“Afraid of his sister?” Saki teased.

“Damn right!” He caught Yuki from slipping off his shoulder in all of their arguing. “And you’re not?”

She backed a step away from Seiji with her face turning a little blue. “Well—“ Everything in her face went pale suddenly. Sweat started to build up over her face.

Seiji leaned forward trying to figure out what had Saki so frightened. He just lightly mentioned Yuki’s sister and did not expect to get such a reaction for him. “Saki?” However, she was not answering him. Approaching her more, Seiji tried to get her voice working, but all she did was point at him. “The hell’s wrong with you?” She just kept pointing with her face getting worse and worse.

Then Seiji felt the presence. The ominous over bearing presence that seeped into every pore. The one more frightening than any of those that he fought in Atlantis. It made his whole body sweat and lock up. Seiji turned as if he was rusty behind him towards the door. The door was open and filled with the most terrifying image any of them had seen. “Oh crap…Momoko…”

Momoko stared at them not even saying anything. The fact that she held silence only made the scene worse for them. It was as if they were thieves in the night caught in the act. Everything aimed directly at them.

Not certain where things were going, Seiji took a step back. “Now Momoko, this isn’t what it looks like.” He looked over at Saki for some support. “Hey, Saki! Back me up here!” Unfortunately, she was useless. Neither of them were good at handling Yuki’s older sister. She always had a huge protective streak even more so than Saki, if that could be believed. It was why they tried keeping her in the dark about a lot of the trouble that Yuki got involved in.

Unfortunately, there was no hiding what they did. In fact, it actually looked worse than it was or perhaps it did not look as worse as it should. Seiji had to reconsider Yuki’s reality, the one that Momoko could not know about. If she knew, none of them would make it out of their house alive. ‘Damnit Yuki, why’d you have to pass out? Only you would have gotten a yelling at…’

Chapter 288 – Family

Stepping backwards a little in progress, Fumiko stood in front of her house. The lights were not on. It was the late evening by the time they got through all of the trouble at the docks and back to their neighborhood.

She was not sure what she expected from the house. Or even her parents for that matter. They did not come rushing out to see her. She did not even know if they knew she returned. ‘I didn’t exactly leave on the best terms. I just yelled at them before I left. Am I even welcome?’ Standing before her house, it almost seemed selfish of her. She expected nothing to be different. She expected everything to just return to how things were before. She could start her life back up.

That was how it should have been. Yuki’s quest was over. Her involvement in things ended. While she did not feel like she repaid him for saving her life in full, she did all she could for him. There was nothing left she could do. Her part in things was over.

A normal life was all she had to return to now. A home waited for her, maybe. It could have been that she demanded the home be waiting on her instead. It was a complicated feeling. ‘What do I do now? Everything just goes back to the way things were before? I return to being a student like nothing happened?’ She could not move her body forward. Was such a notion even possible for her?

In the distance, a loud noise erupted, shattering the peace of the neighborhood. For Fumiko’s enhanced hearing it almost sounded like it was near to her. She immediately flipped around. Magic circles spun out over her arm quickly with flames hovering off her hand. ‘An enemy?! Where?’ Sweat built up over her face in uncertainty. Her eyes darted around to locate where they hid.

Nothing.

The noise never came back. All she could hear was the wind. Her entire body had tightened up to the point it felt like she could snap at any moment. ‘Relax it’s nothing…’ Fumiko tried to calm herself down, but the anxiety already took over for her. She pressed her back up against the property wall before she fell down. Her body could not stop shaking.

It took her forever to actually calm down. All her mind could do was race thinking about all of the possible ways the enemy could come at her. She did not feel safe even though she should have. It was her home. It was not Atlantis. The threat was over. She did not have anything to fear from sneak attacks.

She did not know when it happened, but as she finally came down from her panic attack, she heard some familiar voices. They started out as distant, something she thought she had been hearing the entire time.

“Fumiko? Can you hear me, dear?”

“Fumiko!”

Fumiko stared a little confused for a moment. She saw them, but they looked out of focus to her. “Dad? Mom…”

They helped her up to her feet when they saw she could finally acknowledge them. Perhaps it could just returned to normal. Maybe a happy ending was possible, even for someone like her.


The meeting for Yumi and Yori was not so dramatic. In fact, it did not even happen. When they opened the door to their house and announced their return, no one met them. Yumi went around the house quickly to check to see if their mother was asleep. When she entered the kitchen, she found Yori. “She’s not here.”

Yori agreed with her quickly and produced a paper. It had her writing on it. “Seems that she’s already working tonight.” He pointed to the trash bin in the corner noting few other papers looking very similar to the one he held.

They had been gone longer than planned. She stared at their mother’s handwriting for a minute. It might have only been a paper with ink, but she felt how important it was. The feelings from it bleed into her hand. “We’re finally home, Yori.”

“It’s over now.”

Yumi dropped the paper to the table. She approached her brother. Her hand wanted to reach out for him, but it still shook. It was something that became more manageable, but her mind still had trouble forgetting the nightmares. All she really had done was improve how to hide her feelings from him. It made her feel awful that she could not even feel comfortable around him anymore. He was her brother and the most important person to her and yet she could not even look at him without fear crawling down her neck.

Despite it, she had to keep appearances up. It was nothing he could do for her. In fact, all it would do was put distance between them.

“Thank you for putting up with my selfish requests.” She had never really actually apologized or thanked him for going along with Yuki despite the dangers. It was worse on him given what happened to him. Because of her insistence, he had been captured, even interrogated. He had to fight as a result of her. “I’m sorry, Yori.”

He dropped a hand on her head to ease her concerns. “You don’t have to Yumi. We both made choices. Everything worked out in the end.”

“You’re right…”


“Lady Chiharu, you’ve returned,” spoke Tamotsu sliding the doors open to Chiharu’s room.

She had just popped out of the shadows and barely even set a foot into her room. Chiharu stared at the older man for a long time. Her mind went through numerous responses for him. However, she simply just walked forward. He made room for her as she came to the threshold.

Following behind her with still no response, Tamotsu tried to determine what happened to her. However, he was not making any progress against her stonewall. It seemed her expression had improved in her time away. “You’ve been missing for a month, Lady Chiharu. What have you been doing? The men—“

Chiharu came to a stop. Her head tilted over her shoulder to look back at Tamotsu. “Are you so incompetent to not be able to handle the morale of the men in my absence, Tamotsu?” The look in her eyes suddenly became very demanding. She expected a lot from him.

‘She’s changed quite a bit in her disappearance, what happened to her?’ It was a little trouble for him. He thought he had her under his control, but when he could not stop her from her leaving she left his grasp. However, it was nothing he could not handle. “I merely am a single man. While I can keep the men together, you’re the Head. They look to you and a missing Head only invites disruption.”

Her eyes narrowed a little watching him longer. However, there was nothing to be found. All she could see was his loyalty and concern. He was useless. He just followed her and waited on her action. He did nothing on his own. “That’s why I’ve returned, Tamotsu.”

Chiharu threw open the doors to the main hall. The small numbers of what remained of her clan’s men loosely gathered about. They looked unmotivated and even lost. It annoyed her to no end to see how empty her men looked. “What the hell is wrong with all of you?!” she yelled, announcing her arrival in the most thunderous way possible.

The sound of her small, but barking voice was all they needed to jump up. A moment later, they all charged after their tiny leader hardly acting the part of cold-blooded killers. Chiharu pushed them off her trying to get them under control, but they were impossible to deal with. They had not seen her for so long. “Damnit! Are you all babies? Children!”

“Lady Chiharu!”

After she fought them all off and put them into their place, she had them lined up in front of her. ‘Though small we maybe, the Higoshi won’t be able to stop us. It’s not about the numbers, but the individuals.’ Chiharu saw all of the fierce loyalty in her men’s eyes. They might have been pathetic, but they were her men and they looked to her. ‘This is mine to accept…’

Taking a step forward, she took up a strong position before them all. “Now that I’ve returned, I’m not going to be letting any of your slack off! The Higoshi Clan thinks that we’re weak and open for attack. We’ll show them how wrong that they are! Starting today, you’re all getting my special training!” Chiharu bunched up her hands together in a familiar excited look she borrowed from someone else. “Prepare for hell!”

Tamotsu watched from her right flank. He saw the fire that Chiharu lit in all of the men. ‘She was nearly crushed by the weight of leadership before, what’s changed about her? This is going to be more troublesome than I expected. I may have to advance things sooner that I planned. The time for Chiharu Chinen to die might be sooner than I foresaw…’


“…and you show…Yuki…wrong with…”

All he could hear from yelling or more like lecturing. The volume was consistent, but never actually made it painful to hear. It just did not seem to stop. His head was still fuzzy that he could not catch everything going on. However, he did recognized one thing. “Momo?”

It was enough to stop the endless battery from Momoko. “Yuki!” She immediately turned around to look at Yuki, laid out on the couch. Despite what seemed like never taking a break for a breath and she still managed to hear his soft voice. “Are you alright?”

He still tried to get his baring on everything. “Yeah, I think so…” His eyes turned about the room starting to recognize things. It was his house, the living room and across the table was Seiji and Saki. He got up with a little help from his sister. Though his body did not have any pain it still felt like he was fatigued like someone ran him on a treadmill for hours without even water. “I’m thirsty…”

“Right!” She immediately jumped up to her feet and bolted for the kitchen.

Yuki still trying to figure out what was going on. He could see his friends more clearly than before. They looked like they had been through hell and seen death itself in the face. “What’s the better with you two? I don’t know what I look like, but I’d almost say you look worse than I feel.”

“You’re not far off,” answered Seiji.

Saki could only muster up a ‘yeah’ in a very halfhearted way.

It did not really make a lot of sense to him, but his little brothers did not really give him much opportunity really to understand them before they were all over him. He did not even have the energy to fight them off. They completely had their way with him.

Momo returned with a glass she handed to Yuki. “Come on, you two!” She glared down at Jun and Ken grabbing them off Yuki. “Your brother’s very tired right now. I know you’re excited to see him again, but give him some space!”

“Yes, Momo…”

Amongst the chaos of reunions, the disciplined two tried to sneak out of the house. They wanted to avoid another hour of Momoko telling them everything that they did wrong. Neither knew how she had enough to say for so long without actually repeating herself, but she managed it still. However, she appeared behind the two of them as they slipped on their shoes. “Where are you to going?”

“Ah, didn’t want to get the way now that Yuki’s awake,” Seiji quickly replied. He stared at Saki who tried to use her speed to leave with the door already wide open. He did not want to be abandoned to Momoko, she had more problems with him than Saki.

Momoko grabbed the both of them by the neck. Either through fear or a real source of strength, neither could escape her. She leaned her head between them. “Thank you.” They stared at her in a little surprise not expecting to her that from her. It was not another lecture. “…for bring him back to us…”

Saki and Seiji both stared at Momoko needing a moment to take it all in. They could see that she was almost on the verge of tears. She was happy to have him and not any worse than he left. They could only smile a little with deep guilt sitting in their chests. While already individually agreed upon, they made a personal pack between them never to tell Momoko the truth.

It was the only thing that they could think to do. Cruel as it was to do, it would have far more cruel to know the truth. It was not the right answer, but it was the best answer.

To be continued…