Monday, March 19, 2007,9:52 PM
Traveler ch. 16

16


The new day found Yossi lying in the bed, face down to the mattress and with the pillow over her head, trying muffle the fuss coming from the outside. It had been a long night. She spent hours talking with Rika about how different their worlds were and how the younger ended traveling with an almost unknown girl. Of course, Yossi didn’t tell anything about Kaoru’s origin. That would be too shocking for someone who was already talking with a clone of her dead girlfriend. Besides she didn’t have too much to tell. Kaoru just told her that Ishikawa was her mom, nothing more.

Rika as someone’s mom… That was so weird to think about…

For some reason, Yossi began to wonder how Kaoru’s father would be. Ishikawa’d always got high tastes so, the man was probably handsome and polite, the perfect partner. Yocchan built in her mind an image of the happy couple with a little baby-Kaoru in their arms and something deep inside her cracked. Why that single though hurt her so much?

Because I still miss you…

That was the awful truth that she had been denying all this time. Her feelings hadn’t disappeared. They had been hidden, waiting for the right time to get out and make her life miserable again. So much time fighting against herself for nothing. Just one smile from that newly found Rika and everything went to hell.

Yossi squeezed the pillow against her head harder to erase all that thoughts from her mind and get some sleep, but that was until a certain and annoying girl rushed into the room and began to shake her.

“She’s back!”

“Hnn…”

Yossi grumbled but didn’t even bother to stick her head out of under the pillow.

“Yoshizawa-san!” shouted the younger shaking her again “She’s back!”

“Who?” asked the singer finally, but without paying too much attention to whatever Kaoru had to say. She just wanted to get rid of her and go back to her attempts to get some sleep.

“Konno-san! She’s here!”

Hearing that name, Yossi’s senses came back to life again and she woke up quickly. She threw away the pillow hurling it against the wall, stood up from the bed and grabbed her clothes to put them on while she followed Kaoru out of the room.

***

“Any problem?”

“Not really” answered Konno to the leader while leaving her heavy bag on the floor “We bumped into a bunch of drunken men two days ago but Risa got rid of them easily”

Yuko walked towards the younger and tapped her head.

“Aah~ our little Nii-chan has grown up well”

“Stop treating me as if I was still a child. I’m already eighteen, you know?” said Gaki-san with an offended pose “I’m not a sca…”

Suddenly, Risa fell silent, her face turned pale and her eyes wide open while she was pointing with her index finger to something.

“Ghost!”

Everybody there turned to look at what Risa was pointing at or, to be exact, at who she was pointing at.

“Hi” said Yossi already used to that kind of reaction.

“What?! Nobody can see it?!” the calmness in the other girls began to desperate Gaki-san who took the nearest girl to her and began to shake her “It’s a ghost! A gho…”

Plaf

She’d chosen the wrong girl to shake.

“Better now?” asked Miki with her hand still raised, ready to slap the younger again if it was necessary.

Risa just nodded, unable to say something coherent, while she was looking at the apparition in front of her.

Plaf

“Miki!” shouted Yuko.

“Just in case”

Nakazawa rolled her eyes and turned her attention to Risa, who was holding her aching cheek and had took a step back in fear to avoid a possible new attack from Fujimoto.

“It’s a long story, Gaki-san, but she’s not a ghost” explained Yuko “But we’ll talk about that later. Now, we need our brilliant Asami to help us with something”

***

“So, there’s something you can do?”

“I… don’t… know…”

Konkon had the Traveler in her hands and was watching it carefully. Kaoru had summed up briefly how the machine worked, but she was still clueless about what could have happened. Besides, the whole time-travelling story was too shocking and she needed a few minutes to recover and process all the information.

“As I told you, I’ve never seen something like this before” said Konno “I can repair radios, make cars work… but this is out of my league”

“I’m sure it’s just matter of time for you to figure what the problem is” Yuko took the young genius under her arm and smiled “Well, girls, I guess you’re not going anywhere for a while, uh?”

“I guess so…” answered Yossi disappointed.

Yuko smirked.

“That’s good, ‘cause I need you to do something”

“What do you want know? ‘Cause if you need someone to have Miki entertained again I’ll tell you right now that I pass…”

The older took Yossi out of the room, leaving Konkon and Kaoru alone working with the Traveler. Standing in the corridor, the two women stared at each other for a moment. The expression in Yuko’s face had changed completely. Now she had that serious look of a leader that made Yocchan respect her so much.

“I want you to talk with Aya”

“Me?” asked Yossi surprised “Why?”

“That kid is lost. She needs to know that she’s not alone”

“But… I can’t. I won’t know how to do it. In my world, Miki’s the closest one to Aya. I barely talk with her”

“Miki?” laughed Yuko “I knew there’s something about those two… Anyway, it has to be you. Aya won’t hear anyone else”

“She won’t talk with me”

“She’ll do it”

“Why are you so sure? She’s been avoiding me since I arrived here”

“Of course she did it. Did you really think that she was going to accept you as well as Rika-chan did it? Even if Ishikawa seems a dreamy girl she knows that you’re not going to stay longer and she’s strong enough to handle it, but Aya… It’s easier for her to avoid this new chance than getting hurt. That’s why I need you. You have to open that door to let the rest of us enter her life before you leave her again”

Yossi leant against the wall of the corridor and sighed

“She’ll kill me before being able to say anything, you know it, right?”

“Nah. Just let out the Yossi that fought against Miki yesterday and Aya won’t be able to deny you anything”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t ask. Just do it”

“But…”

“DO IT”

If there was someone in the Earth able to go against Nakazawa, that wasn’t Yossi. So, she just could nod in agreement and see the woman leaving with a smile of satisfaction in her face. Then, she let her back roll against the wall and, sitting in the floor, buried the head between her knees.

“I wanna go home…”




To be continued...

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