Welcome to 'Night'! I hope you're all enjoying yourselves so far! Thank you for supporting my little story! I really appreciate it!
Everything's kicked into high gear. Please continue to enjoy yourselves, and remember: NO FLAMES, PLEASE! FLAMES ARE NOT APPRECIATED. However, all reviews, good or bad, are ALWAYS welcome! Thank you very much for your time!
Theme song of 'Night': Mystical Princess by Masashi Hamauzu. 'About Her' from Kill Bill 2 is the theme for the last half of the chapter.
Minutes flew by like hours, but at the same time, they held the merciless potency of seconds. The center of the storm caught the tension of Hiroshi Nakano in a flash-the loyal friend of Shuichi Shindou had dashed after the young one in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the night's darkness caused his desperate cries to fall into silence; the thunder didn't allow the passage of human voices. The power of the rainstorm was just too great to overwhelm.
He was in the center of a street, drenched in the blanket of undying darkness. Just a few minutes ago he had been satiated in the refreshing winds of happiness, and now he was trapped in a world he barely recognized. The small figure of his friend was no longer in his sight; the night's darkness didn't allow his voice to reach Shuichi, and it was eager to swallow up any broken soul. Not another soul was around, and the winds were dangerously loud; the entire world seemed to be lost in eternal darkness.
His eyes desperately searched for the beloved vocalist, but no relief came in any form. He could see nothing but the sheets of black before him; the entire world seemed to have been painted black within the last couple of minutes, and everything was so bright before. His heart wanted to fly right out of its imprisonment...breathing became unbearably difficult as he realized one thing; his chase had come to an end.
Shuichi was nowhere to be found.
Several more cries tore themselves from his heart, and pierced the night air...but every single one of them fell into silence. After the last cry drifted into oblivion, he removed oceans of tears from his eyes...tried to regain enough strength to breathe...and removed his cell phone from his pocket. It only took him a second to dial his best friend's number, for the young star was on speed dial.
The number 1 was going to be his gateway to one of two things: solid relief or devastation.
He placed his phone to his right ear and waited. Oceans of thunder held a vigil over him as his heart continued to drum against his chest. It refused to stop screaming...the phone wouldn't stop ringing...
The fifth ring came.
Sixth...seventh...
"Dammit, Shu! Answer me...please!"
An answer came...but it wasn't the answer he wanted to hear. It wasn't from Shuichi himself-
"Hey! You've reached the one and only Shuichi Shindou! I'm not available right now, but feel free to leave a message! Check ya later!"
-the answer came from Shuichi's recorded message.
Hiro's chest tightened...and the entire world became even darker. The winds wouldn't stop howling, his heart wouldn't cease its screaming; he was in the middle of some strange nightmare, and there seemed to be no way out of it. After an eternity of silence, his phone rang...but the caller wasn't the caller he wanted to hear from.
"Hiro! What in the hell is going on? Everything okay?"
His chest became tighter. His mouth became even drier than the hottest dessert...as his best friend's smile flashed in his mind...
"I can't find him."
It was incredibly difficult to pick up a fragile voice in the midst of a huge thunderstorm. Suguru Fujisaki's tension rose even higher; that became apparent within the next few seconds. "What?" he cried out, bearing a great resemblance to a sergeant in the middle of a crisis. Hiro repeated his words...with his voice at a higher volume. It was still excruciatingly difficult to breathe, but somehow he managed to gather enough strength to speak.
"I said I can't find him! I lost him!"
"He's got to be somewhere! He couldn't have just disappeared!"
"I can't see a damn thing out here, and I'm pretty sure HE can't either! And he didn't answer my call! He always answers his phone!"
Suguru's voice became softer. Something big had happened in Eiri Yuki's bedroom; Shuichi was nowhere to be found, and Hiro was on edge. Something had gone horribly wrong.
"All right! Calm down, Hiro! Everything's going to be fine! Just calm down and find your way back here! I'm sure Shuichi's going to pop up!"
Hiroshi ended the call and fell to his knees, feeling oceans soak his entire body. Just a few minutes ago, the night had been blissfully beautiful...now it was endlessly black and painful. His bright star had vanished into the night...and the entire world seemed to be in tears. His heart still refused to cease its belligerent pounding, and his head had become perilously light during Suguru's call...
...but he had to find his way back. He had to go back.
Everything's gonna be fine...he'll be back soon. Suguru's right.
Time flew by at the unstoppable speed of light. Yuki's house was a hotbed of chaos: urgency was in the air, and it wasn't light. The air was severely thick with tension, so thick that it was almost unsuitable for human consumption. The guests that had stationed themselves downstairs, K, Tohma Seguchi, Reiji, Ark, Suguru and Yuuji, were lost in the depths of confusion; in mere seconds Shuichi had flown right out of the door, right after he had gone up to see the chief of the house.
The place that had once been cheerful was now a volcano of confusion. The guests exchanged worried glances and words with each other, feeling as if the entire world had tipped itself upside down in mere seconds. As always, K and Ark exchanged words, each bearing his own emotions; K bore the fire of an angered chieftain in his eyes, and his best friend had a similar expression within his own, even though his fire was a bit softer.
"What do you think happened up there?" Ark asked, narrowing his eyes in uncertainty. "I've never seen anyone run at such a high speed, let alone Shuichi! It's as if Eiri Yuki released some type of bomb on him!"
His friend rubbed at his chin; a habit he usually carried out during hectic periods of thought. "You probably aren't too far off the mark." he said, bearing the voice of vigilant FBI agent. "Shindou decided to throw himself into the night, Eiri Yuki's still up in his room...he's probably frozen with guilt about something. I think I've pretty much summed it up, but we'll get the lowdown from Nakano."
As if on cue, Hiroshi Nakano flew the door open...and kept himself in the doorway for a few excruciating moments. All eyes instantly flew to him, and his friends instantly realized one thing; he was alone, and horribly pissed off. His entire body was soaked in water; he looked as if he had dragged himself through the Atlantic Ocean for three straight months. His eyes were poisonous and deadly, filled with the fatal venom of a cobra...
Beams of urgent compassion filled the eyes of his friends, but each beam had a different effect on each individual. K's eyes took on the vigilance of a valiant, composed warrior, Reiji's eyes took on a motherly type of compassion, Tohma and Yuuji fell into the same wave of fear, Ark's eyes were no different from the eyes of a worried brother, and Suguru still had the look of a concerned army sergeant.
Hiro looked ready to kill.
"Are you all right?" Reiji asked him fearfully, bringing him into the house by his shoulders. A towel, courtesy of his brother, fell onto him a second later...but he seemed to be completely oblivious to anything but the thirst for revenge...
"Dry yourself off, bro! Come on, tell us what happened!"
"Why did Shuichi decide to bolt off like that?" a worried Suguru asked his friend, apparently uncomfortable with the rapid change of environment.
Another moment of intolerable silence followed those words. During that period of silence, Hiroshi used the towel to dry himself off, fuming at the seams with anger...the others kept their eyes on him and waited...
The breaking of the silence caused Reiji and Tohma to jump.
"I can't find him...he's out there, somewhere, and I lost him. Shuichi's out there in, all alone in that!"
Yuuji placed a hand on his brother's wet shoulder, evidently uncomfortable with seeing his brother in pain. The windows tried hold their ground against the powerful winds...but the storm's power refused to cease its growth. All of them listened in; the winds kept howling, the windows kept shivering...the lights began to flicker...
"Don't worry!" Yuuji said after another horrifying moment of silence, feeling fear sink into his own soul. "Shuichi's gonna come back! I'm sure of it!"
Hiro's eyes became as cold as ice, and so did his voice. His eyes whipped themselves onto another body, one that had just entered their world of chaos-
"I'm not so sure he's coming back anytime soon, thanks to that filthy bastard over there!"
Two waves of thunder struck the house...as all eyes shot straight Eiri Yuki.
Fear and confusion prompted Reiji to speak, but her opportunity to do so was completely shot out of the air, due to Hiro's sudden movements. He tore himself out of Yuuji's protection, shot right over to the silent novelist...and delivered a fierce blow to his face.
Gasps tore themselves from Reiji, Tohma and Suguru. Tension shot through the roof as thunder continued to pulsate within the black skies. Anxiety exploded in Reiji's eyes, and gave her the strength she needed to speak.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Hiro began a barrage of attacks on the silent novelist, unleashing every bit of fury within every blow. He was not only angry but frustrated as well...and scared.
"It's this scumbag's fault! Shuichi's gone and HE'S responsible! There's no other way around it!"
"Hey!" K shouted against the tirade of fury, taking the role of 'vigilant chieftain' for the fifth thousandth time. When things became tough, he always took a stand against the tides. "Cool it!"
"You went ahead and ruined everything, pretty boy! You had the best of the best and YOU THREW IT ALL AWAY!"
Hiro heard Reiji and Tohma gasp once again.
"That's right! We found loverboy tied up with some wench! You had it all and you GAVE IT ALL AWAY! We aren't too smart, now ARE we?"
"I said COOL IT ALREADY!"
K placed himself in between the two, bearing a resemblance to a coach that had to halt a fight between two opposing players. He kept the wrathful Nakano on one read; the enigmatic, silent novelist was on the other. Tohma instantly rushed to Yuki's aid, his gentle eyes radiant with sadness.
"Now you two can either duke it out like high school punks, or we can deal with this as ADULTS! What's it gonna be?"
Silence followed his question. Hiroshi's vengeful, sorrowful eyes kept themselves pasted on Yuki, who was currently in Tohma's care...
The silence gave K the answer he needed.
He whipped out his cell phone, opened it up...pressed a single button...
...and waited, just as Hiro had waited.
"Hey! You've reached-"
Dammit, so he's not answering his phone.
"Fine! If he's not at that door in a few hours, we'll resume our attempts to call him. If our attempts to reach him fall flat, we'll ask around! If Shindou's not back by the afternoon, we'll file an M.P on him."
"An 'M.P.'?" Suguru asked him anxiously, his eyes filled with tension. K gave him a look that heightened the excruciating apprehension.
"A missing person's report."
All of their hearts fell.
Intolerable silence tormented them for what felt like an eternity. Each of them wrestled with their own thoughts...their own emotions. The winds continued to pound against the windows viciously, bearing the savage desire for destruction...
The silence came to an end as soon as K whipped out his prized possessions. He was in mood for trivial arguments; his facial expression made that perfectly clear. He too looked ready to kill, but his ferocity came from a deeper tide of maturity.
"Now we're all going to chill for a few hours. Patience is a virtue, you know. All we have to do is wait. If he's not back by ten, we'll carry out our options. But for now..."
A dangerous smile bloomed on his face, and his eyes glimmered in the darkness.
"...let's sit still like good little children. After all, we can't go about jumping off the walls, now can we?"
The air became even heavier. It was now completely unfit for human consumption, especially since the atmosphere had been so cheery several minutes ago. All of them felt as if meteors had fallen into their house, and they had nowhere to turn. Just the mere thought of Shuichi being swallowed up by the merciless storm was enough to shatter their world, and the thought of a missing person's report didn't lighten too much of anything. Maddening silence returned to the house as the storm continued to strengthen their emotions...
Hiroshi gave one last look to the silent novelist, who had become his sworn enemy. Both pairs of eyes met each other; one pair was filled with emotions only Tohma could read, and the other pair was filled with cold hatred. Silence passed between them for another eternity, then Hiro's eyes became even deadlier than a cobra bite.
"You'd better keep your distance, playboy."
Not another word went between them.
Suguru made an attempt to comfort him, but his attempt fell before it even began; Hiro had made the decision to storm into another area of the house, unable to bear the sight of his enemy's face any longer. Silence returned to the house in a maddening flash of lightning, giving birth to explosions of pain within the hearts of the remaining individuals. The silence would have driven a stranger to the brink of insanity.
Shuichi Shindou, the brightest star in all of Japan, the one that had filled all of their lives with sunlight...
...was now gone...and the entire world was dark.
Reiji's fearful eyes fell onto Eiri Yuki, who had his head bowed. Only Tohma could see the emotions within his eyes; to the others, his emotions were unreadable.
"...Mr.Yuki, are you all right?"
Tohma's heart sank when a moment of silence elapsed. Yuki had a desire to speak...
...but the one he wanted to speak to was no longer around.
Tohma's gentle eyes fell into Reiji's fearful ones. His soft voice was fragile, no different from a shard of glass. That same description could have easily been applied to Yuki's condition.
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid Yuki-sama needs to return to his quarters."
The softhearted Seguchi lifted his companion off the ground, unable to keep his mind off of the emotions he saw within Yuki's eyes. His emotions were completely silent to the others, but he could see them perfectly...and they were excruciating to look at. Yuki was silent, which was a rare event; the novelist was rarely ever silent, unless he was immersed in his work. But even then he sent out a few streams of profanity during the occasional roadblocks. He was dead silent, and had lost the strength to even walk...
I've only seen you like this once before. You were only this delicate once in your life. It as if that dreadful time has come back to haunt you.
Immersed in a new world of pain, Tohma lead the saddened Yuki into his bedroom...feeling the emotions of his companion sink right into his heart. Supporting Yuki was no different from carrying a bag of steel; he was burdened with an annihilative level of emotions. The only voices within the house belonged to K and Ark, and their voices were faint to him; the others were lost among the night's devilish silence. The decorations Shuichi had placed on the walls with loving care were no more than meaningless objects now; the Christmas cheer had died as soon as the star bolted from the house.
The expiration of two minutes found the two of them in even more silence. Tohma gently placed Yuki onto his bed, feeling like a mother in the midst of her child's pain. His object of affection was normally outspoken, brash and defiant; now he was no different from a zombie. Shuichi's decision to vanish was eventually going to give birth to devastation; Yuki's silent eyes made that clear. The novelist's eyes, which were solid pools, were locked onto the bags Hiro had dropped right before Shuichi's departure...and they were filled with impenetrable sadness. The winds continued to burrow themselves into his windows...as his eyes silently analyzed the bags.
Silence was present in the bedroom, but it was even worse than the silence downstairs. Tohma kept his heavy heart focused on the injured author, who could have easily been compared to a heartbroken animal. Half of Yuki's heart wanted to shrug off the pain, but that half was beaten down mercilessly.
The night's storm tormented them for what felt like an eternity...then Tohma made an attempt to lighten his companion's mood.
"Here now, why don't I get you some ice for those bruises of yours? Letting them sit won't bring about any benefits-"
The tone of Yuki's voice caused an ocean of arrows to strike Tohma's heart.
"Can it. I don't need you to play 'nursemaid'."
The Seguchi's face fell ten miles into the floor. Several long years passed before he found enough strength to speak...or were they just minutes?
"Don't worry. Shindou-sama will return soon, and the damage can be undone. Everything's going to be just fine."
Yuki rose from his place and slowly made his way over to the abandoned packages. The concept of reality became painfully foreign to him as he searched through each bag, looking for a certain gift. He found what he was looking for in no more than a minute; he lifted a square-shaped package out of one of the bags and stared at for an eternity. It didn't take half a second for Tohma to realize something; the gift was from none other than Shuichi. The package was lovingly wrapped up in red paper...and there was a beautiful gold bow on top.
Yuki stared at the gift for what felt like an eternity, frightening Tohma with his silent, enigmatic emotions. Several more years passed before he began to unwrap the gift, and every time his hands removed a piece of wrapping...tears shot into his eyes...and his fragile heart fell further and further into pain...
...pain he had only felt once before in his life.
A minute passed before the unveiling arrived. Beneath the wrapping was a beautiful box; one that held the ultimate result. The object on top of the box caught Yuki's attention, though...
It was a card.
Tohma watched him unwrap the card, still bearing the pain of a frightened mother. Every one of Yuki's movements increased the sadness within the air...and it made one fact painfully clear.
Shuichi was gone.
It was a beautiful card, one that was even more beautiful than the box. It was simple yet delicate, filled with the sweetness of a pure Christmas dream. The innocent beauty caused two tears to fall from the novelist's eyes...but the contents of the card broke the camel's back.
Yuki,
I hope you like your present! It took me a while to find the perfect gift for you, but this had your name written all over it! It's a replacement for the one you have now; the one I damaged. I really hope you like it! I'll make sure your first Christmas is the greatest Christmas ever!
Love always, Shuichi.
Yuki knew that the contents of the box were only going to make things worse.
After another moment of silence, the novelist gave a sarcastic smile to his companion.
"Well, here goes nothing."
A huge lump developed in both of their throats, and within their chests. The wind continued to drum away at the windows...as Yuki removed the lid from the box.
His predication was right-on target.
It was a brand-new laptop. Top-of-the-line quality.
He spoke after another eternity of silence.
His voice had its usual qualities; it was the voice of a nonchalant, sarcastic, busy author...
...but his body was trembling with tears. He was no different from a kitten.
"You know...this year...was supposed to be different. This was supposed to be my first real Christmas. Everything was perfect...absolutely perfect...until I went it and screwed things up. Hiro had every right to do what he did."
Tears tore themselves out of Tohma's eyes, and sadness choked him.
Yuki's next words broke his back.
"Things are quiet now. Too quiet."
The thunder refused to stop.
He wanted to turn in. He wanted to be alone.
Speaking was excruciatingly difficult.
"Should...should I stay with you?"
"No. Leave me alone for now. I don't need anyone's company at the moment."
Tohma Seguchi silently left the room, his eyes radiant with raindrops.
Eiri Yuki slowly climbed into his bed...and...
...sadly embraced his first night...
...alone.
There weren't any smiles, any hugs...
There were no passionate kisses on the cheek, no whispers of 'I love you'...
There wasn't anything but the storm.
The cold, endless storm.
If I could turn back time...I'd take back everything that had happened.
I would undo everything you saw...I would take away everything I said.
Wherever you are, please come back...
So I can tell you...what I've always wanted to tell you...
"Shuichi..."
Tohma Seguchi may be a little OOC, but I'll explain him further into the story. Thank you for enjoying, and please take care! Thank you!