Chapter 9
Mary can hear the sound of footfalls chasing after her as she flees down the bustling hallways of Hyakkaou. Students are flooding in and out of classrooms like water released from a reservoir, but she can still hear the steps behind her in time with own. Although she physically removed herself from that suffocating room, the tension in her body still lingers from the threat of Yumeko's presence. She focuses on weaving through the gaps of moving bodies to distract herself from that persistent pressure.
Her mind is torn. A part of her wishes that it's Yumeko coming to console her, but the hurt and angry part of her hopes it's anyone but her.
Then finally, she breaks through the horde of her classmates and pushes past ancient, wooden double doors. The exit leads to an outdoor pathway that opens up to Hyakkaou's meticulously trimmed garden. With the rush of fresh air on her face, Mary lets herself breathe for what feels like the first time in a long time.
Oxygen surges into her lungs while she relishes in the feel of the setting sun on her cheeks. She leans against the sturdy, wooden railing letting her hair fall around her face. She manages to take in two whole deep breaths before the doors creak open behind her.
The sound of soft, even footsteps slowly approach her.
She waits for it, but the magnetism she now associates with the girl never hits her chest. Mary knows it's not Yumeko without even looking. Distantly, she recognizes the feeling of her stomach falling as disappointment.
Itsuki is sweet, Mary repeats.
The footsteps stop beside her and suddenly, Itsuki's arm is looping around her elbow. Those caramel blonde tresses settle across her shoulder and for the moment, Mary lets her. For the past few days, she didn't want to be alone and Itsuki has been there for her without even knowing she needed it.
"What's going on, Mary-san?" her voice is gentle, a complete change from the hyperactive tone she had in the gambling room.
Mary's eyes fall to the light pink bed of flowers in the garden. She's not sure what to tell the other girl. She wouldn't even know where to start. Most of all, she's not sure telling Itsuki about Yumeko would be the best decision. They were friends, but Mary wasn't ready to be that open.
The girl must have taken the hint because she changes the subject, "I've never actually taken the time to walk around the garden. Will you join me?"
Mary takes a deep breath. Wordlessly, she tightens the hold on their linked arms and guides them to the cobbled pathway.
They silently walk through the terrace until the sun dips under the horizon and the lantern posts automatically switch on. Itsuki doesn't push for more and only breaks the peaceful lull to comment on the beauty of the abundance of flowers.
Much later, though, Itsuki decides to take the first step.
"My mother loves to garden. She would tend to her flowers every day while I played in the yard when I was younger," Itsuki's voice is wistful, then suddenly, bitter, "I used to hate it. I always thought she spent more time with her precious garden than with me."
Mary's head is still angled down, but Itsuki knows she is listening intently.
"But then, when I grew up, I realized it was important to her. The special attention and care she put into the seedlings would materialize with every bud and blossom that grew." She places her free hand on Mary's bicep where their arms interlock. "Believe it or not, but she's the one that taught me about hard work. Not my father."
Mary lets the words drift in the air between them. Just as they pass a row of jasmine flowers hanging from a shrub, she looks to the girl beside her and pauses, "Thank you, Itsuki-san."
Itsuki is startled from the sudden acknowledgement, but she recovers quickly, "Of course, Mary-san." She offers her a soft smile at the admission and Mary returns it, easily.
At the end of the path, there is a bench glowing from the light of a lantern only a few feet away. Mary guides them towards it and they sit, taking in the tranquil scene before them. They are alone save for the sound of crickets and water bubbling from the fountain they had passed earlier. It is a stark difference from the chaos of Hyakkaou that looms behind them.
She feels like her mind has been a scrambled mess since that morning with Yumeko. She hasn't slept well and who knows if she's been eating? She certainly can't remember. The peaceful air is a welcome change from what she's been going through lately. It's because of this that Mary blames for what she says next.
"You've been such a great friend to me without even knowing, Itsuki," Mary admits under her breath. Her shoulders are hunched forward as she grips the edge of the bench and toes a stray pebble on the ground. Itsuki watches the side of her face intently.
"These past couple of days have been rough," Mary confides.
From the corner of her eye, she can see Itsuki nodding at her words. "Right. I had a feeling."
Mary hums. "Normally, I would be fine dealing with it alone, but this is...complicated."
"Dealing with what?"
For a second, she considers telling Itsuki about the situation, but ultimately decides against it, "I have a best friend," Mary rushes out, "well...had a best friend." All this time, Itsuki had shared countless stories of her past and her more personal thoughts while Mary had shared nothing. She decides that now would be a good time to start.
Itsuki is silent at first contemplating the choice of words, but then, "what do you mean had? What happened?"
"She was my friend that I hadn't seen since childhood. On my first day here at Hyakkaou, I recognized her and she remembered me," Mary thinks back with a small smile on her face. She laughs ruefully, "she was a housepet. But we worked hard together to get her out of it."
"Does she still go here?" Itsuki says, imploringly.
"No, not anymore," her voice breaks on the last word.
"Truthfully, I don't really know what happened," Mary says, pushing off of the bench. Itsuki watches as her form grows tense with each step she takes away from where she's still sitting. Her fists curl into a tight ball and she feels the mood change in an instant.
"But there's one thing I am certain of," she mumbles with her back still turned to Itsuki. When Mary finally turns around to face her, she has a murderous look in her eyes.
"She's gone because of Kirari Momobami."
The sound of crickets calling to one another in the night is Mary's only indication of time passing. Otherwise, she would have thought that everything had frozen over. The girl on the bench is silent, her mouth gaping open with doubt in her eyes.
"Mary...that's-" Itsuki starts.
"Insane? Stupid? One-hundred percent true?" Mary supplies. "I know she's the reason why Tsuzura is gone, even though she'll never admit to it!"
Itsuki shakes her head trying to comprehend what she's being told. "Hold on a second, you need to back up. Is Tsuzura...de-"
"DON'T SAY IT!" Mary roars. But when she sees Itsuki flinch, she changes her demeanor, "I refuse to believe she's anything other than alive and well. She's just...not...here," she finishes weakly. "If she's anything other than okay, then I could never live with myself. I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to make sure we survived together. I was supposed to be her...Prince."
She could be imagining it, but Itsuki swears she sees the beginning of tears in Mary's eyes. She never thought her friend, who always seemed so strong and cold on the outside, could care so deeply about someone.
It actually does make sense, Itsuki concedes, she is very much the protector-type. Truthfully, she doesn't know what to say to that, so she stays silent waiting for Mary to continue.
The normally tenacious girl looks so fragile as she looks up somberly at the stars in the sky. "The worst part was, I didn't even get to say goodbye," Mary chokes under her breath.
"Make sure to wipe down the tables again before you leave, Yukimi-san," Mary throws over her shoulder as she packs away the profits she had made for the day.
"As always, captain! Good work."
The gambling den they had acquired for themselves had been extremely successful, as of late. Although the three of them were an unlikely team, they were able to run gambles like a well-oiled machine spitting out an ample amount of earnings each time.
With the money counted and packed away in her briefcase, Mary heads out of the library room to check on Tsuzura. She had told her earlier that day that she had a commitment that would probably run into the night. The girl hadn't provided much detail, so she guessed that Tsuzura would be back in her dorm by now.
"Tsuzura, you will never guess how much mon-" she says slamming the door to the room open. She drops her briefcase. The sight of an empty room stops her in her tracks.
The room was literally bare aside from the standard furniture that came with the room.
Tsuzura's usual pristinely-made bed was divested of her signature light pink comforter and matching pillows. Her dresser drawers were empty, suspended out of their usual spots, and some were even discarded on the floor. The desk chair and side table were on their sides, kicked out of the way. And Aiko, the fluffy, white stuffed-toy bunny that Mary had gifted her wasn't at its usual spot on the writing desk. Tsuzura would always keep Aiko there for company while she did her homework.
She takes a final look around the room. It looked like the girl had been robbed.
Mary's senses are on high-alert. Her heart starts pounding on sheer fight-or-flight instinct. She knows no one would be stupid enough to ransack a dorm at Hyakkaou, of all places. No, this was something else. She didn't know what yet, but she had a very bad feeling about it.
She sprints away from the skeleton of a room not knowing what to do, except that she had to find Tsuzura. Classrooms, paintings, doors, everything that she passed by was a blur. She's certain that she pushed several people out of the way in the process, but she doesn't give a damn. There was something wrong about all of this and the fact that she hasn't even seen Tsuzura yet only confirms it.
Her feet blindly take her to the great foyer of the school where large, glass windows oversee the steps leading to the entrance. She comes to a stop.
In the distance beyond the iron gates of Hyakkaou, Mary can see headlights breaking through the pitch dark of the night.
She pushes past the heavy, wooden doors and is greeted with the sight of her best friend solemnly walking towards a large vehicle with tinted windows. Luggage in one hand and Aiko in the other.
Bone-chilling gusts of wind is whipping her dark, midnight blue hair around her face, but she knows that it's Tsuzura. She knows, it is.
"TSUZURA!" she yells from the top of the stairs. The girl doesn't react. The spiraling wind is too strong for her voice to reach any further than a few feet ahead of her.
She tries again, cupping her palms around her mouth trying in vain to project as loudly as she can, "TSUZURA!"
Nothing.
Mary rushes down the concrete steps, pushing past the ache in her muscles after running for so long just moments before. She's screaming so hard that she swears she can feel her vocal cords strain against her throat. "TSUZURA!"
Something's wrong. Something is so wrong. There are tears streaming down her face because Tsuzura isn't turning around. She can't hear her and she's not turning around.
The door to the vehicle slides open and an older man in an expensive-looking suit is sitting inside. She barely has a chance to look at the man for any longer because Tsuzura is climbing in beside him. "TSUZURA, PLEASE WAIT! TSUZURA!"
She still can't hear her.
BANG. Far behind Mary, the heavy double doors that she must have left open have slammed shut from a particularly strong blast of wind.
The sound causes Tsuzura's eyes to snap to the side where she finally, finally sees Mary running after her.
"TSUZURA! PLEASE, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!"
There are streams of tears running down Tsuzura's face mirroring her own, but her mouth is set in a strong line. The once cowering girl she had reunited with in the beginning of the semester was different now. She was still as sensitive as could be, but Mary knew that she had grown stronger. She could see it now in her bright, but tiredly resigned eyes. There was sadness, overwhelming sadness written across her face. Yet, despite it all, Mary could see there was a determination in her features that hadn't been there before.
"TSUZURA, PLEASE!"
It felt like an eternity of them staring at each other from a distance. Mary with panic in her eyes and Tsuzura with resignation in hers. She was still running to catch up to her, but Tsuzura didn't budge from her seat next to the strange man. Why wasn't she leaving?
"PLEASE, STOP!"
It was always like this. Tsuzura would find herself in trouble and Mary would always come to the rescue. That's how they worked. That's how it always worked. But this time, Tsuzura wasn't letting herself be saved.
"TSUZURA!"
Just as she was in reaching distance of the iron gates, she watches helplessly as Tsuzura's lips mouth her final words to Mary.
"Stay strong, my prince."
Then, the door to the van slams shut between the two girls, leaving Mary to stare at her own reflection in the tinted windows. Even she could see the pure heartbreak in her own eyes as the vehicle peeled away from the curb.
"No. NO!" her exhausted body scrambles after the retreating van, but the tail lights were barely visible as they turned down the winding driveway of the private academy.
Mary can't remember how, but she manages to make it back into the building before the brewing storm outside gets worse. Her legs are sluggish and her head is wrought with a migraine from the constant crying. Idly, she rubs the skin of her throat trying to soothe the ache from her overworked vocal cords.
She collides with a body. "Oof, sorry-" Mary mutters without meaning it. She was so distracted that she didn't see the person who had been standing at the top of the stairs, all along.
Kirari Momobami.
"But how do you know if she had anything to do with it?" Itsuki questions.
She sighs exasperatedly. "I just know! She was standing there, staring with a creepy, knowing look in her eyes!" Mary blurts with her arms flailing out to the side. "There was no one else in that foyer, just me and her. I'm sure of it. She had to have seen the whole thing and she didn't even question it!"
"To be fair, she always has a creepy knowing look in her eye," Itsuki quips.
Mary doesn't humor her. She crosses her arms over her chest and stares fixedly at the ground. She could understand that the story was hard to believe, but Mary knows what she saw that night.
Arms suddenly wrap around her back and she feels herself resting her forehead on Itsuki's shoulder. "I'm sorry. It's just a lot to take in," she apologizes. "I'm sorry about what happened to Tsuzura."
She doesn't let the tears fall. It has been months since she last let that happen.
Mary gives Itsuki a look of gratitude before breaking from the embrace.
"I wrote letters to her house for weeks, but never got a reply. I called every chance I could, but no one ever answered. Her cell phone number is disconnected and her parents are unreachable. I've tried everything. I never found her."
Itsuki can only stare dumbfounded at her friend. Never did she expect this when she followed Mary out of that gambling room.
"After Tsuzura, I closed myself off to everyone at Hyakkaou. I didn't trust anybody, least of all Kirari," Mary spits out.
"That's why I'm glad to have you as a friend, Itsuki. Really, thank you."
All Itsuki can do is take Mary's hands in hers and squeeze them fondly, hoping to convey whatever it is that Mary needs in that moment.
They're still standing there, hands connected with one another, when Itsuki realizes how late it is. "You know what? I think I still have some daifuku in my fridge. Let's stuff our faces 'til we pass out!"
Mary gives a small nod and chuckles, uncharacteristically shy after all she's revealed.
As they walk back to the dormitory together, she considers the past conversation they've shared. Itsuki is the first person she has ever told about Tsuzura, but she doesn't regret it. Not one bit.
Once again, Mary is glad that she won't be alone for the night. Even if it isn't with the girl she wants to be with.