Symmetrical Scars

11) Reminisce

"You don't have to tell me anything if you're not ready, Raina." Kid said, placing his hand over mine.

I shook my head, "I need to say everything aloud. It's too late anyway, I'll just rerun through everything in my head, I might as well."

My hands twitched slightly before I continued, "Eventually, I got tired of Jace being so possessive. I tried to break it off with him and just be his weapon again but... He said he was the meister, and I needed to do as he said..."

His open palm collided with my cheek and I cried out, backing away from him. Jace advanced towards me anyway, grabbing my wrist and pulling me towards him.

I struggled to free myself from his grip, hitting him and kicking him, screaming for help from a neighbor or something. Nobody came.

His hand released my wrist for a moment and I tried to make a break for it, only to be caught by my short brown hair. I screamed out in pain and continued my attempts at attacking him.

Jace's voice was deadly and sickeningly low, "Why do you always insist on leaving me, Raina?"

"Jace!" I shouted, still squirming in his grip, "Let go of me! I'm not kidding! You're hurting me!"

There were tears in my eyes and Jace dropped me to the floor with a thud. I heard a crack as Jace's foot collided into my ribs, and I screamed again. He crouched down and held my head up to his eye level by my hair.

"We'll have plenty of time to be together at the hospital." Then he slammed my head down to the ground, making the world around me go dark.

"I was in the hospital for a few weeks after that, eventually my body kinda adapted to the pain." I said, "Of course, I still bruised."

"I had two friends at the academy back then, they were named Kat and Lyn. We were inseparable, at least until Jace started hurting me."

Laughter and talking resounded the Death Weapon Meister Academy's courtyard. If it had been a few days before, you would have seen Jace and I talking and mingling with the other students, like normal people. But now Jace made the two of us sit inside the classroom in silence.

My head was bowed to my lap, my fingers twitching slightly while my foot tapped below. I can still feel how my mind swirled so fast with every moment with Jace. I can't quite remember exactly when it didn't feel suffocating to be around him, but it was a long time.

One day Jace wasn't around, he got up from our desks before class without telling me where he was going. My friends, Kat and Lyn, had gotten back from a mission a few days before and were coming back to school that day. They sat and talked with me for a while,
but I didn't say much anymore.

"Raina, what's that on your face?" Kat asked, and leaned forward to inspect my cheek. My hand quickly clasped over it, praying to god she didn't see the bruise.

Lyn grabbed my arm and inspected my wrist, finding a dark blue bruise along it.

"What the hell is this?" Lyn asked, and I cringed. "Did- did Jace do this?"

They were friends with Jace before this. When he was kind and fun to be around, and I'll never forget the mortified look on their faces when I nodded my response.

"W-wait! W-where are you going?" I asked, grabbing Lyn's shoulder as she stamped away from Kat and I.

"I'm going to kill the little shit." She stated.