She thrashed about on the grass for a minute or so, the harsh jerking of her neck gradually slowing, until finally she lay still. She rolled over to lay on her back and stared up at the sky. The bright sunlight seared her bloodshot eyes and she squeezed them shut in protest, forcing the last few teardrops out of hiding.
She lay there for a few minutes more, feeling the slow, gentle flow of blood from her right nostril make its way down her cheek. As the seconds passed, she began to calm. Her breathing slowed. The insistent throbbing in her nose quietened.
"Shizuka…" whispered a nearby voice.
Her eyes burst open and she lifted her head from the grass.
"Shizuka…"
Shizuka trembled, her eyes filling with tears again. She knew the voice.
"Shizuka…"
"SHUT UP!" she screamed. She brought her hands up to her head and clamped her palms over her ears. She pushed as hard as she could, so hard that it felt like her head was going to crack down the middle. She couldn't hear the voice now. That was all that mattered.
"Shizuka…" came the voice again, undiminished by her attempt to silence it.
"NO!" cried Shizuka, pushing even harder. She began to cry again, the hot tears stinging her eyes and carving an uncomfortable trail down her dirty cheeks. A soft chuckle, akin to a lonely breeze, slowly wound its way through her mind. It felt like a dull knife being twisted slowly.
"Now, now, child…" soothed the voice. "Why didn't you want… to hurt the cat?"
Shizuka didn't reply. She kept her hands pressed against the sides of her head, despite the futility of it.
"The cat… do you think it cared?" asked the voice mockingly. "Do you think a cat knows anything… about love? Do you think a cat… understands… how you feel? Nobody… understands how you feel… nobody… except me…"
Shizuka shook her head fiercely. "I didn't want to hurt it!" she cried. "It didn't do anything!" Her voice was faint and distant, owing to her hands, still forced against her skull.
"But… why not?" asked the voice again. "You could have… killed it… beaten it… kicked it… stamped on it… spat on it… extinguished it's pathetic life... wouldn't that feel… good?"
Shizuka's cries intensified and she began to grind her palms against the sides of her head. Her skull felt like it was about to fracture. Her mind was on fire. The voice continued.
"You are… a weak girl…" it whispered. "A weak… pathetic girl… and you wonder… why he left you?"
It laughed discordantly, an unnatural sound that forced the pain in Shizuka's head to breaking point. She pulled her hands from her sore ears and curled them into fists. "STOP IT!" she cried, slamming a fist into the side of her head. A jarring thud echoed around her skull.
"Pathetic…" scolded the voice.
"SHUT UP!" cried Shizuka, swinging her fist again, this time connecting with her mouth. The force of it caused her head to jerk back and slam against the ground. She groaned as a thin trickle of blood began to force its way from her lower lip, mingling with the discharge from her nose. Her vision wavered in front of her. The trees around her became dark, blurred figures, looking down on her, shaking slightly with silent laughter.
"Please… leave me alone…" she mouthed silently. "Please… just leave me alone…"
The voice, mercifully, said nothing.
Shizuka lay on her back for a while, her eyes closed, feeling the sting of her swollen face, until the ebb and flow of the pounding inside her head lulled her to sleep.
Artemis' eyes flickered open and he glanced nervously around the room. His sleep had been tempestuous at best, the shadowed eyes of the tuna girl swirling around his mind like a fog. It was dark, the only light being that of the silver moon outside filtering through the curtains. He was alone. The soft bed was empty, save for himself. He and Minako had gone to bed at around ten, to ensure that she woke up for school the next morning.
As he glanced around the room, several pairs of small, blind eyes stared back at him silently. Minako's stuffed animal collection. Artemis shuddered. They were too similar to the tuna girls' eyes for his comfort. He looked up at the bird-shaped alarm clock on the bedside table. It was light enough to make out the time - a quarter past eleven.
He pushed the blankets aside and hopped off the bed to the ground, padding across the carpeted floor towards the door. It was slightly ajar. It was probably a good idea to find Minako and bring her back to bed, or she'd never get up for school. He refused to acknowledge the real reason he didn't want to be alone.
Downstairs, Minako sat cross-legged before the television, dressed in her pyjamas, staring with a smile at the glowing screen. It provided the only light in the room. The volume was turned down so as to be just audible.
The door behind her opened and Artemis entered. Minako, enthralled in her show, didn't notice. He headed across the room and sat down beside her. "Mina?" he whispered. Minako almost jumped out of her skin with surprise. She scrambled backwards, eyes wide, until they settled on the cat and she relaxed, putting a hand to her chest and exhaling loudly.
"Artemis! Don't sneak up on me like that!" she said, relieved rather than annoyed. "I thought you were one of my parents! If they find me down here I'll be grounded for a month."
Artemis nodded. "Quite rightly," he said. "What are you doing down here at this time anyway?"
He glanced over at the TV screen. Three handsome young men were singing a terribly generic song about infatuation as a crowd of adolescent girls screamed hysterically at them. He rolled his eyes. Typical Mina.
"Oh, I, um…" stuttered Minako, her brain cells firing at full speed to come up with a reasonable explanation for her watching television in the middle of the night. Try as she might, one didn't arrive. She grinned, a bead of sweat slowly making its way down her forehead. "You see," she began, "it's just that… um…"
Artemis frowned, struggling to contain his amusement. "Mina… need I remind you of a little thing called 'school' tomorrow?"
Minako shook her head. "No, no," she replied. "This show is finished in a few minutes anyway. I'll go straight back to bed, and I can still get a lot of sleep before I have to get up. There's nothing to be worried about."
"Then why did you sneak out of bed?" asked the cat.
"Well… I knew what you'd say, and…" said Minako before trailing off and lowering her eyes guiltily. Artemis smiled kindly. The light from the television set made his round blue eyes shine in the darkened room.
"Mina, while I don't approve of you sneaking downstairs to watch a show like this, I wish you'd be honest with me. We're partners now. There should be no secrets between us."
Minako raised her eyebrows. "Well, if that's true…" she began, a malevolent gleam in her eyes, "then why don't you tell me exactly where you came from and what my true mission is, hmm?"
She enjoyed watching him squirm. "Mina… you see… it's…" he stammered uncomfortably. "It's not that I don't want to tell you, but… I just don't think you're ready yet."
Minako shrugged. "Fine, fine," she said, her tone one of mock disappointment.
She took her position before the television again, crossing her legs beneath her. "Now, just let me watch the last few minutes, okay? I'll be right up after that. I promise."
The memory of those cold eyes slid down his spine like ice, and Artemis shook his head. "Actually, I think I'll stay here with you. Do you mind?"
He climbed onto her lap and curled up, turning his attention to the screen, where one of the idols was signing an autograph for a girl with a face so red it looked like a ripe tomato. Minako looked down at him, puzzled. "Um, of course not," she replied, surprise apparent in her voice.
"I just thought I'd keep an eye on you," said Artemis matter-of-factly, upon hearing her tone. "To make sure you go right up afterwards."
Minako shrugged and placed one of her hands on his back, gently stroking his soft white fur. He'd been acting strangely all day, ever since he'd picked her up from school. She suspected it had something to do with "the enemies", whoever they were. He had so many secrets. She didn't know anything about him, really. But when he was curled up on her lap like this, she felt safe somehow. She trusted him.
"Artemis…" she said softly, gently rubbing his back. "Underneath all those lectures, you're really just a pussycat."
She giggled at her own joke. Curled up comfortably on her lap, Artemis smiled too.
In a dark room, not too far away, another girl in her early teens lay on her stomach, on an untidy bed. The night breeze infiltrated through the open window, teasing her dirty hair. She'd been lying there for hours.
She'd awoken in the park and ran home as fast as she could. She'd locked herself in her bedroom when she'd arrived and hadn't moved since. Her mother and father had been concerned, but they couldn't help her. Nobody could. Nobody could understand what she was going through.
Shizuka rolled on to her back and sighed miserably. Her bare feet were cold, but she didn't seem to be able to muster up the energy to climb under the covers. Ever since Yukio had left her a couple of nights ago, she hadn't been able to do anything at all. She'd thought that going back to her special little place in the park would have helped, but then she'd seen the bald spot kitty and…
She fought the tears that were never more than a second away from spilling and turned on to her side, clutching a pillow tightly. A scene played over and over in her head, the same image in an endless loop, as it had done for the past two days. No matter how many times she'd gone over it, she just couldn't make sense of things. Why had he left her? She'd done everything right.
"You know why…"
She tried to ignore it. Think of something happy, she thought. She strained to think of anything. The only happy times she could think of were all with Yukio, and he…
"He finally… gave up on you…"
The tears began to flow again. She squeezed her eyelids together tightly and hugged the pillow, praying for them to stop. They didn't.
"He saw you… for what you really are…"
Shizuka began to rock back and forth, sobbing gently, her face buried in the soft white pillow. The bedsprings beneath her creaked in time with her movements.
"Ugly… pathetic… useless…"
Why wouldn't it stop? Why wouldn't it stop!
"Nobody even cares… nobody…"
"Please… please…" Shizuka whispered, her voice only one iota above silence. "Please… just leave me alone…"
It had left her alone earlier, in the park. Why?
The dull ache in her mouth and nose reminded her. The voice had stopped when she'd hurt herself. It had felt good to release a little of the pain and anger that coursed through her veins like acid.
Slowly, she released her grip on the pillow and curled her hands into fists. She held them up in front of her face. She willed herself to bring a fist crashing down into her aching nose, but it wouldn't move. She held it there for a few minutes, before it finally flopped back down to her side uselessly.
She began to cry harder . She didn't want to hurt herself again. She'd accidentally looked in the mirror when she'd entered the room and what she had seen had frightened her badly. Her nose and mouth were swollen and raw. Her face was plastered with dirt and dried blood, and her eyes…
What had scared her most when she'd looked in the mirror was her eyes… her eyes had been so dull and blank… like there was nothing inside them…
She didn't want to hurt herself, but she didn't want to hurt anybody else either. She thought of the bald spot kitty again. She'd lost control for a moment. It had ran away, but what if she had caught it? What would she have done? She felt sick at the thought.
There was only one other time when the voice wasn't with her, and that was when she was asleep. She didn't have nightmares. She didn't have dreams either, not since a couple of days ago. Just blissful nothingness, a darkness that covered her all over. Nothing could penetrate it. Not even that voice.
She sat up and climbed off the bed. Slowly, she walked over to the door and unlocked it. It opened with a loud creak. She glanced out into the dark hallway beyond. The lights were off and the only sound was that of silence. She guessed her parents would be asleep, it was almost midnight. The door to the bathroom was at the opposite side of the corridor.
She crept slowly towards it. Her parents room was the first door on the right.
"They're in there… asleep…"
She stopped in front of it and stared down at the doorknob.
"Your father never liked Yukio…"
Shizuka frowned. Her hand reached out to touch the knob. She closed her hand around it.
"Your parents are so happy… they don't know how a broken heart feels…"
Shizuka turned the doorknob, slowly, so as not to wake them.
"They don't… understand…"
She turned it all the way to the right.
Behind her, her bedroom door creaked loudly and shifted a few inches, manipulated by the cold breeze that still circulated the room. Shizuka's eyes opened wide and she darted her head around to look in the direction of the sound. She stared at the motionless door for a few seconds, and then turned back. She looked down. Her hand was still gripping the doorknob to her parents bedroom tightly. She quickly jerked her hand away as if it had been burned. She backed away, slowly, until her back was pressed up against the wall. What had she been doing?
She shook her head and looked down at the end of the corridor. The bathroom door waited for her. It seemed like miles away. Slowly, quietly, she began to creep towards it again. She focused her mind on it. The bathroom door was the only thing that mattered right now. She wasn't going to stop walking until she reached it.
She counted her footsteps. Ni. Shi. Roku. Hachi.
And then she was stood in front of it. She reached out a trembling arm and gripped the cold brass doorknob, and twisted it. She pushed, and it opened before her. She stepped into the room, wincing as her feet touched the ice-cold tile. She fumbled around for the lightswitch and flicked it on, illuminating the tiny room. She blinked a couple of times, the light assaulting her tear-filled eyes, and then headed over to the medicine cabinet beside the bath.
She approached it. A wretched, ugly girl walked forward to meet her. Shizuka stared down at the floor, avoiding looking at the swollen face and those lifeless eyes. She reached up and opened the mirrored door of the cabinet, and scanned the row of bottles inside. She knew they were in there somewhere.
With her door safely closed and locked again, Shizuka climbed back onto the bed and examined the small bottle in her hand. She briefly ran her eyes over the kana printed on the label, uninterested.
She unscrewed the lid, reached inside, and plucked one of the round pills out. It was tiny. She placed it on her dry tongue. It took a moment to swallow it. Her throat was coarse. She hadn't had a drink for hours. It finally went down, and she looked back at the bottle in her shaking hand. Maybe she should take another, just to make sure?
She reached into the bottle and retrieved another of the little pills. She stared at it for a few moments. A sudden wave of drowsiness washed over her, and she groaned softly. She managed to place the bottle on the table beside the bed before her eyes began to force themselves closed. She smiled sleepily. She'd won, for one night at least.
"Pathetic girl…"
Bye-bye, voice, she thought through a layer of pink fuzz. Bye-bye, room. Bye-bye, Shizuka.
