Natalie

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

 “Ruka, what’s wrong? You haven’t said anything since you got back and you’ve mashed your cheesecake into mush…” Natalie said, reaching across the table and taking my hand in hers.

“Tonight’s meeting is gonna be long… don’t wait up for me.” I stood up, not looking at her.

She wouldn’t let me go that easily and I knew it. She ran in front of me, grabbing my arms and stopping me before I could even reach the door of the cafeteria. She stared intently into my eyes with a frown on her face and her eyebrows furrowed. “Ruka, tell me what’s wrong,” she demanded. “What’s going to happen? Did they find out about us?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not important.”

“Ruka, why can’t they just leave you alone? Why won’t they let us be happy like this? We’re not hurting anyone by being together!” she said, her voice cracking under the stress as she grabbed the front of my shirt.

“I know, Natalie. Look, I don’t want you getting involved in this gang shit. Just go to the dorm and don’t worry. Everything’s gonna be fine, ‘kay?” I growled, frustrated with her. She was making a scene and everyone was watching and starting to whisper.

“Ruka, baby, please don’t go. I know what happens when a gang doesn’t like something. If you go to that meeting, they’ll kill you.”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks and it pulled at my heartstrings to see her so distraught and know that her worries were valid.

“They’re not going to kill me. I’m not going to go down that easily, Natalie. You know how stubborn I am,” I smirked, trying to play it off as nothing to calm her down.

“Stubbornness won’t keep you alive, Haruka. You’ll be against the whole gang! There’s no way in hell that you could survive that! You’re only human! I’m begging you, please don’t go.”

“No matter what happens, I want you to know that I love you. Don’t ever forget that, okay? I have to go.”

I removed her hands from my shirt and walked around her, leaving her speechless and staring into space with tears flooding over her face. I glanced back at Natalie when I’d gotten out the door and saw Kano standing in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. I didn’t have time to get pissed off or anything, and the cafeteria wasn’t the place to get territorial over her, so I let it slide, making a mental note to kick his ass later if I lived through the beating I was bound to get. I slowly walked around the building to the maple with my hands in my pockets and a heavy heart. The whole gang was there, some holding bats, chains, crowbars, or pipes, formed in two lines facing each other that created an aisle to the maple where Rin, Baby Chi, and Machi stood facing me. I stopped in front of them, after having gotten spat at by every gang member along my way up to them.

Machi was holding a baseball bat against the back of her neck with both of her arms, and Baby Chi was scowling at me like an angry bull dog. Rin had a snake-like anger about her. She looked calm, but she was seething and deadly behind her mask of serenity. I’d gotten to know her well enough to see that she hated me and wanted me dead. The look that she was giving me was the same look that she gave someone who brought up her dad around her or that she gave someone before sicking the gang on them. She took a step forward and spat to the side before addressing me, and I stood there, feeling blank and numb as I waited for my punishment.

“Ruka, you’ve ignored us for over half the year now. You tune us out at meetings, you flake on us whenever we’re trying to find you, you don’t help us take care of business, and you don’t hang out with us anymore and even when you do, you seem distracted. It’s almost as if you’ve forgotten us and we all think it’s because you’ve gotten buddy-buddy with that Natalie chick. What do you have to say for yourself?”