My Sun and Moon (Akaza x OC)

Chapter 28: Important to Me

Badump.

With an insane speed, Nagano's face turned to a bright crimson and her heart tightened at his words alone. Something she hadn't experienced truly ever in her lifetime. There had been small fancies when she had been a child, but after the death of her family and training to become a slayer, not once had she allowed herself to hold such romantic feelings. The only love she might have experienced had been a platonic sort of love, a sibling sort of care for Giyu. But that had been it. This? Oh this had been different. Every thought in her mind that she had mustered up to make her seem brave or stoic in this decision had whisked away, leaving her mind a blank slate. Nor had her reaction gone unnoticed, internally she screamed as she watched the amused snicker.

Clearing her throat, Nagano punched him in the gut with her free hand. Laughing he took the hit unmoving and grabbed the other vial from her hand holding onto it for when it would be his turn. Looking down at the vial, Nagano slowly hesitated.

"Nervous?" He asked.

"A little." She admitted.

"We don't need to do it." He offered.

"No," She shook her head. "I've made my promise, and I'm sticking with it." She gripped the vial.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive." Nagano firmly nodded. Popping the cork from the vial, she tilted her head back and drank every last inky drop until the glass vial had been empty.

She did not have to wait too long after taking in the substance, within an instant her body seemingly convulsed and collapsed onto the ground, her entire body burning like an inferno. Not only that, inside of her body, it felt as though thousands upon thousands of tiny needles had suddenly exploded inside of her and began stabbing at every single demon blood cell inside of her body. Reaching out for the terrified Akaza with a shaking arm, she opened her mouth gasping for air, to speak, to say anything. Trying as she might, only small wheezes left her lips. Part of her swelled with terror as she worried that this might have been a mistake, that all of this was wrong. They were wrong. It wasn't actually a cure. But simply a death. A mercy. Tears streamed down her cheeks as the sounds around her dulled to a mumbled roar and the world around her blackened.

Darkness.

And then scarlet.

Scarlet blood everywhere as far as the eye could see.

A familiar place.

An undesirable place.

If her memory served her well, she had been shunted back into the small part of her mind where she had battled her animalistic self. Where she gained control of her own self, pushing her will down on the other side of her.

Yet something about this place was different. As if dying.

Narrowing her eyes, Nagano slowly scanned the room, noticing the sky around her that had once been a deep dark void now had been filled with vein-like silver cracks stretching to each corner of the horizon. Each of them pulsing as if filled with a human's heart beat. The sky behind coursed with agitated anger, as if fighting whatever coursed through it. The thick sea of blood that had come up to her knees had now shimmered ever so often the same silver color, its bright color shifting through the mass of deep crimson. Then there was the tension. The deep oppressive anger that hung in the air, one that felt deep and muggy like a hot summer's day. Though there would be no sunlight here. The oppressive anger had come from something else. Someone else.

"He's angry." A distortion of her voice echoed from beside her.

Whirling to the side, Nagano lifted her hands in tight fists protecting her face as she readied herself into a defensive stance. She would not be caught off guard this time. Standing fifteen feet away from her, her double stood, their eyes pinched with anger. Though they were not the source of the anger.