Fable (on hiatsu)

35. Lapse

The people looked pretty smashed up, I must say. Part of me was asking "Don't tell me, I did this didn't I?" and the other part was going "Cool!"

I wasn't really sure what had happened, though I was realising that there was a hole in my memory (not on the T'Ko part, though). A big hole. Outside, the sky was pitch black other than the gusts of snow. So at least five hours had passed.

I tried to figure out why I couldn't remember those hours, when I got a horrible suspicion.

"I didn't... did I? Oh, man... that's bad..."

I was jolted from my musings by the sound of footsteps running down the hall. They turned the corner and I came face to face with Onii, Kyuu and a fire Fairy. They almost ran into me.

"Gaaah!" Kyuu yelled, thoroughly frightened. Then she recognised my face. "Craft?! Where have you been?"

"...Who knows?" I answered. "Why were you guys running?"

"Whaddya mean, 'who knows', I asked where you were! Drat, we have to hiiiiiide!" She replied irately, while opening a classroom door at random and piling us all in. She actually tossed some of the unconscious bodies aside with her foot. Onii and the fire fairy were watching us curiously.

"Excuse me for asking, but how do you two know each other?" Onii asked softly.

"Wha- I'm his sister! Isn't it obvious?" Kyuu roared. I suddenly noticed she was wearing a light white dress and her hair was sopping wet. A disguise?

"... I guess, I just didn't think that Ren would - that Craft would have such a young sister, is all!" Onii hid her original statement. It seems she had noticed that I hadn’t told Kyuu my secret yet...

"Well he does! So there!"

"It's okay, Kyuu, she didn't mean anything mean by saying that." I explained. "By the way, have any of you seen me since school ended?"

"What do you mean?" All three asked.

"I can't seem to remember what has happened since then..." I confessed.

"...Are you serious? You lost your memory?" Kyuu asked me. "Don't worry, Craft, I'll do my best to help you remember! You're my older brother by two years, my name is Kyuu, and you have a sister that's a year older than you, that's Sophie and-"

"Hold your horses! I said I forgot what happened between the last bell ringing and a couple minutes ago! Not my whole life, idiot!" I reminded her in a hurry.

"Oh. Thank goodness... what would I have done if you had forgotten all of us?" Kyuu sobbed onto my green kimono. I noticed how ragged it was now. What in the world had happened in five hours to get it so dirty and torn?

"So... how's Plum's birthday going?" I asked Onii as we crouched along the wall, so we wouldn't be visible from the door.

"Where have you been? Oh, right, sorry I forgot. It's gone crazy apeshit." she held her mask, rubbing nervously at the painted eye in the center.

"Nice expression. What do you mean?"