Kuina shrieked, looking at the bullet that had landed on the doorframe.
"Are you trying to get me killed?" She asked her, because their eyes linked and she was facing her way, and Chiasa should've said something, because she parted her lips and her heart jumped fiercely inside her chest ready, just as her lungs filled again and gave her the permission to, but she didn't.
Instead, her hand extended looking for Kuina's, barely stopping a millisecond away from letting her see how much of her she had served to consume, to eat, like other people was used to when Chiasa had day after day forgotten she had teeth too, that she could bite and it hadn't had to be thoughtful and careful of infecting a vein with her canine or obstructing an artery out of malice, intention, the ravages of never allowing Yumi nor Amaya to hug her again so they wouldn't get stained as she was. Chiasa spoke so little, she almost had no more words than she knew of, vocals and consonants that she had learned when she was a child and relearned as an adult, mouthing them like an addict discovering the ecstasy of falling asleep easily once a pill dissolved under a tongue; most of the time, she whispered, talking low until she grew her voice back, until she finally found that familiar sound that once became strange, unrecognizable for herself, her sisters.
"Don't take it personal," Chiasa dropped the gun on the table instantly, losing color on her face, "What are you doing here?" She said at the same time Ann asked her to give her a hand, but Kuina didn't move from the door.
"Are you the witch?" She fidgeted with her cigarette.
"Anyone who's desperately trying to identify the witch now is not it," Ann rationalized, "If you were the witch, you would've hidden yourself to kill some time or participated in the killings."
Kuina glanced at her and then at Chiasa momentarily before deciding to step forward. Trusting, like Kuina was doing and Chiasa had done in a series of breathing and bloodstained sins marking her limbs, was heedless, foolish, when things could go sideways at any point. And still, they covered their eyes and went in blind, hoping to not crash against concrete or drown down the abyssal zone, where sunlight didn't penetrate. It was incautious, because there had been a time Chiasa had thought of turning on her radio and report tales onto Hatter's ear, leaving bread crumbs all the way to Chishiya and Kuina's plan; because she had long ago lost her purity, and rotten children could not be clean from it; because Chiasa loved her even if her body refused to, and revealing one truth and vitiate the king's mind out of a lie could help her to get away from Kuina's eyes, voice, smile, warm hands; because she could simply betray anyone whenever she felt like it.
"What's that?" She asked, lifting herself off the table.
"Super glue!" Ann showed it to them, leading the way towards the exit like a tourist guide would gesture right and left the wonders of a land she'd seen many times for it to keep amazing her, "If we heat it up and hold it over the murder weapon, the cyanoacrylate vapors will fuse with the moisture to show fingerprints."
The three of them left the room behind. Ann had been walking too fast for Chiasa to match her strut, with the sting of pain tensioning her leg's muscles each time she stepped with it, before recalling her injury and slowing her pace so Kuina, holding Chiasa close to her, could also hear loud and clear her explanation for winning the witch hunt.
"Next, we'll use some cocoa powder to dust for fingerprints on things like cups that have been used by the most likely suspects," she enlisted, "After we take them with tape, we'll be able to identify the culprit." Ann's lips barely moved, but no sound came out of them, as if she had stopped breathing the moment she halted in the middle of the hall that led them to an open charcoal staircase.
Chiasa hadn't been able to see it at first, what had Ann speechless. She wouldn't have even noticed it if she hadn't squinted, crooking her neck slightly over her shoulder, at the ghost materializing out of the desire to end it all.
Last Boss faced them from a distance, salivating expectations and hunger, though it wasn't exactly that what had Chiasa furrowing her brows at, it was the mist. No, not mist, she thought, automatically sniffing the ambient.
Something was off.
"I'll leave it to you to help us clear the game," Kuina said to Ann, and Chiasa's eyes returned to her, refusing to let go of her hand the same way Kuina had once refused glancing back at her, just as she did that night, "Chiasa, go somewhere safe, please." She whispered, tilting her head towards her.
Yet her eyes didn't waver from the man's figure. She wasn't looking, but Chiasa was, because she had always been. She had always had her eye on her, before and after Kuina stopped reaching out to her; she cared, she cared so much she couldn't find any other words to put it than a promise she had made for herself, one that she confined to her heart she would give up anything if it meant it'd lead her back to her arms, even if what awaited her was an empty and sinking ending, a freefall, a void so alike the color of her eyes she wouldn't mind the fall. Chiasa looked, because there was something else hidden in her gaze, a type of determination she had never seen in her before the same way it had appeared inside her pupils at that time; it was something she wasn't going to steal from her, no matter how much the worry of losing her squeezed her throat and her hands itched as she released her from her touch.
She wasn't going to betray her, because then, Kuina looked back and Chiasa had to bite her tongue to remind herself she didn't need to keep praying for it to happen. She let her arms cross themselves around her chest, pushing her backwards and into her body, closer until their heartbeats vibrated together.
"Kick his ass." Chiasa mumbled in her ear, pressing her lips against the hidden spot below her earlobe she knew well.
She kissed her and didn't regret it. She kissed her and didn't think about anything else. She kissed her and there wasn't no other burning sensation than the one that pumped her mouth, her nose, her blushing cheeks, her brows, every part of her face Kuina's eyes finally glanced at without the hesitation of a believer standing in front of a temptation that couldn't be touched, but called to be.
The number of hours they had before the game finished was limited, they needed to take advantage of every second, even if it involved walking away the girl she loved, handing her to a beast that was ready to sink its teeth into her flesh, ripping it off like origami when it wasn't folded right and had to be thrown to the side, as the loads of them Chiasa had inside a drawer in the security room.
Something came into her mind.
The cameras, Chiasa turned around abruptly, If their recording still works, it's game over.
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...
