Protagonist

Sex: Male

Rank: Vice-Captain

Code Name: Winter

Appearance: Irrelevant

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters in this narrative apart from the sister.

Chapter 2 - redo

Uncontrollably, I grip my hair in frustration. I think it is frustration anyway. Frustrated that I didn't understand that my sister needed help urgently. I can't help but blame myself. After all, it is entirely possible that there was a leak in the ceiling of the building I found her in and that's how she caught the plague. However, it could have been something more alarming instead. And it's something I refuse to believe, but my gut tells me that I should. It could even be my fault that she caught the plague. I feel sick just thinking about the possibility, but it turns out to be the most credible. As far as I can tell, there was no leak in that ceiling, and I doubt that Tiara would expose herself to the red rain of her own free will. That must mean that she caught the plague while she was in my arms. It may have been while I was running, or while I was walking, but either way, if even one drop of rain fell onto her face then she's caught the plague. The gut-wrenching thing is that there were two ways she could have come into contact with the rain. The first being direct contact; the rain falling onto her face, the only exposed skin while wearing a specialised raincoat. Or, the rain dropped from my raincoat onto her face. The latter seems the most likely, meaning that I'm responsible for her catching the plague.

"Why?" I ask myself in frustration, increasing the strength of the grip on my hair as I do so. I can feel the hair almost ripping out of my head. One hair would hurt a little, but two handfuls of hair would hurt like hell. That's probably why I stop gripping my hair and decide to something a lot more stupid; not being in the right frame of mind. "Ow!" I shout after I've dug my teeth into the flesh on my right arm. I need to let out this anger and frustration, but biting myself didn't do that. Instead, I grab the couch with both hands and grab onto whatever I can hold; quickly releasing and then taking it back into my grasp. There's less pain than there is on my arm, but still, I can't calm down.

"Young man," I raise my head at the sound of a commanding, womanly voice. The first thing I notice instantly about the woman, is her bust size. Her knockers are larger than Ciel's covered ones! The best thing about this woman being that hers seemingly don't want to be contained in a shirt as most of them are exposed. I stop myself from grabbing the balloons in front of me, feeling ashamed that I had thought about grabbing them and squeezing them the same forceful way that I was doing to the couch. "I would appreciate it if you would refrain from damaging the furniture." The woman speaks again, and I make eye contact this time. Well, almost make eye contact, one of them is covered by long, black hair. Through her one revealed eye, I can see that her eyes sport a light green colour. On the topic of revealing, her white trousers reveal part of her thighs. I indiscriminately look back up to upper half, and notice that she is wearing a white sniper uniform.

"You're in the Blood Unit, I see." She comments. She must have been staring at me as much as I was at her, and honestly, I'm all right with that. I nod my head to answer her. "And if you're here, rather than with the rest of your unit," I hear her speak with curiosity, and I gulp at the fact that she knows my whole unit is overlooking the Satellite Base residents. She's obviously some kind of authority figure here. Her very demeanour seems to suggest so. "It means that you must know someone in there." She trails off, looking towards the infirmary. "Wait here." She surprises me by her command, but I don't think about not following. Instead, I watch in confusion as the woman enters the infirmary.

A few minutes pass before I hear the infirmary door open, and the female commander comes out of it. Her face still as stern as it was before. Her eyes look onto me, "You're the Vice-Captain of the Blood Unit, right?" I merely nod in response and find myself staring at her as she looks towards the ceiling. "I think you've earned a few days off. When's the last time you had a break?" The woman surprises me with such an unexpected, friendly gesture that I don't answer her straight away.

"Not for a while." I recount, the last break I had was sometime after my first mission against a Vajra, and that was just after Gilbert joined the group.

"I'll see if I can speak with your unit's creator and tell her what I've told me. I'm sure that she'll agree with me." She smiles slightly, and I just stare as she begins walking away. That's when I realise something.

"Hey. I'm still capable of fighting Aragami even if my sister has been infected by the pla-" I attempt to reason against her giving me a forced holiday. After all, I am the Vice-Captain of Blood. I am supposed to lead the group from the front. I'm the one who is supposed to help the group become friendlier with each other. This is the only main objective Captain Julius has given me. I need to stay true to it, no matter how painful it is.

"Listen," The woman stops in her tracks, turning her body to speak to me. The look in her eyes has changed from the caring gaze to the commanding gaze. "I'm speaking from experience when I say this, but you cannot fight Aragami without a clear mind. Your mind clearly isn't clear, otherwise you wouldn't be waiting outside for your sister, despite being told that she has the Black Death and needs to be quarantined." Her every word feels like a dagger piercing my heart. She may just have my best interests in mind, but she tries dissuading me so cruelly. However, I did kind of ask for that; not wanting to give up on my unit so easily.

"That was a bit cruel." I give her a pained smile and she seems to get the message. She gives a sigh before giving a small wave as she turns back around and keeps walking away.

It takes me more than a few minutes before I come to terms with my task, as well as coming to terms as to what's happened. Somehow, my sister has been infected by the Bubonic Plague, more commonly known as the Black Death. I thought that Tiara passed out in my arms due to the pain in her leg, but was it because of the plague instead? I grimace as I realise I have no idea how to break this to my family. I haven't seen them in such a long time, and then to suddenly show up and say that my sister, their daughter, has caught the Black Death, that's not going to be a very good welcome back. Reluctantly, I stand up from the bench. Not really wanting to do so, but I know that the more I prolong the explanation, the least likely I will be able to actually explain. With this in mind, I get back into the lift and head back to the lower floor.

As the lift descends, I can hear almost nothing from the lower floor apart from one voice. I don't quite recognise it straight away, but as the lift stops and the doors open, I see who it belongs to.

"I'm sorry to say that the red nimbus shows no sign of stopping in the next few hours." Director Sakaki says sadly, his head almost bowed down as he announces the news, although that could just be to address all of the Satellite Base residents below him. I step out of the lift, and step in line with my Unit. As Sakaki continues speaking, I look over the crowd to try and locate my parents, as well as my sister's friend. I look over the faces of each individual as I search.

"They look familiar." I comment as my eyes land on a large group of people. It takes a few more seconds of staring before I realise why they look so familiar, and I feel like kicking myself when I do. Those are the people that entered through the shelter I was operating. So, if I look a bit harder, I might be able to find Tiara's friend. What did she look like again? My eyes widen in surprise as I realise that I don't even know what she looks like. "How can that be?" I whisper to myself as I think of how I could possibly forget her appearance. Then I realise, I only ever looked at the girl three times. One when I first met her, again when I saw her standing with Nana, and the final time being just before I brought Tiara to the infirmary. "Shit." I mumble.

"Cheer up, Winter, it can't be that bad." The sudden whisper of Captain Julius makes me physically jump slightly. I blink at him and run through his words again.

"Therefore, for the next few days, you are to remain in here." I look to the director as he speaks. Wait, Julius thinks that I was swearing about the fact that the Satellite Base residents were going to stay here?
"You've got the wrong idea, Julius." I tell him at a volume slightly above a whisper. "I was just thinking to myself. It didn't have anything to do with what the director just said." Silence fall between us as we stare at each other. I'm not sure why he keeps staring at me, but I stare at him to make him know I'm telling the truth. I've heard that keeping eye contact with someone is supposed to indicate that you're telling the truth. Well, I've heard the opposite, therefore the opposite to that opposite must apply, right? Whether he believes me or not, he turns away, opting to look back at the crowd instead. I do the same thing, but for a different reason. Maybe if I rack my brain for memories from just a while ago, I'll be able to remember her appearance. I doubt my short-term memory is that bad, right?

I close my eyes and attempt to block out the sound of the director as he continues to address the residents. As if my memories are stored in files, I 'open' one of the more recent ones. However, as expected, it is very blurry. Thus, I attempt to focus in on it. I completely disregard the sound from the real world as I delve deeper into my own memory. Within a few seconds, a blurry figure of my sister's friend appears. Now all I need to do is focus on it more. A few minutes pass, and it doesn't work.

"I guess I can't manipulate my own memories, huh?" I whisper to myself, although it doesn't matter as the sound of all the Satellite Base residents moving around drowns it out. I look around confusedly at why they are moving though. I look to my unit who, like I am, still standing still, facing the crowd. "What now?" I almost have to shout due to the noise. I can already tell that, if the next few days are going to be like this, then it's going to be havoc.

"Weren't you listening?" Ciel asks me with a raised eyebrow as the group begin to huddle together. If I answer Ciel honestly here, it's not going to make me look very good.

"Yeah, I was. I just want clarification." I lie through my teeth, but I doubt that they know about it.

"Yeah, Ciel, there's nothing wrong with asking for clarification." Romeo speaks, arms behind his head as he does so in his usual stance. "What does clarification mean?" He whispers towards me, standing by my side so that no one else could hear. Unfortunately for him, his ability to control the volume of his voice needs to be improved.

"It means to make something clearer." Gilbert comments, his voice sounding almost holier than thou.

"Yeah, thanks wise guy." Romeo replies sarcastically. Seeing what's coming, and stopping it from happening, Julius speaks up.

"We need to complete a register of all people that entered through our shelters." Julius explains, and my eyes widen. This is going to be a tedious, and time-consuming task.

"All of them?" I ask, although I already know the answer.

"Yes, including the girl that you carried to the infirmary." Ciel remarks snidely, and suddenly, I feel the same unease in my stomach as I do earlier. I should have known that my unit would ask about that, and yet I never planned my answer for it. I feel a nervous sweat begin to make itself known.

"Who was that girl anyway?" Romeo asks, the topic having been changed from what we need to do to the girl I carried in my arms. Honestly, I don't want to tell them the truth. I don't need them to know about my family in order to work. All they need to know about is me.

"Somebody you know?" Gilbert asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Come on, guys. Does it really matter?" Nana comes to my defence, and I inwardly breathe a sigh of relief.

"Nana's right. We know how the Vice-Captain is; he can't refuse a person needing help." Captain Julius also comes to my rescue. I'm glad that I can rely on at least two people to bail me out of an awkward situation, but I still can't shake the feeling of despair in my stomach. After all, I still need to tell my sister's friend and my family about how Tiara has caught the black plague. "Nana, Winter, the North Eastern Satellite Base residents as well as the North Western Satellite residents will be housed on this floor. That means that you two and Romeo will remain on this floor while the rest of us cover the other three floors." Julius informs us.

"Why are residents from two different Satellite Bases on the same floor?" Romeo asks curiously. I must admit that I'm curious too.

"That is because" Ciel answers for us, "combined together, there is still less residents for those Satellite Bases than there are for the remaining Satellite Bases."

"So, each of the other Satellite Bases has their own floor?" I ask, and a nod of Ciel's head confirms it. With that confirmed, depending on where Captain Julius's shelter residents are, this could either be an easier task than I thought, or a harder task than I thought…