“You know I love you, right, auntie?” I said, digging my fingers into the sides of seat as Sachi swerved in and out of traffic like a lunatic, the sleek black sports car narrowly avoiding disaster seemingly at every turn.

“Yes,” Sachi said, honking the horn angrily as the car jumped forward as she slammed her foot down on the petal before jerking back as she pressed the brake to avoid a vegetable truck. She honked the horn once again. “Fucker!” She yelled angrily before pressing the accelerator again, causing the sports car to leap once more.

“You also know that I wouldn’t say anything to enrage you, right? Especially when you’re…driving.” I closed my eyes as we skipped between two cars with barely ten centimeters clearance on either side of the mirrors.

“That I do not know,” Sachi shook her head. “You’ve done a pretty good job of pissing me off with this whole thing, Kasumi.”

“How do you think I feel?” I scoffed. “I was kidnapped for the second time in as many days and am now officially recklessly endangered by your driving! Not to mention I couldn’t even dress properly!” I sighed and tried desperately to calm down.

“You can’t be trusted to not jump out of the bathroom window and escape,” Sachi snarled.

“I live on the third floor!” I gaped at her. “Even if I could fit, which I can’t, I’m not going to jump out the fucking bathroom window!”

“I don’t know that Kasumi,” Sachi shook her head as she swerved dangerously across three lanes of traffic before reaching the Tokyo Bay Bridge. “You’re like a fucking contortionist spider monkey. For all I know you already had an escape plan. I couldn’t take the chance.”

“You’re exaggerating,” I sulked as we climbed the bridge at a rather alarming rate of speed, my fingers digging deeper into the seat cushion in response.

“How’d you skulk out of the press conference, then?” Sachi growled, her eyes boring holes in me.

“Watch the road! Watch the road!” I snapped nervously. “You are a menace when you drive. You must know that. And I didn’t ‘skulk’. I just left. I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay after what you all pulled. None of you even gave me an idea what you were doing. What the hell was up with that? Who puts someone on the spot like that with no warning whatsoever? That was a shit move and you know it!”

“Why you little…! I ought to…!” Sachi snarled in fits, flailing her arms in a most dangerous and distressing way before calming herself and, mercifully, putting her hands back on the wheel. “No,” She shook her head, plainly talking to herself. “I promised.” She turned to me and scowled. “But don’t think this is over. You and I are going to have a long talk after this.”

“Not if you don’t watch the fucking road!” I shouted, hiding my eyes as we veered into oncoming traffic.

“Mari’s so much worse than I am. Seriously, don’t drive on the bridge with her,” Sachi shuddered, swerving back dangerously into the proper lane. “This is fine”

“This is most assuredly not fine,” I mumbled fearfully.

The Hall was what Kunoichi called their office, business, and practice space. It was a warehouse on Tokyo Bay in Chiba several blocks from Sodegaura station. The cavernous first floor contained recording studios, rehearsal rooms and the dance studio while the upper three floors were filled with office space. It was on the top floor I found myself, sitting at a long conference table. Across from me sat Kunoichi and Nanami, all staring at me silently. The fuck is this? I thought uncomfortably, uncomfortably aware I was in ratty sweatpants and a long anime t-shirt with no makeup and my hair hastily put up into a ratty ponytail.

I looked at each of them in turn as they silently stared back at me, the clock on the wall ticking the awkward seconds off, the deafening silence extending and lengthening until it had become an almost ominous, looming thing. What the hell is up with this situation? I asked myself. What the fuck was going on? And, just as importantly, why wasn’t anyone saying anything? Finally I sighed, figuring it was up to me to break the silence.

“So, am I allowed to make a call, officers?” I asked flippantly.

“Kasumi chan,” Akari said quickly, shooting a withering look at Sachi who had started to get out of her seat angrily. “I love you. We all do. You know that, right?”

“Of course,” I shrugged. “That’s why you wrecked my life without consulting me and then sent Speed Racer to kidnap me. Love is fickle like that, though, I suppose.”

“Why you little-!” Sachi leapt to her feet.

“We discussed this!” Askari snapped irritably. Sachi glowered at me for a moment before reluctantly sitting back in her chair. “Consider this an intervention, Kasumi chan.”

“Hah?” I cocked my head to the side and arched an eyebrow disbelievingly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We all think of you as our own,” Akari sighed. “We love you so much. Unconditionally. There is nothing anyone at this table or in this company wouldn’t do for you.”

“She’s right,” Mari chimed in. “I know for Nanami and Koemi you’re like a daughter. For us you are like the best, most amazing niece we could ever ask for!”

“We love you so much, Kasumi chan,” Yukiko smiled. “When you came home from high school, we all couldn’t wait to hear about your day. To share in your triumphs. And my oh my, there were so many of them!”

“Smart, beautiful, charming when you want to be, and so independent,” Rei nodded. “We are all so proud of you.”

“It’s why it hurts us when you are in pain,” Koemi shook her head. “To see someone you love hurting is no fun. It tears at you. It makes you desperate to help. To take some of their pain and ease their burden.” What the hell is going on? I thought to myself. Did they script this out or something?

“We don’t know what happened in Tottori, Kasumi chan,” Nanami leaned forward, dark eyes staring at me intensely. “You didn’t want to talk about it when you got here and none of us pushed you. You wanted to be out of the spotlight, and we accommodated you, understanding you had your reasons. Fame is a difficult thing to cope with, especially when you’re not used to it. I understand that as well as anyone.

“When you didn’t want help, we respected your wishes. When you wanted to do your own thing, we bowed out with no questions asked. We always gave you the time to figure things out for yourself.” I couldn’t help but agree. They had always been close, but never interfered. They had guided without forcing me. They had instructed without telling. They had always been wonderful.

“Then why? Why put me on the spot like that?” I demanded with a scowl. “Why force me into something you know I don’t want to do? Why put me through that?”

“Do you remember when you first came to Tokyo, Kasumi chan?” Akari asked, sitting on the table, and staring at me intently. “Do you remember how unsure you were? How you didn’t want to get used to having things in case they might be taken away from you at some point? How you shied away from any sort of interaction with all of us?” I shrugged. It was true, I supposed.

“We figured it was fine,” Akari shrugged. “You had trauma. We all knew you had. We didn’t know specifics, but we knew. We had our own trials along the way, but we had each other. We figured we could be there for you and help however we might.”

“The problem,” Nanami sighed, “is you haven’t gotten better. You never bothered to let us in. Not even a little. We sat by through high school when you refused to make friends. We sat by through college when you went out with a different girl every week and still made no friends. We sat by after you graduated and still kept everyone at arm’s length. And that’s the problem, Kasumi chan. You keep everyone at arm’s length. Even us. Even after all these years.”

“What did we do to you, Kasumi?” Sachi finally entered the conversation.

“Huh?” I stared at her in confusion.

“We had to have done something to you to push us all away like this,” Sachi shrugged. “You don’t treat people who love you like it’s a pain in the ass to be around them. You don’t act like people you love are unwelcome strangers incapable of even knowing where you live, let alone anything about your life. So, we can only think we did something wrong.”

“It’s not like that!” I snapped.

“Then how is it, Kasumi chan?” Nanami asked.

“It’s…”I began before stopping. What the hell was even going on? This was none of their business. It didn’t concern them. What was done was done. I mean what was I going to say? ‘My girlfriend was fucking my brother’? ‘I was kicked out of my house because I was gay’? ‘My best friend was sent to a different school for even being associated with me’? What would that accomplish?

I always tried to keep things in perspective. I certainly had it better than many people. There were people the world over raped and killed just for being gay or trans. There were people starving in the streets, dying in wars they had no say in. I most assuredly didn’t have a monopoly on shitty situations. In fact, landing in the lap of luxury after Tottori made me pretty damn lucky. My situation was, honestly, a bit like winning the lottery.

So why didn’t I want to tell them? They were right, of course. They had been nothing but supportive. Throughout my angsty teen years and sulky college period they had stuck by me. Far more supportive than I had any right to expect. It was true, also, they had always done their best to help me with no questions asked.

But with stupid stuff like what was bothering me, what could they even do? There was no magical spell to put the memories to rest. No word, deed, or gesture, to take away the sense of betrayal I felt when just about everyone I knew either turned on or were turned away from me. I suppose I could have gone to therapy, but what good would that do? Reliving things certainly wasn’t going to help me forget about them.

“It’s just a lot of stuff happened before I left,” I began again. “Personal things. I didn’t really deal with them well at the time and, shocker, I haven’t gotten any closer to dealing with them the more time has gone by. It’s…I don’t know, tough to separate what happened from what is happening sometimes, I guess. I’m sorry for acting childish.”

“We’re not here to pry,” Akari replied, walking around the table to sit next to me. She put her hand on my arm and peered at me intently. “We’re here to help you.”

“What we did… putting you on the spot like that, wasn’t what we intended,” Nanami sighed, coming around the table to sit on the other side of me, her eyes locking with mine. “We wanted to talk to you about everything first. We wanted to lay everything out and get your thoughts. But every time we tried you never showed up or showed up for a few minutes and left.”

Now that I thought about the lead up to the conference, they were right. I thought it had been strange they kept inviting me over to Sacchan and Akari’s apartment or the Hall or something. I’d used up every excuse in the books and even invented some new ones to get out of things. Not because I didn’t love them or want to be with them, but once I got locked into a cycle of being alone, I tended to want to stay by myself. Well shit, I sighed. Looks like I may not have been completely blameless in what went down.

“So, what’s with this, then? Why kidnap me?”

“I swear to fuck I – “Sachi began with a scowl.

“We want to talk to you, Kasumi,” Akari shot Sachi a look and shook her head. “That’s what an intervention is, after all.”

“I’m not an addict, you know,” I frowned at her.

“There are all kinds of addictions, Kas,” Koemi pointed out.

“Nothing ominous...or creepy about that,” I muttered.