Chapter Text
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“I wanna feel guilty (I wanna feel that it's wrong).”
- Pushing It Down and Praying, Lizzy McAlpine
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“Hey.”
Crimson red head of curls stands firmly in the doorway, her arms crossed and eyes narrowed gently. She seems to be surveying the area. Accessing how many patients are in the room and how many of them are still injured or bedridden. She sighs.
“Mr Ougai ordered ten minutes ago that if all injured units have been healed, then they must return to the front lines immediately. This is not up for debate.”
The girl, maybe a year or two older than Yosano, huffs. Her arms crossed over her chest and a piercing glare targeted towards the men that raise an eyebrow in question. Said men tense and pale under her gaze, before scrambling to stand upright off their beds and stumbling past her, out into the battlefield once more.
Yosano is intrigued. Because only Mori himself has that effect on people. Honestly though, this girl doesn’t look like much. And the thought of saying that to her face has Yosano snickering from her spot beside one of the many soldiers' beds where she carefully sows back together a ripped sleeve from a military uniform.
Just imagining the way the red-heads cheeks would probably flush in frustration, and that fan she is currently holding would probably come up to cover it in embarrassment. Before threatening Yosano’s entire bloodline.
“What are you laughing at?” As expected, Yosano is caught before she can think more deeply on the amusing subject. She turns her head towards the hot-headed girl, a smirk already forming on her face.
“Miss Kouyou, if I'm not mistaken?” Yosano hums, not bothering to wait for an answer. “Why is it that you are here again?”
Kouyou's eyes narrow further. The annoyance evident in her expression.
“I am your superior and you are not permitted to ask such questions.” Kouyou lifts her fan, using it to cover the lower half of her face. It's slightly intimidating, but the impact is lessened when she remembers that when Mori is pissed, his expression is ten times more terrifying.
“...Right. Sorry.” Yosano snorts. The apology is mostly half-hearted because she can't be bothered to actually put effort into paying attention to the new girl.
Kouyou's expression morphs from irritated to mildly pleased. She shuts her fan (in judgement, might Yosano add. which- how is that possible?) and turns, moving to leave the room. That is until Yosano decides to poke fun at her a little more. Because- hey, when is she going to get another chance to speak to someone who is actually her age while she’s in this war, right?
So Yosano stands and starts following Kouyou with a wide, cheeky grin on her face. To which Kouyou glares, and ultimately does nothing about it.
“So.. are you like some hot-shot around here or something? Famous or something?” Yosano, in turn, receives silence in response. And- in her humble opinion she believes this is incredibly rude. How dare this girl think herself so much better than Yosano, that she refuses to even grace her with a response? She’ll show her!
“You do know how conversations work, do you? Normally, you reply when someone asks you a question-”
“I genuinely couldn’t care less about what you have to say right now.” Kouyou scoffed, crossing her arms as they walked. Yosano just sticks her tongue out childishly.
“Yikes, what are you? Five? You answer as if you are a toddler. Never wanting to listen to anyone other than yourself-”
Kouyou abruptly spins on her heels, eyes narrowed down at Yosano. “I am twelve, you imbecile!”
Yosano was right. Kouyou’s face does go bright scarlet when she’s embarrassed. Or maybe that's just her anger showing up on her face? Either way, she looks like she’s about two seconds away from strangling her and Yosano isn’t planning on letting that happen. (It’s also been months since she’s had a good chase.)
So, like any eleven-year-old gremlin would do, she gasps, and exclaims:
“Mr Mori!” her hand shooting out to point over Kouyou’s shoulder. As soon as Kouyou’s head snaps in the direction that Yosano’s eyes were set upon, Yosano slaps a hand over Kouyou’s arm and screams “Tag! You're it, loser!” Before stumbling and shoving her way passed the red-head and across the hall without looking back.
It takes two seconds for Kouyou to process what just happened.
It takes her one second to imagine the dark-haired nurse being squashed in a hydraulic press.
And one more second to sprint after Yosano (Which is highly impressive knowing she’s wearing heels and an expensive looking kimono).
“If you do not get your insufferable ass back here you abominable fucking shit!”
Yosano was not aware that curse words could be arranged in such an order. Yosano learnt some impressive sentences that day.
And she doesn’t remember laughing as hard as she had since that day.
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Yosano, still, hasn’t gotten used to waking up in a room that isn’t her. The first of her senses that she comes back to is her hearing, the steady beeping of a heart rate monitor in the room she currently occupies.
So that can only mean that she’s in her office.
Did she pass out from lack of sleep again? She thought that she would remember from the last time that she should drink more coffee before pulling all nighters.
This line of thinking is promptly thrown out the window when the second sense she comes to is the aching, pulsating, throb around her neck.
Which is strange, because she doesn’t remember getting injured on a mission. Actually, she doesn’t even remember going on a mission. The initial numbness in her limbs fading away as she registers the feeling of the blanket over her and the mattress underneath her. Yosano soon realizes that she is in one of her patients' beds.
And she’s pretty sure that if some lemon wielding fucker (read: Kanji), or any idiot, really, had gotten close enough to be able to strangle her, she would remember how she kicked their ass afterwards.
So now the raven haired finds herself confused.
Because if she wasn’t on a mission, but she’s in her office, and she is somewhat injured…
…What even happened?
This brings her to the conclusion that she should probably find someone within the agency that does know what happened, despite how much she desires to remain sprawled out beneath these bedsheets.
So she squints her eyes open, pleased to find that there isn’t too much light seeping through the blinds in her office. If she had to estimate the current time, it’s probably early in the morning. The time that she’d usually already be up and at her desk, doing paperwork or maybe having a morning cup of tea with Kyouka if the day was slow.
Managing to slip off the mattress, Yosano steadies herself with the palm of her hand against the bedside counter.
If she hadn’t just woken up (and.. Is she on medication right now?), perhaps she would’ve noticed the glass of water waiting for her. She instead, accidentally knocked it over whilst stumbling to stand upright properly.
The shattering of glass is particularly loud in the silence of the agency. And vaguely, in the back of her mind, Yosano associates the object with the word ‘dramatic’
She is also faintly reminded of Dazai.
And.. someone else. She can't remember her that well though, having just woken up-
“Yosano!”
Suddenly, there are hands gently holding her upright, preventing her from stumbling onto the floor.
Glancing up, she recognizes Kunikida. His eyes narrowed in concern and eyebrows furrowed together. She smiles. Usually, their current position is switched. Yosano always taking care of the agency members. It seems now, she is the one being taken care of.
“...Ah, good morning Kunikida.”
“...Lay back down. You're injured." The older man attempts to get her to sit back down. After multiple tries, Yosano relents and listens, if only to understand what is going on. To figure out why her head is so heavy and why she feels so lethargic this morning.
“Why?” She shifts, sitting back down on the edge of the bed.
“What?”
“Why am I injured?” She huffs, eyes narrow at the blonde.
For a moment, Kunikida just stares at her. Looking utterly lost at where to even begin. His dumbfounded expression soon morphs into worry, and he kneels in front of her (while carefully avoiding shards of broken glass on the floor tiles).
“...You don’t- you don’t remember?”
“You think I would ask if I did?” The response (meant to lighten up the tense mood) is pointedly ignored as they notice another mop of blonde hair situate themself by the doorway. Kenji glances around the room, searching for something before his eyes land on the two of them.
“Is everything okay? It sounded like something broke in here.” The kid asks gently, stepping fully into view and no longer hidden behind the door.
Kunikida just sighs, gesturing beside them on the floor.
“Glass broke. Think you could clean it up, kid?”
“No problem! I’ll go get a broom.”
“Thanks.”
As the kid’s footsteps retreat, Yosano’s attention is shifted back to Kunikida, who is now pulling something out of his pocket. He places it on her lap. An opened envelope with ‘Doppo Kunikida’ written in cursive.
In her own hand writing.
“...What’s this?” She blinks, glancing up from the envelope.
“You wrote this.”
“...”
Looking down at the piece of paper, Yosano hesitates.
“You can open it. It’s okay.”
Slowly, the raven haired flips the already half torn letter flap open and retrieves the contents inside. She recognizes the card paper that she pulls out. It’s smooth on one side and faintly rough on the other. She keeps this brand of paper on the desk in her room. Looking down, memories flood back to her as she reads the first line.
Vaguely, she registers the drops of dried water on the paper.
At my funeral, there will be no flowers.
As I am not deserving of something as delicate as I could only dream to be.
One day I shall learn to not yearn for the unreachable.
Today, or any day after this,
this, a request that is to be long forgotten by the world,
In a crumpled, rapidly written suicide note.
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