FINGERS CROSSED, yuzuha usagi

CHAPTER TWELVE

Watching them go separate ways, Yasuko couldn't help but remember a tale she had heard from her grandmother's lips every night the ocean's whispers were too loud, knocking at her bedroom's window and giggling behind her mother's door, getting fed by the sound of sheets brushing and sighs consuming all oxygen off the four walls she was never allowed to be at.

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.
So he said to his mother, "I am running away."
"If you run away," said his mother, "I will run after you. For you are my little bunny."

She always quoted it with such emotion in her voice Yasuko had even once asked her if those bunnies had been her mother and herself, both so willing to grieve each other that all the unspent love gathered in the corner of their eyes, in the lump in their throats and in that hollow part of their chests.

The realization came years later, when it was too late to take back the yelling and stitch up the wounds in her heart, that she had misunderstood it. Perhaps the bunnies weren't her mom and her grandma, perhaps they were just a wish told out loud after it got jaded from biting on it every birthday when the candle was placed in front of her aching lips. Love, like the ocean and her mother's hand reaching out half asleep for who used to lay on her side, had no other place to go than their eyes, the route of longing and desires where they met the dream of everything they were looking for on someone else's gaze getting lost in theirs.

"Where are you going?" Arisu stopped her without even thinking as he noticed her walking next to him and not in the other direction.

Turning around, Yasuko made up her mind. It may have been the way he changed the weight of his body back and forth between his right and left leg, or the way she swore she would've loved it if they had got to know each other when they were carefree, when she was eleven and the only thing it worried her was why her mother's heart ached whenever she twirled a piece of her hair behind her ear. Whatever it was, Yasuko didn't let it slide, she grabbed it as hard as she could, and pulled it towards her chest, to keep it there until her last breath. Until her bunny ran away and she had to follow each step.

"For a nice view." She smiled, gesturing to a building close to the alley they decided to lure the King Of Spades into so he wouldn't be able to get more ammo from the blimps. Somewhere along the lines, she felt the need to ask going up her throat, tickling the tip of her tongue, "See you later?"

Arisu's lips parted, but Yasuko hushed him almost immediately.

"Say yes," Yasuko's eyes pleaded him to let her believe the idea of meeting again once all of that had finished, "Please, say you'll see us later. All of us, Ikehara, Usagi, Kuina, Ann, Akane, Aguni, me."

Arisu took a deep breath in, nodding his head silently.

"I will." He promised, even if it meant to lie to her.

Everything that came after was a blur, something her mind had either tried to leave somewhere darker, buried in wet sand, or was too scared to simply order her body to open her eyelids. It started with Ikehara's brush of fingers on her cheek, eyes scrutinizing every detail of hers before he turned around; it started with Usagi's hand squeezing her arm just for a second as she walked away; it started with Aguni standing behind her with every word capable of pronouncing stuck between his teeth; it started with Kuina and Ann giving her a little smile; it started with Arisu's lie, and with the ones made by herself, those that told it might have been that what she truly deserved. For everything and nothing in concrete.

The alley was dark and empty, just like every street of Shibuya that had come across the King of Spades' path. Yasuko looked through the rifle's scope attentively as the man approached it, each step more than trained to not let be heard a single sound out of any movement he did. The deeper he immersed into it, the more they grew inpatient, hungrier, desperate.

Kuina made the first move, followed closely by Ann, who sneaked from behind his back.

The sudden shooting emerging from the alley gave Yasuko goosebumps. Ann's aim was as accurate as his, successfully ripping out his bulletproof vest enough times to allow Kuina to storm at him from his side, though one thing they weren't fully considering was how fast he was. The King of Spades got a hold of her, pushing her towards a lit up machine and bringing the mouth of his firearm up to her forehead.

No, Yasuko's fingers turned white from how hard she was grabbing her rifle.

In life, there were many things and people to blame fate for being so blind, for awakening something she had been hiding deep down her spine. It could've been works of the sea that left a salty undertone of wanting on both corners of her lips, or maybe it was the unresolved rage getting worse, spilling out her mouth as uncontrollably as her mother's had done before.

Fate, sometimes, was the equivalent of rage. And rage was like love. A desire, a prayer unanswered, ricocheting from the ceiling and landing right onto someone's eyes, never quite reaching where it was meant to. It was a violent urge, harsh and despairing; it might have even been rotten teeth chewing down someone's neck; it was a restless, wild stare, and the hissing of the King of Spades dodging Heiya's arrows at the same time he restocked his ammo and advanced again towards where she and Kuina ran away to hide. Those last days, rage had become something to worry about. It had different names, different detonators, different tones and threatening smiles; it morphed, changing the connotation of words, the force with how their steps approached stomping on the floor, the way their arms swung.

Yasuko was aware of it, the only thing she had to do was to look at her reflection on the building's window in front of the one she was leaning down the roof cornice. For a moment, as her eyes went back to the King of Spades peeking out from a corner to find himself face to face with Aguni, she really wondered why he had dismissed her to that role, away from their reach. She moved the scope a couple meters in the other direction, watching Ikehara's concern manifest in erratic patterns of breathing and too inpatient wriggling in the same spot he was crouching at. Maybe he was the reason, she thought, sadly, furiously.

It was then she got enough of it, of rage, of love, of everything. Yasuko's shoulders relaxed, her finger pulled the trigger.

The bullet grazed the King Of Spades' cheek by mere coincidence when Kuina appeared out of nowhere on her periphery, dragging a rolling table from the inside of a shop towards where he was standing. Kuina looked up at her before she focused back on the man on the floor, who didn't hesitate to shoot at her, still wondering from where of his surroundings had he received that cut.

Yasuko freezed out of fear. They were moving too much to find the man alone in her sight, but she still tried to calm down the aching on her chest that told her it would never forgive herself if she doubted twice again before pulling the trigger, even if someone else got hurt out of it. They had agreed they would be careful of getting in the middle of her aiming, that they wouldn't hold grudges against her if her finger slipped and missed his objective because of their fight, but she wasn't okay with that, and that was the only thing she hadn't told out loud.

With so many figures to watch out for, it became difficult for Yasuko to maintain her rifle's scope in the same place. Instead, she paced it from one side to the other, until she finally got them all in the same no-way-out final part of the alley. Her eyes found Ikehara's hands reaching for the King of Spades' arm joints to stop him from punching Aguni in the face repeatedly.

But still, he was taking them all down one by one.

Inside of her, something seethed, tearing at her ribcage in a familiar way that she knew what it meant. I'm not gonna let it happen, she thought in a rush, abandoning her rifle on the roof and skipping steps from the emergency staircase to get to them before it was too late.

The thing that troubled her the most was she didn't care to get hurt if it meant they didn't. She could take it, she was okay with taking that pain for herself if it meant they didn't.