Technical Difficulties (Brother's Conflict)

Chapter 26!

As she waited and even during the hour ride on the train, she constantly opened her phone and looked at her messages with Nageki in her half asleep stupor. To say she was tired was an understatement, since the night alone had been exhausting and she wasn't planning on sleeping again any time soon. She kept staring at their most recent texts, Nageki not so secretly trying to figure out how to bake and Mei not so secretly giving him tips so that he didn't accidentally burn the place down. She smiled almost every time she opened them up, yet it always immediately melted away as the image of her kissing Tsubaki welled up to the front of her mind.

So, everytime she went to type something, anything, she would think of the kiss and most of her brain would shut down and then she would close her phone with a sigh and try again after another twenty minutes. When she finally arrived at her apartment, she flopped onto the bed completely ungracefully after her whole game of mental gymnastics for the entire night. She had hired out one of the people from the apartment next door to come in occasionally and dust things off just so it wasn't a complete mess when she came to visit. They had been willing to do it for a cheap price too, since they occasionally had trouble with cable and were more than happy to have an excuse to come use her TV when she wasn't there. She had sent a text on the train ride over informing them she'd be crashing for the weekend to get some work done, so she wouldn't be startled by them either.

Now it really was just Mei and her thoughts and to be completely honest, she didn't like it in the slightest. So, instead of thinking too hard on the subject that her brain seemed to enjoy bringing up 'Why she felt guilty while kissing Tsubaki', she decided to start work early on her painting since that's what she really came for. It was late morning when Ema finally saw her note and called her to make sure she made it safe, which Mei assured her of, hoping word of her talk with Masaomi wouldn't spread too far before she got back to fix everything.

She was humming lowly to herself, a loose paint splattered shirt and a pair of equally messy jeans hanging off her skinny form. She had no way of knowing what temperature it was in the room, so she just hoped the thermostat wasn't lying to her when it said it was the decently warm temperature she was paying her heating bill for. Like seen before, Mei became a much different person when she was focused on painting. Her eyes had an edge to them, like they were consuming the world around her rather than just observing and you could practically cut the tension she created in the air with a knife, the level of focus she reached making the room almost stuffy even for her.

Nothing of interest really happened all day, her neighbor did stop in and drop off some fresh bread being the nice person they were, but there was nothing else in the world but Mei and her painting, at least that's what Mei wanted it to feel like. Without meaning to, the days flew by with her constantly ignoring her phone, forgetting to sleep or eat, and only occasionally taking breaks. The brothers only knew she was alive because Ema occasionally had a call go through with a clipped conversation of one word answers and the assurance that she'd be back for school the next week.

It was suddenly mid morning on Sunday, meaning she'd be heading back that night. She looked at the work in front of her, constantly adding even the smallest of details with a miniscule brush despite the fact that the canvas was bigger than her entire upper body. It was a depiction of, in an almost hyper realistic way, a woman's hair being tangled in with yellow flowers in a field. The only things visible in the aerial view was an expanse of daffodils, the thick brown hair of the woman tangled in with the stems and leaves and contrasting with their bright yellow color, her hand limply hanging in those same greens, and a trail following her looking like daffodils had been trampled and broken as though she had been dragged across them. 

Some art connoisseurs would be able to spin the piece to be much more in depth than it actually was like some sort of english teacher with a classical literature novel. They'd say it's about society dragging women through the mud or that women are being strangled by being compared to flowers, but there wasn't those kinds of meanings behind it.

Mei simply felt like dying currently, the thoughts that plagued her days ago still not sorted in the slightest, and she felt that if she were to die she'd at least like to go near some pretty flowers or something. After deciding to stop procrastinating any longer, she called her usual art dealer, telling her she had a new piece and would drop it off at the usual place for her to auction. To say there was excitement in the woman's tone was an understatement, but Mei tried her best to ignore it.

With her phone now in her hands, she could now see all the missed texts from Nageki and the few that fit on her screen from a multitude of different brothers, though she didn't see a single one from Tsubaki and for some reason some of the tension left her muscles. 'Missed', that was the perfect word to describe it. Here she was, in this secluded apartment, missing her family's moments, missing time she could spend making memories with friends, with Nageki. It was just like.. "Why is it, no matter how long it's been, I always come right back to this?"

An almost disappointed smile highlighted her pale features as tears slipped down from her tired eyes. She had decided to change her life for the better, yet she'd gone all the way back to the kid she used to be before she was set free from her mother's grasp. She stood slowly, walking over to her small kitchen and finding some instant ramen still good from her last visit. As she waited for the water to boil, she held her phone tightly to try and make her hands stop shaking. "Hello?"

"All I get is a 'hello'? You're practically blowing up my phone you're sooo lonely and that's the lackluster response? I expected more." She feigned being hurt in her voice, though in person she was grinning. Nageki seemed to know that too.

"Ah, kitten. I was waiting for you to call. Why did you abandon me for days, I must be the most lonely man in the world!" He was whining and something about it made Mei happier than she'd been in over 48 hours, probably more.

"You sound like you'll disappear or something if I don't give you attention."

"Good, because that's correct." She couldn't help all of the laughter that bubbled up to her throat this time. "Your sister told me you're up at the apartment, did something happen?"

Maybe it was the slightly more serious tone in his voice, the undecipherable guilt still weighing on her chest, or the fact that she could picture him asking it with those grey eyes full of genuine concern even if the rest of his face was blank; but, she wanted to break down again and tell him everything. Instead, she told him that she and one of her brothers had a disagreement about something, especially not mentioning that guilty feeling still hanging in her chest that only seemed to grow as she lied. For the first time in a while, she could tell what Nageki was thinking with only the sound of his voice. It was colored by anger but she knew he hadn't believed a word she had said. 

"If it would help, I could kill him." His voice had dropped in octaves as he said it, proving to her just how angry his was that she was willing to lie so blatantly.

"I know."