School Girls' Stories - Year 1

Chapter 43 – Regrets of the Young


Yuki stood to the ride of Shinwa’s laid out figure on the bed. He was watching her carefully preen over the plant she had bought in the gift shop below. She knew it was ugly, but it was all she had been able to afford. She just wanted to cheer him up, and it was working.

“Yuki, I’m going to be released soon,” he explained to her. “You don’t have to do all of this for me.”

“You stuck up for me!” Yuki cried out for joy. “No one has ever stuck up for me that way before. I mean, Fuji used to stick up for me or Shai when someone would pick on us, but I’ve never had a guy stick up for me. Kago certainly never did when he was with me. I’m babbling, I know, but you should not have stepped into the fight like that. You could have been killed, and all that time I couldn’t take my eyes off of you because it was so great to watch you move. And for me. So thank you.”

“That is the longest thank you I’ve ever heard,” Shinwa grinned, then grimaced at the pain it induced. He sat up slowly, while Yuki tried to push him back down. He pushed her hands gently away and shook his head. “I can’t talk on my back. I’ve tried that before, it doesn’t work.”

“But you may overstrain yourself,” Yuki protested.

Shinwa let out a loud laugh, and though he regretted it, it felt good to his heart. “I can not get much more hurt than I am right now, dear,” he smiled at her. “Your ex is a pretty touch jack ass.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuki apologized, reaching across Shinwa’s lap without a second thought and grasping his hands into hers. “I didn’t know he would do something like that.”

“It is not for you to apologize,” Shinwa pointed out. “You aren’t the one who attacked with a knife, are you?” Yuki shook her head pleasingly. “Then do not apologize for him. You do not control his actions.”

“I was so scared though,” Yuki admitted. “Scared for you, scared for myself, scared for the friends who stood by trying to protect us, and what is worse, I don’t think he was there for me.”

Shinwa raised his eyebrow, which only caused electric shocks of pain to go through his whole body. He was not going to be pleasant to look at for a while. “What do you mean?” he asked when she remained silent.

“Why would he go to Fuji’s looking for me?” Yuki pointed out. Suddenly the world made sense, and Shinwa did not like where it was going. “He did not know Fuji was moving out today or that I would be there. He didn’t call my cell phone wondering where I was, and my mom and dad said he never stopped by. So it can only lead us to the conclusion that he was there for Fuji, not me.”

Shinwa was not sure if he was relieved or more worried that he had gone to Fuji’s with a knife. “Why would he go to Fuji’s?” he asked of her.

“He’s in love with Fuji,” Yuki admitted sadly. Though she had left him it was still a part of her heart that hated admitting that he never really like her back. “He’s been in love with Fuji for years, but she had no interest in him. She actually had no interest in most boys until she met Amatsu. He’s like a stalker to a movie star, and it is how he looks at her. Do you know what stalkers to a movie star act like?”

Shinwa knew very well. “The ones that get too close can be dangerous,” Shinwa admitted. “Did you ever hear about that girl from Ace of Base who was stabbed by a fan who just loved her too much?”

Yuki nodded. “Well, that is my suspicion what he was there for,” Yuki said sadly. “Seeing you just put him in a different frame of mind.”

Shinwa sighed, disturbed by this new insight. Maybe if he saved Fuji’s life she would stop hating him. Doubtful, that girl seemed to hold a grudge.

Even thinking about it made him hurt. How many of these girls was he going to have to save? How did these three land themselves into such situations?

“I think you should let the poor man get some rest,” came a nice voice that had no real definition to it from the doorway. Yuki and Shinwa both faced the door to see Shoushin standing there, looking suave and awkward.

“I’m sorry,” Yuki suddenly apologized. “I didn’t mean to burden you with all of my troubles. I guess I talk too much when I’m nervous, not that I am nervous around you or anything, I’m just that kind of person, who is nervous, I mean. I’m babbling again.”

Shinwa laughed and Shoushin entered the room. “Hi Oshidori,” Shoushin smiled. “It’s nice to see you again. Do you mind if I talk to Shinwa a bit alone?”

Yuki shook her head vigorously, a look that was almost cute on the young girl. “No, you can talk to him, I have some other things I wanted to do before I left. Before I leave I will come in and say good night, all right Shinwa?”

“I look forward to it,” Shinwa admitted. Yuki slid out the door and down the hall to her next destination.

~*~


“I know you don’t want to hear it now, Shinwa, but the band wants to get back together,” Shoushin was saying to Shinwa. “Kyouteki will never be replaced in our hearts, but we can find another bassist.”

“Now is not the time for this, Shoushin,” Shinwa snapped rather crankily, which was very unlike the lead singer of Velvet Wrappings. Usually such a nice boy, with dreams in his heart and eyes, his eyes and heart appeared dead while his once best friend spoke to him.

“Shinwa, think of all the things you are leaving behind if you don’t do it. We aren’t the same band without you.”

“I believe he said not right now.” Fuji was never a very imposing figure, but standing in the doorway, dressed in a business suit like her mother was suited to wear, her hair pulled back, her glasses securely in place, and her face looking severe from the normal powder she put on long ago to keep her beauty from distracting from her brain, she was altogether frightening. Shoushin jumped up and bowed to the girl, thinking her anything but a girl, but when Fuji showed and her stature was actually taken into account, as well as the perkiness of still young breasts, Shoushin realized that she could not have been much older that Shinwa, at best.

“I know you,” Shoushin said. “You were the uppity young one Yuki and Shai were hanging around with.”

Fuji’s eyebrow arched so high into her brow it almost disappeared into her hairline. It was enough to have Shoushin wanting to apologize. He hated intimidating women, and at that moment Fuji was every bit the intimidating woman.

“I need to speak to your friend,” Fuji stated, still keeping her hands well behind her back. “If you don’t mind, I believe you have other places to be.”

“Shinwa,” Shoushin threw a look over his shoulder, “can we talk later?”

Shinwa nodded and watched Shoushin’s retreating back. When he was alone with Fuji he commented, “You cut a pretty scary businesswoman. I will hate to work for you one day.”

Fuji took her hands out from behind her back and threw what was in them at Shinwa’s feet. Without leaning forward he knew what it was from the cover. It was a magazine with a battered Kyouteki on the cover, but it was a London magazine, something that no one most likely would have read in Japan.

“And you thought I had no reason to dislike you,” Fuji nearly snarled. “You battered Kyouteki, crashed your car into a tree, killing the passenger next to you, whom also happened to be Kyouteki’s new boyfriend, and were charged with voluntary manslaughter, since there were no skid marks.” Fuji stopped to take a breath, placing her hands on her hips. “The only piece I am missing is why it never ended up in a magazine over here.”

“They were paid off,” Shinwa admitted softly and honestly.

Fuji gave a sharp nod, like that was exactly the answer she had been expecting from him. “Is this why you are playing hero? You do not want to see anyone else die?”

“I didn’t mean to kill him, Chenbaro,” Shinwa snapped, reverting to calling her by a very unfamiliar way. This woman was not going to believe him no matter what he said, but it did not mean he was not going to try. “I was found not guilty, and I moved on with my life. Yes, it is partially the reason I want to play hero, I want to make up for my fuck up in London by saving someone’s soul.”

Fuji did not look pleased, she looked absolutely disgusted. Shinwa saw something else in her eyes, something that he did not expect. “You weren’t the one to find that magazine, were you?” he asked with a small realization. “I should have known. Ineriaru Amatsu, I should have recognized the name, but everyone calls him Amatsu since he is a deejay. Amatsu is the one who turned you against me.”

“Inperiaru Tattoi,” Fuji finished for him. “Kyouteki’s boyfriend and Amatsu’s older brother.”

~*~


Kago’s eyes widened with something he was not used to feeling when Yuki walked into his room to check on him, has arm wrapped into a cast and the painkillers having just starting taking effect. It was surprise, and he hated being surprised, and yet there she stood, in nothing more than her grey jersey and a pair of jeans, looking unfabulous with her hair flat and her make-up damaged from all of the emotion of the day, and yet he recognized her for the friend she had once been.

Yuki closed the door behind her and leaned against it, looking to Kago’s pale and bruised figure on that bed. He looked no better than Shinwa, but at least Shinwa had walked away with no broken limbs.

“Kago… what happened to you?” she asked quietly. “You are starting to turn into Nakago, and I don’t know what to do. I loved you once, but you are not the man I expected you to be. I saw those newspaper clippings in your room, the ones about the rapes and murders. I know what you were doing with me were experiments on what you were learning. I could forgive your damage to me, but why did you go after Fuji?”

Kago tried to swallow the lump that was in his throat. He blamed the painkillers for his sudden turn of emotion. He never would have felt choked up if it had not been for them inhibiting his senses.

“You are smarter than you pretend to be,” Kago pointed out to his ex-girlfriend.

“Tell me, Kago,” Yuki pleaded. “Tell me as your friend, confide in me.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Kago asked snidely. He may feel more emotional because of the damn painkillers, but he certainly was not growing stupider, nor was his attitude feeling any better.

“I want you to tell me what you planned with Fuji,” Yuki said with more force than he had ever heard her use before.

Kago sighed. “Not what you thought,” he said quietly. “I didn’t plan on killing her, I don’t know if I was even going to use the knife, but I know that Fuji belongs to me, not to that bastard she’s with.”

Yuki shook her head sadly. “Maybe you and Nakago should be in the same institute,” was the most biting thing she had ever let escape her mouth. “You are sick and you need help. Fuji is never going to love you, not the way I loved you. I let you use me and abuse me, and you still dreamed of Fuji.”

“That is just as sick and twisted,” Kago snapped at Yuki. She was taken aback by the venom in his voice. “You allowed me to abuse you because you thought it would bring you love. It didn’t though, did it? It just brought animosity from yourself upon your soul, and I looked at you as nothing more but the scum on my shoe. Yuki, you held an ideal of me.”

“Just as you do of Fuji,” snapped Yuki, stepping forward until she reached the foot of his bed. “Fuji is not perfect, and she is not the one for you.” Yuki opened the door to the room, ready to leave. Nothing she said was going to save Kago’s soul, or his ideals about a woman who would never have looked at him twice if he had not been Yuki’s childhood friend.

“Kago, the next time we see each other, all friendly farces we put on for one another are over,” Yuki said quite plainly. “It was nice while our friendship lasted, but even that was just a grasp at reality for you. This fake reality is over, I leave you to the darkness in your soul you worship, but I warn you: leave Fuji alone. I may not be an imposing figure, but my brother and sister are more fucked in the head than you are, and I am sure they would be there for me if I called for help.”

“Your brother is in an institute, what can he do?” Kago snarled.

“He is,” Yuki said with a bright smile on her face, “but his friends aren’t.”

Yuki stepped out of the room, feeling a little good for being so brave, though it might have been the coward’s way out. He could not hurt her from his bed, but he could hear her out, and hear her out he did.

Fuji exited from Shinwa’s room at the same moment and the two girls locked eyes across the hospital hallway. “Shinwa?” Yuki asked, walking towards her friend. “I would never expect you to check on him and see how he was doing.”

“He saved your life,” Fuji said, ignorant to whose life he may have really saved, but wiser than Yuki in the ways of a mind that had been damaged in London. “I had to thank him.”

“Oh, that was big of you Fuji,” Yuki said with absolute honesty. “How was it with your mom and Mr. Tennison?”

Fuji gave a small nod. “In a way, I understand things better,” she admitted, “though I still think they are both cold and calculating, and Mr. Tennison is a bastard.”

Yuki and Fuji shared a warm smile and a small laugh. “I’m going to go home,” Fuji said to Yuki. “I know you probably want to say goodnight to Shinwa. I will talk to you tomorrow at school.”

“Can you believe we have to go back to school tomorrow?” Yuki asked. “It seems like the rest of the world should stop along with us.”

Fuji nodded. “I agree, but, we know better, it never will.” She walked away, looking the extreme opposite of what Amatsu had opened her up to being. Yuki hoped she would not go back to the old way again, but Fuji was complex when she wanted to be.

Yuki walked back into the room and smiled at Shinwa, who hurried to hide something behind his pillow. He looked up at her with a grin that did not reach his eyes, but Yuki ignored it, too happy to just see his face.

“Once you are feeling better,” Yuki said sweetly, her smile stretching across the whole of her face, “I am going to take you out for a large meal, on me.”

“How can you afford it with no job?”

“Okay, I am going to take you out for a large meal, on my parents, they just won’t know.” They both gazed and smiled at one another, the breath of fresh air in their complicated lives.