The moon takes responsibility for the world during the night, casting its divine luminescence unto all of earth's dwellers. Alongside it walks a friend, the rabbit.
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Miruko's POV
Time: 4:52pm
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Dear Diary,
Just woke up loll so tired ;p
Signed,
Rumi :)
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Rumi Usagiyama did not fear.
Growing up as the eldest sister to several younger siblings, she never had the chance to learn the sentiment. There was always something to clean, someone to pick up after, bed sheets to hang, clothes to iron. She spared hardly any time to think for herself, instead devoting nights where she couldn't sleep to mending holes in dresses and rips in trousers. Fear provided room for doubt, and doubt wasn't necessary when preventing children from toppling off high chairs or pushing babies out of the way of boiling water.
The Rabbit Hero: Miruko didn't fear either.
After all, there was no need for her to. Fear only served as an obstacle to achievement in her path as a hero, a barrier that didn't need to exist in her progress. Courage and spontaneous action came easily to her if she didn't leave room for the sensation in her head, or heart. She had nothing else to thank for her rise in the hero ranks. Miruko the Hero had no fear of detachment, no fear of judgement, no fear of the unknown, no fear of the future, no fear of death.
She'd always imagined her end to be heavy and dark. Like a large palm coming down to destroy all of her horizons stretched far into the future, or a blanket of uncomfortable warmth laying out to rest on all of her dreams. She'd always expected to feel the release of all her memories slowly leaving her, being replaced by a nothingness that she tried so hard to describe and become accustomed to. Even as she was a small child, she'd sat in her room with her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut trying to imagine what it would be like, but often gave up after her thoughts refused to cease buzzing about in her head. Death had almost been like a friend to her, a friend she was yet to meet.
But this death wasn't friendly. This was cold, hard and almost blindingly white, the opposite of what Rumi had imagined. She could hear the shout of voices calling for something, though she couldn't discern what exactly. Freezing cold seeped into her body, nestling snugly in her bones. This death wasn't warm, dark, soft or heavy.
This death hurt.
"Her heartbeat is active again!"
Slowly, Rumi realized she could open her eyes. She had never believed in heaven or hell, or any afterlife for that matter. Religion had always been foreign to her, the promise of conscience after death seeming impossible to grasp. What she couldn't grasp, she couldn't understand. What humans didn't understand, they tended to fear, so she cast it out of consideration and into the shadow of her silhouette.
But was this heaven? Alternatively, was it hell?
Black spots swirled in and out of her vision as she slowly opened her eyes. The light above her bled into the shadows in the corners of her eyes, the shadows bled into the colours from the fuzzy shapes around her, the colours bled into the light. From what she could hear, this was neither heaven nor hell. It was a hospital. She closed her eyes again. Everything was bleeding. Bleeding situation. Bleeding eyesight. Voices bleeding into one another.
Bleeding.
Blood.
There was so much blood the last time she was conscious. It was everywhere. Stuck in her clumped, matted hair; staining her suit; leaking into her left eye; dripping from her ripped ear. All she could see was red. Neither Rumi nor Miruko had ever seen so much of it at once. It could only mean one thing, and yet, she wasn't afraid when her breath became shallow. She wasn't afraid when her vision darkened. She wasn't afraid when she slipped into unconsciousness.
Rumi twitched her left arm. Almost instantly, a red-hot pain shot through it, stabbing right through her shoulder and neck, straight to her brain. She choked back a gasp of pain, instead opting to exhale heavily through her nose.
So, her upper body was still available.
"Can anyone stop the flow from her arm?" a feminine voice, probably belonging to one of the doctors around her demanded, strained with urgency. "Has the cavity on her side been tended to?"
Her lips felt dry and cracked, but it seemed too impossible for her to gather enough energy to lick them. She gave up a stray breath that was too weak to be a sigh. Rumi couldn't find the strength to move her body, to sit up and tell the doctors and nurses that she was fine, and that they had no reason to fear. The exact reason why she had dedicated hours to becoming Miruko, a hero that provided a sense of safety to everyone around her had arisen, and yet-
Here she lay as Rumi, in a hospital she didn't know. Here she lay, too weak even to raise a single limb. She hardly managed to force her thoughts together like an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle, and even that came with struggle. All she could do was take in a shallow breath as purchase, and let out a shallow breath as payment. Therefore, she dedicated herself to that, maintaining her heart rate with steady, almost rhythmic breaths.
Rumi Usagiyama and Miruko the Hero did not know how to fear. So they clung to what they did know— thoughts bobbing in murky waters void of moonlight like flimsy pieces of driftwood.
Somewhere along the lines of her breathing, she fell out of consciousness, succumbing to the weight tugging at her limbs.
*
Rumi forced her eyes open, a groan erupting from her throat.
The hospital gown she had on clung to her body with sweat, sticking to the bed sheets underneath her. It felt unbelievably hot, like the sun itself was next to her in the bed she lay in. She shifted a bit, trying to get comfortable, but immediately giving up after a knife-sharp pain shot up her back, blooming in her shoulder blades. She couldn't see past the light blue hospital curtains, but heard the hushed whispers of medical staff all the way down the corridor outside of her room. Not bothering to take apart every single conversation in earshot, she looked to the polyester tiles of the ceiling, sighing.
"Ms Usagiyama? Are you OK?" Rumi's eyes snapped back down from the ceiling. A woman sat in the hospital chair beside her bed, shifting in her seat uncomfortably under Miruko's gaze. She cleared her throat awkwardly and sat straighter, as though she had been waiting to say something.
"Where am I?" she croaked, breaking the silence. It was almost humiliating, how vulnerable she was in this state, how the rasp of her voice fit the frail, confused woman that she was, but Rumi pushed the thought to the back of her mind. There were matters that were more important. "How long have I been out?"
"You've been unconscious for a week or so, Miss." The woman bowed, smiling gently. "I'm Doctor Miyamoto. I was just popping in to check if you were conscious, and it seems I arrived just at the right time! Would you like anything to eat or drink?"
It had been days since she drank anything. Rumi was sure that water was the only thing she could allow to pass her lips, food too heavy for her weak stomach.
"Some water would be nice, thanks." She returned a feeble smile back to Doctor Miyamoto, nodding her head in gratitude. "Could you turn on a fan or some shit? Like, it's really hot in here."
The Doc looked back over her shoulder at Rumi with one foot out of the door, an apologetic look in her eyes.
"I'm really sorry about that. The other patient requested that the heating be turned up."
Miruko's eyebrows shot up, interest piqued. Usually, injured heroes had the privilege of having a hospital room to themselves in recovery, even more so if they were highly ranked. For her, the Number Five Hero to be sharing a room with someone? The amount of casualties must have been insane recently. Silently, she cursed herself for not being available at the time.
"Who's the other patient?"
An unrecognizable emotion flashed on Doctor Miyamoto's face for a moment, disappearing before Rumi could pinpoint it. She wrung her gloved hands together, smile not quite reaching her eyes cast on the floor.
"It's the Number Two, Hawks," she whispered, before slipping out of the room. The door clicked shut, leaving a heavy silence that had no right to settling so quickly.
What happened to Hawks for it to be such a touchy subject?
Sighing, Rumi hung her head, heavy with the weight of curiosity. While she was out something had happened to the Number Two. Something most likely devastating. It wasn't uncommon for heroes to be seriously injured, but the reaction evoked from the Doctor was nothing short of rare, if not exceptional. The most likely scenario was that he was dead, but that wasn't possible for obvious reasons.
What she could not grasp, she could not understand. What humans didn't understand, they tended to fear. Therefore, she moved on.
Miruko knew already that her forearm had been ripped off during her fight with the Nomu. She remembered the unreal level of blinding white pain that rushed through her body like electricity— far too well for her liking. The loss of a whole limb was nothing but an interference with her work, but she had already taken the challenge wholeheartedly. Though the thought was rather childish, she thought it like a cool battle scar, a real medal to show what she was capable of enduring.
Raising the bandaged stump to the light above her, she rotated her arm around, prodding at the nub of her slightly bloodied bandage. The little jabs of pain assured her that her loss was real and permanent, no hyper-realistic dream of hers. It felt good, in a way that Rumi didn't understand fully but accepted regardless.
Briefly, she remembered— her arm wasn't the only thing injured.
"Ah, I should check the rest of my body too." She muttered to nobody else in particular.
She drew her hospital blanket back to reveal—
From just below the knee—
Her leg, it was—
"What the fuck.
Gone.
What THE-"