Disclaimed.
Finding Mikan
Chapter Two: Sarcasm is the Language of Siblinghood
Hayami, skillful private detective of Japan, did most of his business in the thirteenth room on the sixteenth floor of an all-purpose building situated at 5106 Furuta Street, four blocks south of Sakamoto Hotel.
Hotaru wrinkled her nose as she entered. His office had a very stale odor and was in desperate need of scented candles. Stepping into the room felt like entering a sealed attic after decades. Visible specks of dust that floated in the air about her oscillated between glinting and disappearing as what dull light that made its way through the translucent curtains struck them from different angles.
Except for the path leading from the door to a photocopying room, there was no space in this crammed up office. The floor was covered with stacks and stacks of paper. Some yellowing plants were squashed up into a corner in a feeble attempt to make space. Against the far wall stood a very solid wooden desk with an armchair in front of it and a gaunt man behind.
Stepping into the empty armchair, Hotaru said crisply, "I expect that you know who I am and why I am here."
The only other person in the room nodded as if anything else would warrant a court case for a billion yen.
Hayami was not what Hotaru had visualized at all. For one, he was deathly pale. For another, the man had a habit of ducking his head to hide his eyes behind inch-thick glasses. The only thing she had been right about was his sense of style—simple and office orientated; he was clad in a simple blue and white lined button down shirt. There was nothing unique about him other than his incredibly frail looking build. Yet Ross Anderson said that he was one of the best.
"Very well, Hayami-san. I sought you out upon recommendation so I expect marvelous results. As for the fee… nothing short of two hundred fifty thousand yen, I suppose."
It was hard to tell, but behind his glasses Hayami's eyes seemed to augment to the size of baseballs.
Hotaru almost snickered at the mindset of middle-class citizens. "To start off, I have two simple requests. The first is to investigate who Hyuuga Natsume-san is and what he wants with me. I already gave you my name and number earlier so do not hesitate to contact me if—"
"Excuse me, Imai-san," spoke Hayami, causing Hotaru to irritably glance up mid-sentence. "You really don't know who Hyuuga Natsume is?"
The slight, hesitant pause and tremor in his voice indicated that he was awaiting kind of feedback. Hotaru allowed him a slight shake of her head.
Clearing his throat, Hayami continued, "but you two went to Alice Academy together."
She flinched ever so slightly at the name.
"I am an Alice too," he further elaborated, which did nothing to soothe her unease, "eight years your senior. I also participated in the revolt against Elementary Principle Kuonji just as you did."
Hotaru pressed her lips into a thin line. "Ah, yes. That…"
The Rebellion was the one haphazard event to ever be documented in Hotaru's memory. She had long given up trying to collect and make something of the jumbled snippets and blurs of unfiltered chaos. In fact, at this point, she was seriously beginning to question her underdeveloped ten-year-old brain's processing capability. Nothing about it ever made sense. There was a dreamy, evanescent to the entire catastrophe, as if there was no what and when but rather events seen through windows-like screens suspended in a whimsical void.
Everyone had been everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
"It… it happened a long time ago." Hotaru cleared her throat abruptly. "Anyhow, all that is irrelevant in this day and age. I am more concerned with the present and why he would possibly want to speak to me now, after all these years."
Hayami nodded and halfheartedly fetched a pencil to start jotting notes, which, Hotaru noted to herself, if he actually were a renown private detective, he should have done so from the very beginning.
Sharp violet eyes focused on the hunched figure that was quietly etching unreadable kanji on paper. "Well, it would be nice to hear about that sometime soon. He seemed rather fervent too the first time we met. I hope he is not always like that." The pencil faltered and Hotaru paused, but resumed once more when he continued on unfazed. "The second thing I request is an investigation on why in the world there are so many tangerines floating around Tokyo City. Personally, I believe it to be either an ingenious marketing strategy or a badly conducted conspiracy. Whatever it is, the entire thing seems to tied in with Hyuuga-san."
Hayami was silent for the longest time.
The little sounds, mundane sounds of unanswered questions reverberated around the room—the ticking of a clock and scrawling of a pen, the gentle spring breeze whistling through the cracks of the window, the rustle of Hayami's sleeves against the paper as he moved at a leisure pace. They were sounds of enigma, of the unknown. They made Hotaru's senses heighten and planted a small seeds of suspicion inside her mind.
"Is he setting up for something?" The words surprisingly escaped her mouth with ease, and she was suddenly convinced that Hayami also had something personal to do with the case.
His smooth etches broke off as she whispered the question. In a fidgety way, Hayami adjusted the bridge of his classes and raised his pencil an inch to his face, staring intensely at the tip as he replaced the snapped lead. The clickety-click of the pencil's mechanisms added to the collection of useless noises. A swallow, a bob of his Adam's apple, and then he lowered his head to the paper again.
Once more, silence filled up the chasm. Hotaru lips curled unpleasantly as she perused the office of information a second time. This was a secretive room; what came in never left, and what left would soon be forgotten. He never needed to bribe anyone. Silence would do that for him. Silence would get him the answers he wanted and it would also protect the information he held.
Hotaru broke this leverage, "because I do not have solid evidence of Hyuuga-san's affiliation with the tangerines, I am willing to treat the two as separate cases. Two hundred fifty thousand for each? And seeing as we are clearly at a loss for words, I think we can safely adjourn this meeting. Shall we bring out the contracts then?"
Wordlessly, Hayami bent to rifle through his desk before bringing out a gigantic white, D-ringed binder. He practically slamming it down on his mahogany desk. Cases, Hotaru saw the label as he set aside the cover. The private inventor licked his finger before flipping papers at breakneck speed, likely with the intent of keeping his other cases confidential. She was surprised though. From the point of popularity, he was definitely not just any normal person. Yet somehow this entire meeting had something completely contradicting to say.
As he drew out two sheets of paper, she decided to stop thinking about it and attribute his weird behaviour to the general eccentricity of Alices. Why had his skin gone so pasty from being cooped up all day in his office? Why did she have an continuous, unrelenting numbness in her heart? The answer was simple: they were aliens, Alices. Alices that were not normal and could never be.
She wrapped her fingers around a pen, the pen that he had held to place his signatures seconds ago. It was slightly warm. She glared at it, daring the pen to prove the notion that Hayami was a human, that Hayami had the same human warmth non-Alices possessed. The pen did nothing. And so she gripped it tighter, reading and rereading the entire page of font eight words before scribbling her consent at the bottom of two pages—one copy for him and one for her, for Hotaru did not approve of photocopied contracts or anything unauthentic in general.
"Well, the terms are now binding. As of now, you must update me every time you find out something relating to my cases. I understand that by company policy, violations can be settled by a court order that entitles me to twice the amount of money in my offer so—" she learned closer, keeping a blasé expression on her face prevent him from gaining any more leverage "—with that in mind, do you have anything you wish to tell me, Hayami-san?"
"That sounds like a threat of some kind, Imai-san," he sighed, avoiding her eyes in the guise of tucking the binder away in his drawer.
What was it that prevented him from speaking? Hotaru could not pinpoint his partiality to Natsume Hyuuga. There was only one thing she was sure of and that was that Hayami would stay on this subject no further until their next meeting.
She took a stand. "Decipher it however you wish. I will be taking my leave now. Good day."
"Do not greet me with that sour look. It makes you seem impertinent." Subaru was all warmth and sunshine when he saw his sister for the first time in fifteen years.
Before she could retort, he shook his head, whipping his windswept hair everywhere. Her own lips curled up in distaste as she was sprayed by millions of droplets of water from the early typhoon that her brother had been unfortunately caught in.
"I was just wondering what a vagrant was doing on such a prestigious floor."
He stuck up his bony nose. "Humph. You should prostrate to me for all things I do for you."
"Go to sleep," she growled, only to have him dump his jacket on her head. Even her brother was a good eight inches taller than her, though it seemed less when she first saw him because he slouched his body so much.
Hotaru scowled as she hung his trenchcoat on the rack while examining him thoroughly from the corner of her eye. He was setting aside his own suitcase, which was about half the size of hers. Other than being tall, Subaru was also much skinnier than one would expect a man of thirty-three to be. His jaw was no longer sharp but square-shaped and his face much wider. Though he had kept the round spectacles from when they were younger, the trademark purple Imai eyes behind them were much too hard and weary for his age.
A telltale sign of overstress.
Without another word, he flopped blissfully onto Hotaru's bed and pulled the duvet over his body.
Hotaru herself felt the powerful effects of jetlag shortly after. She knew she ought to get accustomed to Japan's time zone as soon as possible so she could actually get some work done during the day. If only there was anything actually appealing to keep her up. She did not want to watch a drama. Placing an order for internet was pointless the night before they checked out. There was a pool on the lobby but swimming was one of the few things Hotaru never had and never would enjoy doing.
Outside, the thunder rumbled. It looked like a nightly stroll was also out of the question.
Sighing, Hotaru gave up. She finally relinquished to her primal needs and blacked out.
Hours later, her own duvet was yanked from her grasp. Always a light sleeper, Hotaru's senses were immediately stimulated after her body was exposed to the cool air of morning. She leisurely opened one drooping eye; Subaru was giving her a look of mixed disdain and morning grouchiness. Clutching her head delicately, the inventor dragged herself up into a sitting position.
She turned to stare drowsily out the window. Last night's storm subsided into a light drizzle and a thick layer of mist that veiled the entire city. Illuminated by the sliver of sun peeking over a blurry horizon, it was a very tranquil scene.
Unfortunately, the Subaru of the morning seemed to have little appreciation for tranquil. "Let's go," he barked authoritatively.
Out the suite they promptly marched with their respective luggage in tow. Hotaru looked back at the tangerine for one last time as her brother waved over a cab. Against the pale blue of the morning sky, it stood with a looming presence that served as a reminder of her meeting with Hayami.
"Hurry up!" Subaru snapped.
Narrowing her eyes at it one last time, Hotaru boarded the cab following her brother.
Tangerines. Natsume Hyuuga. Now it became clear to her. Although she had seen many different variations of tangerines across the country, the one he had drawn was almost identical to Sakamoto Hotel Corp.'s logo. For the first time, Hotaru wondered if it was mere misfortune that a huge storm blew the masterpiece away the day after or if he had strategically timed it so.
This plague reeked of conspiracy. Too many tangerines were placed just out of the city's core, just out of the spotlight. The places they appeared in had relation to normal day life, as whomever put them there intended to subtly establish their presence in the back of the every citizen's mind. In the small roads she and Subaru were being driven through, Hotaru spotted more tangerines spray painted underneath bridges or roofs and in other nooks that were shielded from rainstorms.
"Why are tangerines appearing everywhere?" she eventually questioned, turning from the window.
The driver replied in a way that preluded a long tale: "Well, 'em tangerines 'ppeared ten years ago in graffiti. People say it had some'um to do with gang activity—markin' of territory? I dun believe it. There were police investigations seven years back and they didn't find 'ny signs of gang activity. Anyhow, in the past five the media and 'em huge companies picked it up. I say the price of tangerines in Tokyo inflated least seventy five percent since 'en."
She modified her voice, lacing it with fake curiosity to cover an undertone of suspicion that the taxi driver would not be able to pick out. "Does this peculiar symbol only appear in Tokyo or other cities as well?"
"Canna say for sure. I'ma Tokyo cab driver here. Dun get 'round much," he chuckled.
"Do you really have to ask about this?" Subaru piped up sharply. Hotaru was surprised at this sudden change in demeanor when he had been so much less stingy the night before, but she gave him points for being perceptive nonetheless. "Do these tangerines really concern you that much?"
"You have not heard news from customers?" Hotaru pressed on, ignoring her brother.
"Still the same intruding pest," muttered Subaru disapprovingly under his breath. "The symbol has not appeared up north or in any major cities I had business in. Don't go investigating every uncanny aspect of Tokyo and making more out of it than what it is. Have you ever heard of the saying 'let it be'? Some things are just the way they are; in the grand scheme of things, you can do little to change Tokyo's culture. What are you going to do once you find the source of all this? Erase them from existence?"
She can hear the underlying accusation in his heated spiel: why are you so interested in the tangerines? What is your reason? For Imais never acted without reason and she had sorely underestimated her brother by assuming that he would not say anything.
"I was just curious," she ensured with a tranquil smile, "since I saw quite a bit of tangerine merchandise in the last few days and I was wondering if I could make good use of all this."
He said no more, but judging from the foul aura he emanated through body language, her brother was not satisfied with her answer in the least. Subaru, in general, seemed mighty crabby since the beginning of the car ride. He stared resolutely at windshield wipers the whole time and did not uncross his arms once. The only times he spoke were to criticize Hotaru or give new directions to the driver.
She tapped her brother on the shoulder gently. "Any word from former classmates from Alice Academy?"
Without moving his body, he turned to her with a full on glare, as if to say, what are you doing discussing these things in front of a non-Alice?
"I am curious," she was getting tired of having to explain her reasons for asking every single question, like she was some cantankerous teenager and he was the principle forced to deal with her. "I have not seen them in a while."
"Neither have I," the annoyed edge in his voice was in no way disguised. "I only see Shuuichi from time to time and the rest not since two years ago."
"And Hyuuga Natsume?"
Something ever so little flashed inside of his eyes. At times, Subaru fumbled or twitched when he felt awkward, but as soon as the name left her lips he hardened into absolute stone, shoulders jerking perfectly in sync with bumps as the car tires grazed potholes in the pavement. "I have no clue what he's doing nowadays," drawled Subaru, "and I would not give a single yen to know."
"He is related to the tangerines," Hotaru informed in a whisper too quiet for the taxi driver to hear.
"Forget about the tangerines!" Subaru hissed. "They have nothing to do with you. Do not prod where your nose where it does not belong. As for Hyuuga, I care for him perhaps less than I care for you. He was always a troublemaker. It was enough that your best friend gave him another chance at life, but I feel zero sympathy for him if he is wasting his time on such childish antics."
"My best friend is Hertz, Janine," Hotaru stated slowly, carefully, a little shaken from his sudden outcry. "I believe I told you about her. She has nothing to do with Hyuuga Natsume."
He turned his head away from her, propping it on an arm that in turn rested on the window on the other side of the car. Though he tried his best to hide his countenance from her, she could see a clear reflection of his pensive face in the glass. "I am not talking about her. You had a best friend inside Alice Academy, a long time ago. It was that girl who caused all the ruckus."
Ah, that best friend. Hotaru had but a general idea of Mikan Sakura inside of her head. She was a sweet and cheery girl. Her hair and eyes were both brown and her eyes were larger than average. Was she medium height? No, she was short. Or was she tall? The girl had been a mere one star—no, at one point, she had no badges.
She grimaced at the familiar throb that made its presence in the back of her head. Whether it was physical or psychological she did not know but her body was dead set on punishing her whenever she tried too hard to recall certain details. Sighing, Hotaru cushioned her pounding head with a hand. It was a dull irk, the irk of trying to solve an equation that was not equal.
In silence, the car parked in front of a quaint but large apartment building. Subaru paid the driver generously, hoping he would take a clue and not mention their conversation to any future customers. He extended a hand to Hotaru. Deciding to snob him for his crankiness, she slapped his hand away and stubbornly exited on her own side, the side facing the street.
Her brother was not impressed and he made it known to her, snorting, "if you want to die at the hands of your own stupidity, trust me, I have absolutely no qualms. But whatever you do, you are not allowed to associate yourself with the likes of Hyuuga Natsume."
In a carefree manner, she ignored his words and dragged her luggage into the revolving doors of the building.
"He is not a good person and our parents would not approve of it," he droned on behind her. "They are already frail as is and you'd just take away more years."
Whipping her body back, Hotaru narrowed her eyes as she accused, "you told me mother and father are doing very well."
"Yeah, because I'm there," he scoffed as if talking to a child. "As if they would have any medical complications on my watch. Doesn't mean that they don't fret needlessly. Mother's an absolute worrywart. There was seldom a moment yesterday when she wasn't asking about you. She was worried about me as well, and somehow convinced that my train was going to crash and explode."
"Well I am sure she will be thrilled to hear that we are both alive and healthy. Besides, you do not intend to stay long." His suitcase had one third the volume of a cubed metre and he could not possibly fit more than ten outfits in there, not counting the toiletries.
"I'll be leaving this Saturday," Subaru informed as they arrived at his apartment. Violently jamming a key into the keyhole, he further warned teasingly, "do not destroy my apartment. I will take you to court."
He crossed the threshold before she could enter.
Says a lot about the kind of person he is, she mentally snorted, following close behind.
And she had thought that Hayami's office was dusty. It had nothing on Subaru's apartment. They both coughed up a storm upon entering and she found it amazing that the air was even breathable. Subaru immediately rushed through the rooms, opening up windows while Hotaru remained in the foyer, almost tearing up. A quick perusal told her that a thin layer of dust coated every object in sight—not that there were many. Most of the furniture was either covered in a sheet of cloth or plastic, and even more dust flew into the air as Subaru uncovered them.
When enough fresh air got in, Hotaru gently shut the door behind her and Subaru marched into the kitchen.
"Naomi took the feather duster with her," he sighed after a series of clattering.
Vigilant as she was, Hotaru noticed that Naomi seemed to have taken most of the small objects. The only things laden around the apartment were empty shelves, tables and picture frames. There was even a round print on a carpet from a plant that used to sit there.
"This is hardly livable, Subaru," she told him, fetching two wet napkins out of her suitcase to dab at her eyes. "Your walls are yellowing."
"You think I don't know!" he exclaimed, popping his head out of the kitchen. Clenching a wet tissue, Subaru stared at the object in Hotaru's hand blankly before guffawing. Two siblings with the exact idea in mind. It was almost comical.
Now it was his turn to do scrutinize the room for what it had become. He flinched a little at the walls and a little more at the empty picture frames.
"She could have at least left a picture of Hikaru…" Hotaru almost did not catch the comment.
"Do you not have a picture of Hikaru? He is your child too after all."
"Only ones of his early childhood," he informed somberly, tossing the tissue aside.
There was a large lump in his throat as he made his way over to a barren wall decorated with only a screw. Subaru was entranced by that spot. Even Hotaru had to admit that she had never seen her brother look at anything with the expression he had when he closed his eyes and placed a hand on that wall. "Here's where we hung our wedding picture." His voice, almost a whisper, was laced with nostalgia.
His eyes snapped open, and at that moment, Hotaru saw a man she did not recognize. The dull purple orbs, framed by subtle creases and heavy eyebags looked not at the wall but far beyond it, searching futilely for something. For an incandescent moment, she thought she saw several flickers of mixed emotions within his iris.
Then, Subaru took his hand off the wall and he looked so stoic Hotaru wondered if she had imagined the entire scene.
"I am tired," he sighed, dragging his feet in the direction of the bedrooms. She did not follow him.
Instead, she explored the house, pulling the remaining sheets off of every piece of furniture and dumping them all a corner of the room. Since she suspected her brother to be hopeless at interior decorating, Hotaru could only presume that Naomi had good taste. The questionable square in the middle of the room turned out to be a magnificent glass table. The shelf also seemed to be made of genuine wood—maple, from her experience. Since the couch with the atrocious floral pattern was the only shoddy piece of furniture around, Hotaru deducted that it must have been the one thing that Subaru was allowed to pick out and solemnly vowed to replace it as soon as possible.
Leather would do very nicely.
The pantries, cupboards and refrigerator were all emptied out and though there was an old, corded phone, it had no service. A lot had to be done if she was going to take permanent residence in this space. She and Subaru would need to go shopping for a whole bunch of supplies, not to mention the tedious legal procedures that inevitably followed. The mere thought brought a long, heavy sigh to her lips.
For today, though—or until Subaru woke up again—there was only one more task to do.
She dragged her suitcase to the couch and took a seat. Somehow everything she valued was crammed into this point six seven square metre box of space. Again and again, the thing reminded her of how nomadic and uncertain her life was. Hotaru did not hold much dear, objects or people, but the little she did she usually kept for a lifetime. Packing was not an issue anyways, considering that she and Janine had moved from place to place more than a few times during their university days before settling in a surprisingly comfy basement.
One by one, she drew items out of the suitcase. Before leaving America, she and Janine spent an entire night packing and grouping all of her things together. Everything was already organized and all that was left was for Subaru to give her word of where she could put her stuff. Since he was resting at the moment, she placed everything on a vintage tea table—another excellent choice by Naomi. Or so she assumed.
As she reached into the suitcase once more, Hotaru found a wrinkled plastic bag with all kinds of sharp objects inside. Furrowing her brows slightly, she lifted it to find the sack of small keepsakes and trinkets Janine and her boyfriend Tom coerced her to bring with her across the Pacific Ocean.
Rolling her eyes at the thought of their persistent faces, she opened the bag to sift through for things to throw out. There were endless magnets and keychains she bought from different states while on business trips, all of which were unneeded. There were some small objects Janine and Tom gave her as souvenirs, all of which she decided to keep but would never look at again. Then there was a rather striking key that she had no recollection of whatsoever.
Hotaru pocketed it as a reminder to ask Janine later.
It was not that she had forgotten overnight what Tokyo was like. It was just that Hotaru never really brought it upon herself to observe the differences until that day she and Subaru stepped, for the first time, inside a seven-floored shopping mall.
As they rode up the escalators from the toys section to the furniture section, Hotaru's hair tingled at the outlandishness of her surroundings. She found it hard to believe that in less than two minutes, they seem to have moved from Toys R Us to Ikea, but it was certainly nothing new to Subaru so she stuffed that thought to the back of her head. But when, for the umpteenth time, Hotaru looked down into a crowd of fair and dark haired, yellow skinned people, it was hard for her to keep her mouth shut any longer.
"Why is Japan so racist?"
Subaru looked at her funny. "What?"
"A normal country consists of Hispanics, Caucasians, Natives, African-Americans, and Asians," insisted Hotaru. "Everyone in Japan is Asian."
Subaru looked at her funny. "Aren't you Asian?"
And that was the end of the subject, for they had arrived and he was insistent on actually surveying furniture instead of trying to decipher her weird comments. But, Hotaru thought as she looked at her brother pitifully, what use was it to raise the subject to Subaru? He had never been to other countries. He would never know about the culture she grew and adapted around. Heck—he probably still thought all Americans had blue eyes and blond hair.
Janine would have easily agreed with me. The thought came to her mind without warning before she forcefully swatted it away, eyes accidentally catching a nearby mirror as she looked up to search for her brother. Brushing her hair behind her ear, Hotaru stared into violet eyes that darkened at her own miserable state. What use was it to think of something she no longer had? As if she would see her best friend again—not for more than a few months at a time anyway.
I am an adult now, she reminded herself, staring resolutely into the broad back of her brother's figure. I must do what I must do, alone or not.
With faster strides, she easily caught up to him, although judging by the length of Subaru's legs, he could easily out-walk her if he tried. "The easiest arrangement, as I see it is to keep the apartment under your name. I will pay monthly rent and it will work to both of our advantages," since you clearly cannot let go of what you had… "since I do not plan on staying long."
He fingered the price tag of a leather sofa that Hotaru set her eyes on as she made the proposal. It was white, very firm and square. Square was good. Square did not come with sentimentality and nostalgia; Tom's sofa, where he, Janine and Hotaru spent a good many of their nights, was round and velvet, in no way the same. Square was exactly what she needed. Square was a new start.
When he flipped over the price tag, the expression he had on could only be described as one of disgust. A six digit price tag, Hotaru merely shrugged it off before expressing her approval for it.
"What?" he exclaimed, staring at her in disbelief, "you would spend thousands upon thousands of yen on a mere piece of furniture?" He turned back, stared at the numbers a little longer and then shook his head in resignation. "Well, I suppose it's you after all."
Assuming Subaru to have told her off for being materialistic, Hotaru wrinkled her nose in displeasure. "And what is that supposed to mean?"
He threw the price tag aside and sighed something long and heavy. At the time, Hotaru never did understand why he suddenly imposed that abrupt a subject change, or why he was so adamant on finding faults in everything she did. She merely attributed it to Subaru's incapability to become accustomed to physically being around her and seeing all her habits and quirks as opposed to just communicating over the phone. At the time, the end of the long sigh was the beginning of a rather philosophical question.
"There was a professor who once asked me if, in algebra, x and y represents anything of real, sentimental value to me."
This time it was Hotaru's turn to stare at him weird. She blinked blankly, attempting to figure out where his train of thought was going or where it even came from. "They are variables," she stated slowly.
He turned, a ghost of a smile on his lips, and quirked an eyebrow up at her comment. Befuddled at his reaction, Hotaru did not know whether to frown in disapproval or demand that he tell her what was going on at once. She sucked in a sharp breath, unable to find any hidden tricks in his eyes. Her body tensed like a cat waiting to pounce and her teeth ground against each other inside her suddenly dry mouth.
Because at the time, she did not trust him enough to believe that this was not a test.
"You'd fail—"
A familiar shell-shocking feeling traveled from her toes all the way up into the tip of her hair. For just a tiny moment, she wondered if she was going to have a public breakdown. A thousand horrible images flashed in front of her eyes. Irving Academy. The Memory Project. The nefarious motto that had to be chanted before breakfast every day, like a wretched school anthem: "you're worthless if you fail. You're absolutely worthless if you—"
"—as a doctor, and thank heavens you never went down that route."
She shook the last shivers off of her arms, quite sure that she was feeling the aftermath of an earthquake or something of the like.
"It's quite dandy to think of everything as variables, because variables don't matter. But you soon find yourself using breathing intervals to calculate your patient's time of death. And you soon find yourself unwilling to try to save someone dying right before your eyes, because the likelihood tells you that you are too late."
His hand flew towards her suddenly, fingers latching a tight grip around her head. His fingers dug into her scalp in a skull-bruising way. If Subaru was trying to entertain himself by testing if he could lift her entire being in a crane-like manner, it was in no way entertaining to his sister.
"Hands off," she snarled most venomously.
He, being a despicable, uncivilized arse, growled from deep within his throat, "and the moral of this story is to lighten up, little sister, because no one likes talking to a robot."
Subaru and Hotaru's interaction may seem like character development, but it's actually important. Very very important. Wink wink. ;)
Thanks for reading! Please review, fave, alert!
-IndigoGrapefruit
