Her Otherworldly Smile (Kyo⨯OC; Yuki⨯OC)

「Before the Wish」

—Before the Wish (Reading Volume 3)—
—Third Person—

During an old, ordinary day, before Skylar and Aly found themselves living with the Sohmas...

"This is what happens when you ignore an earache," Aly reprimands, looking at her idiot best friend as she hands her the heating pad. "I'll never understand why you can't just admit when you don't feel well."

"I didn't want you to worry," Skylar mumbles mulishly, cringing when the hot cloth touches the side of her face. "Besides, it was just an earache."

Aly closes her eyes, counting to ten in her head before answering her very stupid, very troublesome friend.

Honestly, Aly isn't surprised nor upset that Skylar didn't tell her when her ear first started hurting—after all, Skylar's prone to outer ear infections because she refuses to wear earplugs when swimming, so her ear hurting is actually just the norm during summer. However, the fact that Skylar neglected to tell her that her ear had been hurting for two weeks and she had developed a fever at some point is what's making the normally calm and collected brunette lose her mind.

"Yes, well, earaches obviously turn into serious problems when you ignore them," Aly hisses, "which is why you should tell someone when you're not feeling well."

Skylar looks down at the hospital bed, sighing. She always hates it when Aly gets mad enough to yell. "I'm sorry, Als. I honestly just thought it was a bad ear infection."

"Oh, it's a bad ear infection all right," Aly continues, clearly not finished with her lecture yet. "You not only have an outer ear infection but an inner ear infection as well, which has managed to travel to your bone because someone refused to tell anyone that she was in so much pain, she was sobbing. I was wondering why you kept tearing up in class, but you just told me it was nothing every single time. You know if I hadn't forced you to go to the hospital, this could've gotten worse, right? Mastoiditis or whatever the nurse called it can cause permanent damage to your hearing and brain, but you fought me the entire way here, saying you were fine."

"I thought it was just a normal earache," Skylar repeats.

Aly glares at her. "Skylar, you're one of the top students in school—please do me a favor and save me from the ignorance spiel. You know as well as I do that a fever is usually a sign that your body is fighting an infection, so why didn't you at least go to the doctors when you found out you had one?"

"How was I supposed to know it was connected?" she demands.

Aly's eyes ignite. "You're not supposed to know because you're not a doctor, which is why you should've gone to one!"

Skylar looks down again, thoroughly chastised, and cringes, hit by a wave of throbbing pain.

"It's hurting again, isn't it?" Aly says softly.

"Yeah," Skylar says, eyes wet with tears. "Do you think the antibiotics will work fast?"

"Within a few days maybe," Aly says. "Just lay down and try to sleep. I'll wake you up when the nurse comes back with the medicine."

"Alright," Skylar agrees, slipping under the thin cover. Carefully, she rests her good ear against the flimsy pillow and breathes in slowly, trying to ignore the pain radiating in her ear.

Aly watches as a few tears slip down her face and sighs, feeling all of her anger leave her.

As much of an idiot as she is, it's still awful when Skylar's this sick.

—xxx—

Another Before the Wish chapter~ They'll probably get longer as the story continues, but this one was specifically meant to give you an idea of how far back Skylar's stubbornness goes, especially since the next couple of chapters in the next volume are going to highlight it. Besides, Aly's in the "official" cover for Volume 3, so I thought she should be the main voice (Skylar's Voice of Reason as Uo calls her) for this chapter~ At any rate, first official chapter of volume 3 is coming tonight or tomorrow, so look forward to it, cupcakes~

Happy reading~<3(: