Chapter Text
Ryoko hasn’t done anything with her hair yet.
Chunks of it still hold its natural blood red sheen, but streaks of it from her scalp all the way through to their tips have transformed to a pearlescent white. She can’t say exactly when it happened; somewhere between the moment she fled her sister’s massacre of assassins (at her sister’s insistence) and the moment she found Yasuke in the little apartment where he’d been holed up since transferring to his new middle school (to intern at the nearby hospital, despite his age) – somewhere in that space of time, it had happened. Yasuke didn’t comment on it the first moment he saw her, but he did shortly after, and she’d run her fingers through it, all grease-spattered and dirty, and wondered how he’d seen the white underneath all of its grime in the first place.
Eventually, she’ll have to decide what to do with it; whether she’ll return it to its blood red or bleach it all white or play around with something that is neither at all, she’ll need to do something.
(Not the red. If not for the white streaks, it would look just like the blood she’d seen around the—)
((When she remembers all of that, she heaves, vomits. She told Yasuke once – just once – and they’ve never discussed it since. Even then, she didn’t give him any specifics, just enough for him to understand why she is here. Why she can’t go back.))
She hasn’t started attending middle school yet, not while she’s still recovering from everything, not when she doesn’t even have hair with one consistent color yet; she’d be bullied ceaselessly for that, and she’s in no condition to be bullied (she’ll snap, she’ll hurt someone the way that Mukie—), and Yasuke is so busy during the day with middle school and his hospital internship that the only time they can spend together is after dark. He bikes to school, bikes to the hospital, because that means he loses less time to sleep (because that means he loses less time with her), but every now and again, as she slowly but surely gets better, she walks to the hospital to see him – to walk back with him, if she doesn’t sit on the back of the bike as he takes them back. Sometimes they walk the streets, silent, and it’s clear that bothers him. She’s always been the talkative one. She just doesn’t have the words anymore.
Ryoko walks through the streets in a white gown, barefoot, with her hair streaked red and white, and people avoid her.
They probably think she’s a ghost. That’s fine.
Yasuke bikes them back, and people avoid both of them. That’s fine, too.
Ryoko holds onto both sides of the rack Yasuke’s tied to the back of his bike and leans her head back and looks at the stars. They seem to stay in place as he bikes them back, and she reaches one hand up and out, as though she could almost—
The bike hits a pebble, something so infinitesimally small Yasuke couldn’t have known to avoid it, and the bike jumps, and Yasuke stays on, and Ryoko, with only one hand loose on the rack, tumbles off. Her knee stings, as does the palm of the hand she’d pushed out to break her fall. The skin of both has been scraped clean off. She’s bleeding. The same color as her hair. The same color as—
To the left of her, something metallic jangles.
Ryoko breathes (had she not been breathing before? maybe not) and looks up to see a girl of roughly her age with long brown hair and a ribbon holding it back trying to climb over some sort of metal entry gate. She blinks twice – makes sure she isn’t seeing anything, and she isn’t because the girl is still there – and shouts out, “H-hey!”
The girl glares at her. “Hey what.”
It’s not a question. It should be a question, probably, but it’s not.
“What are you….” Ryoko struggles with words. She’s never struggled with words before. “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” the girl calls back, still glaring at her, pert nose upturned.
Ryoko glances at the sidewalk around her, then slowly pushes herself up as Yasuke’s bike skids to a stop behind her. “I fell,” she says. She brushes the dirt and rocks from her skin, sees the blood bubbling and ebbing up through her broken skin, and her eyes begin to glaze over.
“Well, I’m going to break into the school!” the girl halfway over the gate says. “And you’re going to help me!”
This has nothing to do with me.
The breeze lifts the edge of Ryoko’s white gown and sends it pushing back and forth against her ankles. Yasuke’s saying something – barking it out at the girl whose name she still doesn’t know – and Ryoko’s just seeing the spot at her knee where the white gown is growing stained with her blood.
This has nothing to do with me.
Ryoko shivers as the breeze brushes cold against her bare arms, and she starts towards the gate, to the girl halfway over it. Yasuke grabs her wrist, but she shakes his hand off. “What are we doing?”
The other girl beams.
“You’ll see when we get to the other side!”
Ryoko doesn’t exactly collapse on the other side of the gate, but she hits her bloody knee when she lands and then can only hobble where the girl wants her to run.
The girl gives her a sour expression, lips a downturned V, and then glares up at Yasuke as he jumps over the gate with them. “Fine,” the girl says, “you’ll do it then.”
“Do what?”
Which is how Ryoko ends up sitting on the bleachers with her arms resting on her knees, her hand wrapped in a fresh bandage, her right knee wrapped in another one, while the girl shouts out directions to a Yasuke who keeps glaring at her and then looking over at Ryoko, who is too tired to tell him to stop.
Tired.
That’s a funny word, honestly.
Tired. Exhausted. Weary. Consumed.
If she’s honest, Ryoko hasn’t felt like herself since Mukie abandoned her, since Mukie told her to run. She feels like something else – like someone else – like she’s in the middle of some great and terrible becoming. Eventually, the girl sits down next to her, still barking directions at Yasuke occasionally, and without a second thought, Ryoko leans her head against the girl’s shoulder.
The girl flinches. “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” Ryoko quips back, voice soft with excessive weariness, as she glances up with big red eyes to meet the girl’s golden brown ones.
The girl gestures with one hand to Yasuke and whatever he’s writing with the chalk along the ground. “Can’t you tell?”
Ryoko sighs. She doesn’t have the dataset for this. She doesn’t want to look for this. But the girl asks, and so she does. “You’re writing a message,” she says, voice growing monotone, “to anyone who can see it and understand what it says. You’re saying, I’m here. To aliens, to time-travelers, to espers, to sliders, to Santa Claus himself, if he’s out and about on a holiday that isn’t his.” She doesn’t blink. “As if that sort of thing would draw any of them to you.”
“You can read that?” The girl’s eyes narrow, and her face gets super close to Ryoko’s. She smells a bit. Sweat, mostly. Probably hasn’t brushed her teeth. “Are you an alien?”
“No,” Ryoko says calmly. “I’m a ghost.”
The girl presses the flat of her hand against Ryoko’s bandaged knee and scowls when Ryoko winces. “Ghosts don’t bleed.” Then she crosses her arms and slumps back down, glaring out at Yasuke. She shouts another direction at him – Ryoko doesn’t care, so no matter how loud the girl gets, she doesn’t pay her any attention – and then gives Ryoko another suspicious look. “How do you know that won’t work?”
Ryoko rolls her eyes.
(This isn’t like her. She cares, usually. She listens. Even when Mukie used to go off on all of her soldier mercenary military assassin research and interests. Even when Mukie spent hours correcting her posture because she was holding her stick sword wrong. But this….
This has nothing to do with her. Even if she’s sitting right here. Even if she decided to break into the school with this stranger. It still has nothing to do with her.
So why is she here?)
“If all those creatures are here and in hiding, a message like that isn’t going to get them out.”
“But it’s in their own language and everything!”
“Are you sure?” Ryoko asks, glancing out over the incomplete message, its chalk inscription trying to gleam in the moonlight and failing. “Or did you just decide it was their language without any real proof?” She leans against the other girl again. It’s overly familiar, sure, but it’s comfortable. And she’s so tired. “If I were an alien, I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”
The girl frowns. “Even if I guessed?”
“Even if you guessed.”
The girl barks out another instruction at Yasuke, but it’s not as enthusiastic as it was before. Half-hearted. “You really don’t think this will work?”
Ryoko shrugs. “It might. There are probably stupid aliens just like there are stupid people.” (She is not like this. She doesn’t call people stupid!) She leans a little more heavily against her. She’s warm, which really just means that Ryoko is cold. “But do you really want a stupid alien? Or do you want a smart one?”
“Any alien!” the girl proclaims, loud, enthusiastic, all that energy coming back all at once. It’s endless, maybe, her enthusiasm for this.
It makes Ryoko feel even more tired.
(She was like this once.)
“People are all just boring and normal,” the girl continues without hesitation, "and aliens, time travelers, espers, sliders – all of them are infinitely better than people!” She flashes Ryoko a grin. “That means you, too, Ghost Girl.”
Ryoko blinks twice and then looks away. (She’s too bright, this girl. She’ll blind her with that warmth.) “At least you’re looking for them,” she murmurs. “You can’t find one if you aren’t looking.” She runs her forefinger along the inseam of her thumb. “Maybe I should write a message for them.”
The girl shoves her. “Don’t steal my idea!”
“I won’t.” Ryoko chuckles – small, broken – as she holds up her bandaged hand, used again to catch herself, twinging with pain. “I’d have to break into another school first, and that….” She sighs and stares out over the now quite marked up field in front of them. “I’m too tired. But you’ll let me know if yours succeeds, right? Make all the papers?”
The girl just grins at her.
It’s as they’re leaving the school, as Ryoko carefully situates herself on the back of Yasuke’s bike, that the other girl pauses in her brisk walk in the opposite direction. Then she turns, hands propped on her hips, and yells, “What’s your name?”
Yasuke doesn’t even turn back, answering before Ryoko has a chance to do so, “What do you need that for?”
“So I can tell you if they contact me! Obviously.”
Ryoko hops off the back of Yasuke’s bike. The action causes her knee to twinge again, but she doesn’t wince as she hobbles over to the other girl. “Mitsuki,” she says, voice gentle. Standing next to her, she realizes that she’s nearly the same height as the other girl. How odd. Someone so bright seemed like she would be huge. Huh. Still, she meets the girl’s honey brown eyes as she repeats, “Matsuda Mitsuki.”
The girl looks her over, and then instead of offering her own name, she asks, “What middle school are you at?”
This time, Ryoko doesn’t have a lie ready. Even if she did, something tells her it would be far better to keep that information to herself. There are people she doesn’t want to find her right now, after all, and while it isn’t likely this girl has contacts with any of them, it isn’t an impossibility. So instead, she takes one of the girl’s hands in her bandaged one and holds it up until they’re flat against each other. “Have you heard of the red string of fate?”
“Ew,” the girl says, lips pursing, but she doesn’t take her hand away. “Why’re you bringing that up?”
“Well, think of it like this. If I don’t tell you and we see each other again, then it’s fate, right?” This time, when she meets the girl’s eyes, Ryoko almost feels taller than her, but not by much. She’s growing, finally. Maybe she’ll be as tall as Mukie the next time she sees her. If she ever sees her again. “Like the cosmos says we’re supposed to be friends, or something like that. And if not—” She winks. “Well, we’ll find those time travelers, and we’ll fix it, won’t we?”
The girl holds her hand still, flat against Ryoko’s. “If I find a time traveler, I’m not going to waste my time finding you.”
“Fate, then.” Ryoko tucks her thumb around the other girl’s hand. “Like a good story with a clandestine meeting.”
“Hm.”
But despite the noncommittal sound, the girl tucks her thumb around Ryoko’s hand just the same.
There are no red strings when they leave.
That’s probably for the best.
Ryoko hates red, anyway.