by the Rurouni Idoru
There was a note on the table. She had called all of the others, told them to come to her house, and started warbling incoherently. All because there was a note on the table. Yusuke leaned over and seized it. He then flipped it over, inspecting it, as if there would be a map drawn on the back.
"So she just up and left?" Yusuke put the note down, and Bara nodded hysterically. "I see why you'd be upset, but you act like you're gonna die or something. She just went home, that's all..."
"Just went home? Just went home?!" Bara positioned herself about three inches from Yusuke's face, and gripped his arms tightly. "Hiei's gonna KILL ME!"
"Hiei?! Hiei's not the problem!" Bara wheeled around to see the face of Kuwabara. He looked partially as if he were ready to pound a full-grown cow into chop meat, and partially as if he were about to cry and never ever stop. He grabbed Bara roughly by the shoulders, and managed to lift her up off of the ground by an inch or two. He started to shake her rapidly. "We finally had her! She was comfortable! She liked it! She liked ME! I was just gonna finally ask her out on a real date with dinner and movies and everything! AND YOU LET HER GO!" Bara's slow reflexes kicked in then, and her leg shot up into Kuwabara's knee, causing him to reel in pain and drop her.
"What do you mean, 'let her go?!' I wanted to have her here as much as you did! Besides, what are you gonna do to me? You can't hurt me, I'm a girl. It's Hiei I'm worried about. I'm gonna die a terrible death...chopped into little peices, and hidden under floorboards...then they'll find me and make a made-for-TV movie about it, all messed up and not close to the truth..." Kurama sighed as Bara trailed off.
"I suppose I can tell him. He's less likely to kill someone he's known for this long." He looked up with a wry smile. "We should just be glad Hiei doesn't have a phone, or else Bara would've called and said something she'd regret by now." Bara laughed nervously, placing her right hand on the back of her neck.
"Yeah, but it's not like he's got anything to plug it into. His current address is, 'Tree in front of Teara's house.' And I can't see him with a cell phone." Yusuke turned back to Bara.
"Speaking of that little Chinese otter, you call her?" Bara nodded.
"I did, but she wasn't home." She laughed softly in irony. "If she knew, Hiei'd probably be tracking me down right now. And I'd be bleeding slowly to death..." Of course, by now I'm sure you, the reader, know who left. But why? And where from? Well, lucky you, this is the set-up chapter. Always start at the beginning. So I suppose that's what we should do.
Teara, Bara's best friend (who had taken quite a liking to Hiei) had allowed Hiei to stay in her home for a while, but her mother would not hear of that. Thus, Hiei was staying in a tree while Teara's mother was in the country. Yukina, however, had shown a slight interest in attending school for a while. After clever reasoning on smooth-talker Bara's part, Hiei decided she'd be best off staying with Bara. The reason he decicded to trust the girl who could, at times, irritate him more than Kuwabara? Because, to quote Bara, "Genkai's ain't walking distance from Sarayashiki, you don't want her near Teara's insane mother, Yusuke's got too many family problems himself, much less having to help her deal with hers, Kurama doesn't have the room in his house, I KNOW you don't want her staying with Kuwabara, and I doubt you'll want her to climb up and share that tree with you." Then, Bara decided to sing loudly and off-key until he finally conceded to let Yukina stay with her, and Bara then proceeded to dance about, joyously crying,"Free air conditioning!" It had been a short while since Yukina had truly found out about Hiei. It had become fairly apparent that he was the brother she had been looking for.
It had never really occured to anyone that Yukina would finally go back to where she lived after finding her brother. She was starting to just meld into the group. She was becoming a part of the picture. It suddenly felt as if she had always been there, and always would be. No one had quite remembered that she was only in the Ningenkai to search for her brother. No one remembered that she was allowed to search for her brother, and only that. Of course, surely no one would mind if she stayed in ningenkai for as long as she wanted, but she did not know that. She did not realize how welcome she was. And when a polite guest thinks they have overstayed their welcome, they don't stay long. And it was apparent that she had thought that she had overstayed her welcome. How was this apparent?
Because there was a note on the table. A very simple note. And what did the note say?
-Yukina