Ah, I see someone's super-uber-analyzing the chapters to find out who it is. And I won't tell you who Saki is yet, because that wouldn't be fun.
Though, Hitomi not wanting to go to the hospital... has nothing to do with the attacker ^^
And, record amount of pages in Word :: 11. I actually had to boil over to Chapter 3, so if you're lucky you'll get that one tomorrow. And yay, change of POVs!
Chapter 2 :: I Wish
Thursday mornings were usually beautiful for me, especially when there was a surprise waiting for me at work. There were never surprises, but then again, Hello Project was never dull.
First, however, I had to answer my cellphone, which was buried in the depths of my not so large bag.
Out of all the times that someone could call, it had to be now, didn’t it?
Ah! There it was!
I held up my sleek, black phone, adorned with shiny stickers and all (because when Tsunku said ‘I’m going to give you all new phones,’ and follows it up by giving us all stickers, all us teenage girls can do is make our phones look prettier… though, I think he did it like that on purpose), and read the name on the screen.
Sayumi couldn’t wait till I got up to our meeting place? It was her surprise too.
Sighing, I answered.
“Moshimoshi?”
“Reina? I have a problem…”
She didn’t sound too panicked, for Sayumi anyways, and sometimes Sayumi could have been a total drama queen, especially when her pride was hurt.
I hope it wasn’t that that was keeping me from my surprise. Takahashi probably wouldn’t have liked that. She made a grumpy subleader.
“What’s wrong?”
“Blood… there was blood everywhere…”
Okay, now either Sayumi forgot that it was her time of the month and was flipping out over it, or there was something serious going on.
I dismissed the thought of it actually being serious. It was Sayumi for god’s sake, please.
“Yocchan… is she at work?”
I blinked, and looked around.
“I dunno… I just got in, but I haven’t seen her anywhere…”
There was a silence at the other end.
“Reina… promise me that… if you can’t find her, you call me back? I… I just want to make sure… she’s okay…”
Okay, the thought of it being serious returned.
“Is everything alright Sayumin? Are you okay?”
“I… I’m fine… just make sure Yocchan’s okay…”
“… Sayumin, is something wrong?”
“Yes… sorda… I… I can’t tell you right now… I have to… Reina… I love you, okay?”
That was new. Well, not really. Whenever Sayumin said that, she usually followed it up with an ‘Usachan, peace!’ or a hug, or something quite similar. It was the whole narcissist cute thing coming full swing.
This sounded different though. It sounded sincere.
“Reina? Oh migod, Reina!?”
“I’m here.”
“Oh… oh good, she didn’t get to you yet…”
“Who? What?”
“Don’t worry about it…”
“Hey, Sayu… take the day off, would ya? I’ll cover for you… you sound real stressed.”
Or insane. I hoped it was insane, and that our former leader was hopping around like the big dork that she is, off working hard or kicking a football around.
“O-okay… if anything happens, call me…”
“Don’t worry… and Sayumin…”
“Yeah?”
“I love you too.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
She paced back and forth in front of Miki, her mind spinning. Miki was as relaxed as ever, watching her subleader start having very Gaki-like reactions.
“How could… why could… who would want…. I hate FRIDAY!” Ai finally shouted angrily, stopping and staring at Miki, “They’re so stupid!”
This would have been a very Tsuji-like response to the whole Aibon scandal. Smiling as warmly as she could manage, Miki put a hand on Ai’s shoulder.
“Calm down. Tsunku said they’d sort it out. It’s stupid, okay? We’re just friends…”
That word. Ai hated that word too. Friends. What kind of word was that when it was a girl using it about a boy?
She had been into drama for way too long.
But Miki was right. Calm, before the other 6th Gen girls got upstairs. That was not what she wanted to surprise them with.
Though, they might have already known about the fiasco.
“But… I still hate FRIDAY.”
“That’s how they get their profit Ai.”
Miki was entertained by Ai’s reaction to the whole ordeal, and Ai was very not happy about that.
Then again, she was afraid flipping out at Miki was a bad thing.
“But… you’re living with him?”
“Yep. Separate beds though.”
That sounded like a lie, but Ai had no intentions of pushing her leader off the deep end.
“Alright…”
“Don’t worry ‘bout it. I mean, keep informed, but it’s not something you should be fluttering over. That’s my job, it’s my scandal.”
Nodding, Ai smiled, to show that she was in fact trying to not be worried about it. They were just friends, she reassured herself, friends who lived in the same apartment.
That was all it was.
Nodding again, more to herself, Ai opened her mouth to speak, when she was half tackled down.
“Ai-chan! I HATE FRIDAY!”
Ai gave Risa a strange look. Was this not a recurring moment in the déjà vu that seemed to be Momusu?
“So do I Gaki… could you not yell in my ear next time?”
The girl gave Ai a pout before hugging her again. Letting out a sigh, Ai gave her a pat on the shoulder in comfort.
“I still hate that stupid excuse for a newspaper… thing…”
“Tabloid.”
“No. It can’t be a tabloid. It’s supposed to be bad at its job, and it’s good at being a tabloid.”
Well that made no sense to Ai, who gave Risa a small chuckle.
“Whatever you say… ah, Reina! C’mere!”
Ai detached herself from a still flipping out Risa, and made her way over to meet the Yankee girl, who looked far from being her bubbly, Yankee self today.
“You’re right on time too. Sayu and Eri haven’t come in yet, but when they do…”
“Sayu’s taking the day off. She doesn’t feel well.”
The statement caught Ai off-guard, who tilted her head to one side, still grinning.
“What?”
“She’s… I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but she’s not feeling well enough to come to work today.”
“But… I need all three of you to be here…”
Reina looked up at Ai, guilty written all over her face, but concern all over her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Ai blinked, frowned, but immediately followed it up with another smile, patting Reina on the shoulder.
“Don’t be. We’ll just have to go on without her… you didn’t happen to get word of Eri yet, did you?”
Reina shook her head.
“Alright. Lemmie settle things with Miki, and I’ll talk to you about what’s gonna happen, alright Reina?”
Without getting a response, Ai glanced back over at Miki, who seemed to be on the phone with someone.
“What? What do you mean?... Are you alright?... Who?!... Tomo-kun, talk to me… You’re… you’re bleeding? Who did that to you?”
Coughing, Ai grabbed Risa, who was staring at the scene, and Reina as well, and pulled them away from their leader, who was erupting with anger.
“Who!? No… I haven’t seen her… or… wait… WHAT?!... she did that to you? Why?... no… no I haven’t… Sayumi? What about her? … Fireworks? … God, you’re making no sense… call the hospital… I’ll take care of the other side, alright? I swear…”
Rolling her eyes, Miki gave the girls a glance, before rubbing her temples.
“Tomo-kun, don’t worry about it, I’ll figure it out.”
Without another word, she hung up the phone and glanced over at the girls again.
“Reina, did you say something about Sayumin?”
Peeking her head over Ai’s shoulder, Reina nodded sheepishly, already worried that Miki was going to turn into a volcano of anger and erupt all over her.
“Where is she now?” the leader demanded.
“… Home. I told her to stay home, she wasn’t feeling well.”
“Well… call her back. Tell her to come here… I wanna talk to her.”
After a moment, Reina shook her head.
“I… I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
“What, she fluttery after seeing someone almost die?”
There was a long silence as Miki, rather frankly, put the cards down on the table. Reina, who was formulating the excuse to whatever response Miki had come up with, simply did not have anything to respond to, so just stood there, staring. Ai was doing the same, with wider eyes and a large gape.
Risa let out a squeak and hugged Ai, like this was all some sort of scary story.
“Didn’t know, didja?” Miki ventured again, “Well now I wanna know what the hell’s going on. I’m not gonna give FRIDAY something else to write about, so long as I lead this group.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“Hitoribocchi de sukoshi, taikutsu na yoru”
Maki brushed a small lock of hair out of Hitomi’s face, as she watched the older woman’s sleeping form. The last few hours had been loud, and tiresome to the both of them.
”Ow! Can’t you just let them heal or something!?”
“No… Yocchan, you’re bleeding all over the place! I need to patch some of these up!”
Hitomi snorted, and batted away Maki’s hand, which had a pink shaded cotton ball in it.
“Not if it means this ‘cleaning’ thing. They’re just fine dirty!”
“They’ll get infected if you don’t let me do anything about them!”
“Well then they get infected.”
Maki gave her a pout.
“You could die from that!”
Hitomi thought about it a moment, and shrugged.
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.”
She said it with a grin on her face.
“I think devil horns and a sexy black dress will make me look sexier.”
Maki tried a smile, finding the comment rather amusing, and she had to agree. Devil Hitomi looked amazingly hot in her brain.
“Not with all these gashes you won’t. Now c’mon, lemmie do something about this.”
Maki tried again, and instead of meeting with another angered hand, she found that Hitomi consented, though not quietly.
“Ow!”
“Oh come offa it. It’s not like I’m killing you with it.”
“You might as well be!”
“You know, half an hour ago, you weren’t complaining…”
“That would be because I was thinking about you in a nurse’s outfit… not thinking about how much this hur-OW! Alright, enough!”
And before Maki could say ‘No, not enough,’ the cotton ball flew out of her hand, and onto the floor a few feet away. Hitomi snorted.
“I’ll be fine. Trust me on this one,” the older woman said, “If it’ll make you feel better, just put some of that strange gauze stuff on my wounds until they heal up…”
Maki didn’t say anything for a moment, staring at the cotton ball, then down at her hand, and back at the ball again. Letting out a sigh, Hitomi mumbled something.
“Telekinesis.”
Like that was supposed to explain everything. Opening her mouth, Maki stared over at Hitomi.
“Teleki-wha?”
“Telekinesis. I can move things with my mind… it was something Tsunku blabbered on about when I joined Momusu. Rika got one too. A blabber I mean. Didn’t he give you one?”
“No.”
“He didn’t? Huh… I coulda sworn you had something in there…”
Two hours, three spools of gauze, and an angered argument about how large, infected wounds make someone die, and Hitomi finally calmed down enough to realize that there was something wrong.
”… I can’t move my leg…”
She was far from immobile, that was for sure, but the statement was said in such a manner that had Maki worried. And Hitomi persisted on that she still had no need for a hospital, or a doctor. It was like being there with her was better than anything a hospital could come up with.
If there were still leg problems after this though, the results could have been devastating. Hitomi needed her legs to do her job, to do what she loved.
“watashi dake ga samishii no?”
Maki smiled at the woman sleeping in her lap as she sang to her. She seemed so peaceful, like a child dreaming peaceful, innocent things in bed late at night. It had taken a long enough time to get her to rest, and now that she was, Maki had enough time to give her a subtle examination.
She was sure those wounds were much worse earlier, when they were arguing about it.
“… Maki…”
The sound of Hitomi’s voice knocked Maki out of her thoughts, as she smiled warmly at the woman, who had her hands folded behind her head, with her eyes staring right back.
“Yeah?”
“You make a good nurse…”
“… What do you mean? We argued half the time.”
“I wasn’t talking about that stupid disinfecting stuff. I was talking about you. You have a healing touch.”
Taking it out of the ample naughty thoughts that Maki could have responded with, she raised her brow at Hitomi.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means stupid?”
Oh, so she wanted naughty thoughts to be more than thoughts. Well, Maki could do that, but after Hitomi felt better.
“You can heal people.”