Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Ebony and Ivory ❯ Slow Suicide ( Chapter 29 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Don't worry! No one commits suicide in this chapter!

Yuki is panicked to learn that what he thought was a dream about being sick and clinging to Kyo was in fact reality. Worst of all, he seems to remember calling Kyo by his old nickname, Kyo-nii. Will he have to start all over again?

Meanwhile, Kyo is at a loss for answers once again, and now he's more confused than ever. If Yuki had only been tricking him into thinking they were friends before, why did he act like they were friends again when he was least capable of pulling off a trick?

By the way, arigatou to all of my reviewers! I hope to keep hearing from you! :-D

Anime/Manga: Fruits Basket Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 07.23.2007 | Updated On: 10.12.2007 | Pages: 8 | Words: 5.4K | Visits: 2.0K | Status: Completed

A/N: Did I scare you with the title? Don't worry; neither Yuki nor Kyo is going to do anything desperate in this chapter. You'll see what I mean.

CHAPTER 29: Slow Suicide

Light slowly began to register on Yuki's closed eyes. His mind drifted. He vaguely remembered his lungs hurting, and then something else… something comforting… being held. He felt like he hadn't been touched in forever. Who had held him? Kyo… Kyo had been there. Thank the kamis that Kyo had been there. Kyo-nii… “You need to get better so we can spar again.” Yuki smiled a little. Just like Kyo. They hadn't sparred in a while, had they? Why was that?

Akito. Yuki's mind reeled, and he jerked in his sleep. Then he remembered, and wondered how he could have forgotten. We're not friends. It had all been a dream.

Yuki took in a deep breath. It hurt. His eyes blinked open. He was lying in bed. There was something in his nose. Yuki reached up to touch it. Oxygen? His heart beat a little faster. Did I have an attack? He remembered using his inhaler… clinging to Kyo's arm. But it couldn't have been Kyo… that part was a dream. But who was it? It had been extremely late. Hadn't he been hoisted onto someone's back? He had heard Kyo's voice…

“What happened?” he whispered aloud.

“Ah. You're awake.” Hatori? What was Hatori doing here? His face appeared above Yuki. “How do you feel?”

“I… my lungs hurt.” He paused. “Did I have an attack?”

“You don't remember? You had an extremely severe attack.” He paused. “Can you breathe all right now?”

“More or less.” Hatori removed the oxygen. Apparently, he knew how much Yuki hated it.

“You're very lucky,” Hatori said, putting the equipment away. “Kyo had been waiting up for you, and found you trying to get home.”

Kyo really was there? “Wait…” he said. “Did he…” Yuki blinked, feeling a surge of fear. What did I say? Did I really call him Kyo-nii? He couldn't ask. Please, please tell me I don't have to go through this again. Oh please… “He was… waiting up for me?”

“I think it was so Honda-kun would get some sleep, since she had waited up for you for the last few days beforehand.”

Did she? I forgot. “What's going on? Where is everyone now?”

“Shigure is downstairs. Kyo and Honda-kun are at school.”

“What? I need to go to school!”

“Relax. You can't go to school. I sent a note in with Kyo. You're much to sick to even leave this room, Yuki. And besides, I want to have a talk with you.”

Yuki felt a slight sense of dread. “Can it wait?”

“If you would prefer an audience.”

Better this way. “Okay, we can talk now.”

“Very well.” He sat down beside Yuki's bed, and his eyes became dark. “What the hell have you been doing to yourself, Yuki?”

Yuki blinked. Hatori, swearing? That was scary. “I'm fine.”

“Don't you dare lie to me.” Hatori's voice was like flint.

“I've been out a lot lately.”

“Everyone tells me you haven't been eating.”

“I… have…” Yuki paused. “A little. I haven't had much of an appetite these days.”

“You skip dinner.”

“Only sometimes.”

“Every day for the last week and a half is hardly sometimes.”

“But I eat afterwards.”

“They tell me you eat about the equivalent of about half an onigiri.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“I can see your ribs, Yuki. Do you know how pale you look? Or how dark the circles under your eyes are? You look emaciated.”

“I felt okay.”

“How long have you been having trouble breathing?”

“Just yesterday.”

“The truth, Yuki.”

Yuki sighed. “For the last week,” he whispered. “But I've been using my inhaler.”

“That's not going to help you if your body is too weak to take it in.”

Yuki glanced at one of his wrists. “Is that an IV?”

“You needed nutrition immediately. You should start eating again as soon as we finish this conversation.”

“But I'm not hungry.”

“Do I look like I care?” Hatori sighed. “Yuki, tell me the absolute truth. How much have you been eating every day?”

Yuki thought for a minute. “I usually… sometimes… get an onigiri for breakfast on my way out the door. And at school I get lunch.”

“Do you eat it?”

“Some of it.”

“How much?”

Yuki sighed. “Usually just a couple bites. It doesn't taste very good. And I'm never very hungry in the afternoon.”

“And for dinner?”

“I usually eat what Tohru sets out for me.”

“How much of it?”

Yuki frowned. “Not very much.”

“Ten percent?”

Yuki avoided Hatori's gaze. “Maybe a little less.”

“Have you been feeling weak lately?”

Yuki sighed. There was no point in trying to cover it up anymore. “I feel a little dizzy sometimes in PE.”

“I thought so. Kyo told me he thinks you almost fainted once.”

“What?”

“Kyo isn't stupid, Yuki.”

I didn't think he was paying attention. “I didn't, though. Faint, I mean.”

“Kyo also said you've been sitting in the shadows of your classroom.”

He noticed that too? “What does he care?”

“Why have you been doing that?”

“Because my teachers keep getting weird… they say I look especially pale.”

“Do you think you do?”

Yuki paused. “Maybe a little more than usual. But it's winter.”

“They say you've been isolating yourself.”

“Maybe a little.”

“Eating outside?”

“I like the cold.”

“That's probably why you got sick. Your body weight has gone down severely. That will make the cold affect you more strongly.”

“I like it.”

“Why?”

Yuki was silent for a minute, then decided the question was not rhetorical. “Because it makes me feel alive.”

“Otherwise you feel dead?”

Yuki shivered. “A little.”

“Are you depressed, Yuki?”

Yuki shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Kyo said you stopped being his friend.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Yuki closed his eyes. I'm too tired. “I don't know. I don't want to talk about it.”

“Do you realize that you've been putting yourself in danger, Yuki? And that by extension you're putting all of us in danger? What if you transformed during PE?”

“I've been sitting out.”

“Purposely fouling?”

Yuki's eyes widened. Kyo noticed that too? “Yes.”

“You know they're all worried about you. Especially Kyo, Honda-kun and Hatsuharu.”

Yuki sighed. Why is Kyo worried? “I don't care. Tell them I'm fine.”

“Yuki, you are most definitely not fine. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“Sometimes… when I get dressed in the morning.”

“In the dark?”

Yuki paused, surprised. He had. It must have been subconscious. “Yes.”

“Can you sit up?”

Yuki did so, with an effort. Hatori removed the mirror from the wall. “Unbutton your shirt.” Yuki did so. Hatori held the mirror in front of him. Yuki stared. He hadn't seen himself in the light like this. He could see his ribs, and his skin looked almost transparent. His cheeks were shallow, and his eyes looked somehow bigger. He had dark circles under them, and his face was as white as porcelain. His breath felt raspy, and his lungs hurt. Hatori lay him back down.

“What do you think?” Hatori asked, mildly sarcastic. Yuki made no reply. “Yuki, why are you doing this? What happened?”

Explanation… please come up with an explanation. Yuki felt a little dizzy. His mind wasn't working properly. I miss the piano. I miss Kyo. I miss Saito-sensei. I miss Kyo so badly, and I miss the piano too. It's so quiet. So, so quiet. And I can't even hear it in my head anymore. Kyo said I'm the rat, and I am. Who else could do all this to his best friend? Yuki tried to cry. He couldn't. “I hate myself,” he whispered at last.

“And so you're trying to kill yourself? Is this a slow form of suicide?”

Yuki sighed. Maybe it is. “I don't know.”

“Why do you hate yourself?”

What was Hatori doing, probing for symptoms of a mental disorder? Yuki smiled a little, bitterly. “Because I'm the rat.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>& gt;>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The question “Where's Yuki?” was on everyone's mind that day. Kyo had to explain to at least two dozen people, most of them fan girls, that Yuki had had an attack and was home sick. He assumed Tohru had had to tell just as many.

Haru was worried. “Bad enough to make him stay home? He hasn't had one that bad since he left the Main House.”

“Apparently he's been starving himself. I should have said something.” Kyo sighed. “He's been staying outside a lot too. That probably wasn't good for him.”

Haru shook his head. “If you'd said something, he just would have yelled at you.”

“Either that or completely ignored me. But I should have told Hatori or something.”

“Did you know it was this bad?”

“I should have.”

Haru shrugged. “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”

Kyo pressed his lips together. “Haru… if I hadn't been waiting up for him… he would have died.” He felt sick.

“You don't hate him, do you Kyo?”

Kyo shook his head. “It was weird…” He stopped. He still hadn't figured Yuki out. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“It's nothing.” Why did he call me Kyo-nii?

The solidarity at the lunch table that afternoon was evident. No one was saying anything yet. But they were all there. Kyo, Tohru, Haru, Momiji, Uotoni and Hanajima. And they were all worried. Even the Yankee.

“Hey, where's Yuki?” someone said, coming up. Kyo had to think for a moment before recognizing him as Manabe Kakeru, the student body vice president.

“He's sick,” everyone at the table said simultaneously.

Manabe paused, then sat down with them. “I know. He looked pale the other day. But he wouldn't say what was wrong. I told him to see a doctor.”

“He had an asthma attack,” Kyo said. “His worst in years. Hatori, our family doctor, says he'll probably be okay, though.”

“He's been acting weird lately,” Manabe said. “He hasn't even been yelling at me. And he normally always yells at me.”

“He's been isolating himself from everyone,” Haru replied. “He and Kyo used to be best friends, and now Kyo can't get anywhere near him without getting yelled at. Neither can I, and he and I were like brothers.”

“He never talks to anyone anymore,” Tohru said. “He seems almost afraid to be around people.”

“He always leaves right after student council,” Manabe said, frowning. “Like he can't wait to get away.”

“But you know,” Momiji said, “He was snapping at everyone at first. He… he called me stupid one time, because I asked him what was wrong.”

“Same here,” Haru said. “He said I was getting on his nerves. It kind of hurt.”

“He was saying stuff like that to you too?” asked Kyo, who had been listening in silence.

Manabe shrugged. “He told me that he thought maybe I'm not cut out to be the vice president.” Kyo's eyes widened. “He apologized later,” Manabe said. “But still…”

“He told me to mind my own business,” Tohru said. “He said he didn't need to be mothered.” She looked hurt. “He never apologized for that. Maybe he was right… that I was interfering.”

“He wasn't,” Kyo said firmly. He sighed. “So it's not just me, then?”

“Gosh, no,” Haru said. “That was before, though. Then he just started icing everyone.”

Manabe sighed. “Well, let me know when there's an update. I need to go sit with Machi. Tell Yuki she's worried too.”

“Take care,” Tohru said. They all watched him walk away, then went back to eating. Kyo was lost in thought. None of this made any sense. It wasn't just him. It was everyone. And yet… and yet last night Yuki had seemed so normal. Like before, when they had been friends. Before when he was tricking Kyo. How could he trick Kyo now? Things didn't work that way. You were less likely to be able to deceive someone when you were sick, not more. Because your guard was down, or something. Was it possible that it hadn't been a trick?

“Haru,” Kyo said quietly, “he did like me, right? He and I really were friends, right? For a little while?”

Haru hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Inseparable.”

“And… and he smiled and laughed when he was with me.” Especially with me.

“Yes. He really did like you, Kyo. He had liked you for a long time before that.”

“Did… do you remember us ever hugging?”

“I saw you hug him once, one day when he seemed depressed.”

“And he didn't seem repulsed.”

“Not at all.”

“So I'm not imagining it?” Kyo asked, his desperation evident in his voice. “He changed? It's not just me?”

Haru sighed, and shook his head. “I don't think it's you at all, Kyo. I think there's something wrong with him. A mystery, really. Maybe he had a nervous breakdown or something. Things like that… happen fairly frequently in our family. It happened to Akito, I think… and Rin. Something happens, and they just… snap. And they start pushing away everyone close to them and acting totally opposite of normal, and no one knows why `cause they don't explain.” He put his head in his hands, which were shaking slightly. “I really thought…” He stopped.

“But why would he have snapped?” Kyo asked. Not only Akito and Rin. So did my… He shuddered and looked up at Haru, who shrugged sadly. Why?! Yuki, you damn rat, why?

“I'm worried,” Tohru said softly. “I wish I knew what was going on.”

Kyo sighed. “So do I.”