Anthy and Utena woke up to a normal morning, lots of "Wake up, Miss Utena, we'll be late!" and "Five more minutes..." until Chu Chu bit Utena on the nose. They went to their morning classes, and the only time Utena got worried that whole morning was when she noticed that Wakaba hadn't shown up for any of them.

"Hey, Anthy, where do you think Wakaba is? She's never missed a day of school in her life."

"I'm sure I don't know, Miss Utena. Perhaps she's sick?"

Utena shook her head. "Nah...Wakaba would go anyway. She thinks she'll nab either me or some cute guy if she pumps info into her brain. Hm..maybe that's why she's got such a big forehead... Anyway. You better go water the roses. I'll meet you under the oak,kay?"

Anthy giggled on the slight play on the word and nodded. "I won't be long, Miss Utena."

They went their seperate ways, Utena to the tree and Anthy to her garden. She stopped to fill her watering can, humming her favorite melody and tapping the toe of her shoe before continuing to the garden. She pushed the door open and dropped the watering can, her hands flying to her mouth as her eyes widened in abject horror. The stench of blood was too much for her, and she dropped to her knees, vomiting on the ground. She wiped her mouth with her knuckles and looked over again.

The body of Wakaba Shinohara was naked, laying on the ground, but you couldn't see any recognizable part of her body.She was tightly wrapped in cords of barbed wire, deeply cutting into her skin. The signs of her own struggle within the coils was the fact that her pale skin was torn to shreds, and there were strokes of blood along the floor, as if some insane painter were using her as a brush.

Her throat was brutally hacked open, to the point where her neck was hanging by nothing more then threads of muscle and sinew. But the thing that most disturbed Anthy was that a rose was stuck into her mouth, with the stem poking through the opening in her neck. She got up and stumbled over and saw that Wakaba's eyes had been gouged out. A sob of dispair welled up in Anthy. Her eyes...her big beautiful brown eyes... She looked away and saw that Wakaba's uniform was neatly folded beside her body, splattered in blood, and her shoes were placed next to them, as if they were to be worn the next day for school.

Anthy scooped the bloody uniform into her arms and hugged it close, sobbing. She walked out, still holding onto Wakaba's clothes, and found a teacher. "Please...help...help her..."

She showed him Wakaba's blood stained clothes.

"Hmm? Miss Himemiya? What's wrong? Has something happened?"

She lead him to the garden, where he recoiled as he peered inside. "Good Lord..."

Utena came up. "Hey, Anthy, what's taking so long? I had to stop Chu Chu from eating your lunch. Anthy? Anthy, what's wrong?"

She looked at the teacher as he gibbered into a phone about a body. Utena went cold. Body? She approached the door to the garden, and Anthy whispered, "Please..Miss Utena..don't go in there." But she did anyway.

When she saw Wakaba's cold and bloody corpse, she walked over, sank to her knees, and lifted her limp body to herself, crying as she pressed her face against her friend, ignoring how the barbed wire cut into her, and didn't even feel when Anthy put her arms around her.