Work Text:
kaede
mama aimee’s really worried
and mama shi keeps trying to call you
please text back soon.
— Delivered Wednesday, 2:41 PM.
kae
seriously this isn’t like you
— Delivered Thursday, 12:03 AM.
— 31 Outgoing calls.
okay now you’re not being fair
i don’t care if you’re mad at me. but why are you worrying our mamas?
— Delivered Sunday, 2:14 AM.
kae, you have twenty-four hours to get back to me.
— Delivered Sunday, 6:35 AM.
Kaede is a petty asshole.
Kimiko declares this to herself as she gets off the train, tossing her bag over her shoulder. As she walks out onto the station, she shoots a text to the group chat her mothers have with her and Kaede, so they can all get updates at the same time.
(It doesn’t get used too often—Kimiko doesn’t go out much, since she isn’t part of any clubs and no longer has any interest in joining any. The only one who seemed to be out at all hours of the day was Kaede, so for weeks at a time, the only messages in the group chat would solely be her updates about her whereabouts. Mama Aimee always reacts with a kiss emoji, Mama Shiori with a red heart.
But it’s been dead silent since the school year started. One day, Kaede’s messages just… stopped. Like she dropped off the face of the Earth.
Her mothers were the first to worry. Of course they were, that’s like, their job—and Kimiko isn’t a very good sister, because she found every excuse to not worry. She’s just busy. She’s busy finally getting good at piano. (She’s busy leaving you behind.)
And now it’s been almost two weeks.)
Kimiko’s message is the first message sent in the group chat since Kaede’s radio silence. The first message in two weeks.
hi, just wanted to let you guys know i’m here
[photo]
— Read.
Mama Aimee <3
Make sure you turn on your tracker. Mama Shi’s keeping an eye on you.
i know. thank you mama
— Read.
Bitterly, Kimiko thinks to herself: Kaede, was that so hard?
She forces herself to whisk away the thought. Something has happened to her sister. Even though she’s still mad at her, she can’t get carried away by her stupid grudge. (There’s a venomous part of her that says, this is what she wanted, Kaede always gets what she wants, so why should I care?—her mothers would cry if either of them heard her say these awful sentiments aloud.)
But Kaede wouldn’t do this to their parents. To Kimiko, maybe.
Not to Mama Shi and Mama Aimee.
(And if she would, Kimiko is going to give her the earful of her life.)
She texts her parents again when she gets off the bus in front of the campus. For a brief second, she forgets to hit send, caught off guard by just how grand the whole building is on the outside. It’s taller than it looked in the photos online.
No wonder Kaede wanted to attend here so bad.
Whatever.
“Let me in!”
It didn’t take long for Kimiko to find herself in trouble already. All she did was walk up to the campus entrance—she didn’t realize that the guard standing there was going to be such an asshole about letting in a family member.
“Get lost, kid,” snaps the man, rolling up the sleeves to the jacket he wears.
Fortunately, Kimiko is quite the scrappy girl. Kaede was prone to picking fights in junior high, so naturally, she got dragged into them as well—she drops her bag to the ground, finding her own fighting stance.
Which is, apparently, an amusing sight for the security guard. He’s laughing now.
Kimiko steels herself on the ground, then lunges for his midsection. She’s not scared of how tall he is, or how toned his arms are. In fairness, it’s because she’s not thinking much at all.
Because that’s the thing about Kimiko. She picks fights, she gets herself into trouble—
—and she loses.
When she's tossed down onto the ground, a swear slips past her throat, her arms scrapinf against the pavement in her effort to protect her face. She hisses when she feels the heat rush to her arms, and she doesn't have to check to see that she's bleeding.
Fuck.
Weakly, Kimiko looks up at the man. He's picked her bag off the ground and is now holding it above her.
“I'm not telling you again,” he says. “If you don't have a student ID, I'm not letting your punk ass in. If you really have a relative attending here, they have to meet you outside.”
Kimiko spews something incoherent, something about knowing Kaede is in there, but she's not responding and that means something bad has happened. She presses her palms against the sidewalk as she lifts herself up. She hacks and coughs, wheezing to catch her breath. The man had practically knocked the wind out of her, and he had no qualms with doing so. She shouldn't have expected anything less from a stupid rich school like this—and their class of pompous freaks and their dickheads with their own heads up their assholes, and——
The bag falls on top of her.
Mama Shi
Kimi, please text back? Yiuve been out there for hours
— 5 missed calls.
Kimiko's body burns.
It aches and sears from her foolish endeavor. With her phone screen now cracked, she's resorted to planting herself at the side of the school gate, sat on the ground and reading through whatever it is she can find online. She's not badly injured, but her hindsight is scolding her all the same. What did she think she was doing, confidently ramming into an adult man? She's no athlete. She never stood a chance.
Even more unfortunate: that guy was the former Ultimate Boxer. She read that in an article, something underground and hard to find given his name was only mentioned in a recent covered up incident where a Reserve Course student tried to enter the Main Course building, and got beaten up for it. It was a brief article, nothing too substantial or worthwhile.
Kimiko thinks that she was lucky she didn't die.
She reads over her mother's text. Oh, Mama Shi. Her daughters are both stupid idiots.
Rationally, she should text back. She doesn't want either of her mamas to worry that they've lost their other daughter too—but she can't find the words to say. It's already dark out, and she still hasn't found Kaede. She's a bit of a failure in this regard, unable to even get into the campus without getting her ass kicked to Hell and back.
(Maybe that's why Kaede left and gave up on her.)
The Potential Talent Initiative—whatever the hell it was, that artificial talent crap—Kaede only chased after it because Kimiko gave up. It's undoubtedly her fault. If she had only chased their dream a little harder—if she didn't give up flute and leave Kaede to fend for her piano dream on her own, maybe she would be home.
They would both be home.
Instead of opening her mother's text, she finds herself staring at her and Kaede's messages again. Her thumbs hover over the keyboard, the way they always do when she realizes she misses her.
i'm sorry i was such an asshole
please come back
you're gonna be a great pianist. i know it. i was never going to be a good flutist and you know it but i just want you back.
just tell me you're okay.
— Delivered Monday, 7:37 PM.
For some reason, Kimiko stares for a long time at their message log. She stares extra hard at the word delivered. Silently, she's hoping—hoping that it will say read, hoping that she'll see the typing bubble pop up, hoping she'll get a text from Kaede that says: i'm okay.
She waits.
She waits, even though it's getting cold, even though she realizes she should have worn a sweater. The blood on her arms has long dried, and she doesn't have anything to clean herself up with. She waits, knowing she's going to have to figure out an explanation to her parents.
She waits, knowing somewhere deep in her heart, Kaede is not going to reply to her.