Warning! Let's just say I personally like to nickname this chapter 'Girl Puberty.' As Ruri is a person with a vag, it's a thing that happens to peeps with vag's. As a person with a vag, this has happened on occasion and since Ruri falls in the age range that this usually first occurs in, I'm sure this had to have happened at least once.

That and it's fun to scar Shun and Yuuto for life.

So, trigger warning for blood and talking about that thing that happens to peeps with vag's once a month, give or take.

When was the last time I saw the sun? I mean, really saw the sun? It feels so long ago now. It feels like it's only out for a minute in winter sometimes, making the nights much longer and more dangerous. If Yuuto and Shun have watch duty, I'll have to be with the other girls for sleeping. The other girls, like Yuiko, are nice enough, but they tend to talk more than I like to talk, usually with the gossip of the day. Who did this, who did that, who they thought was cute, how they can't wait for summer just to see those cute boys going shirtless. And, this never fails to happen, there's usually at least one or two that ask if I could help them to talk to my brother, since, to them, 'he's so dark and mysterious and cool, it's hard to approach him'.

I used to laugh at that, because, really, my big brother? Dark? Mysterious? Hard to approach? Surely they weren't talking about the same person, my brother Shun Kurosaki?

Now, it's more annoying than it is funny. Yuiko usually teases me because I make a certain face whenever someone approaches me with a certain tone of voice with a question about my brother. It's a mix between being annoyed and 'no, not this shit again', she tells me. She thinks it's especially funny when I turn down them 'anonymously' giving me presents to give to him, or that I will often just say 'Just go over and talk to him, it's the easiest way to get him to notice you.'

I mean, he's not that complicated. Talk to him and he'll usually talk back. It's not that hard.

Then they usually don't like me because I wouldn't help them 'get in' with my brother, whatever that means. Then I'm usually accused of 'not being romantic' or being 'a spoilsport.' Not that I really care, but I'm not my brother's keeper! If he wanted a girlfriend, I'm sure that he could do it on his own without my help. I don't want to be involved in that kind of nonsense!

Then again, those that want to talk to my brother, usually tease me about Yuuto and how much I like him, which, sadly, always leads to my face turning red. They think that they can use that as blackmail against me, even if it doesn't really work. Yuuto is my friend more that anything. So what if I think he's cute, and that he looks good with his shirt off when he has to take it off in summer to keep cool. He seems to blush a lot too whenever he sees me in summer, when we all are only walking around in shorts and tank tops.

Well, he seems to blush a lot whenever any of the girls wear tank tops in summer and he usually looks away soon enough, sometimes holding his nose for some reason.

Well, okay I'm sure that we all kind of do smell, especially when it's summer and we're all sweaty and gross, even the girls, but c'mon Yuuto. We can't be as bad as the boys could be, and they could really, really stink on some days, sometimes for weeks.

Don't believe me? I've live with two boys, one of which I've lived with the majority of my life. Trust me, I know how they can stink. You learn to live with it after a while, as it just becomes part of daily life.

As luck would have it, I did have to stay with the girls for sleeping tonight. Both Shun and Yuuto had watch duty that night, so I had to stay with the girls to stay warm.

Though I might talk about how much I don't like them, there are times that I'm glad they're here. I'm still closest to Shun and Yuuto, but...

Well, to put it simply, they're not girls.

It's a little embarrassing to talk about this, but... well, it is a part of the story so... I kinda have to.

It happened back when we were still with our first resistance group. You know, where we were with Yuuma Tsukumo and his family and friends? We had survived into the spring with them. Shun, Yuuto, and I had our own space, sleeping on pallets and keep our small treasures there. Small treasures usually consisting of combs, mirrors, cool stones, music boxes, little toys, things like that. We tended to sleep closer together during the colder nights, further apart on warmer nights, but it was our little space and people tended to leave us alone.

I remembered it being a particularly cold night for spring, so Shun was sleeping closer to keep both of us warm. Yuuto would have been with us, but he was training to be a night-watcher at the time. We all went through that training when we were younger, to be used to long nights when we would be watching for Academia. Instead, it was just Shun, having an arm around me as we slept, keeping the other warm through the night. He had been growing taller over the past few weeks, so he practically engulfed me whenever his arms were around me, getting taller and bigger almost every day, it felt like.

It was that morning that we had discovered that something was wrong.

I remember waking up feeling something cold and wet on me. I thought it was gross because I had thought one of us had wet the pallet, seemingly.

I will tell you, on good authority, that neither of us are bed-wetters nor have we ever been, even when we were kids.

...Anyways.

I was starting to wake up and felt the dampness on me. I was about to sleepily tell Shun off for not going to the bathroom before bed and pissing on me in his sleep, when I realized that that something cold and wet was also sticky. I could also feel it deeply between my thighs, becoming slick as I moved.

Shun was still asleep when I pushed his arm off me, trying to investigate what it was that was on me. What was on me, however, made me scream, effectively waking up Shun. If I hadn't been freaking out, I'm sure I would have laughed at his face at being startled awake. His hand was on his Duel Disk before either of us could blink, but I just couldn't stop screaming. When he asked me what was wrong, I couldn't even gather the words, I was so freaked out. When he finally looked down, he saw why I was screaming, turned pale and looked horrified.

There was blood everywhere. On my clothes, on the blankets, on the pallet, and even some on Shun too. He was looking around the area, thankful for the two of us being alone when I had screamed, but that also meant that an enemy could have just sneaked in and seriously hurt me and ran afterward. He had grabbed at my shoulders, trying to see if I remembered if someone had come in and attacked me, asking me where it hurt the most, but I was just as clueless as he was. Funny thing was, though there was blood everywhere, I don't remember feeling any really sharp pains anywhere. Maybe some stomach cramping, maybe a bit warmer than usual, but nothing that major. Shun was still quick to take me into his arms and rush towards the medic area, calling out to anyone that was there.

To make a long story short, we both had... learned some things that day. Some things... that were quite... enlightening.

Poor Yuuto, though.

He had come back to an empty pallet covered with blood and blankets strewn everywhere and had assumed the worst had happened. When he went looking for us, asking around what happened, if we had been attacked recently, but no one seemed to know where we were nor had we been attacked else there would be more of an uproar, worrying him more.

Yuiko had found him like that, asking around if anyone had seen me or Shun. When she asked him why he looked so worried, he told her what he had come home to. She concluded that, if there was blood involved, then we must be in the medic area and Yuuto took off like a shot, surprising Yuiko.

Yuuto may be small, but he was certainly fast, especially so when he was determined and worried. Yuiko could barely keep up with him.

By the time they had arrived, Kotori, Yuuma's wife, had explained things to me and Shun, both of us looking quite pale and stunned. She had given Shun a spare set of clothes while she took me aside to help clean the blood off of me in the showers. It's how Yuuto found Shun in his stunned stupor, now taking his turn in shaking someone's shoulders, demanding to know what had happened and where I was. From his own words, Yuuto found that Shun was muttering to himself, something about blood and girls, making him worry all the more. Luckily, Yuiko had put two and two together and figured it out. She took Yuuto aside while Shun was still trying to process what he had just learned about girls. Yuuto wasn't happy not knowing what was going on, nor the fact that Yuiko was leading him out of medic area.

Yuiko had to be the one to explain to him about what was happening as she lead him back to our sleeping area, explaining that nothing was wrong, just that I was growing up and becoming a woman. When Yuuto still didn't understand, Yuiko decided to tell him, in detail, what it meant when a girl started bleeding when she wasn't visibly injured anywhere. Soon, he had the same look on his face that Shun had, stunned into silence and looking a tad pale. Yuiko even had to walk him through washing the pallet and our blankets, he was so out of it because of the new information thrust upon him.

We have never spoken of the incident again, and Shun and Yuuto usually shut up and look away whenever any of the other girls bring it up, finding some sick joy in our collective embarrassment.

It wasn't too bad afterward, even if the girls still sometimes snicker at the two of them, but I did find a care package from the other girls when we got back consisting of hot water pads, old torn pieces of cloth, some of the things that Kotori had given me to catch the blood and some small packages of chocolate, something that was really, really rare to come by these days, especially still good chocolate. I felt so touched by their kindness, I remember.

There are so few other girls in our group now, it sometimes makes me kind of sad. I mean, I'm always sad whenever we lose our friends and comrades, don't get me wrong, but...

I don't know. I guess, outside of Shun and Yuuto, they were so close to me. They were my friends too and we supported each other whenever times were tough.

I miss them sometimes, you know?

We were scouting for supplies today. It was still very, very cold out today, but the weather was clear, so we figured it was safe enough to try and replenish our supplies.

Shun and Yuuto were scouting ahead in case there was trouble, while Yuiko and I searched for supplies. We had all gotten used to the quiet of Heartland by now, even welcomed it as it helped us to hear if danger was coming. Still, there was an eeriness to the silence that I don't any of us could ever get used to, the only sounds we could hear was the wind and some of the surrounding buildings settling. We can sometimes hear the echoes of what Heartland used to be, a city surrounded by lights and music, something that none of us could have imagined being gone one day.

Yuiko had a habit of picking up what she could find of the cards littered about the city, the many that fallen under the might of Academia. She does it in hopes of paying respects to them, giving them proper send offs instead of blowing away in the wind to be torn or ruined by the elements, even though it's been about three years since then, so some of the cards are probably beyond repair by now.

She stops when she finds one card in particular, causing her to freeze. Though every other time I've seen her, Yuiko was always bright and hopefully, optimistic, sometimes a little foul-mouthed, but she still had a good heart.

But, looking at that one card in particular, her determined look seemed to shatter and fall into despair. When I asked what was wrong, she could only say that she finally did it; she had finally found her.

I leaned in closer to see who it was that she had found, finding the portrait of an older woman, looking a lot like Yuiko and Junko, her little sister. And, like the rest of the cards we have found, she looked to be in pain, but she was still determined. Her clothes also looked similar to the rags we wore, implying she had survived for at least while before...

Before I could think anything more, Yuiko collapsed onto her knees, holding tightly onto that card, tears starting to stream down her red cheeks.

'I-it's my Momma, Ruri.' She explained to me, 'the stubborn old broad. I never even got the chance to say goodbye.' She told me about her mother, the one that wanted her to be a proper lady all the time, to dress nice and be pretty when Yuiko just wanted to be herself, crude and funny as she was. It led to a lot of fights between her and her mom, who always seemed to compare her to her prettier and seemingly perfecter younger sister. Matter of fact, she had a big fight with her the day the invasion happened. She didn't even remember what it had been about, it happened so long ago. Now, finding her mother's card like this, out in the open in the dead of winter three years later...

I did the only thing I could do and pulled her into my arms as she cried into me, sobbing hard.

"You're so lucky to still have your brother, Ruri." She told me, reminding me of when we lost Junko last winter. Yuiko had taken it pretty hard then, her only family taken from her so cruelly by Academia. We were lucky to stop her from taking on Academia by herself then, else she would have been carded then too, her grief so powerful then.

"Hold onto him. Don't be like me and push your family away. Keep them as close as you can. If you fight with him, resolve it as soon as you can. Don't be like me, Ruri, and live with regrets."

She then asked if she could be alone for a little while. I didn't really want to leave her alone, especially with the harsh winter wind starting to pick up, but she insisted. That I could have Yuuto helping me to find stuff for the camp while Shun stood guard. He was good at that.

I soon respected her wishes and wandered ahead to find Yuuto, just as Yuiko had asked. The image of her kneeling on the ground, looking broken and shivering as the snow starting to fall was the last image I had of her before running ahead to find the boys.