Kyanobenthes' Scratch Pad

Nari continually squashed a corner of her pillow in a fist while staring up at the ceiling, running yesterday’s conversation through her head from various angles and time frames.

“Obaa-sama… does this mean that I will not find…?”

*This omake chapter may be read independently of “Syncope.”

Setting: Natsuki’s fifteenth birthday.

The clean, powder blue button shirt and black business trousers were not the usual attire in which Shizuru was accustomed to seeing Reito, but she liked the more relaxed and perhaps sincere feel he emanated now. She was not sorry to see the stiff, black school uniform gone; it was as though he sloughed off a manifest part that was infected with the HiME fiasco. A small part of her heart yearned to do the same.

Her own auburn hair was too wiry, cloud-gray eyes too light with too great a contrast around the black pupils, skin too oily. Her lips were a bit too thin, fingers a bit too thick, and feet a bit too large.

*This chapter is better read after 1.7.

Setting: About two months after the HiME festival ended. Winter.

The ceiling was the same—distant, slanting, gray, and with irregular, black indentations that had Natsuki wondering whether tiny eyes were hidden in the cracks. As shadows wavered around the already dark, bluish gray surroundings, she found that she was tied down to the hospital bed, and fear rose in her throat as events began to unfold with slow familiarity.

Natsuki sighed as she stared up at the hospital ceiling, a slit of sharp yellow escaping across it from the drawn curtains. She looked at the clock, which did nothing but increase her anxiety. I suppose that doctor will be visiting in the morning like he said he would.

An aggressive roar rolled over the sidewalk, though the motorcycle, which Shizuru recognized immediately and looked off to her side expectantly, wasn’t even visible yet. A moment later, the black and red object with its black and red rider appeared around the bend.

Four hours earlier:

“It’s about time!” A girl’s voice bounced haphazardly past the edge of the door the moment Reito began to slide it open.

“Remember the sugar?” Mai smiled broadly when she opened the door to the raven-haired girl.

A very annoying man grunted energetically into Natsuki’s ear, trying to prick the girl’s interest in the weather and local events. Hissing irritably, she reached over with outstretched palm and smacked him hard on the top of his flat skull, effectively silencing him.

Her slender fingers absentmindedly wandered to the back of her neck, lightly pressing against the faint itch of a mosquito bite tucked just under her hairline. It was an unintended souvenir from an otherwise wonderful rural park visit last week with her younger, dark-haired friend. She had a photo from that trip laminated into a bookmark, which, due to the easily misinterpreted posture and blush, her friend insisted that she show no one at any time, under any circumstance. This small memory made Shizuru smile in the faint, cool gray glow that spilled from the nearby window onto the massive wooden table she had appropriated.