Disclaimer: I do not own Peach Girl or any of its characters. But I do own Goro's friends, managers, agents, and Momo's new friends, and her new name. So, HA!!
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Chapter 2
"Just my luck."
Momo stopped at the train station. She remembered where he was from the television broadcast from two nights before. He had said on the broadcast that he was going to stay in the city where it was filmed for another week before he left to go film the next few episodes of his new series. Momo knew she had to get there before he left. She waltzed up casually to the register.
"I need a ticket to Nagasaki." she said to the man behind the counter.
"One way or two?" he asked her.
Momo hesitated. But the more she thought, the more she knew that she would have to be back by a certain date. She didn't want that.
"One." she replied simply.
The man handed her the ticket.
"The train leaves in half an hour. Be ready, or be sorry." he said. "It leaves from platform 16, so be there or you'll miss it. If you want to go ahead and board, go right ahead."
"Thanks." Momo said.
"Yeah, whatever." the man muttered. "I hate kids."
Momo ran toward the platform. She wanted to go ahead and get a seat. She approached the conductor.
"Hello sir. Is this the train to Nagasaki?" she asked him.
"Sure is, sweetheart. What can I do for you?" he replied simply.
"I was just wondering, where would I put my stuff? I have my ticket right here." she said to him.
"Well, little lady, just give me your bag and go right on in. Pick any room that isn't occupied." he told her.
"Okay, thanks! Just let me get my things for tonight and the rest of the train ride and then I'll leave the rest with you." she said.
Momo knelt and took the things she would need, then, after thanking the man, boarded the train. She walked back toward the back of the train. She picked the last room on the left. She walked in and put her stuff away. Then, she lied down on the bed.
"Oh, my head is throbbing!" she said to herself.
She walked over to the sink and grabbed an aspirin out of the cabinet. She got a small Dixie cup full of water. She put the aspirin in her mouth and downed it quickly. Suddenly, she began feeling dizzy. She walked, or rather, stumbled, to the bed and collapsed.
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Momo awakened three hours later. Her head was still a bit sore, and it seemed like it had been days since she had eaten. She was also still a bit dizzy. She looked around. She was no longer in the room she had chosen. She was in a room that looked very much like a hospital room.
"Where in the hell…" Momo began.
A nurse, or what looked to be a nurse, approached her.
"What in heaven's name did you take?" the nurse asked.
"What?" Momo asked, confused.
"You had to have taken something. It knocked you out!" the nurse explained.
"How long have I been out, anyway?" Momo asked, curious to know how long she had indeed been out.
"Three hours, baby doll!" the nurse replied.
Momo sat straight up at this, making her head spin.
"Three hours?!" she yelled.
This too, made her head spin. She clutched her head, but nevertheless, it still spun.
"All I had was an aspirin." she said.
"We don't have aspirin in the rooms. Only here!" the nurse said.
"Maybe someone left it in the room." Momo said, hoping that she would not hear the answer she was expecting.
"We don't let anyone take things from this nurse's area." the nurse said.
"That's what I was dreading." Momo thought aloud.
"What, honey?" the nurse asked.
"Oh!" Momo realized what she'd done. "Nothing."
The nurse had walked away a difference and was now shuffling through a cabinet. She returned with a bottle in her hand. She thrust it out toward Momo.
"What's this?" Momo asked.
"A real aspirin." the nurse replied simply. "This might be able to make your head stop spinning."
"Thanks." Momo said.
She hoped it would work. She grabbed the glass of water that the nurse was now holding in her other hand and quickly swallowed the aspirin. This time, she didn't pass out as it went down. Momo sat and talked with the nurse for a bit as her headache faded.
"You remind me a lot of a nurse I had at…" Momo began with a laugh. Then she stopped.
She wanted to forget Misao, too, as much as she hated to.
"Where, dear?" the nurse asked.
"Nowhere. Forget I brought it up." Momo replied.
She simply wanted to forget her old life entirely. But for some odd reason, it kept coming back to her.
"I forgot to ask, what's your name, love?" the nurse asked Momo.
"Oh! Mo…Shimihara Aourouna." Momo replied.
Well, it's a start. Momo thought to herself.
"Shimihara! Why that's a lovely name! What's your nickname?" the nurse asked her.
"Mihara." Momo replied.
"That's nice." the nurse said to her. "Where are you going to? This train runs so much, I forget the schedule!"
Momo laughed for the first time in weeks. She clapped a hand lightly to her mouth. She was amazed that she could still laugh. It was a sound that she hadn't heard in so long that it startled her. She missed it, she quickly realized.
"I'm going to Nagasaki. I have some friends there that I'm probably going to live with. I don't want to come back to Tokyo for a long time. And hopefully I won't have to." Momo said.
"Why, dear?" the nurse asked her.
Momo hesitated. Should she tell the nurse? No, she decided.
"Uh…I just…Well, you see….I kinda…Forget it. My head's feeling a lot better now, so I guess I'll just go back to my room." Momo said. "Bye!"
Momo rushed out the door of the nurse's office area. She started walking back to her room. When she got back, she looked at the clock on the wall. It was 9:30 pm. She had to get to sleep soon. She shuffled quickly through the things that she'd brought on the train with her, looking for her toothbrush. It wasn't there.
"Crap!" Momo said. "I must have left it in my bag. I'll just go ask the conductor where he put it."
Momo left her room and walked toward the front of the train. She neared the area where the conductor was sitting. She knocked on the door. A man she had never seen before in her life, certainly not the man that she had given her bag to, opened the door.
"Are you the conductor?" she asked him, nervously. She was praying that he wasn't.
"Yes, I am. What can I do for you?" he asked her.
"Who was the man that was standing at the door? And what did he do with my things?" Momo asked.
"He certainly didn't work here. I stood at the door of this train from 15 minutes before in left the station until it left. I didn't see anyone else there." the conductor replied to Momo.
"Oh, shit!" Momo said. "He told me to give my bag to him and that he would take it and put it away. He had to have run off with it!"
Momo was furious. She had left her bag with that kleptomaniac, and he'd run off with it! Now what was she going to do? Momo thanked the conductor and walked slowly back to her room. Maybe this was a sign, a sign that he had run off with her old life, the life that she never wanted to see again. Maybe things were looking up. But for now, Momo sat down on her bed and muttered, "Just my luck." before falling quickly asleep.