Yuri Worlds
[55] Alive
Misaki swiftly yanked the probing chopsticks away from the wristband as Yuka attempted to get in one more shot of its interior guts. They both gave the strange artifact as much space as possible. The parting of what Misaki now suspected really was a living entity slowly settled back into still, midnight waters with cautious projections probing. Misaki kept pressure on her large scratch so it wouldn’t drip as she carefully wiggled her fingers closer to the band. As she anticipated, the animated movements quieted even further, and the surface of the item once again resembled the strange, etched graphene with aspects of silicon that it normally possessed. No further movements towards or away from the object prompted a reaction.
Yuka, with a frantic whisper, continued her last thought, “In all the Goddess’s holy sight… The fuck was that?”
Scooting away from the wristband on the tatami floor, Misaki relayed what she saw when pressing into it. Something in the wristband was alive, and something else was crystallized. Whatever that meant. Yuka shook her head.
“Why would they… Why would anyone put something like that inside there? That’s horrifying.” Misaki agreed with a nod, noting that this was unlike anything she’d ever seen in her home world. The company had peculiar technology but not living gray gooey monsters that people had to wear on their wrists. She reached for any explanation that could be charitable towards the company.
The goo entity activated some casual memories she had in the same vein as the show still on pause. Self-replicating forms, like nanomachines. An apocalyptic gray goo from sci-fi stories. A machine that just ate and ate and ate while replicating itself endlessly. DE? She couldn’t think of what it might stand for, if it actually meant anything. Same went for the other thing.
Straining to come up with something, Misaki spun together the possibility that the dangers of this world…oh. That was right; she hadn’t really elaborated on the fact that this world was dangerous for them. The atomic rules and minor and major differences in how universes operated were like trying to go up into space or to some barren planet without oxygen. That was why they had these bodies.
Yuka plopped down on the tatami floor on her butt. Her breath drifted out of her like an old balloon leaking its last air. This made sense to her. So much said to this point dodged around the physical realities. It was because of the company; it was because of the chasm between their worlds. But this was a barrier laid out. Something tied to their physical bodies, a temporary form that couldn’t persist in this environment. Yuka had the same questions as Misaki about why a certain number of days appeared to be stamped on their ability to stay here. It seemed so arbitrary.
Misaki leaned forward and moistened her colorful lips as she relayed, “I think it’s a load of crap. I found out… I recently found out that there’s someone who lives here, who used to live on the other side. My side. This time limit is fake. It has to be. It’s… like walling off the privilege of staying here. Induced scarcity, it makes sense with all we’ve seen about them limiting knowledge and so many other things.”
Yuka gritted her teeth at all these details about the company but also quietly relaxed and asked, “So, that means we don’t have to be apart? Screw the company. They tried to control you like a robot and make you say things you didn’t mean. They twisted your appearance and your mind to hurt you more than once. They’re holding back knowledge, which can inspire so many wonderful things in my world and beyond. They have to be stopped.”
Misaki readily agreed with all of that, but the two of them were stuck with the uncertainty about how to take the corrupt company to task with evidence and all those other things that important people and lawyers would have to wield against them to put a stop to this. But it was a goal, a chance to fight against the forces trying to separate them. Yuka pulled up an app on her phone to make all sorts of notes about what they knew and what they might be able to prove.
The three of them had to sign a lot of waivers, which they didn’t read every single word of because they were far too long. The usual random risk of bodily harm if something were to go wrong. She couldn’t recall anything in particular that sounded off or peculiar in the typical boilerplate legal language. They had a companion app and all sorts of basically spyware offloaded onto their phones for the duration of the vacation. Chika found ways around it, but the rest of them just dealt with it. Misaki noted the weird blood thing, the bandage, and the way she bled several days later from the same spot, not certain if it was relevant.
The spiky, furry crawling thing, which made several appearances and may have latched onto Yuka‘s leg, also deserved a note. Misaki also dug deeper into her visions, noting a scary one on the train that first day along with her vague allusions to a dream in a medical lab that felt like something from the company. The rest of the information was enmeshed in a lot of difficult explanations and uncertainties. Yuka had a lot of her own elements to document between. Less uncomfortable for Misaki was to come out with the explanation that when they got really close before, she actually left her body and joined with Yuka’s body and mind.
After a few seconds of silence following that admission, Yuka set down her phone and looked across at her girlfriend with the artful, visible shading of a gulp. As the magnitude of what that meant crashed into her, her face exploded with enough blush to be mistaken for a vicious sunburn. Her already wide brown eyes grew even larger.
“When when… After what we…after our private… after that, when I went to use the restroom… You were with me totally and completely?” Misaki firmly nodded, expressing that every single thing that Yuka felt and thought she was also privy to. Moments later, Yuka gave the tiniest, sharpest squeak of shock, as though that were the sound of her soul leaving her body. She couldn’t get any brighter across her face without cosplaying as a radish.
Misaki admitted with a meager blush of her own that, “I said I loved you inside your head so many times.”
Yuka gasped. "That was you! I thought it was so weird that my brain was being so nice to me for once. And all the other nice things—that had to be you. It’s like you were my guardian goddess." That last sentiment wasn’t one that Misaki could totally accept, but she admitted that the words were sincere, and the repetition was in the hopes of telling her what was going on and retaining her presence of being. Peeling off another layer of the uncertain things she still kept to herself, Misaki admitted that when she changed into a squishy, happy, ditzy marshmallow, it was like she also inhabited Yuka briefly, but not to the same raw, detailed extent.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Squirming on the floor, Yuka muttered, "Sweet goddess smiles. Everything. You were my everything… Which is totally romantic, but ack… The last few hours were not the best of me that I could ever show off. Not even close. Why couldn’t I have a little bit of privacy? Not even my tampons know that much about me!" She was mortified, but not upset.
Misaki made it clear. “Seeing every part of you. Being with you despite the sadness of being a silent part who couldn’t help you through the pain and tears. All the terrible things the fake inside my body said and did. What I wanted most of all was for you to know how beautiful you are, how loved, and how, if that had to be my fate as a spirit connected to you, then so be it and for the rest of my life. To share your life with all my heart.”
The little whimpers became untempered crying as Yuka struggled to ravenously draw close to her girlfriend while also being careful not to repeat her getting lost inside because of too much love.
Slowly, she found words. "I love you too. I want to share everything I can. But it’s… although, you know. My Goddess, you know. This is like the craziest roller coaster. I went through such a trial of uncertainty and ill feelings, and you saw what happened to my hair. I don’t know if that’s another side effect of that stupid thing over there. Or hearing that tough girl blond talk like she knows everything. And then the heartbreak of thinking you didn’t care anymore, and that hurt, oh my gosh you, you heard everything. You heard all of that. You did hear… like my being really mad and incoherent and meaner than I ever should be, right?"
Misaki confirmed that not only did she know about all the violent venting inside Yuka’s head, but because she was there, she eagerly agreed with it. She added that she was cheering her on the entire way to overcome all of that. This stole Yuka’s ability to say anything else coherent, as she just squeaked, blushed, and squeezed her hands in her lap. Despite all that twisting and swirling uncertainty of feeling and heart, the boldest question softly emerged from Yuka’s quivering lips as she looked up and over at Misaki with as much confidence as she could fashion together.
“… Will you marry me?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No quiet moment to think and reflect. No Franklin uncertainty rolling and contorting the possibilities into a myriad of shapes to consider and lose himself in. She nearly died. That clarity of self surely couldn’t last, but she was going to wield it as long as possible.
Yuka was the one mired in the entangled whethertos and whyfors of how they would actually accomplish this. She pointed out the variable time between their worlds. She was relatively young, but, from a universal perspective, they weren’t quite as distant as all that. Misaki held her chin and gently wrapped her in the kind of hug she so desperately wanted to share again when she couldn’t. They relaxed into one another as they released the episode on the screen from frozen time.
It slipped into a curious love story of its own with a woman from the past who enchanted the lady captain in ways unlike anyone else she had ever met. She was so deeply optimistic and curious, with bold, beautiful questions, prying too deeply into the time-traveling crew’s secrets. She had hope with the desire for peace, to help such a cold, cruel world. Misaki knew the version from her world, by reputation at least. The two of them should’ve had their lives together, but they were from such very distant worlds that there was no way for either to avoid what was fated, or else all would be lost. Yuka appreciated the quality of the writing on display but wasn’t quite in the mood for the downer sentiment. The later vacation planet antics hit a little better, for the both of them.
Despite their enjoyment of the show and the refreshing presence of each other, not too close but warmly nearby, the reality of this whirlwind day caught up to them to a desperate degree. The wristband was not only handled like hazardous materials with as many layers and gripping tools as possible, but it was also placed within a heavy box in the recessed closet, closed, and wrapped around something else as a final additional measure. Misaki truly didn’t feel any different with just her bionatural suit of anime girlhood, either as the only barrier against nightmare possibilities or a stumbling block against her own truth to share with the lady she loved.
They rested serenely, with the gray goo band hopefully sealed away. Misaki had dreamed before without the watcher at her wrist. She hoped, with quiet optimism, that this time her dreams would be fruitful, fair, and joyful for the future she felt so close to.
Unfortunately, a vague anxiety clung to her, like when she couldn’t sleep back home because of something she ate earlier or a general antsy feeling invading her being. This one drove her to tense action. Someone was still watching her; she was sure of it.
Someone she couldn’t quite reach, but she knew they were there. Misaki tensed around the woman she loved. She flared her teeth despite how ridiculous that gesture probably looked to anyone who might see it. Guard dog. She would be Yuka’s guard dog. Watch out for her and protect her so that she would never again feel heartbroken sadness. In her sleep, Yuka squeezed her softly, and her breathing slowed to the faintest flutter of snoring.
It would be okay. They were going to stop the company and whatever terrible things they’d done and planned to do. The murderer who broke Maharu’s family would be found and brought to justice. Their travels between the worlds would be resolved, and while they might be long-distance for a while, they would bridge the gap and share everything between that impossible span.
It was beautiful, and she couldn’t wait to make it real.