Cardfight!! Vanguard: R

Episode Four: Wish You Were Here / Chapter 16

16 – Investigation and Understanding

Sunlight found its way through Yume's curtains, sending down a merciless attack on her slumbering form. She twitched, then tried turning but only found it uncomfortable and switched back to deal with the sun. Soon she heard her mother calling her name and the faint smell of her miso creeping in through the crack in her door.

Opening her eyes slowly, she slumped her body out of bed and shuffled down the stairs, rubbing the remnants of her mascara further up her face.

Taking her usual place at the table she drooled over the breakfast spread, her mother set before her. She started to grill Yume once for coming home late, though she couldn't really remember how she even got through the door; soon her mother's voice began to fade out as she tried to piece the vague fragments of the time after she and Taichi left the Red-light District.

A strange scent on his neck, yet comforting all the same, and the sweet and fumbled words he had strung together to give her piece of mind. And then the long train ride home where things went dark for her. just the lingering look of calculation on Taichi's face.

Pushing the rice in her bowl to make a big clump she took it up in her chopsticks and brought it to her mouth to take a bite.

"So, this Taichi fella, he your guy?"

"Gah!" the rice ball slipped out from between the chopsticks. Yume frantically began snapping around trying to get a hold of hit while fumbling for her response, but all she could make were grunts and other various sounds as she exerted herself to get her food to safety.

"Quite the man you've snagged, had you on his back and everything, not too sure on his style though, seems a bit mature, he is your age, right?"

"Mom! Its not like that" Yume managed to secure the ball of rice and began to bite into it, "he's a member of the vanguard club, I've told you this before!"

"I know, but you got back so late, look I get it, I was young once y'know, had all sorts of guys after me too- "

"Mom! Can you not be like, so gross in the morning?"

Miss Yumemiru laughed loudly at her daughter, "Well if he could see your face this morning you'd send 'im running for the hills" she sat opposite to her daughter, and placed her hands Yume's "I just don't want you endin' up with a man like ya father."

"Speaking of..." Yume tangled her fingers with her mothers, "When's Yu-chan supposed to be coming?"

"He should be coming next year. I don't understand why he wanted to come live with us all of a sudden, but I know that man probably hasn't been looking after him well enough, he's been to all sorts of places, so I think it'll be nice if he had somewhere to call home..."

"Even though he's..."

Miss Yumemiru looked distantly into her cup. A long-forgotten memory finding its way into her mind again refreshed as though it were just yesterday. Her ex-husband drenched in rain, holding a child in his arms, and then... boxes, divorce papers, the confused expressions of Yume as she tried to understand why her mother was taking her to live with her grandparents in Hokkaido. She soon returned to the present and firmly gripped Yume's hand, "No matter what, you're still his big-sister, so long as you're here he has a family, right?"

Yume nodded and continued to eat her breakfast, her mother sat and watched for a while before taking her bowl and washing it in the sink.

*

As the afternoon rolled around, Yume and Katsuki bother peeked their heads around the corner of the hallway – an attempt to be inconspicuous, but a failure as the students passing by took note of them and did their best to avoid them.