Hanabi

Chapter 35: An unlikely plan

The pale morning light was the first thing the brunette noticed when she opened her eyes, and the second was the sea of blond hair in front of her. Tomomi still had her arms around Mami’s body, and she remembered falling asleep again with her face against the back of Mami’s neck after her little loud encounter with Rina in the hallway. She was happy when all Mami did was laugh at her screams in the middle of the night, but Tomoko looked very displeased when she tucked her head outside of her room to check what happened, her eyes a sparkling green in the middle of darkness.

Mami went back to sleep quite fast after Tomomi came back into the room, and even now the brunette was expecting her to sleep for a long time still. The blonde was completely exhausted from her training with Tomoko; the only other time Tomomi saw her so tired was after that Oni bit her. She didn’t know if she should be worried about that or not. Probably not.

The fact was, Mami ate almost as much as Haruna the night before, during dinner. Not that Haruna ate that much, the shorter girl actually ate a lot less than Tomomi usually saw her eating, but that wasn’t Mami’s current standard quantity of food. Of course she had been improving noticeably and consistently since they met, but that was a jump and Tomomi realized it was probably due to how much energy Mami wasted with the nekomata that afternoon.

All those things, from her little outburst with Tomoko when she found them in the backyard to having Mami eat that much, ended making Tomomi distracted from her conversation with Sojobou and the vision she had. She didn’t discuss it with Haruna like she wanted to.

She did discuss it a bit with Mami before sleeping, but that was strange. Mami just told her that it was probably a great thing but she didn’t understand much of that subject and she should indeed talk to Haruna about it. Tomomi tried to talk about how broken Haruna seemed to be in that vision and how Mami was all curled up and covered in blood, but the blonde changed the subject. That alone made Tomomi sure that those visions had a lot to do with reality; she knew that Mami must know things about Haruna’s past by now and Rina’s as well, and as much as Mami had been very open with her about things there was still that rift with the scar on her back. If Mami didn’t want to talk about her vision the same way she didn’t want to talk about the scar, Tomomi got to the conclusion that those things were probably connected. The blood did seem to come from Mami’s back in the vision, when she stopped to think about it. Maybe she was witnessing things about all three of them that she normally shouldn’t.

Since she promised Mami that she wouldn’t push the scar subject, she had to keep to her word and give her space. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to annoy the hell out of Haruna to get some answers.

Carefully, Tomomi moved her arms off Mami and sat up on the futon, then slipping out of it slowly. She pulled the covers a little more over Mami and gave her a light kiss on the cheek before tiptoeing her way to the door. Once in the hallway, she walked her way to Haruna’s door very quickly, hearing some noises coming from the kitchen and thinking it should be Rina.

She knocked on the door and heard the same characteristic grunt that she had gotten used to during those past few months, and it never failed to make her chuckle. Haruna was like that, but she didn’t really mind it unless it got really harsh. When the door opened, she gave Haruna her brightest smile and chanted a “good morning Haru” that made her roll her eyes and reenter the room.