Hanabi

Chapter 47: Mt. Kurama

White was starting to become a very depressing color. White walls, white ceiling, white floor, white sheets, everything in that goddamn place was white and Haruna didn’t think she could take much more of that.

She was alone in the room, the IV drip driving her as insane as the white environment that smelled like cleaning products and disgusting medicine. There wasn’t much to see out the window, as the hospital was far from anything even mildly interesting. The brunette leaned her head back against the wall and sighed, closing her eyes.

Now she had to be sitting in that bed pretty much the whole time, those were medical instructions. That meant she couldn’t even sleep the whole day for time to pass faster. She hated to be sedated or out of control of her own body in any way, but now she wanted the sedatives from the first couple of days back; at least those last excruciating days would’ve gone by in the blink of an eye. It had been a week, she couldn’t take that freakin hospital anymore.

She was going to be released the next morning, with a ton of instructions about movements she couldn’t make, ways that she couldn’t lie down and things that she couldn’t wear as to not constrict her chest and stomach. Haruna managed to break three ribs and crack another two in total, not to speak of another crack on one of her right forearm bones. She scoffed alone. Her doctor had made so many questions that she felt like screaming.

Doctor and nurses were convinced that five damaged ribs and a forearm couldn’t be just a normal accident, and they only gave up on the idea of calling a police officer to make her tell who did that to her when Tomoko intervened. She convinced them it was a car crash, but that it was best not to get the police involved. Not that it was a complete lie, her truck was indeed damaged and Tomoko parked it out of view inside Mami’s house gates.

Haruna didn’t want to know how much money Tomoko gave those people to keep their mouths shut.

None of that mattered though. She just wanted to get the hell out of that hospital and find out what happened to Rina. No one was telling her the truth, she knew it. She could smell bullshit from a thousand miles away. Tomoko just kept saying “she’s ok” in those annoying different voices of hers, but she never elaborated; Tomomi showed up to see her a few times in that week, but she wasn’t speaking much either.

The last visit on the day before, Haruna only asked once. Tomomi looked like she had been run over by a truck; she had dark circles around her eyes and gave her the most tired smiles Haruna had ever seen. She moved to Haruna’s bed with a chocolate bar that she smuggled in for her, and that at least made the shorter brunette laugh a bit. But when Haruna asked about Rina for the millionth time, she heard the same old answer.

“She’s recovering.”

Well, recovering from what exactly? No one was telling her what happened; no one told her what that Oni did to Rina to get her in recovery for a week. She was a freakin kitsune, she was much more resilient than a human being.

But she didn’t insist with Tomomi anymore because she saw it in her eyes, that girl was on the edge. Mami hadn’t woken up yet since the battle. An entire week and the blonde didn’t open her eyes even once. She was surprised that Tomomi kept smiling at all.