INFERNO ( the GazettE Tale )

Start of the End (2)

The ticking of the clock from second to second is where all people's life lies. They couldn't stop the time from working and so as their life. They had no choice but to live the span of their life between the twelve numbers that is pushing the entire world to move. By everyone it includes me, I had no immunity over the time and though it was impossible, I was once again living between the ticks and tacks of my life.

"What's with your clothes? Why are you dressed like that?" My mother asked early in the morning when the dawn was just about to break, completely forgetting that she was frying an egg while she stared at me and scrutinized my clothing.

I looked down at myself, my black leather shoes covering my white socks was the first I saw, I don't think there was something wrong with it. I put the right shoe on the right feet. My black skirt and blouse were clean and the red necktie around my blouse's collar was knotted in a nice butterfly. I don't think there was something wrong with my clothes. "School."

Week had passed after I got back home from the hospital, four days after the detective's visit. I was released with two still healing ribs, bruises around my body that were now starting to fade from deep green and purple they once were, and some bandages covering some part of my body.

After the day that I told the detective that I was taken by a group of guys wearing masks to torture me to death, he didn't came back just like what mom promised. I guess he took my story which was good for my side. I also had the strength to look at my wrists and found vertical long line of wound on each of them, the treating wasn't done yet and I still had to cover them with bandages.

Ever since the day that I woke up from my death, I never had a good night sleep. It was either I woke up from my own scream or from the feeling that I was being tortured by pain that was still in me even if I was out of conscious.

I don't want to stay in a reality that always holds painful facts. I don't want to dream, too certain that it'll fall into a nightmare.

"Aika, I already talked with your home room teacher and he said it's ok for you to come back after another week." She coaxed with her endearing calm, sincere tone.

I shook my head in disagreement. When we got back here in my apartment and had most of my time spent inside my room, Every memory of him flashed in my brain, like it was the easiest place to have my brain over work and my heart to feel the worst pain again like a huge hole was punched right through it. For the first time, I wasn't comfortable with my own room, with my own apartment where it held a lot of memory of him.

"I need school." I need something to side track me from all of this and I guess lessons and friends might be the answer. I walked across the living room to pick my bag and hurried to the door, I took a deep breath before pulling the door open.

"Call me when you need me, okay?" That was the last thing my mother said when I walked out of the suffocating haven to face the unwelcoming reality.

I walked silently at the corridor to the second classroom at the school's third floor's west wing. The whole school was still eerily silent. It was too early when I left the apartment, this might be the most punctual day of my academic life but I wasn't after the grade rather to escape the radiating sorrow in my own apartment.

I was two or more paces away from my seat when realization hit me. I was in my school. I was in my classroom. I was in a place where you are obligated to speak more than one word. And in here, when you were gone for what they felt like centuries you have to expect that the question's list might be in a scroll. I groaned at my stupidity, but when I was about to turn to another aisle to my seat, I stopped.

All of my system halted, like I was a machine that suddenly shut down. And in a nanosecond the agonizing pain rose from my chest, covering all of me, eating me at the spot where I was suddenly stuck.