Blue Butterfly | Amajiki Tamaki

| 38 |

3rd POV

"... Hey... Hey."

Nothing.

"... Do you think [Name]-chan's alright?""

At the lone mention of your name, perturbed silence sailed across the room like a cold gust of wind from the wintry North. Quivering mouths dipped into anxious frowns. A tic vibrated at every taut jaw.  And eyes squinted just a tad harder, the light above—too bright, too glaring—slashing through their clear view of each other, perhaps trying to use that as an excuse to avoid painful eye-contact.

Needless to say, no one dared to lift their heads, as if in contemplative, mourning silence.

As if... the girl's name was taboo itself.

Nejire intertwined her fingers on her lap, hands heavy and her eyes glazed with grogginess; she couldn't get a small wink of sleep the previous night (everyone had woken up at 4am) let alone touch her breakfast, swallowing the persistent yawns back down her dry throat and ignoring the angry rumbles in her stomach. Maybe she should have eaten more. Maybe she should have listened to Mirio's loud chomping when he was wolfing down his breakfast to work up an appetite. Or maybe it was best to ignore it all.

Instead, she blew out air slowly through her nostrils. Then sucked a cold gulp of air to whisk the feverish heat building in her throbbing head.

Nausea intermingled with uneasiness bubbled in her stomach like hot acid.

Everything was making her sick.

From the pearly-white walls to the sickening silence.

It was gnawing at every nook and cranny of her brain.

Like a horde of mosquitoes sweeping down along a length of her pink flesh, stabbing her with their long swords and draining the life out of her. The suspense was killing her. The wait was killing her. All it did was accentuate a headache. No one was aware she was moments from ripping her hair out and erupting into a massive tantrum—she was that impatient, that fidgety and that frustrated ever since the incident.

The group sat perched on one of the large, black-inked couches in the lounge room, listening, briefly, to the ceiling fan above stir subtly.

The interior was bleak and irritatingly white, a colour so pure, so innocent, that made a ball of bile spike at the back of Nejire's throat. Last night was anything but innocent. There was hardly any furniture save for a table adorned with stacks of loose-leaf and chairs encircling a tiny, round glass table with a vase of pink-flushed peonies. The sunlit petals made her stomach churn more in discomfort, tearing her gaze away from such bright cheeriness she couldn't fathom at the very moment.

As if she could be happy in this state. As if anyone could.

Her best friend was gone.

Again.

For the second time.

Nejire had never felt so useless in her whole life.

Deep inside her chest, her lungs burned with scathing fire, choked words whirring in her core. The air in her chest coursed like thick black smoke seeping from an ancient Ford engine, clogging her throat, binding her tongue with smokey tendrils and smouldering the corner of her eyes with an irritable itch. It threatened to unleash a waterfall, but Nejire promised herself that she wouldn't cry.

She won't let anyone see her so weak—so fragile.

She just... couldn't believe it.