Yuri Worlds
[114] Remember
The moments, hours, and days immediately after were the worst. Care cried so hard and unrelentingly that she was soon so literally dehydrated that Silvia and Fiona nearly rushed her to the emergency room. They were able to get enough fluids into her.
The only thing that kept her sane at that time was the pleasant delusion that Cerberus couldn't possibly be gone. It happened so quickly. It had happened with surreal efficiency. They quietly went through their evening; they woke up in the morning; they prepared everything; and then she left in an instant. She hadn't even released the widow's anguish trapped inside her. She hadn't really cried. They treated it more like he was getting on a plane and would be coming back in a week.
Maybe, just maybe, she thought, the time of her loved one's absence would be hilariously short. In a few days, she'd hop back, happily knocking on the door, telling them that everything was finished; they found what they wanted to find within her, but it wasn't everything they wanted, so they just let her go. That could happen.
Every sound outside, even when it was clearly a bird rustling the branches, activated Carrie's hope that it was Cerberus returning to her. Worse levels of sinus pain and stomach discomfort than Yuka suffered in the lead-up were rubberbanded into her. Her nervous consolation was that maybe, because of what she was feeling, that meant she drew away comparable unpleasantness from her partner.
She knew that time, as it always did, would mute the worst of it. Carrie went back to work—well, into her new work for the first time. She didn't have to wear an EEG or slavishly mark every single time she peed beyond the expected minutes. She was basically her own manager and kindly dealt with her assistants, who were also reeling from the world they all now lived in.
Writing out technical information was surprisingly simple. Her other self left her notes about what terms to avoid, what phrases to focus on, and what oversights to be mindful of. Technical writing had to be understandable by a wide range of people with vastly different experiences. It had to be precise; it had to be sharpened and honed with clarity and simplicity. No flowery ornamentation to the words.
She checked and used foundational documents from the collaborating writers as a baseline to compose wider structures. She picked up the precise nuances of expert terminology and fashioned it into her brain as though she'd been learning it all her life. Refining the language until it had the most punch per syllable occupied her days.
Fiona and Silvia always checked in and made sure she was comfortable and relaxed. They provided stories from the outside about strange plants blooming around the comic book shop and the cute date that Luna and Bridgette went on. Carrie learned not to cry in front of her little sister and friend but to wear an iron smile for them, not too wide and not too passive. When she had certain nights free, she communicated with Naoko on the device to see how things were going over there.
One of the first things she passed along were all the secrets Cerberus kept about her sacrifices. Naoko nearly cried, seething but without anger that her good friend, her best friend, hadn't laid the painful truth before her. Carrie didn't need to explain to her; Naoko understood the choice Yuka made, even though she desperately wished it had been a different one.
Thankfully, she had received papers and packages about strange lost media that shouldn't have existed but still found their way to her doorstep. Bianka received and cautiously disclosed the equivalent of Freedom of Information Act documents. No UFOs, and suspiciously, though not unexpectedly, not much in regard to the company, but still plenty to get girls angry about normal, banal forms of corruption.
Her girlfriend was walking with a slight limp but doing much better, and she was already planning the romantic destinations she knew they should both visit on the company's dime. Large donations had been made to the shrine, in the Okura family name, and to the Sasakis, who were hiring for the start of the refurbishment of the old hotel.
School life was gradually getting back to normal, and Naoko recently made a new friend, a transfer student with long, cotton candy-style hair fairer than Namiko's. Ayame sent along fond wishes, but Naoko hadn't heard from Haruka since their escape. Carrie noticed but didn't mention that the compounding stresses of everything looked like they had started to ever so slightly feather Naoko's eyebrows when she leaned close on the communication device.
Several weeks into this new existence, Carrie still felt sour stomach side effects. Practically every day, nausea gripped her, and she upchucked from a little bit to a lot. No one around her questioned it because she was still recovering from the separation, but changing meals and lightening the styles of dishes did next to nothing to help her constant troubles.
To minimize the possibility that it was a kidney stone or something similar, she regularly took time to exercise at the gym with Fiona, trying jumping jacks and other moderate exercises. The workouts made her feel better despite the intense jiggles she had to work to control, but ultimately didn't halt the strange sickness.
They noticed that some other ladies locally, especially Yumeko on social media, were experiencing similar symptoms, so they wrote it off as a temporary side effect of exposure to the flood of energy until they had reason to suspect differently.
The weeks passed, and Carrie suffered through the best she could with this strange but restored body. Her petitions to Travel Anywhere publicly, through electronic correspondence, written letters, and whatever else she could throw at them, continued without pause until finally they informed her that she could visit Sasaki Cerberus.
When that news came, she would've gladly just left through whatever portal they pointed her towards without a bag, identification, or anything else she needed to take with her, so long as it took her right into her loved one's arms. Fiona and Silvia took care of what she would need, along with providing her with a temporary, disposable phone. Carrie promised to track down her and Yuka's phones around where they would have been left, even though her little sister and friend didn't have much hope that those devices could be recovered in usable condition considering nature and all the events since.
They escorted her like heavier bodyguards than they actually were to the partially rebuilt facility and went through a similar but more uncomfortable version of the workup and medical check, which felt even more like bullshit than the last time.
Fiona smiled and leveled her serious eyes as she warned Carrie to be safe.
Silvia reiterated this with her words.
"Come back to us."
Carrie smiled and nodded.
Then Silvia turned her angriest expression on the nearest worker who cared.
"Bring her back safely, or else."
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The boat bobbed with a slow, steady motion, rising and falling in the front. That somehow didn't upset Carrie's tender, uneasy stomach. She stared across the way to the distant shore and the slim, jutting towers of silver and ivory, like ancient animal bones stripped to their bare essentials but not quite fossilized. Out here, on the water, the presence of the dense city all around fell silent.
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The trip back had been thoroughly uneventful. Traveling alone worried her, and Fiona and Silvia begged to go with her, but Travel Anywhere explained that they couldn't arrange a trip for all three of them on such short notice, just Carrie.
No dark wristbands awaited her on arrival, and there was no pretense of burgeoning crowds navigating the interdimensional thoroughfares. Even the little timer was absent. But she had plenty of documents and several checked bags with important luggage.
The world she arrived in felt very much like the one she remembered but also subtly and irrevocably changed. The main portion of the travel center was cordoned off, and she had to be rerouted to the south along the shoreline. Rather than taking a circuitous bus trip back to the train station, she opted to bridge the gap with a small ferry crossing the bay. It was a rickety thing that didn't look like it often carried passengers, but the fare was decent.
The smell of the water was sharp but not unpleasant. She looked out over the lazy waves and noticed a storm of seagulls swarming in a slow, living twister around a distant, floating carcass. With the infusion of a portion of the flood back into this world, Carrie expected that the glowing, animated vibrance that first enchanted and mystified them at the beginning of the trip would only be sharper, like putting on glasses that tinted towards beauty. But this was a real world, just like hers. She now saw all the rough and nervous places she'd been blind to.
When they arrived at the dock, the ferry girl actually returned her money with a slight bow, a subtle smile, and no further explanation. Carrie attempted to thank her when she hauled her bags off and leave behind a tip, but the boat was already gone before she could. That helped pay for her ticket to Akechi.
Riding the train alone wasn't really riding alone with the shifting, settling multitudes of girls on their way to one place or another. Still, she felt the sharpened loneliness of not having her sister, friends, or wife nearby. Plenty of girls said hello and wished her well, but they just drifted past with that simple, subtle courtesy and nothing more. She appreciated the restroom layout, despite how tight it felt, and thanked her stomach for keeping her lunch down.
Grateful to be on her way, Carrie relaxed. For the sake of simplicity, she'd been given her Misaki form again. It wasn't too different, despite the slight decrease in her bust. Napping with everything pulled close protectively, she set the loudest possible timer on her loaner phone and rested against the bench as awkwardly as possible. Soon, her heels hurt, snapping her out of a sudden bout of sleep. She felt a weird sense, as though someone had settled onto the cushion next to her and scooted over protectively.
Opening her eyes, she could see that the entire bench was empty and soon wrote it off as a quirk of the train as it swiftly jostled and stretched along its route.
She'd phoned ahead through Naoko and was embarrassed to see the Sasaki moms exuberantly waving for her when she arrived at the station. They instantly treated her like a lost daughter finally returning from a long trip, lavishing hugs, heaping concerned questions, and shouldering the burden of her bags. They had some of the worst feathering around their eyes, along with clear tiredness in unmistakable rings. Carrie… or Misaki to them, turned around their prying questions and asked why they were so exhausted.
Their initial efforts at repairing and reconstructing the old hotel were well funded by their mysterious benefactor. What they had the most of lately was time to dig in and push through, but it was exhausting labor.
They asked about her trip. Misaki noted that she essentially had her promised remaining week along with visits to her—the strange, mutual friend who saved them from captivity. Could she help with the reconstruction? The moms wouldn't hear of it! She was once again their guest, not their labor force.
Throughout their trek back, Misaki dropped little hints about the quietness of their house, with Haruka moving towards her forever name soon and living alone. She dropped the breadcrumbs of the possibility that some of the now-empty storage rooms upstairs might be useful if they had a second daughter. Both admonished her that they were too old at this point to really think about that, and they had so many things they needed to do. The hotel at least needed to be completed before they could even think about adding to their family.
Kei lingered on this thought though. She noted that there was a certain presence of emptiness that was hard to shake, which reminded her of the nagging feeling when starting a trip or preparing for something important, like you just didn't double-check your preparations enough and there was something you must've forgotten.
But it was absolutely ridiculous to think that they could've forgotten an entire daughter! That was just one of those leftover dream memories they both had been having lately of seeing another, unfamiliar face. It was only a dream, a translation of their fears and concerns into unexpected forms.
Arriving back at the house really did feel like returning home. Misaki placed her shoes in the proper way that she learned during her last stay, politely helped out where she could, and treated the Sasaki moms with warmth and cheer. In turn, the two moms stopped just short of proposing they adopt a girl while scouring Misaki for signs of hunger, ill health, and unhappiness. Their likely soon-to-be adopted daughter concerned them by laughing at the couch-hogging presence of the screaming whale breaching itself through the cushions. They urged her to sit down and relax as much as possible.
It wasn't long before the others came around to warmly greet her. Naoko led the way and embraced some of Maharu's missing, blazing energy. She wasn't the same level of firecracker and feisty rocket, but she genuinely aspired to raise the same enthusiasm and emotions. Her still slightly hobbled partner, Kosame, beamed gleefully as she spread love around the room. Bianka soon joined the group too, wearing softer, more flowing outfits than her usual fare.
The trio of schoolgirls delighted and ruminated on the college possibilities before them. As Yuka had keenly anticipated, Naoko was a STEM aspirant, specifically wanting to focus on experimental science. Kosame was confidently a law lover, even though she was a lover of many things with minor thoughts towards luscious languages. Bianka wanted to further her recent critical findings into actual changes in society.
They each had so many things to show Misaki, talk about, and show off, especially the new karaoke machine the Sasakis intended for the hotel, but she had obligations first and promised they could indulge all of that later. Kei walked her out but also showed off the bright, repainting progress of the old hotel.
"I think it would be quite perfect with a third story symmetrically reflecting the first. Then it would be a proper hotel. Not too big to overshadow the house or draw the concerns of neighbors. My wife pitched me a few different ideas for what to call it. But her favorite and mine is probably the simplest: Mecchen House. I don't know how I'd feel about a dorm with more than a dozen hyperactive young girls. It would be less lonely. But there's a limit between embracing Shimai and being drowned in it, as I try to tell my wife."