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A heart rate monitor beeps over the hum of machines, of the intake and exhale of air, of the television mounted to the wall playing some animated children's show. A high school-aged girl sat in the visitor’s chair, a small trash can below her slowly filling with peels of various fruits. Her knife glides gently, raising the skin of the apple from its flesh. She stops before she can completely sever the two, instead detailing the apple slice in the likeness of a rabbit.
The girl sets the slice on a plate and repeats the process with practiced ease. Locks of silver hair fall on either side of her down-cast face. She, herself, is quiet as if a single audible sound would shatter the tranquil, albeit heartwrenching scene and bring forth everything she was holding back. Once the entire plate was filled with a veritable herd of apple-bunnies, she sets the knife on the tray and moves it from her lap back onto its place perched on the overbed table. They’d go uneaten, Yui knew Nanako was barely strong enough to keep herself alive, she hadn’t woken up in two days but that didn’t stop her from visiting and leaving her gifts hoping, praying that her sister would be alright.
Hands now unoccupied, her gaze shifted down from the apples down to them. Hard, rough and calloused digits and palms stared back up at her. Yui stared dumbfounded, as if never realizing her hands were in such shape. They were so soft before, but now? Healed cuts, rough callouses and jagged scars dot her hands and more of her body than she would care to admit. She clenches one of her hands into a fist, but immediately the sensation flashes something in her mind.
Namatame, begging for his life, pleading his intentions, and she almost subjected him to the same fate Saki and the reporter suffered. Her friends, the level-headed ones, had to pry Yui off of him or she would have done it. Just what has this case done to her? Where did the Yui Narukami who got off that train in April go? And when did the Yui Narukami of now appear? She was so kind, murdering someone would have never crossed her mind, she had the empathy to understand people, to see the truths in Namatame’s ramblings.
Her hands cover her face, they feel slick and warm and smell of iron, yet she cries into them anyway. Quiet, almost imperceptible choked sobs leak out into the hospital room, real tears mixing with the blood Yui feels coats her hands. She just wanted it to stop, she wanted everything to end. For everything to be okay. She wanted to go back before, when her friends could trust her. She wanted Nanako to be safe.
Yet the Gods were cruel, and time marches on.