Disclosure
People always say the worst phone calls are the ones you receive in the middle of the night. They're right, but only because they've never made the phone calls.
Right now Takatsuki Shiori is sleeping coiled into a small, as to mean unimportant, ball with her sheets wadded up around her bruised fists. She broke a vase in her room full of blue roses earlier, quite thick glass I believe. I have a rosy mental picture of her-- she's still snuffling in her sleep from crying, her eyes are swollen shut. Her few looks, in short, are squandered.
She answers on the first ring. She might want to purchase some sleeping pills. I consider voicing my concern about her resting habits, but then, that's rude when we're only acquaintances. Plus, the comment would just degrade into a pun on the word sleeping as used to mean dormant, and I'm sure Miss Takatsuki is in no mood to discuss those habits, so recently awoken.
Yes, only just conscious, just like her. She's not got the temper or voice left to screech at me. She asks me what I want.
Oh, Shiori. What a dangerous conversationalist you prove to be, even at four a.m. I could tell you all sorts of things right now-- dreams about princes with fresh-born colt's legs in white satin; pretty princes walking right into the dense tangle-forest night where the tiger masks his marks; and princesses like a conjurer's act who think they veil their tears well, just like new brides abashed before their knowing husbands.
But I do not. I put on the practiced professional voice, frostily and distantly informing you of the passing of one Tsuchiya Ruka. I wait for you to say you didn't even know he was still unwell-- there, that's what you revealed in that hitch in your breath, the poorly suppressed gasp. You can hear it in my voice that it was not you he mentioned in death, and I anticipate avoiding your fresh tears.
But you surprise me again, thanking me in that defeated voice that tells me too well that you know when you've been outclassed, and hanging up. Perhaps this is not so new to you after all. People always say the worst phone calls to receive are the ones in the middle of the night, but maybe that's because they've never experienced anything worse than a phone call.
