Twisted Wonderland | Mickey's Print

22. The Sneaky Thief

After the flash vanished, the shadow girl had changed from a dark silhouette to a fully human-looking girl. Just as Yuu had guessed, she was wearing the same clothes as him: a white cotton shirt, a pair of brown pants of the same material and sandals.

She was about his age. She had clear skin, straight, jet-black hair which length reached her mid-back, and there were on her forehead some adorable bangs parted down in the middle. The short sleeves of her shirt highlighted the lines on her toned arms.

The young girl opened her eyes slowly, revealing to be the same shade of blue as Yuu's. She actually looked a lot like him.

When she noticed him, she got startled and looked at him with a mixture of surprise and confusion.

Yuu also gasped a bit when he recognized her. "Yuki?" He asked.

The girl did not move or respond, she just stood there in silence, still confused. Yuu got closer again and stopped a step away from her, making the height difference between them more noticeable, she was a bit shorter than him.

"Yuki, this is you, right?" Yuu asked again with a small tremor in his voice. For the first time in several weeks, he wished more than ever that what he was seeing was not a dream. He reached out his hand towards the girl in an attempt to check if she was real or not.

To his surprise, the girl stepped forward and firmly grasped it with both of her hands. "Yuu, what's wrong?" She asked with concern. "You look nervous..."

Hearing her voice and feeling her warmth caused small tears to fall from the young boy's eyes and he ended up throwing himself at her to wrap her in a hug. "Yukiko!"

The girl struggled to regain her balance after that sudden tackle. "Hey! Hey, calm down," she exclaimed before hearing small sobs coming from him. "Wait, are you crying? Why? What happened?" She moved away from him without letting go and stroke gently his shoulder.

Yuu quickly wiped away his tears. "Sorry, it's just..." He murmured with a broken voice. "I've missed you so much... I was so afraid I'd never see you again!"

"You... missed me?" The girl repeated, confused.

The young boy swallowed hard and took a deep breath to try to calm down and speak clearly. "Yes... You, mom, Aunt Yoshiko... What happened? Were you very worried because of me?"

"Wait, wait, why would you miss us? Did something happen?"

Now the young boy looked at her, just as confused as her, and shook his head, puzzled. "What do you mean? I'm not missing at home? Nobody's looking for me?"

"Missing? What are you talking about? Last time I saw you was last night when we went to sleep, remember?" The girl asked, trying to make sense to the situation. "But what is this place? And what were all those animals? Am I dreaming?"

In fact, the last memory Yuu had before waking up in Twisted Wonderland was going to bed, just as he had told Crowley. "I'm sure those animals were a dream, but you don't look like one," he told her. "But if I wasn't missing, then..."

Before thinking of anything else to say, the girl shivered and began to cough.

"Yuki?" Yuu asked.

"I..." She murmured before coughing even harder and losing enough strength to fall to her knees.

"Yuki! What's wrong!?" The boy exclaimed with concern as he crouched down and wrapped his arms around her.

"I don't feel good..." She replied in a whisper.

Before they could say anything else, darkness began to engulf them. "No wait!" Yuu exclaimed to that empty void. "I need more time!"

He had a lot of questions to ask, a lot of things to talk about, a lot of lost time to make up...