set the world on fire (Mawaru Penguindrum)

Chapter 7

Himari, her lips taut and skin pale like porcelain, slept on, chest barely heaving underneath her paper-thin hospital gown as she breathed deep, even breaths. A wavering line maneuvered across an inky monitor.

So much depends, Ringo thought, on the machine that draws your very last breath,

She knelt down beside the bed, tentatively reaching out to grasp Himari's hand. Frozen, the slope of her fingers and milky beds of her nails merely carvings in an ice sculpture. Her gaze drifted to the tangle of crimson threads resting on the nightstand, strung by a pair of plastic knitting needles- a scarf, its once neat stitches in a disarray.

The gentle curve of her neck, cascade of silky auburn tresses, broad forehead...everything sang of Shoma in the most profound way. How alive she must have once been. Breathing, living, loving.

A girl she had not, and would never, meet.

And so, the words finally came.

"Your brother almost died saving a useless girl like me," Ringo announced, met by only the gentle whoosh of the ventilation system, "so it only makes sense for me to repay my debt, right?"

Upon leaving the eerily-quiet room, she found herself gravitating towards Shoma's room. Past groggy nurses wheeling carts laden with vials and wheelchair-bound patients, she trudged in a zombie-like daze until she found herself standing before him.

She nodded curtly to the nurse, who only nodded, slipping out of the room.

"I promised, didn't I?" Ringo told him. "It'll be over soon. I promise."

Taking out the tape-molded diary out of her bathrobe pockets, she brushed its loose pages against his outstretched palms. "I thought you should be able to touch it, just this once." She hesitated. "Even if you were only out to get this...the kindness you showed me is immeasurable. All this time...all I've done is push you around, take out all of my frustration by telling you to do this, do that. And...you totally didn't deserve any of that. Nada. Because you are, and always will be, the better person.

"I never meant any of it. Honestly. All along, I was afraid you'd leave me. Give up on whatever twisted turn of fate got you to chase after me and disappear from my life like everything meant nothing." She faltered. "So thank you. For giving someone like me a chance, and you know, being there until the end."

Ringo leaned down, giving him a chaste kiss on the cheek.

She had burdened him enough as it was.

Ringo entered the warehouse later that afternoon. It was a dismal place, the black linoleum flooring smothered in dust and rotting wooden rafters enthroned in gossamer cobwebs. Rows upon rows of conveyer belts were laden with cartoon penguin-emblazoned boxes halted in their upward motion. KIGA, they boasted.

Never had the sea seemed so boundless. Each step into the warehouse was mountainous and echoing, every sensation coursing through her veins throbbing and pulsing and simply demanding to be felt.

"I'm here now."

Everything weighed on those three little words. Every laborious breath and quivering feeling.

A lanky man with his streaked pink hair up in a ponytail stepped out of the shadows, his lean form enveloped in a seemingly-infinite lab coat. An angelic devil, swathed in white. His oddly feline features seemed to leer at her.

"Ringo Oginome." He acknowledged her with a nod. "I've been expecting you."

Sanetoshi Watase held up a handheld device, the e-mail she had written under the guise of midnight pulled onto its screen.