Hyakki Yagyou

Chapter Sixteen: Inconspicuousness, Smoke

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.” 

-        Ambrose Redmoon

December 29th, 11:20 am

Emi kept tapping her fingers against her knees. She hated hospitals. They were nothing but buildings of death, passing, awful smell – a mixture of cleaning fluids and bodily fluids – and disease. She could not wait for Ryu to be discharged. The doctors were still working on his medical files and discharge papers. It would take a little while and she promised to be patient but the more minutes ticked away the more impatient she became.

Every once in a while she could glance at the large, round clock on the wall (typically for a hospital clock, it was black-edged with a white surface and black hour numbers and hands). The hands seemed to be moving more slowly than usual across the paper surface. And the sound that came with them – a monotonous, low tick tock – almost started to drive her insane.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.

At this point she could even guess its pattern and melody correctly. The more she listened to it, the more she wanted to sway back and forth – like a madman – but she knew that should she do that, someone would label her as insane quickly. And then, the put-a-straitjacket-on-her-and-take-her-to-a-madhouse-immediately scenario would happen. She was not going to let that happen.

But, she could not stop listening to it. It was stuck in her head, like a melody of a catchy pop song, and her mind could not stop focusing on it.

Seeing that the doctor was not going to tell her she could help Ryu get home any time soon, Emi had to do something about this. She decided it was best she moved away from the waiting room.

So, she got up and walked over, past the reception desk or whatever it was called, down the hallway, past a couple of bedrooms, a toilet and down yet another hallway where her destination object was – a vending machine.

Usually, anything from vending machines (especially those in hospitals and schools) tasted horrible. But she needed coffee. She needed something to keep her calm. The accident had shaken her to her core. 

It seemed that it wasn’t enough to find out the truth about her mother but Ryu also had to have a car accident. When she received a phone call from Abe, Emi somehow felt that it wasn’t about anything good. The moment she picked up that call and heard Abe’s worried voice, she knew something bad had happened.

And it did. When Abe told her Ryu had been hit by a car, Emi thought he was dead and she was ready to burn the entire world for taking yet another person away from her. The pain she felt at that moment was beyond description. But, Abe added quickly that he was alive and just severely bruised. Luckily enough, his nick-of-time reflexes kicked in and he moved away in time for the car to just hit him and make him roll over the hood and fall down.

By the time she arrived to the hospital, Abe, that detective whose family name was Hara and a man named Yamada (whom she recognized as the chief pathologist she had met upon being brought to the morgue to identify her father) were there. Yamada was terribly shaken up. He had seen the entire thing happen. Emi wondered what she would do and how she would feel if it had been her, in Yamada’s stead, to see it happen.

Abe was still a bit shaken up, from the shock she received upon finding out about the accident, and detective Hara was as calm and cool as ever. Emi did not know him well and she did not know this was his usual behaviour so she thought it was strange. A co-worker was injured and the man kept a straight face as if he was there, waiting for his wife to finish work so they could go get some dinner later.