Try to escape / into me
--
Remember / My letter #5
Mai Tokiha had been many things in the course of her lifetime. Some things she still was, and some she had stopped being long ago. She was still studious. She was still hard-working and she was still clever, though not subtle. She was not still afraid of water. She was not still a picky eater—she had left that behind when she learned how to cook. She was not still a guilty soul, as she had been.
Maybe not, anyway.
But the biggest thing Mai Tokiha was not was a fool. She had never been a fool, nor would she ever be a fool. Even when she was being foolish, Mai Tokiha was no fool. She could take care of herself, and she knew what she was doing. Maybe that was why she resented the look that Natsuki gave her as Yuuichi frantically asked about Shiho, had anybody seen her, when was the last time anybody saw her? The look that Natsuki gave her was something she despised in that secret, dark part of her that she allowed the luxury of hatred.
She was not a hateful person. But she was somebody who felt the draw of her pride very strongly. So powerful, it was, that for a moment she was tempted to go to Natsuki, to console her for her obviously forlorn look so that maybe she would stop staring at Mai that way.
Crack.
The gunshot echoed over the water and shut everybody up, the irritating guest nobody invited to a party, clearing the room out in five seconds flat. Nobody moved for a few seconds, and then Chie started to laugh. “Just some stupid kids from the town with their fireworks,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face dismissively. “Trying to see if they can get a rise out of the dumb tourists.”
Maybe they would have even believed her, if not for the next two gunshots, which echoed more clearly in their ears, punctuating her words as though in direct defiance of some false prophet. The cry of pain at their end, a true believer mourning for his cause.
Everybody froze, nobody quite sure what to say, and tension played across the air like music from an untuned guitar. Nobody corrected Chie in spite of the conclusion drawn across the board; perhaps because none of them were sore winners, but more likely because none of them wanted her to be wrong.
None of them spoke, because nobody knew what to say. They all knew exactly what that noise was, because although some of them had only really heard it for the first time that day, the sound of human suffering was unmistakable. Nothing else came close—not animal pain, the shrill, inarticulate howls of a confused, miserable beast; not angst, the adolescent pain that all of them had, in one form or another, experienced at some point during their high school years. Nothing could compare to the sound of somebody who possessed at least rudimentary language skills reduced to articulating their pain the same as the animals did. Gooseflesh rose immediately on their skin, almost as one.
Out of all of them, it was Midori who reacted first. Maybe because she’d dealt with violent death before on an intimate level outside of the HiME festival, or maybe simply because she was older and therefore more mature, or maybe just because out of all of them, she felt that she had the least to lose.
“I’m going to go check it out,” she said quietly, all pretense and preamble abandoned; then, after a moment’s consideration, “has anybody seen Natsuki?” Even somebody with nothing to lose knew better than to enter a battlefield without decent backup, and out of all of them that had come to the carnival, only Natsuki seemed halfway decent as backup.
Well, Midori thought, Natsuki and that man, Minoru. But it seemed fairly apparent to her that Minoru was probably at the center of that shit-storm; he seemed to be the root of all of their troubles up to that point, why stop then?
Mai shook her head. She had dealt with death as well as Midori. Lots of it.
Mikoto blinked twice, and then murmured, “Is Mai going with Midori?” almost before Mai had thought of it herself. Suddenly, everybody’s attention shifted to Mai, who went a little red in spite of herself.
“Mai,” Yuuichi said in a hollow impression of his usual jovial tone. “She’s just being a little squirt; you’re not, right?” Yuuichi had never called Mikoto a “squirt” before. He had never really called her anything before.
Mai took half a second to make up her mind, but before she could say anything, Midori said, her voice firm and a little overbearing, “No, you’re not.”
Mai blinked, taken off-guard and momentarily stunned. “I’m not?”
Midori shook her head. “No. If this is…” men with guns coming to kill us, “what we think it is, then we’ll need somebody to—”
The first bomb went off then, an enormous, rippling blast from a few miles down the road, in Goza. It destroyed what remained of the burned-out strip mall that had been bombed earlier that day, but nobody was hurt, since it was past dusk and nobody was out. The air seemed to shiver for a few moments afterwards, and in its wake, all heads turned towards Goza. Chie, eyes wide and horrified, began to shake violently, and Aoi took notice almost immediately, taking her hand and squeezing hard, whispering something low and soothing in the girl’s ear.
Nobody was hurt by the first bomb, but the second one more than made up for it. The bomb, the police would later discover, was not one but a series of bombs, delivered from a larger submunitions explosive inside of the back of a pickup truck, parked outside the house that Natsuki had earlier laid siege to. The first bomb ripped apart a chunk of the street, but more importantly, sent over two hundred smaller submunitions in all directions. Forty of them pierced the house’s exterior and detonated into even smaller explosives, roughly hand-grenade sized, which also spread in all directions, a bit like buckshot. One landed about two meters from the man with the sad eyes, who had let Shizuru walk out of that house not a day ago, resigning himself to a fate something very much like this. The bomb exploded and burned his face and eyes, but it was the second submunition, which lodged itself in his stomach, that killed him.
The house literally collapsed on itself, pierced in so many places, its foundation so weakened, that a child could have toppled it if the force of the blast hadn’t.
Four more houses around it, the other four corners of that intersection, suffered similar fates. One boy of fifteen was killed, riding his bicycle back home from the house of a girl who he had been helping study and on whom he harbored a powerful crushed. The largest piece of him anybody ever found was his hand, which had grasped that of the girl momentarily before he left for the night.
Nobody ever figured out how somebody had managed to sneak that much U.S.-bought military grade anti-tank explosive into the country.
None of the kids at Goza knew of these happenings, but as screams and sirens began to rise from the town, carrying surprisingly well in the cool, moist night air and echoing nicely through the forests, it became obvious that they could guess at them.
There was a moment’s silence after the first two bombs went off (and about ten minutes before the second two exploded) and then Midori said, “That does it. Mai, get everybody into the house. I’ll accompany you that far, because there’s…something I should get from in there, but you goddamn keep them there and goddamn keep them safe.”
It took Mai a moment to get her thoughts in order well enough to offer a protest. “Midori, no. I should be with you, me and Mikoto, so we can—”
“So you can what? So you can get yourselves shot?”
“I know how to take care of myself,” Mai snapped, suddenly angry at being thought of as something weak and helpless, something to be taken care of, not once but twice in less than twenty minutes, and by two people who she respected more than anybody. “Don’t treat me like a—”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re up against here,” Midori said hotly. “Not. A. Clue.”
“You don’t have any more of an idea than I do,” Mai shot back. “And would you stop cutting me—”
This time, it was Mikoto who stopped her midsentence, tugging at her shirt intently.
Mai stopped, and looked down at her. Looked down into the girl’s soothing eyes, hard with years of fighting and paranoia but still somehow possessing just that little twinge of childish innocence, of the endearment that one couldn’t help but afford to cute little girls. For just that brief moment, Mai marveled, thinking, this should be the eighth wonder of the world. Mikoto, how did you ever manage…
“Mai should stay here,” Mikoto murmured. “Mai is scared for Shiho, because Yuuichi is scared for Shiho, but Mai can’t do anything in there, and nobody else can keep everybody safe.” In her voice was not a challenge, nor condescension as one might have when trying to win an argument, but only the utmost confidence; that childish belief that what she said was true because it was about Mai, and Mai could do just about anything in the world.
In the face of such faith, such pure, unreserved admiration and need, Mai’s anger melted as quickly as it had kindled. She glanced at Yuuichi for a moment, Yuuichi whose eyes were desperate, frightened, and then turned back to Midori and nodded.
“I will.”
“Good,” Midori said. “Everybody get to the cabin. It’s not safe there, but it’s safer than anywhere else.”
“What about the van?” Reito asked, his voice calm and under control, reassuring as the third bomb exploded and more people died and a few people lived, all without ever knowing why. “We could probably drive somewhere where it’s safer and wait for your call.”
“No,” Midori said. “If they’ve come for us here, they’ll have done something to the van by now, or they’ll have somebody watching it.”
“Who’s to say they don’t have somebody watching the cabin?” Reito frowned.
“Nobody,” Midori murmured, all-to-aware that he was right. “But we’ve got nowhere else to go.”
Reito nodded solemnly, understanding. “I’ll help Mai after I find Kazuya and Akane.”
Heaters to block infra-red sights, and perhaps a circle of power around the cabin to warn you if somebody enters, something inside of his head said, and he shivered involuntarily. Maybe if not for the latter advice, words from a day long gone, he could have lived with it, but as it was, he knew exactly whose voice that was speaking to him, and he hated it. And himself, for having it.
To escape it, he escaped the group, moving off to look for Kazuya and Akane. He had a rough idea of where they were, and he would have to move quickly.
Midori smiled tightly. Thank you, professor, she thought with more than a twinge of pain. For letting me onto that little trick they’ve pulled with the van. Not a car-bomb, of course. You couldn’t plant one of those on a car without about an hours’ solitary work, and the beach parking lot was anything but solitary, with over thirty occupied cabins stretching down the road. (A few people now were starting to emerge from these cabins, curious but not concerned about the ruckus). Rather, they’d have somebody with a gun either waiting inside of it or just a few cars down. Maybe they would, as somebody had once done to her on one of her adventures with the professor, have people come with nail guns to quickly seal the doors, and simply tow the van away.
And who are they? She wondered briefly. She thought for a moment it might be one of the enemies she’d made in Israel, but it occurred to her that not even they would go to such brutal extremes to take revenge on her—because it was, very obviously, (to her, at least) somebody in her group that was being targeted. All of the guns seemed to revolve around them that day.
Should have asked Minoru when you had the chance; stupid, stupid girl.
She shook her head, refusing to succumb to those kinds of thoughts, at least right now. There would be plenty of time for self-loathing later; she knew that quite well from her years of bathing in alcohol to keep herself from precisely that.
“Okay. Everyone in the cabin. Can she walk?” She indicated Chie with a nod, and Aoi nodded grimly.
“I think so, but I wouldn’t count on her to run,” she said quietly. “That thing in Goza hit her pretty hard.”
Midori took a moment to marvel at Aoi’s quiet strength then; Chie was by and far the more forward, the more vocal of the two, the tougher in a crowd, the more frank in a discussion, but of them, it seemed that Aoi was the one keeping the tempo set, the music going, and anybody from knowing that the conductor had actually died at his podium.
They set off for the cabin together.
--
The seconds inside of the cabin ticked by agonizingly, at least to Natsuki, as the man with the knife attempted to stare Natsuki down. It was pretty obvious to her that he was a little bit afraid, and Natsuki could not for the life of her understand why—it was him that had the knife, him that had the gun at his side. He was large and solidly built, and she had no idea how he had managed to get into the cabin undetected. Shizuru seemed entirely calm; indeed, Natsuki had no idea if she even knew there was a man standing behind her; she hadn’t seemed (admittedly, Natsuki had only seen her shadow) to react when he appeared. Was there something somebody was missing?
It was possible.
What was more important at that moment was whether or not Natsuki thought she was fast enough to make a play for her gun. It was in her bag, which meant she would have to find a way to get it open before the man gutted Shizuru, which seemed unlikely.
You could go for him, too. You could take him.
Who’s to say that? Who’s to say he has no backup? Who’s to say he’s not just going to cut Shizuru’s throat the instant you flinch?
“Is there something wrong, Natsuki?” Shizuru asked gently. “You seem frightened.”
What in the hell is she—
“You walked in on me at a rather inopportune moment. If you could, perhaps, step outside while I finish…”
Natsuki gaped. What in the hell is she…
The man glared at Natsuki.
Natsuki did her best to glare back, and then she knew, but she also knew that what Shizuru had in mind wouldn’t happen.
Natsuki wouldn’t let it, but she couldn’t stop it, either.
Not without her bag.
“I’m…very sorry, Shizuru,” Natsuki murmured. “I didn’t mean—”
“To stare?” Shizuru teased. “You seem to have done a very thorough job of it nonetheless.”
In spite of herself, Natsuki couldn’t help but notice…
There was, indeed, quite a bit to stare at. No wonder the girls at Fuuka Academy worshipped Shizuru. She was perfect—firm everywhere she should have been firm, pale where she needed to be, dark…
She was only dark in one spot aside from her head.
Natsuki reddened, and then said, her throat fairly well choking, “I just came in to get something out of my bag. I’ll—”
“By all means, take it, but then…I’m getting rather cold.” Guiltily, Natsuki traced her eyes down Shizuru’s slim neck, across her collarbones, and then down…
and it was true. Shizuru was getting cold.
Natsuki stared at her one more time, still slightly disbelieving. She means to let herself be taken.
To protect me.
She grabbed her bag quickly, her eyes never leaving Shizuru’s, and started for the door.
Fuck that.
In the dim light of the cabin, she could see the man’s big arms moving towards Shizuru again. But with
shizuru
the pressure gone, Natsuki was able to act again, and quickly. She had the gun out in half a second, and in the light of the cabin, she didn’t need to re-enter the room to aim. She aimed for the man’s back, where she was certain Shizuru wasn’t, clicked the safety off, and shot him. The gun gave a single hard report and the man dropped.
Something clicked, and it wasn’t her, and suddenly Natsuki realized why Shizuru had consented to be taken without a fight. She had less than half a second to drop to the ground, and then a second shot cracked from inside the boys’ bedroom, through the wall that Yuuichi had pounded in frustration less than a day ago, when their largest worries encompassed who was watching them snog.
Shizuru was out in half a second, a robe thrown half-heartedly about her shoulders, barely covering up
firm
what needed covering up, and then the man behind the door opened up with his machine gun. Shizuru flung herself to the ground as soon as the first shot went off, and holes started to appear in the cabin, the sand outside puffing as the bullets lodged themselves in the hill. She landed on top of Natsuki, who didn’t dare fire back—the only reason they were still alive was that the man didn’t know where they were now—he knew where Shizuru had been, though. The wall behind where Shizuru and the man had been standing a moment before was nothing more than a bunch of holes.
It actually took Natsuki a few seconds to realize who had landed on her. She blocked out the feeling of
warm
Shizuru’s body as best she could. No distractions. Not now.
Nobody could fire an automatic weapon for more than a few seconds at a time, though; whoever held the weapon started to burst fire, poking seemingly random holes in the cabin’s structure, searching. Natsuki clamped her hand over Shizuru’s mouth. Shizuru didn’t even try to make a sound, but Natsuki felt better doing it all the same. She began aiming with her gun, trying to pick out the exact source of the shots. Maybe she would have even found it before the man found her.
But before that could happen, several things happened, all at once.
The door opened, revealing the entire group save for Reito, Akane, and Kazuya; Midori, at their head, had about enough time to gasp.
At the same time, Minoru Alder managed to draw a bead on the little fucker with the machine gun, holed up behind a bunch of heavy wooden crates in the boy’s room, where he had been laying not half a day ago as Midori fixed his wrist. He had his head in full view through the window—fucking amateurs are getting easier to kill every year—time was, amateurs had that youthful shit and vigor. He breathed, once, twice, and the guy still didn’t move, so he put a fist-sized hole through his head.
He didn’t know it then, but in doing this, he saved over half a dozen lives: The man had been about three seconds from firing over his rapidly-constructed barricade—made from heavy blocks of wood and cardboard boxes that he’d brought in with him—at the door, assuming it was Natsuki and Shizuru making for a quick getaway. He would have taken Midori’s head off and put a hole in Mai’s lung the size of a baseball.
Instead, he slumped to the ground, blood and gray matter leaking out of his head, and Minoru said, “You can open your eyes now, kid.”
Shiho uncovered her eyes, and gazed at Minoru in wonder for a moment. “Did…”
“I killed him, yeah,” Minoru murmured. “I’m going to take you down there now, but I don’t want you going in that room. Okay?” No kid should have to see that.
He didn’t know that she already had that day.
If he had, maybe he would have set off right then and there to find Scratch-ass and take him apart, a fist-sized chunk at a time.
It was probably for the best that he didn’t.
--
Natsuki stood up, recovering quickest, doing her best to put herself between Shizuru and the rest of them. “Everybody,” she said quietly. “Inside. Stay out of both of the rooms.”
Nobody asked her what in the hell was going on. Nobody needed to; of all of them, only Chie and Aoi were even sort of in the dark; the rest of them guessed at roughly the same thing (whether or not it was technically accurate seemed almost irrelevant): Revenge.
Revenge for the Carnival. Who it was seemed an impossible guess—how many people had they hurt? How many countless people had they hurt or killed in those horrible, bloody months?
Reito showed up a few moments later with Akane and Kazuya, neither clad in much more than they were born in and both appearing a mildly pathetic mixture of embarrassed and frightened. He and Midori went to set up traps by the windows. Reito used the barricades—the ones without blood on them—to block the gaping hole that had been made in the girls’ room.
Shizuru led Natsuki outside. Natsuki protested, but Shizuru insisted, and when they were out, and the rest in, Shizuru took her robe off again.
“What are—” Natsuki managed, and then Shizuru was on her, hugging her tightly, squeezing her about the midsection, where a sort of fire seemed to light, beginning in her belly and spreading all the way up through her breast. Her eyes widened in surprise, and then in something else.
“Thank you,” Shizuru murmured.
Natsuki didn’t know what to say, and, after a moment, Shizuru let go. They stared at each other for a moment in mildly comfortable, if electric, silence.
“But,” Shizuru whispered. “I’m going.”
You what?
“They’re here for me, Natsuki,” Shizuru said. “He…” it was obvious who he was, “told me. He said that if he had me, none of you would ever have to meet them. So I’m going.”
Natsuki froze, and the fire in her belly abruptly turned to ice. Her eyes stopped seeing Shizuru, started seeing…
Seeing Shizuru. Seeing her die.
Seeing her die again.
Natsuki didn’t know a lot of things about herself. If there was one thing Natsuki was not, it was honest with herself; in fact, some days she could hardly remember when she had last been on speaking terms with the honest facts about herself. She no longer knew what these facts were, and whenever somebody confronted her with them, she did what she was doing now: She froze.
She didn’t know how she felt about Shizuru. She didn’t know if she could love her the way Shizuru wanted. She had kissed her earlier that day, but she hadn’t felt right when Shizuru had kissed back, later. She had rescued her without a second thought, but that had almost been relieving; a break from the tedium, from the conflicting feelings that she had felt building for months before.
She had never really thought about the prospect of coming out. About what it meant. About any of it.
But as Shizuru gave her hand one last squeeze, one which she barely felt from the numbness that had begun to run through her body, she knew that what she didn’t need was even less time to try and sort it out.
And she knew that touching Shizuru had felt damn good.
The girl turned to leave, giving her a look that mixed sadness, hurt, and dread in equal measures, and before she was halfway around, Natsuki grabbed her by the shoulder.
Maybe you just get off on these kind of situations.
Maybe you get off on the thrill. Maybe you just don’t know how to want something until somebody takes it away from you. Maybe …
Maybe you’re just fucked up.
That was the last thing that would have ever surprised Natsuki Kuga.
Shizuru looked at Natsuki, her eyes blank. Resigned to death. Natsuki had seen that expression before.
Then Shizuru pulled away again and started to walk towards the hill.
For the second time in only a few minutes, Natsuki thought, fuck this.
She grabbed Shizuru again, moving with a speed born of years of paranoia, and whirled her around, more forcefully this time, only to be met with the same dead eyes. Eyes that had nothing left to see in this world.
Fuck it all.
Before she had time to ponder the finer points of what coming out really meant, she pulled the naked girl to her, her heart lighting up again.
I don’t know what I want. I don’t know if I want you or not. I don’t know if I love you, or if I’m just grateful to you for being the first to try and end my solitude. I don’t know if I feel happy because you’re my friend or something more. I don’t even know if I can be attracted to women.
But as she took one last gaze on Shizuru’s body, the last seemed to answer itself as Natsuki, for the first time in her life, took the initiative and not the offensive.
Shizuru’s lips were dry this time, and she didn’t react at first. Even for Shizuru, the great bastion of cool, of in command, the prospect of walking into death, even for those she loved, was too much for her psyche to bear, so she numbed herself.
Natsuki did a fine job of melting her. Her lips were hot on Shizuru’s, and her hands pressed themselves into Shizuru, one at the small of her back, one about the girl’s bare shoulders. Shizuru’s skin was as soft as it was smooth, and after a moment, she started to kiss back.
Maybe, Natsuki thought, in a moment of something a little less intense than giddiness but a little more powerful then contentness, we have a shot at this after all.
She prayed that Shizuru would agree with her.
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