(I added a "previously" section to the top, because it's just too troublesome to have to match up lines and...all that. And besides, I like it that way. You don't have to read it if you don't want to.

I don't own Fruits Basket. I think that's Funimations or someone's.

Anita is Werecat13's.

All other original characters are mine.

Italics are thoughts; a series of these ~ mark the beginning and end of the chapter.

Enjoy/go away)



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Previously:

Haruka Sohma fainted due to a breathing issue brought about by Kyo. She woke up as a ghost, but couldn’t really think much about it before Momiji came bearing news of a terrible something that happened that shouldn’t have happened to Haruka. After a speeding run, she found her house burned to the ground and heard that her family was in the hospital. She sprinted there through houses and streets and cars to the right hospital, where she met a sarcastic and critical Sohma ghost named Hiro. Hiro, after far too much argument, brought her to the room where her body was, where ten people were gathered, of which she only knew four by name. One of the girls that she didn’t recognize stammered to her that she couldn’t move the body.


Chapter 7-

Haruka froze with panic for what she so dearly wished was the last time that day. “Wh-what?” she managed to choke out.

“I, I-I, I did all I could,” the girl stuttered, near tears. “B-b-but nobody can get it to move.”

“D-does that mean…” Haruka was almost scared to say it. “D-d-does it mean th-that I can’t…”

Fortunately, she didn’t have to finish the sentence. “I-I don’t know,” the brunette girl whimpered, shaking her head. “I just know that, that it’s p-probably not very likely…”

“Hey, nobody said she was gonna die just because someone else couldn’t make her move,” Kyo pointed out loudly. “You’re not her, but maybe she’ll be able to use her body!”

Haruka’s breath caught. Her mind was working fast; it made sense that just because this girl couldn’t use Haruka’s body didn’t mean that Haruka couldn’t use it, but it also made sense that if the girl couldn’t use it, then Haruka couldn’t use it, and that would mean…would it mean that Haruka was dead? She almost didn’t want to try using her body again, out of fear that it wouldn’t work and she’d really be dead.

Hiro huffed. “Oh, stop being dramatic. It’s so annoying. Man, I hate people who just go on and on about how bad it could be, before they even realize that the worst-case scenario is usually about the least likely possibility. They don’t even realize that if they shut up and do it, then it probably won’t come out so bad.”

Haruka felt some hope spark up with these words. It couldn’t be that bad, could it? After all, what were the chances that she would actually not be alive again?

“Hey!” Hiro snapped at her. “Just go and do it!”

Haruka was ripped back to reality. The chances of living seemed much slimmer again.

Nonetheless, she would definitely be dead if she never went back to her body. She took a deep breath and walked over to the bed. She hovered over her still face, and let out the breath when she realized a fairly major problem. “Uh…how do I do this?”

Kyo nearly fell over. The girl next to him looked slightly less worried now since her expression was slightly watered-down with surprise. The young orange-haired girl didn’t really react. Hiro cringed and mumbled something under his breath about how pathetic that was. Yuki’s face almost took up a slight smile, perhaps relieved for something vaguely comedic after such a serious day. Everybody else in the room, though now particularly lively, was apparently alive enough to not hear anything.

“Well,” the girl next to Kyo began, “you just kind of…match your position…”

Haruka thought about this for a second. “You mean that I just have to, like, lay down in my body?”

“Pretty much,” the brunette answered, almost smiling faintly.

Haruka nodded intensely, but it still didn’t feel very comfortable. Everybody was looking at her, and it sounded a little too much like what some weird anime fan would write in her epic fan-fiction love story plus ghosts. Except that, if it was like that, then somehow some male ghost person would need to end up kissing her. If the author decided to be picky, then it would have to be Yuki for one reason or another.

She sighed and told herself, Oh, come on, it’s not that! Where on earth did that come from? It’s not true, anyway.

She sat on the bed. Just lie down and act like you’re going to sleep, she told herself. Maybe the only reason nobody else could use it was because they couldn’t match your way of lying down comfortably.

Haruka took another deep breath, readjusted herself so that she’d fall into her body, and lay down.

Her angle wasn’t right; her feet were hanging off the side of the bed. She shifted herself to fit her body.

The moment her physical head met her spirit’s, all of the day’s events seemed to be washed away with a tsunami-worthy tidal wave of drowsiness. She rolled over and fell asleep, too tired to even notice the sheets moving with her.

She never imagined sleep so deep as that one. She didn’t wake up until much, much later, and her first thought was something like, I fell asleep as a ghost? I guess that means that ghosts need sleep?

Haruka yawned widely and rolled over, excusing her previous thought with, Was that actually real? Oh, come on, since when could you see ghosts, let alone become one? I’m sure you’ll wake up and see that the alarm clock says I slept in because I forgot to set it again for the beginning of school, and then you’ll be running out the door with a piece of toast in your mouth, wearing your overly-washed school uniform…

Of course, she added, who said that it’s even time for school to start? You probably have the whole weekend ahead of you, and you don’t even need to open your eyes at any point in time today, or until you have to go to the bathroom or get really hungry or something.

She yawned again. Well, if I’m this tired, then it must be summer. I wouldn’t have been up late enough to be this tired if school was in…

She then deemed her current position uncomfortable and rolled over again. You see? If you were a ghost, then the sheets wouldn’t have moved with that! It didn’t happen!

Haruka took a deep breath, grateful for the extra day of sleep, when she realized that something smelled a bit differently. She opened her eyes to see what it was and saw that she was in a hospital bed, and that the smell came from a small vase with a few flowers of some sort in it.

She sat up. Or…maybe it did happen…

She looked around a bit more. To her other side, Anita was dozing off in the chair next to her. And what is she doing? she wondered. She’s always there. She’s following me like an overprotective…sister? She sat up a bit straighter and looked at the foot of the bed, where she saw an orange cat purring away quietly. Hospitals don’t allow pets, she pointed out to herself. It’s a ghost.

The whole thing reminded her of her Sister Dream. The thought occurred to her, probably not for the first time, that Anita was the sister from her dreams. She dismissed it. That was just a dream…even if… She glanced at her wrist, more so at the purple-and-white bracelet on it. That’s not evidence, she told herself. That’s a coincidence. They might rhyme, but they’re not the same thing.

She looked up and realized that most of the other people who were in the room when she was last awake were still there, mostly unconscious or close to it in various chairs. Saburo seemed to be almost dozing with Akemi’s head in his lap. A short ways away from them was the girl with the silver hair had the little girl curled up in her lap, and next to her was the other orange-haired girl in another chair. Nanami seemed to be deeply dozing next to Anita. Haruka couldn’t help feeling that someone else had left by now.

She yawned again. I guess being a ghost really drains you, she figured.

Haruka figured that, since nobody was really awake enough to talk to and they all looked so tired that they needed the rest, she’d be best off just going back to sleep for a while. She fell back, pulled the sheets up, rolled over, and stared at the flowers for a little while before she fell asleep again.

She fell into a dream. Yuki was in it, and he seemed really distant and blurry. He was trying to tell her something, and she was trying to figure out what he was saying.

Finally, his voice seemed to reach her ears, distant and faint, but she could figure out basically what he was saying.

“…you’d understand this, because…Hatori didn’t…explain last night…basically, you won’t…see us or…to us, except maybe…dreams, but not…long. You should…see us by the end of the week…think you heard that, so I…say it again…”

Haruka woke up at that. If her dream was real, she wouldn’t be able to see Yuki for a while, or any other ghosts, for…he said a week, right? She’d probably be pretty lonely in the mean—

“Haruka!” She looked to her left to see that Anita was awake now, and apparently rather grateful that she was awake. “You’re awake!” Haruka’s hypothesis was correct.

“So?” Haruka’s voice cracked. She thought about it for a moment, then realized that it shouldn’t surprise her; she hadn’t used it for…a while. “I was awake a little earlier…”

Anita smiled with tired relief. “I think the nurse said something like that. I was too tired to really notice.”

Akemi yawned squeakily, stretched a little, and rolled over…off of Saburo’s lap. She squawked as she hit the floor.

Saburo woke up, as did everyone else; the silver-haired woman and the orange-haired girl just jerked their heads up with a quiet gasping noise, but Nanami yelped and the little five-ish-year-old girl squeaked.

The silver-haired woman frowned slightly. “So, you’re finally awake,” she commented coldly. Somehow, Haruka had a feeling her abnormally cool voice was one of the warmer temperatures that she could get it to. “Can we go home now?”

“No,” Anita answered immediately, looked up at her from Akemi on the floor, who was now whining into Saburo’s shoulder. “I want to stay.”

The woman sighed. “Come on, you’ve been here over two nights, and you’ve barely slept over either of them. You should go home to get some sleep, if nothing else. You can come back again every morning if you really want, but you’re not staying overnight anymore.”

“No,” Anita repeated. “You can go home if you really want to, but I am going to stay with my”—she seemed to change her sentence at the last second—“family member.”

Haruka suddenly remembered her revelation from earlier. If she was about to say “sister”, then…

“You have to go to school sometime,” the woman persisted. “You know what Katsuo will do if you fail.”

Haruka fake-coughed, trying to point out that she was still there.

The woman looked at her harshly. “Yes, I know you’re here,” she snapped before she turned back to Anita. “And you can’t get off by saying that you wouldn’t go to school anyway. It’s probably true, but you know that Katsuo will make any excuse to keep you—” She just stopped and glared more. She never finished that sentence.

A crackling silence filled the air. Anita glared at the woman, and the woman kept glaring back. Finally, Anita sighed and turned to Haruka, forcing herself to smile. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t introduced you them everyone. That,” she began, nodding a glare at the silver-haired woman, “is Hitomi.”

“Charmed,” Hitomi said to Haruka icily. Haruka didn’t think that anyone would not be able to tell that she really didn’t mean it.

“Sohma?” Haruka asked, rather certain that she already knew the answer.

Hitomi laughed in a slightly insane manner; she seemed happy, but it was almost scary for some reason, like she was laughing at someone’s death or something. “Of course, my dear. I don’t think there’s a soul in this room that isn’t.”

Haruka nodded, pretending that Hitomi had said that like a normal person.

Anita went on. “Our little princess,” she gestured to the little girl, “is Cho.

Cho bowed her head slightly and blushed. “Um, hi,” she said in an understandably small voice.

Haruka smiled kindly at her.

Before Anita could continue, the other girl interrupted her. “I don’t need anyone else to introduce me,” she began tartly. “My na—”

The orange-haired girl was interrupted by a rhythmic knock on the door. Akemi answered, following the rhythm, “Who’s there?”

Anita sighed. “Akemi, you should know already. There’s only one person who would knock like that. And please don’t encourage him.”

“Yes, you should know who it is,” a male voice answered flamboyantly through the door. “It is I, the greatest seamstress known to Sohma House!”

“Don’t you have to be a girl to be a seamstress?” Anita asked herself quietly.

“Oh, well then, come on in!” Akemi told the visitor, apparently unaware of Anita’s comment.

Anita looked panicked. “No! No, don’t come in!” she called, but the doorknob was already turning.

There was a pause, and then the door flew open, and the visitor announced, “Why, hello, my dear, dear family!” Haruka saw him and saw that he was probably in his late twenties or maybe early thirties, with hair such a light brown that it might have been thought of as dark blonde instead, which fell all the way down his back to the point where he probably had to take care not to sit on it. He was posing grandly in his…well, it looked like an old-fashioned dress—as in female attire fit for the medieval ages. “I have been sent from the great Queen Katsuo I as a messenger to ask why the”—censored—“ing hell you all haven’t come home in two days!” The strangest part was how cheerful he was as he said this.

Akemi gasped. “Naoki! Cho’s in the room!”

Naoki(?) gasped, too. “Oh dear, I forgot all about that! Oh dear, Cho, please do pretend that you’ve never heard Uncle Naoki say that word!”

Cho tilted her head. “Which one, ”—censored—“ing or hell?”

Anita and Nanami looked horrified, while Saburo and most everyone else seemed more so annoyed at…well, probably Naoki. Naoki and Akemi, however, seemed entirely indifferent.

“Well, now that you mention it,” Naoki answered cheerfully, “forget both of them.”

Cho smiled and said, “Okay.”

Anita’s jaw dropped to the floor.

Haruka coughed, trying to bring the topic back to its beginning. “Were you saying something?”

“Huh? Oh, why yes, yes I was,” Naoki answered without missing a beat. “The great Queen Katsuo I would like to know—”

“Yes!” Anita interrupted. “We know!”

“—why the dirty-word-ing dirty-word you haven’t come home for two days!” Naoki ignored her and kept going.

“Oh, like she doesn’t know!” Anita erupted, standing up and taking on a fighting stance. “I mean, gee, it couldn’t possibly because she’s my—” She choked her word, and stood there with a look of panic at her own words on her face, with everybody looking at her with similar expressions. She looked around the room, let her fists fall, and growled, “I should have guessed. Setting me up like that.” She sighed, obviously trying very hard to control her anger, and almost managing to make herself look only incredibly irritated. Haruka admired her self-restraint.

Anita’s head snapped back up. “Just tell her that she already knows why I’m still here. And make sure she hasn’t forgotten that little deal that we mentioned earlier,” she added.

Naoki’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Well, I suppose that would be worthwhile. But you’re paying for my medical bills if she doesn’t like it.”

Anita sighed, now looking only mildly irritated. “That would be a very small price to pay,” she told him, “for the chance to be able to actually say it.”

Naoki grinned. “I don’t know, the company only anything for injuries I get on-set. You’d be entirely on your own, and I don’t think Katsuo would exactly help, either.”

“Nonetheless,” Anita went on, now most entirely relaxed in a rather tired way, “I’d give anything just to be able to say the word anywhere near her.”

Naoki’s smile was heartfelt. “I think most of us would. This secret is just so hard to keep…” He turned to Haruka. “I’m sorry, we’re talking about you like you’re not in the room. And I suppose I haven’t introduced myself. Well, maybe I have,” he added, looking up with his hand on his chin as though he was actually thinking. He snapped his attention back to Haruka. “No, I don’t think I did. Oh well, it never hurts to do a job twice to make sure it’s right!”

He turned on his heel and left the room.

A full minute of silence followed. Haruka could have sworn she heard a cricket chirp.

Like just before he entered before, the doorknob twisted, and the door came forward just enough that someone could push it open if they wanted to.

Haruka might have enjoyed the proceeding moment of silence more if she hadn’t been so confused and overwhelmed by his performance.

If Haruka had to guess, he kicked the door open. It most certainly opened very quickly, and he seemed to have needed his hand(s) free to throw confetti and sparkles.

He posed in the doorway, wearing what looked like a dress to be worn to a wedding. “Fear not, young lady!” he declared gallantly, “It is I, the great professional seamstress and minor-role actress, Naoki Sohma!” He made a noise with his lips that seemed to have been very much practiced, and sounded very much like a one-tone trumpet fanfare, especially for having been made without any kind of instrument.

Anita had her head in her hand. Nanami looked on in awe. Saburo rolled his eyes. Hitomi sighed, rolling her eyes. The orange-haired girl (whose name still hadn’t been mentioned) was leaning against the wall, her head tilted back and her eyes closed, probably exasperated. Cho stared on, wide-eyed and probably rather confused. Akemi broke out into applause, complete with whistling and calling, “Encore!” but stopped ten seconds later when she realized that nobody else agreed with her.

Silence. A tumbleweed would have rolled by in the hallway if they weren’t in a hospital.

More silence.

The rapid squeaking of a wheeled object being rolled by at high speeds, being carried along by many running footsteps and female voices yelling, “Don’t you die on me, Tohru!” “Your electric signals say that you’re too young to die!”

Seconds later, through the doorway, Haruka could see a stretcher being carted along the hallway at high speeds by a doctor of some sort, along with another few professionals trying to keep up with I.V.-type things, and a pair of women running along beside the stretcher with the nurses, yelling encouragement at a seemingly unconscious peer of theirs.

The hospital equivalent of a tumbleweed, in Haruka’s opinion.

More silence followed, until a nurse came by and said kindly, “Excuse me sir, but would you mind please not throwing sparkles in the hospital? Some patients have asthma, and things like that have been known to cause some breathing problems with them…”

Naoki turned to her and smiled charmingly. “Why, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize, and it absolutely had to be done. I will not do it again, I promise, and I am sincerely sorry that I had to do it here of all places.”

The nurse blushed and looked down. “Well, just don’t let me catch you doing it again,” she said in what she probably hoped was a strong and forceful voice, but really came out so weak that she immediately clutched her hand to her mouth and ran away.

Naoki sighed and turned back to the room. “Now, as I was saying…”

Silence.

Anita was looking through the doorway intently. Finally, after a nervous look at Haruka, she stood up slowly and went to the doorway.

Naoki noticed her approach and asked, his face serious again, “Oh, are you going home now?”

Anita shook her head. “No, there’s someone else here that I need to visit. I should be back soon.” She walked right past Naoki.

Haruka realized that her mouth was hanging open. She closed it.

Naoki looked at her directly now. “Well, I personally have no reason to stay, so I suppose I shall be going now.” He turned and left without a single word. Any doubts in Haruka’s mind that Naoki didn’t know her name vanished. He didn’t seem the type to skip out on asking her name just because the conversation was getting a little awkward.

Hitomi stood up, too. “Well, I guess if Anita went somewhere else, then I have no reason to stay, either, other than that I’m her ride.” She sighed. “Tell her to call me if she really actually needs a ride or something. She probably won’t. Cho, Yoko,” she added to the little girl and, presumably, the orange-haired girl, before she turned back to Haruka and added, “By the way, this is Yoko. We’re going,” she went on to the girls. “Same with you three,” she added to Saburo, Akemi, and Nanami.

The only protest from any of them was from Akemi. “Aw, can we at least come back later so I can give her a Get Better Soon card?”

Hitomi sighed. “Fine. If you have to. But later.”

Akemi looked pleased at this and stood up, brushed her skirt off, and practically skipped out the door, followed by Saburo and Nanami. Yoko was already out the door.

Cho stood there for a second, uncertain, before she went up to Haruka’s bedside and said into her ear, “Get better soon, Big Sis.” She turned and ran-skipped out the door.

As soon as Cho was out the door, Hitomi nodded curtly to Haruka and closed it.

Haruka sighed. She was completely alone. Every living human in the room was gone, and now she could get some peace and quiet.

Well, I’m glad that’s over, she began, mostly to her ghost friends. When she didn’t hear an answer she asked, Hey? Where are you guys?

Then she remembered her dream. Yuki was saying something like how she wouldn’t be able to hear or see them for a while. She’d be out of contact with the ghosts.

At that point, it sunk in. There would be no unknown family that she had only just met trying to talk to her about sisters and secrets. There would be no mother and father, coming to see if she was alive, because even if they would have normally, they were in the hospital now. There would be no Sohma ghosts to be heard yelling at each other, “Stupid cat,” “Damn rat!” “Stupid cat,” “Damn rat!” No ghosts to talk to about the family curse that she barely understood.

For the first time in a long time, the loneliness really sunk in, and Haruka was entirely alone.

She sighed. Well, I haven’t felt this in a while, she thought to herself. Then she grimaced. This is going to be a very long day...


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