Author's notes

I'm trying to write a lot of chapters at once, before I post any of them, because I am quite possibly the least consistent writer on the planet. I only get about six hours to myself every day, and I sincerely enjoy playing video games and drinking with those six hours. I enjoy writing as well, but writing takes thought, and thinking is in short supply nowadays.

Many of the details of Yoshino's character I have summarily made up; I don't think any of these conflict with what we know of her from the series. If you take umbrage, please let me know. That doesn't mean I'll do anything about it, but it's good to be told.

Credit where credit is due, part of this chapter belongs to the marvelous film Oldboy.

In case you were curious, IT was not a reference to the Stephen King novel. Think about the poor saps at work who fix your internet, and next time you see them, tell them thankya. Many of them have 4-year degrees in CS, making them far overqualified and far underpaid. Bum economies are something, huh.

I don't think Yoshino would like a very masculine type, but would anybody really be surprised to hear that she occasionally swings the other way? (But the other way from what? Ha-ha).

I lay on the computer a little in this chapter; don't mind it. I promise it's not a marty stu SI, (you'll know by the way you'll never see him again, and how he has that new plot-device smell), but we have to write what we know. Those of you in the know: Come up with your favorite four-line perl regex and post in your review it for bonus points. Maybe I'll be able to tell what it does.

A lot of you probably won't like the way you see the girls behaving in this chapter. It earns its M rating, I think, or at least comes close to it, and I get the feeling that I will be getting a lot of cries of OOC for it. If you've read It's So Cowardly, you'll know just how okay I am with that. I prefer to experiment with characters.


Two

Stave:

Commala come through / I'll sit a spell with you / if there's nothing else to do but talk/ then that's just what we'll do

Maybe this is clichéd, but I think what led to my evacuation of the world of the living more than anything else was the Internet.

The truth is, nobody can live without any human contact if they place any value on their sanity. I tried for a solid three months; that was the first time I attempted suicide. A man in a white coat was the first person I talked to in three months. We talked about, among other things, my sex life (what sex life, ha-ha), and I don't think he understood the extent to which that made me never want to see anyone ever again.

When I got back to my apartment, I threw out the business card of the counselor I'd been referred to, and purchased a video game, what they call an MMO. The MMO became my best friend, my window into the world, and on rare occasion, my lover. What else but the Internet can simultaneously hold all of those titles?

He gave Yoshino Shimazu's ass a pinch, and although she knew that making a fuss on the train was considered in poor taste, (which, if you were of Lillian stock, equated to in violation of the Geneva conventions)she looked around, saw three men looking slightly red. All three seemed to her to be avoiding her gaze. Seemed to be hoping she wouldn't notice them—which, of course, doubled their chances of being noticed. Only one of them had actually had the nuts to touch her, but she had a feeling – a sort of intuition which felt stronger than intuition – that all three had been contemplating it. She wondered idly whether any of them would have tried if they'd seen all the odds and ends in her purse.

(you have more than just odds and ends in there)

(why on earth do you keep this up)

Please be quiet, I have to work today.

The train pulled to a stop, the speaker informing her that this was her stop in a polite, detached tone. Time for work. Time to be a good citizen. Work, receive your reward, feed your belly. Go to a bar. Have a few. Go home with someone you don't know, don't particularly want to know.

Yoshino was in the middle of a human wave which would have propelled her forward, or possibly trampled her and left her as an example for the others, had she dared to stop. And yet, she was not sure if she hesitated as she exited the train. She felt like she did. Like she could not have avoided hesitating. What kind of complacent idiot just went from one discrete location to another without a moment of caution? (isn't this world full of holes after all)

And then she was down and moving, leading the pack, in fact. Not that any of them were particularly being led. It was the unique entity known as the crowd, which propelled her forward, and she fucking hated it.

Yoshino exited the platform and began a familiar walk. Three blocks south of the station, two blocks west, a final block south. Inefficient, but only if her goal was nothing more than getting to the office where she was probably the toughest manager in the country. It wasn't.

Her goal was the alley. It was always the alley. It had been the alley for the last two years.

The alley where she sometimes heard the horrible chimes. Not every day. More often when she got her monthlies.

The alley that was the last place she had seen Rei.

Three blocks south. As she approached, she could hear the first one in the distance, strong today. Still two blocks away and she could hear the faint clanging in her head, a noise that had forgotten that the polite way to enter the brain was through the ears. Like the onset of a migraine, and her head often hurt when she passed the alley, but her throat often choked, as well, and that had nothing to do with what she called the nutso-chimes. (She was quite certain that anybody who was more convinced that an imaginary set of chimes had more to do with the disappearance and presumed death of Rei Hasekura than did a small, shady section of a neighborhood that always seemed just a little more dilapidated than all the others was fucking nutso.)

She put her hand to her temple, massaged it, but did not stop or even slow her gait. She passed by the alley two minutes later, and looked

I bet you can find her

down the alleyway, saw nothing. Just the dark end of an alleyway with a manhole right up against the wall,

I bet if you come down here, you'll find her. She went down the manhole, you know. Went exploring.

stopped.

She didn't often stop and stare anymore. She hadn't spoken to the alley, hoping, wishing (in one hand, shitting in the other, which fills up first, ha-ha) that Rei could hear her, for six months now.

Not since the alley had started talking back. Started encouraging her to search. Down the alley, down the manhole, down to...to somewhere else.

Down, down, down.

Come on, it's lots of fun here. There's no recession. Hell, there's no economy. You won't have to worry about whether you'll end up having to lay somebody off or if you can skate by cutting salaries again. You can see Rei again. You can touch her if you want. You can touch her anywhere you want. She won't stop you. She might even help you along a bit.

Yoshino would have shut her ears, if only the fucking sound weren't coming in through her eyes. She'd close her eyes if she wasn't sure the alley would just whisper it in through her nose. Or her mouth as she breathed. Or her fucking

(come on honey let's see your cunny)

pores. She was pretty sure she couldn't close those on command. Yet.

Come on I'll show you a picture of her if you'll just take a peek down here. Genuine Polaroid pho-to-graph. While you're here we can take a couple of Polaroids of you if you'll just give us a little peek. Show the world what Lillian taught you to be ashamed of.

She had promised herself she would never answer it again, but today, she did. Only a little. Under her breath. Tokyo buzzed, constantly, at a high enough volume that one always had to speak with at least a little oomph in her voice, so she was reasonably unafraid of being heard, but she'd have been unafraid of being heard in a cave with three nuns standing next to her. "I'd carve it out and eat it," she murmured, her voice steady, "before I'd show it to you."

Was giving it a pronoun legitimizing it?

It was already fucking legitimate. She visited it daily, she could give it a pronoun.

The thing laughed. Laughed. Not a small chuckle, either—the guffaw filled her head, filling it to bursting, to the point where she actually had to stop (someone almost bumped into her, apologized, and moved on without really noticing) and cradle the bridge of her nose in her fingers. The girl has some steel in her after all. All right, cully, cut it out. Sautee it up. Season it. Set a nice glass of wine out to wash it down. Eat it.

Eat it.

EAT IT.

Yoshino started to walk again, and resolved to close her mind to it as it taunted her, its voice fading in her head, but not nearly fast enough, EAT IT, EAT IT, EAT IT CULLY EAT IT.

She was five minutes late, and this alone was cause for some discussion. The boss was never late. The boss was not only on time, but counted precisely how many seconds of work you missed, and held each one of them against you.

Not only was the boss late, but she was haggard. Her hair was neat, her skirt crisp, her makeup perfect, and her expression an utter mess. They didn't know what it was, only that they desperately hoped none of the others were stupid enough to ask about it. She passed through the sea of desks without so much as a word, and not so much as a word was spoken to her. Her eyes never seemed to leave the path she'd plotted out. This was not unusual; what was unusual was that this time, they could not feel the boss's scrutiny, vision or no. She was distracted. Somehow, this felt even more dangerous.

They rode it out, and she passed, as a fever might – leaving no lasting damage, only vague memories.

As it turned out, one of them was very stupid indeed.

Yoshino shut the door to her office harder than she'd intended, didn't notice, and shut the curtains to the two windows that looked out from the office to the floor without thinking about it (anybody with a brain knew that when the curtains were shut, to knock on her door was to take one's life into one's own hands).

The voice had faded from her mind but now somehow rang in her ears like an echo (eat it eat it eat it cully) in a deep canyon. This was not the first time the alley had spoken back to her, and she should not have felt so rattled by it.

Was it because she had tried to confront it?

Or because when she did, it simply laughed at her?

Did you really think it would be afraid of you? Did you really think that a talking alley would respect you simply for having the stones to tell it you weren't completely terrified of it?

I must be losing my fucking mind.

She took her jacket off and hung it on the coat hanger near her desk, pondered sitting down. She already knew precisely how much she'd be getting done today, and it fell somewhere between nothing and squat. She looked to one side of the office, where she kept a treadmill, thought about having a run. She had had it purchased with company funds when she got promoted, one of the conditions she'd laid out for accepting the promotion. Officially, it was for her health – she'd had quite a few doctors over the years, and they had been unanimous in informing her that although her surgery had been a success, if she didn't exercise regularly and keep a strict diet, she still ran a very good chance of dying before the age of fifty.

As of late, the treadmill was for something else entirely. Something she didn't quite understand yet. She had demanded it with the intent of keeping her heart beating, and so had mostly gone on little jogs, twenty minutes intended to get her sweating but not wheezing.

That had changed as she began to understand some of what had surrounded the alley. The more she investigated, the more she had felt the need to not simply stay in shape, but to become strong. She had started training not only to jog long distances, but to sprint, and to walk for long distances. Sometimes she would jury-rig her laptop to the treadmill and walk the full 9 hours she was at work, the treadmill informing her she'd walked almost 40 miles. She was in the best shape of her life by a mile (and Rei's not here to see it).

She felt like today would be a sprinting day. She glanced over to the lock on the door, saw it was locked, couldn't remember locking it. She went to the small closet near the corner of her threadbare office, opened it. There wasn't much in the closet, just like there wasn't much in her office, just like there wasn't much in her apartment.

(just like there isn't much in your life)

There was, however, a sports bra, (she hardly needed it – she and Yumi had always had a healthy competition going, and that was the best she would ever do, short of having a kid or plumping up) a set of conservative running shorts, (which went down to her knees), a (slightly less conservative) tank top, socks, running shoes, and a spare set of panties. (Because nothing in this world, slow drowning death included, was quite so horrid as going to a staff meeting in sweat-soaked panties which proceeded to dry into a crusty mess around your thighs as a shit-dull middle-management type informed you that productivity was up 17% but profits were down 9% due to a bum economy, which meant that you were going to have to equal that gap out with your worker's livelihoods.)

She unbuttoned and shed her blouse and bra quickly, sliding into the sports bra as quickly as possible. (Another old habit a Lady is nude as little as is possible, and never around others, which she always thought would make sex a horridly awkward, rushed affair, just as the locker rooms at Lillian were horridly awkward, rushed affairs.) After sliding the tank top over her shoulders, she dropped her skirt and panties and brought those up as quickly as possible as well. She gave the socks in the closet a sniff, decided they were still okay, (and so what if they weren't? Nobody would be smelling them while she was running) and put them on. She was stuffing her ankles into her still-tied running shoes when there was a knock at her door.

She froze for a second, frowned. There were no new people in her department, so there was nobody who didn't know just what happened to the poor saps who had a question or proposition for her when her shades were closed, and there was nobody who didn't know where the bodies were subsequently stashed. (At their desks, as an example to the others.) It could have been somebody from another department, and she was quite certain that if it was human resources, the little bastards outside would have gladly let them go to their deaths without a word of warning, possibly snickering as they did.

(A brief flicker of paranoia – what if it was her boss; she gave exactly two shits what he thought of her, but didn't like the idea of his eyes flicking over her slim frame, outlined so well by her workout clothes.)

Another knock. No way was it somebody from her section. Knocking once was provoking the sleeping predator; knocking twice was poking it in the eye with a stick.

She grimaced, her temper fouling, and unlocked and opened the door, probably a little too sharply. What greeted her immediately was a white button-up shirt and plain blue tie forming a sharp contrast with the smooth, slightly lined cool orange of a gently-muscled neck. She instinctively experienced two entirely separate, entirely uncontrollable reactions: The first, annoyance – white button-ups and boring blue ties meant IT, and that meant some new, useless feature installed on her computer and mindlessly dull conversation about just how awesome this new, useless feature was; the second, a bit of pleasure. Yoshino was not much of a judge, but it was a very nice neck.

The very nice neck belonged to an equally nice face; the face was masculine, but appeared to be hanging onto it by only a thread, with smooth skin, high cheekbones, lovely black hair that framed his eyes nicely, and a nose and lips that were both just slightly upturned. His frame was almost as thin as hers, just slightly taller. On his face was not the look of fear she had come to expect, and indeed, encouraged actively, but a look of almost boredom—no, a flicker of something else passed across it, just for an instant, and she knew that look, but not from experience, (she had some, but certainly not a wealth) but rather from intuition. It passed as quickly as it had come, but she stored it away for later, and couldn't tell herself in the next moment why she had.

Not unless she were being honest, anyway.

"What is it?" she said, laying on the I'm going to kill you and eat your corpse as thick as she could.

"Got something to configure on your PC," he said. "New tool, very …" he stopped. "Well, not very interesting at all, but it's new, anyway. Pretty interface. Lots of light blue and rounded edges. I'm pretty sure that was at least half the budget, since the whole thing is just a mask for a four-line perl script."

She smiled in spite of herself, and then pushed it away, nodded, moved aside. "I swear, last time one of you was here they told me they could do this remotely."

"We can, but only if your computer's on."

"Tough situation to remedy. Is the phone broken?" She couldn't quite understand why she was being as rude to him as she was, except that this was how she was to people who had bothered her; maybe her difficulty came from the fact that she didn't really feel that bothered, and god help her, she knew why, and she knew she knew, and she didn't want to fucking hear it.

He grinned a little sheepishly. "On the level?"

"On the level."

"Was a dare."

"Oh, come on," she grimaced as he walked over to her computer, hit the power button, and waited. "They are not honestly doing that now."

"You scared Yoshida pretty bad," he remarked simply, and she smiled at this. She didn't have a fucking clue who Yoshida was, only that the guys in IT (and they were mostly male, so she didn't feel bad using the qualifier) made a habit of knocking when her door was shut and her blinds were closed, and that she tended to go rough on them as an example to the others. Clearly it had backfired.

If that's what you want to call it.

He made his way over to her laptop, sitting in its station at her desk. He stood by it for a moment, and she grimaced. "You can turn it on," she said, allowing herself just a sliver of annoyance.

"Some people get touchy," he said, turning the computer on.

"Some people in IT, maybe, where the computer is a sacred sign of status," she remarked, and then shut the door behind her. In the next instant, she pretended to herself that she didn't know why she (honey honey show us your cunny) had.

"Among other things."

"Substitute?" Her eyebrows went up, and she realized that she really didn't want to know.

"To some of them."

"I'm guessing not to you, though."

"Confidentially? My GPU is huge."

She bit back a chuckle. (A lady does not laugh at a dirty joke. A lady would sooner be flogged than laugh at a dirty joke.) "I have not a clue what that means, and before you try to explain it to me," (he shut his mouth), "don't." Being honest, though, she took more of a liking than was probably good for the discipline of the company to his utter disregard for the fact that she was not only his superior, but his female superior, when telling dirty jokes.

He turned his eyes back to the computer, staring at the loading screen. She frowned for a moment, until she (honey honey) rose up just a touch on her toes and saw that his mouth was working, forcing back what was very obviously a laugh.

"Okay, it's coming up. I'll be five minutes. Don't mind me, just do whatever you'd do if I wasn't here."

"If you weren't here I'd be on my computer," she pointed out.

He frowned for a second (she saw it in his eyes—she'd come down off the balls of her feet). "Fair point," he remarked, clearly not quite sure what to say.

In fairness, you're not making it easy for him. The poor dork.

He clicked the mouse, frowned, clicked again, and out of reflex, she said, "It's slow."

"The eternal mystery: Why is my computer slow?" He didn't look up.

"Thought you people would know."

"Nobody knows. Even IT types can only shrug and say, it's old. I have a couple buddies who make these things, and they say pretty much the same thing."

"For some reason I always envisioned computer geeks like car geeks – if you can restore an old hunk of junk it's way better than the latest model. Even if it costs you twice what the latest model is worth."

"Not so," he remarked. "If your machine is more than a year or two old it's no longer your machine, just a temporary one while all the parts for your new rig show up in the mail."

"That feels somehow heartless."

"Clearly you are more of a car person."

She smiled at this, as she had never driven a car in her life. She lived in Tokyo; who needed a car? The trains were faster, better for the environment, and they sometimes gave you that warm, sweaty feeling up the back of your dress.

He typed for a few seconds, frowned, then typed again and nodded. "You want me to configure this for you, or do you want to figure it out yourself?"

"Will I ever use it?"

"That depends. What do you do, exactly?"

"I make mean faces at everyone until they work harder."

He snorted. "Probably not, then. But everyone who's a department manager or higher gets it, so the company can call itself lean to the stockholders."

She was not certain that she had known anybody as cynical as (herself) this since Sei had left for New York. She missed it, somehow. She and Sei had never been terribly close, but Yumi had meant the world to Sei, and that had meant that the older woman was, by association, important, and to be visited with on occasion.

"That ought to do it," he said. "Anything else I can do for you?"

She paused, pursed her lips, and said what she wanted to say, without thinking about it. (Which was, incidentally, the only way she could have said it.) "You can take me out for a coffee."

He froze, a little stunned, a little wary, a lot frightened. "Like, now?"

"No, after work. Now I need to," (get on my treadmill and - not jog - fucking sprint as long as I can, as hard as I can, and not just because I'm suddenly feeling chubby and self-conscious in spite of my best efforts, but because I just did something I want to run away from) "make mean faces at the poor drudgery outside. I usually leave at about six."

"Oh my word, the management has it easy," he said, a grin spreading to replace the slow terror that had taken over his face in the moments after her request. "If I leave before seven I may as well not come back."

"That's fine," she said quickly, "I can…well, I can work. Or wait. Or something. But there's a lovely restaurant across the street, they serve Italian food there, and—"

"What happened to coffee?"

"They have coffee there too, but at seven I'll be hungry." At six I'll be hungry, at seven I'll probably chew my arm off.

He waited for about four seconds that lasted about four years, and then said, "Sure. And I'll try and sneak out at six thirty; I'm not sure if I'll be able to, but it's worth a shot."

The implied, the unsaid: You're worth a shot. A grin played on his face; a little excited, a little nervous, a little afraid, a little hopeful. Not the look she wanted to see. Yoshino hoped he wasn't…

What?

Clingy?

You're horrible, you know that.

"Okay," she said. She'd be there by six. No force in the world could keep her here late without a fucking good reason. (How she'd ever made manager was still a mystery to her.) She'd order dinner for 6:45; she figured if it took him longer to show than it took her to eat, he wouldn't show at all. Yoshino knew she was pretty, but she also knew that she was, as somebody who spent most of their time in Harajuku might put it, not fashionable. To some men, a trendy shirt and a nice pair of boots was infinitely more attractive than a nice ass and a pair of tits. (Ironically, this, much like the Lillian view on nudity, made her feel that sex between folks with these sorts of priorities must be very awkward indeed.)

"Okay," he echoed. "I'll see you there, then. As soon as I can."

He's going to be clingy.

God fucking damn it.

You are horrible. Well and truly horrible.

After he left, she got on the treadmill and ran. The new tool didn't do anything that she had a use for; she deleted it.

By six o'clock, her treadmill informed her that she'd journeyed about forty miles, and gone fucking nowhere in the process. A normal day.

The cute boy from IT wasn't that clingy, but he was surprised when, early the next morning, both of them sticky with sweat and Yoshino, at least, feeling roughly fifty times better than she had the morning before, handed him his pants. He didn't protest, but he looked disappointed. Not clingy. Maybe. He left looking a bit sad, and when the door closed behind him, she had three thoughts in rapid succession:

God, that was just what I needed.

Thank god he wasn't clingy.

Jesus Christ, you're horrible.

All three were true.


Response:

Commala come two / that's not all that we'll do / for if by night you would have me / then commala I'd have you

Sachiko woke the next morning with a splitting headache and the distinct impression that something furry had crawled into her mouth and died sometime during the night. The wine they had split the previous night had been what Sei called two-buck chuck; it had actually cost around five dollars, after taxes, but Sei had informed her that this wine had earned its title decades before and never quite lost it. The taste was not offensive, though not quite what Sachiko was used to (she was, in fact, used to very little when it came to alcohol – she had kicked her high-school ulcer around the same time she had started to seriously date Yumi, but her stomach was much weaker for it, so she wasn't able to drink particularly often). Something she had never quite been warned about was that cheap booze led to costly hangovers. Sei, it seemed, was more used to it, as by the time Sachiko had finally wrenched her eyes open she was already up, dressed in a white tank-top and panties and little else, and staring out her window.

Sachiko sat up, and her brain took about three seconds to follow her skull. Like a true Ogasawara, she gritted her teeth and bore it, but had to steady herself with a hand. Sei noticed her a moment later, and turned, grinning.

"Hitting you pretty hard, is it?" she asked, not sounding awfully concerned. "I warned you."

"No you didn't," Sachiko said through a mouthful of cotton balls that somebody had apparently stuffed in her mouth to suppress the dead-rodent taste. "I haven't felt this awful since—" Since when? Probably since Kyoto.

"Since Kyoto," Sei finished, and this time Sachiko smiled.

"I was just thinking that."

Sei nodded, and there was a moment's silence, during which Sachiko did her best not to notice the pathetic job Sei's tank top did covering her generous bust. She turned her eyes to the window. "What were you doing?"

"Just…" she paused, and Sachiko knew the answer—she was listening to the song. Her apartment is only a couple of blocks from the tower—"looking out at the city." Why is she lying about it?

"That's not quite…" Sachiko frowned. She did not feel bad calling Sei on her fib, but she had never quite known how to do something like that directly. She wanted to say something like, and the song, I can hear it just a little. It's quite lovely, isn't it, but she couldn't hear it, and she had a strange feeling that Sei would know it. She frowned, saw something in Sei's eyes. Something not quite right.

A thought occurred to her suddenly: Be careful.

Of what, exactly?

Of her.

"That's not quite what?" Sei asked.

Sachiko felt somehow more uncomfortable about the thought of being careful around one of her close friends than about calling her on a direct lie. "Not quite right," she said. "You were listening to the…to the song."

"I was," Sei admitted with no hesitation. "You can just barely hear it from the window. That's why I stay here."

It was from Sei's eyes, rather than her words, that Sachiko thought, she doesn't like admitting that. Is she embarrassed? The thought of Sei embarrassed by anything was a little odd, but didn't feel wholly out of place, as Sei began to, probably unconsciously, shift slightly away from the window. Shutting the song out.

What is she embarrassed of? The song is lovely.

Sachiko decided that pressing the topic would be a bad idea, and did her best to change the subject. "What are we doing today?"

"You're going to make a movie, if I recall correctly," Sei replied, and her face immediately cleared, glad to be rid of the topic of the song, as though they were not discussing a lovely tune so much as rough bondage. "What time is your meeting?"

"Eleven," Sachiko said, and somebody inside her head headbutted her, reminding her just how early eleven could be. She closed her eyes and put her index finger and thumb on the bridge of her nose, grimacing against the pain. "Remind me why I let you convince me to drink that entire bottle of wine."

"Hey, sister," Sei said. "You did most of the convincing yourself." She grinned, and her grin came close to touching her eyes, but did not quite manage to do so. "All I did was a teensy little bit of enabling."

"For shame," Sachiko said quietly, pressing the bridge of her nose a bit harder.

"Shall I make you a prairie oyster?" Sei asked, her eyes beginning to do an old dance that Sachiko was more than familiar with. For some reason, Sachiko felt a great deal of comfort at this little shit-eating twinkle. Felt the feelings of suspicion, of caution, of concern that Sei had given her melt away, and into a blinding jolt of nausea.

Sachiko's face twisted, and before she was halfway to her feet, Sei shouted, down the hall to the left, although she already knew where the bathroom was. The instructions to follow freed her mind to focus on

Holditinholditinholditin

Keeping her gullet down until she hit the bathroom, but as she opened the door, her mind emptied entirely and she felt the song seep into her spine. As she closed her eyes and stopped running, she felt her stomach begin to quiet, and she put her hand on the doorknob, steadying herself.

(ashes to ashes, dust to dust, everything returns from whence it came, and McDonalds is no exception ha-ha)

"Well," Sei said from behind her, and a moment later, she felt two hands, gentle but firm, clasp her arms just so.

(when did she get there?)

(Firm hands. Firm.)

She stayed there for another minute or so, quietly savoring the feeling of her stomach calming. "You good?" Sei asked eventually.

"I think so," Sachiko said, and couldn't think of a way to follow that up, so she didn't. "I'm sorry about that," She straightened up, looked down at the plain blue T-shirt, (which she had stolen from Sei – she wasn't certain, but she didn't believe she actually owned any T-shirts herself) which was now no longer entirely blue, but rather sporting a large red patch from a spill that Sachiko could not entirely recall, and grimaced. "And about…"

"Don't worry about it," Sei said with a smile that Sachiko could not avoid describing to herself as chipper. "I work at a bar. I've gotten way more on way nicer shirts before. It comes out. You probably shouldn't be wearing a T-shirt to your meeting anyway."

"Probably not," Sachiko agreed, and then paused. "What time is it?"

Sei poked her head out of the bathroom, frowned. "Nine-thirty."

Sachiko's stomach gave another lurch. Oh god, I'm going to be late. "I need to get ready," she said quickly. "I'm very sorry, but may I use the shower first?"

"Sure," Sei said. "And don't look so terrified. We're only a few minutes away from the building, fewer if we're smart enough to forget our heels. We'll make it."

Sachiko nodded, her mind desperately trying to pry itself away from the conversation and into the realm of panic. An hour and a half to shower, shave my legs, put on my makeup, pick out a wardrobe— she nearly vomited in panic. "Sei," she said, her breath catching in her throat. "I forgot my bag at the hotel."

"Aw, shit," Sei said, spitting out the last word. "Sachiko, you're lucky we're about the same height. I'll find you something while you're in the shower. I hope."

"You hope?"

"Most of my wardrobe is geared towards getting big tips at a bar. It's not exactly business-formal."

"Oh no," Sachiko said, grabbing her mind with her claws and dragging it, kicking and screaming, away from panic. "Do you have anything that buttons all the way up to the neck?"

Sei laughed at this. "Of course I do. You get in the shower. I'll scrounge something up by the time you get out."

Sei left, and Sachiko, having no choice but to trust her, stripped down and got into the shower. At some point during her ten minute shower, Sei entered the room and laid a neatly-folded pile of clothes on the toilet: A plain white blouse, crisp black dress pants, and a silk scarf, which she knew for a fact she could tie around Sachiko's neck in such a way as to make up for her lack of a coat or tie, which she knew without asking Sachiko had been intending to wear.

When Sachiko got out, she saw the stack of clothes, dried off apprehensively. Was Sei aware that leaving freshly-ironed clothes in a steamy bathroom was a great way to wrinkle them? She thought maybe she wasn't. When she tried them on, however, she found them perfectly crisp, and better still, almost a perfect fit. She wasn't entirely sure what the point of the scarf was, and so exited the bathroom carrying rather than wearing it, which Sei quickly remedied by tying it around her neck in probably the most ingenious imitation of a necktie she had ever seen.

Ten minutes later, shoes were donned, pieces of toast eaten as quickly as possible without scarfing, and they were out the door. On their way to the elevator, Sei grabbed her hand and took off in a dash to catch a closing door, and then kept hold of it. (It's always easier to keep holding someone's hand than to start.) Sachiko did not object, but thought it a bit unusual – She had never thought of Sei as precisely recalcitrant, but she had never been particularly touchy-feely, either. (Was anybody at Lillian touchy-feely?) On the other hand, she didn't dislike it – Sei's hand was soft and delicate, and gripped hers just firmly enough to remind her that Sei was there, and as they walked through Manhattan, with its unfamiliar sights, its offensive smells, its hostile sounds, the reminder was nice. They didn't speak as they went, but the closer they got to 2 Hammarskjold Plaza, the more Sachiko began to sense some sort of agitation from Sei. She couldn't tell why, exactly; she only noticed that Sei stopped making eye contact with her at some point, squeezed her hand a little tighter, walked a little faster, her steps more rigid. The kind of thing that Sachiko had seen from Yumi when she was trying to run away from a knot in her stomach.

Anxiety.

No, not quite.

Fear.

And then, just as Sachiko was beginning to really think about this, they were there, in front of the door. Sei hesitated for a moment, and then opened the door, held it for Sachiko. As the door opened, Sachiko began to hear the song again, felt it dull her own nerves.

"It looks like we have about half an hour," Sachiko said, and Sei nodded absently, steering them towards the ledge of the little garden that seemed to exist solely to protect –

The rose.

A brilliant, red rose, in the middle of the garden, sitting by itself. Sachiko's eyes locked onto it, and then she found herself sitting on the ledge, and all of a sudden Sei was holding her, and not gently.

"What—"

But something in her mind said, no. Don't ask questions.

And that, coupled with the song, was enough to pacify her.

And so Sei held Sachiko for a half an hour. At some point, they sat, but not once did Sei stop touching Sachiko in one way or another. Sachiko felt a kind of dull foreboding, but the song, which she was increasingly sure was coming from the rose, stopped her from considering it overmuch.

At 11 in the morning, two men with sharp eyes and crisp suits came to them, and asked Sachiko to come with them. Sei's hand tightened around Sachiko's for just a moment, and from nowhere, Sachiko thought, second thoughts.

And then Sei's hand let go, finally, and in the midst of her sudden and acute confusion, Sachiko had time to miss the warm comfort as the two men escorted Sachiko away. Sei didn't look at her.

(is she crying?)

When they got in the elevator, one of the men slid a card, and Sachiko began to move down, instead of up. All too late, alarm bells started going off in her head, the nervous edge that had been dulled by the rose's presence. Fifteen minutes later, she was gone: From 2 Hammarskjold Plaza; from New York City, from the world in which she had lived.

And at the precise moment that she exited the world of science and progress, Yumi Fukuzawa, thousands of miles away, unable to sleep at two in the morning in their small, comfortable, simply decorated home in Tokyo, felt a shiver pass over her. An hour later, she had woken Yoshino from a dead sleep, and was driving to her house.