Smoke blasted out from the school as the rest of the third floor classroom rammed into a fragile second floor below.  It wasn't enough to keep it whole and the walls exploded outwards under the sudden stress.  Debris fell into the first floor covering everything in a mound under the mask of clouds.  The blown out dust blanketed the entire school grounds alerting all of the students and washing out screams.

Saki ran through the gray veil disregarding the danger until she tripped over a large piece of rubble.  Her collapse drew in the hopelessness.  “Yuki!  Yuki!”  The particles in the air were drawn into her open mouth as she yelled, bringing her to a painful cough bent over.

“Yumi!”

“Yumi!”

The voices that called out became muffled partly by the noise of the collapsing school.  Saki tried to look through the layers of dust to find who else was nearby.  It was still too thick of clouds masking everything out for Saki to know.  All she could do was listen out for the voices hoping that she was getting close as they grew louder.  Eventually, a slightly dark form in the smoke appeared to her and reached out for them.  She carried them out of the danger as well as her sense of direction could manage.

“Put me down!”

Saki struggled through getting kicked and slapped by the girls.  “I’m trying to help you!  Stop fighting me!”  Unfortunately, among all of their shouting Saki’s voice was drowned out.  After another kick in her ribs Saki sighed heavily and just ignored them trying to get out as quickly as possible so that she could give them a piece of her mind.

The feet of the girls appeared first out of the smoke followed quickly by Saki.  Once Saki knew she was breathing normal air again she dropped the two girls down on the ground.  “Dammit!”  She leaned in towards the girls bending over nearly to meet them in the face.  “What happened to being grateful for being protected!?”

“We didn’t ask to be protected!”

“Yumi’s still in there!”

“So is Yuki, but we can’t do anything right now!”

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 a similar suit along with Saki.  “You?!”

A final collapse of the section of the school 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…”

Chapter 73 – Dome of Safety

“…ugh…Yumi…”  Yori tried to find his sister in his confusion.  He was completely covered in darkness, but there was the strange sense that he wasn’t as badly hurt as he should.  His head still rang from the collapse making it difficult for him to focus.  “Yumi?”  

Yori grasped around blind desperate to find his sister and praying that she was still alive.  ‘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.  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 his sister 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 injuries…”  He let his back bend a little as he sighed, relieving the tension.

Minutes slowly passed for him as he held on to her and began searching around their room.  The walls that surrounded them were the rubble from school, but he couldn't tell a distance or shape from them.  It seemed to almost be going on forever while being the exact same.  He wasn't 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 space.

The clearing soon exhausted itself of answers to the mystery leaving Yori to begin to question more about their situation.  He ran another check on himself for injuries as well as on Yumi, but found nothing.  In fact, it worried him that apart from the ringing headache he didn't feel any pain.  “How’s this possible?  We fell three floors and were 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's sense of curiosity got the better of him.  He gently put his sister 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 composite 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.  “It’s real…”  He measured his words out carefully with his breathing still fearing a collapse.  “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 Hayash’s involvement?  Or someone trying to get to Hayashi 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 his sister back up into his arms checking on her condition once more trying to focus.  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 the past began to stir.  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…’

“…Hrmph…”  Yori turned 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 froze him through his bones.  It tightened his muscles and racked his chest as it lingered inside.

Months passed in similar scenes.  Until, Yori walked out of the entrance of their house passing the kitchen.  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.  “…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 near the stairs buried by a closet.  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 wasn't 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 for 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 to 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 do, 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…’

His sister suddenly moved in Yori’s arms alerting him and startling her a little.  Reacting to the fall still, she tossed about screaming for her life.  In her flailing she hit Yori with the back of her hand.  Eventually, she 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!”  His sister 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 her as she looked around in the poor light at their situation.  “What’s going on?  Where are we?”

Since his sister felt 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.”

“Buried?  Are we trapped?”  She choked the words a little when she began to examine the surroundings with him.  Being inside a small place did not worry her as much as the confusion.  She tried to focus on her brother hoping that it would stop the lightheaded feeling that she was starting to develop.  “…Brother…are you hurt?”

“No, nothing.”  Yori turned around towards his sister suddenly feeling something in the back of his head whispering to him.  “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes…”  She tried to sound convincing for him, but her unsteady words were only the start of her failed attempt.  His sister felt her knees buckle and then everything in her body went numb for a second like her brain had been completely cut off.  She collapsed to the ground barely caught by Yori in time before it was too painful.

Yori could feel her limbs shaking as he pulled her close to him.  “No, you’re not!”  It felt like she had become heavier suddenly in his arms forcing him to sit down before he lost control.  Fear quickly creeped into his heart the longer he stared into her pale eyes.  “What’s wrong, Yumi!  Where does it hurt?”

The flashlight’s beam seemed to be growing dimmer for his sister as darkness began to blanket her eyes.  Lightheadedness turned into a dull pain at the front of her head.  Lines of wrinkles drew in around her eyes from the stabbing sensation that forced its way inside her head.  “Brother?”  She tried to lift up her hand, no longer able to see him.

He grabbed on to her hand so that she could feel him still.  “I’m right here!  Stay with me, Yumi!”

“Yori?  I can’t see you…”  She had at first felt him take hold, but even that feeling was starting to fade from her away.  The numbness returned leaving her whole body dull like lead.  Panic gripped her fast as the last threads of reality seemed to be falling away from her.  “I can’t feel you, brother!  What’s happening to me?”

“Sister!  Please!”

His sister’s eyes closed slowly with the last bit of her strength faltering.  “…brother…” 

“No, Yumi!  Stay with me!”  Yori held on to her tightly shaking her as he could no longer feel her moving.  He couldn't stop because if he did he would have to admit his fear.  “Stay with me!  Don’t leave me alone again!  Yumi!”