Sometimes, Chiasa just needed someone to listen, to let her spill her guts out and don't say anything if she bit a bone too loudly or a cartilage too softly, to share into a pair of hands why she woke up in the middle of the night with her heart in her throat and her chest emptying, even though the shame of it consumed her the same way she did with her thoughts. All she wanted was for someone to split her open and look inside, and ask every question she couldn't find the courage to, everything that she swallowed and kept eating her alive. In and out.
She knew that feeling well, from memory and with her eyes closed. It had been living alongside her since the day she graduated as a rope access technician and got her first job at some high-rise window cleaning company that had her running around, doing anything but working for what she had prepared, until another opportunity came; it had been buttoning up her clothes at morning and unbuttoning them at night; it had been crawling up her neck as she trembled alone in the last cubicle of a building's bathroom; it had been haunting her for not praying, for not having her knees raw, for not repenting for only had been wearing her work overall over a white t-shirt and black shorts, because it shouldn't have been her fault his eyes trailed back at her when finishing up their duties and hopping onto their buck hoist while they talked about how hot the weather was and she rambled about going straight to buy some ice cream for her sisters once they were on earth again.
Her biting down words were truly made by humiliation. And flesh. And blood. And the mishearing of a name that got her shaking, even if she'd beaten herself up many times in the past forcing herself to think it didn't make her feel anything. But it did, because the scene replayed in her mind: from the moment her clock had ticked the remaining second before they were off work to the beginning of a nightmare, tinted by the ghost of her pleadings fighting against her clenched teeth; a nightmare where he didn't listen and nothing stopped him from wanting more, even if her pushing hands and wriggling body tried saying all she couldn't, too scared of the buck hoist swaying so she choked on her sobs and the pair of fingers tracing down her tongue.
There was something in her lungs she missed having, yet she ceased wondering what after so long.
Chiasa was just tired, enough for her to desire that the floor carpeting stayed as warm and comfortable to still be laying there when the specks of sun penetrated the windows.
The Beach's lights blinked. Chiasa looked up at it furrowing her brows.
Was that an electrical voltage drop?, she thought confused, standing up from the spot she had been sitting in, with her back pressed to a wall and the aftertaste of watching Kuina leave her behind. She didn't blame her, for wanting to get away from that place, Chiasa herself had many times played with that idea when she couldn't sleep. Though it somehow hurt being the one that couldn't, even after she'd helped Chishiya end threading his web, fast and easy, knowing their paths would've never crossed if it hadn't been for Kuina in the first place.
Kuina and Chiasa met at The Beach. It had been an instant connection, like those Sunday late mornings she would go to the grocery store and she'd spend the whole line chatting with another lady over life and sweets and prices and recipes; it all reduced to the fact they got along well, caring about each other and always finding an excuse to say hi, until things changed.
Chiasa didn't remember how it happened, if it had been days before Aguni sent Niragi to have an eye on her or actually afterwards, around that time when she found out why Niragi was the way he was (because she had seen it before in her youngest sister) and, in consequence, helped for something to click on his head, watching the process of thoughts morph into a playful smirk that told her he recalled the familiarity of her face. But at the end, as the militants drifted closer to her and Hatter found a liking to her work at the control room, Kuina was the first to cut all contact with her, avoiding her eyes every time they linked and her voice calling her name whenever she believed she had the chance to speak and explain... She didn't even know what was there to explain. Chiasa only had questions about why had she left her: was it because she didn't talk much and preferred to be alone in that security room? Was it because Niragi and her gave her the wrong impression? Was it because she hadn't initially said yes to Kuina asking her to join Chishiya and her to steal Hatter's cards? Was it because when her hands touched her naked back she flinched too hard or was it because when her lips pressed a kiss onto her earlobe her first reaction had been to try to push her away? Was it because she was too scared of living in her own skin?
She had no answer for any of it. And yet, what was left of her was a head too full of thoughts to complement how her heart was all fire.
THANK YOU FOR STAYING AT SEASIDE PARADISE TOKYO. . .
AS A TOKEN OF OUR APPRECIATION, WE WILL NOW COMMENCE A GAME FOR ALL THE GUESTS IN THE HOTEL. . .
Chiasa halted. There's no way.
DIFFICULTY, TEN OF HEARTS. . .
WE WILL NOW BE EXPLAINING THE RULES. . .
ALL PLAYERS ARE TO ASSEMBLE IN THE LOBBY. . .
With her chest going up and down faster and faster, Chiasa arrived at the lobby at the same time the message was repeated and a swarm of bodies was pulled into a table that read: ONE PER PERSON. She grabbed one phone out of the pile before another man could and turned around again, pushing flesh off her way using her elbows to move towards the stairs.
Breathing out over the railing, the sound of every mobile chirped as the automatic face recognition captured their lines and expressions and the white screen's background became luminous dots held in between hands, like fireflies trapped inside a jar that soon enough broke apart.
If it hadn't been for a girl's scream, Chiasa wouldn't have noticed the gravity that pulled every Beach's resident into the same spot, there where a woman laid with her eyes closed and a knife stabbed in her chest.
GAME, WITCH HUNT. . .
THE EVIL WITCH WHO TOOK THE GIRL'S LIFE IS HIDING AMONG YOU. . .
THE WITCH ROLE IS NOT LIMITED TO WOMEN. . .
YOU CLEAR THE GAME IF YOU FIND THE WITCH AND BURN THEM IN THE FIRE OF JUDGEMENT. . .
TIME LIMIT, TWO HOURS. . .
Everything finally settled inside her mind.
The Beach was no longer the perfect utopia they lived at, it was just another square of a big board. They should've expected it to happen, but they didn't, until they faced each other and realized they were all in a game arena and that was just the beginning of chaos.
GAME START. . .
YOU ARE READING
FREEFALL, hikari kuina
FanfictionNO TWO PEOPLE CAN KNOW THE SUN THE SAME WAY. . . ˗ˏˋ Chiasa was aware there were as many gods as many stars, that someone could have as many dreams as many wishes and could tell many lies as many monsters could hide inside the same closet, that livi...
