A hundred lives for the life of one (is this the end?) | JJK

CHAPTER SEVEN | SOLIDARITY

Everything hurts.

Blinking open blue eyes tinged with exhaustion and discomfort, she desperately tries to recall what happened after leaving school. Was it all a dream? Did she sleep wrong? Are her initial thoughts. Slowly, her eyes come into acute focus. Her realization is swift when she takes in the details of the ceiling. This wasn't her room.

Panicked, she quickly sits up. That seemed to be the worst decision of her life as, right as she decided to move, her muscles spasm with uncontained agony. It feels like the worst cramp she's experienced and almost forces her to lay back down. Grunting, she stares dully at the blanket covering her legs. She could wiggle her toes, seeing the movement echo onto the silky sheets. At least that meant they were still there. That didn't help her fear, though. She was terrified to see what was under the covers. The sharp ache of her bones and the tingling in her skin didn't sit right in her mind.

As her own screams echoed in her mind, she visualized what could be revealed to her under the covers. Is it a grotesque image? Is there barely anything remaining of her legs? Does she still have skin over her muscles? Muscles over her bones? It was a morbid train of thought, but she had to know.

"Nukumi."

She blinks, the dull look in her blue eyes lightening into clarity. Her head sluggishly turns to the owner of the voice, glad that it was able to quieten the anguished cries she belted to everything and nothing in her desperation to escape the pain. Geto stares at her, his brown eyes swimming with gallons of worry that made her confused. Why was he looking at her like that? Like she was some fragile thing that could break under the slightest pressure. She learns, then, that she hates that look. Especially when it comes from the teen in front of her.

"Suguru-kun..." She whispers hoarsely, granting herself the ability to call him by his given name as he was doing to her. It felt more personal, more real. Unlike how she currently felt, floating between planes of existence with the muted impressions of pain keeping her connected.

The black-haired sorcerer nears, gently pulling her into an embrace. She doesn't need to look at his face to know she scared him; to know her screams would haunt him just as they would her. They would both feel too weak, failures in their eyes. Suguru and Nukumi knew they would hold echoes of this incident in their mind for years to come to surface in their darkest, most vulnerable moments. The solidarity between the pair would change the course of events meant to occur, skewing a piece a little to the right when it was meant to go left, turning on a light switch when it was meant to short circuit and send a raging fire to burn the house down.

He pulls away, staring down at her with a different, less-infuriating, look in his gaze. She has no time to examine it before he speaks, and it shifts once more. "How are you feeling?" He asks softly, the weight of some heavy thing settling onto his shoulders.

Unthinking, she takes his hand in hers as a comfort, not squeezing for fear of hurting him. She doesn't need to say how she feels. The remnants of the event cling to her both physically and mentally. An event a child should never go through, yet she was subjected to. It made her wonder if this world was intent on ruining her peace.

She wanted to say so much. The new hollow feeling in her chest screaming at her that she missed an opportunity, that she was missing a key component to herself. The terror that clung to her heart. Her own screams sitting as background noise in her already messy head. The mantra of her promises suffocating her. The always present worry for Yuuji sticking to the forefront of her mind.

Instead, she leans into him as he moves closer, her hand pulled into his lap as he gently rubs his fingers over her knuckles. A reminder that this was real, that she was still alive. "Tired..."