Sweet Like Candy

Do I Punch You or Hug You?

Hey guys! There's a lot of talking in this chapter, but I hope you don't mind.

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Rin woke up a while later when the sun was coming up and peeking into her room through the blinds. She heard Shiemi and Izumo talking softly to each other and decided not to open her eyes just yet. She did note that her body hurt a lot less and her fever was finally gone. She was in a clean hospital gown and had a thin blanket keeping her legs warm. Her hair was still a tangled mess even while short, unfortunately. She just knew the brush would be unforgiving later.

A door was shut and Rin finally forced her eyelids open, blinking blearily to see Izumo leaning against a door opposite the one leading to the hallway. She was shaking and her face was getting red and splotchy. She then broke down in tears a second later, telling them about her little sister.

"She's been safe all this time....my reason for living....it's too cruel!" She sobbed.

"But she doesn't remember me! The last I saw her, she was only three, but it still hurts so much! It's unfair!" She covered her face with her hands. Shiemi just looked on and Rin watched tears form in her soft green eyes before gently and silently spilling down her cheeks.

Rin groaned and wiped the grit and sympathetic tears away. All these strong emotions as soon as she woke up were testing her emotional durability. The longer she was a half- demon, the easier she found it to feel strong emotions from people. Maybe it was her desire to understand people so they wouldn't all seem like mysterious monsters to her. Maybe it was just a demon thing because some demons fed on emotions. Whatever the case, she did not wanna cry this early in the morning. Unfortunately, Rin had always been a sympathetic crier(not counting fake years, which she could tell the difference from real tears).

"You two wouldn't understand! You grew up with happy families! You can't possibly understand how I feel!" Izumo cried.

Rin growled. What kind of bullshit was that? Her family hadn't even been a family and she'd raised herself for the most part, albeit terribly because she was a mess and could only ever act like she had her shit together. And Shiemi's mother handn't even raised her, she'd been raised by her grandmother and stayed in the shop or the garden until she was fifteen! What was Izumo on about, them not understanding how she felt?!

Shiemi interrupted Rin's rising irritation and Izumo's angry blubbering.

"I’m so glad." Shiemi said softly as tears streamed down her cheeks. Rin was close to sobbing again herself and she was tired of tears. She'd cried more than she'd ever wanted or needed to before just in these past few months alone! And they were all bad situations, too! She was tired of crying out of sadness.

"Nori came to see us off at the train station." Shiemi began. Rin recalled the exchange. Paku had stopped her and Shiemi just before they left for Shimane and pulled them over to the side.

"She said she was leaving you to us, Izumo. She told us that you said you were jealous of me and Shiemi. Jealous of how we could cry and laugh and get angry so freely. She told us to take care of you. And I'm so glad we succeeded on that mission, because I don't know what we would've done if we'd failed." Rin admitted, a lump forming in her throat and making it difficult to talk. Ugh, emotions!

"We haven't had happy families either, despite the lies we used to tell ourselves that we did. We've all lost things or just never had them in the first place. And I'm so sorry you lost everything. But you still have us, this time." Rin opened her arms and Izumo collapsed into them, loudly sobbing and staining Rin's hospital gown with snot and tears. Shiemi smiled at them from across the room. She didn't make a move to get up, so Rin figured she was still hurting from the day before.