To Be A Dove (TBAS Sequel)

Chapter 3

Hello scrappers! I came up with the idea of putting references from TBAS at the beginning of each chapter. The quotes are matching with the chapters of the first book, the reference of this chapter will be of Chapter 3 of TBAS and so forth. Enjoy!
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I laughed. He relaxed a bit and I smiled as his arms wrapped around my back. I felt my nervousness slowly calming down. When I pulled away, he smiled at me.

"I like hugging."

"I like it too."

~•~

Hospitals could've very well been the most uncomfortable places in existence.

There is something about being trapped within a brightly lit room that slowly makes you lose your grip on reality. The lack of sound, the white color that seems to swallow you whole. Every last feeling coursing though your body seems to be forced out, washed away by the lack of color and merged against the walls as you are only left to sit in the haunting quietness, giving in to a false state of senselessness.

Hospitals, Emi soon realized, were made to make people feel numb.

And as opposed to the earlier feeling of desperation that gnawed on her intestines like a hungry beast, Emi quite prefered it. Numb was better, she decided.

Emi liked numb.

She had even begun to feel numb to the presence of her companion who remained slumped against a chair, his body stiff and unmoving beneath Emi's gaze.

One would think Shin had fallen asleep. That his body couldn't handle the amount of pressure it was being subjected to and had finally caved in. However, the boy who previously had the ability to sleep for days on end hadn't closed his eyes since the raid ended. And it showed on the paleness of his skin, the dullness of his irises, the way his lungs would only haul in air every 15 seconds, as if every automatic thing in his body had slowed down and was steadily shutting off.

Shin was not numb, Emi noted. He was dying. His soul was rotting, and Emi could smell it from a mile away.

His stomach had been the first to go, refusing to ingest anything that was given to him, be it by the nurses, guards or even Emi herself. His legs followed, subjecting him to the same chair right next to the hospital's door. He remained there, as would a loyal dog waiting by the door for his master to come back home.

Or maybe a man who had been locked out of his own house, the spare key long forgotten as he reduced himself to wait by the door, naively hoping for it to someday open.

The elites were his shelter, his only sense of home. Now they were scattered, viciously torn away from each other like petals of a flower, a selfish hand asking to be loved.

When the door opened beside him, he didn't even take notice. His ears had grown so accustomed to the silence that they had erased the sound of the doctor calling for him. It was only when he felt a gentle hand against his shoulder, the soft touch immediately perceived as familiar, that he finally looked up. His once electric blue eyes found Emi's, but they were now a pale sky color, as if the very life had been sucked out of them.

Emi mouthed something he couldn't quite hear. Was she pulling him up? Or had he always been standing?

Suddenly the white room started moving before his eyes and he was now behind the door, absentmindedly walking down corridors as he felt his body weight being pulled forward by the girl. His eyes lightly caught sight of an exit sign, the neon colors pinching at the threads of his memories.

Something at the back of his mind told him the sign was important. A distant memory of the past let him know that he was, in some way, connected to it. An exit sign? Was he somehow related to the concept of it?