CHAPTER 18
"He's alright?" Neru asked Kaito.
Kaito nodded and rumpled Neru's hair pulling some of it out of her ponytail. She smiled a little in relief. Len was okay.
"What about Haku?" Neru asked.
Haku had walked into the hall after Kaito had escorted Neru and Len into Len's room.
"She's alright," Kaito said then frowned, "she just walked past her and didn't even seem to see her. Walked right up to me and asked where you were. That's when I sent her in the room."
Neru nodded, remembering hearing Haku's voice before she walked in. She seemed to not have seen Len either.
"She's just spacey and single minded," Neru said. It sounded like an excuse.
The blender. The clothes. The cell phone. And now walking past Rin. She was getting worse.
Neru faked a bigger smile and looked up to Kaito. "She's fine. She's just fine." Kaito looked back to her with something sad sparkling in his eyes.
He knew she wasn't fine, as Neru suggested, but in fact bad.
Almost as bad as….
He shook his head to keep her from seeing what was clearly on his face. He was hiding something. Something big, important.
Neru managed to see it before he shook it away. She felt the tendrils of what it was pulling at the edges of her mind. She tried to grab them back and they retreated a little. Teasing at the fringes of her mind. She had a feeling deep down she knew what it was, but couldn't recall it. She forced her smile a little wider.
"So Len is really okay?" Neru asked, shoving the topic of Haku to the side. It stung Neru a little; choosing to talk about Len's wellbeing, and not wanting to, even caring to, talk about Haku's.
Kaito seemed pleased with moving over the topic of Haku. He smiled, a slightly shy one at that.
"Yeah, he's really okay Neru," Kaito said with a laugh. "You two have gotten pretty close recently."
Neru blushed and turned her head away from Kaito.
"He's my friend," Neru said to the ground she was looking at. "I don't want Rin to be able to hurt him again."
"I guess it helps that Len's a cutie though," Meiko said as she walked into the room. Rin's blush turned nearly crimson.
"That has nothing to do with it," Neru said with a raspy strained voice. She looked back to Kaito. "Can I go see him?" she asked only to him.
He looked at her with a smile; one that Neru felt was actually a hidden frown.
"I think it'll be best if you sleep a little first."
"Okay," Neru whispered.