II
Perfect Blue
Scars are souvenirs that you never lose
The past is never far
Did you lose yourself out there?
Did you get to be a star?
And don't it make you sad to know that life,
Is more than who we are?
Once upon a time my life was perfect. I was on my way to high school, I was smart, pretty and popular. Everything a girl could want right? Right. Facing my parents over a low "C" was about as scary as it got. Not that they'd really care all that much if I got an "A+++" if it's at all possible. But that's not the point. They wanted my grades to stay in the rang to where I could get a scholarship and they wouldn't have to pay all that much to get me away to college. Loving, ne? But that's normal, right? Okay so maybe you wouldn't
exactly want your child to live in that type of rather uncaring environment. But lemme tell you, after all the hell I've been through, that kind of life is so sugar sweet it rots the teeth.
Anyway, life was wonderfully bliss. Heh, thanks to the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho, that was shot all to hell. You know it's funny how one little glance in the wrong direction can fuck up all your hard work for a normal life. In my case, it was actually my best friend's glance in the wrong direction, which led her straight to the book: The Universe of the Four Gods, a. k. a. the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho. The first time that idiot Yuuki Miaka decides to read she picks the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho, of all things! I don't know if I should kill her or kiss her for it. Get you mind out of the gutter! I didn't mean it that way! I'm definitely straight. Believe me.
I should hate Miaka because that book made my world do a complete 180. It drug me, kicking and screaming, from my little protective bubble. You know what I'm talking about. That little bubble that you build around yourself, thinking nothing can hurt you, and that there are no monsters in the closet, or that
those bed bugs your parents warn you about aren't real. Well, Dearheart, bring out your Monster-Be-Gone and your Raid, 'cause they're real. And not all monsters you can spot right away, because not all of them are ugly. Trust me on this one. I've met a monster more beautiful than anyone I've ever met before, but he was a monster just the same.
Anyway, the book. Yes I should hate my best friend for finding the book. And for I while I did hate her. So much that I wanted to kill her. "Why?" you ask? Because as I read the pages out loud to her we were both sucked into the damn thing. I swear to the gods that I'm not lying. And I'm not crazy. It's kinda surprising though, I mean, after all that we've been through both Miaka and I are as sane as a person can get. But back to the story. By some twist of fate and my oh so wonderful talent for misreading emotions, we both ended up as priestesses for two different warring gods. Miaka as Suzaku no Miko, and I as Seiryuu no Miko. To tell you the truth that wasn't exactly the most glamorous moment of my life. Though all of Miaka's shichiseishi (Celestial Warriors) loved her with the utmost devotion and would walk through fire for her, my seishi wouldn't have cared if I were devoured or not. Well, okay, not all. Suboshi would have done everything in his power to get me back, or probably would have killed himself to follow me into the after world. I wonder why I never let myself love him then. I think for the most part I was afraid. Afraid that
he'd end doing the same thing as the perverts in the ally did, or eventually leave me for someone else. But I think I was mostly scared to death that after I summoned Seiryuu, I'd have to leave him behind. Boy, I don't think I could have ever been more wrong about anything in all my life.
Which brings me to the good things that came out of the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho. It gave Miaka her Tamahome. After all was over and done with, I did get jealous of them. It made my blood boil. Miaka lost the love of her life, but waited what? Maybe a month or two before Tamahome was reincarnated into our world as Taka. While I had lost Suboshi, the only man who had ever loved me, not Seiryuu no Miko, not the girl that fell out of the sky, but Hongo Yui. Now before you get your panties in a wad, I'll let you know that I tried to love Tetsuya. Lord knows, I really did. For two and a half years I tried. But I could never find
that spark. You know, that spark makes you want to give every bit of you heart and soul out to a person. The sunglasses didn't help any. He wouldn't take them off, even for me. As stupid as it sounds, I was beginning to wonder if the guy had eyes at all, I mean, why else would they be that important?
So, six months before being together for three years, I broke up with Tetsuya. He told me he had seen it coming for a long time. Sometimes I wonder why he held on so long. Unsolved mystery. But that's past, this is present.
It wasn't but another six months after Tetsuya and I went our separate ways when I saw the last thing I ever expected to see. Working at a car repair shop, covered in oil and grease, was an eighteen year-old boy with mossy-blonde hair, blue eyes and a blue bandana tied firmly around his brow. What stuck out the most was that with his blue tank top on, you could see a kanji that seemed to be carved into his left shoulder. Kaku. It looked as if someone had just went to his skin with a knife and carved the kanji there like they would on a tree trunk. Eiko Shinji was his name, but that didn't fool me for a second. I knew I had found my Suboshi after those three long years. Let's just say it finally put the last broken piece of my life back together.
Like Taka, he had a completely new name, but unlike him, he still had all his memories. Like his name, his personality had changed a lot. He wasn't quite as brash, and not near as childish. I suppose all that time on his own did him some good. Though he still loved me more than ever, he wasn't so dependant. To put it
shortly, he matured far more than anybody could ever imagine.
At times I wish that his reincarnation was as simply explained as his personality change. I mean, Taka is the once in a life time miracle, right? Even HIS reincarnation wasn't supposed to happen. Like before, unsolved mystery. But, like I said, only at times do I ponder over it, most of the time I don't even bother myself with the question. Shinji is just one of those little things that you'd rather just go on not knowing, but enjoying it. But I'm sure you don't want to hear too much about all that mush, now do you? So here's a quick fast forward. Both Miaka and I graduated from High School and are nineteen now. I guess you could say we're all grown up now. Yep, rough tough big kids. College kids. By some God given miracle, Miaka made it to college. There's a breath taker for ya. I don't see why she even wanted to go. I just can't see her doing any job that requires a college education. I mean, come on, this is Miaka! So anyway, we're roomies in the Bataan College dorms. Taka and Shinji share a room one floor up from us. I guess it's a good thing we weren't scattered across the campus.
So yeah, we were normal again. If you ignore the fact that our boyfriends both died at least once and have held about three different names, all was normal. Note the WAS. I swear, the second my useless life scrambles back together it gets tossed right back out to the wolves. This time I'd take Shinji, Miaka, and
Taka down with me...
~*~*~
I woke up that fateful night twisted up in my sheets with a furry cat tail swishing under my nose.
"Get lost, Ryuen" I grumbled, shoving the little body off the edge of my bed. As soon as he hit the floor he was back up on my bed again. Miaka can never figure out why it's only my bed that the cat sleeps on and why it's only my bed covered in cat sheddings. Truth be told, he knows better than to sleep with my room
mate, unless he had a sudden suicidal urge to be squished. I've heard of dogs and things like that being suicidal and just waiting on the side of the road for the car that has their name on it, then just dart out in front of it. But no little furry friend would be crazy enough to sleep in the same bed as Miaka. Even I'm afraid to do that, too many old painful sleep over experiences from junior high.
Oh, wait, I kinda owe you and explanation to this whole cat thing, don't I? Heh, yeah. See...for the past semester, we've been illegally harboring a cat in our dorm room. Shh, don't tell! As much as a pain that cat is, we love him! I think, as much as I deny it, I'd cry my little eyes out if he was ever taken away from us.
I felt a paw gently trace a line down my cheek, then another just to make sure I got the message. That, there, my friends, is one of Ryuen's less violent ways of getting us - no, me. It'd take far more to get Miaka up. Something more along the lines of an earthquake that's jumping off the Richter scale. - outta bed. Hot dog! I'm in luck tonight! Ryuen wasn't possessed to do more just to get me up. I swear, his little mind can cook up some real evil methods to get what he wants, if he felt the urge. More luck for me, our dorm is on the ground floor so I can just slip out the window, let him do his business, then hop back in before getting caught.
"Alright, alright. I'm up." I literally had to roll out of the bed, otherwise the warmth of the covers would have immediately drawn me back to the mattress the moment I tried to get up. Then the cat would have to
resort to a much more painful way of getting my sleepy ass out of bed. "Come on." I staggered to my feet and snatched him up in my arms. He protested softly when I didn't make a very straight line to the window. He squalled even more when I had to shift him from his comfortable position in order to get the window
open. With one hand I slid the window open then tucked it back against my body as I crawled through. I dropped him to the soft soil of the flower bed by our window before I was even half way through the window frame. I swung my legs around and both feet touched moist ground at the exact same time.
"Holy shit!" I had to clamp my hand over my mouth before I woke someone up. "Gods, this sucks," I glared down at the mud caking around my bare feet. If only I had remembered that it had rained that afternoon...yuck. And as if the mud between my toes wasn't bad enough, a rather chilly gust of wind hit me in full force, dropping my body temperature a good 10-15 degrees. Wonderful, just peachy.
Why me?
Ryuen poked his head out from behind a bush and just gazed up at me blankly.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Lets go." He protested, but scuttled out into the open obediently . In an attempt to make it up to me, Ryuen brushed against the backs of my legs, which did not help my serious case of the shivers by any means. Great, perfect. Probably had mud all over me now. I knelt down to scoop
him back up in my arms when he bounded off the opposite direction. "And just where do you think your going?" I got up and staggered after him as he scuttled towards a clump of trees that marked the on-campus picnic area. Something at the pit of my stomach pleaded that I just let the idjit cat be and get some sleep. I
pushed those marvelously tempting ideas away and struggled to keep up.
Ryuen stopped, bawled at something in the darkness then retreated behind my ankles. Okay, now that was odd. He never does anything like that, he's a got a "big-tough-kitty" attitude, not "I'm-a-girly-kitty-save-me!!". I knelt back down to re-attempt the scooping of the cat, when I saw a flash of deep amber. And when I said flash, I meant flash. A rustle of leaves and a streak of gray marked the end of whatever had been there. Not good.
I dunno, I guess a few clouds decided that, hey, they wanted to part from the moon, or something like that, but a sudden shaft of moonlight beat down through the gaps of the leaves belonging to each tall tree that hang over me. My breath caught in my throat at what it revealed. A crumpled figure laying stomach down
in the mud. Underneath it and smeared across it's tender flesh was mud with a deep eerie red sheen to it. Oh dear god.
Ryuen cried out again from behind me. What a weenie. I swear. Still crouched down, I scrambled over to the shadowy figure, my thin pale hand clinging to the bark of the near by tree as if it would save me from whatever the thing was. More clouds parted, I guess, because the moonlight intensified so that I could make out the...whatever it was. Gods, I still have nightmares about what I saw.
I finally got close enough to the object in the dark to where I could make out important features by the moonlight. There plastered into the mud was a boy a year older than myself, still in school uniform, his cheek pressed against the ground so that his face was turned toward me. Glassy, cold, dead blue eyes gazed
at me and the mouth was parted as to form unearthly words. There was a gaping hole shredded out of his neck, important veins, arteries and other vital throat organs lay strewed out, basking in the cool open night air. I rocked back on my heels, tears cascading down my cheeks. Aside from the blood and fatal injures, the gentleness of the face was all too familiar, tearing away at my heartstrings. "Takeru," I whimpered to the dead boy.
Something else flashed in the moonlight, an eerie amber. Then came the sound of chains giving a gentle rattle. I found myself looking into two familiar globes of dull amber. From somewhere around the new large figure a gentle blue glow illuminated the darkness. Oh shit.
"Ashitare?" The eyes flashed wide, followed by an excited grunt. After a great deal of thrashing about, he calmed and gave me an empty stare. "Ashitare? WHY?" Suddenly I exploded in fear, sadness, and utter rage. "Why, Ashitare? Why him? What in the hell did he do to you?" Not that I bothered to think about the fact that Ashitare shouldn't have been there in the first place. Noooo. Of course not.
Stupid me.
"Rot in Hell, Ashitare," I sobbed, bitter salty tears dripping over the edge of my chin. His empty stare narrowed in confusion at the command I had given him.
"Yu-i..." He grunted softly then whimpered. Never had I heard him speak a single word, not one. So you could imagine how it sent me reeling when I heard that. Dear God, I still shiver when I recall his voice. With another grunt a blue glow engulfed his hunched figure, and like that he was gone. By now my eyes were stinging awfully with my hot angry tears.
Ryuen wailed once more. I forgot about him! I scrambled as fast I could over to him and roughly took him up in my arms. Gods, it felt good to have something to hold onto, even if it was our little whimpy cat! He squirmed in my arms and scratched against my chest and stomach. Of course me being so drugged up on the adrenaline and pure fear that coursed through every tiny muscle in my body, didn't feel a thing.
Ha! There was the window! I don't think I took the time to carefully squeeze through, more like I just lurched out at it and got lucky enough to get through with only one major scrape that covered half my back. Sheesh, there's real luck for ya. It felt like someone had peeled all the skin off my back like I was a banana. Warm blood was drenching my cotton shirt. I glanced around the room madly, trying to remember just where Miaka's bed was. When I get scared or hyped up like that I tend to forget things, even the smallest stupid things. What can I say? No one's perfect.
Found her! Asleep. Great. Here I am, all bloody and ready to just keel over dead from fear and Miaka is out cold, mumbling something about how Taka shouldn't have eaten sushi. Wonderful.
"MIAKA! Wake up!" In utter frustration I chunked Ryuen right in her face. Whoops! Poor kitty. But hey, it got her up! She sat straight up like a board and just looked at me with her big brown eyes, confused as normal. Hell, I couldn't blame her this time.
"Oh. O-hayo gozaimasu, Yui-chan!" I don't know maybe it was my incredulous expression, or the fact that I had blood all over me. But she looked troubled and her eyebrows etched together in thought. "What's wrong, Yui-chan?!" I exhaled deeply, part of my stress flowing out with my breath. How could I just stay upset with the idiot? Especially, when she had been innocently sleeping away and me and my inconsiderate self had thrown the cat in her face.
"Just stay in here. Clean Ryuen up, it was muddy outside." She nodded slowly. I guess she was a bit surprised. I'm pretty sure I looked like I was either ready to scream my lungs out at someone or cry myself dry, and other than the last reminisce of the first tears I cried for Takeru, I wasn't doing too much of either. She nodded slowly and crept off her mattress. 'And don't go outside, whatever you do." I tried to run out of the room, but my legs weren't working very well with my brain, and I'm sure my feet must have been scratched all to hell. After a second try with my disobedient lower half, I was out of the room and down the hall in mere seconds.
It was odd, I don't think I would have acted this way in the book at all. Just an everyday thing there. But, God, this wasn't supposed to happen here! Not now! I couldn't care right now if it had been Takeru or some unknown person, though it being Takeru added to the hurt, it was the fact the I had just witness the
aftermath of a brutal murder, committed by MY DEAD seishi!! I felt like crumpling against a wall and scream and cry all at once. I guess some old habits never die, eh?
Now, where was a security guard?? The campus ALWAYS has two or three about at night, I should know, I've had to dodge them with Ryuen all year long! The minute I need one they all disappear! Just my frigging luck!
I rounded a sharp corner and BAM! Right into a body more than three times my size. THUD! I landed squarely on my butt while the other just had to take a step back to secure their balance.
"What the bloody hell?" I shook my head clear and looked up. Yes! Wonderful! At the moment I was so grateful that I had just nearly mowed over a security guard, I don't think I could have even tried to restrain my bright relieved smile. He wasn't smiling back. Uh oh, he must have been staring at all the mud and
blood on me.
"What in the bloody hell are you doing running around like that? Are you alright?" I got to my feet hastily and nervously ran a hand through my hair. Aw crap! I should have just left my hair out of this mess. I'd be taking one hell of a shower later. Man.
"Well...," crap! Where are you supposed to start with something like this? 'Yeah mister I was out relieving my cat that I'm not supposed to have when I saw a dead Takeru and a big wolf man that I met in a book looming over him,'??? I don't think so. I tried again. Great, just perfect. This time all that came out were more tears. I wanted to stop, I'm sure I looked like an idiot, but the urge was just too strong.
The man rolled his eyes slightly and drew in a breath. "Why don't you take a second? When your done, I'll be down the hall." He turned to leave me. Pish, there wasn't a chance in hell I'd let that happen. Not now.I latched onto his arm and held on with a death grip. If the man really wanted to go the other end of the hall, he'd be dragging me with him.
He sighed and turned back around and watched me compose myself with a bit of a twitch, irritation, I'd be willing to guess. It's just my luck to find the most uncompassionate cop ever to walk the face of the Earth.
"There's a dead body at the picnic area!" Oh there's a great start, right to the point. Sheesh. "I don't know what to do, it looks like he had been attacked by some animal. I was out there and I just found him lying there, already dead!" He sighed deeply and his facial expression stressed.
"Look. Just go back to your dorm, and take a shower for God's sake. I want to tell you everything is going to be fine, but apparently, it won't be. All I can tell you is we'll take care of things. Now go on." He shooed me off and gratefully, I stumbled all the way back to our room.
~*~*~
I woke up on my stomach (it hurt too damn much to sleep on my back). Sunlight stretched through the blinds and made lines of shadows all over my body. I blindly felt for my alarm clock with my hand. Found it. Groggily I stared into the numbers, 10:14 a.m. Oh, right, only ten. Silly me. I slid my hand back under
my pillow and got comfortable again. WHAT?? I writhed into an upright position and nearly yanked the clock's plug out of the wall when I grabbed it again.
"Ten fourteen?! Miaka!!" I glanced over to her bed and found her curled up in the covers and wiping the sleep from her eyes. Apparently I had just woke her up.
"Hai?"
"It's ten fourteen! We have classes! You turned my alarm off!" She nodded sleepily, not looking a bit remorseful. "Miaka!" She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into her covers.
"Go back to sleep, Yui-chan." I stared at her wide eyed, not quite knowing just how to react. She opened one eye and noted that I was still staring at her rather dumbstruck. Miaka sighed and sat up in her bed, looking at me sadly. For the first time I noticed that her eyes were all red and puffy, like she had cried herself to sleep. This morning they found Takeru-" she didn't even finish the sentence. She couldn't. Couldn't blame her, I was acting that way myself last night. Then it hit me. No wonder she turned the alarm off! There'd probably be a few days where we wouldn't be attending classes. Grievance period. "They're
pretty sure it wasn't suicide or a homicide. But they're still taking people in for questioning," Miaka added between sobs.
"Fat lot of help that'll do. Nobody will know anything." I sat Indian style in the middle of my bed, staring blankly at the floor. "Miaka," I paused already feeling the tears taking that beaten path down my cheeks. "Takeru wasn't just killed, he was torn apart. There was a HOLE in his neck!" I couldn't look up at her, knew her horrified expression already. I've seen it lots of times. "I saw Ashitare last night. He killed Takeru."
You grew up way too fast
And now there's nothing to believe
And reruns all become our history
A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio
And I wont tell no one your name ~ Name, The Goo Goo Dolls
Perfect Blue
Scars are souvenirs that you never lose
The past is never far
Did you lose yourself out there?
Did you get to be a star?
And don't it make you sad to know that life,
Is more than who we are?
Once upon a time my life was perfect. I was on my way to high school, I was smart, pretty and popular. Everything a girl could want right? Right. Facing my parents over a low "C" was about as scary as it got. Not that they'd really care all that much if I got an "A+++" if it's at all possible. But that's not the point. They wanted my grades to stay in the rang to where I could get a scholarship and they wouldn't have to pay all that much to get me away to college. Loving, ne? But that's normal, right? Okay so maybe you wouldn't
exactly want your child to live in that type of rather uncaring environment. But lemme tell you, after all the hell I've been through, that kind of life is so sugar sweet it rots the teeth.
Anyway, life was wonderfully bliss. Heh, thanks to the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho, that was shot all to hell. You know it's funny how one little glance in the wrong direction can fuck up all your hard work for a normal life. In my case, it was actually my best friend's glance in the wrong direction, which led her straight to the book: The Universe of the Four Gods, a. k. a. the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho. The first time that idiot Yuuki Miaka decides to read she picks the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho, of all things! I don't know if I should kill her or kiss her for it. Get you mind out of the gutter! I didn't mean it that way! I'm definitely straight. Believe me.
I should hate Miaka because that book made my world do a complete 180. It drug me, kicking and screaming, from my little protective bubble. You know what I'm talking about. That little bubble that you build around yourself, thinking nothing can hurt you, and that there are no monsters in the closet, or that
those bed bugs your parents warn you about aren't real. Well, Dearheart, bring out your Monster-Be-Gone and your Raid, 'cause they're real. And not all monsters you can spot right away, because not all of them are ugly. Trust me on this one. I've met a monster more beautiful than anyone I've ever met before, but he was a monster just the same.
Anyway, the book. Yes I should hate my best friend for finding the book. And for I while I did hate her. So much that I wanted to kill her. "Why?" you ask? Because as I read the pages out loud to her we were both sucked into the damn thing. I swear to the gods that I'm not lying. And I'm not crazy. It's kinda surprising though, I mean, after all that we've been through both Miaka and I are as sane as a person can get. But back to the story. By some twist of fate and my oh so wonderful talent for misreading emotions, we both ended up as priestesses for two different warring gods. Miaka as Suzaku no Miko, and I as Seiryuu no Miko. To tell you the truth that wasn't exactly the most glamorous moment of my life. Though all of Miaka's shichiseishi (Celestial Warriors) loved her with the utmost devotion and would walk through fire for her, my seishi wouldn't have cared if I were devoured or not. Well, okay, not all. Suboshi would have done everything in his power to get me back, or probably would have killed himself to follow me into the after world. I wonder why I never let myself love him then. I think for the most part I was afraid. Afraid that
he'd end doing the same thing as the perverts in the ally did, or eventually leave me for someone else. But I think I was mostly scared to death that after I summoned Seiryuu, I'd have to leave him behind. Boy, I don't think I could have ever been more wrong about anything in all my life.
Which brings me to the good things that came out of the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho. It gave Miaka her Tamahome. After all was over and done with, I did get jealous of them. It made my blood boil. Miaka lost the love of her life, but waited what? Maybe a month or two before Tamahome was reincarnated into our world as Taka. While I had lost Suboshi, the only man who had ever loved me, not Seiryuu no Miko, not the girl that fell out of the sky, but Hongo Yui. Now before you get your panties in a wad, I'll let you know that I tried to love Tetsuya. Lord knows, I really did. For two and a half years I tried. But I could never find
that spark. You know, that spark makes you want to give every bit of you heart and soul out to a person. The sunglasses didn't help any. He wouldn't take them off, even for me. As stupid as it sounds, I was beginning to wonder if the guy had eyes at all, I mean, why else would they be that important?
So, six months before being together for three years, I broke up with Tetsuya. He told me he had seen it coming for a long time. Sometimes I wonder why he held on so long. Unsolved mystery. But that's past, this is present.
It wasn't but another six months after Tetsuya and I went our separate ways when I saw the last thing I ever expected to see. Working at a car repair shop, covered in oil and grease, was an eighteen year-old boy with mossy-blonde hair, blue eyes and a blue bandana tied firmly around his brow. What stuck out the most was that with his blue tank top on, you could see a kanji that seemed to be carved into his left shoulder. Kaku. It looked as if someone had just went to his skin with a knife and carved the kanji there like they would on a tree trunk. Eiko Shinji was his name, but that didn't fool me for a second. I knew I had found my Suboshi after those three long years. Let's just say it finally put the last broken piece of my life back together.
Like Taka, he had a completely new name, but unlike him, he still had all his memories. Like his name, his personality had changed a lot. He wasn't quite as brash, and not near as childish. I suppose all that time on his own did him some good. Though he still loved me more than ever, he wasn't so dependant. To put it
shortly, he matured far more than anybody could ever imagine.
At times I wish that his reincarnation was as simply explained as his personality change. I mean, Taka is the once in a life time miracle, right? Even HIS reincarnation wasn't supposed to happen. Like before, unsolved mystery. But, like I said, only at times do I ponder over it, most of the time I don't even bother myself with the question. Shinji is just one of those little things that you'd rather just go on not knowing, but enjoying it. But I'm sure you don't want to hear too much about all that mush, now do you? So here's a quick fast forward. Both Miaka and I graduated from High School and are nineteen now. I guess you could say we're all grown up now. Yep, rough tough big kids. College kids. By some God given miracle, Miaka made it to college. There's a breath taker for ya. I don't see why she even wanted to go. I just can't see her doing any job that requires a college education. I mean, come on, this is Miaka! So anyway, we're roomies in the Bataan College dorms. Taka and Shinji share a room one floor up from us. I guess it's a good thing we weren't scattered across the campus.
So yeah, we were normal again. If you ignore the fact that our boyfriends both died at least once and have held about three different names, all was normal. Note the WAS. I swear, the second my useless life scrambles back together it gets tossed right back out to the wolves. This time I'd take Shinji, Miaka, and
Taka down with me...
~*~*~
I woke up that fateful night twisted up in my sheets with a furry cat tail swishing under my nose.
"Get lost, Ryuen" I grumbled, shoving the little body off the edge of my bed. As soon as he hit the floor he was back up on my bed again. Miaka can never figure out why it's only my bed that the cat sleeps on and why it's only my bed covered in cat sheddings. Truth be told, he knows better than to sleep with my room
mate, unless he had a sudden suicidal urge to be squished. I've heard of dogs and things like that being suicidal and just waiting on the side of the road for the car that has their name on it, then just dart out in front of it. But no little furry friend would be crazy enough to sleep in the same bed as Miaka. Even I'm afraid to do that, too many old painful sleep over experiences from junior high.
Oh, wait, I kinda owe you and explanation to this whole cat thing, don't I? Heh, yeah. See...for the past semester, we've been illegally harboring a cat in our dorm room. Shh, don't tell! As much as a pain that cat is, we love him! I think, as much as I deny it, I'd cry my little eyes out if he was ever taken away from us.
I felt a paw gently trace a line down my cheek, then another just to make sure I got the message. That, there, my friends, is one of Ryuen's less violent ways of getting us - no, me. It'd take far more to get Miaka up. Something more along the lines of an earthquake that's jumping off the Richter scale. - outta bed. Hot dog! I'm in luck tonight! Ryuen wasn't possessed to do more just to get me up. I swear, his little mind can cook up some real evil methods to get what he wants, if he felt the urge. More luck for me, our dorm is on the ground floor so I can just slip out the window, let him do his business, then hop back in before getting caught.
"Alright, alright. I'm up." I literally had to roll out of the bed, otherwise the warmth of the covers would have immediately drawn me back to the mattress the moment I tried to get up. Then the cat would have to
resort to a much more painful way of getting my sleepy ass out of bed. "Come on." I staggered to my feet and snatched him up in my arms. He protested softly when I didn't make a very straight line to the window. He squalled even more when I had to shift him from his comfortable position in order to get the window
open. With one hand I slid the window open then tucked it back against my body as I crawled through. I dropped him to the soft soil of the flower bed by our window before I was even half way through the window frame. I swung my legs around and both feet touched moist ground at the exact same time.
"Holy shit!" I had to clamp my hand over my mouth before I woke someone up. "Gods, this sucks," I glared down at the mud caking around my bare feet. If only I had remembered that it had rained that afternoon...yuck. And as if the mud between my toes wasn't bad enough, a rather chilly gust of wind hit me in full force, dropping my body temperature a good 10-15 degrees. Wonderful, just peachy.
Why me?
Ryuen poked his head out from behind a bush and just gazed up at me blankly.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Lets go." He protested, but scuttled out into the open obediently . In an attempt to make it up to me, Ryuen brushed against the backs of my legs, which did not help my serious case of the shivers by any means. Great, perfect. Probably had mud all over me now. I knelt down to scoop
him back up in my arms when he bounded off the opposite direction. "And just where do you think your going?" I got up and staggered after him as he scuttled towards a clump of trees that marked the on-campus picnic area. Something at the pit of my stomach pleaded that I just let the idjit cat be and get some sleep. I
pushed those marvelously tempting ideas away and struggled to keep up.
Ryuen stopped, bawled at something in the darkness then retreated behind my ankles. Okay, now that was odd. He never does anything like that, he's a got a "big-tough-kitty" attitude, not "I'm-a-girly-kitty-save-me!!". I knelt back down to re-attempt the scooping of the cat, when I saw a flash of deep amber. And when I said flash, I meant flash. A rustle of leaves and a streak of gray marked the end of whatever had been there. Not good.
I dunno, I guess a few clouds decided that, hey, they wanted to part from the moon, or something like that, but a sudden shaft of moonlight beat down through the gaps of the leaves belonging to each tall tree that hang over me. My breath caught in my throat at what it revealed. A crumpled figure laying stomach down
in the mud. Underneath it and smeared across it's tender flesh was mud with a deep eerie red sheen to it. Oh dear god.
Ryuen cried out again from behind me. What a weenie. I swear. Still crouched down, I scrambled over to the shadowy figure, my thin pale hand clinging to the bark of the near by tree as if it would save me from whatever the thing was. More clouds parted, I guess, because the moonlight intensified so that I could make out the...whatever it was. Gods, I still have nightmares about what I saw.
I finally got close enough to the object in the dark to where I could make out important features by the moonlight. There plastered into the mud was a boy a year older than myself, still in school uniform, his cheek pressed against the ground so that his face was turned toward me. Glassy, cold, dead blue eyes gazed
at me and the mouth was parted as to form unearthly words. There was a gaping hole shredded out of his neck, important veins, arteries and other vital throat organs lay strewed out, basking in the cool open night air. I rocked back on my heels, tears cascading down my cheeks. Aside from the blood and fatal injures, the gentleness of the face was all too familiar, tearing away at my heartstrings. "Takeru," I whimpered to the dead boy.
Something else flashed in the moonlight, an eerie amber. Then came the sound of chains giving a gentle rattle. I found myself looking into two familiar globes of dull amber. From somewhere around the new large figure a gentle blue glow illuminated the darkness. Oh shit.
"Ashitare?" The eyes flashed wide, followed by an excited grunt. After a great deal of thrashing about, he calmed and gave me an empty stare. "Ashitare? WHY?" Suddenly I exploded in fear, sadness, and utter rage. "Why, Ashitare? Why him? What in the hell did he do to you?" Not that I bothered to think about the fact that Ashitare shouldn't have been there in the first place. Noooo. Of course not.
Stupid me.
"Rot in Hell, Ashitare," I sobbed, bitter salty tears dripping over the edge of my chin. His empty stare narrowed in confusion at the command I had given him.
"Yu-i..." He grunted softly then whimpered. Never had I heard him speak a single word, not one. So you could imagine how it sent me reeling when I heard that. Dear God, I still shiver when I recall his voice. With another grunt a blue glow engulfed his hunched figure, and like that he was gone. By now my eyes were stinging awfully with my hot angry tears.
Ryuen wailed once more. I forgot about him! I scrambled as fast I could over to him and roughly took him up in my arms. Gods, it felt good to have something to hold onto, even if it was our little whimpy cat! He squirmed in my arms and scratched against my chest and stomach. Of course me being so drugged up on the adrenaline and pure fear that coursed through every tiny muscle in my body, didn't feel a thing.
Ha! There was the window! I don't think I took the time to carefully squeeze through, more like I just lurched out at it and got lucky enough to get through with only one major scrape that covered half my back. Sheesh, there's real luck for ya. It felt like someone had peeled all the skin off my back like I was a banana. Warm blood was drenching my cotton shirt. I glanced around the room madly, trying to remember just where Miaka's bed was. When I get scared or hyped up like that I tend to forget things, even the smallest stupid things. What can I say? No one's perfect.
Found her! Asleep. Great. Here I am, all bloody and ready to just keel over dead from fear and Miaka is out cold, mumbling something about how Taka shouldn't have eaten sushi. Wonderful.
"MIAKA! Wake up!" In utter frustration I chunked Ryuen right in her face. Whoops! Poor kitty. But hey, it got her up! She sat straight up like a board and just looked at me with her big brown eyes, confused as normal. Hell, I couldn't blame her this time.
"Oh. O-hayo gozaimasu, Yui-chan!" I don't know maybe it was my incredulous expression, or the fact that I had blood all over me. But she looked troubled and her eyebrows etched together in thought. "What's wrong, Yui-chan?!" I exhaled deeply, part of my stress flowing out with my breath. How could I just stay upset with the idiot? Especially, when she had been innocently sleeping away and me and my inconsiderate self had thrown the cat in her face.
"Just stay in here. Clean Ryuen up, it was muddy outside." She nodded slowly. I guess she was a bit surprised. I'm pretty sure I looked like I was either ready to scream my lungs out at someone or cry myself dry, and other than the last reminisce of the first tears I cried for Takeru, I wasn't doing too much of either. She nodded slowly and crept off her mattress. 'And don't go outside, whatever you do." I tried to run out of the room, but my legs weren't working very well with my brain, and I'm sure my feet must have been scratched all to hell. After a second try with my disobedient lower half, I was out of the room and down the hall in mere seconds.
It was odd, I don't think I would have acted this way in the book at all. Just an everyday thing there. But, God, this wasn't supposed to happen here! Not now! I couldn't care right now if it had been Takeru or some unknown person, though it being Takeru added to the hurt, it was the fact the I had just witness the
aftermath of a brutal murder, committed by MY DEAD seishi!! I felt like crumpling against a wall and scream and cry all at once. I guess some old habits never die, eh?
Now, where was a security guard?? The campus ALWAYS has two or three about at night, I should know, I've had to dodge them with Ryuen all year long! The minute I need one they all disappear! Just my frigging luck!
I rounded a sharp corner and BAM! Right into a body more than three times my size. THUD! I landed squarely on my butt while the other just had to take a step back to secure their balance.
"What the bloody hell?" I shook my head clear and looked up. Yes! Wonderful! At the moment I was so grateful that I had just nearly mowed over a security guard, I don't think I could have even tried to restrain my bright relieved smile. He wasn't smiling back. Uh oh, he must have been staring at all the mud and
blood on me.
"What in the bloody hell are you doing running around like that? Are you alright?" I got to my feet hastily and nervously ran a hand through my hair. Aw crap! I should have just left my hair out of this mess. I'd be taking one hell of a shower later. Man.
"Well...," crap! Where are you supposed to start with something like this? 'Yeah mister I was out relieving my cat that I'm not supposed to have when I saw a dead Takeru and a big wolf man that I met in a book looming over him,'??? I don't think so. I tried again. Great, just perfect. This time all that came out were more tears. I wanted to stop, I'm sure I looked like an idiot, but the urge was just too strong.
The man rolled his eyes slightly and drew in a breath. "Why don't you take a second? When your done, I'll be down the hall." He turned to leave me. Pish, there wasn't a chance in hell I'd let that happen. Not now.I latched onto his arm and held on with a death grip. If the man really wanted to go the other end of the hall, he'd be dragging me with him.
He sighed and turned back around and watched me compose myself with a bit of a twitch, irritation, I'd be willing to guess. It's just my luck to find the most uncompassionate cop ever to walk the face of the Earth.
"There's a dead body at the picnic area!" Oh there's a great start, right to the point. Sheesh. "I don't know what to do, it looks like he had been attacked by some animal. I was out there and I just found him lying there, already dead!" He sighed deeply and his facial expression stressed.
"Look. Just go back to your dorm, and take a shower for God's sake. I want to tell you everything is going to be fine, but apparently, it won't be. All I can tell you is we'll take care of things. Now go on." He shooed me off and gratefully, I stumbled all the way back to our room.
~*~*~
I woke up on my stomach (it hurt too damn much to sleep on my back). Sunlight stretched through the blinds and made lines of shadows all over my body. I blindly felt for my alarm clock with my hand. Found it. Groggily I stared into the numbers, 10:14 a.m. Oh, right, only ten. Silly me. I slid my hand back under
my pillow and got comfortable again. WHAT?? I writhed into an upright position and nearly yanked the clock's plug out of the wall when I grabbed it again.
"Ten fourteen?! Miaka!!" I glanced over to her bed and found her curled up in the covers and wiping the sleep from her eyes. Apparently I had just woke her up.
"Hai?"
"It's ten fourteen! We have classes! You turned my alarm off!" She nodded sleepily, not looking a bit remorseful. "Miaka!" She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into her covers.
"Go back to sleep, Yui-chan." I stared at her wide eyed, not quite knowing just how to react. She opened one eye and noted that I was still staring at her rather dumbstruck. Miaka sighed and sat up in her bed, looking at me sadly. For the first time I noticed that her eyes were all red and puffy, like she had cried herself to sleep. This morning they found Takeru-" she didn't even finish the sentence. She couldn't. Couldn't blame her, I was acting that way myself last night. Then it hit me. No wonder she turned the alarm off! There'd probably be a few days where we wouldn't be attending classes. Grievance period. "They're
pretty sure it wasn't suicide or a homicide. But they're still taking people in for questioning," Miaka added between sobs.
"Fat lot of help that'll do. Nobody will know anything." I sat Indian style in the middle of my bed, staring blankly at the floor. "Miaka," I paused already feeling the tears taking that beaten path down my cheeks. "Takeru wasn't just killed, he was torn apart. There was a HOLE in his neck!" I couldn't look up at her, knew her horrified expression already. I've seen it lots of times. "I saw Ashitare last night. He killed Takeru."
You grew up way too fast
And now there's nothing to believe
And reruns all become our history
A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio
And I wont tell no one your name ~ Name, The Goo Goo Dolls