Momoko stared at them without even saying anything. The fact that she held silence only made the scene worse for them. It was as if they were thieves in the night caught in the act. Everything aimed directly at them.

Not certain where things were going, Seiji took a step back. “Now Momoko, this isn’t what it looks like.” He looked over at Saki for some support. “Hey, Saki! Back me up here!” Unfortunately, she was useless. Neither of them were good at handling Yuki’s older sister. She always had a huge protective streak even more so than Saki, if that could be believed.

Unfortunately, there was no hiding what they did. In fact, it actually looked worse than it was or perhaps it didn’t look as worse as it should. Seiji had to reconsider Yuki’s reality, the one that Momoko couldn’t know about. If she knew, none of them would make it out of their house alive. ‘Dammit Yuki, why’d you have to pass out? Only you would have gotten a yelling at…’

Chapter 288 – Family

Stepping backwards a little in progress, Fumiko stood in front of her house. The lights weren’t on. It was the late evening by the time they got through all of the trouble at the docks and back to their neighborhood.

She wasn’t sure what she expected from the house. Or even her parents for that matter. They didn’t come rushing out to see her. She didn’t even know if they knew she returned. ‘I didn’t exactly leave on the best terms. I just yelled at them before I left. Am I even welcome?’ Standing before her house, it almost seemed selfish of her. She expected nothing to be different. She just expected everything to return to how things were before. She could start her life back up.

That was how it should have been. Yuki’s quest was over. Her involvement in things ended. While she didn’t feel like she repaid him for saving her life in full, she did all she could for him. There was nothing left she could do. Her part in things was over.

A normal life was all she had to return to now. A home waited for her, maybe. It could have been that she demanded the home be waiting on her instead. It was a complicated feeling. ‘What do I do now? Everything just goes back to the way things were before? I return to being a student like nothing happened?’ She couldn’t move her body forward. Was such a notion even possible for her?

In the distance, a loud noise erupted, shattering the peace of the neighborhood. For Fumiko’s enhanced hearing, it almost sounded like it was near to her. She immediately flipped around. Magic circles spun out over her arm quickly with flames hovering off her hand. ‘An enemy?! Where?’ Sweat built up over her face in uncertainty. Her eyes darted around to locate where they hid.

Nothing.

The noise never came back. All she could hear was the wind. Her entire body had tightened up to the point it felt like she could snap at any moment. ‘Relax it’s nothing…’ Fumiko tried to calm herself down, but the anxiety already took over for her. She pressed her back up against the property wall before she fell down. Her body couldn’t stop shaking.

It took her forever to actually calm down. All her mind could do was race thinking about all of the possible ways the enemy could come at her. She didn’t feel safe even though she should have. It was her home. It wasn’t Atlantis. The threat was over. She didn’t have anything to fear from sneak attacks.

She didn’t know when it happened, but as she finally came down from her panic attack, she heard some familiar voices. They started out as distant, something she thought she had been hearing the entire time.

“Fumiko? Can you hear me, dear?”

“Fumiko!”

Fumiko stared a little confused for a moment. She saw them, but they looked out of focus to her. “Dad? Mom…”

They helped her up to her feet when they saw she could finally acknowledge them. Perhaps it could just return to normal. Maybe a happy ending was possible, even for someone like her.

* * *

The meeting for Yori and his sister wasn’t so dramatic. In fact, it didn’t even happen. When they opened the door to their house and announced their return, no one met them. She went around the house quickly to check to see if their mother was asleep. When she entered the kitchen, she found Yori. “She’s not here.”

Yori agreed with her quickly and produced a paper. It had her writing on it. “Seems that she’s already working tonight.” He pointed to the trash bin in the corner noting a few other papers looking very similar to the one he held.

They had been gone longer than planned. She stared at their mother’s handwriting for a minute. It might have only been a paper with ink, but she felt how important it was. The feelings from it bleed into her hand. “We’re finally home, Yori.”

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“It’s over now.”

She dropped the paper to the table. She approached her brother. Her hand wanted to reach out for him, but it still shook. It was something that became more manageable, but her mind still had trouble forgetting the nightmares. All she really had done was improve how to hide her feelings from him. It made her feel awful that she couldn’t even feel comfortable around him anymore. He was her brother and the most important person to her and yet she couldn’t even look at him without fear crawling down her neck.

Despite it, she had to keep appearances up. There was nothing he could do for her. In fact, all it would do was put distance between them.

“Thank you for putting up with my selfish requests.” She had never really actually apologized or thanked him for going along with Yuki despite the dangers. It was worse on him given what happened to him. Because of her insistence, he had been captured, even interrogated. He had to fight as a result of her. “I’m sorry, Yori.”

He dropped a hand on her head to ease her concerns. “You don’t have to Yumi. We both made choices. Everything worked out in the end.”

“You’re right…”

* * *

“Lady Chiharu, you’ve returned,” spoke Tamotsu, sliding the doors open to Chiharu’s room.

She had just popped out of the shadows and barely even set a foot into her room. Chiharu stared at the older man for a long time. Her mind went through numerous responses for him. However, she simply just walked forward. He made room for her as she came to the threshold.

Following behind her with still no response, Tamotsu tried to determine what happened to her. However, he wasn’t making any progress against her stonewall. It seemed her expression had improved in her time away. “You’ve been missing for a month, Lady Chiharu. What have you been doing? The men—“

Chiharu came to a stop. Her head tilted over her shoulder to look back at Tamotsu. “Are you so incompetent to not be able to handle the morale of the men in my absence, Tamotsu?” The look in her eyes suddenly became very demanding. She expected a lot from him.

‘She’s changed quite a bit in her disappearance, what happened to her?’ It was a little troublesome for him. He thought he had her under his control, but when he couldn’t stop her from leaving she left his grasp. It was nothing he couldn’t handle. “I am merely a single man. While I can keep the men together, you’re the Head. They look to you and a missing Head only invites disruption.”

Her eyes narrowed a little watching him longer. However, there was nothing to be found. All she could see was his loyalty and concern. He was useless. He just followed her and waited for her action. He did nothing on his own. “That’s why I’ve returned, Tamotsu.”

Chiharu threw open the doors to the main hall. The small numbers of what remained of her clan’s men loosely gathered about. They looked unmotivated and even lost. It annoyed her to no end to see how empty her men looked. “What the hell is wrong with all of you?!” she yelled, announcing her arrival in the most thunderous way possible.

The sound of her small, but barking voice was all they needed to jump up. A moment later, they all charged after their tiny leader, hardly acting the part of cold-blooded killers. Chiharu pushed them off her trying to get them under control, but they were impossible to deal with. They hadn’t seen her for so long. “Dammit! Are you all babies? Children!”

“Lady Chiharu!”

After she fought them all off and put them into their place, she had them lined up in front of her. ‘Though small we may be, the Higoshi won’t be able to stop us. It’s not about the numbers, but the individuals.’ Chiharu saw all of the fierce loyalty in her men’s eyes. They might have been pathetic, but they were her men and they looked to her. ‘This is mine to accept…’

Taking a step forward, she took up a strong position before them all. “Now that I’ve returned, I’m not going to be letting any of your slack off! The Higoshi Clan thinks that we’re weak and open for attack. We’ll show them how wrong they are! Starting today, you’re all getting my special training!” Chiharu bunched up her hands together in a familiar excited look she borrowed from someone else. “Prepare for hell!”

Tamotsu watched from her right flank. He saw the fire that Chiharu lit in all of the men. ‘She was nearly crushed by the weight of leadership before, what’s changed about her? This is going to be more troublesome than I expected. I may have to advance things sooner than I planned. The time for Chiharu Chinen to die might be sooner than I foresaw…’

* * *

“…and you show…Yuki…wrong with…”

All he could hear was yelling or more like lecturing. The volume was consistent, but never actually made it painful to hear. It just didn’t seem to stop. His head was still fuzzy that he couldn’t catch everything going on. However, he did recognize one thing. “Momo?”

It was enough to stop the endless battery from Momoko. “Yuki!” She immediately turned around to look at Yuki, laid out on the couch. Despite what seemed like never taking a break for a breath and she still managed to hear his soft voice. “Are you alright?”

He still tried to get his barring on everything. “Yeah, I think so…” His eyes turned about the room starting to recognize things. It was his house, the living room and across the table was Seiji and Saki. He got up with a little help from his sister. Though his body didn’t have any pain it still felt like he was fatigued like someone ran him on a treadmill for hours without even water. “I’m thirsty…”

“Right!” She immediately jumped up to her feet and bolted for the kitchen.

Yuki still tried to figure out what was going on. He could see his friends more clearly than before. They looked like they had been through hell and seen death itself in the face. “What’s the matter with you two? I don’t know what I look like, but I’d almost say you look worse than I feel.”

“You’re not far off,” answered Seiji.

Saki could only muster up a ‘yeah’ in a very halfhearted way.

It didn’t really make a lot of sense to him, but his little brothers didn’t really give him much opportunity to really understand them before they were all over him.

Momo returned with a glass she handed to Yuki. “Come on, you two!” She glared down at Jun and Ken grabbing them off Yuki. “Your brother’s very tired right now. I know you’re excited to see him again, but give him some space!”

“Yes, Momo…”

Amongst the chaos of reunions, the disciplined two tried to sneak out of the house. They wanted to avoid another hour of Momoko telling them everything that they did wrong. Neither knew how she had enough to say for so long without actually repeating herself, but she managed it still. However, she appeared behind the two of them as they slipped on their shoes. “Where are you two going?”

“Ah, didn’t want to get in the way now that Yuki’s awake,” Seiji quickly replied. He stared at Saki who tried to use her speed to leave with the door already wide open. He didn’t want to be abandoned to Momoko, she had more problems with him than Saki.

Momoko grabbed both of them by the neck. Either through fear or a real source of strength, neither could escape her. She leaned her head between them. “Thank you.” They stared at her in a little surprise not expecting to hear that from her. It wasn’t another lecture. “…for bring him back to us…”

Saki and Seiji both stared at Momoko needing a moment to take it all in. They could see that she was almost on the verge of tears. She was happy to have him and not any worse than he left. They could only smile a little with deep guilt sitting in their chests. While already individually agreed upon, they made a personal pact between them never to tell Momoko the truth.

It was the only thing that they could think to do. Cruel as it was to do, it would have been far more cruel to know the truth. It wasn’t the right answer, but it was the best answer.