Black★Zero

Chapter 2: Searching For the Hope from Back Then

Flopping onto a bed in a room half-filled with moving boxes, Rei sighed as she stared at them with her light brown eyes and muttered, "I guess I'll finish unpacking after all." Rolling over, she added, "Later..." She had lived abroad with her father on an extended business trip until recently. The branch he had gone to in Europe was near the vacation home owned by her grandparents on her mother's side, who let them stay there to reduce the travel expenses, but they finally returned a month ago after receiving word that Mato died in a plane crash. Things had just gone so poorly she hadn't bothered unpacking more than the essentials.

Her father and Mato's mother argued over how long he had been away, so terribly that she was sure they would divorce. It would have been all Rei's fault, because she had been acting childish and begging him to extend his trip, having never come to terms with her own mother's death. The result she thought she always wanted suddenly felt like a curse she had placed on Mato's family and Mato herself, the smiling older sister she rejected. Yet now, something even more unreal than that plane crash had changed everything, her unbelievable second chance to start over from zero.

At first Rei had her ears yelled off for turning up in a hospital more than 500km away, only able to give the excuse that she'd gone looking for Mato, but all blame and arguing just disappeared when they heard she actually found her alive. She found herself thinking they changed their bad attitudes towards each other almost a bit too easily for being adults, but even she had to be happy. At the same time though, the fact that Mato was still in a coma meant this unreal situation probably wasn't over just yet. The other world... Her and Mato's other selves had led Rei to her at the hospital. There was no other explanation except that it had all been real.

The existence of this world and other selves, her experience with it made her feel like it was all connected. In particular, Magician had said Mato's other self felt as if she had possessed her, although the condition she was in didn't match her description because her body was still here. Was Mato not waking up because of her other self? All the recovered survivors were in comas as well, if she hadn't teleported from bed to a hospital, she might have thought it was a place people in comas wind up. In the end, she just could not understand what that place even was. Lying there dwelling on everything that happened, she finally muttered, "Maybe I should just find some occult books."

His head sticking through the door stealthily, her brown haired, blue-eyed 11 year old younger stepbrother Hiro stared at her as he triumphantly said, "So you really can use black magic!" Hurling her pillow across the room, Rei shouted, "Knock!" She would never be able to understand how Mato could put up with this thing ever since he was born. Worse, he'd been on some sort of black magic craze ever since she teleported across Japan, although she honestly couldn't say for sure he was wrong. He was closer than her parents, who had shrugged and called it a strange coincidence when they didn't find anyone who saw her boarding a train. Glaring at him as he just opened the door again without knocking, she curtly asked, "What do you want?" He ignored her tone and just replied, "Mom wants to know if you want to go with us to the hospital."

Already two weeks into June, the heat of summer had already fully established itself by the time the car arrived at the local hospital in the afternoon. Looking over at Rei resting her head against the passenger side window lazily in the sunlight, a woman with a lot of energy, short brown hair, and blue eyes, Mrs. Kuroi poked her with a tube of sunblock and cheerily said, "We're here, rise and shine! You'll burn if you lean against the window in the summer, are you still not used to the time zone here Rei?" Raising her head quickly in embarrassment, she took it from her and muttered, "No, this is how I always am riding in cars." As they both got out along with Hiro, Mrs. Kuroi gave him one now as she remarked, "Well, as long as it's not the same when you start driving them."