School Girls' Stories: New Generation - Finale

Chapter 18 – 7 Hours Remaining (7:00 AM)



“I…”



“Do you love Ashe?”



Rhapsody turned on the bed to look at Sora’s face. The two of them were sitting together for the first time… and it seemed like the very first time. How many times had they been alone together in their lives? They seemed to always be surrounded by people and secrets. Now that secrets were being told and everything coming out in the open they were no longer crowded with secrets and shadows and other people… and still he hovered in the room with them, the soul of the one she truly loved… and still she had gone to Sora.



“Sora…”



“Just tell me, Rhapsody, do you love him?” Rhapsody opened her mouth to answer and Sora gave a quick, curt shake of his head. “Don’t give me the ins and outs of how you love him, don’t tell m that the love you feel for us is different, Rhapsody, just be honest with me, and yourself. Do you love Ashe… more than you love me? Would you rather be in Ashe’s arms than in mine right now? Who is it you truly have always wanted to be with? In seven hours we are to be wed, is it Ashe you wish to be with?”



“Sora, I love you, and being with you my life would be perfect.” It was Rhapsody’s turn to stop him before he said more, a quick lift of her hand stopping him from his continued rant. “Sora, nothing would be happier than a life with you, but yes, I love Ashe. This is a love that would never bring me happiness. I would be angry with him for what he did to me as an adolescent teen who had barely gone through puberty, I will always hate him for faking his death, I will be always angry at him for the pain he caused Mom, and Dad, and myself. Ashe and I would be miserable because I forgive him but I can not forget… and in remembering I still boil over with this seething anger.” It was more emotion than Sora had ever heard from this woman before.



“Rhapsody…”



“Yes, Sora…”



“Go get ready for our wedding… I expect you to look beautiful, so get some sleep as well.”



Rhapsody’s smile was brilliant as she left the room and Sora would have married her just like that, disheveled and disgruntled, but smiling triumphantly. Only, Sora would not be marrying her today. He grabbed the keys to his soon-to-not-be-father-in-law’s car and left the hotel room and began his short drive.



~*~



“Well I surely won’t miss the shit…”



“Fuji, you are not helping,” Shinwa cut in. The men in the women’s lives had entered the room to hear Darrke’s story and now the room seemed overly crowded with Link, Bliss, Fuji, Shai, Yuki, Tiera, Amatsu, Lilis, baby Lily, Shinwa, and Kyoei all huddled together. Fuji may have grand rooms but even this crowd was growing to be a bit much for a place meant for a leisurely four person family that never truly joined together. They should have moved to another room and yet no one could break the horrid mood that grew and dropped and grew again. Everyone wanted to be angry and sad and they were, and at the same time a bit of elation waved through the crowd. Fuji was nonchalant though she just learned of the awful murder of her brother, Link was casual as he was about everything, though Bliss’s eyes were a little wide. Tiera looked excited, and Yuki would be angry with her about it later, but Tiera’s excitement was that the focus was no longer on the bastard (thought they knew who the father was they knew he would lay no claim to them except to pay child support or schooling) babies of her sister and friend.



“I’m just saying, it is not entirely a bad thing… except that you guys buried his body,” Fuji continued. “That gives a sign of guilt, and whether Sora was going to kill him or not you leave that part out. I mean, tell them it was self defense… you guys can get off, I have the greatest lawyers.”



“Damn it, Fuji, not everything can be solved with money!” Yuki screamed, and her anger was more for her daughters than the murder, though she was scared for Sora at that moment. How could he have been so foolish?



“Fine, you are right.” Fuji, never one to acquiesce so easily, held her head regally high and waved her hand in the air to wave off the peasantry of those around her. Her children were not in the room, only her husband, who had seen her at her worst before, she had no need to act the caring parent if her help was being discarded. “Watch your children suffer, it is of no consequence to me.”



“Except that our son is marrying your daughter in less than seven hours,” Shinwa snapped. He may have worked hard to gain Fuji’s friendship at one point in life but his irritation with the woman now drove him near exhaustion.



“You think so?” Fuji asked. “After all that has happened do you think the two most unselfish people in the world will go through with their wedding? Yuki must hate Rhapsody for initiating a fight that resulted in her daughter miscarrying. Rhapsody will only go through with the wedding if she believes it is what everyone else wants, and Sora… do you think he will sit idly by while Waza’s body rots in the earth? Will you all come to the wedding knowing your daughters are in the hospital? What, someone please tell me where I am wrong on any of this.”



“Fuji…” Amatsu tried to appease his wife, but her anger could rival that of any three people in the room and she stepped away from him towards the fireplace, turning her back on everyone.



“I care not that my brother died,” Fuji snapped. “The boy never meant anything to me and I cared little what happened to him. However we did not raise a bunch of casual children. The reason they have failed and fallen is because they are human with emotions that were twisted. Is it their faults, partially. Is it our faults for not being the right kind of parents, partially. Is it the fault of Waza for his administrations? Almost completely.” Fuji faced everyone in the room who stood between a brink of decision. “For the murder or Waza I will pay for the best lawyers ever, Waza’s death is the last thing I want to deal with, what I want to know is what you are going to do about Bliss and Mercedes and Rhapsody after what they did to Harmony and Yuna.”



Shai, who had sat on the couch as quiet as could be, looked to her youngest child and met his eyes. Darrke squirmed but he did not remove his gaze from hers. She thought of her daughter, in the hospital struggling to keep her baby, and Shai clenched her fists. She had prayed for this, she had not wanted her daughter to make the same mistakes she had. She had prayed for a miracle, though she had not wanted it to come exactly this way.



“Kyoei?” she asked of him, which was only fair. Her burdens had been Shu and Bliss, they were entirely her children to protect and care for, even if Kyoei had always been there for her. Harmony and Darrke were purely Kyoei’s, they had his eyes, they had his lips, they were his children and he had every right to make the decision she may not agree with.



Kyoei met Fuji’s eyes, one who had always met Fuji on a level that no one else could. Kyoei was the only person besides her own husband she had liked instantly and had to earn none of the respect she had made everyone else fight for, and here he was looking to her and she was giving up all control to this man.



“We will do nothing,” he explained calmly. He looked to his wife and caught the momentary relief that crossed over her face. “Harmony and Yuna do not deserve this, but they do not deserve the life they have condemned themselves too either if they have more children. If Harmony has her baby we will take care of it, if she loses it… we will see it… as what it is meant to be.” His voice hitched, it was hard to turn his back on his child, but he had done so. Now, after twenty years of being Harmony’s father, he was relinquishing his rights to force her to take the reins.



Everyone’s eyes turned to Yuki who gripped her husbands hand as she fought back a raging urge to scream at everyone in the room. How could they leave Yuna to fend for herself?



Yuki bent her head downward and stared at the floor and the carpeting across it for a very long time. In all of her years with Fuji and Shai and all of their differences this was the one time she wanted to fight them. No, she could not forgive Bliss for this. Was her anger truly only for Bliss? Was she looking for a reason to hate the girl that was stealing her son from her, a girl who was blood related to him? Was she looking for a reason to dislike her sister’s daughter?



Yuki raised her eyes to look to Bliss and Link, who were standing close, their fingers barely brushing. They were being casual, trying to let no one know that once again they were completely in love, if they had even fallen out of love. As simple as him coming to her she had forgotten that back home she lives with her lover and he had forgotten that he had been dating Lisa for nearly two years, a woman who was extremely jealous of Bliss.



Yes, she had been fighting to keep Bliss away, but…



“I can’t make that decision,” Yuki finally sighed. “I will be biased either way. I think it is a decision for Yuna to make.”



“Mom, you can’t be serious,” Tiera butt in. Yuki looked to her youngest daughter, a woman who had grown up into something beautiful, she had brains and beauty and was more like Link in genius but more like Sora in temperament. Tiera was the good of both her sons mixed into one very sweet daughter. One mistake had changed her, it had made her something better, for herself, stronger. Tiera often used that backbone against her mother. “Yuna deserves this.”



“Perhaps,” Yuki agreed, “but she is still my daughter and to say that I can just forgive what they have done, I can’t. I, however, am willing to let Yuna make the decision.”



“Yuna is just like Waza,” Tiera argued. “She will press charges just to hurt them, just to get Rhapsody away from Ashe…Sora, just to get Bliss away from Link, just to get Mercedes away from Shu, because they are all happy and she is not.”



Yuki caught it, as did everyone else in the room. Tiera’s eyes went wide a second but she ignored her slip of the tongue, the wrong name, and she was going to continue in on her mother just to mask the slip, but Yuki held up her hand. “Sweetie, you should be helping Rhapsody dress for her wedding, not arguing with me. It is Yuna’s decision, and I think,” she exchanged a glance with Shai and sighed, “that Yuna will make the right decision.”



Shai held a small triumphant smile and looked to her husband, to Fuji, to Amatsu, to Shinwa, and to Yuki. Yuki sighed and relinquished her control over her daughter, as Shai did, while Fuji and Tiera both realized their goal today was to make a probably very exhausted Rhapsody look beautiful.



The countdown continued.