imsorrymiyabiaizawa dot com

Note: This is set after the end of the manga, and won't make sense if you have only see the anime or drama. Based on a beloved idea my friend Tati came up with for how Miyabi and Urumi's relationship might develop post-series. I doubt I did it justice. ;__;

When Onizuka's hospital stay got extended through the beginning of the new semester (with the aid of some steel shackles and a weighted leg harness or two), Miyabi frankly didn't expect to see Urumi show up in school ever again. Urumi made it very clear to everyone that to her, the pursuit of knowledge was something only indulged in by plebeians who still had knowledge left to pursue; genius that she was, middle school was utterly beneath her. She'd made it even clearer that the only reason she had deigned to show up, in recent months, to a place she found so intellectually bankrupt, was because of their demented mongrel of a homeroom teacher. (Miyabi could grudgingly admit, by now, that Onizuka-sensei had his good points, but that didn't make him any less of a - well, a demented mongrel. Who jacked off to underaged porn. And no, Urumi, that was not healthy or normal. Not that Miyabi was the authority on healthy or normal, but whatever. For crying out loud, child sexualization was exactly the sort of thing he'd punched Ogi-sensei in the face for, the big demented hypocrite! ...Sort of the sort of thing. Whatever! The point was, his porn habits were gross.)

So it really wasn't unrealistic for Miyabi to think Urumi would swagger back home once Onizuka was out of commission, and ignore the rest of them for the rest of time. And if Miyabi had felt a little relieved by the notion - so what? She was learning not to push her friends away, but Urumi, for all her bizarre post-attempted-rape protestations to the contrary, was not exactly what she'd call a friend, and life was just easier when she wasn't around. Classroom interactions were less tense, Miyabi was less uncomfortable, less vaguely, unfairly guilty. Miyabi lived with a lot of guilt, and all of it was earned and all of it was her own doing; at the same time, the only real pressure she felt from her friends was to be herself, to be normal and happy again, to ease up on the self-punishment. Trying to let go of something she'd carried with her for so long - something she knew she was RIGHT to carry with her as long as she had - was damn near impossible. So to throw on top of all that the kind of unjustified self-doubt Urumi inspired in her was to encourage a hindrance, a step backwards, that Miyabi didn't freaking need. Urumi filmed her peeing! Why should Miyabi feel beholden to her? Why should she feel all this confusing responsibility and blame, this indelible loss?

Where Urumi went, emotional torment was sure to follow. Miyabi's gladness at the prospect of some respite from the other girl could hardly be called callous.

It might not be callous, but it was misplaced. Miyabi had expected Urumi to rush home to the reclusion of a life of tutoring: instead, she rushed to turn over a new leaf, even without Onizuka around to praise her for it. Miyabi had expected Urumi to abandon scheduled, low-level classes and the unremarkable people in them: instead, Urumi embarked upon a mission to achieve perfect attendance, to buddy up to every classmate, new or old, till they were interacting like she'd never left in the first place. Miyabi, the former self-appointed leader of their homeroom, had yet to truly re-establish her bearings, yet to ease into the social ebb and flow of a group setting where they weren't all plotting the professional demise of their next instructor. But Urumi, who couldn't form a sentence without self-aggrandizing or slipping in some unbearably archaic turn of phrase, was fitting in to Class 4-4 like it was a second home.

What rankled most was when she turned her Urumi V2.0 tactics Miyabi's way, treating her cheerfully, affectionately, as if nothing had ever changed between them.

Yeah, okay, Miyabi had always planned to do exactly that should the two of them cross paths again. Urumi was so melodramatic and self-pitying that there was no point trying to resolve anything, and her oversized ego could certainly weather the blow of Miyabi acting like Urumi's various assaults on her person - the near-rapes and the terrible photos that kept her up at night - were unmemorable, negligible. Forgotten.

But it was distinctly unfair for Miyabi to go around with all this awkwardness, this strained feeling of not knowing how to act or what to say, this sense that she'd incurred hurt without trying and now she could never pick up the pieces...and for Urumi to be able to, at will, completely turn off any awareness of all this, this, this BAGGAGE, when she was the one who created it, for no discernible reason, in the first place. When she was the one who had relentlessly twisted each and every interaction she had had with Miyabi over the past year from something that, once upon a time, could have approximated friendship, into something mean and ugly and bitter.

It was aggravating, and exhausting, and unwelcome, so Miyabi's response was to retreat into old habits, and ignore Urumi as coldly, cruelly, and pointedly as possible. If it were Urumi V1.0, this would never have succeeded in making her go away, of course, but it would enrage her to the breaking point, and finally bring out the devil Miyabi knew. The spiteful, overwrought, long-winded devil, that Miyabi really, really knew.

But this was the new Urumi, so instead of reverting to her terroristic ways the instant Miyabi looked at her askance (or just looked out the window when Urumi happened to be passing by - that had been enough in past months for Urumi to claim as an attack), Urumi merely redoubled her efforts to interact with Miyabi, amiable facade more impenetrable than ever. It was like being around Tomoko, if Tomoko used huge words and argued with Kikuchi about stocks.

Miyabi liked Tomoko, though. Miyabi's guilt over how she had treated Tomoko, over how carried away she'd gotten acting the "bad girl" and the bully to make Tomoko hurry up and hate her the way she deserved - the rate at which that guilt would triple each time Tomoko resisted her isolating tactics, each time she responded to Miyabi's cruelty with an unconditional kindness and trust so unmerited it set Miyabi's teeth on edge - all of that guilt was earned, and fair, and right. She would forever be haunted by the things she'd said and done to Tomoko; the fact that the girl continued to stand by her and love her to this day made the sting of shame all the worse. Miyabi accepted this. Accepted how hard it was to be around someone who treated her like a best friend when she'd behaved like anything but. Accepted that she had to try anyway.

Feeling the same way around Urumi, however, was not something Miyabi could accept. Urumi was the one person who had wronged Miyabi far more than Miyabi had ever wronged her. Yeah, Miyabi had revealed her stupid secret, and yeah, she had been fully aware of how much that would hurt the other girl, but that was nothing next to the things Urumi had done to her, and she detested that some part of her actually let Urumi convince it that she was the crueler of the two of them. She wasn't. She wasn't.

And none of this was supposed to matter. Urumi was supposed to continue being horrible, and Miyabi was supposed to be so desensitized to that horribleness that she ignored her, focused on other more important people.

Instead, she spent all her time in school feeling twitchy and aggravated, and Urumi was all she could focus on. She couldn't turn to any of her friends, because they were all just glad to have Urumi back and not suicidal, but it galled her that they couldn't see how fake she was being.

And so it went, for the first few months of school: Urumi followed Miyabi around cheerfully and relentlessly, inviting her places, chattering at her merrily, and never having the decency to get affronted when Miyabi's only responses were rebuffs and rejections. In fact, the more Miyabi snapped and snarled, insulted and ignored her, the friendlier Urumi would get. But Miyabi knew her, knew how prideful she was and how retaliatory her nature. She couldn't keep up the strain of this forced geniality for much longer. Miyabi was sure of it. Something had to give.

Today, right now, at last, that moment seemed to have arrived. And Miyabi was glad, sharply, vindictively glad, and Miyabi was relieved, that at last the fake, forced Urumi had fallen apart at the seams, but on some level...

Urumi stood there, in the hallway, posturing dramatically in front of a familiar set of windows, one hand clutching a spray paint bottle, the other fisted tensely at her side...her eyes blazed and she panted, hard, baring her teeth with every breath...curtains of hair hung over her eyes, strands sticking haphazardly to her sweaty forehead: all in all, she projected the aura of a vicious, cornered animal, pushed to its breaking point, and on some level...

...On some level, Miyabi was fucking terrified.

"Miyabi. My oldest, dearest friend," Urumi was saying, fist curling and uncurling by her side, "I didn't want it to come to this, you know." Miyabi breathed, and tried not to let on how frightened she was by the prospect of whatever 'this' was. "I didn't want things to end up this way. But you've pushed me, Miyabi, you've pushed me, and pushed me, and pushed me, and so, regrettably, I've run out of choices."

Miyabi internally railed against that - how about just being honest, Urumi? How about not spending weeks and weeks performing the world's most maddening imitation of "friendship", cloying and saccharine in its falseness, and then losing your shit when your mimicry of solicitousness fails?

But she remembered the last time Urumi had appeared in front of her like this, and frankly, she was having a little trouble breathing, so there would be no duel of words. Not today.

"I tried, Miyabi, you know? I tried to be your friend in the normal way, but you wouldn't have it. You would never have it. So this is what you've driven me to instead, and unlike last time, what you see is what you get. There's no coming back from this, not this time."

Fujiyoshi came jogging forward, then, and raised his hands in a supplicating manner. "Urumi, think about this," he said. "Things were going so well for you, for all of us. Whatever...whatever you're thinking, whatever you're planning, I'm sure you don't want to do this."

"Wrong!" Urumi shrieked, and laughed shrilly. "This is it, Fujiyoshi! This is what she's brought out in me, and it's time for the world to see! I want the world to see!"

Miyabi staggered backwards, and gripped the wall on the other side of the hallway. She had no idea what Urumi was going to do, or HOW she could do anything. Had she somehow bugged Miyabi's house again without her realizing? She hadn't let her come over, but maybe her parents let the girl in when Miyabi wasn't there...she never had told them about the breakdown of their friendship...stupid, stupid!

Urumi was facing the windows now, and she'd twisted off the cap on the spray paint. As she lifted her arm, Fujiyoshi reached out once more to stop her, but she whacked his hand away brutally, and started writing something, in backwards English.

Miyabi blinked muzzily, watching the world spin in and out of focus.

H - T - T - P...came the first letters, and oh god. Oh god, it was a website. How did she get in? When? Lately, Miyabi had started...she'd discovered what it felt like to...sometimes, at night, she'd twist a hand up beneath her sheets and...and had Urumi caught that, all of that, on tape? The shame stuck in her throat, hot and dry and too big to swallow around. Please, no. No.

: / / W - W - W . I - M - S - O - R

Miyabi's eyes intermittently squeezed shut and snapped open to stare ahead of her. She tried to make out what Urumi was writing, but she was afraid to make out what Urumi was writing. She wanted it to all be over, but she was terrified of what was to come.

- R - Y - M - I - Y - A - B - I - A - I - Z

The sound of the spray paint leaving its mark along the glass chafed painfully against Miyabi's senses. No, no -

- A - W - A . C - O - M

- After what felt like an eternity, the noises finally stopped. Miyabi sucked in a painful breath and glanced forward, at Urumi, standing beside her handiwork, staring at Miyabi expectantly, defiantly. A murmur rose through the halls as the other students processed what she had written.

And now it was Miyabi's turn. She slowly let her eyes follow the curve of the letters on the windows, ignoring the trembling she could feel in her whole body.

H T T P : / / W W W . I M S O R R Y M I Y A B I A I Z A W A . C O M

That couldn't be right.

She read it again.

H T T P : / / W W W . I M S O R R Y M I Y A B I A I Z A W A . C O M

What - what the - she -

"Huh?" Miyabi finally said, eloquently.

"It's, um." Urumi cleared her throat. "It's a collection of all the poems and journal entries I've written about you over the past year. Years."

"HUH?" Miyabi repeated.

Urumi blushed, straightening up sheepishly, whatever mad thing had possessed her before having evidently left her system. "I've never known how to talk to you, Miyabi, and now it's been so long, so long that I've gone without saying the things that needed to be said, and. Well. I tried to tell you the normal way, but it wasn't working - "

"Pretending nothing's wrong after you've filmed someone in various states of undress and left to kill yourself in the snow is not normal, Urumi."

Urumi looked down mournfully, and Miyabi almost wished she hadn't said it (even if it was true). "Yeah. Well. I'm not pretending anymore. On the site you'll find everything I've thought about you and felt about you for the entire time we've known each other, and - and it's the only way I know how to. To explain things. To make things right."

"Whatever," Miyabi said, still processing all of this but definitely feeling really uncomfortable.

"Well. That's. That's really all I have to say. I hope - I hope you'll read it, or some of it, because. I'm sick of this, Miyabi, I'm sick of not being able to just be with you - be your friend - and. Yeah. That's all."

Miyabi just stared at her, completely thrown.

Urumi, who was watching her, must have seem something in her expression, because she suddenly winced, and gave one sad nod before turning around and trudging away slowly. She was hunched into herself, more undone than Miyabi had ever seen her, and she looked - she looked defeated.

Finally remembering she had a tongue, Miyabi yelled after her. "Urumi, wait!"

Urumi froze, and turned her head slowly, something hopeful beginning to dawn over her features. "Yes?"

Seeing the raw vulnerability in her expression, Miyabi found herself once again at a loss for words. It was so...so not-Urumi, even if she believed in this version more than she'd ever believed in V2.0. "Um. Just. What was all that about not being able to come back from this? You made the site sound so ominous."

Urumi lifted her lips in a wry half-smile. "Oh. Well, my reputation is pretty much never going to recover. Especially not if people actually read some of the poems..."

Miyabi laughed quietly. "I - I see."

When she didn't say anything else, Urumi smiled at her sadly, eyes shining in a way Miyabi honestly found quite terrifying, and took that as her cue to leave again.

Miyabi still didn't know what to say to her, but, but...

"Urumi, wait!"

She didn't even turn around this time. Just stopped, and stood there, back turned. "Yeah?"

"Um." Miyabi brushed her fingers through her hair awkwardly, and cleared her throat. "Do you want to - want to go get ramen after school? Or, or something?"

Urumi did spin around now, flipping her whole body back to face Miyabi, and gaped at her.

Miyabi's face heated. "Forget it, it was a stupid idea. I'll just - "

"NO!" Urumi yelled, running over. "No! Ramen! I love ramen! Let's get it! Together! After school!"

Miyabi was a little taken aback. "O-okay."

"Okay! Now it's time for homeroom! And then some other classes! But when we're done! We're getting ramen! Together! After school!"

"Right, after school. Ramen." Miyabi kind of wanted to reach out and pat Urumi in some sort of a calming manner. "Urumi," she said, looking into her face searchingly. "Are you okay?"

Urumi flushed, and nodded fiercely. She was reminding her more and more of Tomoko with every passing second. If genius-girl suddenly started stuttering, Miyabi didn't know what she'd do.

She mentally shook herself, and forced herself to smile at the other girl. At her friend. "Let's go to class."

Urumi smiled back, and it was the most genuine expression Miyabi had ever seen on her face.

Miyabi smiled wider.

And Onizuka, watching from the corner in a trench coat, sunglasses, and some broken chains and leg harnesses, smiled widest of all.