The Clock Pendulum Swings | A Mesmerizer Story

𖦹°‧ | DAY TWO.

This is the second day. I'm still frazzled about last night.

Miku shot up with a loud scream, and I panicked, scrambling awake myself just to see her hyperventilate and find herself oddly confused about her surroundings.

I've yet to grasp what happened, or what caused her to act that way in the first place. She said it was just a nightmare. I loosely believed that, if not at all.

I had to console her for what felt like hours, her fragile and thin body against my equally thin own with my hand cradling her back. I hadn't seen her so scared before, even compared to when we first found ourselves in this mess. Her tears soaked both my suspenders and my shirt for she'd been crying for as long as she'd been awake, where to the best of my ability I tried to soothe her worries with gentle words. That was something I was never good at.

Her cries broke my heart, especially because I was at a loss for words and knew not a thing of what to say, breathlessly and tiredly muttering words of reassurance and comfort, constant "it's okays" and "I'm heres" thrown back and forth as Miku sobbed relentlessly.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry... I didn't mean to wake you up... I just... I saw something. It felt so real." Miku whined, tightening her grip around my arm where her nails were nearly piercing that deathly pale skin of mine.

Her breathing was shaky and hurried, as if she was suffocating.

"Breathe, breathe — it's okay, Miku, I'm here," I listlessly consoled, "what'd you see?"

Miku's gentle aquamarine eyes shot up to stare me directly in my rose ones, usually joyous glints of light absent in hers as they were welled up with tears and a bitter display of utter fear and pain, as if she was not only terrified. They remained fixed on me as Miku tremored, her grip tightening, and tightening, and tightening, cutting off whatever circulation I might've had and perhaps even drawing some blood.

"I don't even KNOW. There were so many eyes... so many..." the girl trailed on, her voice trembling.

Either I was too exhausted to imagine, or I truly could not envision what Miku could have possibly witnessed in her mind. It would always come up as a blank in my memory, nothingness like the sky above us, nothingness like the life we lived.

"I... It's okay, you're safe now. You're going to be okay. Nothing's going to get you, nothing's watching..."

Shame on me, I barely believed the words I muttered to Miku — there was no substance behind them, they were empty statements. More so wishes if anything. I wished nothing would get Miku, and I sure as hell hoped nothing was watching us either. I could wish for these things as much as I wanted, it never meant I could guarantee them.

And until both me and Miku fell asleep, until Miku's tears were cried out, I remained there to comfort her, to tell her what she wanted to hear and what I wanted to believe until her worries were settled. This had never happened before, and I was far from equipped to handle it, but if Miku could safely fall asleep without practically suffocating to death from her own fear, I knew it didn't fail, even if it wasn't certain to be true.

"Hey! Teto! You're staring off again!"

Ah, there was that happy girl's voice. How I missed it after being caught so up in my thoughts.

"Sorry, what were you talking about again?" I hum.

Miku giggled, thankfully not bothered by my mental distance, "As I was saying, you know yesterday? When you said that if I made lyrics for that song I was singing, maybe we could sing it together? Well, I've kinda been thinking, and I might have some ideas! It'll take me a while to finish them though..."

Glancing over at Miku, I gave her a subtle and faint smile to acknowledge her joy, but it was hard to be as happy as I wished to be after the chaos only mere hours ago. While there was something so soothing about her happiness and how it reminded me that things were at the very least momentarily okay, worry nipped at the nape of my mind and trickled its way to my body, causing me to thoughtlessly pull at my gloves, to tug at a loose thread of my suspenders' fabric. So badly did I want to just forget what happened, but the eyes, the pained scream...