青い骨の美 - The Beauty of Blue Bones

Chapter 5

Winter
Monday—8:09PM

"You have a guest."

Hinata pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she stared off into space. To others, she looked as though she was just lost in thought, but in reality, Hinata was staring at the girl who stood in the corner of her home. Biting her lip again, she picked at the scab that was barely healing from her constant irritating touches. It has been a week since she manifested in front of her, and it scared Hinata.

She wanted to laugh and cry, beg that creepy little thing to leave her alone. She wanted all of them to leave her alone; all the people who stood outside her house and peered in to get a good look at the woman who stared straight into their eyes while the others ignored their existence.

Ghosts weren't a thing—they weren't supposed to be a thing. Their understanding of beings beyond the plain of human life was mediocre at best, they clung to the idea of spiritual beings, soothing themselves with words promising them of an afterlife where those who have fallen resided. The cursed jūtsu of the Shinigami was all the proof they needed, the revival of their own peers during the war was substantial evidence.

They all assumed that if ghosts existed, like the God of Death, or the souls of their resurrected comrades, they would emanate some sort of chakra. How wrong they were, and Hinata was living proof of it if she could finally come to terms with the truth that stood in front of her.

The voices had quieted down when she removed herself from the source of her self loathing, the hatred was still there, but the constant gnawing of her dwindling esteem was manageable. She assumed that it was all in her head; the whispering, the taunts, the harsh truths she was aware of since the end of the war—she believed that it was just her pessimism finally returning.

As she sat on her couch with her eyes trained on the long, dark haired little girl—no older than the age she was as a mediocre graduate—who stood in the dim light of a lamp that barely illuminated her features, Hinata wondered if she was the physical [or spiritual, she still couldn't wrap her head around it] manifestation of all the years she's been a negative person. Were the people standing around her house just the different manifestations of her fear that she now had to face?

Digging her fingernails into the palm of her hands, she flinched when she heard tapping coming from one of her windows.

"You need to hurry up."

"Why?" Hinata croaked out, swallowing saliva in an attempt to saturate her dry throat.

"He'll die if you wait any longer."

She didn't believe her, even as her stomach twisted at the thought of another person dying because she didn't do anything. "You're lying."

The light flickered as if her unwanted guest simply shrugged. "Do what you want, I'm just informing you that someone is about to die." She disappeared after that. She and all the others who stood around her house.

Hinata blinked, slowly letting her feet touch the cold floorboards. She stood up on shaky legs and wrapped her arms around her body as she went to grab her coat and boots. There was no reason to trust that voice, to trust the thing that was most likely her more deceitful, and darker thoughts in a form that she could see, but guilt began to make her feel nauseous.

She had the chance to save somebody instead of being the reason they would die. She had to prove to herself that she wasn't what her father had convinced her she was.

Stepping out into the cold, Hinata shivered as she palpated the land with her chakra. She had learned to do such a trick as a substitute for relying on her eyes whenever they were out of commission. Fear gripped her heart as she headed further into the forest surrounding her house—fear that her demon would return with their friends to taunt her and make her lose her mind.