(90) Catching up

I can sense the uncomfortable stares from the other girls in the lobby as I nuzzle my face against Haruna’s bare midriff - she’s wearing a crop top. The sound of their whispers and giggles hang around the air, but I am oblivious to them. All I care about now is Haruna. I feel the warmth of her skin against my face. She did so much for me, and I want to show her all the affection she deserves.

“Yuumi?” I hear Haruna’s tender voice call out above me after a moment.

I look up at the pink-haired cheerleader’s smirking face and ask with a stammer, “Y-Yes?”

She narrows her eyes, asking, “Did you hear anything I just said?”

Blushing fiercely, my cheeks turning a deep shade of red, I avert my gaze from the cheerleader. “I shouldn’t blame myself…I know…” I trail off, my voice barely above a whisper. Turning back to Haruna, I try to explain what I’m thinking, “I know I shouldn’t. It was that General’s fault more than anyone’s. But I can’t just ignore that lingering feeling that my presence continues to put everyone in danger—” Before I can finish, Haruna interrupts me, her grip tightening on my armpits as she lifts me up to eye level. I feel the blood rushing to my head as my feet dangle a dozen centimeters from the ground.

Her eyes bore into mine as she speaks, “Don’t. Make me. Repeat. Myself.” Her breath smells of mint, and I can feel the warmth of it on my face. “If you try to blame yourself again, I WILL shut you up,” she threatens, her voice firm. Drawing closer, she finishes by asking, “Got it?”

Her intense gaze and stern voice leaves me stammering. “A-Alright… I get it,” My eyes gaze down before I say, “I was just really worried about what happened to you.” I focus on her again. “You always act so cheerful and you’re always there to pick me up whenever I'm unsure of myself. I just couldn’t bear it seeing you like that!” I cry out as my eyes tear up.

With a light chuckle and an endearing smile, Haruna asks, “Really? Am I that important to you?”

I feel my heart skip a beat and my palms start to sweat. The fact that she feels the need to ask that after all that happened almost makes me lose my shit for a second. “Of course you are!!” I yell, with tears obscuring my vision of her face. I struggle out of her grip, and by wrapping my free arms around her neck, I pull myself closer to her and press my wet face on her shoulder.

“Please don’t ask that ever again…” I whisper, my voice choked with emotion.

She briefly struggles with my weight, but quickly balances it out — she’s used to throwing me around during cheer practice. The girl with short light-pink colored hair wraps her arms around me again, patting me in the back. “There, there, it’s okay. I’m here now and certainly more intact than you.”

“I don’t care…” I tell bluntly, “It doesn’t matter what happened to me. Just the fact that you’re alright makes it worth it.”

I can feel a gentle chuckle, and as her hand glides smoothly across my back, the soft fabric of my shirt rustles against my skin. The sound of her breath is like a soothing melody, and I can smell her sweet perfume as she tries her best to comfort me. With each passing moment, a sense of tranquility spreads around my body — Clearing my head; And my tears slowly begin to dry up.

“That’s really sweet of you, sister. But please don’t forget to take care of yourself as well.” She grabs my head and nudges my attention toward her face. “I also couldn’t bear seeing you hurt just because you were careless. Remember, this ‘Close Friend’ thing goes both ways, sweet cheeks.”

With an understanding nod, I reply. “I know…”

“Good,” she says while looking around. “Now, how about we break this up? I wouldn’t mind cuddling up if we were in our room, but we are in public… And your other friends are getting… Confused.”

I turn around to see Yasuna with wide-open eyes, with the twins looking away, flustered. The sentiment is kind of shared by the other two cheerleaders, but for different reasons; with Naeko on the lookout for any people arriving at the med bay.

“Oh…” I trail off, noticing this. I glance back at Haruna and ask, “Could you help me down? Please?”

The tall cheerleader does so with a grin, holding me by the armpits and letting me down as I let go. When my feet reach the floor, I turn around, trying to think of something to defuse this. “So… Now that I’m out. Where do you girls wanna go? I’m guessing we’re all feeling like we’ve overstayed our welcome by now…”

Yasuna looks around, as if asking, ‘Are we really going to ignore what just happened?’ But she doesn’t get to say anything before Mia gives a suggestion, “H-How about we all go get dinner together? I know it’s a little early, but I think the cafeteria would be a better place for us to catch up…”

With no-one offering a better suggestion — and me feeling pretty hungry right about now — we silently decide to go with Mia’s idea and file out of the med bay’s lobby, Yasuna leading the way with Haruna following behind her.

As we make our way through the tight corridors of the ship, it is quickly apparent they aren’t designed for groups of seven to walk through them at once. Our squad becomes more of a conga line than a block as we battle crewmembers walking in the opposite direction and other obstacles. If I were to compare this to something else, I would sooner compare it to the tunnels under the NWDA island other than the cruise ship; Due to the longer hallways opposed to small segments connecting large rooms.

When I bring this up, Naeko quickly explains this is the standard for large space ferrying vessels as opposed to the other ship, which was built with customer experience in mind. Adding to that, apparently, the UP in UP Colossus stands for ‘Unaffiliated Protection.’ As the name implies, the ship isn’t the property of any city or alliance, instead being operated by the commanding crew who make a living out of contract work. This means that as long as the ship's unarmed — and doesn’t carry military personnel — it stays an invalid military target regardless of the identity of the civilians on-board.

Other than that discussion, we try to restrict our dialogue to inconsequential conversations; like what happened with the tournament…

In a nutshell, the organizers brought it to a close, but didn’t cancel it, and, according to Yasuna, there’s a big difference there. There are two sets of placings, one for academies, and the rest for the individual duelists. On the academy front, the placings are based on the win loss ratio of their duelists. With a whopping zero losses, the NWDA promptly took first place with the CSG following in second with 2 losses. Two academies could have been third place, but the organizers used duelist performance metrics to resolve the dispute.

The duelist placings were where the trickier discussions took place. Third place was the easiest to handle, since both of the potential beginner bracket winners were from the NWDA, so the Director got to choose the winner. Going by how grumpy Aiko sounds when we speak of this, I can guess who the Director chose as the beginner bracket winner.

‘Yasuna also happened to be ecstatic…’

The intermediary bracket was supposed to be trickier, since one challenger was Mia and the other was a duelist from the CSG. Fortunately, the CSG’s headmistress backed down, admitting their intermediary bracket duelist had no chance against Mia and would’ve lost. Light had no issue taking that dub.

Now the advanced bracket is the trickiest… First, Aya and Anna requested a shared room, and they haven’t been seen outside for the last 5 days.

‘I can imagine what’s going on there, but 5 days seems too long for that… Guess they’re really making use of the time they have left together. Wonder what’ll happen when they’ll inevitably have to go their separate ways.’

Even ignoring that issue, there’s still the dream achievers who Aya was supposed to duel before her final showdown with Anna. Apparently, they’re adamant their duelist could take her on and win. After much arguing, the organizers came to an agreement that Aya would have to duel their challenger to claim the title. Light was able to argue that Aya was in no shape for such a duel now, citing possible post-traumatic stress due to the incident at the station. That being the case, the first-place winner is to be decided in a set of remote duels one month from now.

Anyway, that’s a problem for another time. By this point, we have reached the cafeteria. It is a small room compared to the sprawling food court at the space station, or even the small selection of restaurants on the cruise ship. It reminds me a little of the cafeteria at the red dorm.

We get our food for free — the benefits of traveling on a contracted ship. After looking around for an unoccupied table that would fit our large group, we sit down in an arrangement that facilitates discussion. I place myself at the end of the table with the three cheerleaders to my right and Yasuna with the twins to my left, occupying an entire long table.

We eat quietly and talk about random things until an important question crops up.

Aiko fidgets in her seat as she asks, “Yuumi… If you don’t mind me asking. What exactly happened to your arm?”

“Yeah, I was also curious about that,” tells Yasuna, looking up from her plate. “When we carried you to the escape pods, we noticed it getting darker. But after we arrived there, you and Haruna were both taken away by the paramedics. Quite hastily, too.”

Looking over the table, I spot Naeko looking on with interest for my response, while Haruna tries to look away. Nanako doesn’t seem to react… as if she doesn’t care about it.

I let out a heavy sigh before glancing at the ceiling. “Sure, I can tell you.” I look back down. “But before that, how about you tell me what you saw of the duel?”

My question makes the interested parties turn to Yasuna, prompting her to sigh herself. “Not much,” she says while shaking her head. “It seems I was the only one unoccupied that cared to look… But other than that enormous beast you summoned at the end, I didn’t see much. You were too far away for me to notice details. Not to mention that blinding flash of light at the end made me miss everything after.”

Focusing on Yasuna, I narrow my eyes. “What about the final attack? Did you see what that monster did?”

Yasuna’s gaze drops back to the table, and she remains silent. She fidgets around, as if she doesn’t want to say anything else.

“We heard a lot of screaming…” says Aiko, telling me exactly what I need to know.

I close my eyes, drawing a deep breath through my nose. “So, you saw THAT, didn’t you?” I ask Yasuna.

“Yes,” she affirms. Looking up from the table, she focuses on me, saying, “And they fucking deserved all of it.” Leaning close, she asks in an intense tone, “You’re not about to say you feel sorry about what happened to those bastards, are you?”

I blink intently, drawing deep breaths through my nose while gazing at the table. “No, what I did was self-defense…” I go on in a lower voice while nodding to myself. “They had no problem invading a civilian space… They tried to abduct us. They shot at us; T-They shot…”

“Good!” Yasuna shouts, interrupting me by placing a hand on my shoulder. “That’s exactly how you must think about this now.” With a line drawing across her lips, she adds, “While they might’ve been good men following bad orders, they had to know the risks involved with what they were doing.” She leans away, “Meanwhile, you didn’t know you’d be at risk by being there, no-one did, so don’t feel bad for them.”

I listen attentively to her words, nodding along with them. “I see… I-I guess that makes sense…” I look up at her, telling, “Thanks for saying that… I guess I needed to hear it from someone else.”

With a smile on her face, she says, “Don’t mention it. I don’t want to see you being chipped away by guilt after what you did.” She looks down at the table, her eyes dropping, “Trust me, I know what that feels like…” As she looks back up, noticing the prying eyes of me and the other girls, she quickly shakes her head, “Anyway! this isn’t about me. How about you tell us what happened to that arm of yours?”

Trying my best to ignore what Yasuna just said, I draw a deep breath in. “Sure…” I exhale while averting my gaze, trying to hide my expression. From there, I rip the band-aid off as fast as possible. “My left arm was dead by the time they got me to a hospital, so the Director had them install a bionic limb.”

I instinctively look around to see their immediate reactions. The twins look on with their faces contorting with a mix of bewilderment and pity, while Yasuna simply turns away with her maw slightly a jaw. Meanwhile Naeko looks on in an understanding fashion as if she was expecting this answer all along, a sentiment shared by the other two cheerleaders.

“I knew it,” says Naeko, confirming my suspicions.

With a furrowed brow, I ask, “How?”

The girl gives me a sigh. “Yuumi, I may not be a doctor, but I’m qualified to apply semi-permanent wide effect nanobot body mods. I can recognize a necrotizing limb when I see one,” her eyes move down, landing on the aforementioned limb, and she adds, “That being said, I wasn’t sure of it until now. The Director must’ve paid a lot for an advanced model like that.”

I hold out my left arm in front of me. “Yeah, probably. The hospital assistant told me it uses solid vision for the skin.”

Staring at my arm, Yasuna seems to snap out of her daze as she hesitantly asks, “Can… Can I touch it?”

I look over at her and urge, “Sure, go right ahead.”

She takes no time in feeling up the limb, staring at the shoulder and slowly moving down to the forearm before stopping at the palm of my hand. “It feels… Real?”

With a smirk, I tell, “That’s the point.” My eyes hover over the twins, who watch Yasuna’s moments with a laser focused gaze. “You girls want to feel it as well?”

As they give simple nods, I lean over the table, stretching my arm out for them. Taking advantage of the opportunity, they feel up my bionic arm. Aiko even comments, “It really feels no different from skin…” Mia replies, “Yeah, it’s kind of creepy…” This earns her a glare from her twin sister.

Ignoring the last comment, I finally get to sit down again. As I turn to my right, I focus on Haruna, who’s trying to avoid eye contact. “What about you, Haruna? What do you think?”

She heaves a heavy sigh, peeking my way before saying, “I don’t know…” Her eyes lock with mine before she adds, “Naeko told us what she thought was going to happen, and I didn’t want to believe her; But now that I know that is the truth… Well, I can’t help but wonder if I had something to do with it…”

My lips furl into a frown and I disappointingly ask, “So that’s why you started hiding away when Aiko mentioned it?” I lean in, forcing her to look me in the eye. “Don’t even think about it, Haruna; Not after that whole spiel at the hospital about how I shouldn’t blame myself for the attack.”

Her eyes zip around as if her brain is going a million miles an hour. “I don’t know, Yuumi… Are you sure?”

With a heavy nod, I confirm, “Yup, we both know nothing would’ve happened to either of us if the tournament had gone uninterrupted.” I lean back, giving the girl some space. From there, I glance down at my bionic arm, commenting, “Besides, this might not be such a bad thing after all.” I look up at Haruna and say with a wide smile, “Now that I only need to train one arm, I bet I’ll become much better at those ledge grabs in action duel class!”

Haruna’s thinking seems to be disturbed by me saying that as she lets out a nasal laugh and hides a grin growing on her lips. “You seem to be taking this whole ‘Prosthetic Limb’ situation pretty well…” She looks away and draws in a deep breath. “Alright, I think I understand now — I was overthinking. Sorry about that.”

Lightly shaking my head, I tell, “No need to apologize, Haru. You stopped me from going down the exact same rabbit hole back at the hospital.”

She giggles. “Right… Wow, now that you mention it… This was pretty silly of me, wasn’t it?”

I shrug. “Maybe… But it was cute watching you get so worked up about what I thought for a change.” Seeing her blush, I turn back to the rest of the table. “Anyway, does anyone have any other questions about my arm?”

Naeko, being invested in this just by being the geekiest out of the bunch, turns to me and asks, “Are you thinking about getting cybernetics? I’m asking because you seem to have accepted having an artificial limb fast.”

I shake my head. “Nah, I ain’t chopping off my other arm willy nilly like that. And it’s not like I accepted it right away. It’s been an entire afternoon since I found out.” I look over to the only person who has stayed quiet until now, the girl with dark skin and matching long hair sandwiched between Naeko and Haruna. “But I don’t know, what does our resident cosmetologist think of all of this?”

Nanako sharpens up right away, giving me an indifferent look and a shrug. “I don’t know; Can you change the texture of your skin? Having, like, a reptilian arm would be pretty damn cool.”

While I suspect she’s not being serious, I still try to answer. “Don’t know. Maybe? It’s solid vision, so I don’t see why I couldn’t.”

With that silly suggestion answered, our conversation promptly moves away to less serious topics. Like how our food has already gone cold, or how the cafeteria is filling up fast with hungry crew-members and fellow rescued civilians.

After finishing our meals — and placing our trays back — we get out of the cafeteria before it has the chance to become too overcrowded.

Soon, we are walking back through the corridors, until we reach a junction where I say goodnight to Yasuna and the twins, since their room is at a different place on the ship. It goes smoothly, with me leaving Yasuna with a promise that I will try to sleep properly. I find it endearing, but Haruna quickly assures her she will make sure I will be sleeping like a baby… Whatever that means.

'I hope they aren't planing anything lewd. I wouldn't mind relaxing, but I'm not in the mood for something that exhausting after this emotional roller coaster of a day.'