Since Miho was both particularly skilled and talented at archery, against all the odds and ignoring the club's rules, she had managed to become the vice-captain of the school's team. If it wasn't for her status as a freshman, the coach would have made her the captain right of the bat, but such a radical move would not meet with the approval of neither the Kirasaki Daiichi's staff nor the parents of the older students. Kou wasn't really bothered she had to wait a year longer to get to the top; a year sooner or later, who cared?

Truth to be told she had started caring when, against all odds, she was nominated for the archery club's captain, in the process of not only getting the title but also the responsibilities that came within it. This was how she did herself a disservice taking on her already loaded shoulders another bunch of people of a dubious level of intelligence. She was reminded of that fact both unexpectedly and painfully. It all happened during one of the practices.

As Kou was gathering the arrows from the bullseye, after she'd just presented the goons from her team how to make a proper aim, she heard frantic conversations behind her back. Wanting to find out what the newbies were making such a fuss about, and simultaneously curse their brains out, she turned around, her mouth already opening to snap at them. But as she heard a distinct sound of the bowstring tremble, her eyes widened at the arrow piercing through the air, heading straight in her direction. Kou noticed a blanched face of that idiot of a fist year, the heir of the Yamamoto Corporation, began lowering his bow. After that, she felt the steel material of the arrowhead digging through her flesh. The last thing Kou remembered was that she clutched her side and raised her blood-covered palm before her face.

A few hours later, Kou woke up to not so pleasant face of her friend. The painkillers they gave her weren't relieving anything, making her only feel numb and kind of confused.

"Where am I?" She grumbled, trying to pull herself up on her elbows but as she strained the muscles of her stomach, she immediately fell back on the pillows, wincing in pain.

"And where do you think you are, Miho?" Makoto rose an eyebrow.

"Dead."

"That's not a place but a state."

"Seeing that you're here, hell would be my second guess." She grimaced, this time extremely carefully pulling herself up. "That bastard... I'm going to kill him with my own, bare hands!" She huffed, already swaying her legs over the bedside. However, just as the sheets dropped, Kou realized her clothes were replaced with a thin, patient's gown. She frowned, squinting at her sides in search of her uniform.

"You're looking for this?" Hanamiya asked, waving her jacket right in front of her nose; she tried to snatch it from his grip but his hand darted up, preventing her from doing so. "Lie down, Miho, or you'll break the stitches."

"Like I care!" She barked. "Give me back my clothes! I'm going to make Yamamoto suffer, and then when I'm satisfied, I'll make him suffer more just to make sure that dumbass got the point."

"Calm down. If you do this, you'll get thrown out, not to mention you'll end up in prison," Makoto informed, the hand with her clothes lowering enough for her to make a move to get them.

Kou darted forward, her wound stinging like hell, and leaned over Hanamiya's shoulder to get her clothes back.

"Like I cared! I'll rip his insides out and watch as they cool down on the grass!"

"Just wow..." Hanamiya's eyes grew wider at the statement. "You're not giving me any choice, Miho." He shook his head and dropped her uniform on the bed. In a flash, the girl was by the pile. "I'll have to call nurse Yamada..."

Kou froze upon hearing the name. Nurse Yamada was a stocky woman in her mid-forties, or mid-sixties... well, that was hard to tell since she honestly looked like a yakuza member and definitely had a demeanour of one. While she was being patched up by the surgeon, Yamada insisted for him not to use any kind of anaesthesia...

"You wouldn't dare," she choked out, slowly turning to Hanamiya, who looked dead set on making the best of his promises.

"I would and I will if you don't calm down," he stated calmly. "Besides you can't honestly think you could as much as lie a finger on Yamamoto?"

Kou gritted her teeth. "I'm going to kill him. I swear to god, that once I'm out, he'll regret having hands to hold the bow in the first place."

"Why do I even bother..." Hanamiya rolled his eyes before he looked down, frowning. "Yamada-san?!" He called out of the blue.

The panic gave Kou almost impossible speed, and she shot back under the covers.

"What the hell are you doing, Makoto?!" She hissed, covering her head with the sheets as if that simple trick could make her invisible to the iron maiden. "Shut up! I'm not going anywhere, see?"

"Yamada-san?!"

"Shut up!"

"Nurse!"

"M-Makoto, please I'm begging you... I'll be good! I promise," she pleaded, trying to catch Hanamiya's attention but he kept calling for the Hulk. "I won't move, hell, I'll do whatever you want but please stop calling that hag. It will come if you don't!"

"Will you leave Yamamoto alone?" He asked, out of sudden sounding interested in what she had to say.

"Yes, yes, whatever you want, just please shut up!"

Hanamiya's lips curled up in a broad smile and Kou gulped, feeling somewhat doubtful of his intentions. It looked like the medications she was forced to take earlier had intensified her inner paranoiac.

"If you're asking so nicely... how could I possibly refuse? I'm not going to call Yamada because you wanted to bail from the hospital," he informed graciously. "However, you bleed out on my shirt and since I like to think of myself as of a responsible person, I'm forced to inform the staff about your condition, Miho."

Kou's eyes grew wider as they darted to the dark, red stain on her friend's button-up. A sound of upcoming steps directed her attention to the entrance of the room, where a large woman with a faint moustache had just appeared.

Kou turned to Hanamiya, pulling the sheets tighter over her head and mouthed:

I hate you.

The boy just smiled, getting onto his feet.

"I'll leave the two of you alone. I have a practice in an hour," he informed before disappearing into the hallway.

After two, painful days in the hospital, Kou was signed out with a furiously red scar and a burning need of revenge. But as she returned to school and tried to find Yamamoto, thoughts of making him suffer already piling up in her mind, the boy was nowhere to be found. Two weeks later she saw him getting out of the headmaster's office with both hands carefully bandaged. The vice-captain told her, during one of the practices the boy's bow snapped in his hands, hurting his fingers in the process.

Surely she didn't have anything to do with his injury but Kou knew very well who was to be held responsible, or more like whom should she be thankful for returning the karma. Hanamiya didn't like when his people were being mistreated. If one found themselves among people Hanamiya considered those of his own, one could be confident no one would dare to touch a strand of hair on their head. However, when an unfortunate situation occurred, the fact no one could deny, Hanamiya would do many things to return the disservice with twice as much strength. Kou was sure he would do the very same thing for Yamazaki as he did for her, even if the boy was among a major part of people who could get on Hanamiya's nerves with their lone presence.

As Kou was sitting on the extremely uncomfortable chair, her upper body propped on the edge of the bed, she could feel about an inch large scar tugging the skin on her stomach and at that moment she had no doubts it was Makoto who was responsible for Yamamoto's bow snapping.

The girl gave a loud yawn, turning on to her side. A sound of crack was heard when the stiff bones in her neck protested. It had been 2 weeks now since she burst into the hospital and stayed there for good, not stepping a few meter radius from the Hanamiya room's doors, let alone going to school. Kou was drained both emotionally and physically, last days being a genuine nightmare.

Miho moved closer and gingerly laid her cheek against the cool hand of her unconscious friend. Makoto was so cold, his kidneys slowly beginning to fail, along with his liver. The doses of premedication Hanamiya had been receiving were simply too much for his body to cope with and instead of helping, the drugs were making him rot on the inside.

For three weeks had he been unconscious, and even though his state could be described as stable, nothing had changed. Kou closed her eyes, pressing her lips against his knuckles and begged every force she could think of, so Makoto would not leave her alone. There was no other option for her, but he still... he was so cold...

Just as Hanamiya grew used to breaking people mentally, now his victims found their revenge and being unable to shatter his spirit, they broke his body, literally leaving it in shreds. Kou was seething while counting the parts she would cut off first from the culprit's body. The one who harmed Hanamiya made a grave mistake not taking her down with him because once Makoto was well enough for her to leave the hospital, she'd be out for headhunting.

"Miho-chan?"

A female voice brought her back to the grave reality; it must have been past noon already because Hanamiya Ren had already shown up. Usually, she didn't mind Kou basically camping out in Hanamiya's room, since whenever she came, the girl greeted her and left for the corridor's hallways to catch up on her sleep. This time, however, when Miho raised her gaze at the woman, instead of seeing her usual expressionless face, she was greeted with a scowl. If by now she had any doubts about Makoto's lineage, they all evaporated with the sight of missis Hanamiya.

"You're here again," the woman stated. "What are you doing?"

Kou had to force herself not to double-take. This was how her friend would look if he was indeed a woman.

"I apologize for a nuisance, Ren-sama." Miho mumbled and shot on her feet as fast as the stiff muscles let her, which basically meant Kou wasn't swift at all, nearly tripping over her own legs. "I'll wait outside."

"I was patient, Miho-chan, but I swear if I ever see you like that ever again, I'll take some drastic measures to prevent you from coming here, understood?"

Kou's eyes grew wider. It kind of stung to hear the woman was blaming her enough to forbid her from visiting her son.

Nevertheless, she nodded.

"That will never happen again, Ren-sama." Kou limped out of the room, her numb leg dragging slightly behind her, but as she was almost in the hallway, missis Hanamiya spoke up.

"I don't think I expressed myself clearly... you just can't keep going like this." Kou frowned at the softer note of the woman's voice. "Just look at yourself, Miho-chan."

"I-I—"

"No! This is getting out of control. Whenever I come, you're here. You don't go to school!" Missus Hanamiya exclaimed. "Do your parents even know where you are?"

Miho turned to face her, but she just shook her head, exasperated.

"It's not really my business..." She added quietly, probably having the same thought as Kou. If she couldn't even take care of her own child, scolding her would be sheer hypocrisy. "You're wearing the same clothes you were wearing yesterday, and the day before, and a day before that... Tell me, do you ever sleep?"

Now Kou felt really embarrassed... She didn't have the time to get a new set of clothes, but there was a launderette in the hospital's basement, so it wasn't that bad, right?

The girl straightened her back proudly before giving the woman a stiff bow and leaving. But Kou hadn't even moved past the door frame when she felt a hand pulling her back, and a moment later, Miho found herself being hugged by Makoto's mother. She froze, not knowing what to do.

"Just... you need to take it easy, Miho-chan. He'll be fine... he must be," she whispered fervently and pulled away, her hands firmly placed on Kou's shoulders. "I'm grateful Makoto has someone who cares for him."

Kou blinked rapidly.

"C-cares?"

Was that care? That thing, tugging on her stomach and preventing her from sleeping...?

"It's good that he has such a friend like you, Miho-chan."

"Oh, right... a friend." She forced herself not to give a nervous laugh. Well, she wasn't wrong, Miho was his friend... and friends cared. So it all was normal.

"Soon enough, it all will be just a memory," the woman promised, smiling reassuringly. Kou wondered where did she keep all that optimism... "So, Miho-chan, go back home, take a shower and get some sleep because you look like you were run over by a truck."

Kou pursed her lips sourly; missis Hanamiya said it all with a straight face a sweet smile plastered to it.

"I'll try... Ren-sama."

"I can't tell you what to do, but please don't skip school anymore. There really is no need for the both of us to be stuck here. We can take turns." She offered. "You can come after school, and if anything ha-happens in the meantime, I promise to contact you."

For the lack of better options, Kou assented with her, hoping it was just the look Hanamiya had inherited from his mother. Mostly because if it was also the character, she would be called only for her friend's funeral.