Sometimes she has nightmares. She doesn't remember most of what happens or what she witnesses when she sleeps, but the nightmares never fail to be extremely vivid and incredibly heart wrenching. It was as if she was seeing them in real time, like it was happening at that very second somewhere in the world. And it was always the same thing, over and over again.
Her father, Ulrich. He was on tour. At that moment, he was investigating a small town, a few women and children hiding in dark alleys whimpering in fear. She watches as he examines them with sad eyes, observing their frail, trembling forms curled up in the shadows.
And then...It happe
Jeremie and Aelita were already exchanging cautious looks well before they entered the geisha's house. Apart from all the yelling, cheering and the sounds of heavy footsteps racing around the rooms, not to mention the shrieking coming from her kids which was odd because they were usually dead silent with their nose buried in a book or something, causing utter chaos inside the thick walls of the house, the voice of Yumi babbling about in that strange way of hers when she gets overly excited floods the rooms and hallways when the door goes swinging open with a resounding slam, making both Jeremie and Aelita jump.
Yumi greeted them with an enth
Odd didn't see it coming. Not by a long shot.
His friends joked about how he had practically survived everything life could throw at him. Things like escaping a crumbling building unharmed, surviving the wrath of angry teenage girls when they found out he was cheating on them and even getting a few volts passed through him, courtesy of Xana's polymorphic specters. They were almost convinced that he would die doing something stupid. Something like falling out of a tree or getting hit by a moped or bleeding out from a paper cut...If that were possible, of course. He assumed they were right.
Catching a cold hadn't been something that occurred
Maybe he waited too long.
Maybe he joked around too much, maybe he should've been just a little more serious.
Maybe, he never even had a chance to start with.
He's never told Yumi, well, not all of it anyway. Felt that the geisha would reject him or, worst case scenario, she'd take pity on him if he ever said anything. So, like any other troubled teenager, he just left his true feelings unspoken, keeping them locked away safely in the back of his mind. There, logic and reason often won against the nerves, which prevented him from saying too much or anything stupid for that matter.
Most of the time, it doesn't bother him. He grins and bear
It felt as if only yesterday, Yumi was six years old.
Then, he practically blinked and his little girl was suddenly a married woman.
He could still hear that soft growling of hers when she couldn’t get her way. He could still see that adorable half smile she’d get when teaching her little brother, genuinely proud of his progress. He could still feel her fragile little hands wrapping around his own, those very hands went on to become skilled at Pencak Silat. They became so strong and tough that it worried him.
But most of all, he could still remember how, whenever he and their mother would argue, she would wrap her arms Hiroki a
"Yumi, don't...Don't leave." Ulrich feels his heart breaking, slowly falling apart piece by piece, the shards lodging themselves into his lungs. He can barely breathe. He can barely say the words he is trying so desperately to form.
The geisha is just observing him through unimpressed eyes, backpack hanging off her shoulder, boarding pass gripped tightly in one hand and the handle of her luggage in the other. She's heading back home to Japan...Where she claims her real life is. Where Ulrich and Lyoko aren't. Where her friends and family who hadn't betrayed her trust lived. The samurai forces his rage aside and wills the tears welling up in h
Good Times Vs Bad Times by CrescentRoseWolf, literature
Literature
Good Times Vs Bad Times
An Unexpected Error Has Occurred
Yumi's breath catches in her throat. No, please no, no. She clicks frantically at the screen, praying that if she clicks it enough times, the error will vanish and all the work she's done in the past hour wouldn't be erased. The error just sits there, laughing at her and she bites her lip, holding back some choice words.
"Oh my...Ugh...Are you serious?!" She allows herself those words, holding off on the cursing because she was stuck in detention with Jim for the last two hours in library. She shoves away the laptop and folds her arms, hissing in frustration. Ulrich looks up from his comic book and Yumi glan
"You mean to tell me you've never been to Disneyland? In your twenty-six years of existence, you've yet to visit 'The Most Magical Place on Earth'? Not even once? In your entire life?" Ulrich chuckles, shaking his head again for the fifth time that day and Yumi just scoffs, completely puzzled and looking over her husband with a stern gaze. "Yeah, no, this doesn't work for me. I refuse to be married to a man who hasn't set foot in a Disney park. We're fixing this. Now."
Ulrich opens his mouth to protest, wanting to let Yumi know that it really wasn't a big deal, that she shouldn't concern herself with silly things, that Yumi had more importan