Disclaimer: I do not own, blah.

I know I usually write comedy for Azumanga, but this isn't. It's not exactly angst either...it's just an idea that's been sitting around for some time and I finally got sufficient inspiration to write it. It's been in my head quite a while, so I can't fully remember my inspiration by this idea. XD So I have no idea what you'll make of it. Hopefully, you'll like it anyway even if it's not humour. :)

Enjoy!

It happened very suddenly.

One day, Osaka came to school, stuttering over her forced "Osaka-style" introduction and accidentally dropping her napkin in the sink. They didn't know it, but Osaka's arrival cemented them as friends along with Chiyo's.

And then another day, a long while after that, she was gone again.

It had been baffling. Her parents had not moved back to their old town, nor turned to a new one. When questioned, they said Osaka had simply gone to her room early that night, carefully tidying away her things and packing her bag for school the next day.

And then, just like that, Osaka had vanished.

Her friends had waited for a phone call, a postcard, a note tied to a balloon, anything, that might lead them to finding out the exact reason behind this mysterious circumstance. But they received nothing. It was like Ayumu Kasuga just simply never was. (It had been strange hearing that name being mentioned by the police. But of course, they didn't know that to everyone in school, she had always simply been Osaka.)

Yukari doesn't know what to do about it. Each time her eyes flit over Osaka's name on the register, she opens her mouth as if to call the name, but what's the point if she already knows nobody is going to answer? Nobody asks her ridiculous questions about Western-culture any more, and Yukari almost misses it.

Nyamo feels pity when she watches Chiyo trying to do sports now. At least before, she and Osaka could be bad at it together, but now the small girl is always tagging after everyone else, wheezing from exhaustion and effort. There is a sense of aimlessness in them now; even Kagura seems to have lost her enthusiasm for sports.

Chiyo herself finds that she feels oddly lost without Osaka. It's true that the small girl had always been the sensible one out of the two of them, grabbing onto Osaka's sleeve whenever it looked like the spacey girl was actually going to follow through on one of her odder ideas. Now, without Osaka to anchor, Chiyo feels oddly weightless herself, and it kind of scares her. When she confessed this to her parents, they assured her that Osaka would be back, and that feeling scared was fine. Normal. But even though Chiyo knows her parents are just trying to reassure her- who tells their prepubescent daughter that one of her best friends will never come back? She can't help but think that there's something that rings hollow about their words.

Still, she is an optimist by nature, and so she continues to hope for the best.

As for her friends, Chiyo is at first too worried and upset to notice it, but she is a very bright girl and it soon becomes obvious to her.

Everyone, it seemed, had reacted to Osaka's disappearance, even in some small way. People who didn't even know Osaka well or at all still know about the girl who one day stopped coming to school.

Everything shifted and refracted based on this one crucial variable: Osaka was gone.

Sakaki watches.

Before, Sakaki always seemed to be doing her best to keep up with the group. The tall beauty may have been the most athletic girl in school (even if she didn't especially want to be), constantly pestered by eager clubs desperate to have the Sakaki, the Golden Girl, on their side. Yet, the exuberance and sheer youth of her friends was something the tall girl knew she'd never be able to emulate herself. A girl of her size and stature behaving the way they did would have looked at best silly and at worst downright terrifying, like she was hiding some kind of inner darkness under a transparent facade of energy.

A part of Sakaki had always been grateful to the ragtag gaggle of girls that had accepted her, pulling her along in a tide of daring, spirit and fun. Nobody else had done that, too frightened of the mysterious bandages on her fingers and misleadingly cool air. Even Kaorin was hesitant to push boundaries with her beloved Miss Sakaki, although naturally, Sakaki wasn't aware of just how fond Kaorin was of her. But with Chiyo, Osaka and the others, Sakaki had always just been along for the ride, happily tugged along in their wake.

Now, Osaka's absence had left her with a curious sense of purpose. She keeps an eye on her friends with a watchfulness that she lacked before. She is still shy and feels trapped in her hulking frame, but now it almost feels like her fearsome aura must be cultivated, to prevent the rest of her friends from disappearing too - Chiyo-chan in particular. Sakaki is the oldest; she should have done more when Osaka vanished...

For the first time, Sakaki felt small. And she had not liked it one little bit.

The most obvious change, however, was Tomo.

Chiyo found herself staring after the energetic girl anxiously, as if Tomo might suddenly too vanish without a trace. Chiyo had always been slightly nervous of Tomo- the girl had no lid on her impulses whatsoever, and any silly idea Tomo got into her head, she was liable to do it if given the correct motivation (or not held back by her more reasonable friends). This was the way Tomo had always been, according to Yomi, but now there was something charged, almost urgent about Tomo's wilder behavior that was almost too intense to be considered harmless. Before, Tomo had gotten herself into stupid situations before, mostly as a product of boredom and not thinking things through, but although her energy had become a little more diluted, the impulsiveness seemed to have grown worse after Osaka's disappearance. Chiyo might have even been tempted to say there seemed to be something aggressive about it.

Tomo would sometimes get up in the middle of class, usually with a superficially legitimate excuse about going to the bathroom or something, but she would leave and not return until much later. There didn't seem to be a particular pattern to these habitual wonderings- Tomo herself didn't really even know where she was trying to get to, but she found suddenly that sitting still for long period of time no longer merely tedious, but positively unbearable. No amount of scolding, warnings or detentions had any effect on the perpetual wondering urge. Chiyo hated it when Tomo left- half the time it seemed like Tomo was trying to find Osaka, but really such a thing would be like trying to find a lone balloon that has been let go to drift endlessly in the sky. Tomo's attitude towards Osaka was characteristically flippant, but Tomo herself felt frustrated that nobody else seemed to even be tryingto look for her. She may have been an underachiever, but she knew the difference between giving up and not even bothering to do anything at all.

She never thought about it like that before.

Yomi found that she felt unexpectedly guilty. She knew it was irrational- Osaka's disappearance was totally unexpected, and more importantly, unexplained. It was hard to discern when the spacey brunette was serious whenever one of her bizarre remarks left her mouth, so how was she supposed to know that Osaka's constant gazing out of the window meant anything more than her being...well, Osaka? And yet, the bespectacled girl often wondered if she had been paying closer attention, maybe then, somehow, it could have been prevented. She couldn't exactly expect Kagura or Tomo to keep track of something like that, especially since half the time they were just as clueless and weird as Osaka herself. Chiyo was only a child- a super intelligent one, yes, but children aren't known for being the most observant creatures and even Chiyo could be pretty naive at times. Sakaki likely wouldn't have said anything even if she had noticed something, and the tall girl often seemed to be thinking of other things. So who else could be relied on to be the sensible one?

The truth was, though, a prolonged amount of time in the company of airheads had left Yomi hardened and perhaps conditioned to weirdness and unexplained behavior. If warning signs had been staring her straight in the face, she likely wouldn't have picked up on it. These days, her own role as the smart girl seemed less defined then before- nothing she said could reign in Tomo, her words of comfort sounded hollow, saying them just because it was what was expected.

Yomi wishes she could have been a little smarter.

Kagura is ashamed by how emotional she has been. But the strangest things suddenly get her upset, eyes welling up with tears uncontrollably. Like Chiyo, Kagura is concerned by Tomo's restlessness, yet she lacks the conviction to confront her about it. Normally Kagura and Tomo were like two characters in a bad action movie- constantly bashing up against each other in a rush of perpetual energy and goofiness, but things had become much less carefree. Even a girl with an attention span as short as Kagura's, her schoolwork had still dropped to even further levels. But she couldn't bring herself to be upset about it- her parents were worried, but what were they meant to do? Punish her for being concerned for her friend? Without Osaka, the two remaining baka rangers found themselves at a loss as how to surge blindly forward.

So Kagura finds herself filled with a sense of loneliness, even though her other friends are still present, but it's like there is an unexplained void where Osaka once stood and it's more than a little hard to deal with. As if growing up and trying to make it out of high-school alive wasn't difficult enough. Maybe that was why Osaka vanished. Because she just couldn't take the pressure of it all anymore. The knuckleheads made a joke about being so bad in school, but under the joking around, Kagura herself feels pressure closing in on all sides. She might be an athletic prodigy, but she's always falling just short of Sakaki's talent.

Maybe Kagura's not as tough as she likes to think she is.

All of them are hurting in their own separate ways. The thing is, you can't be angry with a disappeared person- it's not like they're around to hear it. And the anger stems from wanting, more than anything, for them to return. In light of that fact, anger seems like a pretty pointless defense mechanism. Like an insect that dies after it loses its sting.

Eventually, somebody breaks the silence.

"You think she'll ever be back?" Tomo asks.

"Tomo!" Yomi scolds, immediately, but she's not as angry as she makes herself sound.

"What?" the wildcat retorts petulantly, and it's almost a relief to hear her say it. "Everybody keeps saying we shouldn't talk about it, but why not? Maybe we'd figure something out!"

"Because it will upset people!" Yomi retorted.

"But they're already upset!" Tomo points out, and for some reason this simple statement sounds almost wise. "Not talking about it won't make her less gone, will it?"

Although really it should be a statement, Tomo still glances around at the others as though she expects one of them to validate her statement. It dimly occurs to Chiyo that Tomo may act like one, but she's not an idiot.

"I think...one day she'll come back." Chiyo ventures, and everyone turns to look at her, quiet. "Maybe she'll come back one day and she won't even have realized we were looking for her in the first place."

Yomi sniffs and folds her arms.

"That sounds like something Osaka would do." she concedes.

Kagura coughs into her fist, feeling a pricking sensation in the back of her throat and tears welling up in her eyes. Her friends are one of the few people who continue to refer to Osaka in present tense, and something about it makes a lump appear in her throat. Sakaki, despite her normal hesitance to initiate contact, wraps an arm around Kagura's shoulders as the tomboy's convulse with quiet sobs.

"It's just..." Kagura manages, and the others listen quietly. "I keep wondering what happens if she doesn't, you know? It's like..."

Kagura fumbles for words. Articulate, she is not.

"...my parents keep telling me I should just stop thinking about it." Kagura goes on. "But how can I? It's not like she's just got a throat infection or she's on vacation!"

Sakaki bites her lip.

"Maybe she is." Tomo suddenly says. "Only, not like a normal people. You know, like everyone has one at Christmas? Maybe it's an Osaka-vacation."

"What, you mean like...she's just gone on a trip somewhere?" Yomi frowns.

"A trip?" Chiyo parrots, confused.

A wind picks up around the girls, the leaves rustling together like they want to tell a secret.

"To Osaka?" Sakaki asks, not really following this theory.

"No, I get what she's saying..." Kagura says, frowning with concentration. "Like...she just ups and disappears, right? No warning to anybody, nothing out of the ordinary happened...so maybe it just kind of happened? Like, it's something she just needed to do? Or she wasn't even thinking of any of that, she just thought about something and left. She didn't leave a note because she didn't plan it."

"We'll never have a concrete way of knowing until..." Yomi trails off.

"I still think we should look for her." Tomo asserts, stubbornly. "And then we can yell at her for not bringing us, too!"

"Where?" Yomi snaps. "God, Tomo, we can't just wonder around Japan aimlessly."

Tomo pouts and folds her arms.

"That's what Osaka's doing." She mumbles.

Despite that they have no concrete way of knowing what Osaka is or isn't doing; Yomi and the others smile anyway. It's a strangely comforting thought- Osaka drifting like a balloon from place to place. Like Chiyo postulated, maybe the girl is doing some kind of incomprehensible quest that so attracted her thoughts that she didn't even think about what she was leaving behind. If that was what really happened, then it wasn't so crazy to think that one day she'd be back as unexpectedly as she'd arrived, once she'd finally gotten to where she wanted to go. Like a dandelion seed on a breeze.

The girls watch the sunset from their hillside perch. Really, there is no logical reason for why they feel strangely sated- they don't know where their friend is or why. But they are content with their own theory on it- they know Osaka because they are her friends. And they can only hope and think that because of this, Osaka will one day return. Hopefully with incredible stories about the time that she was elsewhere.

"Hey, remember that song we used to sing all the time?" Chiyo suddenly pipes up.

"Huh?"

"Song?" Sakaki asks.

"You know..." Chiyo pauses for a minute, gathering a breath, and then begins to sing.

"Hold the wing to your heart. The heart whispers diligently...Now, ride the wind. Your heart is on the other side of the stars."

"Oh yeah!" Tomo blurts. "I remember that!"

"The wish will always come true...The key for love is in the future." Sakaki chimes in, shyly."At the window, a gently calling voice is a premonition of love. And yet, by a distant love, believe in your heart. You also believe in tomorrow."

"RASPBERRY HEAVEN!"

Kagura and Tomo chime in enthusiastically, much moreso then they have been recently. "Not by yourself, you promised. Heaven!"

Nudging Yomi in the ribs, the bespectacled girl sighs, but she joins in with a smile on her face. Suddenly, the five of them stand there, on the grassy hill, singing Raspberry Heaven at the tops of their voices. Not all of them are in tune (mostly Yomi), but they carry on, not even pausing in the song because they know the lyrics by heart.

They know Osaka cannot possibly hear them. Even if she could, it's mostly nonsense they're singing. Yet somehow, a part of each girl thinks that maybe, wherever she is, she knows about it anyway.

"Come on, guys. We really have to get home." Yomi says, once they're done, but for some reason they feel oddly light, the song having a weirdly cathartic effect.

One by one, the girls pick up their various belongings scattered here and there on the bank and head back up the hill. Chiyo glances back and takes in one last look at the setting sun.

"Chiyo-chan!"

Following the call, Chiyo hurries after them. In her mind's eye, she imagines Osaka smiling at her.

Raspberry Heaven!
I'm coming back to you...

The lyrics for Raspberry Heaven sound really odd in English, but it would have looked off if I suddenly switched to Japanese. XD The song was actually a last minute addition, but I liked the idea and I thought it tied up the ending nicely. I tend to struggle with endings, ha.

Thanks for reading!