Written by runwithscissors. Anyway here's the next chapter. I'll try to write mine tomorrow.
Toodles.
"You know, my house is getting stranger and stranger…. Have those guys in white lab coats always been there?"
Fuyuki looked to Keroro for an answer, sucking thoughtfully on his eating utensil. After he'd finished his breakfast, he started noticing more and more weird things around him, like the men dressed in white. They looked a bit like the doctors, except their uniforms were a bit different and they were kind of acting strange.
"Yes…." Keroro drew out the consonants of the word, sounding rather unsure. He gave Fuyuki a nod and said it again. "Yes."
"Oh." Fuyuki put down his utensil. "Okay."
Men in black were one thing, but men in white? That was something else, and Fuyuki wasn't sure what to make of it. They weren't really doing anything troublesome… just watching people observantly, jotting something down into their notebooks every now and then.
Keroro paid them no mind. He resumed his breakfast as though this were a completely normal routine. Fuyuki's hands were shaking. The more he thought about it, the more creeped out he was. Why were those men here?—In his house, the Hinata House? And what on Earth were they doing?
He looked around at his other friends, to see what they would do about it, but it appeared that Tamama and Mois didn't think anything of it, either. Nor would Momoka have, if she was there, but it was a Sunday, so she wasn't.
Fuyuki sighed and leaned back in his chair. It couldn't be that these men in white were a normal occurrence. Undoubtedly they had just brainwashed everyone in the house to think that. He would have to monitor them to make sure. As his eyes scanned the room to count all the men in white that he saw, they settled on another pair of eyes—yellow eyes, that were looking around, as well.
Fuyuki sat up in his chair and squinted across the eating hall. The yellow eyes belonged to a very buff man, rather intimidating in appearance. His body had a few scars here and there, especially a really grotesque one across his right arm—no, not a scar, he realized, squinting harder, but a dragon tattoo. Fuyuki recognized the man as someone from Group B that Tamama had pointed out the day before. And weirdest of all, he was looking around the room just like Fuyuki was.
Daringly, Fuyuki pushed his seat away from their table and began walking toward the dragon-tattooed man. When he reached him, he dropped his voice to a whisper and said, "I need to talk to you."
The man looked around a bit, then pointed a finger at himself and asked, "Me?"
"Yeah."
Two of the man's friends at either side of him, a younger-looking boy and a dull-eyed teenage girl, looked at Fuyuki, then back at the man. "What are you doing?" the girl asked.
He stood up anyway, and he walked with Fuyuki behind a large square pillar opening up into the hallway. The dragon-tattooed man leaned his arm against it and looked at Fuyuki calculatingly. "So what's your problem, kid?"
Fuyuki couldn't say how many times he'd heard that question this last week. Instead of letting it bother him, he narrowed his eyes and cut to the chase. "Those men in white… you seem to be the only other person who notices them. And you're bothered by them, too."
The man paused a second, as if thinking, and then rubbed his hand over his head with a small laugh. "Can't blame a guy for not liking five sets of eyes on him all the time, eh?"
"Why are they here?" asked Fuyuki. "You must know…."
Dragon-man shrugged. "Maybe they just want to make friends and don't know how." Something about his tone made it sound awfully mocking of Fuyuki. He turned around, about to head on back to his table, but Fuyuki grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back.
"Wait! You have to tell me! What if they're—"
"Fuyuki, you shouldn't be meddling with that guy," a voice interrupted.
Fuyuki let go of the man's arm, and Dragon-man rubbed it, though he didn't leave. Instead the two of them turned to the blond man behind Fuyuki. The blond man had a bag slung over his shoulder, was dressed in tight grey clothing, and looked a bit tired, like he'd just come back from a workout at the gym.
"Oh… um…."
"What? Is there something wrong with me?" Dragon-man pushed Fuyuki aside and approached the blond guy's face in a way that would have been way too close to comfort for Fuyuki. The other man might have agreed. He frowned, the scar over his left eye wrinkling as he did so. His left eye had always bothered Fuyuki. It never seemed to focus quite right, and it had a little less color than his right one.
"Please step away, Yanda. I'd like to get past you so I can shout at Fuyuki."
Fuyuki swallowed. "Umm… no, that's okay, Corporal Giroro—"
Giroro's left eye, the one with the scar, twitched. "Fuyuki, I thought I told you not to call me that."
"Call you what, Corporal?" asked the dragon-man, Yanda.
Giroro's hand tightened around the strap of the bag over his shoulder. "You think you're so funny, don't you."
"I'm not an entertainer, Corporal."
Fuyuki would have said something, seeing Giroro get so angry, but he wasn't quite sure what was the matter.
"What's the matter, Corporal—"
That did it; Giroro lost his patience. Like a flash of lightning, his fist planted itself square into Yanda's face, sending the man into the closest table behind him.
The cafeteria fell silent. All eyes were on Yanda as he brought himself to a feet, swayed a moment, and wiped a bit of blood from his nose before lifting his fist in the air and shouting out, "Oh-ho, yeah, now we're talking!" Then the cafeteria broke into chatter.
Yanda charged at Giroro and returned the punch. Giroro staggered for a moment, but brought himself back to a strong stance as he gripped Yanda by the shoulder and laid a blow in his gut.
"Woo-hoo! Give it to him, Giroro!" Fuyuki heard Koyuki yell from the crowd of chatter.
The two men grabbed each other's shoulder and began pushing. Yanda got Giroro against the pillar for a moment until Giroro pushed his foot against it and was able to move Yanda against another table. The patients who had been using the table for eating scattered. Yanda grunted, increasing his grip on Giroro's shoulders, and lifted his knee up, which he brought into Giroro's side, forcing him down. Giroro got back to his feet just as Yanda was brushing himself off and attacked him behind, sending them both to the floor, with Giroro having Yanda in a headlock. Yanda bit down on Giroro's arm, and he was forced to release him as he let out a shout.
Fuyuki's eyes darted all around. He didn't know what he should do. Nobody else seemed to be doing anything about the fight, and instead were cheering and betting, so maybe they had it handled.
When his eyes returned to the fight, Giroro's back was against the floor and Yanda was sitting on top of him with his fist balled, about to deliver a punch, when Giroro quickly flipped himself over and Yanda tumbled off. Fuyuki winced as he heard Yanda's jaw meet the hard floor of the cafeteria. When Yanda stood up, he did not look too happy. He glared at Giroro with a look of intense fury, and for a brief second, he glared at Fuyuki. Fuyuki, knowing what was better for him and what was not, darted behind a pillar and ran off to find his table group. It wasn't that hard to find because Koyuki was nearby, and she was cheering the loudest. Fuyuki quickly found Keroro and hid behind him, but when his curiosity got the better of him, he peeked out into the fray.
Now, Giroro had Yanda's arm over his shoulder. He flung him over onto the ground, where Yanda's back met with the cafeteria floor again, and more cheering broke out. Yanda flipped up and kicked Giroro back in the chest, and the cheering grew even louder. Giroro was looking sort of dizzy at this point, and he gripped the back of his chair to gain some balance. As he did so, Yanda entered in and fastened his hands around Giroro's neck. Giroro's senses must have snapped back into place because he immediately swung his arm up and freed himself from Yanda's grasp. Yanda stumbled out to the side, but the crowd pushed him back in. He swung a punch to Giroro's left, which he should have seen and blocked, but for some reason when he tried to grab Yanda's arm, he missed and grabbed air instead, ending up with a bruise on the left side of his face.
Yanda and Giroro now had their backs to each other and had fallen closer to the edge of the crowd. At the same moment, they both swerved around. Giroro yelled in rage and lunged at Yanda, and they both charged at each other, about to beat the other one senseless.
Suddenly, a group of mature voices halted the cheers and shouts and whistles. Adults dressed in white, black, and grey all pushed there way through to the scene of the fight, led into battle by a tall woman with a sparkling look to her. Her brown hair had streaks of pink in it and was wrapped into a bun in the back of her head, and the suit she wore had a clean, crisp look to it. She tapped her high-heeled foot on the ground impatiently with her arms crossed over her chest. Authority was all about her, but Fuyuki also detected a distinct air of friendliness.
"Giroro Hae! Yanda Rechi!" the woman scolded. She frowned, and her voice was filled with disappointment toward them. "Will one of you explain what is going on?"
"If I had a gun with me, I'd kill you right now," Giroro threatened Yanda. He was immediately restrained by a team of doctors who pulled him to the ground.
Yanda began to laugh at him, which only made Giroro more enraged.
"Yanda," the woman said sternly. He just kept laughing. "Yanda!" The laughter didn't stop.
Seeing that it was of no use, the woman scoffed and walked over to the table where Yanda had originally been sitting. She picked out two younger kids and forced them to stand.
"Nubibi, Yue, how about you two explain some things."
The girl, presumably Yue, crossed her arms and shifted her weight to her other leg. "I dunno, and I don't really care. It's not our problem." Her voice was bored-sounding and monotonous.
"Sorry for Yanda being such a trouble, though." The boy, Nubibi, bowed in apology.
"Nubibi, I just told her it wasn't our problem."
"Oops. Oh yeah. Sorry!" He grinned sheepishly.
The woman looked displeased, but that expression quickly washed off her face and her lips returned to their original smile. Her eyes searched through the crowd again until they landed on Fuyuki.
Uh-oh, thought Fuyuki. He drew back, but the woman kept her eyes trained on him.
"Fuyuki Hinata." She smiled more, if that was possible. "What did you see happen?"
The people in front of him parted, even Keroro took a step to the side, and now all eyes were trained on Fuyuki. He swallowed. He didn't know how this lady knew his name, and he didn't know what do to.
"U-um…. They were fighting," he stated.
"Fighting." The woman nodded and looked up slightly, pondering this word. She walked back into the large circle that the parted crowd had made for her. Her eyes settled on Giroro. "And is fighting allowed, in the Hinata House?"
Giroro avoided her gaze, looking downward with his mismatched eyes, but she just continued pacing.
"No. According to Rule #6 in the rulebook, acts of aggression or violence are not allowed. According to Rules #7 and 8, hugging is the only physical contact allowed, which must be gentle and between persons of the same gender." She swiftly swerved around to face the two men once more, looked them in the eyes, and said, "Were you two hugging, or fighting?"
Yanda guffawed at the question, though Giroro said nothing.
"Tell me, Yanda, Giroro. When was the last time either of you hugged someone else, or was the recipient of a hug?"
Now the two of them were deliberately not making eye contact with each other, though the doctors tried to use their grip on their heads to make them face the woman.
She gasped and placed her fingers to her lips. "Neither of you can remember? Well, then. Yanda, Giroro, turn to each other and exchange a hug."
"WHAT?!" Giroro demanded.
"Are you crazy?!" Yanda screamed.
The crowd in the cafeteria snickered; apparently all of them had been waiting to hear a therapist asked that question by one of her patients for once.
But the woman just crossed her arms and tapped the sole of her foot on the floor, waiting.
The doctors loosened their grips on Giroro and Yanda and awkwardly pushed the two of them together.
"Well?" She smiled and waved her hand, urging them along.
Fuyuki held in his breath. Even he felt a bit embarrassed for the two of them. The silence was heavy and eyes were anxious. For a second they moved, but did nothing. The doctors around them exacted curt nudges at their sides. Standing together like that, Giroro and Yanda looked awfully uncomfortable. They both drew away from each other and glared at the woman before them.
"No hugs?" She pouted, the edges of her lips curling downward. "All right, then. Let's try something else. Giroro, Yanda, I want you to look each other in the eyes and apologize for hurting each other."
Yanda turned to Giroro. "Sorry that you can't take defeat, man." He clutched his belly, snickering at his own joke.
Giroro raised his fist. "Don't you dare laugh at me!"
"Giroro!" the woman scolded. She took hold of his fist and lowered it. "He wasn't laughing at you." The crowd in the cafeteria began to snicker, as well, and Giroro's face grew red. Whether it was from humiliation or anger, Fuyuki wasn't certain, but at least it made his skin look more like how it was supposed to be.
She tsk-tsked. "You know that I thought better of you than this."
"Wh-what? What do you mean?"
She turned to the doctors and said in a cheery voice, "I think that Giroro and Yanda here might need a break in the Healing Room."
"What?" Giroro's knees began to wobble. Just when it looked like he was going to collapse, doctors came by on either side of him and took hold of his arms, and then did the same for Yanda. "Wait… you—you can't do this!" he yelled. Fuyuki could hear his shouting all the way down to the end of the hallway, where it began to fade, along with Yanda's unsettling cackling.
"Hey. Um, excuse me." Fuyuki nudged a girl in front of him. "What's the 'Healing Room?' "
The girl turned around, and Fuyuki resisted the urge to jump. It was Yanda's creepy friend, Yue, the monotonous-looking girl.
"Hm? The Healing Room?" She looked at him with a bored expression. "It's where you go if you're causing trouble. And by that I mean when the doctors and therapists get fed up with you. If you're quiet and don't make a fuss then you'll never have to go there."
"Oh." That was probably why Fuyuki had never heard of the Healing Room before. He didn't remember one ever being in his house, but at this point, he had decided to just stop questioning these things. "But… why did Giroro not want to go?"
"That's the thing," said Yue. She grinned a little, the only expression he'd seen—and probably ever would see—on that girl's face. "They say it's on Floor 4."
After breakfast was Collective Group Therapy, and Fuyuki's group happened to be relaying the fight in the cafeteria to Pururu. Fuyuki wasn't really listening. He couldn't get his mind off of what bothered him the most—and it wasn't the fact that the Healing Room was on Floor 4, whatever that meant.
It was the men in white. During the fight, they hadn't stepped in to intervene at all. It was only when the doctors had dragged Giroro and Yanda off that they had put down their notebooks and pens for a brief moment so they could follow them down the hallway. Something about the whole scene sent chills down Fuyuki's spine.
Giroro still wasn't back yet from the Healing Room. Fuyuki kept glancing back at his usual chair, but it was always empty. Fuyuki kept lacing his fingers and unlacing them as he sat with his elbows rested on his knees.
Even afterward, in the room where he usually had Occult Club with Momoka, he still didn't know what to make of the scene at breakfast. All the words in the books he read himself to pass the time seemed to float off the page and drift into space with their meanings. Finally he could take no more of it and he shut the book closed.
"Ah! Fuyuki, you're done with your book." Keroro turned a Gunpla toward him. "I finished another Gundam model. How does it look?"
"It's great, Sarge." Fuyuki gave him an assuring smile. "Doesn't this feel a bit strange, though?"
"What, strange that everyone is doing art projects at the same time except for you?" Keroro scratched his head. "I'm sure that it would be."
"No, I mean…" Fuyuki shelved his book away and sat up. "…everything that's been going on. I don't remember my house being so… chaotic. But… it's like… chaotic, but not, at the same time…." He furrowed his brow. "What's that word… controlled."
Keroro was silent for a moment, but he smiled softly. "Look, Fuyuki… it wasn't your fault that Giroro and Yanda started fighting."
"That's not really what I was talking about, Sarge."
"Giroro's always getting angry all the time because of his short temper," he continued, ignoring the boy, "and Yanda is someone everyone could deal without." He sat back and clasped his hands behind his head. "But, of course, with guys like these, you can't do anything about them once they pick a fight with you."
"…Why not?" Fuyuki asked.
"Well, for one thing, the Rechi family is really rich." He thought for a moment. "So is the Nishizawa family, then again, but with both Momoka and Yanda their families don't really want any problems. For them or by them."
"Wait, what? Momoka's rich?"
"And for another thing," he went on, "I heard that Yanda's danger level is 7."
"7?" said Fuyuki. "Out of what?"
"Out of 10."
"Is he an alien?"
Keroro laughed. "No, he's just a regular human."
"You mean Pokopenian."
"Pokopenian. Fine. But 7 is super high for a danger level. Mine is 2. Yours is 0."
"He's an alien," Fuyuki decided.
Keroro opened his mouth to say something, but then shut it and kept quiet.
Fuyuki was silent for a moment, too, until another idea entered his head. "Hey, Sarge…."
"What," said Keroro with a sigh. All these nicknames were getting tiring.
"Why is the Healing Room on Floor 4? I thought nobody was allowed to go up there because no one's come back."
"Ah, so you've heard the rumor."
From you, Fuyuki thought.
"I don't quite know why the Healing Room's up there. I've never been to it myself, you see. But I heard that the only way you can get there is by an elevator. And the only way you can be in the elevator is if you have a key or if you're being taken to the Healing Room. If you're not in the elevator because you're being taken to the Healing Room, then you probably have a key because you need to go to the hospital on Floor 3 but you're too sick to take the stairs."
Fuyuki remembered going into the third floor in the evenings for doctor appointments. It wasn't that fun, but at least it wasn't exercise.
"But sometimes," Keroro told him, "someone sick who manages to get into the elevator gets a little too curious. And they go up to Floor 4." He stopped there.
"And?" said Fuyuki.
Keroro just shrugged. "I don't know. No one who's gone there on their own has ever come back."
There's been a few patients, but none of them came back. Doctors and therapists have actually died up there, Fuyuki recalled from their conversation yesterday.
It seemed he was learning new things about his house ever day. Whether that was a bad thing or a good thing anymore, Fuyuki wasn't sure.
By the time Separate Therapy with Garuru rolled by, Fuyuki's mind was temporarily taken off of the events earlier that day, but as soon as lunch time came, he was back in the cafeteria and spotted the men in white again. Natsumi was there to chat with him but he didn't feel like there was much to say with all the sets of eyes on him. He told her a bit about the fight earlier that morning, and Natsumi looked a bit disappointed that she couldn't have been a part of it but at the same time thought it was dumb how boys started fighting all the time.
"Well…" Fuyuki searched for something to say something in their defense. "The Corporal's got a really short temper. And he's always getting mad because the Sarge is always slacking off on the invasion. Don't you remember?"
Natsumi gave him a silent look.
Fuyuki dropped to a whisper so that the men in white couldn't hear him. "And I think Yanda's an alien, too."
"Is he, now." She let out a sigh and nibbled a bit on an apple, suddenly interested in a speck on the wall.
After lunch, Natsumi had to leave, which Fuyuki was always disappointed and a bit confused by. Another therapy hour followed with Bariri, which was extremely uneventful and boring, but at the same time, he wished it would drag out longer so that he could procrastinate on his least favorite part of the day: exercise.
But today's hour of exercise, when he reached it, seemed rather somber. Perhaps it was because Giroro wasn't there like he normally was. He should have been back by now, Fuyuki thought. But he wasn't.
Fuyuki didn't do much exercise that day. There wasn't really anything to be energetic about. Mostly it was because of the weird stuff happening that he didn't understand, puberty-unrelated. So instead of doing laps, or swimming, or playing sports games like everyone else was doing in the gym, Fuyuki distracted himself by reading all the papers taped to the windows and walls. Lists of Hinata House rules.
He'd seen them frequently; they were posted practically everywhere in his house, and every so often a doctor or therapist like the lady from earlier would repeat a rule or two. They confused him, though he figured he might as well take the time to read them just once.
Rule #1: TREAT OTHERS AS YOU EXPECT TO BE TREATED YOURSELF.
Rule #2: COMPLY WITH YOUR SCHEDULE.
Rule #3: NO STORY-TELLING INVOLVING EXCESSIVE VIOLENCE.
Rule #4: NO POSSESSION OF DRUGS, ALCOHOL, OR WEAPONS.
Rule #5: NO POSSESSION OF ANY ELECTRONICS NOT PRESCRIBED BY A DOCTOR.
The farther he got down the rule list, the more confused he became.
Rule #6: NO ACTS OF AGGRESSION OR VIOLENCE.
Rule #7: HUGGING IS THE ONLY PHYSICAL CONTACT ALLOWED.
Rule #8: HUGGING MUST BE GENTLE AND BETWEEN PERSONS OF THE SAME GENDER.
Rule #9: NO PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION.
Rule #10: NO PRIVATE DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION.
Rule #11: NO EXCHANGE OF MATERIALS.
Rule #12: NO EXCHANGE OF FLUIDS.
Rule #13: VISITORS ARE ALLOWED ONE HOUR AT MAXIMUM.
Rule #14: PHONE CALLS ARE ALLOWED TO LAST FIFTEEN MINUTES AT MAXIMUM.
Fuyuki's heart pounded as he continued reading downward. Forget confusing. This was downright frightening.
Rule #15: MANDATORY CHECKUPS MUST BE PERFORMED ON PATIENTS EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES.
Rule #16: ALL ROOMS ARE SUBJECT TO SEARCHES AT ANY GIVEN TIME.
Rule #17: NO UNAUTHORIZED DEPARTING.
He was sure his heart skipped a beat for a second there.
And finally, lingering at the bottom with a small specification of "unless supervised by a staff member," was the mystifying Rule #18:
DON'T TOUCH FLOOR 4.