The Dream Shifter

Chapter 130

In the last exchange of words they all finally opened their eyes to look at who they were yelling at. Kaede raised her arm in surprise to see that it was Saki and Katsumi followed similar suit along with Saki. "You?!" they all said in unison.

A final collapse of the section of the school, that the lost students had been in, pounded out through the ground. It pulled the three girls eyes back to the smoke covered school filled with worry once more. Many of the other students began to gather around them uncertain about their fate.

"Yumi…"

"Will they be alright?"

"Yuki and Ayumi are with them…I hope…"

"…ugh…Yumi…" coughed Yori trying to find his sister in his confusion. He was completely covered in darkness, but there was the strange sense that he was not as badly hurt as he should. His head was still ringing from collapse making it difficult for him to focus. "Yumi?" Yori grasped around blind desperate to find his sister and praying that she was alive still. 'Is she even around here?' Not being restrained by debris he was able to search around slowly on his knees checking everything in his radius thoroughly before moving forward a little.

His hand ran into something on the ground that Yori scrambled to check quickly. "Yumi! Is that you?" A closer examination by his hands revealed it to be the flashlight that they had brought with him. The power had been cut in the school during the battle leaving the halls dark and the classrooms dim. He fumbled around for the switch to check to see if it still worked. When it flipped on he was suddenly blinded by the dull beam. Yori aimed it out into the darkness looking at his surroundings.

Towards the center he found Yumi lying face down unconscious. "Yumi!" He rushed over to her side thoughtlessly tossing the flashlight away. Yori lifted her up into his arms being granted a little light to check her for any blood or wounds. "Good no injures…" He let his back bend a little as he sigh relieving the tension that had built up.

Minutes slowly passed for him as he held on to Yumi and began searching around their room. The walls that surrounded them were the rubble from school, but he could not tell a distance or shape from them. It seemed to almost be going on forever while being the exact same. He was not sure if it was the headache that he had still that was screwing with his senses or not. As he examined the ground it began to come together in his mind. "It's a perfect hemisphere, but how? It doesn't make any sense. Rubble doesn't just fall perfectly into a hemisphere…" Yori continued to take in his surroundings finding that he was at the center of the room.

The room soon exhausted itself of answers to the mystery leaving Yori to begin to question more about their situation. He had run another check on himself for injures as well as on Yumi, but found nothing. In fact, it worried him that apart from the ringing headache he did not feel any pain. "How's this possible? We fell three floors and surrounded by brick and steel. We should be beat up, but I don't even have a scratch or bruise! What's going on?"

Yori sense of curiosity got the better of him. He gently put Yumi back on the ground and reached out for the flashlight. The first test he made was for the height of the space, which granted him plenty of head room and then some. It took him several steps to become in danger of hitting his head. Next, he tested the condition of the surface that could only be considered a compost of random debris from the school's structure. There were even a few chairs that he saw mixed in that were bent under great pressure and flattened conforming to the shape that they were in. Yori took a very cautious move with his hand towards the dome retracting his hand several times before actually touching, afraid that even the slight pressure might collapse what appeared to be a precariously held together artificial dome. "It's real…" he said measuring his words out carefully with his breathing still fearing the breakdown. "It's almost like an arch where all of the pieces are held together by each other's force, but removing one piece would make it all crumble away. We could've been buried if there had been one misplace stone…"

Boldness was found within the reassuring touch of the wall. Yori ran his palm down the surface taking in the feeling. It was completely smooth with the only gaps or bumps where pieces were joined together. He had never seen such a construction. The smoothness almost felt as though it had been pressed, pounded, blasted and smoothed to be created. 'Something doesn't feel right about this…' There was a sudden uneasy feeling starting to build within him that realized it was impossible and had to have been created by someone. Yori feared who could have done it and for what purpose. 'Is this Yuki's involvement? Or someone trying to get to Yuki through us? Another one of those strange foreigners? Yumi!' He rushed back to Yumi's side starting to feel the stress of his own questions weighing on him.

"…sister…" Yori lifted Yumi back up into his arms checking on her condition once more trying to focus on what was more important to him. For the time it was working for him, but it just exchanged one stress for another.

As he focused his mind towards his sister thoughts from past began to be stirred. All of his concentration was on her that it almost felt natural. He became lost in the memories that sifted through his eyes. 'Today was the first time I've seen her so determined, even angry. She's always been shy and a crybaby never telling anyone how she feels until it was too late… It seemed to work very well when she was a child. So much that I couldn't stand it…'

His mother stood up from the chair walking over to Yumi kneeling down to her a little confused for why she was getting so upset. "What's the matter, Yumi? Why are you crying, dear?" She raised Yumi's head to look at her seeing the tears that hung in her eyes. Then she looked down catching a paper in Yumi's tiny hands wrinkled from her tight hold on it. She gently took the paper from Yumi to look at it and then set it aside. "Is this what's got you upset? Don't worry, Yumi. You're still my precious daughter. Your grades won't change how I feel!" Yumi jumped into his mother's arms held out for her unable to stop the crying.

"…Hrmph…" Yori said turning his head away walking out of the room leaving them behind. He stomped off to his room leaving his little sister alone in the kitchen with their mother. "I do well and mother is happy. She does poorly and cries about it and mother is happy! Why does mother pay her more attention?!" Little Yori, age eight, fell down against his bed slowly sliding to the floor. His hands balled up into a fist of frustration the more that he thought and pictured Yumi with his mother. "Does mother like her better than me?!" The momentary realization in that instant froze him like lightning was shooting through his bones. It tightened his muscles and racked his chest as it lingered inside.

'Perhaps it was just a phase, but it drove me to do better and better so that I could get our mother's attention. But I eventually realized my mistake when I figured out what our father had been doing while he was at work.' Yori walked out of the entrance of their house passing the kitchen as he was planning on heading upstairs to his room. He paused when he saw his mother sitting at the table with her head down resting against her hands. It had been a common sight for him to see her looking down in the last few months, but every time that he had tried to ask her about it she told him he was mistaken. "…mother…"

She looked up from the kitchen very slowly almost like she was dead. "Could you check the laundry before you go upstairs? Let me know if it's ready to be dried, okay?"

Yori gave her a slow nod and silently continued not certain what else to do. The laundry room was a small attachment nearby the stairs buried by a closest. An even hum of the washer still running gave him the answer that he was looking for. He started to turn away when the sound of a phone ringing came muffled towards him. It was not immediately familiar, not being the house phone, but he remembered that it was his father's cell phone. "Oh he forgot it. Someone from work probably needs to talk to him. I should let them know!" Yori leaned over searching out the ringing through the clothes until he found it and picked it up.

The phone was large enough that he had to juggle it with both of his hands. He found the call button and raised it slowly to his ear. Yori was about to speak when a woman's voice came through. "Hey honey! Last night was great! You think you can get away again tonight?" It took a moment for it all to click with him, but the second that it did he dropped the phone in shock. Yori backed away from the phone not wanting to believe what he had just heard. The woman's voice continued echo through the floor confused and haunting Yori's mind.

He stumbled back towards the kitchen looking at his mother suddenly with new eyes. She turned up towards him a little confused. "Is the laundry ready?" Yori froze paralyzed for half a minute not certain what to say to her. He could not look at her the same anymore, everything was different suddenly. Nothing made sense anymore to him. All he managed in the end was a shake of his head. "…oh…okay…"

Yori left back to the corner by the stairs staring down at the phone. He turned it off and put it back where he had found it. Afterward, he forced himself to walk up to his room. 'It was then that my entire world changed for me. I realized the pain that mother had been going through alone. I saw how empty and terrible my attention starved attempts were along with silent anger towards Yumi. I had no idea what I could, but I was determined to change things… I was going to make up for what I had done and felt towards Yumi even if she never knew… I was going to be the brother that she deserved…'

Yumi suddenly moved in Yori's arms alerting him and startling Yumi a little. Reacting to the fall still, Yumi tossed about screaming for her life. In her flailing she hit Yori with the back of her hand. Eventually, Yumi was forced to open her eyes from being shaken by Yori. She pressed away into Yori arms taken aback that he was safe before realizing her own safety. "Brother! You're alive still!" Yumi jumped up out of his arms hugging him tightly to assure for her own sake that he was real and partly out of relief. After a few minutes reality soon began to hit Yumi as she looked around in the poor light at their situation. "What's going on? Where are we?"

Since his sister was feeling better and calmed down he let her go to stand on her own. He took another look around the room as he prepared an answer. "Best I can tell is buried under rubble from the school."