Nao

I woke the next morning from sunlight streaming on my face. The brightness was too acute, making me fling an arm over my eyes in an effort to hide away from the light. Slowly I blinked my eyes open, giving them time to accustom to daylight. Sluggishly my mind caught up with the rest of my body. If sunlight was already coming in through my window it must be rather late and surely when I fished for my phone on the bedside table, the clock showed me it was already past ten.
For a moment I was close to flinging my phone against the next wall, instead my arm just slumped onto the mattress with a soft thud.

It was way past time for breakfast, yet nobody had come to check on me. Was there no silly meeting for the HiME-squad this morning that necessitated Midori running to my door and knocking until I got up to join them?
Not even Shizuru had come to see whether I was in my room.
As I flung back the covers and trudged into the shower I wondered if Shizuru was also still in bed, as naked as I was. At first, I had started to sleep naked simply to unnerve her, then I had kept it up because it meant easier access and at one point Shizuru had also stopped wearing her yukata to bed. I could still remember the first time she did it, dropping her robe at the foot of the bed without any announcement, completely catching me off guard. I had tried to regain my composure, to make a quip but Shizuru had already crawled up to me on all fours and silenced me with a hungry kiss. It had been one of the few nights she had taken charge and some of the best sex I had ever had. Just thinking of that night made me hot all over again but then another image assaulted my mind and I couldn't help but wonder whether Kuga was there in bed with her this very moment. Both naked, their bodies sweaty and a little sticky. Maybe she had even found that spot on her neck, the one where Shizuru liked to be bitten to send her into ecstasy.
With a shudder I turned the water to scalding, still it did little to cleanse the imagine from my mind. It didn't help much. My muscles relaxed under the hot drizzle after sleeping all curled up in a ball last night but the water did little to wash the picture of those two entwined on the sheets from my mind.
Little wonder Shizuru did not come by to check up on me when she had her precious Natsuki-chan back. That she was delighted to play with fire wasn't news to me, but I had really thought Shizuru to be smarter than to let herself be burnt down to ashes by that woman again.
I for one, would not be around to pick up the pieces a second time, I swore as I wrung my hair with a towel more forcefully than I should and stomped out of the bathroom.
If nobody cared about my whereabouts, I might as well head into town and get a late breakfast there. My will to help finish this whole investigation had dropped considerably.
Where I had felt genuine curiosity last night, following my mysterious person and even a tinge of excitement, the way I had woken up this morning had dampened my spirits.
A phantom of the skull-splitting headaches from last night still haunted me when I remembered it happening. It had felt like the attacks of migraine Mom had described to me, one of the first signs of her sickness, only a hundred times worse. Or maybe Mom's migraines had been that bad and perhaps I was developing the same illnesses that had brought her down...
Quickly I discarded this train of thought.
It was ridiculous anyway, I was young and healthy and whatever had happened last night, it had passed without lasting damage. Apart from the fact I had lost pursuit.
Had it been an Orphan, I would have blamed the attack on it, but the shadowy figure had clearly belonged to a human. Maybe it had really been just a student sneaking out for a late-night rendezvous with somebody not from the school.
Dropping the matter was probably best if I didn't want to embarrass myself raising a fuss over something so insubstantial.
Just when the lock of my door clicked into place another door swung open further down the corridor and I twitched. Fumi had put us in a scarcely populated part of the dorms, only the other HiME were living on this floor at the moment. Hastily I tried to unlock my room again, intending to hide from anybody who might walk out but I couldn't fumbled the key back into the lock in time before a voice greeted me.
"Good morning Nao-san."
"Hey," I forced out, showing the barest hint of a smile. At least it was only Yukino, who, considering the other people I might have come face to face with, I felt able to tolerate the most right now. When it became clear I was not going to offer more in terms of a greeting, she continued.

"Are you feeling well? I did not see you at breakfast."
Was she being polite, or did she really care, I wondered? At least she had noticed my absence. I gave her a shrug. "Just overslept."
"Oh, that's fine then," Yukino smiled. "I also found it hard to get up this morning after patrolling last night."
I shrugged. What did I care?
We both stood in the empty corridor, looking at each other yet looking away as soon as our eyes actually met. Yukino was still meek and we had no common ground for small talk so she simply stood there, unsure of what to do I could tell. She was too well mannered to go. It was becoming awkward and Yukino's smile slowly faltered. Screwing politeness I ought to have turned around and left her standing there and my brain told me to very much do exactly this.
"Actually I'm heading into town to get something to eat now. Do you want to come?" I found myself asking despite everything.
The small smile returned, still she looked a bit doubtful of what to make of my invitation. "Are you sure Nao-san? I don't want to intrude."
"Na, it's fine," I waved my hand dismissively. Maybe I wouldn't look like a total loser eating by myself.
"Okay," she nodded, and we set off.
Once again uneasy silence fell between us. Every now and then I glanced at her, lacking ideas on how to start a conversation. With Yukino I couldn't even be crass seeing as I had no clue at all what she was up to. Suzushiro would have been easy, riling up that woman had been possible with pretty much anything, especially anything that disagreed with her set of values, which in turn was pretty much everything about me during school. About Yukino however I had no clue, I had never seen her as a person of her own, only ever as Suzushiro's shadow.

She bit her lip, keeping her head low and consciously or not, I noticed she walked half a step behind in me instead of next to me. This had been a bad idea.
I needed to say something before I screamed in frustration.
"So, you had patrol duty last night, right?" I asked after racking my brains for anything to talk about. She nodded. "How was it, seen anything interesting?"
Not that I cared much, most likely she had not seen anything, but it was better than remaining silent.
Yukino shook her head. "I... We did not find anything suspicious looking. No signs of Orphans. If we had our Childs maybe... With Diana surveillance would be much more efficient."

"Oh yeah, you had the voyeur Child," I quipped to see her blush bright red. Well, there was a point I could tease her about, even though the way Yukino stammered that she never had intended to be a voyeur and she certainly hadn't wanted to see that. Much less had she known the consequences of that.
I had no idea what Yukino meant by 'that', but a grin played on my lips as I watched her squirm. "Just forget it," I told her when she started to look like she might get a heat stroke from all the blood in her head. "I have no clue what you're talking about. It's in the past so I don't care."
She snapped her mouth shut and stared down on her shoes again, it made me roll my eyes. I had not even had coffee yet, but I started to regret taking her with me. Why did she have to be so difficult? Breakfast with Shizuru was never this awkward.
Shizuru who had had breakfast without me this morning. Only when we were sitting in a booth by the window, coffees in front of us and a muffin waiting for me to eat it, she piped up. "Do you want sugar, too, Nao-san?"
She held the sugar dispenser out to me. I took it thanking her.
"How... how have you been since high school Nao-san? Did you go to college or did you get a job?"
Where she suddenly got the courage from to ask me stuff about my life, never mind that it was still superficial, I didn't know. Maybe I didn't look as menacing as I used to when I was drooling over a muffin.
"Eh, I'm doing fine. Got a rich benefactor who takes care of me." As expected, she blushed at my frankness and I grinned at her slyly. Obviously, her mind was connecting all sorts of images with my words. If she kept wanting to know more about my life, I might even tell her said benefactor was Shizuru. Let's see how red she'd turn at that piece of information, poor thing might even get a nosebleed.
It wasn't completely true, I did have a part-time job and I paid my share but if it wasn't for the Fujino-family money we'd certainly not be living in the spacious apartment and not splurge so often, but Yukino didn't need details.
If she could question me, it was only fair to retaliate.
"How about yourself, Yukino-san," I stretched the syllables of her name. "are you still working for the big blonde, taking care of her screw-ups?"
Yukino gasped. She sat her cup down so forcefully that coffee sloshed over the rim of her cup, but she didn't notice or didn't care. Instead she was glaring at me angrier than I'd ever seen her. My hand holding a piece of muffin stopped halfway between the plate and my mouth.
"Haruka did not screw up! She did more for the school than anybody ever knew or acknowledged and sure sometimes not all went smoothly, but that never deterred her and she certainly didn't need me to clean up after her!"
I had never heard her raise her voice so much. But the outburst stopped as fast as it had started. Yukino took a deep breath, mumbling a meek "Sorry", as she pulled out a napkin from the holder wiping up the spilled coffee. "And I don't work for her. I have an ordinary desk job in a big company."
For a second I felt sorry her although I couldn't say why. Blatantly clear was however, that this was not a subject open for teasing, I had hit a nerve with my comment about Suzushiro, this was something to store away in my memory.
Idly I wondered why Yukino did not work for her, I had imaged them working together like in school, it had seemed like the natural continuation of their high school relationship.
"And I'm sure Haruka is doing wonderful on her own with her family business." she asserted. I shrugged and munched the rest of my muffin. My wish for company was all but over. Yukino had not been the best choice to begin with and it was getting boring trying to get her to talk when she had nothing interesting. I drank the last of my coffee and got up.
"See you later," I told her, throwing some money on the table. She looked like she was about to say something when I sauntered off but thought otherwise.
Knowing Midori she was likely to put me on the rooster tonight but at least until then I was determined to have some fun, or, if fun was not to be found, at least something remotely interesting to take my mind of Fujino, Kuga and my headache from last night.
Outside I briefly contemplated going back to the basement of the glass dome in daylight, but brushed it aside. Let one of the others go there. It wasn't like I hadn't noticed anything down there. Only my imagination had run wild.
Turning my back to the campus I made my way to the mall. Surely there where some nice, expensive purchases to be made with Shizuru's card.