Continued from here

The crazed beater took a sigh as he spoke. “Klein...I’m saying this as close to a friend as possible. Don’t make yourself look like a damn idiot again! The only thing you’ll be doing is adding to my list of things I can blackmail you with.”

「☆」▬♦

                                    ‘ Huh? Is that so--? ‘

              She’d  first   ask,   look of confusion coiling               upon her features as she listened to her friend. 

                                       ‘ I’ve been around-- Quite recently too, did                                        your friendlist not  tell  you  I was online? ‘

                     If so, then that was a pretty weird bug. 

Having been tackled to the ground, the Evil Kirito Clone made a peculiar gurgling sound in surprise, then turned its head back around to look at Klein.

“AzUrE AzUrE…”

My muse is hallucinating and thinks yours is someone who hurt her in the past. Send me ‘It’s just me!’ for my muse’s reaction.

The experimental new drug Doctor Izumi used yesterday to prepare Rika’s legs for the operation caused her such excruciating pain, she passed out the second the effects wore off.

She doesn’t wake up until mid-afternoon the next day. Coincidentally, that’s just when Klein - Ryoutarou, “Ryou” for short, here in the real world - comes for a visit.

The moment she opens her eyes, she can feel that something isn’t right. She can’t put her finger on it. It’s just…the atmosphere is off somehow… Blinking away sleep-induced blurriness, she sits up and looks around slowly. Everything looks the same. Nothing’s changed at all. She doesn’t get it…

But then, there’s a presence in the doorway.

Ryou’s standing there, smiling with a hand raised in greeting as he offers a quiet, consciously gentle “Hey.” She’s about to return them when she takes in the rest of him.

The color of his clothes, his hair, is the same as the blood yesterday that left her when the pain became too much, that had Charlotte so worried and Doctor izumi calling for more personnel to hold her down, that flowed from the corners of her mouth and dripped from her chin and flew when she choked—

The room starts to blur, Ryou included, and Rika swears it’s suddenly harder to breathe, to feel her heart beating. Colors and light and darkness blend together, the most prominent being that red, and she gets the distinct impression that this is the source of her uneasy feeling from before. She prays it’s just a side effect of the medication.

And yet, when everything reverts seconds later only to have him in place of Ryou, she doesn’t care what’s causing it. She’s already done.

Gasping breaths and a rapid heartbeat fill her ears, and tears she didn’t even realize were there start streaming down her face. She wastes no time in pushing herself back into the farthest corner of her bed, pulling her dead weight legs to her chest and wrapping her arms around them so tightly all four limbs whiten. She wants to pull her eyes away, but she can’t.

“P-” her breath dies in her throat, tears strangling the rest of the once-sacred name, “-Papa?!”

What the hell is he doing here?! Where are Uncle Ryou and Uncle Daisuke? Why the hell is he here now, when he never should have left her here all alone in the first place over four years ago?! How dare he show his face here after everything he’s done to her, everything he’s put her through - everything the three of them put her through?!

“Get out,” she commands shakily, hardly above a whisper. Righteous fury and hellfire fill her being in the next moment, however, and her eyes narrow to blazing-cold, hateful slits. The volume rises to full-on yelling. “Get out! You have no right to be here after what you’ve done! I—” she can’t stop her voice from breaking, “—I hate you!”

For the first time since he’s entered the room, she ducks her head and finally allows her shoulders to quake, clutching at her knees until they bleed and liquid diamonds shatter to pieces on top of them. She can only keep the surface tension intact for so long before the rest bubbles up and boils over.

“H-how…how could you?” she demands, sobbing, the cracks and shunts in her speech too many to count. “I was a little girl…a-and you left me here to die, damn it…!” Trembling hands move to clutch at her hair while she takes a moment to bury her face deeper in her knees. She is not a coward, not by any means - but in this one instance, she’ll let herself be weak. Because if there’s any person she’ll show that side of herself to besides Kazuto, if for drastically different reasons, it’s this man right here. When she looks up at him again, she’s vulnerable and broken in a way no one but her boyfriend has ever seen. “I loved you, a-all of you, more than anything else in the world! Did I…d-do I really mean…t-that little to you?! And if…if that’s true…w-why are you here now…?!”

As long as she lives, this wound will never heal.

“P-Papa, please…!”

She hates begging. She’s only ever begged three times in her life: once for her family, again for her friends, and the last back in SAO when she swore Kirito to secrecy about her condition. This time makes four.

Out of pure instinct, the startled Kirito instantaneously thrust his elbow back into Klein’s crotch, then spun around, ready for battle. When he saw the familiar fire-red hair and goofy face, Kirito let out an exasperated sigh.

“Klein, how many times have I told you not to sneak up on me?”

sinonthevirtualsniper

twinbladesurvivor

phoenix-blade-klein

glacixleyes

      Sugou just figured that there was no point in doing any work, especially

      with the amount of visitors that Asuna was receiving today. He sighed

      and just  took a book to read while he sat by her bed. He was just here

      in case Asuna's father came over to make it look more like he is the

      concerned fiance instead of his true motives. He heard the door open

      and saw it wasn't Asuna's father.