青い骨の美 - The Beauty of Blue Bones

Chapter 30

Summer
Nine Hours Ago
Friday—2:25AM

The fear that coursed through her veins and made her ears ring could never be vocalized. Nails dug into her shoulders, keeping her in place as her vision went blurry and her mind was submerged in thick sludge as though she was trudging through a pit of mud. Sound and sight were no longer reliable as she focused on the pain in her system.

There were many times that Hinata had to remind herself that the things she sees and hears were not real. The most notable of them being from the past where she had only spent a week or two in her own home—alone. She had told herself that spirits weren't real, that the laughter that rang in her head as she observed those who played in her yard was a simple manifestation of her broken mind.

Of course, she soon learned that they were indeed real. Now, however, she wasn't so sure that the auditory and sensory hallucinations she was currently experiencing was all a figment of her increasingly weakening state of mind.

Hinata winced as she felt her skin get pierced, the pain similar to a kunai embedding itself into her defenseless body. She whipped her head around as a plethora of voices made their way into her head.

She couldn't make out what was being said; it felt like being in a room where every single person was having a different conversation. Only a few words popped out, warnings for her to keep going or else IT would catch up to her. The hands on her shoulders squeezed tighter, and the cackling of the familiar voice made her face lose all of its colour.

When she came to, she was standing in front of her bed with Naruto and Sasuke at her side. Remembering what she had invited them in her room for, she immediately flushed red and started speaking. The entire time, her mind reeled with information; still images of her time with IT.

Fear ran deeper as she got into bed, she tried to ignore it by engaging with them, by laughing and teasing, yet it was always present. Always there reminding her that there is something she has to get done so they could all go away. So that IT can leave her alone once it realizes that she is not a threat in any way.

How could a rabbit threaten a tiger?

She welcomed their arms that wrapped around her as they finally settled down, she pulled them even closer in hopes that their touches would soon drown out IT's hands that have yet to let her go. They never let her go, not since she woke up to excruciating pain in her arm. Not since it marked her and claimed her for itself.

When her exhaustion, and that brief moment of contentment managed to lull her to sleep, Hinata was happy to ignore the voice at the back of her head telling her that something was wrong. After all, something was always wrong these days. She could deal with it in the morning if it was really important.

Her contentment was soon replaced by anger, anxiety and just shame. Shame on herself for thinking that for one moment she would be at peace when she had been the victim to a world far beyond her own comprehension. She should have known that the gap in her memory, a faint static screen that appeared whenever she tried to think of what happened between her getting up and then appearing in her room, meant that she wasn't in control.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

No, Enkai had promised that things would get better in the outside world as long as she continued navigating the spiritual [read:unknown] realm that the dead reside in. But as the days went on, as she woke up every day with lapses in her memory after that horrible night, Hinata realized that she had not been in control as much as she thought she had been.

So she screamed.

As her soul was ripped away from her body and thrusted into that pocket dimension. As she watched the transaction; her soul passing through the thick goop that separated her realm from the dead's, she screamed and thrashed, begging to wake up because this was done against her will.