It was midmorning in a house somewhere on the East coast of America. A warm, sunny day that she really despised - especially since her parents didn't believe in air conditioning.
"Ugh." The middle-aged woman put down her book and rubbed her side, her brown eyes filled with pain. "Everything hurts today."
"Yeah, well, if you'd exercise, you'd be more in shape, Elly!" An older woman that resembled her was moving potted plants around to sweep and dust behind them. It was almost as if she wanted to be in her daughter's way since there were only several plants and she had been at it for fifteen minutes so far.
She closed her eyes. "My ankle is twisted, mom, and it's over a hundred degrees out. I'm not going for a walk, so please stop bugging me about it."
Her mother sniffed. "I'm just saying, if you got out more instead of reading and watching all those stupid cartoons, you might lose some weight. You feel so much better when you eat right. It's so good for you... and then you might meet someone, too!"
She stared morosely down at the manga she had in front of her, fingers tracing the image of the man in all black leather with the giant plume of blond hair. "Yeah. I bet they would be just as crappy as my other boyfriends were. I told you, I'm giving up for awhile."
I'll stick with my anime guys, thanks very much, she thought to herself as her mother rambled on in the background. Saying "uh huh" or "yes, that's true" every few minutes but not really paying attention had become second nature to her, and it appeased the other woman enough so she could get up and grab another cup of coffee.
"Ugh. I hafta go to the bathroom before I get my coffee," she said, wincing at the announcement. She really needed to stop doing that but she doubted the habit would ever go away. Elly rounded the corner and headed to the bathroom before going to the kitchen. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire, god knew why, but maybe she could find some relief there.
She looked in the mirror and became even more depressed. Who was going to want someone that looked like this? Her genes tended to lean towards obesity and it was a struggle to lose any weight. She had horrible, soul-rending depression, and that caused her to eat more as well. The combination was not a good one; she was around five foot, four inches and currently weighed two hundred and thirty or so pounds. Most of that, she figured, was in her wide shoulders and butt.
The insomnia she suffered from gave her deep, dark circles under her eyes and her constant migraines had been one of the reasons she started shaving her head.
A fat, bald, forty-plus year old woman that had never done anything with her life stared back at her with hopeless, dead eyes. She splashed water on her face and head to cool herself off.
It didn't help.
She was starting to go through menopause, so not only were her hormones going batshit crazy but there were more aches and pains to account for.
The stories and artwork she made up around her favorite anime were the only place she didn't hurt. Of course, her family wanted her to give that up because it wasn't "productive".
Let's face it, nothing I do is going to be productive. I'm past that now. My luck sucks, and that's just how it is.
"Did you get lost? I swear, it's like she doesn't want to talk to her own mother..."
She groaned. "I wish I could just..."
Step into my fantasy world? Really? Delusional. Reality is what it is - and it sucks.
That was exactly when the hole appeared beneath her feet and she plummeted downwards, everything happening too quickly for her to even scream.
There was a group gathered on a neatly manicured campus lawn staring up at the other end of the swirling, circular abyss.
"So you don't know what these do? You never experimented?" A woman wearing an outrageous white bodysuit and bondage gear squinted at it in apprehension. "It looks awful."
"Yeah, no way I was going in there." The dark-skinned man shook his head. "I tossed a few things in, sure, but nothing came back. I wouldn't risk it."
A body appeared all at once, falling rapidly to the earth below.
"Nothing's ever come out of one of those before!"
"Holy shit!"
"It's a person!"
Elly was cold and stunned, her breath taken away by the rush of falling. She had time to think that she had maybe died, or was going to when she hit whatever passed for the ground where she was. She heard panicked screaming and then there was a huge jolt upon impact.
She had been partially buffered by a pair of strong arms and what felt oddly like scarves wrapped around her upper torso. Blinking, dazed, she opened her eyes and groaned, rubbing her head where a large bump seemed to be forming under her hair.
Wait a minute ... hair? And what were these things sticking up out of it?
She blinked, struggling to focus. There were voices all around her, and while she recognized some she couldn't understand them at all. She rubbed her eyes and all she could see were a shiny pair of orange shades. The person pulled them down their nose and she saw a familiar pair of green eyes with concentric, spiralling pupils.
"Hizashi?!" She gasped, and had just enough time to notice his confusion before she passed out.
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