Chapter Seventeen

Fuji

"Tezumi!" I breathed.

Takahashi rushed past me in a flurry and flung herself at her friend's side. My leg... How I hated those crutches, for preventing me from doing the same. They sank into the sand, stealing away precious time until I threw them down and crawled the last few feet to Tezumi's motionless form.

"She's soaked," Takahashi uttered despairingly.

"Take off her jacket," I ordered. "I'll give her mine."

It wasn't until then that I noticed the figure beside her. Saki lay there, as still as Tezumi, her wrist clutched in the other girl's hand. A heavy weight seemed to be lifted off my shoulders when I discovered a pulse.

"We've got to get help—"

A faint moan escaped from Tezumi's lips.

"Tezumi! What happened? Are you ok? Tezumi!"

She gingerly sat up and cradled her head in her hands. "Splitting headache."

"We need to get you both back to camp. Let's wake Saki up..."

By then Saki had begun to stir too. Draping my jacket around Tezumi, I said, "Can you two walk? We'd better start out soon if you can."

Peals of thunder rumbled in the air as Takahashi and I helped the two shaking girls up. Retrieving my crutches, we hastily re-entered the dark woods. The journey was painfully slow at first, with Tezumi and Saki only half conscious, not to mention my own disability. A few minutes passed and Saki revived a little, enough to notice the lightning splitting the sky. Looking back, she saw me and Tezumi stumbling behind her, propping each other up. For the first time, I spied a flash of irritation cross her face.

She turned to Takahashi. "Tezumi's injured. She can't get too far on her own. Why don't we go ahead and get help?"

"She looks ok to me. A little groggy, maybe, but ok. And besides, there won't be anyone back at camp. They're all out looking for you and her."

"Still, we could probably get some bandages or something," Saki insisted.

"Bandages?" Takahashi rummaged in her bag. "I've got some."

"But it's going to rain soon! Heavily too, by the look of things. Well, it doesn't really matter for me, but you..."

"I don't mind."

"Takahashi," whined Saki, exasperated. "I'm dead on my feet and I feel like I'll die if I don't get warm soon! Could you just take me back first?"

"And leave Fuji and Tezumi behind?" Takahashi said incredulously.

"By the rate we're moving we won't get back until dawn!" snapped Saki.

Her words were like a punch to the stomach. Once again I was slowing someone down. Tezumi normally acted as though I did not, but I knew that was purely in the interest of sparing my feelings.

"Hitomi," Tezumi whispered feebly. I wondered who she was calling until Takahashi turned around. They're on first name terms? How could I not know—oh, yeah, right. "Just take her back first. Fuji knows the way. We'll come along later."

"Tezumi, I can't just leave you two—"

"Don't worry." She smiled through her exhaustion. "I'll be with Fuji."

Warmth gushed through me.

Takahashi seemed to understand something I didn't—no surprise there—because she smiled knowingly and motioned for Saki to follow her. Their receding footsteps faded away as they gradually vanished into the distance. Now, it was just me and her.

Gentle raindrops sprinkled down through the trees, covering us in fine droplets of water. The rough soil crunched beneath our feet, wearing away at the rubber tips of my crutches.

"Tezumi, what happened?" She normally had a very good sense of balance. Falling down mountain slopes wasn't something that happened to people like her.

"I don't know," she said tiredly. "I was walking along that dirt road...Saki was there...something grabbed me...the next thing I know, I'm hauling her out of the river."

"Look," I tried to come clean. With myself, anyway. "I really should've gone with you. But—"

"Fuji." She sounded so weary. "It's fine. I know."

Since she possessed the superhuman patience needed to hang out with me in my present state, I figured it would be save to assume she could forgive and forget really easily too.

"You have the right to make your own choices in what you do, anyway," she added.

Well, I didn't really choose to be getting Saki's water bottle for her while you walked off...But since she didn't appear to be angry at me, I wasn't going to complain.

"But still, I know we haven't been spending that much time together recently, and I really do miss the day when we'd spend the afternoon with Chiko in a burger joint just talking about how Momo fell asleep in class and things like that. I guess I've been..."

"A little preoccupied?"

I rest my case. The girl reads me like a book.

It was really pouring now, and the dancing leaves offered little shelter. It was getting hard to see. Sitting down between some sparse trees—it was a lot wetter there but at least we wouldn't be struck my lightning—Tezumi covered us with my dripping jacket. It was kind of cramped, but I didn't really mind. I put my arm around her to keep her warm. A little warmer than she was, anyway. 'Tezumi, we can do more together afterwards, right?" I whispered into her ear. "After all, you're the one who won the chance for me to come here," I added jokingly. "Everything can be just like before."

I expected her to smile, and tell me that we could. But she didn't say anything. Gazing misty eyed out into the sheet of rain, she never replied.