Tangerine ~ Bullet Train

11 - "We're going to fucking die."

For the first time in ages, Tangerine wasn't able to keep his calm. He stretched out his hand and looked at it. It was starting to shake more and more. He felt the blood pumping rapidly through his body, his heart making awfully painful thuds.

This wasn't the first time their mission became a real challenge, but this was the first time Tangerine and Lemon knew that whatever they would do, they would be completely fucked. They couldn't run away; they would plead guilty and face the wrath of the White Death, because Tangerine was sure he would find them eventually. All they could do was to stay on this train and find the thief that stole their case. They would let that fucker get the blame for the White Death's dead son, give him the money and be delivered at his mercy. Which he didn't have, ever.

Fuck, Tangerine wasn't able to get his breathing under control. It was all over for his brother and him. They could only wish for a death that would be quick and painless, but given the reputation of the White Death, that would surely not be the case.

He threw off his jacket, bringing his hands to his tie afterwards, desperately trying to loosen its grip so that he could breathe again. That's when the doors to the hallway opened. He quickly wanted to enter the bathroom, but he was unable to do anything when he saw Yuina standing there. Although she tried to distract herself from The Twins, Tangerine especially, she failed in doing so. She saw Lemon walking by in haste, after which she looked for Tangerine and saw him clenching himself to the headrest of a seat before entering the hallway. She couldn't do anything else but walk after him to check if he was okay. He wasn't; with his eyes bewildered, his body shaking heavily and his hands unable to find the knot in his tie to loosen it up, she recognised him having a panic attack. She thought of him preventing the same for her when they met on the platform for the first time and stepped up to him to assist him in loosening up his tie.

He finally felt like he was being able to breathe again slightly, but his body didn't stop shaking. His heart didn't stop hammering fiercely. Although he felt fear running through his veins by the fact his heart would pump so heavily, he felt even more fear when the thought of his heart stopping altogether crossed his mind.

Yuina stood in front of him and placed her hands on the side of his shoulders, leading the way in breathing steadily. She felt slightly tense herself, but she tried to stay calm for his sake. She breathed in for a few seconds, hold it, then breathed out for a few seconds. Tangerine tried to follow her example, but he didn't succeed right away. The strangest feeling crawled up inside him; apart from having a complete and total panic attack, he also felt some strange nerves coursing through his body. Suddenly he was very aware of the fact that she stood by him so closely, touching his shoulders, trying to calm him down and comfort him. The strangest thing was that he slowly felt less and less fear, his heart still pumping like crazy, but not like he was suffocating anymore.

He felt the urge to act like nothing had happened; to keep a tough attitude so that he wouldn't look less manly, but at the same time he didn't feel the need to do so. He could see in her eyes that she didn't think of him as less manly for tensing up and having to fight this fear. She didn't think less of him at all. If anything, she even felt more connected to him than she already did. He had helped her through her upcoming panic attack last week and now she had helped him. With her eyes sliding over his face worried, they also became slightly warm by noticing he in fact felt a bit calmer. His body didn't stop shaking completely though.

'We're fucked,' he started saying out of nowhere. He was so desperately trying to shield everything from her before, but now he was blurting out everything that worried him. 'We got screwed over. This fucker we don't know stole our case, and now the son is killed right under our fucking noses, and we're fucked. We're going to fucking die.' Yuina felt stunned when hearing his words, but not for reasons a normal people would. She just heard someone say a passenger on this train has died, even been killed, but that was not why she felt so awful. She could see the worried look in Tangerine's eyes, the fear for his life, and she absolutely hated seeing him like this. He saw. He noticed she wasn't startled by his announcement, but only by what that would mean for him.