Yukako sits at her desk, scribbling away at her math homework as her mother sits on her bed, behind her with a brush in one hand and a lock of Yukako’s hair in the other. “Oh I’d wish you’d tie it back sometime,” Mama comments. It’s an expensive brush from an expensive set Yukako’s father had given her some birthdays back. Her mother’s been running it through her curls for nearly half an hour now. “It’s so pretty down, and I’d hate for you to have tie it back, but sweetie.” Yukako keeps at her algebra. “The wind messes it up so much.” ‘The wind.’ That’s what Yukako tells her mother when she comes home with her tresses all in tangles. It sounds a lot better than ‘I was setting girls hair on fire’ or ‘I was trashing a cosmetics clinic’—both of which require her to use Stand, Love Deluxe. Stand. Something only others of her kind can see. She’s not the only one of her kind, either, no. There’s a whole bunch of them, like her and Koichi. To be truthful, Love Deluxe—the ability to do damn near everything with her hair—can straighten her tangles out no problem, but usually Yukako will forget about any mess that might’ve been made somewhere between the excitement and danger over the day, not too mention everything is unimportant when she walks home with Koichi afterwards.
“I’ll remember tomorrow, Mama.” She always says that. Like always, she doesn’t. Or deliberately ignores, sometimes it’ll depend. Yukako isn’t normally in on so much of the action—she’s more on-call, compared to Josuke’s full time—but Users have to be ready at any point, they have to be. It seems as though any one of them could find trouble (more like trouble finding them, hm?) at every given turn, so while Love Deluxe might snap through that elastic band in half of a second, that half of a second might be required. Users don’t seem to find her as often, but when they do, they’re scarier people like Aya Tsuji. Yukako doesn’t talk about it much (if ever), but she still has nightmares about that sometimes; where Kochi can’t pick out her face, where she just continually rots away, or the worst one in which she’s spending a special moment with Koichi and suddenly begins to expire all over him.
“Mama.” She turns the page of her text book.
Mama continues brushing. “Mm?”
“May I have some tea? Earl Grey, with honey.”
Koichi has only recently returned admitted to returning her cherishing feelings, and the few dates they’ve been on have been a little strained—never mind that she’s been making him do all the things she thinks he should like to do. A week ago, however, Koichi had come up with a completely brilliant plan: instead of her suggesting things to him, why don’t they pick something new together to form something in common instead of finding something. He’s never protested to any of her ideas before (as if he dared), but this is such a wonderful idea, it’s a real sign of togetherness. They’re so in love.
“Of course, sweetie. Mama will be right back.”
--
The tray, not only carrying the tea but also cute little cookies to have with it, clatters to the floor as Mama drops it in shock.
The window is open, Yukako is not here.
There is blood and a blade on the desk.
--
The last thing Yukako remembers is stopping to sharpen her pencil, and upon remembering she’d loaned her adorable little bear sharpener Josuke, instead fishes around for the box cutter in one of her drawers. It had been a while since she sharpened a pencil in such an old fashioned way and she slips, the blade sliding up her hand and thumb. Then the dizziness set in. Yukako hasn’t been much of a strange to blood this last while, and violence is nothing she’s batted much an eye at in the last year, so what the sudden light headedness came from she isn’t sure. She had felt her head lull back one moment, and when she lifted it the next, she was here.