ninety-nine balloons (part 4 x fem!reader)

21- There's Someone Outside

Keeping up my track record of never updating this fic ever, day 45324

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What is left for you is little more than desire to simply give up. 

Hazamada left when morning came slipping through the blinds. He slept by your side through the night to ensure something. He never bothered to tell you what in particular, just that, I've got to know.

The hand you treated as a chew toy left with him. From what you could gather, he was probably going to hand it off to whoever was doing the investigation on the missing persons, which you knew was no cop or detective. They don't care, he said.

The conversation from the previous night; It was odd, hearing that there was a serial killer lurking around, just beneath your nose, but plenty of odd things have happened. You're a prime example. 

Today, you were going to meet someone new, apparently. Friends with Koichi, distant friends with Hazamada (you think that's a nice way of saying not friends at all). He can, according to Mada himself, fix your undead problem. 

But can his friend do that? You look at your greying skin, how it shifts to something cold and blue when you pay too much attention, how every vein beneath that dead color becomes a hill on your arm. Can he fix it?

Ninety Nine Balloons is another issue. Can he fix it, too? You try not to give it any attention as it stumbles around the room, braindead. 

It wasn't the stand you used to have, that much you've made clear to yourself. It wobbled around with loose movements like a puppet on strings, each joint moving in jarring ways that made you think they were held on hinges.

It wasn't even that eye-catching red anymore, now something more dusty and old, like a grandmothers porcelain doll, left to lose its color on her shelf as it sat, unmoving. 

You think it doesn't recognize you. If you call it, It'll look at you, head dropping to the side as it stares, and for a moment you swear it lights up - but then it dims and becomes hollow again, and resumes what it was doing before. 

If Rohan, that's what Hazamada called him, could really fix you, then you hope he can fix your stand too. You don't want to have a zombie be linked with you for the rest of however long you live, which you imagine isn't that much long at all. 

The lollipop you've been sucking on for the past half-hour tasted more like paper than it did caramel apple, and for that you knew it was time to grab a new one. Your tongue was probably rough as sandpaper by now, but did it much matter? 

They kept you busy when your body refused to sleep, which was often now thanks to that damn mask, and if the only thing that stood between you and bashing your skull open from boredom was a chunk of hard candy on a stick, then fine! Damn your raw tongue and dehydrated cheeks, you'll eat a thousand!

To find enough balance to settle on both feet was hard, to say the least. Because of your greater strength, every step forward became something more akin to a launch - and because of that same strength, your body was also much lighter, so that launch turned you into a rocket.

Hazamada would probably snicker if he saw you crawling around the ground, struggling to move along like a slug over salt, but screw him! It's either lollipops, or some kid outside!

Ninety Nine Balloons came stumbling out after you, though it didn't seem to know why. Like a reluctant dog on a leash, it tried to saunter back into the room it was before, struggling against he pull of its own limit.

You hated the way it tripped over itself and jangled its body around, how every move resulted in a thud against the floor or wall, when it would land on its ankle instead of its foot when it walked or knock its head into something nearby. A toddler without its brain. A body without will.