Ayano grinned widely, seeing the gears turning in Saki’s head. It gave her exactly what she wanted. Things could start taking the course that she wanted. She didn’t even think about how much Saki would actually ge their fate. Recruiting Saki was the only goal and that had succeeded in her mind. “Wele on board!”

  Saki tilted her head over to Ayano, holding back a lot of her surprise and armed more with s reality. “Yetting ahead of yourself. I didn’t say anything about joining yang. I just said I have a pn.”

  “A pn to help us.”

  “Well, yes, but that’s not the same thing as joining you.”

  “Close enough,” she shot back without skipping a beat. Nothing seemed to faze Ayano in Saki's attempts to crify her position. It was going to be a no win situation. No amount of words ged her mind. Saki could only sigh. “You don’t have to be wearing our jackets to be oeam. Everyone has different ways that they help and work together.”

  Looking back at the ter of the building, Saki thought about everyone moving about trying to live out their normal lives. She realized the sort of thing that Ayano had going on. It already seemed apparent. She uood before. But there were no words that formed before. She had the words for it now. Saki could uand the sort of group that Ayano wanted. ‘I think this could actually work…’

  Chapter 372 – Broken Pns

  Standing outside of the building, Ayano and her man saw Saki out. He had a bit of an annoyed look on his face still not accepting everything. But Ayano spped him in the back of the head to get that off his fabsp; “Good luck.”

  Saki readjusted the windbreaker once metting it to rest better on her shoulders. It covered up much of her new clothes that she picked up from the mall inside. She fit well enough with her shorts and a loose t-shirt with a generic looking logo a saying “Rise”. “This is going to take some time to put together.”

  “We’ll hold out until you make it work.”

  “I’m sure you will.” Saki turned around and started walking away. New p into py now. She had to put more pieces into py than she wanted. ‘I’d imagihat Yuki could do this better than me. But this is the only thing I think of doing.’

  Nobuyuki gnced over at Ayano, returning to his disapproving expression. “Are you sure about this?”

  “You rescued her. And you’re askihat?”

  “Well she was captured like everyone else. I couldn’t leave people in their hands.”

  “Then don’t worry about it. She’s someohat we trust. Besides, we’ve got bigger problems to deal with right now.” She spun around and started going bato the apartment. “Resg all of those men that you spent on resg me.”

  “She could have helped us.”

  “She probably would, but she’s got bigger things to do.” Ayano walked briskly forward, moving to the elevator. He wanted more of an answer from her, but she didn’t give him one. Everyone had family, she wasn’t about to keep the girl from her family. That wasn’t who they were.

  A ding preceded the elevator opening to grant them travel. Ayano stepped in and puhe floor. “We’ve got a family to put back together. That is our mission.”

  The trek bailiar territory went mostly uful for Saki. She had to deal with a couple of rampaging mohat came about from Yuki’s ges. All the fighting with humans made her fet that there were sometimes dark things that crawled around their city. But after all that she saw, it was hard to say that they were the worst the city had to offer anymore. Like always as the cliché went, that was reserved for humans.

  When she came upon Phoibe’s pce a bit of awkwardness flowed over Saki. This wasn’t the sort of pn that she had in mind. She khat they would be happy to see her. But after her parting, she wondered how difficult it was going to be. She tried to find the words that she was going to use. Yet she wasn’t granted such a luxury.

  Hana stepped out of the door as though she khat Saki was there, probably because she actually did know. “Miss Saki, you’re babsp; Everyone’s ialking about you.” She immediately reached out to guide her inside by the arm.

  “Wait, Hana, I-I…” Saki didn’t want things to py out like this at all. This wasn’t the way she had it pictured.

  “Miss? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not prepared yet…mentally for this.”

  Hana simply smiled at Saki and pulled on her more. “That’s fihey’re your friends.” It proved hard for Saki tue with her overly simplistic outlook ouation. Saki easily ged along inside and to the back of the first floor.

  Before she k, Hana had tossed her into the stairwell that she didn’t even ked in the buildi with very little recourse. She stared back at Hana, uo look at the stairs. All she got from Hana was a surprisingly stern looking stare hidden behind the happy cheerful smile that disguised her i. Saki looked back at the stairs that went up to where she expected all of them to be.

  She wasn’t prepared wheook the first step or the tenth step. That wasn’t going to ge anything. Though in a way, she could thank Hana for f the matter. She wasn’t sure if she would have gone in so easily without being forcibly dragged around. Though she still didn’t want to see them just yet. No other option remaihough. The fact of the matter was more than before she o see them. Things became more plicated than she had ever phem to get. ‘How did I get myself stu the ter of all of this?’ It seemed so unlike her. She worked behind the ses, not up front. That was the inal pn. Things weren’t supposed to rely on her. She was supposed to be easily intergeable. Yet not anymore.

  What had her life bee now?

  At the top of the stairs, she found herself ohird floor where she had never been before. Though admittedly, she had never been anywhere but the first floor. The st time she came to this pce was before everything turo hell and things were normal. They were ers. Now it was something much different.

  Toug the hao the door, she could hear through the walls their voices thanks to her enhas. It was Seiji arguing with Hiroshi. Things almost seemed normal from what she heard.

  “Like I’d told you yesterday and the day before and the fifty other times you’ve brought it up, no! We ’t be st their gates to rescue Saki.”

  “Then e up with a pn!”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing?!”

  “Yuki could wake up any day aill don’t have a pn that won’t involve blowing up the whole pce, which you disagree with!”

  “You ’t be so blind and ignorant to the way the world works to actually think that anything that involves st the front gates of the UN will do anything but make the situation worse do you?”

  “I don’t care how dumb you think it is! Saki’s not staying there!”

  “I don’t want to have her arrested either, but we ’t be stupid about this!”

  “Sorry, but there’s someoupider than Seiji out there that already beat you to the punch,” interjected Saki to end their fighting. She stood ihreshold of the ro to keep from looking very awkward.

  Everyohered around a table suddenly stopped what they were doing and stared at the entra expeg to see who they found there. But while everyone was stunned and dropping their jaws on the floor, Seiji beat them all to the punbsp; “Saki!” He bolted to the drabbing her up roughly cheg to see that she was real. “It’s you!”

  “Yes, I’m really here.” She hardly expected to get any sort of hug of weling from Seiji after everything that she said to him in the past. Yet it also just sort of made sense. None of that really bothered him. He just seemed to know.

  While Seiji was showing hoy everyo seeing her, Hiroshi approached with the more important and obvious question. “What are you doing here?”

  Seiji barely even seemed to care about what he was doing to Saki at the moment as he joined in on the questioning. “Yeah, what the hell, Saki!? If you were pnning on esg yourselves why’d you make all of us worry.”

  “I didn’t pn any of that. Things just sort of happened. If you let me go, I’ll expiuation. Things have beuch more plicated.”

  Gathered around the table and room, Seiji, Hiroshi, Tatsuya, Yori, Nerine all gathered. They all sat in sileaking in Saki’s story and waited until the end.

  “I ’t believe how pletely reckless they are,” Yori said as the first person to the punch with Saki’s story cluded. He stepped up away from the table and looked back over at the curtain where his sister tio sleep. Only Saki’s reappearance was enough t him away from her side. “Don’t they uand what this will mean? They’re going to be hunted and give the UN even more justification to press down on ah powers.”

  Saki agreed with Yori’s assessment. It was the same thing that she feared. “That’s why we o do everything we to get out ahead of this situation.”

  “And what do you think any of us do?”

  “Not us.” She focused over on Hiroshi. Saki leaned oable, putting all of the attention on him now. “It’s going to be you. This had to e from someohat’s still .”

  Everyone looked a little puzzled at Saki and Hiroshi trying to figure out what was going on. But Hiroshi seemed to uand. He had plenty of time to think about it since Saki left. “What you left for me.”

  “That’s right. Only you do this.”

  “You’re asking for something really dangerous that we don’t even know will work out.”

  “If we do nothing, we kly how things will py out. This way we at least don’t know the course. It may work, it may not, but it’s better than knowing for certain that things are going south.”

  “Saki…I’m just a high school student.”

  “None of us are students anymore. It’s time for us to be the adults if we pn on w with adults. You know how bad things will get if we do nothing.”

  “Yes…that’s what I’m afraid of. But I don’t know if this will work.”

  “It’s our only bsp; It’s what Yuki would want.”

  They all looked back to where Yuki rested. It was something that they both knew was the course he would take. The hard course and the impossible course. The ohat no one would want to take because it would never possibly have a ce of w.

  He would do it.

  There was no doubt in their minds about that.

  Hiroshi sighed aloud as a sign that he had resigned himself to the course. “I have a promise to protect this neighborhood and this is going to be the best way to maintain the peabsp; I’ll do it. But this isn’t going to be something that’s going to get results ht, Saki.”

  “I know, this is the long game. The big gamble.”

  “Once Yuki wakes up, we’ll expin things to him.” Hiroshi stood up to go over to where everyone slept. Yuki and Yumi remaihe only oill unscious, the others simply rested to recover their strength. “He’ll agree with this pn knowing him.”

  Saki gathered alongside Hiroshi as the others came in. In a way, they all sort of expected Yuki to wake up in the moment as it seemed the right time to return. Everyone was finally back together. But it was in fact, Yori’s sister that surprised everyone by stirring. Yori immediately rushed over to her side. “Yumi, you’re awake!”

  She stared at Yori a moment as though she was taking everything in. She then looked at Yori with disied eyes. “So, it’s you boy.”