Shrimpy: Hi! OuO
I'm the kind of person whose ears and face get really red when they're excited or nervous. Once I was listening to a song, Mirishira Romeo and Cinderella, and I fell in love with it. My ears were burning so I asked my sister if they were red, to which she replied, "What kinda hardcore yaoi are you watching?"
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Len's POV
"Oooow...Grandma, where are the painkillers?" I groaned, descending the stairs. I hadn't bothered to tie my hair up yet, because I woke up to a throbbing pain in the back of my head. She sat comfortably on the sofa, her hair in a neat little bun.
"In the loo, honey," Grandma replied with an apathetic tone. She stared attentively at the gleaming screen of a Nintendo 3DS. I flopped onto the couch, landing face first in fluffy pillows. "I think I'm going to throw up," I added, eyeing her wearily. "There's a toilet in there, too," she said dully. "And I might have a concussion," I continued experimentally, wondering if she would even look up.
"Don't fall asleep. You might die."
I sighed and sat up, gingerly touching the spot that hurt the most. It stung brutally.
"Dammit!" she hissed, sounds enacting from her small game. Specifically, the sound of defeat rang with purpose, a melody of her downfall.
"Legend of Zelda?" I said, leaning over to catch a glimpse of the "Game Over" screen. Streams of light from the window glared at me. "Yeah, I just can't defeat this guy," She groaned and leaned back into the cushions. "Maybe you should -"
"CAN'T," she answered, the 3DS beeping and tweeting.
"Right," I muttered. Suddenly Rin screamed bloody murder from the second floor and freaked me out.
"HOLY - RIN?!" I shouted.
"Calm down, she probably just saw another spider," Grandma sighed, tapping her stylus over and over again on the screen. "How are you unfazed by a shriek like that?" I demanded, entirely awed. Grandma was someone who, not very long ago, assumed I had raped someone. Not very fun to look back on, but she should be overreacting.
"RIN ARE YOU alright?" She shouted, calmly pressing on in a dungeon. "YESTERDAY I MISSED A HUGE PARTY AND LUKA-CHAN SAYS THEY HAD UTATANE PIKO!" Rin cried, a small sob lingering between words. Grandma glanced at me smugly.
For someone so much older than me she could be so immature.
"S'okay Rin, pick yourself up. Piko isn't that important, whoever she is!" I volunteered.
Her footsteps thundered down to the bottom of the stairs, her hair a wild copy of my own.
"One," she explained, "Utatane Piko is a huge deal! Two, Piko is a boy!" I did not see where this was going. "Care to Elaborate?" Grandma asked sweetly, as if she didn't either.
"Utatane Piko is a pop idol, and he was singing at the party last night! I missed it!" Rin sighed dramatically. "That's so unfortunate," I deadpanned.
"He sang songs I haven't heard yet!"
"Terrible."
"I don't regret taking Miku-chan out yesterday but I could've seen amazing things!"
"You really have it hard."
"And what's worse is that I forgot to ask Miku to introduce me to Ruko-chan!"
"Your unrelenting friendliness is inherently troublesome."
"Speak English you bloke," she groaned, sitting down on the steps. I rubbed my temples, the pain increasing slightly. "You don't just call a random grown woman 'chan,'" I mumbled. I meant it in a choleric way, but I didn't have the strength to be irritated by her lack of understanding. She stared at me perturbedly, her legs crossed.
"You know, you guys are friends. Why don't you call her 'Miku-chan' instead of just 'Miku'?" She asked, brushing back her hair. Her green eyes peaked up at me from below a curtain blond hair. Grandma was muttering under her breath, not hearing anything at this point.
I sniffed. "I don't ever do that." Rin shrugged and looked down quietly. Then she smiled. "You're freaking bipolar, you know? One minute you're 'cool and nice' and the next you're like a shy underclassman," she reminded me.
Suddenly Grandma heard us again. "Ha!" She scoffed. "It's called sexual attraction, darling, read a book."
"How do you know all about that, Grandma?" Rin piped, leaning forward. It didn't do a good deal of anything since Grandma was several feet away. "One: believe it or not I was your age once. Two: I was a NURSE. I worked with that kind of stuff," she said. She sounded exasperated, like she explained this many times before. She had, but she was never very specific when she talked about being a nurse.
"Wow, you're straightforward," Rin giggled. "Don't I know it. Go get a painkiller and lie down, love. I doubt you have a concussion," she ordered, still absorbed in her game.
"Hey, 'Nii-chan," Rin chirped, following me up the stairs. I raised an eyebrow. "I thought we established that you were older," I said.
"We did," she confirmed, trailing behind me while I walked to the bathroom. I opened the cabinet and peered inside. It was filled with bottles of all kinds, just like the cabinets in the kitchen. Except in the kitchen, the bottles are full of spices and things like that.
"Then-"
"Old habits die hard," Rin pressed, and she snatched a red and white bottle off of the shelf. behind it was an orange capsule of Solamyn.*
"What did you want to say?" I asked, taking the bottle and popping the cap off. The pills were white and small, but Grandma's expertise rubbed off on me and I knew what dose could work, as well as what dose could kill me.
"What do you think Miku-chan is doing right now?"
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Miku's POV
"You're lowering my recommended dose," I say. I want to ask why, but I also don't care much about my medication.
Tick tock. The clock doesn't care either.
"I bet it sounds scary going on without your regular antidepressants-" I cut off Doctor Honne mid sentence.
"I don't care for them. They barely work."
"Yes, but they aren't miracles. They work terribly, so we're trying to ease you off of them, maybe get you off immediately," he explained, "and the medication that controls your hallucinations are not suppressing - what did you call it? - The White Coat."
"You don't say," I mutter, staring at my hands on the table.
"So what I'm thinking is that White Coat is psychological trauma that builds up," he said, leaning forward. "You say he is-" "It," I correct him. "You say it is always showing you things you don't like to remember? And you try to suppress those things. If you can come to terms..." He stopped, assuming I would cut him off again.
I took in a sharp breath. "It doesn't work," I sighed. "I'm aware Haku is dead. I'm aware she died because of me."
He shook his head. "Now that's the kind of attitude that helps build the trauma I think you have." "Everyone thinks it's trauma!" I groaned, dropping my head hard on the wooden desk. "You point to it yourself. If you really don't think it's trauma, I wonder why comfort from a random person helps you," he said in a wistful soliloquy.
Len was the reason they ended so quickly. Was it his approach? Or maybe something as weird as his smell?
"When Ruko tried to calm me down, she didn't hug me. She tackled me."
"This boy hugs you?"
"Yes," I answer, peeking at him.
I confide in him sometimes, because...well, color association, he has red eyes. He was also very calm, with a soothing, deep voice. His presence screams of comfortable peace.
He smirks a little bit. "Mind telling me his name?" He coaxed, taking out a purple pen.
"You feed the school all of my information," I reminded him, "I'd like to keep him anonymous for his sake." We stop simultaneously and look at the clock on his desk. It's ticking, ticking, time marches on.
The light continues to shine on his silver hair.
"You need to stop protecting people. That's the reason anyone can get away with attacking you," Honne said softly, his red eyes serious. He looks at his pad and sloppily scribbles a disjointed observation. He writes how I'm acting and refusing to tell him that my 'friend' is Len.
"That's because my 'attacker' from the last event didn't lay a finger on me. So I never said who he was to any adults. The funny thing is," I admitted, "I did tell two people who it was, the 'friend' included. But they never told anyone else."
It's true. Bruno never so much as touched me.
Much, Much Earlier
It's dark and I'm scared...what if he pops up again?
The door opens. From a distance I can see Bruno put on a brave mask. In the darkness I can see regret in his eyes.
"Do you see that bitch?" The lighter voice demands, loud enough for me to hear from the basement. I HATE that voice so, so much.
I make eye contact with him for a second, holding in my panting.
Blood drips from my forehead, and I numb myself in preparation. "It's okay," I mouth, and he watches me. It's alright to reveal my hiding space.
"It's empty. She must've gone to another floor," he calls back.
While I'm alone it's really cold and frightening.
Hours pass by like minutes. I'm alone and then I'm not. I look up fearfully and see Len standing next to me.
My heart leaps with joy and I almost want to hug him.
"Who did this to you?"
I remember seeing him snap. He seemed the same, but his eyes turn cold. To be honest, it's so unfamiliar and frightening.
I think of regrettable things and my tongue slips. My lip stings as I say, "Bruno."
But Bruno lied to everyone just like I did. The lead dog wasn't him.
He's still just Bruno.
Present
"The session is almost up," he sighed, staring at the clock. "I'm very glad to hear you're happy, and that you've got a good friend to help you." "I am too," I say, rising from my chair. He scribbles something on his notepad and tears it out.
"Hand this to your mother," He instructed, placing the paper in my open palm. My brow furrows, me being alarmed.
"I'm not going to kill myself. You don't need her to monitor me while going cold turkey with the antidepressants," I insist. We walk over to the door, and stop when he smiles at me.
"Miku, my naive little friend," he laughed. Honne opened the office door for me. "You have no idea how powerful the effects of your medicine can be." I shrug, folding the paper.
"After six years, you don't know how powerful my mind is."
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Normal POV, Yesterday Night
"...I like what your friends did with your hair," Ruko murmured, twisting locks of Miku's teal hair on her finger. She set her magazine aside.
"Thank you," Miku said half-heartedly. She was not comfortable with Sitting next to Ruko in the living room. She was not comfortable in the living room with or without that woman.
"It's nothing like this," the woman added, pointing to the streaks of blue in her black bangs. "Damn skunk stripe it is."
"I hope it washes out soon," the tealette sighed, sipping the hot coffee from its mug.
The mug itself was designed for her. "I'd rather drink beer through my nose then be here" was something she had said, in German, after her parents took her back to Japan. Ruko decided to be funny and had the mug made. The words were pink with a cartoon mug of foaming beer.
Obviously Miku hated it, but no one ever returned it to the factory.
"Why's that?" Ruko asked, inhaling the scent of rich black coffee. Miku added more cream to hers, a habit Ruko saw no point to.
"Because Rin-chan will try to dye it again," Miku said with a tiny, barely noticeable smile. She stared into her light brown coffee. The raven grinned.
"You called her 'Rin-chan' just now," she pointed out. Miku whipped her head around and locked her eyes on Ruko. She still had deadly, expressive eyes. "I didn't," she insisted.
"You did, it was the second thing out of your mouth."
"I said 'Rin' and I've barely ever used honorifics."
"You just said!" Ruko repeated stubbornly, sticking her tongue out. "I didn't!" Miku cried, dumping more cream into her drink. Ruko frowned at the notion. "You are ruining that perfectly good coffee," she scolded, snatching Miku's customized mug away. She stood up and made haste for the kitchen.
Their house was very dim and dark. It was a nice house, true, but the lights were poor and the curtains drawn.
Having a Good lawyer for a Dad usually meant being rich, but, Miku was not rich. Her parents were. Ruko had the house decorated any which way she wanted and Father hung around with her singing old songs Miku could somehow recognize.
Ruko filled the mug with coffee and sauntered back, watching Miku smile at her phone. She was sure Miku didn't really know how to use it, so the sight was weird.
She set the mug on a coaster and flopped back on the dark red couch. "I didn't know you used that," she said, yanking hair ties out of her black hair. She gathered it all up at the back of her head and tied it into a ponytail. Coffee just didn't taste right when she wasn't working hard.
I'm not a workaholic like Mikuo, though, she remembered, picking up her mug.
"I just started. Rin and Neru gave me their phone numbers, and Neru keeps going on about some party. She says this guy named Utatane Piko is singing something," the girl replied. She took a sip of the coffee Ruko had made and set it back down. She didn't like it, apparently.
"Utatane Piko? That kid's a pop sensation! He graduated from vocaloid and got a record deal a few years ago," Ruko exclaimed, stretching her arms out.
"I didn't hear about him before now," Miku added. The raven smiled.
"You know, you could go on to do something like that too."
The lock clicked and the door swung open. "I'm home, work was painful," Mikuo called. He pulled off his shoes but stopped in his tracks, his eyes coming to rest on his family.
"Mm," Ruko said, taking a gulp of fresh coffee, "You missed it. Miku actually drank black coffee. And she actually uses her phone." He shut the door behind him.
the tealette acknowledged him with a nod. He watched her carefully, because she was actually acting normally around his wife. Where was the hostility? Mikuo thought it was creepy.
"Miku, do you have a fever?" He asked, his brow knit together with concern. He strode over to his daughter and pressed his warm palm against her forehead. She gave him a wary look in response.
"She's here on her own will, Teal Boy," Ruko snorted, laying on the leopard print pillow.
"I'm gonna grab a coffee and finish up, the court's meeting tomorrow."
"Why don't you sit down with us," Ruko said, more a statement than a question. Mikuo smiled tightly and ran a hand through his teal hair. "You know, I would, but Miku has a therapy session tomorrow and I have to meet my client first thing..." She nodded.
"You think our peace is eerie."
"I'm happy but confused," he confirmed, walking away.
"Father, who is your client?" Miku called. She stood up and watched him disappear into the kitchen.
"This guy from a restaurant." He began whistling as he mixed sugar into his coffee.
"What happened?"
"Now, Miku," he scolded, "You and Doctor Honne have Doctor Patient confidentiality. I can keep most of it private, can't I?"
"But half of your cases come out on the news," she huffed, sitting back down.
"I don't release details unless my client allows it. In this case he'd prefer I didn't."
"Don't worry, I doubt it's that big of a deal," Ruko sighed, adjusting the cushion so she could sprawl out comfortably.
There was a crash in the kitchen. The raven sat up straight. "Shit!" Mikuo snapped, setting his mug hard on the counter.
"Dammit Mikuo, I swear to God if you broke my coffee pot on the floor I cleaned this morning-"
"I broke the coffee grinder."
Ruko's blue eye twitched. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU! PREPARE YOURSELF FOR DEATH!"
Miku watched the woman leap up and dash into the kitchen. It was somewhat amusing, but too dangerous to laugh or smile about it.
They began to yell at each other menacingly.
"Look at this mess, you klutz! You are getting me a new grinder!"
"Fine!" Mikuo barked. "I'll just drive across Japanese to get you a brand-new useless grinder for useless coffee!"
"Yeah, yeah. Go get accused of groping a girl on the train!"
Mikuo gasped. "You go get accused of shoplifting!"
"You get accused of bribing the jury!"
"YOU GO GET ACCUSED OF ADULTERY!"
"YOU GET ACCUSED OF CHEATING!" Ruko sobbed, because she knew he was accusing her of cheating.
"YOU GET ACCUSED OF BEING PUSHY!"
"YOU GET ACCUSED OF NOT BEING THERE WHEN YOUR DAUGHTER WAS BORN!"
"GO GET ACCUSED OF BEING SO THICK SKULLED!"
"YOU ARE CHARGED WITH BEING SO AGAINST A FAMILY!"
"AND YOU ARE CHARGED WITH NOT HEEDING YOUR HUSBAND!"
"YOU ARE HEREBY ACCUSED OF BEING A DICK!" The raven folding her arms and turned away from her husband.
"YOU ARE CHARGED WITH BEING A COFFEE-LOVING WEIRDO!"
YOU ARE ACCUSED OF HAVING REALLY WIERD HAIR AND GIVING IT TO OUR DAUGHTER!"
Mikuo clutched his hair, wanting to tear it out.
"YOU ARE ACCUSED OF GIVING OUR DAUGHTER INTENSE AND SCARY EYES!" Miku didn't believe that one.
"SHE GOT YOUR EYES!"
"Correction!" He snapped. "She got my eye color but her eyes are so damn bright and sparkly!" He blinked. Mikuo meant to insult her but that wasn't an insult.
"YOU ARE CHARGED WITH GIVING HER YOUR LOVE FOR SWEETS!" Ruko shouted, ignoring the tears in the corners of her eyes.
"You are charged with giving Miku that childish hairstyle!"
Miku was miraculously not offended.
"You're accused of loving her the minute you met her!"
"You're accused of having me hold her when I arrived late at the hospital!"
"You're accused of calling her your Baby Girl!" That one makes sense, Miku thought.
"You are accused of naming her after me!"
"I didn't name her after you!"
"Her name is derived from mine!"
"I named her 'Mayu' and the hospital mixed the name up!"
"Really?!"
Miku cocked her head, curious about this one. She didn't believe it but it was interesting.
"Yes, really!"
"Then you are accused of keeping the name 'Miku!'"
"It was a cute name," Ruko said with a shrug.
"Yeah, it's dainty."
"I was thinking either 'Mayu' or 'Sachiko.'"
"I remember that..." He sighed, leaning against the counter. He carefully avoided stepping on the broken grinder.
"It's like there always has to be two of us fighting," The raven murmured.
"I never cheated on you."
"Likewise."
"I also never bribed the jury or groped a girl on the train."
"I know," Ruko groaned, "I just wanted to get under your skin."
They were silent. The couple simply looked at each other. Neither wanted to apologize first, but they were sorry.
Miku never thought her broken family was this sad.
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Shrimpy: I simply adore MikuoxRuko, it's very adorable.
*I made up a pain killer because I didn't know what kinds of medicine they have in Wales or Japan. I kinda just coined the name from a Latin word Solamen, which may or may not mean relief.
I guess this was more of a dialogue thing, a filler. But since I'm always skipping these moments, I added important things. Don't ask why I didn't put the events in order because I don't have any explanation.
Bruno never even touched Miku. He wasn't in charge of her getting beat up. O_O
And also I added Utatane Piko.
BUT WHAT FOR?
I'M POOPED
GOODBYE HUMANS