School Girls' Stories: New Generation - Finale

Chapter 21 – A Cancelled Wedding



“Sora!” The voice that called to him had him lifting his head to the door that one of the police had opened, after a very terse conversation with Detective Pop, and allowed a blushing bride-to-be to come rushing through. Sora gazed upon Rhapsody, a woman only half dressed in a white corset that lifted her already ample breasts, a long white skirt that would have been gorgeous with the top that she never donned, and make-up perfectly in place but her hair mussed from a kick ride down to the station. She stood in that doorway, the policeman trying to hold her back as she fought her way in and threw herself into Sora’s arms. Sora wrapped his arms around the woman who in less than two hours he was supposed to marry and did not let go even as Detective Pop cleared her throat.



“I think someone does not want you to go to jail…” Pop suggested.



“How did you find me?” Sora asked of her.



She sobbed so hard into his shoulder, her words so muffled, that he barely understood her, and yet it all rang clear in his mind. “Bliss called Link and demanded he contact the station and after too long someone finally told Link you were here and I rushed here right away…”



Sora heard the unsaid words though she barely even dared thinking them, and he smiled a bittersweet twist of his lips and gripped her tighter. If he wished he could keep her, he could hold on to her forever and she would do as she was told and be a compliant wife, but deep down it was not who Rhapsody is or was. She was as much her mother as she could be, she was just bred to react differently. It he freed her she would be allowed to sin, she would be allowed to discover, with him she would be the perfect wife, and it was not what she wanted. Neither of them wanted that.



“I’m sorry I did not see you sooner,” he whispered to her.



Rhapsody lifted her head, her make-up ruined quickly and over the front of his shirt. Neither noticed. “What?”



“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head.



“Now that you’ve seen her, she needs to go,” Pop snapped, her harsh reality tone back in as her body language changed from that of a woman to that of a detective, transcending gender and only working on being a what. “We need to finish this, it is almost done.”



“He didn’t kill him!” Rhapsody cried, turning to face Pop. “Don’t incriminate him when Waza was murdered in self-defense!”



Apparently someone had filled her in on the way to the police station. Sora knew he had Link and Darrke to thank for that.



Pop rolled her eyes. “He’s told me that part, sweetheart.” Her distaste for Rhapsody was evident in her tone of voice and the word ‘sweetheart’. Pop only called those she disliked with sweet words and it was likely the first time Rhapsody had ever experienced someone so blatant in their dislike of her. “But Sora was going to do the deed. Darrke killed to save his life, Sora was just going to kill him. He will be under arrest for premeditation among other things. And Darrke isn’t getting off Scott free either, he just will have less to deal with, though I doubt the Marines will smile happily at these two men now.”



“But…”



“That’s enough, if you are done crying for your husband-to-be you need to leave,” Pop snapped.



“Detective,” Sora said, cutting in gently, “may I have a minute with my bride, please? This may be my last opportunity to say what I really need to say to her.”



Pop rolled her eyes, but then she shrugged. “Fine, I have a confession, talking to her can’t hurt, just don’t disappear like your uncle did.”



“I won’t,” Sora promised. Pop left the room but she still studied them through the window of the door. She was not entirely trustworthy of the woman inside the room.



“Sora, why are you doing this?” Rhapsody asked, her astonishment shaking her very marrow.



“Because I’m the guilty party,” he explained to her with all the patience of an old man talking to a child he loves dearly. “Because this is the right thing to do. Don’t,” he interjected, watching her beautiful pouting lips open to question him further. He could not bear her voice much longer, the sweet sound that seemed to be daggers now more than anything. “You and I will not marry today, Rhapsody. You can I will never walk down that aisle and I will not see you in the rest of your wedding dress.



“Now just because I am releasing you from our marriage today it does not mean I want you to run into Ashe’s arms and bed and forget all that has happened. Rhapsody, I know you love him, and when I get out of jail, because jail is where I will be going, I will woo you the right way. You and I will end up together, it just won’t be today. And hopefully then you will be willing to show me all of you and I will show you all of me. We won’t be two people afraid to hurt one another, afraid to break something we believed was fragile and in reality is harder than rock. Until that day, live your life, but when I come back we will be two new people meeting for the very first time.”



“Why else are you doing this?” Rhapsody asked, her voice shaking.



“Because Darrke is needed,” Sora admitted. “Darrke is a father to Lily, he needs to be there for her.”



“What?” It was not Rhapsody’s lips that uttered those words, it was Yuki, who stood at the doorway looking in at her son.



Sora only smiled and released Rhapsody back to the outside walls and Detective Pop, who had always looked much kinder upon Yuki Oshidori, allowed her in and within the confines of the small interrogation room Yuki learned more from her eldest son than she had learned from anyone.



Which was the end to a wedding day.



And nearly the end of our story.