"Itadakimasu!" the two girls cried cheerfully and started to dig into their
ice-cream sundaes.
"Ok whatever," Artemis said with a shrug and picked up his spoon.
He, Lily and Joan were inside an ice-cream parlour as the rain came down in buckets outside. Sure the two girls were meant to be in school, but how often does an old overseas friend come to visit? And, as Joan pointed out, they could do the dumb English speaking tourist act perfectly.
"So how long have you been here?" Lily asked as she had another spoonful of cream and ice cream.
"About a week now," Artemis said. "You sure weren't easy to find, and I was worried that I might not recognise you. However you're still pretty much the same as when we went our separate ways."
He then sat back in the booth to look at Lily from a distance before sitting straight again.
"But I gotta admit, you certainly grew a nice bust. Can I touch 'em?"
"No," Lily said darkly and Artemis looked thoroughly disappointed.
"Where'd you get the money to come here anyway?" Joan decided it was time to join the conversation.
The blonde boy put his hands together and a mask of sugar sweetness came over his face.
"Mummy," he said in an innocent voice, "maybe a little overseas trip will help me adjust to being out of hospital and help me forget that you and Dad didn't visit me all that often."
"You schmuck!" Lily couldn't believe that he had tried such a thing-or that it had actually worked.
"No Lily, I'm a born business man. As I'm sure you'll remember."
They finished their ice creams and after a burp the groups newest member said, "Come on girls, you promised me a sightseeing tour of Tokyo that I would never forget. Let's hop to it."
**********************************************
The sky matched the sea with it's blue as seagulls flew overhead into the sun's bright rays. The woman had her arms wrapped around her lover's neck as she rode on his back. They were both grinning as if they didn't have a care in the world.
"Ano, Sakuma san?"
Ryuichi stuffed the treasured photo back into his jacket and smiled up at the person standing beside him. Shuichi was fumbling with his fingers and tried to think of the best approach to take.
The two were standing of the roof of N-G as the heavy rain of the morning died off to a mere drop every now and again.
"What is it Shuichi na no da?" Ryuichi asked holding Kumagoro close to him while he sat on the concrete roof.
"I have something I need to talk to you about," Shuichi said slowly. "Something about Lily chan."
Ryuichi broke away from Shuichi's eyes and looked out toward the grey landscape of skyscrapers.
"Sakuma san?"
Ryuichi didn't look back at him but Shuichi decided to continue on. He was tired of being in the dark all the time, and it was clear now that there was something seriously wrong with Lily's health. He had to help her somehow, and to do that he needed answers.
"She's sick, that much I can figure for myself, but she wont open up and tell me what's wrong. She's been taking these pills and it could have something to do with her asthma but I.."
"I know."
Shuichi stopped abruptly.
"Lily has been sick ever since she was born," Ryuichi said without looking up. His voice had changed now, it had become deeper somehow and it seemed almost dangerous. Shuichi couldn't help but feel a little bit scared.
"She was such a weak baby, everyone thought she was going to die, even Christina," he thought back to a time long ago.
"What's the matter with her?" Shuichi asked sitting down, but Ryuichi kept his eyes fixed on the grey city. After a while he spoke again.
"When she was only a month old she contracted a very bad lung infection and her life hung in the balance for weeks. She managed to survive but the infection left her lungs permanently scarred making them extremely weak, so when she developed asthma later on we feared for her life."
The rain started to pick up as the two idols sat in silence. Shuichi felt very cold and strange as he sat next to Ryuichi then, usually their conversations were happy and energy filled. But not today. Today somebody else was in Sakuma Ryuichi's body, and K's words floated around in his mind.
"What makes you thing that he's always been like that?"
Perhaps this was the real Sakuma Ryuichi and the toy loving thirty-two year old simpleton was just an act to shield himself. It was like looking in a mirror while a completely different you looked back.
"I understand how you must feel Sakuma san, but Lily really misses you. She wants her Dad back. She's living with me right now so why don't you-"
Shuichi stopped as Ryuichi's hard eyes pulled away from the city landscape to bore into the youth's eyes.
"You don't know anything," Ryuichi said coldly. "No one here does. Do you think you could go on living if Yuki san died?"
Shuichi froze at the thought. He remembered how afraid and lost he had felt that night he had gone home to find the apartment empty. He could only begin to imagine what it would be like if Yuki disappeared from his sight forever, never to return.
"I'd die," Shuichi croaked weakly, the mere though making him sick to his stomach.
"That's right, you do die along with the one you love, or at least part of you does," Ryuichi's voice was now angry and hard. "I died back with Christina that day the driver ran that red light and left her dying on the road."
"I'm sorry Sakuma san I didn't realize.." Shuichi tried to apologise but Ryuichi didn't let him finish, he was going to make the young man pay for his ignorance.
"You don't know what it's like to hold the person you love most in your arms as she's bleeding to death. You don't know what it was like when she looked up at me to ask why and I knew that there was nothing I could do."
He stopped for a second and his eyes squeezed shut with anguish.
"You don't know what it's like to leave your child behind so that you can make a better life for her. You don't know what it's like to live in fear because your daughter could die easily anytime. You don't know how much it hurts me to see her and not have the courage to go up to her and hold her again. No Shuichi you don't know, you don't know anything!"
Ryuichi jumped to his feet and stormed across the roof to the door, slamming it behind him, leaving Shuichi in his own thoughts all along except for the wind and rain.
********************************************** "And this," Joan said proudly, "is Tokyo Bay!"
Since Joan had been living in Tokyo the longest, she had decided that it was best that she lead the tour. Lily had quickly informed Artemis that it was best to let her have her way when she was in one of her super energetic moods.
The rain had stopped briefly while they'd been travelling on the bus, but now it was really starting to pick up again.
"Why the Hell are we at the beach in friggin apocalyptic weather!?" Artemis screamed over the howling winds.
Lily noted that in their three years apart he hadn't bothered to clean up his language.
"Hey who's leading this tour tourist boy? You or me?" Joan snapped back with her hands on hips.
"When the tourist's testicles are about to freeze and fall off he has right to complain to the insane leader!" he yelled back as a hailstone hit a car behind him.
As the two continued to argue Lily wandered over to the stone wall to get a better look the bay. Anchored ships were tossed around like feathers on the wind as the waves rose high and then came crashing down. As the rain splashed down on the waves it was hard to tell where the water stopped and sky started. The light shining from buildings on the other side of the bay seemed so lonely, like candles in the night.
Looking now down the long stretch of wet sand Lily saw in the distance some sort of building frame. She strained her eyes trying to make in out but had trouble seeing through the rain.
"Hey Joan!" Lily yelled over at the tall girl who was still arguing with Artemis. He was so skinny the Lily was a little bit afraid that the wind would take him away.
They stopped squabbling and Joan flicked the droplets of water off of her glasses with her forefingers like windscreen wipers to see better.
"Yea?"
"What's that thing over there?" Lily pointed at the thing in the distance.
"That's where they're building for the Tokyo Bay Music Festival," she explained after a minute of glaring. "That metal thing over there is the stage I think."
"Great time for a concert," Artemis said sarcastically as he joined them on the wall.
"Usually they hold it in summer," Joan is in a matter of fact tone, "but Japan held this year's Hockey tournament. Therefore the board directors of the concert decided to move the festival to a later date when the hype from the tournament died down."
"How do you know all of this unimportant stuff?" Lily asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I read all of my Dad's gossip magazines from cover to cover," Joan said proudly.
"Ahh, gossip magazines," Artemis said with a smile that meant he was looking for trouble. "The airhead's encyclopedia."
Lily wondered how the people of England would feel knowing that their ambassador for Japan read gossip magazines while her two friends bitched at each other.
She didn't ponder too long though as her chest began to hurt.
*********************************************
"Hey the people in that office building aren't working very hard!" Artemis snapped as he looked through the telescope.
The group was now at the famous Tokyo Tower, the world's tallest TV aerial as part of their sightseeing tour. Artemis and Joan were currently scanning the city landscape to find a murder or some other crime being committed, just like in Hitchcock's novel "Room with a View."
So far all they had seen was a lot of curtains and cement.
"Take a look," he pulled away from the eyepiece and offered the high powered telescope to Joan. As she lent over he looked across the observation deck to see Lily sitting at a table by herself, one hand over her chest with her eyes squeezed shut tight.
Artemis had spent many years around Lily so he knew exactly what that look meant, and he knew what was likely to happen next.
"Hey Joan keep looking and I'll be right back," he said and slipped a few coins into the telescope to set the timer back.
"Ok, hold my glasses will you?" she asked waving her glasses in his general direction.
He took them and strode over to where Lily was sitting. Pulling a chair out he flopped onto it and smile brightly at his friend.
"What's the matter baby doll?" he asked putting an arm around her shoulders.
"I don't feel so good," Lily admitted.
"Asthma or the other stuff?" he asked dropping the bright attitude. This was worse then his first impression a minute ago.
"Other stuff," Lily croaked.
"Have you seen someone about it?" Artemis asked in a firm voice.
"Yea and I got some pills so you can stop worrying about it," she said but didn't look up at him.
"What kind of pills?"
"Don't worry about it."
Deciding that Lily wasn't going to tell him how bad her current condition was, Artemis took matters into his own hands. He grabbed her backpack off the floor and tore open the zips, searching wildly.
"Hey what are you doing?" Lily demanded, pulling the bag away from him.
In his hand Artemis held a bottle of pills. He couldn't read the Hiragana and Kanji so he strode over to Joan and handed her glasses to her.
"Isn't this the stuff they give to really sick people?" she asked after she translated the writing.
Artemis snatched the bottle back and looked to where Lily had been sitting. She was gone.
Frantically they two teens looked around for their friend. Joan cried out and pointed at the closing elevator.
"Lily wait!" Artemis shouted and ran for the closing doors. "You can't be left alone when you're like this! Wait damn it!"
The doors closed as he reached them and the green eyed boy slammed his fist against the steel doors. The elevator attendant started to give him a firm warning but it was useless for Artemis didn't understand a word.
"Artemis what's going on?" Joan asked looking worried.
He didn't say anything quite a while, he just stood there with his head resting against the cold door.
'If she has to take those then..oh no."
After a few minutes he moved away and turned to his new friend.
"Come on Joan. Whether she admits it or not, she needs help."
**********************************************
"BIG NEWS!" K yelled as he came through the door waving a handful of papers.
Hiro stopped tuning his guitar and lent it against the wall. Fujisaki looked up the piano book Lily had lent him and Shuichi stopped staring into the wall he'd been looking at for nearly an hour.
"What is it K san?" Sakano asked feeling worried. Usually K's news lead to some information that led to some chaotic situation that evolved Shindo san and some important event.
"It's all been finalised!" he said gleefully. "A week after the Tokyo Bay Music Festival we're set to start our tour through thirty districts of Japan."
"Thirty districts!" cried Fujisaki. "That would take weeks! No, months!"
"Four months to be exact," K said brightly and handed everyone in the room a sheet of paper. Written all over it were dates and names of cities they'd be visiting.
Hiro was very happy to see that they'd be spending a little over two weeks in Kyoto. He then noticed that something was missing, something that usually caught everyone's attention at times like this.
"Shuichi are you all right?" he asked noticing his friend's unusual silence. "You've been pretty quiet today."
"I, uh," Shuichi looked up from his list of dates. "It's nothing really. Nothing at all."
'If I go what will happen to Lily chan?'
*********************************************
Yuki had had far too many cigarettes. Even he thought so and when I chain smoker admits that's he's had too many you know that that's a lot.
With no inspiration for a new book, no Shuichi to shag and no kid to break child labour laws with, Yuki had spent most of the day smoking while he watched Americans sue one another on cable television in between naps.
The door handle turned and he looked away from the screen. Death warmed up came through the door and left its shoes at the door.
"Welcome back," he muttered as Lily put her bag down and waved her hand in front of her face. The smell was awful.
"Thanks," she whispered and coughed.
The whole apartment seemed to have created its own fog. It lingered under her nose and made her cough some more.
Yuki frowned as he heard it, that cough really did give him the shits.
"Go have a glass of water," he snapped over the hacking noise and Lily nodded before going into the kitchen. Yuki focused once again on the TV but found it hard to hear over the ruckus Lily was making. He wanted to tell he to shut up and leave him in peace, but even he though that would be a bit unfair.
Things went this way for a little while longer but it wasn't until there was a sound of breaking glass that Yuki became slightly worried.
He grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. The coughing still came from the kitchen, but it was louder now.
"Are you all right kid?" he asked loudly.
The only response he got was more coughing.
"I said are you all right?"
Yuki swung his feet off of the coffee able and feeling slightly irritated pushed the kitchen door open and walked in.
It wasn't a happy sight that greeted him.
Tiny fragments of glass were scattered on the floor and a big chunk of what used to be a drinking glass lay by Lily as she sat on her knees.
For a second she stopped coughing and the stunned author heard just a whisper of a word before her body shook with loud coughs again.
"Help."
Glass jammed itself into the bottom of his feet and knees as he dropped to the floor. He had one hand on Lily's back and he tried to pull her hands away from her mouth with his other.
"Kid! Kid listen to me!" Lily could hardly hear him over her own noise.
"What's the matter?" he pulled her hands away and Lily struggled to speak.
"There's too much *cough cough* it's *cough* choking me!"
Suddenly her body lurched over and blood spilled out of her mouth all over her hands as well as Yuki's and onto the floor. Yuki let go of her and more blood followed, like a fountain of horror and death.
"Lily!" Yuki yelled and held onto her. This was the first time he'd ever called her by her name but neither of them would remember it.
He didn't know what to do; his brain just wouldn't work. He knelt there as he watched her choke and cough up more and more blood like some dying animal.
"Yu-ki-san..."
She fell on her side with closed eyes and blood dribbling out of the corner of her mouth.
'I don't want to die.'
Then darkness came.
"Ok whatever," Artemis said with a shrug and picked up his spoon.
He, Lily and Joan were inside an ice-cream parlour as the rain came down in buckets outside. Sure the two girls were meant to be in school, but how often does an old overseas friend come to visit? And, as Joan pointed out, they could do the dumb English speaking tourist act perfectly.
"So how long have you been here?" Lily asked as she had another spoonful of cream and ice cream.
"About a week now," Artemis said. "You sure weren't easy to find, and I was worried that I might not recognise you. However you're still pretty much the same as when we went our separate ways."
He then sat back in the booth to look at Lily from a distance before sitting straight again.
"But I gotta admit, you certainly grew a nice bust. Can I touch 'em?"
"No," Lily said darkly and Artemis looked thoroughly disappointed.
"Where'd you get the money to come here anyway?" Joan decided it was time to join the conversation.
The blonde boy put his hands together and a mask of sugar sweetness came over his face.
"Mummy," he said in an innocent voice, "maybe a little overseas trip will help me adjust to being out of hospital and help me forget that you and Dad didn't visit me all that often."
"You schmuck!" Lily couldn't believe that he had tried such a thing-or that it had actually worked.
"No Lily, I'm a born business man. As I'm sure you'll remember."
They finished their ice creams and after a burp the groups newest member said, "Come on girls, you promised me a sightseeing tour of Tokyo that I would never forget. Let's hop to it."
**********************************************
The sky matched the sea with it's blue as seagulls flew overhead into the sun's bright rays. The woman had her arms wrapped around her lover's neck as she rode on his back. They were both grinning as if they didn't have a care in the world.
"Ano, Sakuma san?"
Ryuichi stuffed the treasured photo back into his jacket and smiled up at the person standing beside him. Shuichi was fumbling with his fingers and tried to think of the best approach to take.
The two were standing of the roof of N-G as the heavy rain of the morning died off to a mere drop every now and again.
"What is it Shuichi na no da?" Ryuichi asked holding Kumagoro close to him while he sat on the concrete roof.
"I have something I need to talk to you about," Shuichi said slowly. "Something about Lily chan."
Ryuichi broke away from Shuichi's eyes and looked out toward the grey landscape of skyscrapers.
"Sakuma san?"
Ryuichi didn't look back at him but Shuichi decided to continue on. He was tired of being in the dark all the time, and it was clear now that there was something seriously wrong with Lily's health. He had to help her somehow, and to do that he needed answers.
"She's sick, that much I can figure for myself, but she wont open up and tell me what's wrong. She's been taking these pills and it could have something to do with her asthma but I.."
"I know."
Shuichi stopped abruptly.
"Lily has been sick ever since she was born," Ryuichi said without looking up. His voice had changed now, it had become deeper somehow and it seemed almost dangerous. Shuichi couldn't help but feel a little bit scared.
"She was such a weak baby, everyone thought she was going to die, even Christina," he thought back to a time long ago.
"What's the matter with her?" Shuichi asked sitting down, but Ryuichi kept his eyes fixed on the grey city. After a while he spoke again.
"When she was only a month old she contracted a very bad lung infection and her life hung in the balance for weeks. She managed to survive but the infection left her lungs permanently scarred making them extremely weak, so when she developed asthma later on we feared for her life."
The rain started to pick up as the two idols sat in silence. Shuichi felt very cold and strange as he sat next to Ryuichi then, usually their conversations were happy and energy filled. But not today. Today somebody else was in Sakuma Ryuichi's body, and K's words floated around in his mind.
"What makes you thing that he's always been like that?"
Perhaps this was the real Sakuma Ryuichi and the toy loving thirty-two year old simpleton was just an act to shield himself. It was like looking in a mirror while a completely different you looked back.
"I understand how you must feel Sakuma san, but Lily really misses you. She wants her Dad back. She's living with me right now so why don't you-"
Shuichi stopped as Ryuichi's hard eyes pulled away from the city landscape to bore into the youth's eyes.
"You don't know anything," Ryuichi said coldly. "No one here does. Do you think you could go on living if Yuki san died?"
Shuichi froze at the thought. He remembered how afraid and lost he had felt that night he had gone home to find the apartment empty. He could only begin to imagine what it would be like if Yuki disappeared from his sight forever, never to return.
"I'd die," Shuichi croaked weakly, the mere though making him sick to his stomach.
"That's right, you do die along with the one you love, or at least part of you does," Ryuichi's voice was now angry and hard. "I died back with Christina that day the driver ran that red light and left her dying on the road."
"I'm sorry Sakuma san I didn't realize.." Shuichi tried to apologise but Ryuichi didn't let him finish, he was going to make the young man pay for his ignorance.
"You don't know what it's like to hold the person you love most in your arms as she's bleeding to death. You don't know what it was like when she looked up at me to ask why and I knew that there was nothing I could do."
He stopped for a second and his eyes squeezed shut with anguish.
"You don't know what it's like to leave your child behind so that you can make a better life for her. You don't know what it's like to live in fear because your daughter could die easily anytime. You don't know how much it hurts me to see her and not have the courage to go up to her and hold her again. No Shuichi you don't know, you don't know anything!"
Ryuichi jumped to his feet and stormed across the roof to the door, slamming it behind him, leaving Shuichi in his own thoughts all along except for the wind and rain.
********************************************** "And this," Joan said proudly, "is Tokyo Bay!"
Since Joan had been living in Tokyo the longest, she had decided that it was best that she lead the tour. Lily had quickly informed Artemis that it was best to let her have her way when she was in one of her super energetic moods.
The rain had stopped briefly while they'd been travelling on the bus, but now it was really starting to pick up again.
"Why the Hell are we at the beach in friggin apocalyptic weather!?" Artemis screamed over the howling winds.
Lily noted that in their three years apart he hadn't bothered to clean up his language.
"Hey who's leading this tour tourist boy? You or me?" Joan snapped back with her hands on hips.
"When the tourist's testicles are about to freeze and fall off he has right to complain to the insane leader!" he yelled back as a hailstone hit a car behind him.
As the two continued to argue Lily wandered over to the stone wall to get a better look the bay. Anchored ships were tossed around like feathers on the wind as the waves rose high and then came crashing down. As the rain splashed down on the waves it was hard to tell where the water stopped and sky started. The light shining from buildings on the other side of the bay seemed so lonely, like candles in the night.
Looking now down the long stretch of wet sand Lily saw in the distance some sort of building frame. She strained her eyes trying to make in out but had trouble seeing through the rain.
"Hey Joan!" Lily yelled over at the tall girl who was still arguing with Artemis. He was so skinny the Lily was a little bit afraid that the wind would take him away.
They stopped squabbling and Joan flicked the droplets of water off of her glasses with her forefingers like windscreen wipers to see better.
"Yea?"
"What's that thing over there?" Lily pointed at the thing in the distance.
"That's where they're building for the Tokyo Bay Music Festival," she explained after a minute of glaring. "That metal thing over there is the stage I think."
"Great time for a concert," Artemis said sarcastically as he joined them on the wall.
"Usually they hold it in summer," Joan is in a matter of fact tone, "but Japan held this year's Hockey tournament. Therefore the board directors of the concert decided to move the festival to a later date when the hype from the tournament died down."
"How do you know all of this unimportant stuff?" Lily asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I read all of my Dad's gossip magazines from cover to cover," Joan said proudly.
"Ahh, gossip magazines," Artemis said with a smile that meant he was looking for trouble. "The airhead's encyclopedia."
Lily wondered how the people of England would feel knowing that their ambassador for Japan read gossip magazines while her two friends bitched at each other.
She didn't ponder too long though as her chest began to hurt.
*********************************************
"Hey the people in that office building aren't working very hard!" Artemis snapped as he looked through the telescope.
The group was now at the famous Tokyo Tower, the world's tallest TV aerial as part of their sightseeing tour. Artemis and Joan were currently scanning the city landscape to find a murder or some other crime being committed, just like in Hitchcock's novel "Room with a View."
So far all they had seen was a lot of curtains and cement.
"Take a look," he pulled away from the eyepiece and offered the high powered telescope to Joan. As she lent over he looked across the observation deck to see Lily sitting at a table by herself, one hand over her chest with her eyes squeezed shut tight.
Artemis had spent many years around Lily so he knew exactly what that look meant, and he knew what was likely to happen next.
"Hey Joan keep looking and I'll be right back," he said and slipped a few coins into the telescope to set the timer back.
"Ok, hold my glasses will you?" she asked waving her glasses in his general direction.
He took them and strode over to where Lily was sitting. Pulling a chair out he flopped onto it and smile brightly at his friend.
"What's the matter baby doll?" he asked putting an arm around her shoulders.
"I don't feel so good," Lily admitted.
"Asthma or the other stuff?" he asked dropping the bright attitude. This was worse then his first impression a minute ago.
"Other stuff," Lily croaked.
"Have you seen someone about it?" Artemis asked in a firm voice.
"Yea and I got some pills so you can stop worrying about it," she said but didn't look up at him.
"What kind of pills?"
"Don't worry about it."
Deciding that Lily wasn't going to tell him how bad her current condition was, Artemis took matters into his own hands. He grabbed her backpack off the floor and tore open the zips, searching wildly.
"Hey what are you doing?" Lily demanded, pulling the bag away from him.
In his hand Artemis held a bottle of pills. He couldn't read the Hiragana and Kanji so he strode over to Joan and handed her glasses to her.
"Isn't this the stuff they give to really sick people?" she asked after she translated the writing.
Artemis snatched the bottle back and looked to where Lily had been sitting. She was gone.
Frantically they two teens looked around for their friend. Joan cried out and pointed at the closing elevator.
"Lily wait!" Artemis shouted and ran for the closing doors. "You can't be left alone when you're like this! Wait damn it!"
The doors closed as he reached them and the green eyed boy slammed his fist against the steel doors. The elevator attendant started to give him a firm warning but it was useless for Artemis didn't understand a word.
"Artemis what's going on?" Joan asked looking worried.
He didn't say anything quite a while, he just stood there with his head resting against the cold door.
'If she has to take those then..oh no."
After a few minutes he moved away and turned to his new friend.
"Come on Joan. Whether she admits it or not, she needs help."
**********************************************
"BIG NEWS!" K yelled as he came through the door waving a handful of papers.
Hiro stopped tuning his guitar and lent it against the wall. Fujisaki looked up the piano book Lily had lent him and Shuichi stopped staring into the wall he'd been looking at for nearly an hour.
"What is it K san?" Sakano asked feeling worried. Usually K's news lead to some information that led to some chaotic situation that evolved Shindo san and some important event.
"It's all been finalised!" he said gleefully. "A week after the Tokyo Bay Music Festival we're set to start our tour through thirty districts of Japan."
"Thirty districts!" cried Fujisaki. "That would take weeks! No, months!"
"Four months to be exact," K said brightly and handed everyone in the room a sheet of paper. Written all over it were dates and names of cities they'd be visiting.
Hiro was very happy to see that they'd be spending a little over two weeks in Kyoto. He then noticed that something was missing, something that usually caught everyone's attention at times like this.
"Shuichi are you all right?" he asked noticing his friend's unusual silence. "You've been pretty quiet today."
"I, uh," Shuichi looked up from his list of dates. "It's nothing really. Nothing at all."
'If I go what will happen to Lily chan?'
*********************************************
Yuki had had far too many cigarettes. Even he thought so and when I chain smoker admits that's he's had too many you know that that's a lot.
With no inspiration for a new book, no Shuichi to shag and no kid to break child labour laws with, Yuki had spent most of the day smoking while he watched Americans sue one another on cable television in between naps.
The door handle turned and he looked away from the screen. Death warmed up came through the door and left its shoes at the door.
"Welcome back," he muttered as Lily put her bag down and waved her hand in front of her face. The smell was awful.
"Thanks," she whispered and coughed.
The whole apartment seemed to have created its own fog. It lingered under her nose and made her cough some more.
Yuki frowned as he heard it, that cough really did give him the shits.
"Go have a glass of water," he snapped over the hacking noise and Lily nodded before going into the kitchen. Yuki focused once again on the TV but found it hard to hear over the ruckus Lily was making. He wanted to tell he to shut up and leave him in peace, but even he though that would be a bit unfair.
Things went this way for a little while longer but it wasn't until there was a sound of breaking glass that Yuki became slightly worried.
He grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. The coughing still came from the kitchen, but it was louder now.
"Are you all right kid?" he asked loudly.
The only response he got was more coughing.
"I said are you all right?"
Yuki swung his feet off of the coffee able and feeling slightly irritated pushed the kitchen door open and walked in.
It wasn't a happy sight that greeted him.
Tiny fragments of glass were scattered on the floor and a big chunk of what used to be a drinking glass lay by Lily as she sat on her knees.
For a second she stopped coughing and the stunned author heard just a whisper of a word before her body shook with loud coughs again.
"Help."
Glass jammed itself into the bottom of his feet and knees as he dropped to the floor. He had one hand on Lily's back and he tried to pull her hands away from her mouth with his other.
"Kid! Kid listen to me!" Lily could hardly hear him over her own noise.
"What's the matter?" he pulled her hands away and Lily struggled to speak.
"There's too much *cough cough* it's *cough* choking me!"
Suddenly her body lurched over and blood spilled out of her mouth all over her hands as well as Yuki's and onto the floor. Yuki let go of her and more blood followed, like a fountain of horror and death.
"Lily!" Yuki yelled and held onto her. This was the first time he'd ever called her by her name but neither of them would remember it.
He didn't know what to do; his brain just wouldn't work. He knelt there as he watched her choke and cough up more and more blood like some dying animal.
"Yu-ki-san..."
She fell on her side with closed eyes and blood dribbling out of the corner of her mouth.
'I don't want to die.'
Then darkness came.