Chapter 2

It was the next morning and everything was quiet in the Otonashi house, when suddenly, a scream was heard. Yuzuru leaned forward in his bed "Hatsune, what's wrong?" he yelled. Just then he saw Kanade look up at him from under the covers.

"Oh, good morning Yuzuru. Did you sleep well?" she said while rubbing her eyes.

"What the hell are you doing in my bed? I gave you your own room didn't I?" he yelled out of shock.

"Yes but I felt much more content laying here next to you Yuzuru." They all paused for a moment then after a few seconds Hatsune got a horrified look on her face.

"Big brother, you mean you had s…s…s…"

"It's not what you're thinking Hatsune. Th-this is all just a big misunderstanding."

"Oh, Yuzuru," Kanade said, "thanks for letting me sleep in your shirt. It was really comfortable." They all just stood there for a few moments. "Oh and sorry you had to see me like that last night. I know it was rough for you seeing something like that for the first time and everything."

They stayed silent until Hatsune ran down the hall yelling and crying, "Big brother's a man-whore!"

"Hey, wait, this isn't-!...you don't-!...I'm not a man-whore!" He looked at Kanade with a blank expression, "I hope you're happy." She just looked at him confused with her head slightly tilted to the side.

It was now breakfast time and they were all sitting around the table. "Ooooooh." Hatsune said. "You could've told me about this sooner."

"I tried to but you ran down the hall calling me a man-whore!"

"Whatever. Hi there, my names Hatsune Otonashi and I'm Yuzuru's younger, and much smarter, sister."

"Hello, I'm Kanade Tachibana. Thank you for letting me stay with you and I hope I am not a burden."

"Not at all." Hatsune said with a smile. "In fact it gets boring with our parents traveling all the time and whatnot. So please feel free to make a commotion like you did this morning." Hatsune smiled and chuckled a bit.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door and to everyone's surprise it was Shiina! "Oh, you're that girl who saved us yesterday, aren't you? So why are you here?"

"Well," Shiina said rubbing her hands together with a nervous look on her face, "you said you were in my debt, did you not."

"Yeeeeah." Yuzuru said with a confused look.

"Well I was hoping that maybe, if it wasn't too much trouble, you and I could be friends." She said with a scared look like she was expecting him to hit her or something.

"Sure," he said with a smile, "that would be awesome."

"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!" She said hugging him. He was a bit uneasy because her boobs were pressing up against him and when he looked over at Kanade she was giving him an evil stare; which, dare I say, is very rare for her because she hardly ever shows emotion. Yuzuru picked up on this rather fast and pushed Shiina away gently. When he looked in her eyes, for just half a second, he saw her as someone with a much more serious face.

"What happened to you?" he said in a whisper.

"What did you say?" Shiina asked confused.

""Uh…I said um…what's your name? We, uh, can't be friends if we don't know each other's names." He tried to brush off the awkward moment he had just made.

"Oh, right, I'm sorry, how rude of me! My name is Shiina Saito; pleasure to meet your acquaintance!" Yuzuru was trying to figure out why the hell she looked so happy.

"Don't get me wrong," he said, "I'm happy that we're friends now too and everything, but don't you think you're a little bit overjoyed. I mean, it's not like I'm your first friend or anything."

"Actually," Shiina said looking very embarrassed, "you are. You're my first friend."

"No way! How can that be, I mean, you seem nice enough."

"Well, you see, my father never really let me get close enough to anyone to let me be friends with them. He had me train six hours a day Monday through Friday on my weaponry skills; and on the weekends I had to help my mother with my baby brother and the house, so I had a pretty tight schedule. Actually, I'm not even supposed to be here right now I'm supposed to be out grocery shopping for my mother. You see, my father recently grew ill and so since it's so close to Thanksgiving I told her I would do some extra chores to help out around the house. In fact I better get back to shopping."

"Well if you want we could help you out, right Kanade?" Kanade nodded her head with a blank expression on her face.

Kanade walked towards Shiina and bowed, "Thank you for saving me the other day."

Shiina smiled. "No problem, besides, I can't stand it when the strong pick on the defenseless. Now then shall we go?"

"One more question." Yuzuru said. "Are you the daughter of the famous weapons master Hiroshi Saito?"

"Yes, that is correct, but please don't give me any special treatment just because I'm wealthy. I want to be treated like an average person."

Yuzuru then gave her a playful slap on the back of the head and said with a smile, "I wasn't planning on giving ya any special treatment. Now come on, we got shopping to do." She smiled at him, nodded, and started walking with him and Kanade. "Hatsune, we're gonna give Shiina a hand with her chores so be sure to watch the house while we're gone, okay?"

"You got it playa." Hatsune said with a wink.

"Please don't call me that." Yuzuru replied with an expressionless face.

"Ok Mr. Man-whore."

"I'm leaving now." So Yuzuru, Kanade, and Shiina all walked out and Yuzuru shut and locked the door.

"What was that about?" Shiina asked.

Yuzuru turned to her and replied, "That was just Hatsune," he got a slight smile on his face, "being Hatsune." So a few hours and hundreds of dollars later, they were heading back to Shiina's house. It was pretty late, around five-thirtyish so they were planning on eating dinner at Shiina's house. "Holy hell this place is huge!" Yuzuru screamed while staring at, what could be mistaken for, a small castle. "Isn't it hard maintaining this place with just you and your parents?"

"Well, you see, usually we have groundskeepers, cooks, waiters, and a bunch of other different people here. But since it's almost Thanksgiving we let everyone take a week off."

"That reminds me," Yuzuru continued while they were halfway up the mile long driveway, "people in Japan don't usually celebrate Thanksgiving, do they? So, why do you and your family do it?"

"Oh, you see, my mother is American. That's actually where my mother and father first met. My mother was working in a place where one of my father's Kendo matches was being held. So they met there and he decided to stay with her in America for about a year. Then, that Thanksgiving, he proposed to her, they got married, and she moved back here to Japan with my father before having me and my baby brother. So I guess you could say we celebrate that day the same as the Americans do, but for a different reason." Just then her eyes widened as she ran towards the door. "What the hell happened?" she yelled.

Yuzuru's face got serious, "Looks like the handle has been smashed with something like a bat." Yuzuru walked into the hallway and turned to the left to check out the dining room. All he needed was one look and he backed up with fear in his eyes and his hand covering his mouth.

Shiina ran towards him, "Yuzuru, what is it? What's the matter?"

Yuzuru put his hand out, "Shiina don't come any further! Don't look!" Then Shiina saw it. Her two parents tied up and stabbed to death in a chair with cut marks all over their bodies. And worst of all, her four year old brother hanged to death from the chandelier. Shiina backed up into the wall with wide eyes and then she screamed out of horror and intense pain while holding her head. Then, she collapsed face down on the floor while crying and vomit was coming out of her mouth.

"Shiina!" Yuzuru laid her on her side. "Kanade, call 911 right now!"

"Right, I'm on it!" Yuzuru started snapping his fingers in front of her eyes but Shiina didn't respond. Her eyes stayed wide open while tears rolled out.

"Oh no, this isn't good." Yuzuru figured out what was wrong with Shiina right then and there. So within a five-and-a-half hour time period, Yuzuru and Kanade got questioned by the police and then got a ride to the hospital where Shiina was. Yuzuru had tried to eat something but the image of that slaughtered family was racing through his mind, so he ended up throwing it back up.

Yuzuru and Kanade were in the hospital waiting room when Kanade started a conversation. "Hey Yuzuru."

"Yeah."

"How did you know what to do back there when you turned Shiina over on her side? And also, how did you figure out that I couldn't taste food anymore just by knowing I got hit on the back of the head?"

"Well, the reason is that…I wanna become a doctor. That's what my dad does for a living and I think it'd be pretty cool. So I study and practice medicine in my spare time."

At around one-thirty a.m. Shiina's doctor walked into the waiting room and pulled Yuzuru and Kanade out into the hall.

"Are you the friends of Shiina Saito?" asked the doctor.

"Yes," Yuzuru said, "is she going to be alright? How is her condition?"

"Well, the good news is she's stable for the time being. But your friend…your friend has epilepsy. Epilepsy is something that causes major problems in the brain and, to put it in lighter terms causes it to malfunction. Epilepsy also causes things called seizures, which is what your friend has just had. It doesn't look too good."

"Do you know what could have caused the seizure so suddenly doctor?"

"Well it could've been a number of things; heat, stress, flashing lights, but the most reasonable explanation would be the shock of seeing her family's corpse's right in front of her eyes. Right now, like I said, she's stable, but she's in a coma. I'm sorry to have to tell you this but it doesn't look like she's ever going to wake up." Yuzuru then ran out the door into the pouring rain and Kanade chased after him. She finally caught up to him and grabbed a hold of his arm. He started punching the concrete ground with full force.

"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" with each word that came out of his mouth another punch hit the ground. Kanade pulled back on his arm hard enough to hold back the next punch.

"Yuzuru, stop it! Just stop it!" Kanade now started to cry as the blood from his knuckles washed away into the sewage drain.

"I could've saved her! I could've stopped her from going into that room I could've prevented all of this if only I didn't freeze up!"

"You did everything you could!"

"It's not enough! It's never enough!"

"STOP IIIIT!" Kanade gripped onto his shirt and cried into his chest. "Please Yuzuru; I just wanna go home…I just wanna go home. Yuzuru calmed down, bowed his head and stood up.

"Alright Kanade, let's go home. Let's go home." Yuzuru said in a gentle voice. So they walked through the hard rain, praying that tomorrow would be better than today.