School Girls' Stories: New Generation - Finale

Chapter 8 – 16 Hours Remaining (10:00 PM)

“This is too many children,” Yuki sighed, laying onto the couch and hoping, finally, that Lily, Darien, and Dania were all asleep. “I don’t know how we did it when we were younger. I can hardly keep up with one lately. Lily is a handful, and Darien seems to insist on being as much of a brat as possible.”

“Notice how the men bailed on us,” Fuji pointed out.

“God bless them, for they would only be in the way,” Shai sighed into her wine glass.

The three best friends were sitting in Fuji’s sitting room, which was only a room away from the nursery where three sleeping children curled up in wait. One would cry soon and the three women would be back on their feet, calming all three down at once, but until then they were enjoying the companionship they so rarely shared anymore. They had grown older so quickly that it was hard to believe that they were now nearing that hump which was their fifties, and already two of them were grandmothers. Fuji thanked the heavens every day that she was not yet a grandmother, though seeing her best friends as so did make her feel impressionably older.

“So, I hate to reign in the bad news, but I have an announcement to make,” Fuji suddenly interrupted, sitting up a little straighter. “I know none of you were as close to her as I was, but I thought I needed someone to share it with. Danko died last week. The disease finally got the best of her.”

“That was nearly twenty-five years, if not more,” Shai said, closing her eyes and silently doing the math. Twenty-five seemed about right to her and she just nodded to herself. “She lived a full life. I’m glad for her.”

“How did you find out?” Yuki asked, standing up to pace, as she often did when she was feeling a bit out of sorts.

“Her friend from New York called me,” Fuji explained. “She called me a week ago, but I did not want to really spoil the happy news of my daughter’s marriage with Sora. But, I just couldn’t keep it in. I think I miss her more than I thought I would.”

“Despite the fact that she was the one who was Devilin’s friend, who ended up raping your daughter,” Yuki snapped.

“Yuki,” Shai hissed. “What’s gotten into you lately? You have been nothing but angry.”

Yuki waved all of this off and huffed. “Sorry,” she said. “I just… I don’t feel sorry for her, or Kaori, or Nakago. I think I have grown to truly just hate them over the years. They allowed so many bad things, and they stuck me in the middle of this mess, knowing what Kago was doing to me, and no one helped.”

Fuji crossed her arms across her chest. Nakago may have been awful as a teenager, but he had taken blame for a murder that Amatsu had been accused of, and neither had committed. Hell, he had saved Amatsu’s life, and had been trying to protect Yuki. Yuki seemed to have forgotten that in later years.

“Is that why you told your daughter to stop dating my son?” Shai finally asked, breaking the silence.

“So she told you that conversation,” Yuki began.

Shai simmered for a few moments and Fuji could only glance from one to the other. It was the first time she had seen subsequent tempers flare in such a way. Shai was always placating and Yuki was usually kind and optimistic. Now the two stared at one another like they blamed the other for their pain and their problems.

“I did not realize she had told you,” Yuki finally amended.

“She was very hurt by that,” Shai said a bit bitterly. “My daughter cried for days, then went back to New York and cried further. I could not console her.”

“Shai, she’s not your daughter,” Yuki pointed out, “and as far as I’m concerned you should not be treating her so perfectly. She is the incestuous daughter of Nakago and Kaori. She is the very epitome of the worst of things. What do you think happens between Nakago and her when they are alone?”

“What nonsense is this?” Fuji interjected while Shai reined back the tears that were building in her eyes. Fuji had to stand, her temper raised on Shai’s behalf. “Bliss is nothing like that and has never been anything like that! Where do you get these ideas from?”

“Where?” Yuki asked. She nearly died laughing. Fuji and Shai both took steps back as Yuki stood and went to her purse. She pulled out an envelope that she always kept with her. She never wanted to forget what that hussy had done, how she had lead her son on. “Where,” she mumbled further. “I’ll have you know I’m not as cruel as you two are suddenly making me out to be. You, Fuji, are the one who usually makes snap judgments, so just know when I make a decision it is for a reason.” The envelope came out of her purse and landed on the coffee table between them all. Fuji refused to move, she just waited. Shai was the one who reached out and pulled the pictures up and glanced down at them.

“This can’t not be real,” she said, tears forming in her eyes. She was trembling so badly that Fuji had to reach out and snag the pictures from her friends hands. She looked down at them and nearly dropped them herself.

“Where did you get these pictures?” Fuji demanded of Yuki.

“They arrived on my doorstep years ago, I don’t know how, but I found them in this very envelope and knew I could not allow Bliss around my son any longer,” Yuki explained. “I’m sorry,” and she was crying with the rest of them. “I’m sorry Shai,” she said again. “I loved Bliss, and I tried to love her even though she was… I couldn’t. I hated her when I saw these. I could not allow her excuses to go.”

Fuji focused on that picture and nearly crumpled it in her hands. Bliss’s head was leaned back, her face rapturous, and a decidedly aroused Nakago plowed into her, pushing deep, pushing hard. Fuji ripped through the pictures and then stopped. She glanced several times and shook her head. No, this wasn’t right.

“Shai, why does Bliss never wear low cut tops?” Fuji asked, kneeling at the table and passing over the many different pictures.

“She has a mole on her chest she hates,” Shai explained through her tears. “Why?”

“This… is not Bliss,” Fuji concluded. “This is Kaori.”

“What?” the other two women stopped in their sobbing and fell to the floor beside Fuji. Fuji held up the pictures and showed the pictures again. “Notice the angle of these pictures are meant to resemble Bliss, but whoever took these photos has never seen Bliss without a shirt. She has that prominent mole that would have been visible. It’s Kaori, Nakago must have had one last fling with her.”

“Why?” Bliss had cried to Yuki, looking for an answer to her pain.

“Because I know about what you and Nakago are doing,” Yuki sneered, it was the first time Bliss had ever seen her aunt sneer in such a way. Yuki did not give Bliss time ask, she was showing Bliss the pictures before Bliss could even fathom a reaction. “How could you?”

“Aunt Yuki…”

“Don’t you Aunt Yuki me, not now!” Yuki screamed and Bliss backed down, too frightened to continue. “How could you do this to my son?”

“Auntie Yuki, it wasn’t me!”

“How do you argue with proof?”

Bliss, too shaken in her fears and her doubts, could not even begin to question those photos. She did not even want to glance their way, she did not want to see her real father in the act of sex, even if it was to prove her innocence. “How can you think this of me?”

“Because you are my sister’s daughter!”

“Your sister who was raped by your father!” Smack!

“Don’t you ever talk about my father that way,” Yuki cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. Had she suspected all of this time, it almost seemed the answer was yes. “Don’t… just get out Bliss. I never want to see you near my son again!”

Bliss, so shaken, so scared, had found the first lover she could in New York and forgot about the one happiness she had shared, because she could not have stood to see that hurt look in her aunt’s eyes ever again. She did not fight for him, not because of fear, but because of love, love for that family. It was over before it could truly have begun.