Saki felt a freezing chill grip her spine and grow out through her body. It nearly felt like she could see her breath, it was so cold. She knew, like the others uakako’s trol, that many faced these moral crises. They all saw it that day. Yet there was something deeper about this. She couldn’t expin it, but it was as if a paradox existed in front of her. Everything that she could see made her look sane and normal, albeit extremely depressed and suicidal. Yet she was all pletely there. And at the same time there was this tightrope bance of chaos and insanity. It wasn’t there a was. She couldn’t make heads or tails of Katsumi like the others.

  Something very different was wrong with her.

  “Kaede…” called Hiroshi keeping his distand voice low. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough as he hoped. Katsumi noticed him and jumped up fully alert. Behihe knife remained with a pletely dulled and ed edge. She ran as far as she could before the water barrier stopped her pletely iracks.

  Hands pressed against the barrier, Katsumi pleaded with tears in her eyes. “Have you finally decided?” she asked with hope filling her. “Please, I want you to do it! Kill me, please!”

  Uo look at her friend, though her body visibly shook having to hear the words, Kaede walked over to Hiroshi leaving Katsumi alone.

  Katsumi pounded on the barrier. “Hiroshi! Please! I beg you, put ao all of this for me! You’re inhuman keeping me alive like this! Please!”

  With the guiding hand of Hiroshi, he escorted Saki out, not pletely aware that she ushed out of the room until the door closed. The voice of Katsumi pletely disappeared from her head. It arently very well sound proof if she couldn’t hear it. “What the hell’s going on? She doesn’t look like the others.”

  Looking down and the Kaede, Hiroshi seemed to be having some trouble saying what he needed. It took him a while before he could look over at Saki. Even Kaede refused to say anything. “Katsumi’s unique and plicated.”

  “How so?”

  “Because of the powers that she has.”

  “ower does she have?”

  Hiroshi looked over to Kaede to pick things up. There was a silent versatioween them as they fought with gazes over who had the expining to do. In the end, Kaede lost and she recoiled. She still resisted it. “It’s because Katsumi’s powers protected her from Takako that she is suffering worse thahers.”

  Chapter 374 – Broke

  Now Saki was fused, because she khat Katsumi was uakako’s trol the same as everyone else. “What do you mean protected her? Takako trolled her the same as the others.”

  “Not the same…”

  “Stop being so damn vague with me! Expin it!”

  Hiroshi tried to get Saki to uand their point of view. “This isn’t easy for us, Saki.” But he could tell that wasn’t going to be w out very well. Sake wao uand and they were beating around the bush about things.

  “I uand that, but I ’t help if you don’t expin things to me clearly. What is her power?”

  “In a word, resistance.”

  “That’s doesn’t expin much.”

  Jumping in on Hiroshi’s behalf, Kaede started to expin more clearly, “It’s like an enhang effect that she uses for defense. Anything that she touches or is in tact with her has its natural hardness aao damage multiplied several times. However, it also extends to her body. Her skin now has the toughness as if it was steel. And in what only be the wift to have, it granted her a resistao mental corruption. Enough not to be broken, but still be trolled.”

  It all suddenly made seo Saki now. She looked back at the door, which Katsumi sat behind, uo kill herself. Her mihrough it all and uood on some small level. They all did uand partly what it was that Katsumi went through. Yet they khat they could ruly uand. With it all sinking in, Saki staggered back against the wall.

  “So you uand what we’re in now.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “We aren’t killing her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “But we just leave her like that? She’s going to go insane like that.”

  Hiroshi sighed and turned away from Saki. It was the same dilemma that they faced ohey learned what was wrong with Katsumi. He just had no answer. “Sadly for her, I don’t think that’s possible. Being insane would almost be a blessing for her, but her powers would probably prevent it from happening.”

  “Dammit!” Saki snapped, pounding her fist back against the wall leaving a dent in the smoothly polished metal. “What are we supposed to do?” Takako’s sins still followed them even after her death. ‘I thought I had resolved myself to be able to make the hard choices that Yuki and others couldn’t. So why am I hesitating so mubsp; The choice is clear, yet my body doesn’t want it…’ Looking at Hiroshi, she was just as surprised that Hiroshi seemed set on not killing her even with what’s on his hands. ‘It must be the same for him. But we’re going to have to do it… It’s worse keeping her in that state…’

  After a long silence, Kaede broke first with the question that had been fotten in all of the emotions. “What are you doing down here, Hiroshi? You didn’t e dowo just show her this. You could have expihings to her upstairs and avoided all of this.”

  They had both pletely ighat fabsp; Hiroshi had a purpose for it. It served to expin things to Saki, but he also needed something else. “Right, we o talk to you. The situation with Yumi’s bee plicated.”

  “Is she still unscious?”

  “No, that’s the problem. Let’s move baewhere we sit down and discuss this.” Kaede immediately became curious about what was going on with her friend. She agreed in sileh a nod to follow them.

  Ohird floor once more, they sat down at the table with more of the group gathered around minus Yori, still asleep in Yumi’s bed. Hiroshi started ying out the situation and expining how there were multiple personalities in Yumi and the versation they had with one of them.

  Kaede found herself leaning back a lot in the chair having trouble taking it all in. Small whispers came out of her mouth infrequently as the expnatio on. When it was all done Kaede stepped away from the table needing a moment to take it all in.

  Out the small window, the view did little to give her ease. Losing two friends weighed on her. But she shook her head, preventing her from thinking like that. Yumi wasn’t lost to them, not yet. That is what she had to believe. She turned around to face everyoer a minute in thought. “I think I might know where this is ing from,” she finally said.

  “What are your thoughts?” asked Saki, “You know her better than the rest of us.”

  “I think it may have to do in part with her brother.”

  “Yori?”

  “This isn’t really something you know about, but in junih Yumi was bullied because of her brother. Yori was the model student, talented, smart and attractive, everyone liked him. But Yumi’s not her brother and when people realized that she wasn’t going to meet the same expectations they took it out on her. Because she’s always being pared and talked in the same breath as her brother, she’s developed an inferiority plex.”

  Kaede walked back to the table and sat down. She rested her head in her hand thinking about everything. It was still only a theory. So she could only make guesses about any of this. There was no way to be certain until they actually fronted either Yumi or the personalities and Yumi may not even know.

  A long sigh came out of her lips with her mind spinning through it all. “We did what we could to help her, but I thought after she started spending time with you and Yuki that she had finally left that in her past. She was being her own person and indepe of everyone’s expectations. We thought Yuki was exactly what she o finally start looking forward. But maybe we were wrong. Maybe she’s still looking backwards…”

  “Miss Ayabito, I think you may be on the right track,” Nerine jumped in, suddenly looking like she had figured something out. She leaned forward at the table. “People are plex and plicated. They aren’t so simple to define. Miss Mizuno had probably left behind her past as you believe. But something that deep and impag isn’t going to pletely disappear. There’s still going to be little pieces of it remaining behind.”

  Pig up that Nerine seemed to be on to something, Seiji was tired of the plicated talk. “What are y to get at?”

  “It’s like I expined before, His Majesty’s Law is interpreted differently with each person. If Miss Mizuno subsciously still had doubts about herself and insecurities, then these other personalities could be created from that.”

  “I already figured out that mubsp; I’m asking how does that help us get Yumi babsp; Knowing why isn’t a solution.”

  And they were all ba silenbsp; It was as Seiji said. Knowing didn’t give them the ahat they sought. It wasn’t going t back Yumi. They were er off thaarted even if they felt that they uood the situation.

  There was no ahat day. Or even the day. A week passed iive silenbsp; Only Yori caused them trouble, because he felt strongly about going to his sister. As the person inside her said, he seemed to kly where she was. They didn’t uand that. But they had no ao give. Ohat would allow them to meet the person once more. Since Yori didn’t accept that they tied him up as he proved single minded and otherwise useless.

  Then while Saki and Seiji hovered in the room aloh Yuki it finally happened. Nearly ten days after he went unscious Yuki woke up, finally recovered from the ordeal. He rose out of the bed looking lost and fused with his surroundings.

  Seiji immediately jumped off the crate he sat down to grab up his friend with more enthusiasm than he repared to take. “Yuki! You’re awake finally!”

  Caught by surprise, Yuki gasped spping Seiji’s shoulder to be released. “Y-yes! But not for long…”

  “Seiji, you’re choking him,” Saki reprimanded before she grabbed his arm to loosen him up.

  Coughing a bit as he recovered, Yuki sat up properly in his bed looking at his friends. “You look like I might have died.”

  “You’ve been out for a week and half.”

  “Damn…that long…”

  “Wele home,” Saki said, seeing a bit of the mencholy already attempting to take hold of him. She smiled trying to fill a role that she was meant to fill.

  Yuki blinked a little and snapped back for them. “I’m home!”