♘ duel the ninth. ( dream one. warnings for violence. )
Ohtori's campus is massive, beautiful, with roses of every possible shade and color imaginable scattered throughout. The air will smell strongly of roses to any interlopers, but the students have long since become used to the scent. It's early morning, and the grounds are cast over with a thin mist.
The campus is normally bustling with students, but today it is oddly empty, save the two girls sitting beneath the shade of an old oak tree. One girl is...cute, but average. Brown hair, pulled back into a high ponytail, wide, expressive brown eyes. Nothing strikes the viewer as out of the ordinary about this girl, no. Even the school uniform is standard fare -- the teal skirt and puffed sleeves, brown loafers. She is talking animatedly to the other girl next to her, who some denizens of the Garden may recognize as one Utena Tenjou. In contrast to her friend, everything about Utena seems brighter -- the fine gold buttons of her custom-made uniform jacket, her bright blue eyes. In fact, one might wonder why these two girls are friends at all.
Utena speaks up, a bit exasperated, a bit amused. "Wakaba, I think your mom might've been pulling your leg again."
"But Utena-sama! I know she's telling the truth this time!"
"D'you have to call me that all the time? Geez. Cut it out." Utena laughs a little, to take the edge off the statement, and she's sure Wakaba will turn up her nose and laugh too. But something is different. Her friend's head is lowered, and the shade from the tree on her side seems heavier, casting her small frame in shadow. Slowly, a bronze leaf falls from the tree (it had not been there before, Utena thinks. All the leaves had been green--) but Wakaba is talking now, and Utena is inclined to listen:
"You think I'm just a stupid girl, don't you."
It's flat, delivered without inflection, without emotion, and Utena blinks, confused. Another bronze leaf falls to land in Wakaba's hair, and Utena feels a strange sensation, like a trickle of ice water rolling down her spine. "Huh? Wakaba, of course I don't--"
Wakaba cuts her off, sharply. "You do, you and all the others. You think you're better than me, don't you? Because of that girl, that girl, it's her fault, isn't it?" Utena thinks to protest, to ask what girl she's talking about, but a sudden motion from Wakaba makes her freeze. Slowly, a cirle of blood forms, bright red, against the starched white of her neatly pressed uniform. The wound opens, and a single black rose blooms.
Wakaba grabs Utena's throat, and the bronze leaves continue to fall. "I am special, I'm special, I'M SPECIAL! I WON'T LET THEM LOOK DOWN ON ME!" The grip tightens, and Utena begins to struggle. She's usually the taller one, the stronger one, but Wakaba seems to loom over her now, and she can't breathe, or move away. She's frozen by the look in Wakaba's eyes, the undisguised loathing. She has never seen her eyes look like that before. Her fingers grip at Wakaba's arms, and she uses what's left of her strength to kick at her friend's chest, right where the black rose blooms. Wakaba shrieks suddenly, a torturous, pained scream, and the rose falls apart right before she slumps to the ground.
"Wakaba?" Utena croaks out, and pulls the prone figure of her friend close. "Wakaba?"
There is no response, and both girls are left atop the hill, underneath the hooked branches of a long-dead tree.