𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐒𝐮𝐤𝐢 | ɴᴀʀᴜᴛᴏ

Second Test: 'Dyed' Hair

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✧˖*°࿐

Kazumi was enveloped in darkness; unconscious. It wasn't any ordinary darkness, it was plain blackness. Not a single light or figure could be seen other than herself.

However, that quickly changed when her body in the real world began to squirm. And a warm hand placed itself against her forehead. The feminine voice was familiar, whispering for her to quickly wake up and recover. The voice would then say the same thing to another - utterly terrified and desperate.

Although the rushed tone of the familiar girl, Kazumi was still travelling in the endless blackness of her mind. Her closed eyes squeezed further shut. Her brows furrowed and stressed. She was fighting an obvious nightmare.

Inside that nightmare, she was running through the black void. She held something heavy, clutched to her chest. Her breathing was rigid, but it wasn't her own. She could faintly see black outlines of trees whilst she ran, as if despite the blackness all around - she could clearly tell she was inside a forest. But, the forest was much different from the Forest of Death.

Her footing was heavy, like each time her feet came in contact with the bumpy-soft-like black ground, it would lag and get stuck just like treading on snow.

She stopped walking. And panic slowly raised within her, realising that from there and back it was still black. She felt paralysed such as before, and a numbing dread overwhelmed her senses. The heavy weight against her arms and shoulders dispersed. And that caused more fear to emerge.

She didn't know why she felt scared.

However, she remained calm. In this subconscious, she fully prepared herself to see her worst nightmare when a faint outline of a figure finally appeared.

The outline was a glowing white, defying the blackness all around. As it grew larger from the ground - Kazumi noticed the difference in the figure's size, shape, and width. It wasn't the man claimed as 'Orochimaru', but Sanjiro. Her uncle. Her blood.

He looked down at her with disappointment, an unfamiliar dark blade in his right hand as the tip pressed against the black ground with blood which trickled down from it. The colour of the blood was a thick black, engulfed by the darkness. But in the back of her senses, she could smell the iron.

"What a mess."

His low and empty tone made her gut drop, followed by a feeling of dread as if the reasoning behind all of this was hers. She wanted to be acknowledged by him, not overlooked by him. It was her lifetime goal, after all.

Doubt momentarily washed throughout her, making her question why she even needed his acknowledgment, to begin with. It was then she recalled Orochimaru's light talk of 'purpose'. Had he intentionally hinted something to her? Kazumi couldn't tell, but the back of her mind knew something was not right with the man's informal attitude towards her.

It was like he knew her personally.

Kazumi then disregarded the anomalous feeling and went to respond to the downcast Sanjiro — tried — even, but there was no cords in her throat for her to speak.