KAGOME, KAGOME

Circling You

Haruto woke up with a gasp, as he clawed his throat. A string of coughs followed as he sat up from where he lay.

His shivering fingers make contact with a rope that was tied around his neck.
Hurriedly taking the rope off his throat, he lets out another cough.
His dizziness was beginning to fade away.

Only then was he finally able to take in his surroundings.

"Where...am I?" He whispers to himself with a raw throat.

He was alone in a forest.
"This isn't the campus." He thought. Wondering if he had gotten drunk and had waltzed into the middle of nowhere; intoxicated.

The trees swayed in the cold wind.
The young man shivered, the white, ghostly fog blanketing the damp forest.
He looked up to see any signs of the sun, but the fog was too thick.

Haruto looked down and widened his eyes in horror.
The rope that was wrapped around his neck earlier was a noose.
The rope was connected to a broken branch that lay still on the damp, mossy, forest floor.

The young man jumps up in fear at the sight of the rope. He shakily brought his hand to his neck where the rope used to be.

He was in an unfamiliar place and he does not remember trying to....

Haruto began to hyperventilate. The fear coursing in his veins. Pumping up to his panicking heart.
Why was here? How did he get here?
His mind was in a panicked state.

He places a hand on his chest to try and calm himself down.
"Okay, okay. It's okay." He told himself.
"Try to remember how you got here."

He shuts his eyes as he clenched his hand against his sweater.
His knuckles turning whiter by the second as he tried to remember what he did before waking up.

"I...uh, I was at class. I was sitting with Naoko, I think." He bit his lip in anticipation. His head was a mess; a blur.

"And then....the class was dismissed and I...no, everything went black after that." He opened his eyes once again.

His brown colored eyes trailing to the noose on the floor.
"How did I even get here?" He murmured.

Puffs of air blew out of his mouth as he spoke.

"Phone." He says in a blank tone. "Phone! Phone! Phone!" His tone changed to realization as he searched for his phone in any of his pockets.

Hope rises in his chest as he fishes out his phone from his pants' pocket.
Fumbling with the password, he was able to get a track to where he is.

"....what?" He says in disbelief. "What am I doing all the way in.....in Shimane?"
Just then the signal in his phone disappeared.

"Wait, wait! No!" Haruto cries out as he extends his phone up to the sky in hopes to acquire a signal, but to no avail.

He lets out a shaky breath as he looked at his phone in fear. His battery had half a bar.

"I need to get out of here. This place creeps me out." He mutters to himself.

Haruto shivered as his feet shakily moved.
His eyes trail to a muddy path just ahead of him.
Trails and clues to a truck passing by made him gasp in surprise.

Maybe he was close to civilization after all.

Following the path, he noticed he was going up a hill.
The trees began to get thicker and seemed to stretch on for miles.

The fog had become too thick for him to even see what was ahead of him.
The air seemed to be even more colder and colder as he continued to take a step.