AN: Apologizes to my few (very few) loyal readers. I would have updated MUCH sooner but I've had some internet issues and I've spent much of this time offline. So while you've had to wait to read my fic, I've had to wait to read all fics. I also promise that I'll be quicker (than usual) in posting the next chapter.

Chapter 3

For the next few weeks life for Yuri fell into pattern. As the semester really got underway she hit the books and started spending more time studying for tests and writing papers. She and Ginta had managed some sort of uneasy truce. They were on fairly amicable terms and it helped that now they had a third party present when they met. They hadn't told Ayumi the reason that Ginta didn't like Yuri and they were hoping that they wouldn't have too. Every now and then she would notice Ginta looking at her in a way that sent shivers down her spine. But then he would catch himself and give her a sheepish smile.

She often ran into Sesshomaru on campus. She made a point of always going over to see him and saying hi in a rather obnoxious way. She thought he seemed somewhat amused by her antics but he was hard to read. Usually he was sitting a table reading something. Occasionally he'd have a plate of scones with him. He was always polite and would even offer her one. She thought she'd spotted him at various off campus locals but every time she'd tried to approach him, she'd lose him. Yuri brought this up with him the first time it happened. She casually told him, "I thought I saw at WacDonald's this Sunday."

His only reply was a nonresponsive, "Hmm." The following the weekend she thought she saw him at 21 Paradise on Friday night. His response once again was non answering, "Hmm." When she spotted on a Thursday grocery run she neglected to mention it because of the risk of sounding like his stalker. Yuri was annoyed to discover that, in spite of herself, she found she was developing a crush on Sesshomaru. It had to be because he looked so damn pretty. Certainly, it wasn't his personality. She wasn't sure he had one.

The pale girl she saw occasionally, like once or twice a week. One other time Yuri tried to approach and her. That had gone about as well as last time. Once again she had managed to lose sight of the girl; her view had been obscured by people walking past. When she reached the place where she'd seen the girl standing there was no one. Yuri wasn't a hundred percent convinced that the girl wasn't in her head. Perhaps she was a real person but Yuri's subconscious liked some aspect of her appearance and so she saw the girl when there was really no one there. Maybe only ten percent of the appearances were real and the rest were in her head. Mostly Yuri tried to ignore the pale girl.

Yuri was sitting in her room studying when her downstairs neighbor Sakura knocked on her door. "Hey," Yuri greeted. She knew Sakura fairly well and she enjoyed any excuse to take a study-break. "How's it going?"

"Pretty good." Sakura acknowledged, "I've been really busy though."

"Ah the glamorous life of a pharmacy major." Yuri acknowledged with a grin.

"You know us pharmtards: work, work, work," Sakura agreed using the campus nickname for pharmacy students. "Actually that's why I stopped by, I have a test tomorrow and I suck taking pulses, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind being a guinea pig so I could practice."

"Wouldn't you rather practice on the cute boys who live below you?" Yuri teased.

"Hopefully later, they're not home." Sakura blushed. "But I really need to practice. Pleeeease." Her voice got into the whining range for the "please."

"Okay," Yuri agreed. "At least it's not my heartbeat."

Yuri wasn't aware she said the last statement out loud till Sakura asked, "What's wrong with you heartbeat?"

"What?" Yuri asked as she got a chair to sit in.

"You said at least it's not my heartbeat or something. Do you have an irregular heartbeat or something like that?"

"No it's just," Yuri sighed, "This is really embarrassing, but every time the doctor gets out the stethoscope to listen to my heart-I tense. The first time I did it with my new doctor he acted like I was like a little kid-explaining that it doesn't hurt and it's much easier for him to find my heart if I'm not tense. I know it doesn't hurt. I just can't quite relax until he finds it."

"Why," Sakura asked absent mindedly as she searched Yuri's arm for a good place to find her pulse.

Yuri didn't know why she couldn't just shut up but sometimes it's nice to tell things to people and get them off your chest. "I just have this incredibly irrational fear that my heart won't be in my chest. I know it's really dumb. I mean if it's not I'd be dead. There no logical way I could survive without it. Like I said it's totally irrational. It's just little quirk I have. I can't quite relax until I know it's there and I'm safe I'm," she searched for a moment for the right word, "I'm free. It's really important that it's there because he gave it back, the bastard gave it back, and I have it and I'm free and…"

"Yuri calm down," Sakura exclaimed, "Your pulse is racing."

"Sorry," said Yuri, she hadn't realized she gotten so carried away, "What was I talking about," It was weird she couldn't quite remember. She'd been talking about how she tensed when the doctor got out the stethoscope and her irrational fear, that part made sense. But what was she talking about at the end-the words had just kind of come and now that she tried to think about them she didn't even know what they meant. Who was this guy she called a bastard?

Yuri blushed and wondered if Sakura could feel her pulse racing again. This reminded her of something that had happened before. Her senior year of high school Yuri had gone to a party and gotten pretty high. She'd obviously taken some drug but she'd been pretty out of it when she took it and still wasn't sure what was it the pill she swallowed. Yuri didn't remember very much of the night but her friends told her how she acted. Apparently she went on and on for like hours about some guy how much she hated him, how glad she was to be free of him. She'd said some really weird stuff that they couldn't recall but the mysterious guy thing really stood out in their minds. She'd been really out of it though; apparently she also tried to attack someone just by moving her hands and yelling something. She thought she was someone else; she referred to herself by another name. Yuri tried to remember what it was, her friends had told her but she'd forgotten. She'd decided that she didn't like the way she felt when she was high and so far that had been the one and only time she took drugs.

"Thanks for helping me practice," Sakura told her after four times of getting her pulse taken, alternating arms.

"Sure thing. Good luck with the boys, oh and um don't tell anyone what I told you about my heart thing, it's um kinda personal."

"No problem, but it does sound like it would come in handy for those tell one interesting fact about you icebreaker games, like the ones we played freshman year."

"I never though of that." Yuri closed the door and sank down in her chair. Even though she knew it was foolish she reached under her shirt and put her hand to her chest. She located her heart and let her hand rest there feeling the beats. For some reason being able to feel her heart beat in her chest calmed her and gave her something like a sense of empowerment. She sat there for a moment banishing the memories of the unknown fear.