By Die Before I Wake
(Please also read the Update.)
When the team got home from the mall, Hiei looked at Kurama from the passenger side of the car. “How come you never told me about those stores?”
“Because you’d always sit in the food court at a table and fall asleep. We were afraid to wake you until it was time to go.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you ever tell me on the way?”
“We never thought of it until Yusuke mentioned that you needed new clothes today. Anyway, I’ll come up to your room later and show you how to use the iPod and put your CDs on it. You still have that laptop Koenma got for you, right?”
Hiei shrugged and got out of the car. He went to the trunk and found his bags amongst the others. Now my closet won’t be empty, and I’ll be able to hide the wolf more easily, he thought as he walked into the house and upstairs. He didn’t think anything of his slightly open door as he kicked it open gently and put his bags on his bed. He shut his door and turned to his closet to let the wolf out and froze. It... wasn’t closed? Oh, no, where is she?!
Hiei searched all around his room, in the corners, behind the dresser, in the closet and the bathroom, but didn’t find the small wolf pup. He recalled his door being open and cursed at himself for it. He walked out of his room, trying to act as calmly as possible, even though for some reason, his heart was pounding. Then he followed the pup’s scent down the hallways of the second floor, feeling relieved to find that all of their bedrooms were closed.
He felt a little uneasy as he followed her scent dangerously close to the stairs. No. If she had fallen, she wouldn’t have survived. Her body would have been there. But if she made it down, who knows where she could be? Hiei sighed with relief as her scent turned away from the stairs. He stood at his doorway with confusion. Her scent leads back here? She wasn’t in here. Unless I overlooked her walking past me or something.
He sighed and walked into his room again. No. Her scent from going down the wall and back to the stairs must have overlapped... Now all I can do is wait until they find her and take her away. He sat down on his bed and frowned. For some reason, something inside of him... ached a little. Am I getting sick? Or is this what it feels like to worry about someone? Am I even worried? I... I think I actually feel... bad about this.
The fire apparition heard footsteps approaching his bedroom door and remembered that Kurama had told him that he would help him with the laptop, iPod (which he still had no clue what it was used for or why it had such a ridiculous name, for that matter), and the CDs. He looked at the clear iPod plastic case that had been sitting on his dresser, collecting dust, since last Christmas.
Maybe when I’m trying to figure that thing out, it’ll take my mind off of her, Hiei thought as Kurama appeared in the doorframe. The fire apparition stood from his bed and took the iPod off of his dresser. He tossed it onto his desk next to the laptop, which had begun to grow dusty once he had figured it out and immediately got bored with it.
“I brought you some lunch,” Kurama said, placing a plate with a ham sandwich, a blue raspberry Jolt, and a box of strawberry Pocky on Hiei’s nightstand.
“I’ll eat later, I guess,” the fire apparition replied, trying to hide the disgust he felt. Just what I want to eat. A dead pig on two slices of bread. The wolf would have liked it if she were in here. D***. I thought of it again. He was too lost in thought to notice that Kurama had already turned the laptop on.
“Hiei, this time, can you please actually eat more than half a pack of Pocky?”
He shrugged in reply.
“Well, can you come over here with the CDs Yusuke helped you pick out?”
Hiei nodded and took the Hot Topic bag with the CDs over to Kurama. He placed it on the table and Kurama took the iPod from the box. He showed Hiei how to plug it in using the USB cable and installed iTunes for him.
“Can you hand me one of your CDs?”
Hiei grabbed one out of the bag and handed it to Kurama. When the kitsune looked at the cover, he sighed.
“What?” Hiei asked.
“Yusuke got you into Marilyn Manson?”
“He said it was probably the best thing for ‘someone like me’ to listen to. He took me to... FYE, I think, and he let me listen to Marilyn Manson, HIM, My Chemical Romance, and a few other ‘bands’. Then he took me to that ‘Hot Topic’ place to buy them. He said that ‘Hot Topic’ usually had the lowest prices. Also, what’s the difference between ‘edited’ and ‘unedited’ music?”
“Unedited music is its original form. All of the lyrics are unchanged and included in the songs,” Kurama replied, tearing the plastic wrapping from the CD case. “While edited music has some words and/or phrases either cut out, replaced by an annoying noise, such as a beep, or changed.”
“So I was right to get the ‘unedited’, then?”
“I suppose. Now look. You press this button on the side of the laptop here and wait for...” a disk tray popped out of the side of the computer. “this to pop out. Then you place the CD face up on the tray and gently push the tray back into the computer. When this screen pops up, you click ‘Import CD using iTunes’. You see how the iTunes screen pops up afterwards with the names of your songs listed?”
Hiei nodded.
“Then you wait until the CD is completely imported, a notice will pop up, and then you can take it out and put another one in.” Kurama clicked on the “Library” link and showed Hiei how to put songs on the iPod by clicking and dragging. He also showed him how to import more than one song at once by holding the CTRL key while selecting songs. He left the room and Hiei attempted doing this with all of his CDs.
After about an hour or so, Hiei left the desk as all of the songs were being copied to his iPod and sat on the floor against his bed. He caught a glimpse of the blanket in the closet and then he remembered the wolf and how he had lost her. D***, he thought. He hung his head and leaned against the side of the bed. He opened the box of Pocky and took out a stick. He accidentally dropped it and it rolled underneath his bed. He got on his hands and knees to look under and pick it up before some rodent or roach came for it. When he looked under the bed, he froze and gasped…
