken aback at the malice in Chihiro's voice, and Sakaki was pretty sure that the shorter girl was doing her best to glare at her too. "I-I wanted to speak with you," Sakaki nervously spoke.
"Go away," Chihiro ordered as she went back to staring at the fans enveloping Kagura.
"But I…"
"Leave!" Chihiro forcefully shouted.
Sakaki reluctantly gave up and limped back to her desk, or as close as she could get with the wall of bodies in her way. After a few moments of trying to force her way through, Sakaki gave up. She considered going up to the roof with the others, but agitating her leg further was something Sakaki would rather avoid. With no other choice, Sakaki looked for a desk to sit at. Of course, the first desk she looked to was Kaorin's. She walked over and hesitantly sat down. "I really hope she's okay," Sakaki whispered at a barely audible volume.
In the end, Sakaki never really got to eat lunch. She ended up suffering through the rest of the day with an empty stomach on top of all of her unnecessary anxiety. By the time the final bell rang, Sakaki felt as though she shouldn't have come to school at all. With her recent injury she probably could have gotten out of coming to school easily, too. She wanted more than anything to go to Kaorin's house and see if the catgirl was okay, but she at least had to go home with her mother's assistant today.
"Hey, Sakaki!" Kagura shouted as she approached. "Wanna walk home together?" She asked as she glanced about at all the potential fans that might harass her.
"I can't," the taller girl brushed Kagura off.
Honestly, it didn't matter what Sakaki said, Kagura would follow her anywhere until her stalkers wandered off. "What're you doing instead?"
Once again, Sakaki didn't catch so much as half of what Kagura had said. She was still fretting over the fate of her friend. Yomi didn't seem to know anything, Chihiro refused to talk at all, and Sakaki couldn't think of anyone else that was close to Kaorin. In desperation, she spoke her mind to Kagura instead. "Do you know why Kaorin wasn't here today?"
Kagura shook her head. "I don't." Kagura then looked around the room and spied Chihiro gathering her things to leave. "But I bet I know who does!" The athletic girl nearly started to dash towards Chihiro, but stopped herself from leaving Sakaki's side. "Let's go talk to Chihiro," Kagura suggested as she took Sakaki's hand and led the unwilling girl to Chihiro.
Kagura and Sakaki arrived at Chihiro's desk at the same time as Yomi. "Hey, Chihiro," Yomi beat Kagura to the punch.
"It looks like I'm really popular today," Chihiro cynically noted as she glanced about the girls surrounding her.
"I was a little worried about Kaorin," Yomi informed Chihiro. "Do you know why she wasn't here today?"
Chihiro took the time to send a subtle glare in Sakaki's direction before responding. "It looks like she was really upset again," Chihiro informed Yomi, "so she just stayed home today."
"Was it something Tomo did?" Yomi accused more than asked. "Do I need to make Tomo apologize to her again?"
"It wasn't Tomo," Chihiro informed Yomi.
"Who was it?" Sakaki boldly butted in.
"You!" Chihiro accosted as she pointed at Sakaki. "Kaorin wouldn't say anything about what happened, but she did tell me that this is all your fault!"
Sakaki's stoic mask shattered as her face turned to surprise and horror. "M-Me?"
"Don't act innocent!" Chihiro yelled at Sakaki. "It was stupid for me to ever give you Kaorin's number!" Having said her piece, Chihiro grabbed her bag and quickly fled the scene.
With Chihiro gone, all eyes fell on Sakaki. "What…happened?" Kagura nervously asked Sakaki. Remembering the bad mood Sakaki was in yesterday combined with her wounds today, Kagura's mind ran wild with possibilities.
"I…didn't do anything," Sakaki honestly claimed.
Kagura and Yomi exchanged confused glances before turning back to Sakaki. "Something had to have happened," Yomi rationalized, "otherwise Kaorin wouldn't have stayed home."
On the verge of tears and having little other option, Sakaki turned around and walked off as quickly as she could without causing her leg too much pain. Kagura, of course, had to follow. Not only because she refused to leave the situation at that, but also because Sakaki's impeccable intimidation was the only barrier Kagura had against her fans. "Talk to me," Kagura insisted as she caught up to Sakaki.
Predictably, Sakaki didn't say anything as she kept walking at a hurried pace. Despite Kagura pestering her the whole way, Sakaki kept from saying anything at all the whole way out of the school. And, much to Kagura's chagrin, Sakaki got away from her at the shoe lockers because another boatload of letters cluttered up her shoe locker. Once Kagura got out the front door she barely caught sight of Sakaki getting into a rather large car. "Shit," Kagura spat as she saw the car drive off. Having little other choice, Kagura started running. Instead of heading towards her own home, Kagura set her sights on Kaorin's house so she could get to the bottom of things.
A/N: Poor, oblivious Sakaki. Next chapter will hopefully involve their friends doing their best to get Sakaki and Kaorin back on the right road. As promised, this chapter finally reveals the meteorite's effects on Kagura. Much like with Kaorin, there is a silver lining. It just hasn't turned up yet.