Natalie

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

After that, everything went black. I was rushed to the hospital and had to go through surgery. When Rin had hit me with the bat, she’d broken five of my ribs and one had punctured my lung, so the doctors had to re-inflate my lung and suck the blood out of it. I was bedridden with one of those annoying breathing tubes shoved down my throat for a month, but Natalie and Kano were there at my bedside every day, holding my hand and bringing me flowers. I was very heavily drugged for the pain and everything was in a haze, but I remember that during one visit, Natalie had left the room for some reason but Kano was still there. He’d grabbed my hand and sat down.

“Ruka, I know you probably can’t hear me, but… there’s something that I’ve wanted to tell you for a really long time,” he sighed, gently tracing his thumb along mine. I was awake, but I didn’t open my eyes. I was afraid he wouldn’t say it if he saw that I was awake. “I— I never cheated on you… ever. I loved you with all my heart and I still do. Rin lied to you to try to break us up. She’s always been jealous of you… for everything. I dated her for a little while in middle school until I found out how bat shit insane she is… She would always compare herself to you and she was paranoid that I would leave her for you. We hadn’t even met you yet, but she still hated you…

“At first, I didn’t understand what her deal was about you, but when I finally did get the chance to meet you… it was like everything in my world fell into place… It’s not like it matters anymore, though, right?” he chuckled. “I mean, you have Natalie now, but… I miss you, Ruka… I miss you so much that it hurts sometimes… When you came over to my room that one day, you looked so… dead… I’d never seen you that upset about anything before. I hope I never see you like that again… but even though you were like that and I was so confused… I was so glad that you’d come to me… even if it was only for the night…”

Kano stood back up and tenderly kissed my forehead and if I hadn’t had the tube down my throat and I wasn’t in so much pain, I would have kissed him right then and there. I’d never stopped loving him. I’d been so afraid of the possibility of it—of him cheating on me—being true that I’d pushed him away and built a wall around my heart so I couldn’t be hurt if it did turn out to be true. I was too afraid of the possibility of being hurt that I let the one thing that made me happy slip through my fingers. I’d learned my mistake and I would never let it happen again… Not with Natalie.

Natalie told me that after the brawl, security had become extremely tight around campus to prevent another one from happening and things quieted down. She said that there was a lot of tension between gang members, but they were all still in too much pain and recovering that none of them did anything. It was like an uneasy truce had been called.

When I’d gotten released from the hospital and sent back to school, Natalie and I officially brought our relationship out of the closet. We both knew that the gang had nothing to do with me, and thus they had nothing to do with her anymore, so we didn’t have to hide that we were together out of fear for either of our safety. We walked around campus holding hands and laughing and talking openly, and we got stared at by the entire campus. The Jigoku Ryouken didn’t have any smart-ass remarks to make, which was unusual for them. They’d all gained a higher level of respect for me after seeing me drag Rin to the nurse and it could be felt whenever I passed by one or a group of them. The preps and assholes of the school, especially the ones in Natalie’s fan club gawked at us as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Their beloved Nana was holding hands with and kissing me, the girl with the worst attitude in school, the former wakagashira of the infamous Kokoro-en? They didn’t know what to believe.

Lunch came around and Kano saw from across the cafeteria that Natalie and I were struggling to carry our food, especially me with my arm coated in plaster. He walked over and chuckled. “Need a hand, there, Ruka?”