Repayment

“I will make them all PAY for this!” Is what she said, however, she thankfully had a little more intelligence about her. Prioritizing their health over immediate revenge, she called for an ambulance. She might have been completely enraged with what she saw, but they still were more important to her.

Waiting though was the worst feeling for her. She paced around the hospital hall for a while. Even though she was dressed as a normal high school student, the look she gave them all left everyone off balance. They knew to keep their distance from her.

Miyako took a break from the endless wandering knowing it was about as useful as screaming her vengeful words into the empty hall. ‘Damn it…I know most of them can’t be at risk, but Takayuki…as he was when I found him…’ She looked up towards the end of the hall to the ICU. Takayuki had been in there long past the time some of the others finally woke up. ‘…if he dies…if he dies…’ It was difficult to finish the thought, just left to repeat for her.

The entire time she waited, she saw no doctors or even nurses exit. She didn’t plan to miss if any of them exited. No one else would tell her anything about Takayuki's condition. They were either too scared to speak or really didn’t seem to know anything. His life hung in their hands.

Afternoon long passed into night. She had forgotten about time. She never knew when it was when she finally saw someone come out of those seemingly stuck doors. The unfortunate woman didn’t know what was about to happen.

Upon her in an instant, Miyako cornered the woman before she could even make it half way down the hall. Whatever her destination, it had changed. “Tell me everything.”

“Huh?” the woman asked, looking like she wanted to crush her body into the wall to escape Miyako's dark gaze.

Slamming her hand up against the wall, Miyako had little patience for false ignorance. “Don’t give me that! I want answers!”

Scaring the woman till she nearly pissed herself was hardly a smart approach. All it managed to do was shut her down further. She couldn’t utter a word completely entrapped by fear.

Miyako rammed her fist into the wall only centimeters away from the woman. “If you don’t start talking, things will start becoming more unpleasant than they are now!” The intensity in her eyes increased trying to force speech from a mute.

As if a real mute, such things were impossible. Miyako got nothing out of her. The woman was just too terrified to respond. She likely had never seen anyone with such a look of wonton violence and even if she had, nothing stacked up. It was a natural human response.

Creaking hinges from the door alerted Miyako, finding two more exiting, a man and a woman. The second before she acted, they were discussing something between the two of them with a grave tone. None of it registered to her.

“What the hell is happening here?” the woman asked just moments before Miyako pinned both of them up against the wall.

A bit of clarity in Miyako realized that the woman had more of a spine than the man or the other woman. So she targeted her for questions. “I’ll be asking the questions! I want to know everything right now! How is he doing?”

Put off a bit by Miyako, but clearly not paralyzed, she managed to keep her wits about her. “Just like a child to threaten. You’re not family, we’ve got nothing to tell you even if you did bring him in.” The woman actually seemed to be doing it to spite Miyako more than anything from the look in her eyes.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work for Miyako. Swiping her leg out from under the man and dropping him painfully to the tiled ground, she pinned him under her shoe. “You dare to provoke me?” Miyako took both hands to the woman’s top. “You want to see how childish I can be?”

The woman surprisingly remained calm during the whole situation, despite being completely disadvantaged. “You think empty threats are going to change anything?”

“I make neither threats nor empty ones,” roared Miyako, tightening her hold on the woman.

Most would have considered it poor timing, but giving the situation it was actually perfect timing. Otherwise, Miyako would have delivered on her promise, she didn’t make threats. Another person stepped out, a middle-aged man completely confused by the situation of a teenage girl manhandling the hospital staff. “What’s going on here?”

“They jes keep comin’” Part of her speech started to slip as she lost more control of herself.

The man on the ground managed to pull himself out of his fear to answer. “She’s the girl that found all of those wounded boys. She’s demanding we tell her the condition of the teen in the ICU.”

“I can see that,” he remarked from understanding the scene better. Coughing partly out of need, he found himself the one playing peacemaking to prevent the need to treat anyone else. “While she might not be family…judging from her actions she seems to know them. It’s not my business why a girl like you knows a bunch on the wrong side of a gang war, but I can say the boy is still alive.”

“He is?” She lowered the woman and let up her grip, finally getting answers. “And he’ll stay alive?”

“It’s out of any of our hands now. We’ve done all we can, it’ll be up to him if he lives through the night.”

“What do you mean?” Miyako turned to face the man directly, as he seemed to have all the answers.

Getting a full view of her intense fury made the man choke back a little before he responded. “He has a punctured lung and stomach and severe blood loss. Had you found him any later and he would have died. He seems to have a strong will to live despite his injuries. If he makes it through the night, then it’s likely he’ll recover.

“Takayuki’s strong! He’ll live, that’s a promise!”

“The next few hours will be the most important.”

“Can I see him?”

“No, we’re still heavily monitoring him for any signs.” Poor timing reared its ugly head. A ringing came through the hall. All of them looked back at the doors questioning what might have happened. “Damn…” He turned around and ran through the doors followed up quickly by the rest of the staff.

The ringing seemed to drain Miyako. She just stared completely lost at what was happening. She didn’t feel it when more staff ran past her, alerted to the alarm. ‘…Takayuki…’

Chapter 304 – Repayment

Miyako didn’t know when she returned home. It was all just a blur. She never saw the doctors or nurses again. She wasn’t sure what she saw anymore. Everything just seemed numb. She didn’t care about school in the morning or even breakfast. She took a short whole loaf with her and just walked out.

Absent-mindedly, she carried through the streets with no direction. Her feet took her somewhere, but she wasn’t aware of it. Nor was she aware of the stares she got. It wasn’t her blank expression. Rather the fact that she still wore yesterday’s uniform soaked with blood. She had the look of unearthing herself out of a war zone. Most just kept a wide clearance of her path.

Bad luck continued, but delivered to someone else this time. By happenstance, Miyako blindly ran into four familiar faces. She didn’t know it at that moment, but would soon enough.

“The hell?” barked Jiro. While in a fight two days ago, they all looked in good shape.

Junichi stepped up as the wall to get into the face of the one that made the mistake of entering their path. “Watch where yer goin!”

“Hey, Junichi wait,” interrupted Shigeru. He poked out around the wide Junichi. “Isn’t this the girl that tried to start something with you and had to get her men to fight for her?”

“Huh? Oh yeah! It is her!” Junichi leaned in trying to get a reaction out of her, but she did nothing. He didn’t pick up on her condition, finding it to be insulting. “She starts a fight with us and then sends others to do her work. She’s got guts, especially after we dealt with her little weaklings.”

Yasuo stayed back, not too interested in the girl. It was more Junichi that had a beef with her and others already dealt with her men, the ones that actually did something. She was just a small fry, especially a girl. “Hey, wasn’t she supposed to be dealt with yesterday? Did the boys miss her?”

It took Jiro a moment, but he recalled what he had overheard. “I heard Masuzoe’s group was taken out.”

“Before they got to her? What gang made that mistake?”

“I don’t know, just what I heard. But since it seems she never received what she was owed for trying to stop us, we’ve got the chance now. Luck is on our side, I wanted to wipe that smug look off her face the moment I saw her.”

“Bad luck, girlie,” echoed Junichi, in agreement. He grabbed her by the collar of her uniform’s jacket. Dragged off the street, no one seemed to notice or wanted to notice.

Once out of sight, they threw her up against the wall of a nearby building. It was an empty alley only used for pick-ups, but no one was around. So it was a perfect place to teach her who had the right and who was in the wrong.

Yasuo leaned up against the building watching the alley. He had the least amount of interest in beating up a defenseless girl. “Orders are orders and she crossed us, but there’s nothing fun in teaching a defenseless girl.”

“They’re the boss’ orders,” Jiro reminded Yasuo, “You follow his orders or you receive punishment. It’s the way things work.”

“Which is why I’m watching the alley while you take care of the order. I know what happens to those that are punished.”

Eager to start the teaching, Junichi cracked his knuckles. “Then I get the first lesson.” Without any warning, he wound up a punch and smashed Miyako’s face into the building’s brick. Blood quickly started to paint the wall.

“Just remember, lessons are only remembered when still alive.”

“I know, Jiro! I won’t kill her!”

“I only say that because you hit like a train and this is just a girl. She’s not going to take the same sort of beating as her boys did.”

“I know, I know! But I’m still making her remember not to stop me from a lesson!”

“Fine, teacher.” Jiro picked Miyako back up after the second punch from Junichi left her face down in the trash. He picked off the soaked bag stuck to her face to give Junichi a clean shot.

Blood dripped from cuts along her cheek, lips and nose. Yet Miyako’s eyes still seemed completely out of it. She felt none of the punches. She didn’t know what was happening to her. The whole world completely disappeared to her. All she could hear was the repeat of the night before.

None of the staff came out of the hospital hall from what she remembered. They just kept running in. A lot of them. She had lost count. They could have been cramming them all in until there was not even air for room for all she knew. They just seemed to have an endless supply.

The ringing never stopped.

She couldn’t stop it.

It was deafening still.

Deafening.

A loud ring suddenly completely overshadowed the noise. It was completely different from the one that blasted her mind for more than half a day. It was familiar. She knew it. It drowned out the other sound. Suddenly, she realized what she was doing. She was wasting her time.

Her eyes opened for real and saw the punch coming in with enough time to dodge it. Junichi’s fist painfully cracked up against the brick. Miyako blinked trying to figure out what was going on. But the ringing came back, the ring of her cell phone. “A call?” She completely ignored the current situation.

Digging out her phone from her skirt pocket, she didn’t know the number, yet its name came up as the hospital. “Takayuki!” She immediately answered the phone without another thought. “Yes?”

“Is this Miyako Ibuka? The girl that brought in those boys yesterday.”

“Yes. What is it?” An uncomfortable feeling started to surge up in her body. It was fear. The fear that she knew what the call was about. Her mind immediately went for the worst possible outcome rather than the hopeful one. It was hard not to think that way.

“It’s about boy named Takayuki Kano. I’m sorry to inform you that he has passed away.”

“…I see…” Miyako’s hand dropped to her side. The voice on the phone tried to reach her, but failed. Miyako stopped listening. ‘Dead…dead…dead…DEAD!’

“Done with your phone call?” Jiro interjected, stepping in for a recovering Junichi.

Miyako, unfortunately for them, was still awake rather than falling back into the void. She saw all of them. “You…YOU!” her voice roared as her body came alive completely ignoring whatever injuries she sustained from Junichi. She seemed completely healthy the way she moved. “You won’t be enough! But it is a good place to start! You’ll regret this war!”