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Chapter 16

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Author: Kintora

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A/N: My… I haven’t updated this in a while. ‘Round, and ‘round, and ‘round she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows. That’s how I’ve been feeling for the past couple of months. That’s right – I feel like used toilet paper being flushed down the toilet. It’s not fun when you don’t know where you’ll end up.

Anyway, the good thing is that I have updated this for you guys. Enjoy the chapter!

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(Previously)

“So why don’t I be your boyfriend?”

The wind lifted the fallen leaves from the ground, as the dry yellow grass provided a gentle rustling in the background. A few second passed as Kairi continued to stare in disbelief at Sora.

Sora felt his resolve wither again and tried to reword his suggestion, “It’s not like you have to or anything. But maybe we could just pretend to go out. I don’t know, I just thought it’d be safer for you if your… if the Burns’ thought we were more than just friends or something…” He looked pained, as if he would be slapped for suggesting something so ridiculous.

Kairi tapped Sora on the arm, trying to get his attention again. He finally looked back at her, reading her lips as she spoke with a nervous smile. ‘You sure you want to?’

“I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t thought about it,” he said, mildly annoyed.

She held her hands up and placated him, ‘I’m the school reject, and now you want to date me? Wouldn’t that look bad for you?’

Sora crossed his arms, looking away from her, “I don’t really care about that right now. I just want to know if you’re up for the offer or –”

Kairi didn’t know what came over her, but at that moment, she had felt that it was a good idea, pressing her soft lips against his cheek. It felt nice… right, kissing his face like that.

He actually cared enough for her to ask such a thing. Somehow, the warm glow of confidence in her shined brighter than ever before. If Sora could be with her, if she could have another friend to count on – that was all she really wanted and could ever ask for. Suddenly remembering that her hands were fisted into the front of his dark fleece shirt, she let go.

But Sora stopped her, placing his hands over hers before moving them behind her back, bringing her closer to him. Resting her face against his warm chest, Kairi let him hug her. Her did not hug her so tightly to the point that she would suffocate, but he hugged her tight enough to take her breath away. She didn’t care just then who’d see them like that. She just felt safer, more content as the fear was chased away from her insides – for the moment.

That was all that mattered.

“So you’re okay with it?” he asked once more.

She nodded against him and squeezed his lean waist again, trying to make sure that the moment was real, and that she wasn’t dreaming. She would forget, very briefly, of the nightmare that lived beyond the door before them. Closing her eyes, Kairi sighed silently. What a crazy day.

But it wouldn’t hurt for it to last a little longer… right?

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Kairi didn’t want to let go, but she had to. This would be the moment of truth. If her stepparents were really inside waiting for her, what would they say? More importantly, what would they do? She knew that they would be under constant surveillance one way or another, but Kairi couldn’t help but be nervous.

“Kairi,” Sora stopped her a second, “I almost forgot. I talked to my mom about this, and she said it might help you.” Reaching into his blue messenger bag, Sora took out a narrow, dark object and slipped it into her hand.

Kairi opened her palm to stare at the little electronic device.

‘A digital recorder?’ Kairi asked silently.

Sora nodded, “Just in case you have trouble proving anything they say or do to you, you can use whatever it records as incriminating evidence.”

‘I thought that kind of evidence can’t be used in court. Don’t my stepparents need to know they are being recorded in order for the evidence to be viable?’ Kairi felt worried.

“It depends on what they may say or do,” Sora explained, “Anyway, that will be for the law to decide. Just keep it on you at all times, okay? Here’s how you work it.” He pressed the red recording button, “You just press the button next to it to stop recording.”

Kairi bit her lip, but put the recorder into her back pocket for safe-keeping. Looking at Sora again, Kairi gave him a quick smile before turning to the door and shoving her old house key into the lock. There was the familiar, but cold clicking sound as the door unlocked. Silently counting to ten in her head, Kairi waved goodbye to her friends and brushed her way past the doorframe and into the chilly house.

Nobody seemed to be home. Her eyes darted around before she deemed it safe to dash toward the closest window to watch her friends behind the glass. Yuna and Tidus caught her eyes and waved at her from beyond the fence. Sora had been walking down the small walkway when he too turned around to look at her.

To her brief surprise, Kairi saw him smile at her before turning back towards Yuna and Tidus.

Once they were out of sight, Kairi looked down at her feet, letting the pale drapes fall again. The fear of being alone threatened to make her run outside again, but remembering that she wasn’t truly alone helped her straighten up and renew her resolve. She would not let the fear rule her and drive her over the edge again. If she did, there would be no Sora pulling her back. Shaking her head, she made her way to the stairs.

Upon reaching her bedroom and opening the closed door, Kairi almost had a heart attack.

There, sitting on the edge of her bed was her stepmother – unkempt hair, pursed lips, frown lines, and all. She immediately turned her attention to Kairi once she opened the door, and the poor girl couldn’t help but feel a cold wave of fear break over her. It took everything she had in her not to bolt right out of the room. Steeling herself, Kairi reminded herself that as long as she was careful, neither of her stepparents could hurt her. Besides, the police were watching, right?

They were. They had to be.

“Wipe that look off your face,” her stepmother snapped coldly, though her voice sounded more tired than anything else, “I’m not here to hit you.”

Kairi gulped silently as she nodded. The stiffness in her neck made her nod seem jerky.

“You know exactly why we took you in,” Cara spoke curtly, cutting to the chase, “We needed the money. You needed a home. But did you ever wonder why the Lescas couldn’t adopt you the first time around?”

If Kairi wasn’t already dumb to begin with, she would have been struck dumb just then.

“We never told you this. We never felt the need to. But you are my sister’s daughter.” The frizzle-haired woman smiled thinly, “My precious, gorgeous sister was ever the happy one. Mother and father adored her. They gave her everything she wanted! She even found herself a wonderful husband, becoming the wife of a rich Japanese doctor. He was handsome. Smart. And then she had you. She had always wanted a daughter. Everything was just picture perfect for her.”

Kairi stared wide-eyed at her stepmother; no, her biological aunt. She was still having trouble processing it. But things were beginning to make sense. She remembered that Yuna had once told her how Braska and Aore had tried to adopt her before… the keyword being ‘tried.’

“I see you’re finally getting it,” Cara sneered, her nose wrinkling. Despite her nasty voice, Kairi could tell when someone was holding back angry tears.

“She had it all! It was all so disgustingly beautiful. On the other hand, I was always the one left behind – completely overshadowed by her. She did everything so well, so effortlessly. I had to work so hard I almost killed myself, just to get half of the same praises she got. She was beautiful. I was plain. She found a great husband. I found a rotten bastard.”

Cara’s eyes really did water now, and Kairi didn’t know what to feel as she stood rooted at the door. Why was this all just coming out now?

“But I… I had a daughter,” Cara swallowed and continued hoarsely, “My baby girl. My little angel… For two years, I thought I was completely happy because at least, I had her. But she grew sick. I watched the light slip from her eyes as she laid in her hospital bed like some a baby doll. On the same day of her death, you were born in another hospital.” Cara’s voice grew steadily angrier again, “You, my sister’s perfect, little half-breed daughter. YOU lived, while my little girl died.”

Kairi felt a lump grown in her throat as she squeezed the book bag strap in her hands.

“It was like you took her life. As if fate traded her life for yours,” Cara hissed, rising from the bed.

Kairi jolted suddenly as if trying to wake up from a very bad dream. Her muscles coiled tightly, ready to spring for an exit if her deathly, angry aunt decided to lunge.

“So you see now, it was only a matter of time,” Cara smiled mirthlessly as she shook. Angry tears welled in her bloodshot eyes and fell down her face, “It wasn’t hard to tamper with cars. Read some manuals, ask some questions, and learn some things. The brakes in your parents’ car became disabled at the perfect moment. I had been hoping that all three of you would die. But you… You survived.”

Numbly, Kairi swayed slightly where she stood. All thoughts of fleeing left her head. All she could feel was the tingling of blood rushing into all the tiny blood vessels in her hands, fingers, feet, and toes. Some kind of emotion she could not bottle threatened to burst forth from the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t figure out what it was, nor did she care to.

“Imagine my surprise when I discovered this. At first, I was infuriated that you cheated death. But, you know how the adoption process goes. The closest relative with suitable accommodations gets first dibs on the orphan. It only added to my revenge that I would get your parents’ money as well as their lives. In return, I had to keep you. So what did I do? If I couldn’t make you go to hell, I made your life your personal hell.”

Cara Burns started for Kairi, making Kairi back up until she was completely out of the way. The taller woman gave her one final glare, as if debating whether she should hurt her or not, before walking briskly by Kairi without another word. Kairi watched her go, the air around Cara looking as if it were being warped and bleached at the edges.

Then again, Kairi couldn’t tell if it was only her eyes playing tricks on her. She could feel her blood pulsing to her head with every beat of her heart. With each pulse, her vision would beat and shake a little, as if her eyes had hearts of their own.

That was how… angry she was. Perhaps, there wasn’t even a word to describe the rage she felt. She stood, waiting to calm down, and debating on what to do. But mostly, Kairi just wanted to disappear all over again. Minutes, maybe hours went by, but upon realizing that the floor was not going to swallow her up, she willed her feet to move.

Silently, Kairi let herself into her room again and shut the door, locking it. Dropping her bag on the ground, Kairi fell back heavily against her stiff, spring-less mattress. She stared at the pale ceiling and willed herself to calm down. But try as she would, she couldn’t get comfortable for something kept poking her from behind.

Reaching under her, Kairi pulled out the black digital recorder and stared at it. She wanted to throw something. And if she didn’t see the little, red recording button still pressed down, she probably would have thrown it.

She stopped its recording.

Not wanting Cara to hear anything, Kairi stuck her hand into the folds of her backpack and pulled out the new purple ear buds that Yuna’s parents had gotten her earlier that week. Not hearing anything in the hall, Kairi plugged in her ear phones and listened. As the recorder started up, Kairi tuned in to the soft humming sound with rapt attention.

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Barry returned home late, drunk as hell, and extremely irritable. However, he made no attempt to take a swing at Kairi, and she was just fine with that. He threw some dirty words at her, but it wasn’t like she cared as long as he didn’t bloody her up with his fists. Still, she stayed up most of the night, half expecting him to storm through her door and beat her to a pulp.

Luckily, he never came.

Kairi didn’t dare see her stepmother that night, lest something trigger a volatile situation. For the first time, Kairi had felt more worried about her own reaction than Cara’s. The violent, erupting feeling she had felt clawing at her insides earlier had taken a tremendous amount of concentration to suppress. If Kairi hadn’t made the effort to do so, she didn’t know how badly her emotional explosion would have been carried out.

Would she have lost control of her fury? Killing another person had scared her from actually killing Barry the last time he was chasing her around in the school. What still scared her was that she had thought of a million different ways to kill both of them in the time she spent in her little, drafty room. Remembering back to the spilt moment when Kairi had debated on bashing in Barry’s skull, Kairi couldn’t help but shiver. She wanted to see blood. She wanted to see his body twitch, the same way hers after every punch thrown her way. The anger, the burning desire to mangle… was the same feeling that boiled in her stomach during the encounter with Cara.

Only this time, Kairi’s reason to feel angry wasn’t because she had been abused. With Cara, the pain, hatred, and rage had surged one hundred times more than the anger she had felt during the incident with her stepfather.

Kairi had no doubt that if she had lost control for one second in her room earlier with her stepmother, she was sure one of them would have ended up dead. Sure, Cara was insane if anything. But she lost a daughter, just as Kairi lost her parents. In Cara’s deranged mind, Kairi had been equally responsible for her daughter’s death as Cara had been for the death of Kairi’s parents.

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Before the sun was even up, Kairi was up and out of the house, heading towards Yuna’s. She was finally glad to be out of her tiny, confined bedroom and out onto the wide, breezy streets of her neighborhood. Shivering a little, Kairi huddled further into her shapeless hood. Due to the chilly, morning air, Kairi had to choose a thick, lumpy sweatshirt from her collection of secondhand wardrobe. The orange was frayed and dirty-looking, but at least it didn’t have any holes.

Her pink converses scraped against the gritty sidewalk as Kairi shuffled through the quiet neighborhood. Only a few early risers were seen coming out of their houses in their bunny slippers and bathrobes as the paper boy threw wads of newspaper onto their driveways. Kairi ducked as the boy’s aim faltered, sending the newspaper roll whizzing just over her head. She shot the boy on the bike a dirty look, but he had already gone; the sound of his bike bell dying in the dark wind.

Kairi jogged the rest of the way to Yuna’s house, swinging herself over the low fence. She sprinted over the small green yard and slowed as she neared the side door. Sitting down on the single, stone step, Kairi waited. She knew Yuna would appear at seven.

Putting her weight against her hands behind her, Kairi leaned up and looked up into the slowly, awakening sky. Crows cawed in the distance, but she couldn’t see any signs of birds in the wispy, pink-blue sky. However, if she squinted, she could catch the disappearing stars as they twinkled faintly in the fading, navy canvas.

Her lips formed a thin smile as she thought of her parents, watching over her from the stars. Her eyes burned and prickled as her nose grew stuffier by the second. Blinking a little, Kairi ignored the tightness in her chest. It was just cold, she reminded herself. After all, it was almost winter. Mornings would only get colder.

Closing her eyes against the frigid air, Kairi let her head fall further back as she sank deeper into her thoughts. Images of people and things flashed through her mind. Even the disjointed dreams and feelings she sometimes felt, flickered along the edges of her strained mind. As she struggled to calm the storm of flurrying, yet untouchable thoughts, Kairi tried to imagine her parents again.

If only she could see them, and talk to them… If only they were still alive.

Kairi strained her ears, her brows pinching in effort as she thought of their voices, the sound of their laughter. She could still imagine her father’s gentle, brown eyes as he lifted her up into his arms. She could still remember the feeling of her mother’s warm hands caressing her cheeks every night before she fell asleep. But she couldn’t hear them anymore.

She was beginning to forget what their voices sounded like. She was even starting to forget their faces.

Dredging up every memory she had of her parents, she tried to imagine them smiling at her. She wondered if they were happy for her. If there was a wish she could make come true right then, she would have wished more than anything to feel their arms hugging her, wrapping her up into their warm embrace.

In her mind’s eye, Kairi saw a flicker of movement on her mother’s lips – the faintest smile.

Kairi let out a sigh as she sat up straight again. At least her mother was not frowning like yesterday. She could still remember the disappointment and sadness in every line of her mother’s face as she tilted herself recklessly over the school’s roof. Somehow, the thought of not earning her parents’ pride and love had struck her heart stock still, making her question for just the briefest moment whether she was doing the right thing or not.

Clearly, her mother and father didn’t want her to jump off the roof so she could be with them. Smiling a little, Kairi at least knew a little bit of what her parents wanted of her. Her mother’s slight smile proved it, and that was all Kairi needed to cling to; to know that living was the right answer.

The only doubt left in her was what she would do with her life.

Kairi had somewhat planned for her future. Maybe become an artist or a teacher… or someone of a respectable status. But she felt the intimidation that things might not work out the way she wanted them to, because of her disability. It twisted her gut with some cold anxiety. Yet there were still more pressing matters to attend to.

First, she had to find justice. Cara had literally murdered her family, and Kairi could not forgive her. But what could she do to right all that had been wronged? One informal confession couldn’t sustain a whole argument, though it could provide some back up to the case she would build. It was better than nothing.

At least, she had somewhere to start.

A rusted, squeaking sound startled Kairi out of her musings as the white kitchen door swung open revealing a very sleepy Yuna. If Kairi hadn’t gotten up, the poor girl might have tripped over her. But the instant Yuna saw Kairi, she immediately snapped awake; firing off a barrage of questions as she grabbed Kairi by the sleeve and shoved her into the warm kitchen.

“Why didn’t you knock?” Yuna asked as she scuttled around the kitchen, brewing them both some hot chocolate, “It’s totally freezing outside!”

Kairi smiled, gesturing sheepishly with her hands, ‘I didn’t want to wake you guys up.’

“You know what we’re like every morning,” Yuna said as she set some homemade banana muffins before her friend, “One of us will be up to grab the newspaper. You wouldn’t have woken us.”

‘I guess I just needed some time to think then,’ Kairi told her. She took a bite out of the bread, the soft muffin practically melting in her mouth, ‘Wow, thanks! This is really good.’

Yuna grinned broadly, her duel-colored eyes brightening, “I take it you skipped breakfast at your place,” she turned serious, “Speaking of which, how did yesterday go?”

Kairi swallowed the piece of banana bread in her mouth thickly; suddenly not so hungry anymore. She dug into her jeans and took out the slender digital recorder, ‘It… it might help. If you could… could you save it to your computer later? But first, listen to this.’

Yuna looked curiously at the recorder, “Where’d you get it?”

‘Sora,’ Kairi answered, ‘But that’s not the point.’

Yuna looked into Kairi’s eyes, sensing the dread and profound sadness in her friend. Turning the recorder in her hand, Yuna pressed play and listened to the Cara’s voice. As she listened, Kairi sat quietly by, listening with her. Each word that Kairi heard felt like knives piercing her insides every time. She would never get used to it. Kairi shut her eyes and squeezed her fingers together till they prickled and hurt; and all the while, trying not to squirm.

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A/N: This part of the story is a sort of turning point, so it will start to pick up a little faster. I know some of you want to see Kairi’s stepparents get locked up or put to death. Well, you’ll see what happens to them in the later chapters. The other good side is that Sora and Kairi’s little “pretend relationship” won’t stay pretend for too long… :)

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Question of the Chapter:

List your most favorite to least favorite seasons. If you want to, go ahead and explain.

My Answer:

Mine is autumn, winter, summer, and spring. My birthday and Halloween (my favorite holiday) are both in fall. Winter comes second because I prefer the cold, especially when it snows. My car hates it, but I love it. Summer is watermelon season, but it’s still too hot and humid for my taste. And I hate spring, period. Allergies kill me, and the geese returning from the south poop everywhere. It’s just gross.

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Many thanks to Chapter 15’s reviewers: soraloveskairi159 , Alantie Mistaniu , -x-StaarGiirl-o- , Gakushi , White Fire Alchemist , maluka , CerberAsta , xXxCrystalHeartxXx , Akui Ni Michita Hana , kingdomfantasyanime453 , Sora's GuardianAngel , Wings of Water - SKYE , sakuno55 , ffkingdom , doortolight57 , BlueNobody , Raxan , sorasheart281 , eCZi , Kingdomheartsgirl09 , KhanomAna , Aqua-Sirena , Glimmer of Brutality , lamatikah , Gippal the Pimp , vballqueen1792 , Shadow Wolf Princess24 , paopu-cat , okiegirlforever , Akane Naomi , nien317 , RoxasxLoverxDarius , IL0VEAnime65 , crystalnami , Bobsies , Gox19 , allyson , scrimmage-of-love , KairiCakes , cheychey41 , xxxGothic Angelxxx , xTwilightxDestinyx , jcola0823 , Izzyv1o , CerberusFang93 , Chibi Neko-Chan2 , darkrystalangel , hwdbz , David , bepsey007 , Solette , thepurplemaiden , Meep Forever , Lina Mistress of Elements , AquaFlameElementalist , and Hinata-chan 63.

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