2025-09-13: It's Supposed To Hurt
- Cutscene: It's Supposed To Hurt
- Cast: Umie Akabane
- Where: Shibuya
- OOC Date: September 12, 2025
- IC Date: April 2nd-July 10, 2012
- Summary: How does someone work themselves towards opening up to possibility? Very slowly, it turns out, and when Umie realizes she might lose one of the new people she's become close to, she has to come to a decision. It may be slow, and it may be painful, but she wouldn't give these weeks up for anything.
1. April Fool's, One Day Late
The first night Umie spent in her new apartment was the hardest.
Her family had lived in an apartment before, when she was very young, but none of her memories featured the dampened sounds of people going about their lives, spaced sometimes only a wall apart. A chair screech here, a muffled TV commercial there.
And then, Umie herself, laying on her futon, eyelashes dully brushing against the fabric that she refuses to press away from her face, as she laid alone with her thoughts, surrounded by people.
Was she making a terrible mistake? Moving out on her 20th birthday, leaving a note behind about how her parents won't need to worry about their 'wayward daughter' anymore... it was childish, as desperate a plea for attention as it was when she made that terrible little lie nearly a decade ago. Her parents will never call, and even if they did, she wouldn't move back. She was the world's problem now, hanging herself from a tree in search of divine wisdom. Syuusei Honjou could take a hike with his manipulative, passive little attempts at upending her life; he can't ruin her life here.
Anger could only get her so far, though; tears came in afterwards. She called out for Mai-chan, but the girl didn't answer her pleas. The pillow became Umie's confidant instead, as she hugged and cried into it.
When the bleary buzz of late night TV went dead silent, and the sky went from overexposed black to green, the mundane world seemed to take a step back, holding in a breath that it failed to let out.
".... Even here..."
It was like finding an old friend had followed her here, casting its eerie verdant glow over everything. Umie smiled softly; if there was a bump of something lurking in the hallway outside, she considered it a small price to pay.
2. April Showers Bring
Umie's free Satomi Tadashi calendar would eventually contain evidence of her betrayal.
Part-time job after part-time job, run run run, routine, payment, soak in tub, collapse in bed. There were a few messages from her parents: arrangements, distant words spent as she came by her old house for supplies.
She was falling into a rut again.
"Yeah, Kamoshida totally confessed! A real creepo. Can you believe it?"
Umie didn't comment as she served the two slices of angel food sponge cake, each decorated with its own strawberry. The two schoolgirls at the table wore the distinctive uniforms of the school nearby, something like-- Ryujin? Shujin? Even schools like that have pretty shitty people, it seemed.
"Not too long after the calling card was made, too! Hehe, isn't it exciting?"
The smell of a late April shower was on the air, as more customers came in through the door of the cafe.
---
That night was also hard. The green light suffused the room, and instead of making her feel at home, it made Umie restless.
Shifting out of her futon, blonde hair spilled over a bare shoulder as she adjusted the strap on her tank top. The young woman stood up, fumbling with an errant desperation towards the keys in her purse before she had even reached for her windbreaker or shoes.
After slipping on her tennis shoes and sweatpants over her shorts, Umie walked out of her apartment into the coldly quiet hallway, leaving the cocoon of her apartment behind.
'Getting restless, aren't you?' Mai-chan's disembodied voice floated over Umie's shoulder.
"Need to think."
'About what?'
"I don't know. Just need to." She opened the door, and practically leapt onto the street, running down a street of coffins in the still air, the sound of her sneakers breaking the silence.
Huh, Umie thought. This was the first time she decided to explore the Dark Hour since coming to Shibuya.
Was that a good thing, or a bad thing?
3. May Flowers
Umie hadn't had to think about Syuusei in weeks-- that is, until Toki, her old senpai, mentioned him. "You ever think about just marrying the guy? I mean, he's not that bad a looker. Loaded, too. You know he's probably wild in bed. The restrained ones always are."
Umie looked at her plate: angel food sponge cake with whipped icing, decorated with a strawberry. (Em-ploy-ee dis-count, Umie sounded out to Toki, when they were deciding where to meet up.)
"I know, I know, I'm hearing you say, 'shut up Toki-chan', the guy's an asshole." Toki did that frown of hers as she leaned over the table slightly, fork dangling from her hand. "I'm just saying. You're just going around in circles here. I love the hair and the nails, but I was hoping you'd find some cute guy to hook up with here. I've even introduced you to a few!" Toki, unlike many in Umie's life, was one of the few that even knew a fourth of what Umie dealt with, including the mark on her arm. Even still, to Toki, it was a tattoo, not a mark of the supernatural.
"I'm not looking for a guy, Toki. I told you that already."
"Oh?" Toki grinned. "A girl, maybe?"
Umie gave a weary sigh. "Answer's still no. What am I going to do, show them my messy-ass apartment?" Or tell them how Mai-chan thinks I should totally get to first base on the first date? Umie wondered.
Or how Umie still thought back to that day, when she was fifteen, when that middle-aged man spilled out of the upright coffin she had opened, or how he clawed at her, crying, as black ichor began to leak from his eyes and mouth. Fifteen, fifteen. She hadn't even met Toki. She never told Toki, either. Toki didn't know about the supernatural. (That's the way it should be.)
"At least you have one!" Toki replied. (A apartment, Umie reminded herself. Not a coffin.) "The prices can get ridiculous! Why did you decide to move here anyway? Didn't your grandma live in Aomori? You should've gone that direction."
"Because." Umie pressed her fork into her sponge cake, lifting the soft fluff of it to her mouth. "Because..."
The word hung off her mouth. Why did she move here, again...?
'To get away from your parents, silly,' offered Mai-chan, helpfully.
'To get away from my parents' BS," Umie said, before popping a piece of sponge cake in her mouth.
"Okay!" Toki sipped her lemonade. "Then we'll talk about something I know you *will* be interested in." She grinned, swaying in her seat as she munched on the first bite of her cake. "You heard about the second calling card, righhhtt? Oh, oh, you're interested~~!"
Umie grimaced, a hand covering her face. "We're not in high school anymore, Toki, I'm not into that stuff anymore--" It was just a way for Toki to talk about that damn detective prince that went to their high school again.
And as it turned out, Umie was completely right.
-----
The smell of of a May storm sailed on the night breeze before the Dark Hour came.
'Ara~ going out again?' Mai-chan's voice was in her ear, like always.
".... I can't sleep otherwise."
'A normal, boring person would just take a bath, you know~'
"Not in water that looks like blood, they don't."
Mai-chan's reply sat on the edge of her silence, ready to puncture the air. It was a quirk of hers that made the hairs on Umie's back prickle, as she knew, whatever Mai-chan said next, it would be something that would stick with Umie, even if she tried to ignore it.
'You know your heart might as well be next, right?'
Umie's door keys jangled noisily onto the carpet as her right hand shook. Umie knelt down to grab them, but stayed there for a moment, clutching the metal against her fingers of her left hand until they felt as numb as her right did.
She couldn't even have this, could she? Any time she felt any little amount of joy or interest in something, it always came: the statement that there's something wrong, or missing, or that she was being stupid.
Standing up, Umie flung open the door and stormed out, slamming it closed behind her in an irrational, reckless gesture; sounds like that may as well be a siren to any shadows that lurked nearby. Besides, there was no way to 'separate' herself from Mai-chan; the girl had been there since that day when she was eleven, when she soothed a crying Umie after her first Dark Hour.
Mischievous, cute, always ready with a snappy remark. Sharp, observant, never held back with her comments.
Just like Umie...
.... became.
4. Life Might Change
"I don't even know what these people even look like, Mai-chan. Could be some rich old guy who just brings in a bunch of mediators, or something boring like that. You can't assume everyone's got what I have."
'.... Then why are you restless? Again?'
".... Have I been?"
'You've stopped crying at night, too. Ahhhhh, is your heart fluttering?'
"...." Umie sighed, tilting her body back in the swing until she hung up-side-down, gazing at the topsy-turvy view of the playground bathed in the green glow of the Dark Hour. "That's the heart valve replacements, Mai-chan."
'They'll come for you, eventually.'
"Stop saying that."
'Are you still going to go through with it?' As usual, Mai-chan moved to her next topic when the last one was exhausted, never letting it come to a proper conclusion.
"Yes. I'm tired of hiding." Umie planted her hands against the ground and used them to manipulate the swing's direction, scratching her palms as she twisted herself around. "There's other people like me out there. I feel them, even in Shibuya. If I don't connect with them now, I never will."
'Even if it gets the NWO's attention?'
"...." Umie stopped, her swing's momentum slowing to a gradual sway as she stared up at her sneakers, pointed flat against the green sky. "... I'll wear a mask. Badb will do the rest."
If she closed her eyes, Umie could imagine herself falling into the sky and disappearing.
A darker voice lay against her thoughts, a chaotic whisper that lacked distinction of gender or age:
'It's only a matter of time.'
".... I'm tired of waiting," Umie answered back, her eyelids falling half closed.
"I'm taking it all back. Just you watch, Mai-chan."
5. If You Make It Past Tomorrow
After what had been a myriad of developments, July had rolled in without Umie noticing.
'Ah... you haven't cried into your pillow like that for a long time, Umie-chan. Do you regret it? Any of it?'
What felt like fingers stroked through Umie's hair as she laid on her side, grasping onto her pillow. Her crying had already soaked through the pillow cover and into the cushion itself; she'd have to wash it in the laundromat soon.
"No," Umie groaned, smashing her face into the pillow. "... It's supposed to hurt." That's what she told Shinjiro, and now, she was on the other side of that lesson, as she faced down the real possibility that she'd be losing someone she was just becoming attached to. "I meant what I said to Sudou that first time we were in Kaneshiro's Palace. It may've come out of nowhere, but I've felt more alive than I have in a year. It's worth it, even now." Umie's throat squeaked from overuse; she had been saving all her tears for this pillow, out of fear that she'd let someone else see it.
'That's what I wanted to hear~'
"Mmn?" Umie sat up and immediately regretted it- the tension that precluded a headache made the room spin. She'll need to take some aspirin before the Dark Hour hit; it was never great to go looking for pill bottles in the dark.
'You know why you came here, right? Why I always push you?'
That silence came again, the one Umie dreaded so much, as she felt the sigh of air move across the back of her earlobe-- or was that just the sensation of her hair, shifting over it?
'... I love the way your heart beats when you struggle... the way you sound when you cry~' Did Umie imagine the sweet sweep of silk draping over her shoulders, when all she had on was her cotton tank top and shorts?
'That's why I don't want anyone to have it. Ever. My pretty little Umie-chan...'
The lights winked out like stars in the bruised brown black sky, green spilling in through the strands of Umie's hair.
'No matter what hurts it, your heart was, and will always be, all mine.'