@hikikohacker
continued from here
No one could be said to really like hospitals, but Serori considered herself to have more reason than most to find oppressive the walls painted in muted tones and the too-small chairs at bedside. The air was thick with a sterilized scent of death, almost washed out with chemicals and latex but never truly gone. If she could have her way, Serori would avoid setting foot inside a building like this for the rest of her life, but the universe had never seen fit to grant her wishes before, and why should today be any different?
One leg arced over the arm of her chair, she slouched to the side and pulled inwards the halves of her jacket, a broken zipper refusing to keep them locked together despite repeated attempts. It was easy to keep her mind on, trying to fit the crooked pieces together long enough to draw the zipper up near her collarbone. It kept her from thinking too much about the girl in the hospital bed, whose name she didn’t know, and who she didn’t have any identifying information for. Her phone was cracked, and it wasn’t like she had the pass code anyway. “Dammit,” she muttered, the rusted metal of the zipper cracking and falling to the floor as she attempted to yank it up.
Her attention was stolen as soon as the girl in the bed started to speak. “Crunched.” Serori had nothing resembling bedside manner, and in this particular situation, she’d just been the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a typical afternoon, with most people at work or school, leaving the lesser-known backstreets of Tokyo more-or-less quiet. A nice place for a student cutting class to take a walk and collect her thoughts.
Or, at least, it would have been, had she not spotted a car shoot through an intersection, strike a hesitant and nervous-looking girl, and then drive off without stopping. “You got hit by a car,” she explained bluntly, not quite sure how to break that news with tact. “You’re at the hospital.” No, Serori was no great fan of hospitals, but the alternative would have been leaving the girl alone, or worse, leaving her on the street altogether.
