Shut your mouth! [Yata Misaki x Reader]

Chapter 16: Harsh reality

            [Y/N] looked at her reflection as she pulled her hair back. A pale, haggard girl was staring back at her. She felt like crying, but her body refused to respond. She knew that the normal thing to do was to cry in such situations, and she didn't understand why she couldn't. It was as if her mind could not process what was happening.

          She was going to attend her brother's funeral.

          If a few months earlier someone had told her that things were going to change so much when she left her house that day to buy dinner, she would not have believed it. She had been chased; Ryu had disappeared and she had joined a clan, made new friends, argued, cried, and even fallen in love. Everything that had happened in the last few months now seemed far away.

          “Are you ready? Everyone is already downstairs”, asked Yata, interrupting her thoughts.

          “Just give me a minute. I'm almost done”, answered the young woman, putting on the last hairpins. “You know it's rude to enter someone's room without knocking first, don't you?” she added.

          “S-sorry”, apologized Yata, looking down at the ground while blushing.

          He had spent the last twenty minutes thinking of excuses to go upstairs to see if she was all right. He hadn't been able to talk to her since that morning, when Fushimi had gone to inform them that everything was ready for Ryunosuke's burial, and he was worried about her. So, as soon as he saw that the others were ready, he used that excuse to go looking for her.

          Yata had no idea why Scepter 4 was taking care of the burial, but he preferred it. He didn't know if [Y/N] would have been able to handle the paperwork so quickly while trying to come to terms with her brother's death.

          The young woman sighed. Normally she would have taken the opportunity of the redhead's irruption to embarrass him by telling him that he could have caught her changing or getting out of the shower, but at the moment, the idea didn't appeal to her at all.

          “We can go now”, she declared, grabbing her purse.

          Yata looked at her as she walked toward him. With each step she took, the black dress she wore swayed, captivating the red-haired man's gaze, who was quick to blush. He couldn't believe that at a moment like that, all he could think about was that, despite her red-rimmed eyes and blank stare, [Y/N] looked as beautiful as ever. «Like always?», he wondered. At what point had he stopped seeing her as a nuisance  and started thinking about her like that?

          “Yata”, she called, pulling him out of his thoughts.

          When had she left the room? Had he been so entranced that he hadn't seen her pass by?

          “Shall we go?”, [Y/N] asked from the hallway.

          The redhead nodded and took her hand, squeezing it softly.

          “Sure”, he mumbled. “I'm not going to leave you alone.”

          Almost imperceptibly, the young woman's eyes lit up, and a faint smile curved her lips. After squeezing Yata's hand in return, she breathed in and walked down the stairs beside him.

          It was time to bid farewell.

- - - - -

          On the way to the cemetery, the members of HOMRA walked in silence, surrounding the young woman. Although it was impossible that anyone would try to do anything to her when she was with them, they preferred to be cautious. Who knows, maybe they could see something suspicious that could give them a clue about Ryu's killers' identities.