Seiran Academy

Chapter 14

“Mariko!” Minako had never been so happy to see her best friend in all of her life. When she opened the door the next morning there the dark haired girl stood and Minako practically jumped through the door on top of her. She grasped and hugged her and Mariko hugged her back. Mariko, however, was shuddering and crying. “Mariko, what’s wrong?”

Belle stepped out of the bathroom and saw Minako leading Mariko to her bed. They sat together and Belle flipped a long strand of dark hair over her shoulders. “I’m going out,” she said and stepped out without a further word. Minako knew she would owe Belle for that one.

“Mariko, tell me what it is,” Minako insisted as the girl cried into her lap.

“My parents are divorcing!” she cried out in pain. Minako hesitated only a second before placing her hand on her friend’s head and reassuring her, making the soft cooing noises her mother had used on her as a child to calm her down as she cried, and had taken up again as she was a teenager and needed to cry after a horrible night with her step-father. She ignored the similar trait and kept rubbing Mariko and making sweet noises until she was ready to speak.

“My… my father is marrying another woman,” she sniffled, “but he doesn’t want me in the house! My mother has to move back with her family! I have to leave school!”

This was a bit more devastating to Minako. For a moment she forgot she was supposed to be soothing Mariko as a large lump clomped in her throat. She had not been paying enough attention to her friend lately, she had been spending too much time with the overwhelming Dark Trio, yet she knew she was going to miss her friend. She was the only friend that she could really rely on.

How had she repaid that friendship? By ignoring the darkened circles under Mariko’s eyes and the obvious pain written right across her face.

“Your father couldn’t possibly have said that,” Minako amended. “I’m sure you-”

“No, Minako,” Mariko interrupted, her patience taught thin for the first time with her best friend, “I did not misunderstand. I was standing right there when the harsh words left his mouth. I am moving down south with my grandparents until my mom can find a job to support us. We get nothing but an alimony check that is a bit ridiculous in its amount. A peasant could not live off of what we are being given.”

Minako did not know what to say to this devastating news. She was hurting as well. The extent of her pain was nothing compared to her friends, having a family member admit to not wanting you had to be the most devastating thing that could ever happen, though Minako prayed for it every day. Minako missed her father and could only assume Mariko would miss her own, despite his callous dismissal of her presence in his household.

“I just wanted you to know,” Mariko sniffed, sitting up and readying herself to go.

“Mariko, don’t go,” Minako begged. She stood before her friend and reached out for her and only became more shocked when Mariko pulled further away.

“I am being asked to leave before the new week starts for school,” Mariko said. “I think it best I be gone by the end of the day. I just wanted you to know before you heard the rumors in school.”.

No, this cold girl was not the friend Minako had known since childhood. This girl with a spine of steel that turned her back on Minako was what was left at the wreck of devastation, the worst sort of kind. Is this house Minako had appeared to Mariko all those years ago? Minako tried to remember a ‘Before’ time. Instead she only properly remembered an ‘After’. As far back as Minako could remember she was the Minako there today, harsh, studious, and ill-tempered, while sticking to the walls and becoming their gradual flowers. Would Mariko, the soft-spoken, kind-hearted, gifted girl in art suddenly become a dire case of ill-temper and hard stubbornness?

“Mariko…” What did she say now? Keep in touch? She herself had nearly run away, would have gone if Mr. Evans had allowed it. Would she have kept in touch or run as far away as she could and never looked back at the world that had claimed her soul?

“I’ll write you,” Mariko promised, a promise she would never keep.

Minako feared as Mariko left her bedroom that it would be the last time she would ever see the dark-haired beauty that did not have the mind to match that perfect vessel. She may never have been book smart but Minako could never have asked for a better friend, and someone always had to be at the bottom, it just happened that it was Mariko.

Minako began to go after her, her body reacting on pure instinct. She threw herself from the bed and began through the door. Belle’s grip on her and pulling her back into the room kept her from making that mistake.

“She doesn’t want you to see her leave,” Belle explained in the feminine voice he used for every day business. “Let her go.”

“But, she’s my best friend,” Minako cried. “I have no one without her.”

Belle’s smile was unmistakable. “All the more reason you only have us to lean on now.”