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White Wind Anemones

Chapter 2: Awakening

"Hey, Yuui!" An old grandpa greeted cheerfully from his bed as she walked into the ward, clipboard in hand and smile on her face.

"Good evening, Eito," Yuui greeted back, bending to check the grandpa's clipboard at the foot of his bed. "I heard you're ready to be discharged in two days, how are you feeling?" Yep, the grandpa's clipboard had said he had shown full recovery from his lung surgery, and after three weeks of recovering in a private ward paid by his children, he was finally able to be discharged.

"Great," Eito the grandpa replied, "my youngest kid, you know Eiko right? The girl with the short hair, not the one with the wavey hair, that's my eldest. She's coming to pick me up on Monday, and she told me that once I get better the kids will bring the grandkids over."

Yuui listened politely and gave indications that she was listening as Eito the grandpa blabbered on about his family. She didn't particularly enjoy long stories as she tended to drift off in the middle, but she found that it made people happy if she was willing to listen, and making people happy was part of her job and she took her job very seriously. After a year or so, Yuui got the hang of socializing with the patients, and they liked her as much as she liked her job- a lot.

Aoikiwa Yuui was a nurse at Tokyo Central Hospital. She had been a nurse there for five years, and in that five years, she had seen many patients come and go. She was an extremely friendly person, and made it her goal to befriend each and every patient that crosses her path. Therefore she was quite well known among the patients as the 'Very Friendly Nurse'.

In that five years, Yuui had been assigned to many departments as her degree in Nursing made her well suited for any role the head nurses assigned her. She had been to the ICU, to the operating theatres, and both the private and public wards to care for patients. One stood out the most as she had been assigned to the case, meeting the child in the ICU, then the operating theatres, and finally the child's paid-for bed in the private wards. The child had been in the hospital since May of last year, and every time Yuui did her rounds, passing by the child's bed, she would feel a pang in her heart for the child who barely survived and slipped into a coma after the car crash that took the parents' lives. Yuui remembered that the parents had succumbed to death before they reached the ICU, and their child had been in critical condition, but stabilized after emergency surgery. Everything was paid for post-mortem by the parents, who were apparently quite rich business people, leaving their only child their fortune.

Yuui was jolted out of her thoughts as Eito the grandpa stopped talking. She bade Eito goodbye and checked her clipboard as she walked out of his ward, realizing she had to visit the child next, the last before she was dismissed for the day. The night nurses would take over, and she wasn't assigned night duty this month.

She slipped into the orphan's room, feeling the sadness wash over her as she took in the fourteen year old's frail form. The orphan was really an orphan now, the parents had been the only child of their respective families, therefore no uncle or aunt to take the child in, and the grandparents were dead. They had been the only child of their families too, so there weren't even great aunts or uncles. As usual, the child lay among the sheets, breathing slowly, hooked up to a life support machine.

Yuui checked the child's vitals. It was the same as every other day, there was no difference or sign that the child was waking up.

But it was a miracle, that as Yuui stood there, watching the kid for a minute or two in silence. She'd have missed it otherwise. The child's finger had twitched, she was sure of it.

Then the child's heart rate started speeding up, eyelids twitching.

Yuui started. She rushed to the side of the room, where the button for infocomm was at, pressed it and called for the doctor.

"What's happening?" The doctor, a handsome man just a little older than Yuui flanked by a pair of nurses, asked immediately after closing the door behind him.

"The child is waking up," Yuui replied tersely, turning back to the monitor, where the readings were fluctuating in an increasing manner.

"What?" The doctor asked, surprised. "All of a sudden?"

Yuui nodded. "I was just about to leave and spotted the child's finger twitching." She then pointed out the increasing heartbeat trend on the monitor.

"It seems like we have to get ourselves ready for our young friend here to awaken then," the doctor said, confirming Yuui's observations. "Go contact the psychologist."

Yuui could just hope the child would react favourably to the sudden change in her situation.

"Ahhh what a nice day, why must I wake up?" Hikaru moaned as his alarm clock rang incessantly. He was about to drift off to sleep again before the events of the previous day filtered into his mind.

Immediately Hikaru sat up on his bed, eyes searching for the two ghosts, only to groan as he caught sight of the old one from the past sitting meditatively on the ground- air- whatever!

"Good morning Hikaru-kun," the old ghost greeted cheerfully.

"Morning," Hikaru grumbled back, eyes roving all over his room in search for the other ghost, the one of his older self. "Where's the other me?" He finally asked when he saw no sign of the jerk.

"Hikaru-san had something to do," the other ghost said, while inspecting the alarm clock curiously, "ne, Hikaru-kun, what is this and how is it screaming?"

Hikaru's eye twitched. "When will he be back?" He asked, ignoring the ghost's question because he didn't have time for this he was already late!

"Don't know," Sai answered succinctly, "he didn't say if he'd even be back at all."

"Good riddance," Hikaru snorted, ignoring the pang in his heart because for all his older self had been a douche toward him, Hikaru had looked forward to spending some time with him because how cool was that? He time travelled! That means (if his older self was okay with it) Hikaru could have the schedule and answers to every single major test ever!

"Ne, Hikaru-kun, the thing is still screaming," Sai said, pointing at the alarm clock with his fan.

"Oh for God's sake, that's just an alarm clock, and it's not screaming, it's ringing!" Hikaru gave it a good hard whack and nodded in satisfaction as it stopped screaming-er, ringing incessantly.

"What is an alarm clock and why does it ring?" Sai asked, floating after Hikaru as he headed toward the bathroom.

"It wake you up from sleep so you won't be late," Hikaru muttered as he dragged his feet to the bathroom. "Woah woah wait what are you doing?" He asked when Sai made to follow him into the room.

"Following you," Sai replied in confusion. "I cannot leave the radius around you," he explained, but was cut off by Hikaru.

"Not in here!" Hikaru hissed," this is a bathroom! Get out!" With that, he slammed the door on the ghost's face as soon as Sai floated out of the room, ignoring the cry of "Waaa! Hikaru-kun! That almost hit my face!" from the ghost.

Sai's observations of the hall outside the bathroom didn't help matters either. By the time Hikaru walked out of the house and met Akari as he usually does, his expression was as black as a raincloud.

"Woah," Akari commented as soon as she caught sight of him, "woke up on the wrong side of the bed today?"

"No," Hikaru snapped.

Akari rolled her eyes, and started walking after Hikaru made no move to. Unknown to her, Hikaru was being scolded by the Heian ghost that haunted him for being rude, and was having a mental war, and feeling as if today the entire world (and God) was against him and out to make his life hell.

Correction, Sai was a godsend.

First period of the day was History, and Hikaru had thought he was prepared for the test… Only to find that he wasn't really.

Hikaru had let his head hit the desk with a "thunk" once he saw that every single question was difficult and he couldn't remember the names of the Emperor and his advisers even though he had just studied them the night before.

'If this keeps up, I'll be scoring a zero in this test,' moaned Hikaru morosely in his mind.

Sai, who had been peering over his shoulder at the test paper, had then tapped his folded fan against the question asking for the names of the Emperor and his advisers, rattling off their names and how to write them.

Gratefully, Hikaru had written down the names as Sai sparked his memory. Sai had also helped with a few of the open ended questions about the policies back in the past- it seems like Sai could be useful for something after all!

"How about this?" Hikaru asked Sai as he wrote down an answer to the 'suggest how the Emperor could have prevented an uprising which stripped him of his throne' essay.

"Silence over there!" The invigilating teacher barked, making Hikaru aware that he accidentally said it aloud. Hikaru winced and shot the teacher an apologetic glance.

"It is probable, but it might have been better if you added elaboration and explanations for what you think the Emperor did wrong and right, instead of just glazing over the points you said caused him to be overthrown.." Sai pointed out.

'You're good at this. Do they teach you, like, literature in the past?'

At Hikaru's praise, Sai had shyly hid his face behind his fan. "I was one of the Crown Prince's tutors."

'No way, so not only do you play an old man's game and teach it to the Emperor, you teach the Prince literature?'

"Yes, Hikaru-kun, I do." There was a tint of pride in the ghost's voice.

'You're such a wimp. Literature, really?' It was like a douse of cold water onto Sai, dampening his pride.

"Waaaa! Hikaru-kun is mean!" The ghost started tearing up, making Hikaru sigh.

"Sorry," Hikaru muttered under his breath. A curious glance from the person sitting at the desk adjacent to his made Hikaru hurriedly continue his sentence mentally, 'but someone just had to say it. I wonder how much cooler it'll be if I'm haunted by a samarai ghost or something! I bet you can't fight.'

"I came from a warrior clan, of course I know how to fight," Sai argued, "but I don't want to hurt anyone."

"You can use swords?" Hikaru was so surprised, he asked out loud, and ducked his head sheepishly as a few classmates turned around and gave him a glare.

"I preferred the war fan."

Unbidden, an image of Sai's handheld fan came into mind- and Hikaru recalled the Disney movie "Mulan" where the heroine fought the villain with a pink silk fan. He put two and two together, imaging the effeminate ghost wielding his little paper fan and taking down other men much bigger sized than he.

Hikaru started laughing uncontrollably as Sai tried to stop him, but the invigilating teacher had enough.

"War fan, seriously?" Hikaru asked Sai incredulously as he was thrown out of the classroom due to being too disruptive.

On the bright side, at least he finished his test…

When school ended though, Hikaru went back to thinking that Sai was Divine Punishment sent from above to torment him.

For one, the ghost had not ceased his demands for Go, and older Hikaru had not come back to help his younger self handle the archaic ghost. Hikaru also did not know where to bring the ghost to satisfy him (Go Salons are expensive and messy and stinky and expensive) , and he could not concentrate on soccer with the ghost whining on one hand, and asking mundane questions on the other. In the end, Hikaru pleaded sick and went home to play his console games. Who knew headphones could be so useful?

Still, he hoped that his older self would return soon. Hikaru didn't feel good neglecting the Go-obssessed ghost, but it was just that he couldn't cater to Sai's needs without neglecting his own. Perhaps his older self could tell him how he did it, once he returned.

Where in the world could he be?

Underwater.

He felt like he was drowning.

Like he was three feet in the ground, the surface was just there but he couldn't dig, or swim, or struggle his way out of the all-encompassing darkness. And the pressure. He couldn't breathe. Nor could he move his limbs.

What happened?

Somehow he knew that getting to the surface was important.

He felt as if it would be the end if he couldn't reach the surface. He remembered his greatest fear. Was he being pulled back to the future if he failed to reach the surface?

No, he can't go back so quickly, he was just here for a day- less than that even! He had done nothing, spent so little time with Sai, he didn't want to go back, he didn't!

He renewed his struggles with vigor.

And then

He felt it. Feeling was returning back into his limbs. It made his bid for the surface easier. It was getting closer

And closer

And then he broke the surface

Took a deep breath, choking on something in his throat

Eyes opening

He hears

"Welcome back."