Author's note :
Welcome back! Here's a new chapter for this story that is so dear to me, just like these characters are. I hope you like it!
If you're a returning reader, I promise I never forgot about you, and this is as much for you as it is for me.
If you're a new reader, thank you for coming this far into the story, leave a comment if you feel like it!
Now onto a brand new chapter...
Chapter 8 - When in doubt, trust your friends
The phone rang only three times before Rengoku answered - with his usual cheeriness and everything - but it felt like forever in Obanai's mind.
"I need help," was all he had to say before his friend hung up on him. Obanai knew that he'd be at his door in a matter of minutes. Maybe I should've told him not to hurry so much, he thought, but well… It was kind of an emergency, in his head anyway.
Obanai looked around him, he was sitting on his couch, which he had started to refer to as the scene of the crime. Otherwise known as "where he was seating when he realized that he was well and truly fucked, oh and also in love" - but that title was kind of too long.
It was now Sunday, only little more than one full day had gone by since he had some kind of epiphany while laying right there in the middle of the night. Somehow that too felt like forever ago.
He stared at his hands, they were shaking with a slight tremor, had been like that for hours on end and didn't seem to be willing to settle down anytime soon.
Obanai felt empty, like he had no more energy to give, his thoughts had consumed everything left of him, leaving behind a fog that couldn't seem to dissipate. Maybe it was because he hadn't slept for a second since Friday night, when Mitsuri had left well into the night, taking his heart - and probably his soul too to be honest - with her.
It was Sunday and he was supposed to get it together. He had things to do and he had classes to attend early the next morning and he couldn't afford to miss any of them. He was already barely concentrating most of the time, trying to quiet his turbulent mind, and he had to at least get a few hours of sleep if he wanted to survive the week to come.
So, yes, he needed help. But Obanai was a proud fucker, it was one of the reasons he found himself in this situation in the first place, and he loathed having to depend on anybody other than himself to do anything. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and who better than Kyôjurô Rengoku could he have called to help him out while also keeping quiet about the whole thing? The answer was of course - no one.
Just then, Obanai's front door banged open and Kyôjurô barged through like a mad man on a mission. Well, Obanai really should have emphasized on the need of help not being a life or death kind of situation… Maybe if he had, he wouldn't be facing not one, but two of his closest friends - Kyôjurô had brought Sanemi along, for whatever reason - both of them looking like they were marching into battle.
They stood there, eyeing him up and down, assessing the damage he might have done to himself. Their train of thought, although unwanted, wasn't unwarranted considering Obanai's "history" with harmful objects.
"What in the…" started Kyôjurô while Sanemi boomed "Are you alright?" with as much concern as Obanai had ever seen on the normally detached man's face.
"I'm fine," was all Obanai could say, but even that was a lie. After all, it had been 36 hours since he last slept and he could guess that it showed, considering the looks that his friends were casting him. They didn't seem to believe him much, anyway. "I just…" he couldn't even think about where to begin, about what he was even willing to say, "Can you assholes sit down so I won't crane my neck looking at you towering over me like that?!"
Well, Obanai was an asshole himself, and when in doubt, he would always rely on harsh words and his crude syllabus to set himself up for whatever this was going to be.
Sanemi, after closing the front door, sat down on the floor facing Obanai, clearly waiting for him to explain why he had summoned them to his place on a Sunday night. While he made himself comfortable on the floor by stealing cushions from Obanai's couch, Kyôjurô had gone to the kitchen, returning only seconds later with a glass full of water.
Oh. Right. Obanai felt how parched he was, his throat was dry as a desert and his stomach empty of any content. He may have forgotten to eat or drink anything during the weekend. Actually, he couldn't remember doing much besides sitting on his couch and letting his mind run wild until he couldn't see what was in front of him any longer.
"Thanks," he said, lamely, as he took the glass from his friend's hand and started drinking small sips from it.
While he took the time to slowly rehydrate himself, Kyôjurô sat next to Sanemi on the floor, and patiently waited, although he looked sick with worry.
"I don't know what to do," was all Obanai said, once his throat didn't feel like sand anymore. All his snarkiness forgotten, he had never felt so lost in his life. "I need your help," he looked at one than the other, "I need you to tell me what to do.." But he didn't even know how to formulate, how to make them understand, that this was unknown to him, that he had no words for it.
"What to do about what, Obanai?" Kyôjurô probed, while giving him time to compose his answer. Sanemi remained silent, albeit ever watchful of each of his friend's reactions.
This was it, Obanai had to shove his ego aside, had to stop racking his brain for answers he couldn't seem to find on his own, had to stop being so fucking pathetic about what he wanted to do but couldn't. He just had to spit it out, get it over with, let go of the tight leash he constantly kept on himself. If there was one conclusion that he had reached by himself ever since that fateful Friday night, it was that he wanted to live a little, and fuck if that wasn't a brainmelting thought in and of itself. Now he needed help figuring out how.
"I'm in love with Mitsuri Kanroji. And I don't know what to do about it."
There, it was out. Out of the confines of his mind, laid out in the open for these men to witness. And even though they were his friends, Obanai still felt sick just at the idea of letting any aspect of his life outside of his control.
"Fuck," breathed Kyôjurô, with a stunned look on his face, a rare sight considering the guy was the literal embodiment of wisdom. After all, most of the time, he really had the answers to everyone else's questions, which was why he had been called here in the first place. At the same time, he heard Sanemi exclaim "Holy fuck!"
Well, Obanai Iguro certainly wasn't good at many things, being a friend especially, but even in the midst of all the chaos raging through his mind and his life, he thought: at least I still surprised them with something. And the thought came to him unbidden, for all that he was, he was rarely ever surprising.
Mitsuri was having yet another crappy week, and she couldn't have felt worse if she tried. As she walked around campus, feeling just as lost as she usually did, she thought to herself that it was just how it should be. Just as it always was, with her.
She just knew that her shoulders were sagging and that she carried herself with even less grace than she usually did, but she couldn't even find it in her to care about it for more than the short seconds of self-consciousness she had experienced.
It was Thursday, the worst day of the week in her opinion, the day that always lasted longer somehow than any other, not close enough to the weekend, not far enough from Monday.
Ugh, this is the worst. The thought kept spiraling through her head, over and over again, and it made her feel worse every time, as if it was even bearable. It wasn't.
Mitsuri's lunch sat heavy in her bag. She couldn't muster the force to eat any of it. A rare thing, at least it had been in the past. Now, it felt like a constant struggle to even take any lunch break. Now, every time she got her lunch out of her bag, she heard the very words her ex boyfriend - fiancé, even - had told her on so many occasions. "Can't you eat like a normal person? You're getting fatter by the minute!" and these were from the nicest of her memories. "You disgust me." was another colorful one.
She heard him as if he was walking right beside her, telling the cruel words to her face directly.
And therein laid the reason she had had two shitty weeks.
At the beginning of the week before, Mitsuri had actually been doing pretty good. Anxiety, insomnia and general stress aside, she was coping, at the very least. Until her phone had started ringing.
The first time it happened, Mitsuri was in class and didn't even notice it until much later. When she didn't recognize the number and saw no voicemails had been left, she carried on with her day.
The second time the phone rang, she recognized the number from before, and she hesitated. After all, she had always been particularly nervous about answering calls, and generally referred to text messages to communicate with the few people she knew on campus. And most of the time, the "people she knew" were Obanai and Shinobu, and none of them ever called.
By the time she had built the courage to finally pick up, the call had ended, and Mitsuri was relieved. Whoever that was could very well leave her a message if they so wanted to reach her. Or text her, you know, like normal people did.
On the same day, but much later, when Mitsuri was happily texting Obanai about their upcoming movie night on Friday - something that she was particularly excited about, as was becoming the norm - her phone rang again. With the same number.
This time, she picked up, and when she brought the phone to her ear and heard the voice on the other end, everything in her froze. Her hand holding the device froze next to her head, her brain stopped processing anything altogether. The only thing actually moving was her heart which was slamming all around her ribcage like a bird caught between bars of steel.
"Hello, sugar," came the sickeningly sweet voice of a man she had thought she'd never hear from again.
Before he could say anything else, before she could even comprehend what her body was screaming at her to do, Mitsuri had thrown the phone away from her so brutally that it went smashing to the ground.
She scrambled up from the bed where she had been laying and picked it up in a haste. The voice kept coming from the other end of the call but her ears were ringing so loud she couldn't have heard any of it even if she'd wanted to. And she didn't. She hung up immediately and took no time to think twice about turning the damn thing off and putting it as far away from her as possible.
Unfortunately for Mitsuri, "out of sight, out of mind" had never worked for her before, and it certainly didn't work for her then either.
Her body and mind were no longer frozen but were actually burning up, blood rushing to her fingertips, heart pumping extra wild, adrenaline coursing through her veins, keeping her standing, although she was shaking like a leaf.
How could he even have gotten her number? Mitsuri's mind was reeling with endless possibilities of life altering catastrophes, most of them involving her bastard of an ex smashing through every single little thing she had achieved for herself ever since leaving him and her shit life behind.
Does he know where I live? She thought, and started panicking even more. If he had found her number, he could very well find her address, if he hadn't already. He could be at her door right now, waiting for her to get out. She'd be cornered, she'd be stuck with him, she'd have to go face him and escape unscathed… shit, shit, shit!
Mitsuri rushed to her windows and lowered every blind in her small apartment, she double checked, no - triple checked - that her door was truly locked, and even pushed her small desk all the way to lean against it, just to be extra cautious.
After so much time spent worrying, spiraling, hyperventilating, pulling her hair out, she simply had no energy left in her to do anything but lie down. She went back to her bed and rested on the covers, staring at the ceiling as if it had the answers she was looking for written down. It didn't.
The night passed without her even realizing, her eyes never drifted from the door, her heart never quite relaxing. And when morning came and she had to go to class, she took the small knife she had bought for herself when she decided to change her life - when she had gotten free - and kept it in her hand until she reached university and had to keep it concealed in her bag.
Mitsuri spent the following days in a haze. Always checking her surroundings, looking behind her back, suspecting everyone of being a traitor, not trusting shadows in the hallways or whispers in classrooms. It was hell, basically.
But she never saw him, he never showed up to her doorstep or even on campus. And she could only draw the conclusion that he didn't know where she was. Yet. If he had found her number, he could find anything else about her. Even though Mitsuri took care of not having any public social media accounts, and not talking to too many people, especially about where she lived or where she came from, she could never be too sure.
Everything had been a blur for Mitsuri, at least until Friday night. She couldn't have canceled her movie night with Obanai even if she tried.
He felt like the only good thing in her life, like the only person she could rely on, even though he knew next to nothing about what plagued her nightmares almost every night.
She had gone to his place looking like crap and feeling just about the same, and he - in all his glory - had welcomed her to his home, on his couch, and in his arms, like nothing had ever been more natural.
Of course Mitsuri had been ready to crumble by then, and hadn't been anymore ready to resist his heterochromatic gaze then she had been willing to keep him at a distance.
When she woke up in the middle of the night, sleeping literally on him like he was a mattress, she had a clear mind and her lungs felt somehow less constricted than before.
This feeling, however fleeting, had pushed her to kiss his forehead before leaving, it was the "thank you" she should have voiced out loud but couldn't find it in her to say. It wasn't enough to express the gratitude that filled her heart every time she looked at him.
It certainly wasn't enough to show him that she cared about him, like a friend but also so much more. Like someone she wanted to share everything with, as scary as that sounded to her so soon after meeting him.
But Friday night was but a bleep in Mitsuri's life as of late. The anomaly of Obanai still remained unsolved, the attraction was stronger than ever, and the peace that his company brought her, unmatched.
Friday night was long gone, and the week had started again, plunging Mitsuri back in the anxious pool of anxiety she hadn't escaped for long.
Now this week was worse, because she was so bone tired from her sleepless nights, and her body was so weak from barely eating when voices from her past screamed at her that she still wasn't enough, that she'd never be loved.
This Thursday, Mitsuri had nothing but her own bitter memories to rehash, and nothing but hateful words to haunt her every waking moment.
She kept walking around campus, waiting for classes to begin again. At least when she was attending lectures, she could plunge herself in her notes, in her studies, knowing she was doing something good, something that would bring other people good too, in the end.
"Mitsuri!" she suddenly heard someone call from behind her, "Wait up!" the person hollered next. She turned around and saw Shinobu standing a short distance away. Mitsuri couldn't find it in her to resent the short brunette, who had been nothing but kind - if a bit straightforward - with her ever since they met.
She actually felt warmth curdling in the raw crevasses of her heart, because at that moment, she had felt so lonely, and hearing someone like Shinobu call her name acted as a balm on her frayed nerves.
Mitsuri stopped on her tracks and waited for the other girl to join her, feeling lighter with every step she took in her direction.
"You look like you need a hug." was all Shinobu said as an introduction, but it was enough for a small smile to break on Mitsuri's face.
"That obvious?" she replied with barely there good humor.
Shinobu stepped closer and gently pulled her into a hug, leaving Mitsuri all the time in the world to back down if she didn't feel like it. She did. Oh my god did she feel like getting hugged at that moment. It was actually the best thing to happen to her since the past Friday.
Mitsuri let the petite woman embrace her and slowly tried to release the pent up anxious energy that she had accumulated for days on end.
She let out the longest sigh ever and felt instantly lighter than she had in days. When Shinobu pulled back, Mitsuri's face and general complexion had lost its edge, and the smile she sported was softer than before.
"Thank you," she started saying, barely keeping the emotions threatening to spill behind her careful words, "I really needed that." she continued.
Shinobu simply nodded at her with a reassuring smile before taking her hand and leading her somewhere only she seemed to know the way to.
Mitsuri let her. At that moment, she would have let her take her anywhere as long as it made her feel this way, calmer, happier, safer.
Before long, the both of them had reached a small room, where couches and seats were installed again decorated walls and a couple of students were already talking by a coffee machine.
Only Shinobu would know of a place like that in the middle of the science building, Mitsuri surmised.
They sat down on one of the couches, facing each other, Shinobu still hadn't let go of Mitsuri's hand, and that gesture alone brought tears back to her eyes.
The swell of emotions she had tried to keep to herself for so many days was starting to bubble up close to the surface, and she felt like she wouldn't keep it together much longer.
"Will you tell me?" Shinobu carefully asked, "what has you so worked up that you haven't been properly sleeping or eating? And don't even try to argue, I see it in your face that you haven't had a good night's sleep in days." her voice was stronger now, and it carried the worry that was also written all over her beautiful features.
"It's a long story.." Mitsuri warned, even though she felt then that she had never wanted to tell it to someone as much as she did now with her friend. Yes, she realized, Shinobu was her friend, and she could trust her with this part of herself.
"I have all the time in the world." her friend replied, with a reassuring squeeze of her hand.
And then, as she was sitting down on a couch somewhere around a campus she had barely even memorized an inch of, with a girl she had met at a party mere weeks before, Mitsuri felt safe enough to tell her story. She felt safer indeed than she had ever felt in the life she had left behind.
She told Shinobu everything. From the childhood she had spent moving around cities, even states, with parents who had never given her any time of their day. It had been mostly fine albeit very lonely.
She'd been by herself on most days, running around and trying to befriend any kid kind enough to talk to a literal stranger.
That was when she had met Kyôjurô, a boy whose heart burned as bright and true as his eyes. He had never turned her down, had always shared with her whatever adventure he'd have cooked for the day. Had been her first friend and also one of the last.
When Mitsuri was fourteen, her parents - who had never talked to her with anything other than utter disinterest or even disgust - had suddenly taken a keen interest in their daughter's appearance, thinking of what they could make of it, of her.
Shortly after, they had introduced her to an older boy, he'd been close to twenty at the time. Upon first seeing her, he had turned to her parents with a charming smile, clearly pleased with what they had offered him.
Mitsuri was too young to perceive the nuances of each of their voices, and at first glance, the boy - no, man - had been nothing but kind, amiable and charming.
He told her all the right things and promised her all kinds of stuff, mostly that he'd take her anywhere she wanted and that she'd get to do anything she desired to do.
The first time he kissed her, she felt close to nothing, but when her parents told her that she had to do anything he said and asked her to, she felt like she had to try harder, and harder again.
She had known nothing but quiet displeasure emanating from her parents all her life, sometimes outright disappointment - it was directed at her being a girl, her being too tall, too fat, taking too much space. She was the problem.
Until she wasn't. To this man, she was no problem, rather a solution. She'd provide him with everything he asked, she'd give him everything she had to give, and she would never complain about any of it. After all, she hadn't complained thus far.
He took and took from her, giving close to nothing back. He promised her she'd go to medical school once she was out of her parents' home, that she'd be free to pursue her dream of healing people with all the love she had to give.
And she gave him so much of her love, or so she had thought. Time and time again, she convinced herself that he was the best thing to ever happen to her, that he was her savior, and she kept giving him everything.
Until she turned eighteen and he took her home with him with a shiny ring on her finger, promising forever. Mitsuri thought she'd be free to go to university like she had always desired. But he had lied about her being free from anything. She turned out to be the prisoner in her own home.
Once the lies were uncovered, he dropped the nice guy act and let loose of his temper.
Most of the time he would insult her, belittle her, intimidate, humiliate, laugh at her in a thousand different ways. Other times, when she'd pack the few belongings she had - which were admittedly close to nothing - he'd grab her and push her around, barricading the door or locking her inside. Then he'd find a way to punish her.
And this, she struggled with so much to this day, still. She couldn't even describe what had been taken from her during these years, what she'd fought so hard to get back for herself.
One day, she just gave up on her stuff and left home with nothing more than a backpack filled with clothes and things she couldn't survive without.
She came to her parents' house and pretended like nothing was wrong and acted like the happy bubbly girl she hadn't really been in years. They didn't see anything, they had never cared anyway.
She took stuff from her old bedroom, school stuff mostly, and her college applications, they had been sitting there for years.
When she left the house, she didn't bother saying goodbye or even saying anything at all.
Mitsuri left without so much as looking behind her shoulders. She had never gone back to that wretched place, and she never would.
She had tried very hard and mostly succeeded - after months of intense therapy, thank goodness for her shrink - in letting the past in the past.
Until last week when the fucker who had ruined so many years of her life had found her phone number and decided to take a dump on everything she had built for herself then and there.
Which led her to the here and now, sitting with Shinobu, the first person she had told her story to besides her therapist. Mitsuri still felt unsure, after years of never trusting herself and her feelings, she had a hard time trusting others around her with any part of her.
Except Obanai. A not so quiet part of her brain whispered. Yes, she had trusted Obanai with a lot, she even feared she had burdened him with too much already. And he didn't even know anything about any of this.
Mitsuri had been silent for some time now, she felt drained of all her substance, emptied of any kind of pain or anxiety. When she looked up from where her eyes had drifted while telling her story, she found Shinobu's eyes steady on her face.
Her friend's easy smile was nowhere to be seen, though, and there was a rare tightness to the corners of her mouth.
"Sorry," Mitsuri started to apologize, "I know it's kind of a lot, I shouldn't have unpacked all of that on you Shinobu."
Before she could say anything else, Shinobu had grabbed her hand and was holding it with renewed fervor.
"Don't you apologize for something that is none of your fault," the brunette replied with fire in her eyes, "You hear me Mitsuri? It was none of your fault." she punctuated every word with a firm squeeze of her hand.
Just then, Mitsuri's empty heart seemed to fill up again, and it was now overflowing, with so much fear for the life she risked to lose, and yet so much joy for what she had found along the way, and so much love for the people she had been so lucky to meet.
Silent tears spilled from her eyes, just a few, to remind her that she had things to fight for, she had friends she could count on, and a life that was hers alone.
Shinobu silently brushed each of them away with gentle hands and hugged Mitsuri again, for good measure.
"Thank you," the pink-haired girl breathed, "for listening, and…for being my friend?" she hadn't meant to say it as a question, but she somehow couldn't believe herself so lucky as to count this amazing woman as her friend.
"You are my friend, Mitsuri Kanroji," Shinobu reassured her, "you've been my friend ever since we met at that party just as I knew you'd be. Don't ever doubt that."
"And I know I'm not the only friend you've charmed ever since you got here," she pressed on with a glint entering her violet eyes, "you have Kyôjurô, and Sanemi, Tengen, and Obanai, too."
Upon hearing the last name being pronounced, Mitsuri couldn't keep her gaze from shifting just as she couldn't keep her cheeks from reddening.
"You feel something for that weird, snake obsessed guy, don't you?" Shinobu asked with incredulity, even though the answer was pretty damn obvious already. Mitsuri supposed that having friends also meant sharing this kind of stuff with them, even if she wanted to hide behind the couch they were sitting on.
"Obanai, he's…" she started, but couldn't quite get the words out from the confines of her mind. "What I feel for him.. After such a short time, it's too much.. I've just…" Crap but she was rambling now and there was nothing to stop the overflow of poorly articulated words coming out of her mouth.
"What I felt before," she grimaced as she spoke, "it was nothing, nothing, compared to what it's like for me to be near Obanai." And if that wasn't the fucking truth, she didn't know what was!
"I don't trust it, or myself when he's around!" Mitsuri kept on going, "The world is spinning and it's as if only he can keep me on my feet and I'm so fucking terrified of love. I thought I knew what it was but turns out I had no fucking clue. And I didn't think I'd be ready to give it to anyone, ever again." she had to take a pause and breathe deep, forcing her racing heart to relax before it would explode.
"I thought I knew love and I thought I could protect myself from it. But I know now, that I'm in love with Obanai and that there's nothing I can do to turn that around. I couldn't walk away, even if I wanted to.. And I don't. And that's the most terrifying thing of all." Mitsuri concluded, and she couldn't help the despair from dripping into her voice.
Sometimes it felt like love was desperate, grabbing hold to someone and refusing to let go. That was what it felt like to love Obanai.
"Fuck." breathed Shinobu.
Fuck, indeed.
More author's notes : Aaaaaaand... I'm BACK!
I apologize for disappearing, there is no excuse, life is just life, ya' know? Sometimes you have no time or space left inside of your brain to keep a story like that running. But I'm doing my best at keeping this up because I just love a good love story with a happy ending, and I'm hoping to grant these two something like that.
I know this chapter is kind of a filler but I wanted to make them take some time apart from each other, and rely on the people closest to them, as everybody should do when faced with doubts and struggles.
Thank you for reading this, I'll be back soon, and they'll find each other at the end, I promise!
Leave a comment ;)