September 15th Waning Crescent 9:10pm
Laughing. She's sitting across the street from me, talking and laughing with Aragaki Shinjiro. The day after she'd run away from me, she didn't come back. We didn't talk about what happened, nor did she answer any of my messages. I rarely spent time in the apartment anymore. There would be no point without her there.
The time that she withheld from me, she poured into Aragaki. They went out for dinner, to walk the dog, and sometimes just talking in the kitchen of the dorms. If I didn't know any better, I would think they were in love.
They're too far for me to hear what they're saying, but I don't particularly want to know. Whatever it is won't make me feel any better. She ran away, clearly avoiding me and whatever the problem was. Like a weak, spineless coward. This girl wasn't worth my time. I repeated the words to myself almost daily, but they did little to improve my mood.
I turn to go home, back to Takaya. As I round the alley to our apartment, I run into the man talking to a child with sandy brown hair. I recognize him immediately. "I'm sorry sir. I didn't see you."
"Ah... The little Amada boy." The youngest member of SEEs, and the only one to have never seen us. They didn't bring him to bunker the night we revealed ourselves. He knew our names and purpose, but our faces were a mystery.
"You...know me?" His face is pulled into a frown, likely searching his memory for some clue of how they knew each other. He would find nothing. Takaya has never seen the boy until now.
"Oh yes. I live a block from where you used to, before your house collapsed."
Amada glue his eyes to the ground, clearly still a sore subject. His mother died in that collapse and the Kirijo group covered it up. A little recreation during the Dark Hour and a few paid off cops could go a long way in this society. No one would trust the word of a boy against the field of evidence. No one except the boy himself would trust what he'd seen.
"Pity... what happened to your mother. Did they ever catch the teenagers who did it?" Takaya's voice is filled with an innocent curiosity. He was playing this kid like a fiddle.
"Teenagers...? What teenagers?" Amada's eyes are suddenly sharp, staring at Takaya with such an intensity, it would scare a lesser man. Takaya's fake expression of surprise only grows stronger.
"I saw a group of three teenagers going into your home the night of the explosion. I remember it perfectly. A girl with bright red hair, and two boys. One of them had white hair and the other wore some form of hat. I couldn't quite see their faces, but it left an impression on me since I thought it was odd that three teenagers would blow up a house just for fun."
The kid's face is pale, and his eyes are wide. His lips move but no words come out. The truth of what happened that night is dawning on him. He runs off without another word to Takaya. My friend watches the child go with a wicked grin on his face. He smiles to me as I walk up behind him. "That boy will do our work for us."
September 18th Rank 9
A typhoon has hit the city. Minako can feel the winds hitting her like a car. The rain that pelts her skin feels like stones falling from the sky. She won't make it back to the dorm. It's too far, and the rainstorm is too strong. Where could she go? The apartment is the only thing that comes to mind. She bursts through the door, soaking wet.
The room is warm, but her body feels cold. Was she dying? The thought isn't scary. A little comforting, maybe. There's a vague idea in the back of her mind, that Jin might be here so she can die in his arms.
"Big sister...Are you okay?" The voice is foreign. Most likely one of the other people who are living in the apartment. She's about to turn around and tell him that she's fine, when her body hits the wooden floor. All around her are panicked voices, but none of them register except the first one who asked if she was alright. He is just a little boy, no more than 11 years old. She can see that he's wearing glasses, under curly black hair. It is the last thing she sees before she sinks into darkness.
Warm, her skin is warm. That's good. It was cold earlier. In her dreams, she visits the Velvet Room, but it is brief. She can barely get a hello to Theo before she is pushed back to reality.
When she opens her eyes, all she can register is that everything looks sideways, like everything is stuck to the wall. She's in her bed, wrapped in a million layers blankets like a burrito. They are wrapped so tightly around her in fact, that she can barely move, so she chooses not to. Instead, she looks around the dark room, trying to get a handle on her surroundings.
It is dark, much later than when she first arrived at the apartment. The sound of heavy rain batters the ceiling high above her. "What happened?"
"Finally awake, you idiot?" There is movement below and behind her. What she'd originally thought was her pillow is actually Jin's lap. She bolts straight up, her forehead hitting the bottom of his chin.
"Gah!" His head snaps back from the impact and he rolls away from her, cradling the injury.
"I'm sorry! Are you okay?" She's about to reach for him when she realizes the sleeves of her shirt is covering her hands. This wasn't her uniform. Someone changed her clothes while she was asleep. "Why am I wearing this?"
"You showed up completely soaked and running a fever so I changed you into clean clothes. Ah shit, I think I bit my tongue." Jin is licking around his mouth, looking for blood, but her mind is still focused on the fact that he changed her into these pajamas. This callous and inconsiderate man had spent the afternoon taking care of her.
"Thank you..."
"You're welcome." He sighs, giving up on checking the injury to his jaw. "I want to talk."
Her eyes flinch, but she sweeps it away quickly, placing a sweet smile on her face. "Why? We haven't been together in so long. Let's do something else."
I can feel her fingers move with a practiced motion underneath my shirt. She's trying to distract me, but I have more self-control than most people. My body urges me to make the move, and I grab her hand to stop her. "That's not going to work today. You ran away from me right into another man's arms. I've seen you with Aragaki."
Emotions flit across her face: Panic, sadness, and anger take up residence behind her expression. She's losing control, but the smile never fades. "I didn't. Shinjiro is just a friend. There's nothing going on. C'mon. Don't be jealous. I've missed you. Kiss me..." Her lips brush my throat, her hair caressing the injury to my jaw. It's almost enough to break me.
"No, Mina. We're going to talk. Stop it." We wrestle for a few minutes but Minako has the upper hand. I'm taller, but she's far stronger than me. As she's about to pin me on my stomach, my teeth rakes across her wrist, causing her to let go. She breaks her hold and I twist my way on top, holding her down with my weight.
"Ooh, I didn't know you play dirty like that. I like it." The laughter is too high-pitched, fake. She's trying too hard, and it makes her words awkward.
"I'm going to die soon, Mina. That's a fact. Are you going to run from that fact forever?"
"What are you talking about? I'm fine. Everyone dies. That's normal." Her head is turned to the side, so her bangs are covering her eyes and she doesn't need to look at my face.
I lean my head into her chest so her heart is pounding against my forehead. It's fast, and the pulse is so hard that it's enough to cause me the barest of pain. "I probably won't make it to your birthday."
The laughter immediately dies on her lips. She finally turns her heads in my direction, and the pain there is unmistakable."But that's..."
"February 28th. Right... Minako Arisato, I need you to talk to me... Are you going to be with me until the end or should we pretend this never happened? I can do whatever you want. Just tell me."
Her eyes are squeezed shut but the tears roll from them anyway, soaking into her hair. "Jin...I can't do this again. I can't watch the people I love die and then move on. I haven't... Moonlight Bridge. My brother... My parents... It's been ten years Jin... I haven't even learned to live without them! How... How am I supposed to live without you?! I can't! I CAN'T!"
The words choke her and she starts hyperventilating, bordering on a panic attack. I quickly release her but she only curls back into a ball, protecting herself from the world. From me. "Mina. You're full of life. You don't even need to try for people to like you. There are men falling over themselves to make you love them. You'll be fine."
"Ten years, Jin. Do you know how long ten years is...? There wasn't a single day in those ten years where I didn't think about them." She's digging her palms so hard into her eyes, that I'm starting to fear she might hurt herself. "I don't know how to be happy. I'm just going through the motions! There is nothing in this world that I wanted to do until I learned how to fight Shadows, but soon, that will be gone too. What am I supposed to do after that...? Tell me... Everyone in this world belongs to something! Someone... Who do I belong to...? Everything I loved is dead. The man I love is going to die in less than a year. What do you want me to do?!"
When I go to pry her hands from her eyes, there are bruised red rings around them, framing her pain. "I'm sorry..."
"Why can't I save you...?" She's beating into my chests with her fists, but her attacks barely hold any strength. I wrap my arms around her and it only takes a few seconds for her tears to soak into my clothes. She couldn't save me, and I couldn't save her. The over-looking sickness would never fade: my death and her pain. There was no salvation for either of us. "I'm sorry..."
"Jin...I can't lose anyone else." She's clinging to me like a child, desperate, all-consuming. I rub her back in my best efforts to soothe her, but she shows no sign of calming down.
"I'm sorry..."
"Jin...Why does it need to end like this?"
"I don't know."
Her cries are slowing down to a sniffle but her eyes are almost completely bloodshot when she looks at me. Her nose is running and her entire face is wet. This is quite possibly the ugliest I've ever seen her. I place the lightest kiss I can manage on her forehead. It's sloppy, and unromantic, but her hiccup-sobs disappear. Her voice is barely audible when she whispers, "I don't want to lose you..."
"I know... I'm sorry..."
This was only the beginning of the pain I would cause her.
October 4th Full Moon Dark Hour
I remember the first time I fired a gun, Takaya was holding my hands. He was so big and strong, everything I wanted to be. I didn't like the smell of gun powder. It reminded me of my days in the Kirijo Group. The bang was loud, and it hurt my ears. I hated almost everything about that moment except Takaya's praise and affection.
Now, the smell of gunpowder is familiar. It's the smell of our house. It's probably what all my clothes smell like. I don't even notice it anymore.
The ringing echoes off the walls, grinding on my brain. My eyes are glued on the scene. There's a circle of blood on Aragaki Shinjiro's coat, and it only grows larger with each passing second. The man is down on one knee, but his arms are still spread wide, protecting the child behind him. A child who had only been trying to kill him a few moments prior.
"Shinji!" I can hear Sanada scream, and it registers that he's close by. For the first time in a long time, the sight of him brings me no anger. After tonight, Minako will go to him, and I will not stop her. Watching her break down in my arms was enough. I couldn't make her happy. There wasn't enough time. I wasn't enough to ease her pain.
"Why must your friends always ruin a joyous moment?" Takaya sighs and we turn to go. "Perhaps another time then..."
Minako would cry for him tonight and it would be my fault. She was right. I destroyed her.
NC: Rank 10