Errand Girl
Date: Wednesday November 5, 1997
Location: Outside the Koneko
Warnings: None.
It was probably a bit late to realize that she really should have cut her hair.
If there was anything that summed up the whole... whole thing of her presence outside a flower shop she'd almost sworn she was never going to visit again, not after that whole embarrassing ( Read more... )
Location: Outside the Koneko
Warnings: None.
It was probably a bit late to realize that she really should have cut her hair.
If there was anything that summed up the whole... whole thing of her presence outside a flower shop she'd almost sworn she was never going to visit again, not after that whole embarrassing ( Read more... )
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"Ah, no worries at all! Yesterday was actually really busy-- the move is finished now. I think... But some help unpacking would be great! Are you sure you don't mind? That would help me out so much!" And give her some much-desired time with a friend. That kind of company was completely welcome.
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She shivered slightly, drawing her new coat a little more tightly about her. It was still cold, but - well, it didn't seem to matter quite so much, not now she wasn't feeling... well, quite so very spare in the face of all the girls and their friends who hung around the flower shop. She didn't think she envied them quite so much any more - though, she thought slightly ruefully, it would have been nice to just be able to spend time round Ran and his friends without... well, anything else getting in the way of it.
"So, um..." She hesitated. There was a question she needed to ask, an obvious one, but... well, it was probably going to sound stupid whenever she asked. "Where are you living now? I don't think you mentioned, or maybe you did and I forgot, but anyway ( ... )
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She couldn't have known, of course. Aya herself hadn't even known until yesterday. And now that Sakura had asked, she almost felt a little bad for the answer. But the girl was right: she couldn't show up to help unless she knew where to go.
Aya smiled awkwardly, turned halfway towards the Koneko, and pointed to the right-side window on the third level.
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Oh good grief what a very stupid question, asking Aya where she was living when they were standing right outside it! Never mind that there was no way she should have been expected to know, and no way to find out short of asking: in retrospect it seemed only blindingly obvious. Where else could Aya have been moving on such short notice, and why else would her friend have been waiting here at all? Of course she would be living with her brother now-- Flushing, Sakura dropped her gaze, staring at her shoes as if they were somehow fascinating to her. Ground, swallow me up.
"I'm sorry," she managed, when finally she worked up the nerve to meet Aya's eyes again. "I, um... didn't know. Not that I think it's bad you're living here now, Aya-chan." It had, she thought, to be kind of nice, really. Getting to see her brother ( ... )
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"Speaking of coming here, though... what brings you over today?"
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Sakura hesitated, just for a moment, but the hesitation was there. She was sure that Aya must have noticed it; she just hoped that her friend wouldn't make anything of it.
What was she supposed to say now? The shirt, of course: she'd come to give that back. But how in the world was she supposed to explain how she'd got the thing in the first place? Oh, it was a simple enough story, really - she'd been caught out in a silly white dress, and it was the middle of the night and she was cold, and boys just did lend things to girls when that happened and it wasn't like Ken-san had really been wearing it in the first place. The devil, of course, was in the details, and it was details that would damn her ( ... )
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She knew that Omi, Ran and Youji were assassins and as such, they probably didn't hang out a terrible lot with other people.
She knew that they had a fourth teammate, who was currently out of commission in a bad way.
She knew that this teammate was out because he got hurt in trying to retrieve her that time right before she woke up.
She knew Sakura had been at that event-- and, now that she thought back on it-- she'd been wearing an outfit identical to hers with one exception: she also had an orange shirt.
She took the bag and held it for a few moments without peeking inside. "It belongs to their fourth teammate? I mean coworker!"
Oh, snap.
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And she smiled, eyes closing, relieved to be rid of the bag and the burden it contained--which was about the point that Sakura's brain caught up with her mouth and she realized what Aya had said. Realized, too, that her friend had had to hastily correct herself. Not colleague, not friend, but teammateIt shouldn't have surprised Sakura that Aya already knew about her brother, either. Of course she would have to be told in order to live in a place like this, with men like Ran and his friends. The flower shop was a front: they'd told her as much themselves, and surely nobody could live in a place like that for long and not start to suspect that maybe there was something slightly strange about it all. It made it so much simpler if Aya knew, too-- but there Sakura was, one hand flying to her mouth again as she tried and failed to fight back a gasp. Not blushing this time, but paling. It had been hard enough for her to find out the truth, and she had known Ran - Aya, as he'd been back ( ... )
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She didn't protest. Sakura just let Aya lead her into the store and sit her down on one of the couches, she just sat and listened while Aya whispered urgently to her about how it wasn't the time and she knew, she knew and there was no need to pretend around her-- And there was hysteria in her friend's tone and her voice was shaking and then she was crying. Aya was crying and it was awful, just awful and somehow Sakura just couldn't escape the feeling that it was all her fault.
She knew it had been a bad idea to come.
Sakura didn't know what to do next, so she did the only thing that came naturally. Leaning forward, she impulsively gathered her friend into a clumsy hug.
"Oh, Aya-chan, I'm sorry!"
And no, Sakura, don't you start crying too. Her friend was sad and she was hurting and she needed - Aya definitely needed somebody, and she knew she probably wouldn't be much help when she was so caught up in this whole horrible messy thing too but what ( ... )
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"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I thought I had all of this out of my system. I don't know if I even can talk about it... I don't know what I can say. It's just there, and..."
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Was she trying to be reassuring? She had no idea. She just knew better than anything that what Aya was saying was true. It was just there and it just... the truth of the matter sat there in the corner of the mind, huge and immovable as some big, ugly statue, and sometimes you could ignore it for a little while and sometimes when the light hit it just right you thought that maybe the horrible old thing didn't look so bad after all - it looked weirdly noble, if never quite good or beautiful or right, but it didn't care what you thought of it, or even if you ignored it. It just was, and it wouldn't go away. It would never, ever go away.
"Don't be sorry," she said. "It was a - a horrible shock even for me, and I hadn't known any of them for long at all."
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"How do you feel about them? Do you still trust them and... are they really good people? After Oniichan told me, I just..."
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That... had probably come out a little more enthusiastic than she had intended to. The slightly breathless, how-could-I-ever-think-anything-else tone in her voice was totally unfeigned, and the smile that accompanied it was warm and totally genuine. There she went again with the whole awkward Aya thing, but - but this was the truth too, and by the sounds of things her friend really, really needed to hear it ( ... )
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