The librarian’s sight was muddled by shock-derived tears. Even ten hours after she’d found the boy.
“He’s in safe condition,” they said.
“If you had been a minute late, he’d have bled out,” they said.
“The stab wound almost drove into the pre-existing, recently recovered bullet wound in his lower abdomen,” they said. She didn’t even know that this lovely boy who visited the library so often was suffering this much.
The doctors hadn’t asked her any questions, and for some reason, soon five hours after the boy was stabilized, two frantic boys showed up. One of them had strange pink hair. And remembering this, she almost let out a hysterical sob of laughter. But. she was in a hospital, and her behavior might lead the doctors to believe that she was unstable.
Jesus fuck , she never thought she’d use her knowledge for a situation outside of writing.
The letter she found was with a plane ticket. Whatever the hell this boy did, he should’ve gone with this “Eiji”- apparently Ash was the blonde youth’s name. And good fucking grief, the other boy was sappy as fuck .
She booked a second set of plane tickets, and then cracked her fingers before opening her laptop. Damn it to hell if she didn’t use her useless research skills for her current predicament.
With a slow exhale, she pulled up her Facebook account.
Eiji Okumura, or as the order of names in Japan. Okumura Eiji, was a pole vaulter. Well, ex-pole vaulter. She only found this after giving up looking through the social media platforms and resorted to a newspaper archive that didn’t seem completely legitimate. Then, she looked up the article with her bare, painstaking, Duolingo based Japanese and found two other articles about the boy, each with the same breathtaking picture of the boy flying over a tall bar.
The person who wrote the article was Sunichi Ibe, and he occasionally came to America to document street life.
The dots all connected in her head, but she shook it off. She’d always had an expressive imagination after all.
Ash was awake. And since he didn’t seem like he’d object, she’d taken the responsibility to call herself his mother’s cousin, when asked her relation to the boy. Apparently they’d had a great relationship based on their mutual interest in reading, and often went to the library to bond. This time, it seemed like her poor nephew was mugged, and before he could ask for help, he passed out in the front of the library, where they usually met.
The two boys that had shown up earlier seemed to be as eager to roll with her story, and really, the doctors couldn’t do much since they were volunteer doctors in a cheaply furnished hospital somewhere in the depths of the economically dominant collection of lecherous companies quadrant of the city. She only knew this place because she came here three weeks ago to get her broken finger fixed, and they asked her for a donation. When she shoved three tens and a Starbucks gift card into the donation box, the receptionist looked at her in awe and seemed like he was gonna burst into tears.
She did come by occasionally, since her apartment was on the other side of this quadrant.. if she could even be so benevolent to all it that.
When the boy woke up, it was with a loud exclamation of someone else’s name, which she easily recognized. And then, a surprisingly stupid, “Huh, hell sure does look homely.”
“Well, I sure hope so, considering I’ve spent three quarters of my remaining income on decorating my… house,” she said. “And bold of you to assume that you’re dead.”
The boy jolted and within seconds, had her at knife point- and she’d never thought about the dreadful ways someone could be killed by a butter knife until now.
“Who are you?” And his gaze flickered as he recognized her. “You’re from the.. library. What the hell,” and the knife clattered to the ground. “I was supposed to be dead, what the hell, what the fuck -”
“Sorry?” she said unconvincingly.
The boy saw her open laptop, and then the dramatic gasp as he recognized the face and name of the article.
“That’s-”
“Trust me, I know,” she said. “I did some research to figure out how you almost died, but all I found was this angelic boy who seems to be half in-love with you, so I did you the favor of finding out where he lives. The plane tickets are on the counter in the unicorn print folder, along with your passport that I got from your very nice friends and a work visa I received from someone looking for an overseas self-defense training assistant teacher.”
Okay, it sounded a lot less stalker-ish in her head.
“That’s…” he started. “Awfully convenient.”
A pause.
“Wait you said friends?”
And then, as if on cue, the door opens with a loud, “Hello, Ms. Fullen!”
And then, Ash gapes at Alex and Kong.
“I must be in hell,” Ash murmurs, making sure his seat belt is fastened. “I’m in a hell loop, that’s the only explanation. Have you ever watched Lucifer? I have. Only, like three episodes, and all the dead ones with guilt suffered a hell loop, where they lived their fears over, and over again.”
The plane started to move.
Ms. Fullen patted Ash’s head. He’d stopped flinching after she’d did it for the tenth time, a habit that’s been stuck to her ever since she’d had her cat, which had been put down seven months prior. “You’re very imaginative.”
The boys’ eyes widen as he notices someone.
“I-Ibe-san?”
Ah, this must be the journalist.
“Ash?” the man says. The is eyes widen even more. “Wait, don’t tell me-”
“Ah! Ash Fullen!” beams a woman. “I see you’ve come here safely!”
Ash shakes her offered hand.
“I’m Shunichi Shimiru, your work sponsor. My brother came to drive, as I’m absolutely terrible at driving myself,” she grins, and by god, a blush rose up Ms. Fullen’s cheeks. “And this lovely lady here is Claire Fullen?”
“Hello,” Claire stammers out in barely strung-together Japanese. Yeah, she was never going back to America.
It seems like months pass before Ash and Eiji meet, and more months until Claire realizes it. She notices a familiar face next to Ash’s and her heart feels like it’s about to drop out of her chest in excitement, because there’s the boy who’s Ash’s other half - and then they kiss before Okumura Eiji leaves the front lobby of the apartment. It all feels terribly anticlimactic, but happiness blooms inside her chest for the two.