Music recommendation: Just be Friends (Piano Arrange) - Yamai's Cover | Just for the second half of this chapter.
Yuzu sat quietly on the passenger side of the car. She looked outside the window and took in the familiar sight of the street as Harumi drove her back to the apartment. It was raining, albeit, softly. She entertained the idea that the world seemed to be matching the weather with her mood, because if anything, she felt as grey as the sky currently was.
Yuzu understood the reason for Harumi's frustration, but she hoped that the plum-haired girl would've tried seeing things from her perspective. She was unwilling to drag Harumi down with her and that was not up for debate, regardless of the circumstances.
Harumi also understood why Yuzu decided to keep her in the dark, but it hurt her that the blonde would rather keep doing everything by herself. She knew that Yuzu did this for her sake but there was an unshakable feeling of disappointment, like a lack of trust or whatnot.
In reality, both of them were still recovering from the loss of a close friend, as such, they both knew the feeling of losing someone important and the fear that it could happen again, especially in this line of work. Yuzu feared she would drag Harumi to her death and Harumi feared that Yuzu would get herself killed in martyrdom.
The blonde continued looking out into the streets, her dull emerald eyes searching for anything to rest her gaze upon. Coincidentally, she saw a large banner of Yuzubocchi plastered on the wall of a nearby store. A weak smile crept up on her lips as she gazed upon the odd humanoid-lemonish mascot.
"Yuzubocchi, huh?" Harumi was the first to break the silence, "That really takes me back." She said with a grunt of amusement.
"Time flies, doesn't it?"
"How long has it been?"
"Three years now." Yuzu looked down on her lap. She felt nostalgic and sad at the same time, "I remember the first time I saw her in class. She was so small, I didn't think she was a student." Yuzu gave a weak laugh.
"Then she introduced herself like," Harumi placed an open palm on her chest, fingers spread out across the fabric of her shirt, "I'm Tachibana Sara. It must be destiny for me to meet you all here." She imitated the girl's voice as best she could, earning a hearty laugh from the blonde.
"Yeah... she was really into things like lucky colors, astrology, and all that stuff, wasn't she?" Yuzu giggled. A bit of life returning into her tired self, "I still remember the day we met Goro-senpai."
"Right, he looked so mad after seeing your blonde hair."
The two thought back to their first meeting with Goro. It was very unusual for fresh graduates to be taken in by a detective, but Yuzu, Harumi, and Sara all excelled in different fields and the chief wanted them to be trained by someone who knew the ins and outs of police work, which was apparently Goro. Yuzu could still remember Goro's frustration the moment he saw her blonde hair. What's even funnier was the look on his face when he saw Sara.
The girl was small, barely 150 cm. Her hair was pale as snow and her eyes bluer than the sky, in hindsight, Goro probably thought of how such a small and fragile looking girl passed the academy's brutal training. Maybe the bigger mystery was why she was standing side-by-side with the academy's top dogs, Yuzu and Harumi.
Yuzu excelled in hand-to-hand combat. It didn't matter who she was up against or what they had in hand, no one in her class could take her down. Harumi, on the other hand, excelled in marksmanship. Hand the girl any gun and she'd shoot a target square in the face without fail. Both of them had their strengths but they were also equally capable in the other's forte. On top of that, they were both proficient in solving questionable cases, often earning them the jealous looks of their fellow students.
However, no matter how much both Harumi and Yuzu dazzled the instructors, they were both far behind Sara when it came to detective work. She was just brilliant, far too brilliant to be placed in the same league as the other students in the academy. Whatever she lacked in stature and combat ability, she made up for in unparalleled deduction.
The chief had a lot of hope for the three, which is precisely why he decided to have all of them follow Goro instead of a patrolman. They were meant to be groomed into detectives, and that is what should've happened if that incident never took place.
Yuzu shifted on her chair. She planted her head firmly on the headrest as she blinked a few times. Tears threatening to fall from her tired eyes.
It was a few months after they started training under Goro. They received an assignment that had them hot on the tail of an infamous pickpocket in xx district. It didn't sound very serious, so no one took it seriously, except for Sara. The albino girl always dished out her best regardless of how mundane the case was, she would always give her 100%.
They planned it out and it would've been so easy but everything went bad so quickly that no one really knew how to react. The pickpocket was more dangerous than they initially thought he was. He lured the girls into a small area with the intention of making easy targets out of them. Of course, the trainees returned fire, but in an enclosed space like that, any bullet can bounce off.
Blood flowed from Sara's wound, tears from Yuzu's eyes; she did everything she could, but even Sara knew she wasn't going to survive and Yuzu knew it all too well. Even knowing that her death was imminent, Sara smiled. Her last words to Yuzu were that this must've been part of her destiny as well.
They managed to stop the pickpocket, but at the cost of a friend's life - there was no way it was worth it. It wasn't until the autopsy was done that Yuzu found out that it was her bullet that hit Sara. It was an accident, she knew it was, but didn't make it any easier for Yuzu. Since then she never held a gun and if the need ever arose, she entrusted it to Harumi.
"It wasn't your fault. You know that, right?" Harumi gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder.
"I know..." Yuzu acknowledged her friend's words, "But I wonder if she had known that it was my fault, would she have hated me for it?" She smiled bitterly at the thought.
"You know she wouldn't. I don't think that midget has it in her to hate you for it." Harumi fought to keep her own tears from drizzling down her face. Yuzu was always open about showing her emotions but Harumi liked keeping these in check, much like Mei did. It wasn't because she was too proud to show her sadness, it was more like she felt like she needed to be stronger, otherwise, they'd both bawl endlessly.
"Chief told me that they're using Sara's case against me. They're calling for my dismissal."
"The Udagawas? That's cheap."
"I hate that they're using her for this, but I also think... that maybe this is divine retribution." Yuzu looked at Harumi with a pained smile on her face, tears still falling down her face.
"Yuzu-cchi..." Harumi's heart broke at the state that her friend was in. The fact that there wasn't much she could do only made the feeling of anxiety grow fervently as she dug her nails into the steering wheel of the car, "You can't say stuff like that. If Sara was here, she'd smack your forehead for it." Harumi averted her gaze from Yuzu, looking down in frustration.
"Just hang in there. I'll figure something out, all right?" Harumi continued, her voice a little weaker than usual.
"No." Yuzu spoke firmly, "I already lost one partner. Don't you dare do anything reckless, Harumin."
"You're one to speak, considering where you got yourself in. Dumb blonde." The plum-haired girl tried joking around, but there were no laughs to give out.
"I'm serious."
"I know. I also know that the reason why you didn't tell me and Matsuri about this was because you didn't want to drag us into the shithole that you dug for yourself. But you know, we feel bad too. Don't be too self-sacrificing, you hear?" She gave Yuzu a weak smile, trying to reassure the girl and elicit an understanding between them.
"Thank you, Harumin." Yuzu returned the gesture, smiling back at her friend.
"So... what now?"
"Sleep. I haven't had any shut-eye since yesterday and it's making my skin look horrible. 18 hours is too much." Yuzu pulled her cheeks down to emphasize on the dark rings under her eyes, "I mean, look at this!"
"You and me both, Yuzu-cchi. Too bad I'm not gonna get some sleep yet." Harumi gave a light chuckle. She felt relieved that Yuzu had a little bit more life in her now.
"Seriously though... I'm suspended and the Chief won't let me touch any of the cases. I guess I'll be on Mei duty until they either jail me, fire me or call me back." The blonde sighed heavily at how depressing the odds of a positive outcome was.
"Don't worry about it. I'm sure things will end well, one way or the other."
"Hey, don't say it like that."
"Like what?"
"I don't know... the way you phrased it sounded like something bad's going to happen." Yuzu made a show of opening the window and fanning out the 'bad omen' that she spoke of.
"You're overreacting. The worst they could do is jail you and today isn't going to get any worse!"
Yuzu slapped Harumi's arm before looking at the girl in sheer annoyance. She didn't want to be cursed like this, so she thanked Harumi for dropping her off and quickly headed up to the apartment. It's been a horrible day and she couldn't wait to jump into Mei's arms for comfort. Actually, Mei didn't even have to hold her, just the girl's presence would be more than enough.
"Mei?" She called out to the girl as she entered the apartment.
Yuzu's eyes quickly lit up when she spotted her lover leaning over the kitchen counter. Not wanting to waste another minute, she kicked her shoes off and ran towards the raven-haired girl who seemed startled by her presence.
"What are you doing?" Yuzu asked. She noticed that Mei seemed to have been writing something but the girl quickly crumpled the piece of paper as soon as she approached.
"Nothing." Mei answered as she desperately tried to hide the crumpled note behind her.
"Hmm. Really?" Yuzu pouted. She wasn't convinced that it was nothing.
"Yes." Mei looked away, unwilling to meet her lover's eyes.
For some reason, it felt like the raven-haired girl wasn't willing to look into her eyes. Yuzu, being Yuzu, shifted to the side that Mei was looking down on and tried to catch those amethyst eyes, "What are you hiding, Mei?" She continued pouting but Mei didn't give her an answer. She looked around the room, trying to spot what kind of surprise Mei was hiding. Yuzu's first thought was her birthday, which was only a few days away but she never told Mei when it was.
To Yuzu's dismay, she never found anything out of place around the kitchen. So she surveyed further and found a suspiciously large bag sitting on the side of the sofa.
"Are you going somewhere, Mei?"
"To Grandfather's."
"You're staying over there?"
"Yes"
"Oh... okay. When are you coming back?" She asked nervously, something didn't seem right about the whole thing. Mei had always been adamant in staying in the apartment even when she was being told otherwise, so why now?
"Yuzu." Mei blinked to the rhythm of a sharp inhale and an even sharper exhale, "I'm not coming back."
"What do you mean?" Yuzu's anxiety grew with every word that rolled off of Mei's tongue. Deep inside her, she hoped that she just heard those words wrong.
"I mean this." Mei took off the ring that Yuzu had given her, the very same one that Yuzu vowed on, and without a hint of hesitation, she took the blonde's hand and returned the ring to its original owner.
Yuzu's entire world shattered. She thought that she was sad from everything that happened since yesterday but this... was this what real sadness felt like? It was like a thousand icy daggers had pierced through her heart, like oxygen was forcefully being drawn out of her lungs, and, at the same time, like her limbs would grow frigid and fall off on their own. No, the word sadness was far too light to characterize how she felt.
"M-Mei?" Her tired eyes started burning and tears slowly welled up at each corner of those once bright emeralds.
"Hey, Mei. What are you saying?" Yuzu's voice shook as she repressed the overwhelming need to break down. She forced a smile despite her quivering lips, the illusion of happiness quickly washed by tears.
"It's over, Yuzu."
The raven-haired girl kept her eyes on the blonde's, she never averted her gaze, never blinked and she didn't flinch at uttering those words. It was like she was devoid of all emotions and realizing that made Yuzu crumble. She fell on her knees and clutched at her battered eyes, unable to stop the flow of tears, "Why are you doing this?" She weakly uttered.
"Must you really know why?" Mei walked away from the blonde and headed for the living room.
"I want to know."
A sigh sounded from the raven-haired girl before she answered, "There's no particular reason. I just realized that I was acting impulsively." Mei picked up her bag and started walking towards the door, "You're free to stay here until you find another place to lodge at. Goodbye, Yuzu." She told the blonde as she passed her.
Yuzu didn't want to let go of Mei, not like this, so she bolted from the floor and caught up to the raven-haired girl just as the latter reached for the knob. With weak limbs and shaking hands, she wrapped her arms around Mei, holding the girl from behind and burying her face into those luscious raven locks which she loved.
"Don't go, Mei." She sniffled pleadingly.
"Let go, Yuzu."
"I won't."
"Please... Just let go." Mei's voice cracked. Yuzu couldn't see the expression on the girl's face and honestly, she was terrified of knowing what kind of look Mei had at this moment. But regardless of her fear, Yuzu wouldn't let go. She knew that if she did, Mei would be as good as gone forever and that was something she couldn't live with.
"If I let you go now... I know I'll never see you again." Yuzu could feel Mei take in a sharp breath of air, followed by the slowing of the girl's heartbeat.
"Yuzu, I was going to spare your feelings but you're just pushing my patience." Yuzu instinctively backed away from Mei when the girl spoke.
"You want to know why I'm really doing this? Fine. It's because my grandfather has already arranged for me to be engaged, but don't be mistaken, this was always going to happen." Mei kept her back turned.
'Stop.' Yuzu didn't want to hear this but she couldn't bring herself to verbalize those words.
"To be honest, I've been trying to tell you for a while now. Sadly, there's always something getting in the way whenever I try to."
'Stop, please stop.' Yuzu screamed in her mind, not wanting to hear more than this.
"I thought a lot about this and I realized that in the first place, I was just yearning for the warmth of another person. Some form of kindness that was a novelty, but that sort of thing loses value the more you receive it, doesn't it?"
Yuzu paced back further, her face contorted as she became increasingly horrified by the words that came out of Mei's mouth. She wanted to be told that it was a lie but that voice and unmistakable confidence said otherwise.
"The truth is that I never loved you, Yuzu."
That was it, the guillotine that came down and passed judgment on Yuzu. Her heart, her mind... her everything, had turned to ash. All this time, the things she fought for and everything she believed in, snuffed out like a candle in the dark night. There was nothing left to say, but...
"I love you, Mei." She weakly uttered with a smile on her face as she broke down completely.
"Thank you, and goodbye." Mei answered coldly as she twisted the knob on the door - leaving without ever looking back.
When the door closed, Yuzu was left alone, the setting red sun flooding in and illuminating the dull eyes that drowned in more tears than one should see in a lifetime. Mei left... she left her. The realization hit like a bullet passing through glass, shattering what little solace she had left.
They say that you'd never forget your first heartbreak and maybe that was all she was experiencing at the moment, but she didn't want it. She didn't want any of this. It hurt so bad that she felt like physical pain couldn't hold a candle to it. She wanted to disappear, to just stop feeling and drown in darkness. She wanted to be destroyed, to be unfeeling, to be nothing, but most of all, she wanted to be lied to.
She wanted Mei to come back and tell her that it was all a joke, that she loved her and she wouldn't leave her like this. She didn't care if it was just a lie, it was all she wanted to hear.
With her ring in hand, she cried and cried and cried until there were no more tears left to shed, yet even as her tears dried up, she still wailed. She wanted to pretend like this was all a dream, that she'd wake up from at some point but the pain she felt in her heart was all too real to be imagined.
Just outside the door, the source of the blonde's sadness stood. Mei closed her eyes and flattened her back against the cold wood that separated her from Yuzu. 'This is the right thing to do. This is for the best.' She told herself in repetition. She even convinced herself that this would pass eventually, but the ache in her chest reminded her of what an utter joke that is.
Mei closed her eyes and placed her hand on top of her ailing heart. Tears started running down her face as she listened to the sound of Yuzu's anguished cries.
Notes:
*Furiously types the chapter out while depressing songs play aggressively in the background.*
Yes. I opened the chapter with sad shit and finished it with even sadder shit. You all knew this was coming! ( ̄∇ ̄;)))( ((((;_⊿_)
I extend an apology to the people who absolutely did not want to see Mei leave Yuzu in favor of her grandfather's wishes, but this was always part of my concept and I wasn't willing to forego it.
And yes, I don't like Sara very much. That's why she's dead.
Chapter 36 (Manga) rant ahead, has nothing to do with the fanfic:
I realize that a lot of people really hated Mei for the decision she made on the infamous 36th chapter of Citrus, but I always felt like Yuzu was equally guilty of that outcome. Mei wanted to tell her, but Yuzu decided she was too scared to hear what Mei had to say and avoided the conversation entirely. If she had made a different choice then, maybe she and Mei could've talked it out but eh-
Stupod Yuzu being stupod Yuzu decided that it was better to pretend like nothing's wrong and try to fix things by going on a date. Sure, Mei should've pushed through with talking about it, but you can't just blame her for everything. Yuzu literally took it easy and smiled while Mei slowly broke apart with the burden she carried.
FeelsMeiMan. (눈_눈)
