Friends With Benefits | Chishiya x Reader

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Nao waits until you have caught your breath before almost falling over herself in an attempt to hug you. You laugh and reach back for the young girl, returning the glowing smile she gives you and suppressing the look of immense pain that surfaces as she squeezes your left arm. The woman remains tense, watching the exchange with open reproach.

"You kept your promise," Nao whispers, eyes shining.

"Well, I couldn't break a pinky promise," you grin. Nao laughs, and the brightness of the sound feels out of place in a room slowly filling with fog. It suddenly strikes you how unfair it is that such a young girl is trapped in the Borderlands as well. 

The other woman narrows her eyes. "You have a gun," she says sharply.

You vaguely recall the gun still cooling in your toasted palm, and gently disentangle yourself from Nao to set it at your feet in an attempt at a peace offering. "It's alright," you say, even though you are sure she has already gathered as much, "I'm not a militant." 

The woman looks slowly from Nao to you, and the gun on the hotel tiling. You can see the slight ease in her features, although she still looks extremely unhappy about your presence. You find that you still have it in you to be rather miffed, but to her credit she doesn't quiz you further.  

"If you try anything, I'll kill you," she warns, glaring at you as if to hammer the point home.

"You're welcome to try," you say wearily. 

She scoffs, but doesn't follow up with another cutting remark. Instead she reaches for the gun you have relinquished, dark hair dripping over her unimpressed expression. The woman has the same neat hair as Nao, only hers reaches just above her shoulders in an angular cut that seems to match her disposition. You can see a bullet wound in her upper thigh that confirms her as Nao's sister. So she did survive, then.

"We should go," you say to Nao's sister. "There's another fire in the building. Can you walk?"

You gesture to the bullet wound, and the woman frowns. 

"Yes," she says, and proceeds to take a very unconvincingly shaky step forward.

You sigh. Diamonds player, for sure.

Much to the both of your dismay, you end up trudging through the hotel corridors with Nao's sister's arm slung unwillingly around your shoulder.

After much discussion the collective decision had been made to return to the lobby, as things might have quietened down there due to the militants' killing spree. The three of you walk in a very subdued silence; two of the three are pretending the other isn't hanging off their shoulder. Nao shuffles alongside your accursed pair, suppressing a kind of wholly amusement. Her sister clutches the gun you had offered in her free hand, and makes a point to avoid looking at you at all costs. You resist the urge to deposit her in the next room.

Perhaps if the woman hadn't threatened to kill you, things might have been a little less awkward.

The halls in the lower floors are now completely deserted. You presume the militants must be patrolling the upper corridors after having cleared out the first floors entirely, but every so often you cast a wary glance around to make sure you don't encounter another unfortunate militant incident. When you crane your neck around her head, looking for potential threats, Nao's sister scowls at you. 

This, you decide, is the last straw.

Unwilling to have to carry on like this for much longer, you decide to take the plunge. You are no stranger to stubborn Diamonds players, after all. Maybe there is still a budding friendship left to salvage.