FATED (Naegami)

FAMILIAR FACES

I awoke in a room completely unfamiliar to me. It was a decent sized square room with a polished wooden door to my right and a large wardrobe of the same textile directly opposite it. I lay in quite a large, vintage bed with beautiful craftsmanship and gorgeous carvings along the headboard, not to meantion the incredibly soft pillows that felt like a cloud. On either side of me was a sandlewood bedside table one of which had a small lamp and the other nothing. This brought my attention to the very minimal decoration of the room I had woken in - it almost felt like a display room at a furniture shop or at least some sort of unused guest room. It also had an average sized window directly opposite me with slightly creamy, off-white curtains bordering the windowsill which welcomed the warm sunrise behind the somewhat calming countryside to spill into my room, which is what must have woken me up. Having taken in my surroundings, I was suddenly aware of the all-consuming stabbing yet numbing pain which encompassed my body. If I'm remembering correctly, as it all happened so suddenly, I had been mobbed by a community in a humble, abandoned country town who were obviously suffering from the Despair Disease. Being a survivor of the killing school life and an icon of hope for humanity, I was obviously a target but that town was supposed to be desolate... First, they ran at me in unison beating whatever they could with their bare hands leaving my body blue and purple; then, one of them must have lunged at my lower left leg with some sort of knife or other sharp object which proceeded to completely slide through, reaching the other side; next was my stomach, the left side of my body had also been impaled by something much larger and sharper (as it could have easily ended my life had it been aimed a bit better) leaving me with blood rapidly gushing from the entire left side of my body, and finally, the cherry on top was the scorch mark on my right lower arm made by one of those sticks on fire you usually see from mobbing villages in movies... Whatever it was, it was some sort of miracle or divine intervention that I managed to scarper away. I instinctively went to grab my torso in pain only to discover that it had been completely bandaged. The same went for my leg, and my arm had been dressed as well as my head, which was an area of considerable bruising due to my height making me such an easy target. Yet another way it has disappointed me. Not to mention that my blood soaked rags had vanished and I was dressed in clean (yet rather baggy) new clothes that definitely didn't belong to me - they were too...what's the word...nice? The top was a delicate, soft linen and I was wearing a pair of plain, branded shorts (presumably to give my wound better accessibility) but the biting autumn weather made my sore, worn feet quite cold. As everything came rushing back into my slightly better rested mind, I suddenly recalled the reason I was likely in this position: I can recall his mesmerising gaze as he called out my name in shock. If that's what I stared into as I died, I would have died happily.