As noon began to roll around, Sakaki sighed as she stared out her bedroom window at the drizzling rain. In the end the tall girl spent most of the night ruminating on her dilemma. No matter how much she tried to refute her feelings, she couldn't deny it any longer. Sakaki definitely had feelings for the cat-girl that were greater than those of friendship or the normal attraction that she had for anything cute and fuzzy. "What am I going to do?" Sakaki mumbled aloud as she watched the raindrops splatter onto the window. While she yearned to see Kaorin again, even just thinking about her made Sakaki's heart race and stomach churn. There was no way she could maintain her composure around the furry-eared girl, so maybe it was a good thing after all that Sakaki wouldn't get to see Kaorin for nearly a week. It's no use! Sakaki conceded at that thought as she staggered over to her bed and flopped face down onto the mattress. I want to see her now! She thought as she lay motionlessly in the awkward position.
This merry-go-round of disjointed and conflicting thoughts and emotions was clearly going nowhere. "I need to talk to someone," she mumbled into the mattress. The only problem with that was the lingering dilemma of just who she could talk to about something like this. Without giving it any thought, Sakaki could easily eliminate most anyone she could talk to. In the end she always narrowed it down to two dismal choices: Kagura and Yomi. Those were the only two people that she could think of to talk to, and even then it still seemed like quite the bad idea. After all, both of them were liable to judge her, and neither of them had any experience in matters of the heart. When it came to love, her whole clique was just as in the dark as Sakaki. The only person that Sakaki could think of that had any experience with adult relationships was… "That's it!" Sakaki exclaimed as she suddenly realized how simple the solution to her problem was. With a newfound drive, Sakaki jumped up and darted out of her room with a destination in mind.
As promised, Kagura had shown up at Kaorin's house to have the cat-girl aid her in finding a date. Unfortunately, it would seem that Kaorin had underestimated the task at hand as she stood dumbfounded at the substantial pile of letters cluttered on her bed. "In just one week, you got all of these?" she blurted out as she turned to Kagura.
"Not really," Kagura replied as she scratched the back of her head. "When I got more than one letter from the same person I threw it out. And I also threw away all the anonymous letters, all the ones that asked me to meet someone somewhere, the ones that didn't seem like love letters, the ones from guys I know I don't like, all the letters from people that don't go to our school…"
"I-I think I get the picture," Kaorin interrupted Kagura. "That just makes it even more amazing."
"I left out all the ones from girls, too," the tomboy asserted.
Kaorin sighed as she stared at the daunting task in front of her. "This is going to take a while."
"Where's Chihiro?" Kagura asked as Kaorin hesitantly picked one of the letters up. "I thought she was gonna help too?"
Kaorin shook her head. "She said that she didn't want to."
"So… how're we gonna go about doing this?" Kagura asked as she pointed to the pile of notes.
"I guess… I should start by sorting these into guys I know something about and guys I don't know. Maybe you could pick out the ones that you liked the best?" she suggested as she started picking up letters and reading the names listed.
"They all kinda seem the same to me," Kagura mumbled as she absentmindedly picked one up.
Kaorin couldn't help but to feel another pang of guilt as she caught sight of Kagura's bandaged hand. "Y-you really don't think that any of these stand out at all?"
"Well, there is one that's different from all of the rest, but I didn't bring it," Kagura admitted.
"Why not?" Kaorin queried as she started going through the letters, taking note of the names, and dropping them into two different piles. "It seems like that would be the best place to start."
"It's not signed," Kagura explained. "I was actually pretty tempted to throw it out like the rest, but since it was different I decided to keep it."
Kaorin paused as she thought a moment. "Is that really a problem?" she wondered aloud.
"Of course it is! If it isn't signed, how am I supposed to know who left it?" Kagura argued.
"Over half of the entire school is falling at your feet," the cat-girl pointed out with just a hint of envy. "I'm pretty sure all you've got to do is ask your fans and they'll be head over feet trying to figure out where it came from. Not to mention that whoever left it would probably come forward."
Kagura sighed. "Doesn't that seem kind of… manipulative?" she asked rhetorically.
"It'll probably get results, though," Kaorin stated.
"Maybe," Kagura relented with another sigh. "This whole situation kinda makes me uncomfortable, though."
"S-so what kind of guy are you hoping to find, anyway?" Kaorin quickly changed the subject.
Kagura crossed her arms and closed her eyes as she thought for a moment. She then shook her head with a grunt. "I dunno," she admitted. "That's kind of why I'm here."
"You don't have any preferences at all?" Kaorin skeptically asked as she stared at Kagura. "Like a guy that's smart, or athletic, or cool or something like that?"
Kagura shrugged at the suggestion. "I guess I'd probably have the most in common with someone who is good at sports, but anything is fine."
"You're not really making this easy for me," Kaorin groaned.
"This is it," Sakaki mumbled as she looked at the nameplate. Summoning her courage, the tall girl reached out and pressed the doorbell. After a few moments, the door opened to reveal a familiar face. "H-hello, Kurosawa-sensei," Sakaki greeted.
"Eh? Sakaki-san?" Nyamo mumbled with confusion clearly written on her face.
"Um…" Sakaki faltered as all the organized thoughts she had just a moment ago evaporated. "That is, I was hoping that I could… speak with you."
Although Nyamo had often been asked for advice by her students, she honestly couldn't say that she'd ever had a student approach her at her apartment before. Not knowing what else to do, she stepped aside to make room for Sakaki to enter. "Do you want to come in?" After inviting Sakaki in and offering the tall girl a drink, she ended up sitting across a low table from her in complete silence. As the awkward quiet grew to uncomfortable and even intolerable levels, Nyamo felt the need to speak up. "S-so how is your leg?"
"It's healing quickly," Sakaki responded. "I hope it will be better in time for the sports festival."
"Don't push yourself too hard," Nyamo advised. "The sports fest is just for fun, so it's not worth hurting yourself over."
"Right," Sakaki thoughtlessly replied.
Nyamo sighed at Sakaki's reluctance. It was clear that the tall girl didn't come just for small talk, and yet she continued to remain silent about what was really bothering her. While it might have been a bit rude, Nyamo was left with little other choice than to try to coax Sakaki into saying what was on her mind. "I get the feeling that you didn't come here to talk about gym class," she suggested, hoping to nudge Sakaki into talking without seeming too pushy.
Sakaki's gaze immediately fell away from her teacher. "How-how do you stop loving someone?" she tactlessly blurted out.
Nyamo blinked a couple of times as she tried to process that information. Although she'd been asked for relationship advice before, this was one proposal that she'd never encountered before. After putting the pieces of the puzzle together with her own assumptions Nyamo managed to come to a conclusion. "So you confessed and got turned down, huh?" she asked a bit hesitantly. After all, it was a bit of a farfetched idea considering how popular the tall girl was. "That must be rough."
"I-I haven't said anything to anyone," Sakaki admitted as she dodged eye contact.
"Eh?" Nyamo blurted out her confusion. "You mean… you want to give up and you haven't even tried at all?"
Sakaki nodded after a moment's hesitation. "That's right."
The gym teacher crossed her arms and closed her eyes as she leaned back and sighed trying to make sense of the tall girl's words. After racking her mind for a moment, Nyamo gave up on figuring it out. "Is it… someone that's already spoken for?"
"No, it's nothing like that," Sakaki refuted as she began to question why she had come here in the first place. "It's just… impossible. That's why I have to do something myself," she elaborated. "I was hoping you would know something since you have… experience."
Nyamo couldn't help but to be a bit put off by Sakaki's last sentence. "I know I haven't had a lot of luck with guys lately," she muttered as she slumped forward and rested her elbow on the table with her hand propping up her head, "but that doesn't make me some sort of expert in being dumped."
"Ah, no," Sakaki tried to correct herself. "I just mean that you know more about a person's true feelings than anyone else I know. I think we all learned a lot about… love from you."
Nyamo's face immediately flushed red as her drunken speech at the beach came back to bite her again. She tried to cover her face with her hands in a feeble attempt to hide her shame. "L-look, Sakaki-san, I'm still a little lost here. Why exactly do you want to give up instead of trying to pursue your feelings?" the teacher asked as she tried to get herself out of this rather dismal situation. "It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense."
"It's just that the person I like is my friend," Sakaki explained. "If I confessed then she might grow to hate me. I would rather us just stay friends than to risk throwing it all away."
Once again, Nyamo found herself completely stupefied. "Sh-she?"
Sakaki blushed as she hung her head. Idiot! she berated herself for such a foolish slip of the tongue. Having no room to deny it, Sakaki had little other option than to be honest. "Th-that's right. Because of that she will think that I'm disgusting… everyone might," she admitted. "I wouldn't be able to endure… something like that."
"I guess… that does make things a bit more complicated," Nyamo allowed. "I had no idea that you were… like that."
"I-I'm not," Sakaki quickly denied. "It's just Ka-I mean, it's only her."
As soon as Sakaki made her slip, Nyamo's brain went to work trying to figure out the mystery. It took all of two seconds for her to jump to a conclusion. Sakaki-san has joined the Kagura fan club! Nyamo mistakenly thought. "W-well I suppose that explains a lot," she mumbled as she dismissed Sakaki's feelings as mere admiration.
"What can I do?" Sakaki reminded Nyamo of her plight.
Nyamo closed her eyes as she tried to figure out just what would be the best advice for the tall girl. "As cruel as it sounds the best way to get over someone is to have all of your hopes and dreams stripped away," she realized as she opened her eyes to spy Sakaki flinch at the statement. "The sooner that happens, the less painful it would be. Although it seems like you don't want to confess at all."
"There… has to be another way," Sakaki pleaded.
"A confession would probably be the best," Nyamo argued. "Best case scenario, however unlikely that is, would put you two… together, and in the worst case you just get turned down and that would really help you to move along."
Sakaki shook her head. "It could be worse," she claimed. "Ka- she might come to hate me, and if she told anyone… everyone would… dislike me…" the tall girl trailed off.
Nyamo sighed. "I really don't think she would hate you for it, and I'm sure she wouldn't humiliate you like that, either," the teacher assured Sakaki. "But if you really don't have the courage, then I guess you could deal with your feelings in another way."
"How?" Sakaki immediately and enthusiastically asked.
"Redirection is usually a good strategy," Nyamo suggested. "Maybe you should try going out with someone else. A new love is usually a pretty good way to forget about a bad breakup or an unrequited love, even if it is nothing more than a distraction."
Although it definitely sounded like a decent idea, Sakaki wasn't sure if she had the gall to go through with something like that. On the other hand, it wasn't like she had a lot of other options, either. "I'll… consider it," she reluctantly relented. "Is there anything else at all?"
Sighing once more, Nyamo pointed back towards her bedroom. "I know you seem to think I have a lot of good relationship advice, but in case you haven't noticed, I still go to bed alone," she explained. "I really think you should talk to someone else about this. I know it's probably really awkward, but maybe you should just speak with your parents about it. I'm sure they'll underst-"
"No," Sakaki quickly and firmly asserted. "O-Okaa-san doesn't even want me to be friends with her. Okaa-san really seems to… dislike her."
Nyamo gave Sakaki a puzzled look as she tried to imagine anyone who could find enough fault with her star swim girl to hate her. It seemed nothing short of impossible especially with Kagura's profound and bizarre popularity. "Well, there are other people you could talk to," she suggested after a few moments of thought. "The school counselor, maybe?"
Sakaki hung her head as she realized that her P.E. teacher really didn't have any of the answers she was looking for. "All right," she relented as she slowly rose to her feet. "Sorry to have bothered you."
The tall girl's sudden desire to leave caught Nyamo a bit off guard. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of much help," she apologized as she too climbed to her feet. "I really think you should consider telling… her your true feelings, though." Sakaki didn't reply with anything other than a sigh as she trotted over to the door and replaced her shoes before exiting the residence. Nyamo couldn't help but to groan as she sat back down. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Why are we here again?" Kagura complained as she gazed around an office in complete disarray. "We didn't even get through half of those letters."
"I told you before that Kei said to come in. That it was urgent," Kaorin reminded the tomboy as she marveled at how disgusting Kei's office was. "By the way, you probably shouldn't touch anything in here."
"No kidding," Kagura mumbled as she shuffled about in place, a little too bothered by the environment to take a seat in a chair. "But why did I have to come with you?"
"Kei said to bring you," Kaorin asserted. "I hope he's figured something out."
Kagura growled to show her discontent. "I don't even know the guy! What does this have to do with me?"
"I'm pretty sure that Kei thinks that all the weird stuff that's been happening is connected," the cat-girl claimed. "I kind of think that, too. There's no way it can all be a coincidence."
"But none of it is similar," Kagura argued. "Chiyo-chan grew up, I got popular, and you got… uh… mutated."
Kaorin visibly deflated at the comment. "Please don't put it that way," she meekly replied.
"S-sorry," Kagura apologized. "So where is this Kei guy, anyway?" she deftly changed the subject. "If it's something urgent, shouldn't he have been here waiting for us?"
"It's really strange that he isn't here," the cat-girl admitted as she looked about. "Usually Kei drops anything and everything if it gives him the excuse to pester me." Realizing that standing around wasn't going to get them very far Kaorin poked her head out of the office and quickly spotted a passing nurse. "Excuse me," she interrupted the nurse only to receive an irritated stare. "I'm one of Kei's patients and I was wondering-"
"Oh you poor thing!" the nurse interrupted as she suddenly adopted a sympathetic look. "Now you're going to want to talk to Saeki-san. To get to her office, you'll need to take that elevator up two floors," she explained as she pointed down the hall. "Then take a left and go to the end of the hall, and her office is the third door on the right."
Kaorin sighed at the response. "Actually, I have Saeki-san's personal number," she explained as she held up her cell phone. "I was just wondering where Kei was."
The nurse nodded in understanding. "I'm pretty sure he's in the MRI room," she informed the cat-girl. "You can easily avoid him by just taking the elevator down to the lobby."
"Uh… thanks," Kaorin said as she bowed.
As the nurse started off to do whatever it that she was doing in the first place, Kagura finally exited Kei's office and approached Kaorin. "What the hell was that?" she wondered out loud. "Is this Kei guy really okay?"
Kaorin shook her head a bit. "He's totally intolerable," she admitted. "But he seems to be the only one with any hopes of curing me."
"Is all of this really worth it?" Kagura seriously inquired. "I mean, is getting a tail and fuzzy ears really all that bad?"
The cat-girl took pause at Kagura's comment. "I just… want to be me again, you know?" she finally muttered after a couple of seconds. "Not to mention that whole catnip thing. That's got to stop."
"Agreed," Kagura affirmed as she took a look at her bandaged hand.
"S-sorry again," Kaorin apologized as she caught Kagura looking at her hand.
"It's not really your fault," Kagura claimed, eager to dismiss the bad memories associated with the event. "Anyways, where is this Kei guy?"
Kaorin pointed in the same direction as what the nurse had indicated. "I guess we have to and find where the MRI room is."
A couple of hallways later, the duo found a door with several warnings posted on it. "Kind of scary, isn't it?" Kagura suggested as she skimmed over the signs. "Should we leave our cell phones here?"
Before the girls could decide on a course of action, the door swung open to reveal an unexpected face. "Yomi-chan!" Kaorin blurted out.
"Ah, Kei-san said that you would show up," Yomi greeted before turning her gaze to Kagura. "But why is Kagura here?"
"What's going on?" Kaorin wondered aloud. "Why are you here?"
Yomi sighed as she adjusted her glasses. "You're the one that said Kei-san was okay, and since he said to show up if anything strange happened I thought that I'd come in. You lied to me," she accused.
"I know," Kaorin unabashedly admitted. "But why are you here? It doesn't look like anything has happened to you."
"I can't taste anything," Yomi bluntly informed the duo as she stepped back to let them in. "Kei-san hasn't been much help at all. He just keeps ignoring me and ogling Osaka." As Kaorin and Kagura entered, Yomi pointed them in the direction of the observation area. "Kei-san's over there."
While Kagura obediently headed towards Kei, Kaorin found Yomi's offhand remarks to be more than a little alarming. "You can't taste anything? A-and Osaka is here? What the hell is going on?"
"The hell? That's Osaka!" Kagura's voice rang out.
Suddenly forgetting about Yomi, Kaorin rushed next to Kagura only to spy a rather voluptuous-looking Osaka standing in a hospital gown next to the MRI machine. Amazingly, the once flat-chested girl had managed to somehow acquire curves that could even give Sakaki a run for her money. "I-I… ah…" the cat-girl incoherently stammered as she traced an outline of an hourglass with her hands. "How!"
"The same way you became a cat-girl, I'm assuming," Kei replied before speaking into a microphone. "All right, Ayumu-chan. Feel free to get redressed and come back in," he informed Osaka before turning back to the incredulous duo with a beaming smile. "Hopefully you two can help me shed some light on this situation."
"Wh-What? How?" Kagura hesitated as she feebly shied away from Kei's stare.
"Let's go to my office," Kei suggested before moving to the microphone and informing Osaka that they were headed there. "Hopefully Chiyo-suke will show up soon, too."
Sakaki, meanwhile, had been wondering around lost in thought until she ended up in a familiar place, although it didn't look anything like she had remembered. The tall girl stared at the empty lot where the abandoned house once sat feeling a bit forlorn. Not only was she concerned about where all those cats had gone, but it was as if that precious memory that she shared with Kaorin had been tarnished as well. Sakaki couldn't help but to sigh at the depressing sight.
"Not thinking about committing more crimes, are you?" a masculine voice interrupted Sakaki's melancholy.
The tall girl nearly jumped at the unexpected question as she turned to find a police officer in uniform offering her a smile. "I-ah… no," Sakaki struggled to respond.
"How is your leg?" the policeman inquired.
It was only then that Sakaki finally recognized him as the person that had helped her get to her doctor's office on that day. "It's doing better," she claimed as she bowed. "Thank you, for before."
"You can thank me by staying out of trouble," Taro suggested as he walked up next to Sakaki and followed her gaze to the empty lot. "I sure hope you didn't leave something important in there."
Sakaki absentmindedly shook her head. "We got all of the cats out before…" she started only to realize that she had never told Taro about being in there. "H-how did you…?"
It was Taro's turn to be surprised as he remembered that it was the cat-girl that he got all of the information from. "Sorry, it was your friend that told me what happened, more or less," he explained as he tried his best to remember. "The girl with the cat-ears… I don't think I caught her name."
"Kaorin!" Sakaki answered a little too quickly.
Taro just smiled as he rubbed the back of his head. "It doesn't ring a bell," he admitted. "Like I said, I don't think she told me her name. But how many girls with real cat-ears can there be?"
"It was Kaorin," Sakaki confidently claimed.
"Is that so?" Taro replied with a friendly smile. "Anyhow, I think that I should probably get back to my rounds," he excused himself as he turned to leave. "Stay out of trouble, okay?"
"Wait!" Sakaki suddenly urged, causing the officer to hesitate and turn around.
"What is it?"
Sakaki hesitated for a split second before blurting out the only thing on her mind. "Do-do you know anything about love?"
"Eh?" the officer stammered as he was taken aback by the sudden, seemingly random question.
The tall girl couldn't help but to blush a bit in embarrassment at Taro's reaction. "I just… need to know how to stop loving someone. The advice I already got… didn't help."
"So it's something like that, huh?" Taro asked rhetorically as he scratched the back of his head. "I guess that explains why you looked so forlorn. Honestly, I can't say I know a whole lot about love, but I do know a thing or two about unrequited love and how painful that can be," he claimed, assuming that was the situation was Sakaki was in.
"What should I do?" she bluntly asked.
"Well, if there's hope in the future for you, then you should just be a good friend to him and poise yourself to self to slip into a relationship when the opportunity presents itself. No sense in giving up if there is hope," Taro advised. "If there really is no hope, though, then you should find something to hate. I know from experience that just admiring someone from a distance only makes things worse. Try to get close to them and find every little imperfection and fault so you can find a way to move on. That or get into another relationship. Doesn't matter if you really love them or not; it's a good distraction and a good outlet for your feelings."
"I… see," Sakaki replied, dissatisfied at how similar the advice was.
"Sorry I couldn't be of more help," Taro apologized as he easily picked up on Sakaki's disappointment. "But I really can't spare any more time," he excused himself as he turned away again. "Take care of yourself."
Sakaki sighed as she again turned her gaze to the empty lot. She couldn't imagine ever coming to hate the cat-girl, and the thought of dating some random person didn't set well with her at all. Is there hope? she wondered as she thought back on Taro's words.
Meanwhile in Kei's office, the quirky doctor had Kagura standing next to Osaka. "You both have wonderful curves, although it looks like Ayumu-chan is just a little bigger than Kagura-chan."
"I didn't come here to compare breasts with Osaka!" Kagura angrily retorted as she blushed and crossed her arms over her chest.
"Why are we here?" Kaorin demanded from her position next to a rather irate looking Yomi. "You said it was urgent and to bring Kagura, but all you've been doing is goofing off, as usual."
"Ah, that," Kei allowed as he pried his eyes off of the curvy duo. He then moved to his desk and carelessly removed the clutter by sweeping his arms across the surface and dumping everything into the floor. "Gather around!" he loudly announced as he produced a rolled up sheet of paper and spread it out across the desk.
The girls reluctantly complied and cautiously approached the desk. "A map?" Kagura observed.
"It's our neighborhood," Yomi deftly identified.
Kei smiled as he held up various colored markers. "To figure out this mystery, I have to find the source!" he announced. "I want all of you to take a color and trace out where you went twenty-four hours before your dramatic changes. The places where they all intersect are a good place to look to find the cause of all of this."
The girls all looked to one another before accepting a marker from Kei. "It was a week ago for me," Kaorin lamented as she tried to find where her house would be. "It's kind of hard to remember."
"I'm not even sure when I became popular," Kagura complained as she scratched her head with the back of the marker.
"Just try your best," Kei encouraged as he twirled the last marker between his fingers. "This is just to narrow down the search."
"Aren't you going to hand that over?" Yomi demanded with her hand outstretched.
Kei just blinked a couple of times as he gave Yomi a puzzled look. "This one is for Chiyo-suke whenever I can get her to come by. Your ailment is just a run of the mill kind of thing. Nothing special. Though I'm not one hundred percent sure Kagura's fame is totally related to the situation, either."
"Then why am I here?" Yomi argued as she grit her teeth.
"I've already reserved the MRI for…" Kei started as he took a moment to check his watch. "about 20 minutes from now. While complete loss of taste might be a documented phenomenon, a lot of its causes are far from benign," he informed the brunette as he intently watched the trails behind the markers grow. "And if we rule out absolutely every possible cause, then we might have you come and draw a path, too."
Yomi paled a little at Kei's words. "What do you mean, 'far from benign'?"
"From what I can tell, you haven't had any surgeries or severe head trauma recently," Kei recounted. "And you say that you have completely and absolutely lost the ability to taste. That narrows the possible underlying causes to a few possible culprits, and not a whole lot of them are too forgiving."
"L-like what?" Yomi hesitantly asked.
"The first thing I'd like to rule out would be a brain lesion or tumor," Kei calmly replied.
"What?" the entire room screamed in response with the exception of Yomi who was suddenly finding it very difficult to breathe.
It took a few moments for Yomi to let Kei's response to fully sink in. "Y-you… you think I have c-cancer?" she choked out as she struggled to stay standing on her now wobbling legs.
"Well, that all depends on how honest you're being with me," Kei elaborated as he cast a scrutinizing stare at Yomi. "Normally a person complains of reduced, altered, or persistent taste. Not complete and total loss."
"B-but I really did lose my taste," Yomi stammered. "I really can't taste anything!"
"Can you smell anything?" Kei somberly asked as he kept his eyes fixed on Yomi. "A lot of the sense of taste is actually based on smell."
The bespectacled girl thought back to breakfast and felt a bit panicky as she realized that she didn't smell a thing at breakfast. "I-even though I cooked this morning I didn't… smell anything."
"Wait," Osaka interrupted, "didn' y'all complain how tha hospital smelled like disinfectant earlier?"
Yomi had never been happier to be wrong. "That's right!" she exclaimed. "That means it can't be cancer or anything, right?"
While Kei never spotted any behavior that would leave him to believe that Yomi was lying, the complete reversal of her claims was quite confounding. "So you couldn't smell food, but you could smell that awful stench that permeates this place. Interesting."
"It means I'll be okay, right?" Yomi practically begged for a claim, valid or not, that her symptoms weren't cause for alarm.
"You cuties go ahead and finish the map," Kei instructed as he got up. "And have Chiyo-suke do it, too, if and when she shows up." Kei then motioned for Yomi to follow him as he headed out of his office. "I can't rule anything out until after the MRI," he informed Yomi as soon as the duo was alone, "but I can say that things have certainly turned to your favor. We don't have much time before we're due for your MRI, so let's hurry up and get that formality out of the way so we can focus on more interesting things."
Yomi was more than a little overwhelmed as she numbly followed the doctor. "O-okay."
"What should I do?" Sakaki fretted as she pondered the dissonance in the advice she had received. The tall girl was so lost in her thoughts that she failed to recognize that Naomi's car was in the driveway or that the door that she had locked herself earlier was open. So Sakaki was caught by surprise when she quite literally bumped into Naomi. Ever keeping her cool, Sakaki managed to choke out an apology instead of a surprised yelp.
Naomi didn't seem to take notice of Sakaki's apology at all. "You seem pretty out of it," she observed as she easily picked up on Sakaki's muddled mood. "Something wrong?"
"I didn't notice that you were here," Sakaki continued her apology in a feeble and transparent attempt to change the subject.
"Your mother needed me to fax some papers to her office," Naomi explained her presence as she carefully watched Sakaki's actions. "So what's bothering you?"
"It's… complicated," Sakaki claimed.
Having expected a response similar to that, Naomi couldn't help but to let a small smile touch her lips. "I'm good at complicated. That's part of the reason your mother relies on me." Unfortunately, Sakaki just stayed silent as she lowered her head to the floor. After several seconds Naomi sighed as she realized that she wasn't likely to coax anything out of the girl so easily. "I only want to help you," she earnestly informed her employer's daughter. "If you ever want to talk about it, I'll listen."
As Naomi started towards the house's small home office, Sakaki managed to find her courage. "Do you… promise not to tell Okaa-san?"
While Naomi was glad that the tall girl finally decided to open up a little, Sakaki's statement certainly didn't bode well. "You have my word," Naomi assured with a flawless forced smile before looking to her watch. "It's about lunch time. Why don't you let me fax these documents then we can go grab a bite and talk?"
Sakaki nodded in response. "S-sure."
"Judging from that stupid smile on your face I'm guessing that it's bad news," the MRI technician commented as he watched Kei intently staring at the monitor. "The last time I saw you grin like that some poor soul had a parasite in their brain."
"I think this will prove to be even more interesting than that," Kei remarked as he kept his eyes plastered on the screen.
"Th-that bad?" the technician asked.
Ignoring the chattering nuisance, Kei broke away from the monitor as he motioned for the MRI tech to shut down the machine. "You're done, Koyomi-chan," he announced as he activated the intercom. "There wasn't anything abnormal on your scan."
"So there isn't anything wrong?" Yomi asked, hopeful for some happy news.
"Of course there is something wrong. That's why you came here in the first place, isn't it?" Kei asked rhetorically. "All this tells us that there aren't any abnormal structures in your head or neck. Go get dressed. We'll have to work harder to flush out the culprit."
As soon as she got redressed, Yomi found Kei waiting for her. "So, you can rule out cancer, right?"
"Not at all," Kei denied with a shake of his head. "We ruled out a tumor or other abnormality in your brain as a cause of your loss of taste."
"Which removes cancer as a possibility," Yomi pressed, praying that she could somehow influence him to agree with her.
Kei shrugged. "Sure," he allowed. "Definitely not caused by an abnormality in the brain, so it's unlikely to be cancer. We can focus on the occult as soon as we work out neuropathy, psychological disorders, factitious disorders, nerve damage, certain pathways being interfered with-"
"What the hell?" Yomi interrupted the seemingly endless rant. "I don't want to wait ten years for you just to figure out what's wrong!"
Kei gave Yomi a puzzled look. "I'm talking about ruling things out, not diagnosing anything," he clarified. "After we rule everything out we'll be halfway to a diagnosis, though. Since we'll have to do a full blood workup, genetics testing, a PET scan, a full body scan, a dozen biopsies or so-"
"I'm not here to be your guinea pig!" Yomi snapped. "I just want answers!"
"The journey is half the fun," Kei claimed with a flawless smile. "Besides, don't you want me to try and fix your little problem, Koyomi-chan?"
Yomi audibly growled as she sent Kei a fierce glare. "You're just grasping at straws," she accused. "You couldn't help Kaorin and you can't help me!"
Kei's smile warped into a rare frown at Yomi's criticism. "Grasping at straws is better than just giving up," he seriously announced as he stopped in his tracks and changed direction. "I'm going to try and help Kaori-chan and the rest. At least they haven't abandoned hope."
"Fine!" Yomi shouted back at Kei. "I'll just go to my own doctor. Not some kid fresh out of college who thinks he knows everything."
"Small-minded cynic," Kei muttered as he parted ways with Yomi. By the time the prodigy doctor got back to his office he had already shrugged off his disappointment and resentment over Yomi's refusal. Unfortunately he found a new disappointment when he entered his office to find only Osaka there. "Where did everyone go?" Kei inquired as he made a beeline for the map on his desk.
Kaorin an' Kagura-chan said that they had stuff ta do so they left as soon as they finished with tha map," Osaka informed Kei.
Kei's chagrin over the two girl's leaving was overshadowed by the dismal results of the map. "This… doesn't look good.
"There's somethin' wrong with it?" Osaka asked as she moved beside Kei to look at the map.
Kei nodded as he pointed. "There's only one place where all the lines meet. That means that whatever is causing this is likely there."
"Well ain't that a good thing?" Osaka asked.
"In this case, no," Kei explained. "The lines intersect at your school, which means all sorts of trouble."
"How so?"
"First and foremost it means that whatever is causing this is at your school and that I'll have to go there to find it," Kei reasoned.
Osaka blinked a couple of times as the gears in her head turned to no avail. "How's that a bad thing?"
Kei sighed as his posture drooped. "Keiko-chan's there."
"Ah, that's tha girl that tried ta kill ya, ain't it? She really seems ta hate y'all," Osaka realled.
"Don't be ridiculous," Kei scoffed. "That's my little sister, so of course she loves me. Keiko-chan is just a little violent, that's all."
"Sure looked like hate ta me. Like a vendetta," Osaka asserted.
Kei cleared his throat before doing his best to change the subject. "More importantly, we're going to have to uncover the cause of this quickly. If it's at your school then hundreds could be at risk of …" he trailed off as his gaze slowly moved to Osaka's now ample chest. "You know, maybe it's not that urgent, but we should try to figure it out anyway."
"Oh! Ah almost forgot," Osaka exclaimed, having heard almost none of what Kei had just said. "Ah almost forgot ta ask ya about Yomi-chan. Everyone's worried about her."
"She seems like a really bitter wet-blanket," Kei responded. "No fun at all without the little loud girl."
"Ah mean is she sick or anything?" Osaka asked. "Kaorin wanted me ta call her about Yomi-chan when y'all got back."
Kei shrugged. "Normally I would give you a speech about doctor-patient confidentiality, but she wasn't really my patient and Saeki-san isn't here. My diagnosis is that she's a cynical bitch. She'll be fine, but I feel for those around her."
"That's mean!" Osaka scolded. "Yomi-chan's great."
"She'll be fine," Kei repeated. "I figure it's more or less the same thing that happened to you and your other friends. Only she doesn't want my help. That suits me just fine."
Osaka plucked her cell phone from her pocket. "Kay, I'll call and tell Kaorin that, then," she announced as she fiddled with her phone, only to drop the device onto the table. "Stupid things!" she griped as she groped her own breasts. "They're in tha way!"
"I'm sure you'll get used to it, Ayumu-chan," Kei assured with a beaming smile as he handed the cell phone back to Osaka.
A short time later at Kagura's place…
"Osaka says that Yomi-chan is just fine," Kaorin informed Kagura as she breathed a sigh of relief and put the cell phone away.
"That's good to hear," Kagura replied as she led Kaorin towards her room.
"This is a real mess," Kaorin observed as she entered Kagura's cluttered room. Not only was the room wrought with the usual clutter, but it seemed to be that there were letters and envelopes occupying every nook and cranny in the room.
"Sorry about that," Kagura apologized. "It's getting to be a real problem, though," she complained in reference to the letters. "I'll have to start burning them or find a dumpster to toss them all into."
The cat-girl didn't doubt the statement at all. There had to be a thousand letters strewn about the cramped room. And that was just counting what was visible. Taking into account the Kagura had already stashed or thrown away as well as the hundreds of letters sitting back at Kaorin's house there was no telling just how many letters there were. "You got all of these… in a week?" Kaorin marveled.
Kagura shook her head. "Most of these came in the mail or were laying around outside this morning," the athlete claimed as she opened up a drawer and plucked a letter from inside. "Anyway, here's that anonymous letter I was talking about," the tomboy offered as she thrust the letter in Kaorin's direction. At first Kaorin didn't even register that Kagura was holding the letter out to her. She was just dumbfounded by the fact that Kagura had received so many letters. "Here!" Kagura practically shouted to snap Kaorin out of her stupor.
"S-sorry," Kaorin absentmindedly apologized as she took the letter and scanned over it. "What's so special about it?" The cat-girl inquired, not noticing any difference between this letter and the dozens that she had already seen.
"Lots of things," Kagura asserted. "Most importantly is that letter refers to me as "Kagura-san" not "Kagura-senpai" or "Kagura-sama"," she explained. "And it doesn't mention the swim team. It says the track team."
"I thought it just praised you for being great at track," Kaorin mumbled as she reread the letter only to prove herself wrong. "So this person doesn't even know what team you're on. Isn't that a little insulting?"
"No," Kagura refuted. "I used to be on the track team… back in middle school."
Kaorin offered Kagura a puzzled look as she uselessly looked back to the letter. "I don't follow," she admitted, feeling kind of stupid.
"It took me awhile to put the puzzle pieces together, too," Kagura allowed. "But if you look closely, the paper is a little faded. It means that this is the only letter that wasn't written in the past week. Someone wrote that at least a year and a half ago and held onto it all that time. I actually got that the first day I found a bunch of letters in my locker, too."
"So this letter is the only one you know for sure that contains true feeling about you and not just the sudden hype," Kaorin surmised.
Kagura blushed a bit at the comment. "Yeah, more or less," she confessed. "But it's not signed. And it's written in calligraphy so you can't even compare it to anyone's handwriting. I really can't think of a way to figure out who wrote it."
"You know, I get a bit of déjà vu when I look at it," Kaorin mumbled as she stared at the sheet of paper.
"Y-you wrote it?" Kagura exclaimed as she recoiled.
"No!" Kaorin emphatically denied as she crossed her arms in front of her to make an "X". "I'm just saying that there is something familiar about it. I can't figure it out, though," the cat-girl clarified what she had meant. Pulling the letter close to her face in order to study it, Kaorin noticed something else. Closing her eyes, the cat-girl held the paper right up to her face and sniffed it.
"…What are you doing?" Kagura prodded after watching the bizarre act of Kaorin sniffing her letter for several seconds.
"Perfume," Kaorin announced. "It's faint, but it definitely smells like perfume."
"Eh?" Kagura asked as she retrieved the letter from Kaorin and smelled it herself. "I can't smell anything," the tomboy conceded after a few deep inhales.
Kagura resigned and handed the letter back to Kaorin. "It definitely smells like perfume," the cat-girl announced after smelling the letter again. "It seems kind of familiar. Maybe it's this scent that gives me déjà vu."
An audible growl escaped Kagura's throat at Kaorin's announcement. "So you're telling me that the only letter I give a damn about was written by a girl?" Kagura surmised.
"It seems that way," Kaorin agreed.
"So we're back to square one, then," Kagura irately grumbled as she snatched the letter back and carelessly tossed it to the floor with the scores of other letters.
"Just because it's from a girl you don't care at all about it now?" Kaorin accused.
"O-of course I care, but it's not like I can just go and date a girl," Kagura tactlessly tried to dodge as she realized that she had probably just offended Kaorin.
"And why not?" Kaorin growled.
Kagura held up her hands as she tried to defend herself. "Girls just aren't supposed to date other girls," she uselessly claimed. "You're supposed to meet some successful guy, get married, and have children. It's just what you're supposed to do and you can't do any of that with another girl."
"So true love doesn't matter? It's more important to do what society wants than to follow your heart?" Kaorin pressed.
"I never said that," Kagura refuted. "It's just… it would be awkward… and stuff."
"And how is going out with some guy you don't even really know not awkward? Not to mention that it could be dangerous!" Kaorin argued. "On top of that, you've never even dated a girl, so how do you even know if it would be awkward?"
Kagura growled at Kaorin's persistent insistence. "Fine then!" she snapped. "Let's find out just how awkward it is!"
"…Eh?" Kaorin squeaked, completely disarmed.
"You don't have any other plans for today, right?" Kagura asked rhetorically. "Let's go on a date!"
"Ehhh!"