Sunday 11th June 2014, 05:41

Abandoned department store, Tokyo

For a time, everything seemed still. Silent. I was too shocked to acknowledge anything but the immediate source of my confusion. He was kissing me, and I didn't know how to react. His hands were gentle as they cupped my cheeks, but there was something intense about the way his lips pressed into mine: it was almost as if it were his last action on earth.

Slowly I managed to raise a quivering hand, and pushed him away. I looked up at him, into those powerfully dark eyes that still shone with tears. I could still feel my heart beating faster than it ever had before, and the odd warmth that lingered around my mouth was alien and unsettling.

"What are you doing?" I whispered, the sound shaking in my throat. "Why did you…"

"I'm sorry," he replied, letting go of me and drawing away. He turned away his head, fixing his eyes on the floor and clenching his fists against his knees. "I should have asked first… I was just – just so relieved, I… Sorry…"

"It's…it's okay, but…" I paused, suddenly realising that Honey had vanished. I thought I could almost hear his tiny footsteps from the floor above, and quietly resented being left alone after what had just happened. I returned my attention to Takashi, whose face was beginning to regain colour at increasing rapidity. "I guess I just wasn't expecting anything like that."

"I can imagine…"

I didn't answer for almost a whole minute, still reeling with shock. The silence was almost deafening.

"Why did you kiss me?" I asked, and he looked at me, and I was almost pained at the expression of distress on his face. He opened his mouth to reply, faltered, then opened it again.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" he said, his deep voice suddenly high and tremulous. "I'm in love with you, Haruhi. I have been for a long time. You can't tell me you didn't notice…"

I bowed my head, trying to avoid looking at him.

"I can't say that I didn't," I conceded, staring down at my blood-soaked knees. "And there were times that I thought I felt the same, but… But I – I never thought it would be like this…"

"What are you saying?" I heard him say, much closer than I had thought: I looked up to see him right before me, worry renewed in his eyes.

"I can't give you what you want, Takashi…"

I could almost see his heart sink from the way his eyes seemed to dull.

"Haruhi – "

"Listen to me, please," I pressed on, sitting up higher and taking hold of his shoulders. "It's not safe for us to do this: it's just not. It's the kind of people we are to put each other first, but what about everyone else? We can't afford any kind of distraction – not anymore…" He didn't say anything, instead turning his head away: I turned it back, holding it on either side and refusing to let him avoid the reality of the situation. "Takashi, I care about you – so, so much – and I love you, but… I just…"

"I understand…"

"I don't think you do," I said, closing my eyes and bowing my head against his. I could feel his breath warm against my cheeks. I sniffed, clenching my eyes tighter shut as they threatened to well with tears. "Just know that… if it were any other time, I would have kissed you back." I felt something small and wet against my fingertips, and realised that he was crying. His whole body shivered for a moment as he attempted to suppress it, his breath shaky on my face. My insides ached, and I felt like the only way to escape this awful numbness was to sink into the floor and never resurface. "I need to protect everyone in the Host Club as much as I'm able to: they're the only family I have left - " My voice cracked horribly, and I pursed my lips tightly to avoid saying anything more.

I felt his strong arms unexpectedly wrap around me, pulling me closer to him and closing me in an embrace of complete affection and comfort. Despite my overwhelming desire to do so, to relinquish at least some of the emotions bricking up my entire system, I was somehow unable to cry. It felt I was screaming from the inside out, so full of confusion and anger and remorse that I didn't know why I couldn't bring myself to just let it all go.

"If it's okay with you…" he breathed in my ear, his arms quivering around me slightly. "Could I… maybe kiss you again?"

"Takashi?"

"Please…" He gripped me tighter, bowing his head into my shoulder. "I don't want the first time I kissed you to be the last time, too."

I didn't answer automatically. Instead I said nothing for a few moments, contemplating just how much suffering I had put him through for so long, only now to reveal that his hopes would never come to fruition. I sighed, drawing myself away from him: I slipped through his arms as if they belonged to a rag doll, sinking to his sides as his head drooped hopelessly from my shoulder. I surveyed him through heavy eyes, like a husk of the charismatic young athlete he had been just a month ago: filthy, bloodied, tear-stained, and exhausted, he was broken before me. I barely knew if there was a way to fix it.

I slid my fingers through his hair, tangled and wiry, until my hand just gently touched his chin. I raised his head, cheeks glistening with tear tracks in the glowing orange light of the dawn. My lips twitched involuntarily upward in the very smallest of smiles, before I bent my head and kissed him.

It was soft, just barely contact, but I lingered there for longer than I knew: for now I finally understood what I wanted, which was what I should never hope to pursue in the world that no longer allowed it. Before I could give in to my own human weakness, before I could let him take my face in his hands again and hold me there to kiss forever, I forced myself away.

I didn't know what a person was supposed to say after something like that, and to avoid having to think about it at all I hastily got to my feet, turning away. I couldn't look at him, couldn't bring myself to see his eyes. Not now.

"I… I'm going to get us some more food," I said hoarsely, turning my head slightly in the direction of the run-down supermarket. "You go back up and check on the others."

"You shouldn't go alone," he began to say as I bent to retrieve the katana from the floor.

"We already took care of the Henkō on this floor," I explained, slotting the blade through a belt loop and resting a hand on the hilt. "If there were any strays around we would have known about them already."

"I still don't want you to – "

"I just think it's best if we're not too close around one another," I said, still not looking round as I heard him get to his feet behind me. "Just for a little while…"

"I… yeah, I guess that makes sense…"

I could hear the defeat in his voice. I wanted to turn around and apologise, but I knew that hurting him was the only way to protect him: keeping my friends alive was the only incentive I had anymore, and I knew he felt the same. We all did. It was all we had left in the world to work collectively to protect one another: we couldn't afford even the tiniest weak link by way of some high school romance that came at the worst possible time. It was true that I cared deeply for Takashi, but I cared for my other friends every bit as much as I did him: the only difference was the manner of love I had for him.

"Just promise me that you'll come back."

It was this that made me give in. I looked at him, his face burning with unease. I nodded fractionally.

"I promise," I said, and he nodded in return. I paused a moment, my insides suddenly contorting. "And I also promise that… um…" I pursed my lips and closed my eyes, opening them again with a small sigh. "I promise, when this is all over… I'll come back to you."

Wednesday 14th June 2014, 21:36

Noboru private laboratory, Mt. Warusawa; Shizuoka

"So close…" Noboru muttered to himself, squeezing impatiently upon the pipette to release drop by tiny drop of bright violet liquid onto the Agar plate on the table top before him. Discarded all around were similar plates, the bin overflowing with papers to the point of redundancy, the surrounding floor, tables, chairs and window sills littered with charts, results tables and various algorithmic documentations, all with varying degrees of stickiness from the many spilled plates of failed Agar tests. "So nearly there…"

"Jiro?"

The doctor looked up to see Cho in the doorway, hand subconsciously at her stomach and face pinched and tired looking. He pulled that well-rehearsed smile onto his face and beckoned her over with a wave of his gloved hand.

"What is it, my butterfly?" he asked as she approached, her hands fidgeting together slightly.

"I just… lately I've been hearing these noises…"

"Noises?"

"Since Wakaba-san and Domyoji-san left the other night," Cho explained, settling precariously on the edge of a stool stacked high with papers and fiddling with a fraying string at her sleeve. "I don't know why, but since they ran off, the building seems so… so…"

"Yes?"

Cho paused, a hand slightly raised as if she might grab her elusive answer from the air.

"Well, I don't know exactly," she admitted, sighing and lowering her hand. "But now that it's just you and I, it almost feels like there's something else here that isn't… normal."

"I'm not sure I understand," Noboru said, placing down the glass pipette and fixing her with questioning eyes. She looked back at him, a slight frown at her brow.

"I don't understand either," she said, "I can't understand why those two men would just run away like they did." She folded her arms and gazed absently at the floor as she pondered their sudden disappearance: having woken early in the morning from an onset of nausea, to find the building empty on all three floors but for herself and Noboru, Cho found her recurring phobia of isolation increasing in intensity over the past two days. "But, um… like I said, I keep hearing noises. Screeching, almost."

"Screeching?" he repeated, cocking his head to the side as if in question. "I think that's most likely those things outside and down the mountain – I shouldn't pay much more attention to it."

"That's what I thought at first," the young woman assented slowly, still staring down at the cluttered floor. "But the things I hear sometimes seem like they're coming from… from inside the building. Or, even, below it."

Noboru faltered, and it was lucky for him that Cho wasn't looking at him, for a small fraction of colour was now noticeably drained from his face. Hastily he laughed, and it was a good thing he was so natural a liar.

"Ah, I must have forgotten to tell you!" he exclaimed, getting to his feet and putting a comforting hand on her shoulders. "So stupid of me! Those are probably the monkeys!"

"Monkeys?" Cho frowned, taken aback by such an absurd justification to the noises that infested her anxieties. "What do you mean, monkeys?"

"This laboratory belongs to my sixth brother," Noboru explained, "He's a neurobiologist, which I may have explained before – it's impossible to remember now! – and some of his latest work included studying anthropomorphic mentalities of chimps compared to humans. The basement is full of them, all in cages and usually calm enough: I've been feeding them every day, you must have noticed me going down at some point?"

Cho shifted, smiling awkwardly.

"Uh, no, I don't actually think I have…" she conceded. Noboru rolled his eyes as if pretending to scold her, playfully shaking her shoulders before letting go.

"Ah, clearly we've been working you too hard, my love!" he said. "Anyway, they've been getting somewhat rowdy lately so I've taken to locking the basement door just in case – probably angry about the way I've had to cut their rations to supply us, which may be why those two scientists decided to up and out…"

"Fools," Cho sighed, shaking her head sadly at the thought of what could have happened to them. Little did she know that the noises she heard would answer her questions, for the cries she heard were those of Wakaba and Domyoji: with the new strain of Cho's hormonal erraticism from her pregnancy, Noboru felt he could barely stand any whisper of insubordination. As such, when he had caught the two scientists whispering together about their plans to escape 'the madhouse', finally realising that Akihiko's death was Noboru's doing, he didn't dare let them do so: he needed test subjects for the antidote, after all.

And I bet you fuckers thought there would finally be some happiness for Haruhi and Takashi. GUESS AGAIN!

Further tragedy and torment to follow (◕‿◕✿)