The Way We Are (part 7 of 20)

The Breaking Point

How had I gotten myself into this situation? Not two minutes ago I had simply been about to investigate a building my informant Yamada had told me was “suspicious with First District activity.” I had driven about four miles from the Rorschach bar, my usual hot spot, on my motorcycle to this small building in the middle of nowhere. I parked my bike in the woods and had begun walking towards the place when the thing ambushed me. I mentally kicked myself for not even seeing it coming. I should have been more alert, but I was expecting to encounter more along the lines of light security, not a huge creature from god knows where. Before I could even react to the thing, it had knocked me back with a swing of one of its arms, the force strong enough to lift me from the ground and slam me into the tree directly behind me.

Now it loomed over me, pincers slowly pinching at the thin air, black beady eyes staring down at me as its talon mouth oozed with mucus. I watched as the monster took another step forward before reaching down and picking me up in its right pincer. I felt the boney claws pierce through my biker suit and slide under my skin, and as it squeezed me tighter, I not only heard this time, but I also felt the bones of my lower rib cage snap. I cried out in pain, my breath like smoke in the cold December air.

Darkness began to consume me, conscious fading fast. In a last ditch effort, I summoned my element with my one free arm, and although my vision was blurred, I aimed for the scorpion’s multiple eyes and began shooting. The creature screeched in pain, a yellow liquid squirting from the injury I had just caused, and to my luck, it dropped me in the process. I landed with a thud, and through a fit of coughing, I weakly called out for my Child.

A wall of ice surrounded me sprouting out in every direction before the silver wolf emerged from within, immediately lunging for the orphan once he had broke free of his icy cage. Still in a state of hysteria, the scorpion creature didn’t even sense Duran’s presence until he had latched on to one of its legs, ripping the appendage off in one immensely powerful tug. The monster stumbled to the ground, releasing another inhuman cry of pain.

Not wanting to be completely useless, I took aim once more and fired off a round of energy blasts as Duran assaulted the creature from behind. Before long, our onslaught resulted in victory, the Orphan disappearing into the ground like a liquid being absorbed by a sponge.

Adrenaline beginning to wear thin, the pain of my torso steadily grew more and more. I leaned against the nearest trunk as my breathing became heavy and difficult. I heard Duran emit a low whimper as he stopped beside me, nudging me with his nose, and I placed my shaky hand on his muzzle.

“I-I’ll be fine…”

He whined again, knowing very well that I wasn’t being completely honest.

I lowered myself to the ground to rest as the silver wolf lied down beside me, placing his head in my lap. I stroked Duran’s metallic head just like he was my old dog as I stared up at the starry sky, ignoring the blood that was seeping through my leather suit. My eyelids were becoming increasingly heavy, but I somehow manage to stay awake.

So, is this the life…of a HiME? Will it always be battle after battle…life or death? Am I…going to survive this?

…

…Mother…

…

…No, I can’t give up…not this easily…I still…have so much—!

Suddenly, Duran’s head snapped up, the lithe wolf producing a deep growl from his throat in the process.

“Is something coming?” I whispered at I follow his gaze, and sure enough, I could hear footsteps quickly approaching.

“Is someone there? This is a restricted area…” the voice boomed.

“Dammit,” I cursed, “Come on, Duran…We’ve…got to get out of here…”

Duran stood and helped pull me to my feet, which turned out to be quite a laborious effort. Running was out of the question, and walking was barely possible as I soon found out, leaning onto my silver Child just to stay upright. The two of us tried to hovel in the direction of my bike, but the man behind us was approaching too fast. Directing us to the nearest and largest tree, I ordered Duran to disappear as I slumped behind the thick grey trunk, peering around it to see exactly where our guest was.

That’s when I saw it…red plastic amongst the dead grass. My eyes widened as my hand immediately went to my pocket.

It’s not here…

I looked back again to confirm my horror.

My cell phone was lying out in the open, ripe for the picking.

I saw the man emerge from the line of trees, his flashlight scoping the area like a lighthouse keeps a close eye on the sea. Of course, it was at this very precise moment that my phone decided to vibrate, the outer display lighting up brightly in the darkness of the night.

I don’t know why I didn’t just turn the damn thing off. The bimbo wouldn’t have even seen it otherwise. Sometimes I utterly amaze myself with my own stupidity…

My heart stopped as I watched the beam of light land directly on my cell. The guy walked closer and panic kicked in.

Shit, shit, shit! He’ll be able to trace that back to me…I never deleted my texts from Yamada…

And then it hit me.

Oh god, Shizuru’s number is in there!

The officer bent down to pick up the phone.

I summoned my element, and without any hesitation, I fired.

After receiving several stitches on my right side and having my torso properly bandaged, the doctor gave me some extra materials so that I would be able to change the bandages on my wounds myself along with instructions on how to do it properly and at what time intervals to change them. I thanked him and headed back out onto the streets to my motorcycle. Luckily Dr. Watanabe had given me some pretty powerful painkillers, so the ride back home wouldn’t be nearly as excruciating as the ride to his office had been.

Once I made it back to my building, I made sure to take the elevator up to my sixth floor loft apartment instead of taking my usual stair route. After dragging myself inside and up the stairs, I headed for the bathroom, setting the bag of medical supplies from Dr. Watanabe on the counter. I carefully pulled off my biker suit, leaving it in a crumpled pile on the floor for now. It would need to be replaced anyway, considering the blood and holes that were now a part of it, but that was the least of my concerns at the moment.

Gazing at the mirror, I took in the reflected image of myself for the first time since the fight. I was bruised and nicked up just about everywhere, but luckily my face had seemed to avoid too much damage. My torso on the other hand was a completely different story. Bloody bandages covered the wounds, but curious to see the extent of my injuries, I slowly began to peel them away.

The first thing to see was the deep bruising around my ribs where the orphan had tried, and nearly succeeded in, squeezing the life out of me. My skin was already a purplish black color in an odd shape like someone had splattered me with paint. Next were the several cuts that lined my sides. They almost resembled the gills of a fish in a way. The doctor had stitched up the ones of the right side since I had pulled and ripped the tissue when firing at the scorpion’s face. Then there was the fact that the lower section of my left ribcage had indeed been broken. I made sure to keep those bandages in place for now, not wanting to agitate the shattered bone.

Once I was finished gawking at my battered self, I wrapped the bandages back around my midsection. Taking the bottle of pills from the bag and making sure to prepare myself a glass of water, I decided not to bother with trying to put any other clothing on, and instead I just made my way to my bed and carefully lied down on my back.

Well, tonight was a complete failure. That inspection was only supposed to take me thirty minutes, an hour at tops, and then I was going to—!

My body jerked at my realization, which only caused me to grimace even more than I already was.

Dammit! I was supposed to pick Shizuru up at the airport…I should call—no I can’t cause my phone is a smoldering lump of charcoal now, dumb ass… Why did Yamada have to call today of all days? And why did I just HAVE to agree to meet him and go out to that godforsaken place?

…

…

I wonder if Shizuru made it back all right…If she’s mad at me…I should go over to her place tomorrow…eh…but I can’t like THIS…

…

…

Tonight was way too close. What if that guy had gotten my phone? That would have caused a lot of problems…at least that didn’t go wrong…but…still…if he had gotten a hold of it…and if he was part of the First District…

…Shizuru…

I…I’m putting her in danger…our friendship…I could get her…killed…

I closed my eyes, jaw clenching as my hands formed into fists.

I can’t do it anymore…I can’t risk her life like this…I shouldn’t have even allowed myself to get close to her…knowing what I was doing…I’m so fucking stupid…

And that was it. I knew that I had to let her go for her own good. There had always been a slight distance between us since I didn’t want her to get involved with my secret activities outside of school, but now I would have to completely sever myself from her. It pained me to think that I would have to say goodbye to the one person in my life that I even remotely cared for, but a living Shizuru was much better than a dead one. As long as she was alive we could still communicate some, right? But only at school…and only on occasions…I couldn’t put her in unnecessary danger any longer. I wouldn’t.

But how was I supposed to go about doing this? Was I supposed to slowly back off? Drop her cold turkey? She’d move on. She was popular and loved by the entire student body. She didn’t need me when she could be friends withanyone at Fuuka.

Right, she might be a little upset at first, but she’d get over it.

At least, that’s what I thought.

The first couple of days were strictly spent in bed, even though I thought I was going to die from the boredom. At least it gave me some time to study, I guess. Once I felt well enough to move, I started walking around inside the apartment some, testing out what I could and couldn’t do. I found out I was okay with walking, albeit slower than I usually did. I had to be careful with sitting though. I had to get in one particular position for it not to bother me. I dreaded thinking about the desks at school, but I still had two more days until I would have to cross that path so maybe, just maybe, by that time I’d be able to move a little bit more without it shooting sharp pains up and down my sides.

Unfortunately that also meant I had two days until I would have to face Shizuru again. I had no idea how she would react when she saw me. I mean, I hadn’t shown up at the airport, and then on top of that, I never got in contact with her for an entire week. She didn’t know where I lived. My phone was destroyed, so it wasn’t like one of us could call the other. Pay phones weren’t out of the question, but they were pretty useless when you didn’t have the person’s number written down or memorized.

She probably thought I was dead.

Heh, she’d probably be better off if I was…

Maybe she’d be so pissed at me that she wouldn’t want to talk to me ever again. Yeah, that’d be nice. That would make things much easier, but somehow I doubted that was going to be the case.

I wished I could just be honest with her…tell her the truth about all that was going on…but I knew that I couldn’t. She was an innocent individual. She didn’t deserve to know about all this, to be burdened with it like I was. I would spare her from all that. That’s all I could do as her friend, even if it meant destroying the relationship we had formed in the process.

I really didn’t want to go to school, and I probably wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the tests my teachers were giving to see if we had actually studied any over the break. When I reluctantly crawled out of bed, I slipped into the long-sleeved version of my school uniform, and after a quick breakfast and downing a painkiller, I threw the bottle with it’s few pills into my brown bag and headed out the door.

Deciding to risk it, I drove my bike to school. The ride was a little uncomfortable, but it wasn’t unbearable. Besides, anything was better than riding the jam-packed buses in the morning in my personal opinion.

Once I arrived on campus and parked my bike in it’s usual hiding spot in the woods, I slowly made my way to my building. I didn’t know when or where I would see Shizuru, I didn’t know if I would see her at all to be perfectly honest, but this morning apparently wasn’t going to be the time for us to talk as I entered my building without spotting her.

The day went by rather quickly for once; I guess that was because we were pretty much taking tests and quizzes the entire time. When lunchtime came around, I snuck into the bathroom to slip another painkiller. The school didn’t allow the students to bring medicine of any kind without written permission from a doctor, and even then you usually had to go to the school nurse, Ms. Sagisawa, to retrieve it unless there was special circumstances. I, of course, decided to disregard that rule and take my chances.

Leaving the bathroom, I headed for the cafeteria. It was shared by the middle school and the high school so it was always pretty busy come lunchtime. I slipped in and got in line, keeping a lookout for Shizuru, but I still hadn’t spotted her even after I bought my food. Had she gone to our spot in the stairwell? It certainly was likely. I began walking in that direction, but when I found myself outside the door, I couldn’t make myself go in. Why was I dreading this conversation so much? Had I really become this dependant, this attached, to this one girl?

“You’re going to have to do it sooner or later,” my mind spoke up, “You at least owe her some kind of explanation. It’s not fair to her to just stop talking all of a sudden…”

I couldn’t agree more with myself, but right now wasn’t the time.

‘Right now’ is never going to be the time, is it?

I spent the rest of the day going through scenario after scenario of how I thought the conversation with Shizuru might go. I was absolutely dreading what I had to do, but if I didn’t do it, something horrible might happen to her. If she were to be hurt in any form or fashion on my account…Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be able to deal with that.

When the last bell of the day finally rang, I packed my bag and walked out of the building. A light snow had started falling, the white pieces slowly drifting down from the clear sky, disappearing as soon as it touched the ground. I had to walk in front of the high school building to get to my bike, and it was then that I saw Shizuru walking out, conversing with a small group of girls. Most people wouldn’t have been able to tell since she wore such a perfect mask to hide her emotions, but I saw her flinch ever so slightly when she first noticed me.

Emerald met crimson despite the distance.

Changing my direction, my feet began to carry me toward the place where we first met. I could feel her eyes following me. She knew where I was headed, it would take her a moment to get away from her classmates, but she would be there as soon as she could.

And for the first time since I had met Shizuru, I wished that wasn’t the case.

Once I made it to the gardens, I stood alone in the courtyard, hoping beyond hope that the chestnut haired beauty wouldn’t appear…that I wouldn’t have to do what I knew in my heart I had to do.

I had only been standing there about a minute or so before I heard footsteps fast approaching.

“Natsuki!”

This is it…

Our little group exited the building, continuing our light chitchat when I nearly stopped breathing.

Natsuki…

Was I dreaming? No, I couldn’t be. She was there, right in front of me. She noticed me as well, our eyes meeting for a brief moment before she turned and headed in the opposite direction. Of course she wouldn’t risk talking in public…I knew where she would be waiting though.

Anxious to go see her, I made up a quick excuse as to why I had to leave, and took off at a brisk jog towards the garden. Once I was out of eyesight, I sprinted the rest of the way, my breath visibly coming out in quick little puffs.

Her lone figure soon came into view, which only caused me to run harder.

“Natsuki!” I called out to her back.

The girl turned to face me. I noticed that she seems stiff, her breathing almost restricted, but because of her uniform, I couldn’t see anything for sure.

“Hey…”

“Hey? Is that all you can say to me?” I asked, my generally calm composure nowhere to be found.

“…”

“God, I’ve been so worried about you...You never showed up at the airport, I couldn’t get through on your phone, you never called, you didn’t come by the dorm…nothing. What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“And you couldn’t at least let me know that?”

“…Sorry.”

“So what happened?”

“Something came up. It was an emergency.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me that? I would have understood.”

“…”

“Don’t tell me, it’s one of your little secrets again, isn’t it?”

“…”

“Honestly, I let it slide most times, you not telling me what you’ve really been doing, and I just put up with it, but I can’t this time. I just can’t. After a week of not knowing if you were safe…if you were alive…You owe me an explanation this time, Natsuki.”

“…”

“Well?”

“I’m sorry, Shizuru.”

“Sorry isn’t going to work, Natsuki, not this time. I was sick with worry. I haven’t slept in days. Do you know what that’s like?”

This seemed to affect her, the side of her mouth twitching slightly.

“Don’t…Don’t worry about me, Shizuru. In fact, you’d be better off if you’d just forget about me all together...”

Wha-What?

“…Just, leave me alone from now on, alright?”

Natsuki…

“…I think we should stop hanging out after school and stuff…”

What are you…

“…You don’t need to hang around someone like me anyway. I’m trouble. I’ll only cause you problems, so just…keep away…”

Y-You’re not being serious…are you?

“…Besides, you know plenty of people, you don’t need me—“

Smack!

I had wanted to say something to make her stop this nonsense, to make her stop saying those horrible things. My mouth would move, but I couldn’t form any words…so instead my hand unconsciously took over.

I gasped at my own action. Had I really just…smacked Natsuki? My hand tingled as it remained frozen in midair. My whole body trembled as I watched her cheek become red. It usually turned that color because of me, but never like this before. Oh how I wished she was blushing from another spell of my constant teasing right now…

She kept her head turned away from me for several moments before slowly turning to face me again. Her eyes were void of any emotion, her expression completely blank.

I drew my hand to my chest, tears forming in my eyes, “Natsuki, I—“

“I deserved that, I know,” she interrupted me, “I deserve a lot worse than that actually…I’m sorry, Shizuru…”

She began to walk away, but I instinctively reached out and grabbed her by the arm. She hissed, appearing to be in pain, before snapping her head around to glare at me out of the corner of her eye.

“Let go.”

I didn’t respond. I just stared back into those strikingly green orbs, trying desperately to get some kind of sign from them.

“Let me go, Shizuru!” she growled through clenched teeth, jerking her arm back with a twinge of her eye.

She started to take off again, and I tried calling out to her, desperately call out to her, but she didn’t respond, soon disappearing from my line of sight…leaving me alone once again.

How could she…? Just like that…Is our friendship over? Why is she pushing me away like this? Did I do something wrong? Natsuki…

My head continued to play this cruel little game with me the rest of the night, bashing me with one negative thought after another. I didn’t eat, I didn’t move. I just sat there on the floor in a daze. Why was I hurting this badly? What profound feeling could make me feel this miserable…this depressed?

And then it dawned on me…

No, that couldn’t be it…sure, Natsuki meant a lot to me, more than anyone else in my life, but it couldn’t be…that…

Why not? We know the way you look at her sometimes…More than a friend would…in ways a friend wouldn’t…

“No…”

And we know how much you long to be around her…to hear her voice…to see her…touch her…

“No…”

A mere friend wouldn’t feel that way. No, what you feel isn’t just friendship…you lo—

“NO!”

You love her. You’re in love with her.

I broke, finally giving in, letting my mind, my emotions, win. I couldn’t fight it any more, not after today. After the way I reacted to our conversation, how could I not admit it?

I was in love with Kuga Natsuki.

And it wasn’t just a love between comrades. No, it was much deeper than that. So deep in fact, that it scared me. How had it come to this? When had she crept into my heart and completely taken control of it in such a way? I didn’t have the answers, all I knew was how I felt right now at this very moment.

And now she hated me. How could she not? Especially after I hit her.

How could I have hit her? How could I have physically stuck that face? That beautiful face…I swear to you…I’ll never do anything to hurt you again, Natsuki. I won’t let anything hurt you.

It was in the instant of that promise, that vow, that a sharp pain erupted in my left side, but I ignored it, not even noticing the faint red dot of light shining through my clothing.