Yui's Recap: Yui was running from villagers who thought she was a demon due to her purple contacts. She ran through a tunnel in the middle of some hedges and ended up finding a monkey.

Chapter 8

Written by smexysesshomaru

And then she remembered the angry villagers. She was surprised she could not hear them earlier.

In the villagers frenzy, they were yelling, screaming, and threatening from the other side of the hedges that they would burn the greenery down. The greenery, of which, they were declaring was where she, the demon, lived and had taken their daughters. Some were shouting "No!" and were trying to explain that it was dangerous, but a few louder voices agreed that it was a good idea to burn the hell hole down.

Yui felt a shiver go down her back as she glanced at the hole in the tall hedges she had run through. No one had come running through them yet. An option which made much more sense. Questioning their mental competence, Yui was about to reach down and check on the monkey she was standing over. Almost instinctively however, she had the impulse to look up above the tall hedges she had run through. She froze.

"You can't be serious," she breathed. Thick clouds of black smoke were floating upwards, like smoke from a chimney on Christmas day. She stared at the plumes of smoke, lost in thought about the stupidity of what she just saw. It did not take a scientist to figure out the implications of what she was witnessing: If the wind picked up or if the fire got out of hand, the dry grass she had run through to get to this meadow would ignite and burn down their flimsy village.

The monkey, also noticing what Yui saw, "Eeeiked" and ran before Yui could even bring herself to react. The birds, which were enjoying the calm atmosphere earlier, all erratically flapped their wings and fled the scene. A few stray brown feathers floated back down to earth, amplifying the significance of the birds' absence.

Yui's feet started moving before her brain decided what to do. Quickly, she found herself running in the opposite direction of the smoke, out of the cover of the tree she had hid behind, almost forgetting why she had hidden behind it in the first place. Briefly, she thought of the monkey and wondered where it had fled, but saw nothing as her eyes skirted around. Traitor! she thought, but her legs continued to move straight ahead without giving her the chance of trying to find whatever hiding spot the monkey made for itself.

In no time, she was at the other end of the meadow, gasping for breath as she was trying to claw her way through the densely packed branches and leaves. She tried moving the branches out of the way, tried ramming her way through, tried climbing up and over, but it was no use. Regardless of what she tried, she could not get through. The branches were too densely packed to move or to quickly break through, and they could not safely support her weight. She got two feet off the ground three times, and ended up falling, almost twisting her leg once on her quick descent.

Behind her, a football field away, she saw the flames lick the top of the hedges near the entrance she had run through. She was starting to smell the branches burn. The fire was edges spreading around the edges of the meadow.

She panicked, screaming incoherently as she started to run along the perimeter of the hedges looking for a way out. There was nothing, and she did not want to risk going closer to the fire.

Then she remembered it: the pond. If nothing else, it could be shelter! Taking a deep breath and gulping it down like adults do alcohol, Yui sprinted to the pond and swan dived in, surrounding herself with the water.

The water was deep, dirty and colder than what she expected. She sank close to the bottom and stopped moving for a moment. Then, having a stroke of inspiration, she realized something and swam back to the surface. She kicked off her shoes, and almost agonizingly took off her shoulder strap and bid goodbye to her bag and all the electronics inside. I will miss you, my phone. Rest in peace at the bottom of the pond. Forgive me, as your master, I am ashamed that your grave will be shared with my dreaded math text book. Farewell, my one and only Sungsam Milkyway S3.

Then she took a deep breath of air, and sank back down, swimming towards the soft current of water she felt earlier. It was small, and Yui was afraid that she would not fit through, but Yui found a underwater stone cave where the water was slowly exiting. She swam through it desperately, the understanding that she would either burn to death or drown driving her recklessness in her escape.

Seconds passed and the tunnel became so tight she could not swim anymore and was quickly pulling herself along the rocks. One hand went in front of the other, as she continued to grab and pull herself along. Soon, she was squeezing herself through, running out of air.

She was freezing, exhausted, and her limbs felt heavy from all the running she had done. Her thoughts were spamming, I want to live!, which quickly became, I don't want to die, and then, I'm going to die. Her lungs burned and her heart panged as she realized she made the wrong choice: she should not have bought that amulet. She should have been more attentive to her friends. She should have listened to her parents more often. She should have told her family just how much she loved them. One hand in front of the next, she pulled herself along. Over a minute had passed.

Right before she involuntarily opened her mouth to gasp for air, her arm reached out and felt a strong current. She pulled herself towards it, pushing her body into it, feeling the strain of the water as it struggled to bring her neck, and then her torso down with it. The water ripped past her, roughly banging her legs against the stone wall of the tunnel as it pulled her out. She gasped in pain, breathed in the water, and seconds later, as she felt her body bang against the walls the current was rushing against in the cold, pitch black tunnel, she passed out.

Hideko's POV

Ikeda Hideko, Lord Ikeda's son, was neglecting his court duties as always. For the past week, he has been on the run from the castle, deciding that he would rather fake his own kidnapping than marry a plain woman his father that strategically picked out for him.

"And why should I marry her? Such an impetuous girl, who should not be able to stand in the brilliance of one such as I, should not have even the though to share a bed with me." Hideko sighed, and continued to wade in the cold river, bathing himself for the third time that day. He was stark naked, aside from the jewelry he had around his fat neck and pudgy fingers which he refused to take off. Hideko hated being dirty, and living in the forest for that past few days had exposed him to nothing but filth.

He breathed in deeply, looking up at the crisp blue sky. Then he frowned. Somewhere, perhaps a few miles away, someone had started a fire. "Ignorant commoners," he breathed, "Polluting my sky. When I return home I will have to talk to my father about placing laws around when food can be cooked."

He stretched, and sighed, and was about to call over his retainer, (an annoying little boy who could not do anything right), to bring him his clothes, when he saw something coming out of the low, rushing waterfall. Suddenly, pain enveloped him as the body of a girl shot out and rammed head first into Hideko's fat belly. She then flopped into the water, and floated along, as Hideko doubled over in the water and screamed out for his daddy to do something about his pain.

AN: Days later Yui would reflect on this incident and feel an incredible amount of dread and relief, realizing that she never check how deep the water in the pond was first before swan diving in head first.