"Souta failed, didn't he?" Came the old and raspy voice of an elderly man that Suzume could guess was Souta-san's grandpa. "Are you not afraid to die?" His dark eyes bore down on the excused girl standing in front of him with a searching look in his age-old eyes.
That voice! I know that voice! But why in the name of the Ever After does this old man both look, and sound so familiar? Suzume silently mused to herself as she fidgeted nervously under the older man's searching gaze.
"Now then, young lady - would you be so kind as to tell me what fate my grandson's been given?" As he awaits to see what the girls's response would be, his dark eyes narrow slightly and stares directly into Suzume's tired-rimmed hazel-colored eyes with his own hardened gaze.
"Souta-san has become the new keystone to keep the "Warm" at bay near Tokyo's gate." Was what Suzume eventually decided to answer him with. "The job was passed down to him by a little whit kitten who goes by the name Daijin."
The elderly man only gives her a brisk nod of his head in responce to her statement before he continued speaking again.
"Why is it that you wish to return to the Ever After?" He asks her cautiously, frowning softly and raising a questioning eyebrow at the courageous and strong-wild child that stood tensely in front of him. "Do you not know what dangers lerk in the shows of a place such as the one you seek to return to?"
Suzume's mouth opens to come up with a possible response to the question being asked of her, she was stopped in mid-thought by a sharp glare aimed toward her by the now rather annoyed-looking gray-haired man in front of her.
"The Ever After is a beautiful place, yes, but it's the realm of the dead." His eyes narrow again as he stares stight into Marrinette - no - Suzume's - determined chocolate-coded eyes. "That much at least should frighten you."
The normally soft-spoken girl stands a little straighter and narrows her still-glowing hazel-colored eyes even more, and she grits her teeth to stop herself from lashing out at Souta-san's long-time caretaker.
"A world without Souta-san, that's what terrifies me." Marinette hears herself crying out. "I made a promise to Souta-san that I'd come back for him, and I plan on keeping said promise. No matter what the spirits throw my way to try and stop me!"
The dark-haired high school student tenses up and balls her hands up into tight fists at her sides, squares her shoulders, and narrows her hazel-brown, chocolate-colored eyes into a determined gleam before straightens her cloths out and lifting her gaze from the floor.
Her glowing chocolate brown eyes grow wide, and the two glowing orbs of color quickly morph themselves into her not very well-known kitty cat eyes that glance up from where they rested under her bangs to come face-to-face with Souta-san's grandpa.
"Have a good rest of your day, sir. I'll be back with Souta-san, I promise!" Suzume declares confident, hazel-brown eyes shimmering in the light and her head tilting ever so slightly like a burning torch, and her head tilted slightly to the side in thought.
A few more moments of awkward silence pass over the two of them before the sixteen-year-old teenager in question smiles shyly and gives the man a quick, yet sharp nod of her head in farewell before turning swiftly on her heals and leaving the room without so much as another word.
XXXXXX
The young sixteen-year-old high school student sighed softly to herself as she walked out into the hallway and over towards the bathroom to take a long-overdue shower and change out of her dirt-stained outfit and back into her school uniform.
She's in the middle of tying the laces of a pier of Souta-san's shoes when she hears a small voice calling her name a short distance away from where she's crouched on the cold tile floor.
"Suzume-san! Hey, Suzume-san!" The now named Suzume gasps sharply, her jet-black hair, (Now in a high ponytail on the side of her head) went flying wildly behind her left shoulder blade as she turned her head frantickly from left to right, trying to pinpoint the source of the unfamiliar voice.
A pair of wide and fearful hazel-colored eyes grew considerably larger like those of a petrified feline - while her slow, yet exhausted, brain worked on the task of re-organizing her muddled and scattering thoughts back in order,
Suzume's now ominously glowing, and somewhat mournful-looking chocolate-brown orbs shifted warily around the room before darting staight ahead and quickly shifting up and straight ahead of her in a flash.
After a few more seconds of doing nothing but staring blankly ahead of her, Suzume shook herself back to the present situation at hand. The younger 16-year-old high school student and temporary "Closer-in-Training" took a shaky breath and tried to regain her sense of control over her scrambled and physically-drained mind and body.
Her ears were ringing very loudly in a constant high-pitched screech sound that made her head began to something awful like there was one of those "Warms" in her skull, trying to break free of its constraints with only a keystone keeping it at bay.
Along with all that swirling around Suzume like an impatient child calling for her undivided attention - the sleep-deprived teenager could also feel and hear her heart thumping rather fast for what she would call normal, and she could also hear the unnatural loud thump-thump sound drumming in time with her breathing in her still-ringing ears.
But wait: There's more! Both of her hands shook with the after-affects of being pushed to their limits, along with the young teen's ever-constint movements, having little-to-no food in her stomach, and most concerning of all - how she's been running on nothing but pure adrenaline at this point with multiple days on end without a wink of sleep.
The sleep-deprived dark-haired teenager used ever bit of willpower left inside her body to keep her head upright and trained a pair of watery, burning eyes straight ahead of her as she turned to face the owner of the voice.
"Oh, Daijin-san! It's just you! Thank the Ever After you found me! You have no idea how glad I am to see that you're alright and not too badly injured!" The exhausted sixteen-year-old cried in glee, her her dark-rimmed eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree, and her havy, yet stick-like, and sweaty arms shook uncontrollably as she reached down to scoop up the small white cat god into her arms and attempt to stifle the sound of the dark-haired teenager's agonizes whimpers.
Her still-trembling hands latched themselves onto Daijin's small body with a vice death-like grip, and the sharp, raspy, gasps for air that the girl tried and failed to muffle into Daijin's soft, fluffy cream-white fur as near-silent tears rolled sown her face and high-pitched buddy-racking tore themselves harshly out of the mentally-drained and sleep-deprived young girl's already painfully soar, yet sandpaper-like dryness feeling in the back of her throat.
"Hey, there you are, Sumie-chan!" The small white kitten mewed in a chipper tone. "Oh no, please don't cry Suzume! What's wrong? Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?" The cat fired question after question down upon the still sobbing teenager, who could only manage to lift her head just enough for the concerned feline to come face-to-face with a pair of fever-glazed chocolate-brown eyes.
"Uh, hey, Suzume? You there? Hello? Earth to Suzume!" Daijin's mews grew more frantic and he was now to the point of knocking on her forehead with his paws to try and get her to wake up.
But nothing the little white cat tried seemed to be working, and that fact in and of itself was enough to make tears spring to his eyes and his breath get stuck in his throat. Tears were now stream down Daijin's face and soaked into his fur as he curled into a little ball and berries his still tear-streaked muzzle into his charge's jet-black hair.
"Suzume! Hey Suzume wake up! C'mon, Suzume! Open your eyes! You can do it Sumie-chan? I know you can! Please don't die Suzume! Please don't leave me alone again Sumie-chan!" The small cat silently pleads to the sickly teen curently fast asleep in the grass, her dark hair pooling around her in a dark hallow that seems to make the dozing child's face look even paler where she lays under the warmth of the afternoon sunlight.
The young sixteen-year-old's chest slowly rises and falls with each breath she takes and she makes a few sleepy mumbles before shifting slightly before quieting back down again. A few more seconds of silance goes on by and Daijin takes a quick sideways glance over at Suzume's peacefully sleeping face.
A closer look indicates that she still has the feverish rose-pink glow plastered on cheeks and her paler-than-normal face told the former keystone (Who's job Daijin passed down to Souta) could tell pretty easily that the girl was still fighting back against the unforgiving heat rolling off of Suzume's trembling frame as the fever that stubbornly refused to release Suzume from its increasingly dangerous heatwave moving in on the horizon.
Leaning in to get a better look at the young girl's face, the small white feline narrowed his eyes with a concerned frown making a home on his little furry face when all he saw the girl do was stare into his concerned neon yellow eyes with her own red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes, and a sickly-pale face with tear-stained bright pink cheeks that showed the first stages of a rage fever.
What the hell is happening? Did that cat just talk? Holy shit! How the hell does it know my name? Oh dear mother of the forest spirits! I think I'm finally loosing my mind! The young sixteen-year-old high school student mentally screamed to herself in a full-blown mental panic attack.
Holy crap! Just kill me now! No, wait! Scratch all that shit I just said earlier! Oh well, I'm already screwed either way! Were the only words that were able to form a somewhat coherent train of thought in the midst of her sluggish, fever-glazed pieces of her already shattered mind.
However, right at that very moment though, her muddled thoughts were disjointed and floating around in her head without an anchor or rope to steady their course back to their given positions in her brain.