After surviving the horrors of Heavenly Host, Ayumi finds her guilt creeping up on her one after-school, rainy day.
It was just another rainy school day to most students at Kisaragi High. Some students planned ahead, packing umbrellas in the morning, while others were not so fortunate. Some were able to get lifts home from parents, while others had to deal with soggy, public transport.
For a group of five students, however, rainy days were a different story.
On a rainy day such as this, an unfortunate high-school teacher tripped and fell down one of the many flights of stairs at Kisaragi, or so that old legend goes. It was also a rainy day when a small group of friends stayed behind after-school under the guise of cleaning, only to make the biggest mistake of their lives. None alive were more acutely aware of this than Ayumi Shinozaki.
It was on days like this that Ayumi desperately wanted to stay in her bed until her thoughts subsided. Cocooning her sheets around herself, she soon found that every splatter of rain seemed like blood, bringing her back to Heavenly Host. Every drip-drop of water brought her to the sight of rotting carcasses once belonging to students her age, some reduced to nothing more than a pool of black sludge leaking out of rusted buckets. Her mind would transport back to those dark, abandoned halls, and she would fight every urge to just breakdown. She thought of her erased friends and could only blame herself. And when she thought of what she put the other four through, she could feel herself cracking more and more. She knew it wasn't fair on the others to stay in bed and hide from the problem that she so felt she'd created. No one blamed her, of course, but she knew her friends would still be here, living normal lives, had she never found that charm online.
With a heavy sigh and a cloud of negativity surrounding her, Ayumi forced herself out of bed, rubbing away three hours of sleep from her eyes. As she met with her friends outside of the school, it was apparent that they weren't faring much better than her. Between Naomi's weekly breakdowns and mental decay, Yuka's physical and mental anguish and Satoshi doing his best to look after those two to ignore his own problems: it was safe to say they were struggling, and they certainly didn't feel lucky to have survived the whole ordeal without their friends. The fact that they had escaped that hellish school, only to return to a cursed world where their friends had never existed, only made their anguish worse and their guilt stronger.
And of course there was Yoshiki.
Even now he seemed so reliable to Ayumi, always making sure everyone was looking after themselves and doing his best to make sure she was feeling okay, reassuring her that it wasn't her fault. Not that she really knew how to answer, nor did she believe him, but the gesture was appreciated. She just wished she could do more to help him, but Yoshiki was a locked vault. He wasn't invincible, showing some signs of weakness, from the dark shadows under his sharp eyes to the way his uniform seemed to hang from his body, or his newly-formed habit of escaping to the music rooms once or twice a week after school. Ayumi couldn't help but worry for him more than the rest.
As the day went on and the rain continued to patter down, these five friends struggled on, doing their best to hide their pain. Seeing the voids where their friends once were made it worse, especially during homeroom – it just seemed too cruel to have a homeroom teacher that wasn't Ms Yui. But they continued on, other students subconsciously keeping their distance from the 'weird' kids. Not that it bothered them much. They'd rather be thought insane than deny the fact that Mayu, Morshige, Seiko and Ms Yui once existed.
Eventually, the school bell rung, and students began to file out of the building, going home to begrudgingly study and inevitably procrastinate. The group also did this, but their procrastination involved less mindless-scrolling and more painful daydreams. They would often message each other during these hours of absence, trying to make idle conversation to avoid being trapped with their thoughts. Sometimes they'd spent time together after school, but on such a wet day, when they needed company most, it just wasn't practical.
And so they all forcibly separated: Yoshiki heading home, Satoshi and Naomi going to the Junior High Building to grab Yuka, and Ayumi staying behind to complete the daily cleaning roster. With her cleaning partner sick at-home, Ayumi was left to clean alone. Despite offers of help from the others, she politely declined. She refused to cause them anymore trouble. But as the storm went on and the sky drew darker, she found herself regretting that decision more and more. While performing her cleaning duties, she found herself zoning out to the sound of rain, gentle at first, but growing harsher by the minute. Soon after, she was transfixed by the loud pangs of rain against the windows, watching the droplets dribble downwards to a coagulated mess on the window frame.
Then she was in heavenly host.
The rain began to beat down harder, the skies growing cloudier and darker, yet she didn't notice. All she could see was blood staining the decrepit glass and streaking the rotten, wooden walls of that nightmarish school. All she could hear were screams of the dead or soon-to-be dead; tortured souls whispering into the depths of her soul, twisting her into submission. All she could smell were the rotting corpses littered around the school like fallen leaves, transforming slowly into background objects and pieces of furniture, as opposed to once living, breathing people. The mutilated corpses of her friends came into view, blaming her, cursing her for their deaths. Ms Yui asking why she didn't grab her. Mayu asking why she couldn't save her. Seiko and Morshigue reproaching her for finding the charm and causing their demise. They closed in around her, reaching out with claws of malice. They began to strike down on her, pelting her with blows and berating her with curses, until-
"Shinozaki!"
Ayumi screamed at the sound. She was lying on the floor in foetal position, tears streaking her face and her broom long abandoned. Her hands were clenched into fists so tightly bound, her palms were bleeding. For how long she was lying here, or how she even got there, she didn't know. All Ayumi Shinozaki knew, was that she was no longer in Heavenly Host, having been once again saved by Yoshiki Kishinuma.
"Shinozaki, you're alright. You're at Kisaragi now. You're safe."
Struggling to catch her breath, she saw Yoshiki kneeling beside her, his face full of concern. "Kishinuma, when did you-, how did you-"
"The rain was getting worse, and I was getting worried about you being here by yourself. Especially with the rain. So I decided to head over and-"
Ayumi threw her arms around him and began sobbing. She didn't need to hear any more. Frankly, she didn't care how or when he got here. She was just glad he was here.
After what seemed like an eternity of balling into Kishinuma's shoulder, she began to speak.
"I'm sorry," she sniffled, making sure he was as close to her as possible.
"You've got no reason to be," Yoshiki said calmly, trying his best to soothe her. "I'm just worried about you. We're all worried about you." He wrapped one arm around her shaking frame, the other hand gently stroking her hair. Previously, the mere thought of breaking down like this in front of someone, let alone Kishinuma, was unbelievable to Ayumi. She hated relying on others, hated making people help her out. But that was the past Ayumi. The present Ayumi didn't care anymore. Right now, she couldn't think of anyone else she'd rather be comforted by.
Ayumi straightened herself up, still holding on to Yoshiki. "I'm sorry. I'm always causing trouble for you.
Yoshiki gently sighed. "Again, it's no trouble for me. I just wanted to make sure you were alright. You're my friend, after all."
Friend. That word bore like knives through her soul, forcing a question to form deep in her mind. "How can he call me a friend after all I put him through? How could any of them possibly want anything to do with me?" Ayumi found herself falling into a haze of depressive thoughts and self-hatred, thinking of all her past mistakes, before she simply couldn't take it anymore.
"I just wish I never found that stupid charm!" Ayumi blurted out, unable to keep her feelings bottled up any longer. "If I'd never found it, we wouldn't have to feel like this and our friends wouldn't be dead!"
Yoshiki pulled back at this sudden outburst. "How could you have possibly known what that charm would do? None of us did! Besides, we all wanted to do it, Shinozaki. It's not your fault!"
"I ruined our lives!" Ayumi was shouting at this point, quaking in a mixture of rage and sorrow, her breathes becoming faster and faster. "Suzumoto! Ms Yui! Shinohara! Morshige! They all died because of me! They deserved to live and I took that away from them! I took that away from all of us! It's all my fault!"
"It's not your fault, Shinozaki! None of us blame you. Hell, if it weren't for you we all would've died!" Staring into her eyes, Yoshiki held her hands tightly. "You saved us. You are the only reason the five of us survived." Looking into his sharp, grey eyes, she saw nothing but conviction and sincerity behind his words, slowly calming her down. Still struggling for air, she managed to choke out a question. "H-how can you not blame me?"
Yoshiki pulled her into a tight embrace, feeling a hint of warmth form on his face. "You didn't know what was going to happen, Shinozaki. None of us did. We lived because of your efforts in there. Hell, if you weren't with me I probably would've just fallen through the floorboards."
Ayumi couldn't help but laugh at that. "That's not fair, you jerk."
Glad to hear her laughing, Yoshiki chuckled to himself. "It's true though. I owe my life to you."
But she couldn't think of a single time she did anything for him. Sure, maybe she told him not to stare into the eyes of spirits that one time, but she mostly remembered snapping at Kishinuma, getting irritated at him for seemingly no reason. If anything, HE was the one who saved her.
"Did I thank him even once for what he did?" she thought, coming up with a blank. She couldn't believe she didn't thank him even once. "Better late than never, I guess."
"Thank you, Kishinuma," she whispered gently. "For everything." Without answering, he hugged her tighter, a small smile beginning to form.
Outside of the school building, the storm began to teeter off. Yet Ayumi continued to hug Yoshiki, feeling a pang of warmth in her heart as a smile crept onto her face. She knew they had to go home soon, but for now, she just wanted to enjoy the comfort from the blonde-haired boy that had grown so near to her heart.
AN: Just another fic about Shinozaki freaking out post Heavenly-Host and Yoshiki helping her. Not original, but damn this fandom needs anything it can get.