"You're back late, or should I say early?"
Lily jumped in surprise from the unexpected voice. After all, how many people would be up and talking at four in the morning?
She took a deep breath and looked to where the voice had come from. Yuki's silhouette moved from the balcony door as he reached to turn on a lamp. The light bulb glowed and she could now clearly she him standing dressed shabbily in a pair of pants and a blue shirt that he hadn't bothered to button up. In his hand he rhythmically rotated a can of beer, much like how a lion twitches it's tail before in pounces and mangles an innocent gazelle.
Lily found it hard to find any expression at all on his face. As handsome as Yuki was, Lily couldn't help but think that his features had been carved from stone. In their short time together she hadn't seen him smile or frown once and Shuichi spoke more in ten minutes than Yuki would in two hours.
"Well it looks like curfew has been broken," he stated the obvious and his cat-like eyes flicked to the clock ticking away on the wall. "Or more correctly put, smashed."
Lily said nothing and just kept her mind on breathing steadily. Something flicked across the man's face and for a moment Lily thought her eyes were fooling her.
'Was that a..? Yes'
For a second there had been a smile playing on Yuki's lips, but it wasn't a nice smile. It had been one of amusement and since there wasn't a three- ring circus or Shuichi in the room, that meant there could be only one thing he could be finding hilarious. Her.
"Is there something amusing?" she asked lightly.
"I believe I made myself clear this afternoon," Yuki said completely ignoring her question. "Ten p.m. was the rule, and since you broke it, you must know what it means."
"Yes, I do," Lily whispered in a dry voice. Her face still prickled from the cold outside and her lungs were still burning like the pits of Hell, but she didn't care.
Yuki finished his drink and walked past her to get to the kitchen. Remembering the key that was still in her pocket, she followed his footsteps and put the key on the bench as he rummaged through the fridge for a loose can. Lily said something and then headed for the door.
Yuki pulled his head out of the fridge with great haste and turned to see her retreating back.
"What did you just say?" he asked as his eyes narrowed dangerously.
"I said guys like you are the worst," she repeated as she sat to put her shoes back on. "I don't know what your problem is, and to be perfectly honest I really don't care. But one thing's for sure, the more you treat him badly, the sooner he'll leave."
There was a short series of stomps on the wooden floorboards and Lily was pulled roughly to her feet by a strong hand holding her jumper. She flinched as pain ran through her lungs and looked up to see Yuki's face.
"What would a brat like you know about anything?" he asked dangerously.
"Hands off," her voice rose and pulled herself away from him with an angry expression. "Don't even think about trying to intimidate me you pretty playboy. My own grandmother had more attitude than you!"
"What are you trying to pull here?" Yuki crossed his arms and looked down on her with contempt. "A tough kid from the Bronx act?"
"No," her voice fell again and she averted eye contact. "I'm not tough, and on a geographical note, I'm from Wisconsin. But I know what I'm talking about; you can't go around treating people like they don't matter. It'll hurt them and they'll never come back, that much I know for sure."
"If you're going to whine go somewhere else," Yuki grunted and turned away. "I don't waste my time on bleeding hearts and children."
He started to walk away but Lily didn't leave. She stood where she was, her hand forced into a tight fist and her arm trembling with suppressed anger. Yuki wasn't even half way across the room when an angry rasping sound made him stop.
"You truly are the worst."
Realizing the sound was Lily's voice he turned back around with a frown, she was really pushing his patience by lingering in his house and making moral statements.
"You think that you can just show up and pass me off as some whinger!" she screamed angrily. Her lungs struggled to supply the energy needed for her to scream in their current state, but Lily didn't care, she was too angry to worry about the consequences.
"You have no idea what I've even been through! You sit around on your computer being a complete jerk to everyone around you because you think life has dealt you a crap deal!"
Even though Yuki didn't want to admit it, he was surprised by Lily's reaction. He had judged her to be some quiet, nerdy doormat, yet here she was in the early hours of the morning standing before him screaming about his behaviour. However he didn't have time to recover because Lily was far from over.
"I can't understand what it could possibly like to have someone love you like you have, but you selfishly take it for granted. Do you have any idea how horrible it is to be alone? You."
Her lungs had had enough. There was no air left in them from her screaming and they ached horribly. The dark shapes of the apartment started to spin as her body weakened. Her vision faded as she started to fall forward, no energy to stop herself.
The last thing she remembered before slipping into unconsciousness was landing on something soft and the scent of stale cigarettes.
Yuki checked her pulse as she layed in his arms, to check that she was still alive. His fringe moved a little bit from the air coming from Lily's mouth, so she was clearly still breathing.
Something slipped from the pocket of Lily's jumper and fell on the floor, rolling for a bit before halting at his foot. With his free hand he reached down and picked the small bottle of pills up. It was a bit fuzzy without his reading glasses, but he could still make the print out.
His eyes widened and looked back at the girl sleeping in his arms. You couldn't blame him for being surprised, after all, would you really expect and thirteen year old to have one of the strongest painkillers ever made in her jumper pocket?
**********************************************
2 years ago
"Ok, so I need to get chocolate biscuits for Susan, a deck of cards of Max, the new Harry Potter book for Tiffany, the Offspring's latest album for Matthias, an X-men comic for Tom, some batteries for Elisa's tape deck, baseball cards for Logan, a pack of cigs Jason and what was it that you wanted again Lily?"
"Japanese Vocab for Pros-Book Two," Lily reminded the boy sitting on the bed opposite hers' and he wrote it down on his piece of notepaper.
"You could at least ask me to risk my neck for something interesting," the blonde boy teased. "Like a porno mag or something."
He had to dodge the bedpan that flew across the room and he grinned as Lily tried to give him a filthy look but couldn't because of the laughter that broke through.
"Kidding, kidding," the yellow tinged boy assured her and jammed a white bucket hat on his head before scooping the large collection of American currency off of his bleached sheets.
"You'll be careful not to let Godzilla or Hitler catch you right Artemis?" Lily said with a raised eyebrow at her room -mate.
"Lily I've been smuggling things into this hospital ever since I was chucked in the long term ward. I know by now how to cover my own arse," he said quite offended at her reminder.
"Well excuse me," Lily said sarcastically.
All the children in long-term hospitalisation were kept under the close and militant eye of the two nurses that Artemis had taken the joy in naming Godzilla and Hitler. No one could deny that the names were appropriate because their rule was that if it was fun, it was banned.
If you had a diskman you could forget about using it. The only reading material they allowed was Lives of the Saints, The Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare. The only food you were allowed to eat was what the hospital cook dished up and you could forget about leaving your room for anything other than the school lessons, operations and the likely case of death.
Artemis however, was not one to lay down and take crap from a pair of old fuddy duddies just because of a buggered liver. He said that when you're on top of the Grim Reaper's to do list life was too short to play by the rules.
So since he wasn't in any condition to go marching up to the White House waving a flag and screaming about corrupt politicians and the 21 unknown substances in lunchmeat, he charged the children in the hospital 20% extra for whatever they wanted to buy and got it for them. All without the knowledge of either Hitler or Godzilla.
"So what's your new plan Hot Shot?" Lily asked as he pulled on his shoes.
"Little Michael is going to pretend to have a fit in front of Hitler and Godzilla. So when they're distracted I'll sneak out, catch a bus into town, get everyone's stuff and be back before I'm due to be hooked back up to my machine and have pills jammed down my throat."
"If you get caught destroy all evidence that I wanted that book. I don't want to get hit if the shit hits the fan," Lily said with a sigh and picked up Shakespeare from the bedside table.
"Why do you waste your time learning Japanese?" Artemis asked her as he finished doing up his laces. "You never call your Dad and even if you do get out of here, when will you ever use it?"
"I hope to go to a Japanese school and see my Dad when I get out of here," Lily said truthfully with a smile. "Just like you hope that you'll get out of here and go back home."
"Hope all you want," Artemis snorted. "I know that the only way I'm getting out of here is in box and you'll be in and out of long term for the rest of your life where the only time you can practise your Japanese is on the coma patients."
Lily's smile vanished and she looked at her best friend horrified while her stomach churned. This kind of talk and dark expression was completely out of his regular character.
It was like a transformation from a fluffy rabbit to a poisonous snake.
He got off the bed and walked across the room. He paused at the door and spoke again without turning around.
"People like us weren't meant to live right from the start. Hope is nothing more than a shit pipe dream that can send you crazy. I came here when I was five and everyday I hoped that the doctors would tell me something good and I'd be allowed to go home. Seven years later I'm still here taking crap from Godzilla and Hitler."
He thumped his fist on the doorframe and after a few seconds turned around. Lily saw that the usual mischievous flicker that danced in his eyes was gone, replaced with a look that could turn water to ice.
"At the end of the day Japan is drifting in the Pacific and you're in here. If you ever set one foot in Tokyo I'll eat my hat."
*********************************************
"I want you to have this," Lily said in a soft voice and handed Shuichi a tatty old shoebox that was held closed with an elastic band.
Shuichi looked at her pale face with a quizzical look. Lily had slept in till midday that day and when Yuki had spotted Shuichi trying to wake her he'd told him to leave her alone. When she had finally awoke she had refused any food offered to her and had only asked for a glass of water before she locked herself in the bathroom for half an hour throwing up. It was now the early evening and she was watching TV on the couch with Shuichi.
"Well thanks," Shuichi said putting on a smile and taking the box. "It's a little old but I could probably find a few uses for it."
"I want you to have what's in the box," she explained rolling her eyes.
"Oh right," Shuichi said sheepishly and removed the elastic band before gently lifting the top off.
Inside the shoebox there was a mass of paper. Some were colourful and neatly folded while others were just pieces of scrap notepaper with blue ink doodled all over it.
"They're songs and poems my mother wrote," Lily explained as Shuichi started to sort through them. "I thought that they might help you for when you're stuck for a song-like now for example."
Shuichi's pink eyebrows shot up. "Really? Your mother wrote all these?"
"Yea, she was a real literate person from what I could gather," Lily explained and picked out a piece of paper to read. "When I was little I was going through my attic and found a notebook with all the songs she wrote as a kid in it."
She closed her eyes and sighed. "Shame I don't have it any more."
"Did you forget to pack it when you moved?" Shuichi asked picking another song to read. He'd hate to admit that someone other than himself could have written such beautiful lyrics, but there was no way to deny it. Christina had sure had some talent.
"No, me being young and naïve, took it downstairs in a fit of excitement to show my grandmother," Lily's shoulders sagged as she recalled the long ago memory. "I showed her the book and started talking about how my Mum must have been really smart and great to have written all of those songs by herself and my grandmother went right off her rocker."
Shuichi gulped and daringly asked a question. "What did she do?"
"She burnt them." Lily said with a wince of pain and had to take a puff of Ventolin before she could continue the story.
"She yanked the book out of my hands and threw it into the fireplace right in front of me. I remember feeling sick as I watched the flames devour that little book, my mother's legacy had been killed by her own mother."
Lily sighed and sagged back into the couch.
"When I asked her why she'd done it she just said that my mother was a fool of a whore, my father a filthy mongrel dog and I was worse than both of them. I didn't know how she could say that about her own daughter when she'd done nothing wrong. The topic of my parents was completely off limits and the only time I ever heard anything about my mother from my other relatives it was all bad."
Shuichi didn't know what to say. This was the most he'd heard Lily talk about her live back in America and he'd hadn't expected it to be so bad. Perhaps it was time to change the conversation.
"Ano, are you sure that you really want to give these to me Lily chan?" he asked even though he was dying to read all of the lyrics and write a beautiful love song.
"Of course," Lily said with a smile and put the box on his lap. "What's the point of having songs this great if no one is ever going to hear them? You have a beautiful voice Shuichi, so take my mother's songs and shine."
The den door opened and Yuki emerged with computer screen eyes and reeking of cigarettes. After three days of typing he had finally finished his new novel and he'd have to meet with his editor tomorrow.
Lily gulped nervously as she watched him yawn and run his fingers through his hair. He had tried to kick her out last night, but thanks to her collapsing performance she was still in the apartment.
Was he going to let her stay or had he just postponed her exit?
Yuki finished stretching his back and his eyes fell upon the two reading lyrics on his couch. Shuichi smiled at him exuberantly and Lily met his eyes for a spilt second before turning away. It was hard to withstand his gaze for too long, it was like her could see right through her.
"Take a bath."
"Huh?" Lily frowned with confusion. That had been one of the last things she had expected him to say. "Why?"
"Because you stink. Now go," he ordered and grabbing her backpack she obeyed.
Steam filled the small bathroom as the bath filled up with hot steamy water. The lemon scented steam from the hot water and bath salts opened up Lily's airways and she let out a huge sigh of relief.
The hot water soothed the pain in her chest as it loosed the muscles and her lungs relaxed. She slipped into a light snooze and when she awoke her skin had turned a bright pink. She finished up and combed out all the knots in her hair before placing the bath cover on for the next person and left the room.
In the kitchen Shuichi sat eating some dinner and seeing her standing in the doorway in her pyjamas he jumped up and he got her some. She wasn't really hungry but ate out of politeness.
'Well now I know who does the cooking around here,' Lily thought as she found that the food was actually edible.
They heard Greensleeves and the two stopped eating. It took Lily as second to click and then went to retrieve her mobile, skating on the floorboards in her socks.
"Yea?" she said and came back into the kitchen holding the phone to her ear.
Shuichi then lost track of the conversation because Lily started speaking English. Her regular pleasant expression faded and her tone took up a certain firmness. You didn't need a translator to tell that she didn't like the person on the other end.
After five minutes she hung up and frowned as she put the phone down on the table. She didn't look at Shuichi for a while, but she once more took up her chopsticks.
"Bad news?" Shuichi asked with concern.
"Nah," Lily said with a mouthful of rice. "My grandmother is apparently dying and my cousin wanted to know if I was going to chip in for the funeral."
"Gee I'm sorry Lily chan," Shuichi said honestly and put his arm around her for comfort.
"Don't be. I'm sure as Hell not," Lily admitted with a chuckle and Yuki came into the room. "Besides, I could still hear her fat mouth in the background so she's clearly just putting on another attention act. She usually does that when something has annoyed her. I hope that whatever it was really pissed her off."
Shuichi pulled back horrified by what Lily had just said and a corner twitched at the side of Yuki's mouth as he opened the fridge.
"And there's no way I'm putting any money up for a fancy coffin," Lily continued and pointing her chopsticks at Shuichi. "Funeral directors bleed you dry money wise and if it was left up to me I'd chuck the old bat in a garbage bag and leave her out for the trashman to collect."
Neither Shuichi nor Yuki could handle that remark.
Shuichi fell off his chair and had to leave the room for a few minutes. Yuki laughed from behind the fridge door and when he'd finished he had an amused look on his face.
It didn't last long though, he opened his beer and after a large gulp his regular serious expression returned. Lily went back to her food and by the time she'd finished washing the dishes Shuichi was back.
"I'll dry!" he declared energetically and bounced over to the sink.
Lily moved away and let her hair out of its loose ponytail. The brown mess could now do whatever it liked now there was no fear of it getting in any food.
Shuichi pulled a soapy bowl out of the water and moved over to put it on the dish rack. He saw Lily with her hair down and dropped the bowl, shattering into a thousand fragments as it hit the floor tiles.
Lily yelped and jumped away so none of the fragments would cut her as they flew across the floor. She looked up to see Shuichi staring at her with his wide innocent eyes, jaw hanging open.
"What's wrong?" she asked frantically and brushed some hair away from her face.
"Um nothing! Nothing at all!" he blurted quickly and knelt down to pick up the ceramic pieces. He swore mentally for making his surprise so obvious and tried not to look at Lily as she helped him collect the pieces.
'I just couldn't help it.' He said to himself in his head. 'Just for minute there, with her hair down she looked just like Sakuma san at a glance.'
He threw the handful of broken bowl in the bin and got a broom from the cupboard. He started to sweep the tiny pieces into one pile while Lily knelt to pick up more scattered fragments.
After a few seconds he noticed that she wasn't picking up anything. She was just kneeling on the floor with her brown fringe hiding her face from view. Shuichi stopped sweeping and Lily gasped before her shoulders shook.
All the good the bath had done had worn off and her whole body ached.
"Lily chan? What's the matter? Are you sick?" Shuichi asked kneeling down, his voice soft and soothing.
"Don't, just leave it alone," Lily whispered as she tried to keep her breathing steady.
"But why?" Shuichi asked looking hurt. "Don't you trust me enough? Why don't you let me help?"
Lily placed her arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. Her weight made Shuichi fall back on his behind and he hugged her back as her breaths came in big, heavy sighs.
"You're nice Shuichi," she said in one sigh and took a deep breath in. "But you can't help me."
**********************************************
"Shindo kun please pay attention!" Sakano screamed and Shuichi snapped out of his daydream.
"I was listening!" he lied as all eyes were on him. "We were talking about the video clip we shot when we were in America."
"We were talking about that fifteen minutes ago!" Hiro snapped and punched Shuichi on the head, forcing his face into the board table.
"Sorry, sorry!" Shuichi apologised and when Hiro removed his fist he lent back in his chair.
"We were wondering how the lyrics were going," Fujisaki informed him with his head leaning on his fist.
"Oh great! Lily chan gave me these!" he cried energetically and produced the old shoebox.
He removed the lid and the whole team started to pick through the papers, everyone but K having to dig through their memories for their high school English lessons.
"I didn't want to hurt him, but Larry told me to. Larry took over and killed him," Hiro scrunched up his face in confusion and concern.
K snatched the piece of paper out of his hands and read over it.
"That's just some notes Christina took on a Multiple Personality Disorder patient in medical school," he explained after a minute and handed it back to Hiro. "The song's on the back."
Hiro relaxed and started to read the lyrics. He then leaned over in his seat so he could whisper to Shuichi.
"Hey, is Lily chan doing any better?" he asked.
Shuichi shook his head and raised his piece of paper to hide his moving lips.
"I think she's getting worse," he whispered. "I made her stay home from school today, even though she wasn't really for the idea. Yuki's taking care of her. What?"
Hiro had fish bowl eyes as he looked at his best friend.
"What did you just say?"
Lily jumped in surprise from the unexpected voice. After all, how many people would be up and talking at four in the morning?
She took a deep breath and looked to where the voice had come from. Yuki's silhouette moved from the balcony door as he reached to turn on a lamp. The light bulb glowed and she could now clearly she him standing dressed shabbily in a pair of pants and a blue shirt that he hadn't bothered to button up. In his hand he rhythmically rotated a can of beer, much like how a lion twitches it's tail before in pounces and mangles an innocent gazelle.
Lily found it hard to find any expression at all on his face. As handsome as Yuki was, Lily couldn't help but think that his features had been carved from stone. In their short time together she hadn't seen him smile or frown once and Shuichi spoke more in ten minutes than Yuki would in two hours.
"Well it looks like curfew has been broken," he stated the obvious and his cat-like eyes flicked to the clock ticking away on the wall. "Or more correctly put, smashed."
Lily said nothing and just kept her mind on breathing steadily. Something flicked across the man's face and for a moment Lily thought her eyes were fooling her.
'Was that a..? Yes'
For a second there had been a smile playing on Yuki's lips, but it wasn't a nice smile. It had been one of amusement and since there wasn't a three- ring circus or Shuichi in the room, that meant there could be only one thing he could be finding hilarious. Her.
"Is there something amusing?" she asked lightly.
"I believe I made myself clear this afternoon," Yuki said completely ignoring her question. "Ten p.m. was the rule, and since you broke it, you must know what it means."
"Yes, I do," Lily whispered in a dry voice. Her face still prickled from the cold outside and her lungs were still burning like the pits of Hell, but she didn't care.
Yuki finished his drink and walked past her to get to the kitchen. Remembering the key that was still in her pocket, she followed his footsteps and put the key on the bench as he rummaged through the fridge for a loose can. Lily said something and then headed for the door.
Yuki pulled his head out of the fridge with great haste and turned to see her retreating back.
"What did you just say?" he asked as his eyes narrowed dangerously.
"I said guys like you are the worst," she repeated as she sat to put her shoes back on. "I don't know what your problem is, and to be perfectly honest I really don't care. But one thing's for sure, the more you treat him badly, the sooner he'll leave."
There was a short series of stomps on the wooden floorboards and Lily was pulled roughly to her feet by a strong hand holding her jumper. She flinched as pain ran through her lungs and looked up to see Yuki's face.
"What would a brat like you know about anything?" he asked dangerously.
"Hands off," her voice rose and pulled herself away from him with an angry expression. "Don't even think about trying to intimidate me you pretty playboy. My own grandmother had more attitude than you!"
"What are you trying to pull here?" Yuki crossed his arms and looked down on her with contempt. "A tough kid from the Bronx act?"
"No," her voice fell again and she averted eye contact. "I'm not tough, and on a geographical note, I'm from Wisconsin. But I know what I'm talking about; you can't go around treating people like they don't matter. It'll hurt them and they'll never come back, that much I know for sure."
"If you're going to whine go somewhere else," Yuki grunted and turned away. "I don't waste my time on bleeding hearts and children."
He started to walk away but Lily didn't leave. She stood where she was, her hand forced into a tight fist and her arm trembling with suppressed anger. Yuki wasn't even half way across the room when an angry rasping sound made him stop.
"You truly are the worst."
Realizing the sound was Lily's voice he turned back around with a frown, she was really pushing his patience by lingering in his house and making moral statements.
"You think that you can just show up and pass me off as some whinger!" she screamed angrily. Her lungs struggled to supply the energy needed for her to scream in their current state, but Lily didn't care, she was too angry to worry about the consequences.
"You have no idea what I've even been through! You sit around on your computer being a complete jerk to everyone around you because you think life has dealt you a crap deal!"
Even though Yuki didn't want to admit it, he was surprised by Lily's reaction. He had judged her to be some quiet, nerdy doormat, yet here she was in the early hours of the morning standing before him screaming about his behaviour. However he didn't have time to recover because Lily was far from over.
"I can't understand what it could possibly like to have someone love you like you have, but you selfishly take it for granted. Do you have any idea how horrible it is to be alone? You."
Her lungs had had enough. There was no air left in them from her screaming and they ached horribly. The dark shapes of the apartment started to spin as her body weakened. Her vision faded as she started to fall forward, no energy to stop herself.
The last thing she remembered before slipping into unconsciousness was landing on something soft and the scent of stale cigarettes.
Yuki checked her pulse as she layed in his arms, to check that she was still alive. His fringe moved a little bit from the air coming from Lily's mouth, so she was clearly still breathing.
Something slipped from the pocket of Lily's jumper and fell on the floor, rolling for a bit before halting at his foot. With his free hand he reached down and picked the small bottle of pills up. It was a bit fuzzy without his reading glasses, but he could still make the print out.
His eyes widened and looked back at the girl sleeping in his arms. You couldn't blame him for being surprised, after all, would you really expect and thirteen year old to have one of the strongest painkillers ever made in her jumper pocket?
**********************************************
2 years ago
"Ok, so I need to get chocolate biscuits for Susan, a deck of cards of Max, the new Harry Potter book for Tiffany, the Offspring's latest album for Matthias, an X-men comic for Tom, some batteries for Elisa's tape deck, baseball cards for Logan, a pack of cigs Jason and what was it that you wanted again Lily?"
"Japanese Vocab for Pros-Book Two," Lily reminded the boy sitting on the bed opposite hers' and he wrote it down on his piece of notepaper.
"You could at least ask me to risk my neck for something interesting," the blonde boy teased. "Like a porno mag or something."
He had to dodge the bedpan that flew across the room and he grinned as Lily tried to give him a filthy look but couldn't because of the laughter that broke through.
"Kidding, kidding," the yellow tinged boy assured her and jammed a white bucket hat on his head before scooping the large collection of American currency off of his bleached sheets.
"You'll be careful not to let Godzilla or Hitler catch you right Artemis?" Lily said with a raised eyebrow at her room -mate.
"Lily I've been smuggling things into this hospital ever since I was chucked in the long term ward. I know by now how to cover my own arse," he said quite offended at her reminder.
"Well excuse me," Lily said sarcastically.
All the children in long-term hospitalisation were kept under the close and militant eye of the two nurses that Artemis had taken the joy in naming Godzilla and Hitler. No one could deny that the names were appropriate because their rule was that if it was fun, it was banned.
If you had a diskman you could forget about using it. The only reading material they allowed was Lives of the Saints, The Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare. The only food you were allowed to eat was what the hospital cook dished up and you could forget about leaving your room for anything other than the school lessons, operations and the likely case of death.
Artemis however, was not one to lay down and take crap from a pair of old fuddy duddies just because of a buggered liver. He said that when you're on top of the Grim Reaper's to do list life was too short to play by the rules.
So since he wasn't in any condition to go marching up to the White House waving a flag and screaming about corrupt politicians and the 21 unknown substances in lunchmeat, he charged the children in the hospital 20% extra for whatever they wanted to buy and got it for them. All without the knowledge of either Hitler or Godzilla.
"So what's your new plan Hot Shot?" Lily asked as he pulled on his shoes.
"Little Michael is going to pretend to have a fit in front of Hitler and Godzilla. So when they're distracted I'll sneak out, catch a bus into town, get everyone's stuff and be back before I'm due to be hooked back up to my machine and have pills jammed down my throat."
"If you get caught destroy all evidence that I wanted that book. I don't want to get hit if the shit hits the fan," Lily said with a sigh and picked up Shakespeare from the bedside table.
"Why do you waste your time learning Japanese?" Artemis asked her as he finished doing up his laces. "You never call your Dad and even if you do get out of here, when will you ever use it?"
"I hope to go to a Japanese school and see my Dad when I get out of here," Lily said truthfully with a smile. "Just like you hope that you'll get out of here and go back home."
"Hope all you want," Artemis snorted. "I know that the only way I'm getting out of here is in box and you'll be in and out of long term for the rest of your life where the only time you can practise your Japanese is on the coma patients."
Lily's smile vanished and she looked at her best friend horrified while her stomach churned. This kind of talk and dark expression was completely out of his regular character.
It was like a transformation from a fluffy rabbit to a poisonous snake.
He got off the bed and walked across the room. He paused at the door and spoke again without turning around.
"People like us weren't meant to live right from the start. Hope is nothing more than a shit pipe dream that can send you crazy. I came here when I was five and everyday I hoped that the doctors would tell me something good and I'd be allowed to go home. Seven years later I'm still here taking crap from Godzilla and Hitler."
He thumped his fist on the doorframe and after a few seconds turned around. Lily saw that the usual mischievous flicker that danced in his eyes was gone, replaced with a look that could turn water to ice.
"At the end of the day Japan is drifting in the Pacific and you're in here. If you ever set one foot in Tokyo I'll eat my hat."
*********************************************
"I want you to have this," Lily said in a soft voice and handed Shuichi a tatty old shoebox that was held closed with an elastic band.
Shuichi looked at her pale face with a quizzical look. Lily had slept in till midday that day and when Yuki had spotted Shuichi trying to wake her he'd told him to leave her alone. When she had finally awoke she had refused any food offered to her and had only asked for a glass of water before she locked herself in the bathroom for half an hour throwing up. It was now the early evening and she was watching TV on the couch with Shuichi.
"Well thanks," Shuichi said putting on a smile and taking the box. "It's a little old but I could probably find a few uses for it."
"I want you to have what's in the box," she explained rolling her eyes.
"Oh right," Shuichi said sheepishly and removed the elastic band before gently lifting the top off.
Inside the shoebox there was a mass of paper. Some were colourful and neatly folded while others were just pieces of scrap notepaper with blue ink doodled all over it.
"They're songs and poems my mother wrote," Lily explained as Shuichi started to sort through them. "I thought that they might help you for when you're stuck for a song-like now for example."
Shuichi's pink eyebrows shot up. "Really? Your mother wrote all these?"
"Yea, she was a real literate person from what I could gather," Lily explained and picked out a piece of paper to read. "When I was little I was going through my attic and found a notebook with all the songs she wrote as a kid in it."
She closed her eyes and sighed. "Shame I don't have it any more."
"Did you forget to pack it when you moved?" Shuichi asked picking another song to read. He'd hate to admit that someone other than himself could have written such beautiful lyrics, but there was no way to deny it. Christina had sure had some talent.
"No, me being young and naïve, took it downstairs in a fit of excitement to show my grandmother," Lily's shoulders sagged as she recalled the long ago memory. "I showed her the book and started talking about how my Mum must have been really smart and great to have written all of those songs by herself and my grandmother went right off her rocker."
Shuichi gulped and daringly asked a question. "What did she do?"
"She burnt them." Lily said with a wince of pain and had to take a puff of Ventolin before she could continue the story.
"She yanked the book out of my hands and threw it into the fireplace right in front of me. I remember feeling sick as I watched the flames devour that little book, my mother's legacy had been killed by her own mother."
Lily sighed and sagged back into the couch.
"When I asked her why she'd done it she just said that my mother was a fool of a whore, my father a filthy mongrel dog and I was worse than both of them. I didn't know how she could say that about her own daughter when she'd done nothing wrong. The topic of my parents was completely off limits and the only time I ever heard anything about my mother from my other relatives it was all bad."
Shuichi didn't know what to say. This was the most he'd heard Lily talk about her live back in America and he'd hadn't expected it to be so bad. Perhaps it was time to change the conversation.
"Ano, are you sure that you really want to give these to me Lily chan?" he asked even though he was dying to read all of the lyrics and write a beautiful love song.
"Of course," Lily said with a smile and put the box on his lap. "What's the point of having songs this great if no one is ever going to hear them? You have a beautiful voice Shuichi, so take my mother's songs and shine."
The den door opened and Yuki emerged with computer screen eyes and reeking of cigarettes. After three days of typing he had finally finished his new novel and he'd have to meet with his editor tomorrow.
Lily gulped nervously as she watched him yawn and run his fingers through his hair. He had tried to kick her out last night, but thanks to her collapsing performance she was still in the apartment.
Was he going to let her stay or had he just postponed her exit?
Yuki finished stretching his back and his eyes fell upon the two reading lyrics on his couch. Shuichi smiled at him exuberantly and Lily met his eyes for a spilt second before turning away. It was hard to withstand his gaze for too long, it was like her could see right through her.
"Take a bath."
"Huh?" Lily frowned with confusion. That had been one of the last things she had expected him to say. "Why?"
"Because you stink. Now go," he ordered and grabbing her backpack she obeyed.
Steam filled the small bathroom as the bath filled up with hot steamy water. The lemon scented steam from the hot water and bath salts opened up Lily's airways and she let out a huge sigh of relief.
The hot water soothed the pain in her chest as it loosed the muscles and her lungs relaxed. She slipped into a light snooze and when she awoke her skin had turned a bright pink. She finished up and combed out all the knots in her hair before placing the bath cover on for the next person and left the room.
In the kitchen Shuichi sat eating some dinner and seeing her standing in the doorway in her pyjamas he jumped up and he got her some. She wasn't really hungry but ate out of politeness.
'Well now I know who does the cooking around here,' Lily thought as she found that the food was actually edible.
They heard Greensleeves and the two stopped eating. It took Lily as second to click and then went to retrieve her mobile, skating on the floorboards in her socks.
"Yea?" she said and came back into the kitchen holding the phone to her ear.
Shuichi then lost track of the conversation because Lily started speaking English. Her regular pleasant expression faded and her tone took up a certain firmness. You didn't need a translator to tell that she didn't like the person on the other end.
After five minutes she hung up and frowned as she put the phone down on the table. She didn't look at Shuichi for a while, but she once more took up her chopsticks.
"Bad news?" Shuichi asked with concern.
"Nah," Lily said with a mouthful of rice. "My grandmother is apparently dying and my cousin wanted to know if I was going to chip in for the funeral."
"Gee I'm sorry Lily chan," Shuichi said honestly and put his arm around her for comfort.
"Don't be. I'm sure as Hell not," Lily admitted with a chuckle and Yuki came into the room. "Besides, I could still hear her fat mouth in the background so she's clearly just putting on another attention act. She usually does that when something has annoyed her. I hope that whatever it was really pissed her off."
Shuichi pulled back horrified by what Lily had just said and a corner twitched at the side of Yuki's mouth as he opened the fridge.
"And there's no way I'm putting any money up for a fancy coffin," Lily continued and pointing her chopsticks at Shuichi. "Funeral directors bleed you dry money wise and if it was left up to me I'd chuck the old bat in a garbage bag and leave her out for the trashman to collect."
Neither Shuichi nor Yuki could handle that remark.
Shuichi fell off his chair and had to leave the room for a few minutes. Yuki laughed from behind the fridge door and when he'd finished he had an amused look on his face.
It didn't last long though, he opened his beer and after a large gulp his regular serious expression returned. Lily went back to her food and by the time she'd finished washing the dishes Shuichi was back.
"I'll dry!" he declared energetically and bounced over to the sink.
Lily moved away and let her hair out of its loose ponytail. The brown mess could now do whatever it liked now there was no fear of it getting in any food.
Shuichi pulled a soapy bowl out of the water and moved over to put it on the dish rack. He saw Lily with her hair down and dropped the bowl, shattering into a thousand fragments as it hit the floor tiles.
Lily yelped and jumped away so none of the fragments would cut her as they flew across the floor. She looked up to see Shuichi staring at her with his wide innocent eyes, jaw hanging open.
"What's wrong?" she asked frantically and brushed some hair away from her face.
"Um nothing! Nothing at all!" he blurted quickly and knelt down to pick up the ceramic pieces. He swore mentally for making his surprise so obvious and tried not to look at Lily as she helped him collect the pieces.
'I just couldn't help it.' He said to himself in his head. 'Just for minute there, with her hair down she looked just like Sakuma san at a glance.'
He threw the handful of broken bowl in the bin and got a broom from the cupboard. He started to sweep the tiny pieces into one pile while Lily knelt to pick up more scattered fragments.
After a few seconds he noticed that she wasn't picking up anything. She was just kneeling on the floor with her brown fringe hiding her face from view. Shuichi stopped sweeping and Lily gasped before her shoulders shook.
All the good the bath had done had worn off and her whole body ached.
"Lily chan? What's the matter? Are you sick?" Shuichi asked kneeling down, his voice soft and soothing.
"Don't, just leave it alone," Lily whispered as she tried to keep her breathing steady.
"But why?" Shuichi asked looking hurt. "Don't you trust me enough? Why don't you let me help?"
Lily placed her arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. Her weight made Shuichi fall back on his behind and he hugged her back as her breaths came in big, heavy sighs.
"You're nice Shuichi," she said in one sigh and took a deep breath in. "But you can't help me."
**********************************************
"Shindo kun please pay attention!" Sakano screamed and Shuichi snapped out of his daydream.
"I was listening!" he lied as all eyes were on him. "We were talking about the video clip we shot when we were in America."
"We were talking about that fifteen minutes ago!" Hiro snapped and punched Shuichi on the head, forcing his face into the board table.
"Sorry, sorry!" Shuichi apologised and when Hiro removed his fist he lent back in his chair.
"We were wondering how the lyrics were going," Fujisaki informed him with his head leaning on his fist.
"Oh great! Lily chan gave me these!" he cried energetically and produced the old shoebox.
He removed the lid and the whole team started to pick through the papers, everyone but K having to dig through their memories for their high school English lessons.
"I didn't want to hurt him, but Larry told me to. Larry took over and killed him," Hiro scrunched up his face in confusion and concern.
K snatched the piece of paper out of his hands and read over it.
"That's just some notes Christina took on a Multiple Personality Disorder patient in medical school," he explained after a minute and handed it back to Hiro. "The song's on the back."
Hiro relaxed and started to read the lyrics. He then leaned over in his seat so he could whisper to Shuichi.
"Hey, is Lily chan doing any better?" he asked.
Shuichi shook his head and raised his piece of paper to hide his moving lips.
"I think she's getting worse," he whispered. "I made her stay home from school today, even though she wasn't really for the idea. Yuki's taking care of her. What?"
Hiro had fish bowl eyes as he looked at his best friend.
"What did you just say?"