Skeletons In My Closet [closed]

Don't throw up. Don't throw up. Don't throw up. Words circled feverishly within her mind as she huddled in the questionable safety of the restaurant bathroom stall.

The room spun, walls twisting, ceiling threatening to come crashing down as the floor bucked and heaved beneath her feet. All in her mind. It was all in her mind. It wasn't real. The building wasn't going to implode, the people all around her weren't going to suddenly crumble and turn to ash and dust. There weren't explosions rocking the ground, flames and smoke filling the air.

People weren't screaming.

Weren't dying.

Weren't being eaten alive by things they couldn't fucking see.

Azami stood outside the bathroom stall with lips pressed into a thin line in her still lovely face. She'd followed the girl into the bathroom shortly after her ashen faced, terrified babbling something along the lines of 'I'll return shortly, please excuse my hasty departure and disrespect at this time'. It wasn't the first sobbing retch from the girl's stall that had let her know it wasn't just her daughter trying to escape the omiai discussion she'd broached for the umpteenth time in four years.

It was the quietly mumbled apologies, the stern self-beration of her weakness and failure to adjust and reminders that 'it' wasn't happening 'again' that told the business woman practically everything that she hadn't known before.

The toilet flushed, masking the sound of whatever the girl was planning to do to clean herself up within the stall proper as the latch slid free from the locked position with a sound that echoed.

Metal door swinging open, Sekai found herself face to face, frozen in place, with the stern expression of her mother. Her face heated with shame on the spot, brown eyes immediately dropping to the tiled floor for lack of anywhere appropriate to go.

Silence stretched between them.

Azami checked her watch with a frown at the time listed. Still far before the time she'd had considered ending their current meeting to attend another business matter... but perhaps... just this once, she'd let her off a little early. "Too soon to return, is it?" There was nothing resembling sympathy or pity in the black haired woman's voice. Her brown eyes pinned the shorter woman in place, watched the way the girl's hands fought to resist clenching into fists or wrinkling the expensive garment she'd insisted she wear to look somewhat presentable.

More silence, a small, subtle and miserable shake of one snowy head.

Her mouth tightened further. On one hand, the girl had managed to inherit some sort of strong will, and that meant she'd survive. She'd hate life for a goodly amount of time until she pulled herself out of it, but she'd survive because she had gotten that from her mother. One of the few things Azami had ever considered an admirable trait in the otherwise spineless child she'd managed to give birth to. "I asked you a question. You will answer me." Sharp, unyielding words slapped the girl better than an open palm across the face would have.

Light brown eyes in a flushed face slowly jerked themselves up to meet hers for a brief moment. She nodded once, reluctantly with shoulders slumping from their stiff posture. "I... yes. I suppose so." It hurt to admit. It hurt a lot, knowing that she couldn't even handle something as normal as having lunch in her native Ueno with her mother.

--

Replaying the conversation, the events leading up to her mother's dismissal wasn't doing her heart and mind any favors, she knew it, and she couldn't help but try and pick apart where she'd gone wrong and what she might have done differently somehow. Maybe... maybe she could have excused herself, claimed that it was food poisoning or that she'd developed a food allergy previously unknown. That happened all the time, after all, one moment she could eat something just fine and the next she'd have symptoms and things that would badly effect her and make her nauseous.

It wouldn't have worked.

Her mother had always been the sharpest one in the family, and how the woman had never developed spiritual abilities was beyond Sekai's understanding. There wasn't another better suited for the kind of delicate power plays that the spiritual world seemed ever so fond of. She would have tried to take over something eventually, or found a way to get some sort of power leverage even in the other worlds. Azami had always been ambitious that way, after all, and nothing she'd done had ever installed any sense of cutthroat ambition into her only child either.

She was, and always had been, quite the disappointment.

Her face smashed directly into something that didn't feel pleasant, something warm and firm that stung as her nose smashed into something light colored with enough force to make her eyes water. "...!!" Wordless in nature, the muffled yelp was enough to signal she'd gotten herself pretty good with the impact. She hastily scooted back a little, rubbing at her nose and trying to figure out if the damn thing was about to start bleeding and really just put the icing on the disappointment cake that her life had become.

Great, not only could she not handle being in a city for an extended length of time- one that was still too close to Karakura's ruins for her to be comfortable, she could sense the grounds from where she stood there in Tokyo- or handle a quaint restaurant with her mother, but she couldn't even traverse the streets with any sort of grace and invisibility.

And had probably just ruined someone else's day.

It was the flutter of light green that caught her eye, breath frozen in her throat as muscles locked up. No.

No no no no no no.

No.

Not again.

They had just left one another alone and after all of- no. Just. no.

She wasn't ready for another encounter with Nazomi.

"Why, Nazo-" Heart beating painfully against her ribs and breast, she forced her gaze upward, forced herself to brace for the absolute worst even as the question, the stammered apology in a voice that distinctly wasn't that man's came through loud and clear.

Tears stung her eyes as her knees gave out from under her and dumped her gracelessly upon the concrete sidewalk. Relief hurt more than any abrasions from the impact against the unyielding concrete might have. "Thank goodness," the white haired girl murmured, sitting as she was in a pool of dark green skirts and long sleeved white blouse with matching green coat. One hand was over her eyes, hiding some of her relief from view, shielding the sight of teary eyes from inquisitive and hastily averted gazes. "I am truly, deeply very sorry for causing you so much trouble, please excuse my discourtesy and disrespect."

Perhaps she could count this as the third bad thing to happen that day and could go home without worrying about what else she could possibly screw up.

--

Word Count: 1174
GP Earned: 23