The Closed Ward | Tokyo Ghoul

Chapter Eight | Sell Your Soul

"H-Hinata-kun...?"

It's with effort that he cracks open his eyes, dizzy brown irises spiralling around without much success in focusing on her. His mouth moves, slowly, soundlessly, his tongue and teeth coated with a fine layer of crimson; it overflows, though, leaking from the corners of his mouth and streaking down his chin, his neck. His gray hair is matted with it, either held-fast to his skull or stuck up at odd angles and gelled with blood. He lies, crumpled, on the floor, just shy of reaching the couch tucked against the far wall, limbs held close to his body.

He's just so... red.

Rui, panicked, scans the room in search of something to stop the bleeding. Her hands are clumsy; her feet don't want to move. Everything's so quiet she can't even think. But she manages to snatch a blanket off the couch and drop to her knees beside Hinata, her fingers stiff but workable as she tries to look over his body for the worst of the wounds. She finds it on his stomach - a gash through both his jacket and his shirt, jagged and raw. She swallows, hard, and mumbles an apology as she presses the blanket against the wound.

Hinata lets out a low groan of agony, feebly trying to swat her hands away. 

She murmurs quietly to him, her thoughts whirling so chaotically she isn't even sure what it is she's saying; it seems to help, though, as his protests soon peter out, replaced by soft whimpers she considers to be just as unsettling, but marginally more preferable.

"Hinata-kun--" She cuts off, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. Her uncooperative tongue feels stuck to the roof of her mouth, unwilling to let out her jumble of questions and pleas. Rui gives her head a fierce shake, grits her teeth, and forcefully hisses out a slow breath. In the heat of the moment, she'd almost forgotten her own stuttering heartbeat; but it's returned now, a staccato drumbeat pulsing in her ears, unbearably loud.

"Hinata-kun," she tries again, this time biting back a sigh of relief to hear that her voice doesn't tremble as she thought it would. "W-What... happened? Was it... were you attacked?"

It can't be what she's thinking. Fate isn't so cruel as to rip from her two people she cares about in such a terrible fashion... so brutally...

Hinata doesn't respond, not at first. He looks so pale beneath the blood; his eyes - closed now - flicker under the lids, as if desperately searching for something. Rui adjusts her grip on the blanket, leaning over Hinata to apply the same amount of pressure with a single hand, and uses her free one to gently slap his cheek. She waits a moment, does it again; on the second go, his eyes flutter open, and something between a smile and a grimace passes over his lips.

"Y-You're not... my i-imagin-nation... huh?"

"Hinata-kun, I need to call an ambulence--"

"Don't... it's not.... worth it... R-Rui-chan..."

"That's quitter talk," she mumbles, her eyes narrowed in an effort to stop the tears she can feel burning at the corners, because this isn't the time to be crying - to mourn. Hinata is right here and she's not letting him go so easily. Screw the fact that she hardly knows him; he's a life she can save.

His lips twitch, like he wants to smile, and that's enough for Rui.

"Tell me... tell me what happened," she begs again as she removes the blanket for a moment.

She's careful as she peels back the layers of his shredded clothing to look at the whole of the wound. Rui can stomach quite a lot, having seen more than her fair share of atrocities while under Kaori's tutelage, and more than once she's been the only one aside from her mentor to retain the contents of her stomach after witnessing something gruesome - but this is barbaric. The wound is deep, cutting into the heart of muscles and tendons, and - dear God - Rui catches glimpses of things that should never see the light of day.