‘You can’t survive like this any more. What’s done is done and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘……’
‘Look, just lying around here in the dark isn’t going to benefit anyone. You’re frail and weak. Please, just come to dinner tonight, alright? You’ll forget about him with time.’
No. Daddy, no. What if I don’t want to forget? What if I just want to sit here, alone,
and…
‘Your sister’s worried about you too, you know. The whole town is. Ever since he’s been gone, the light has returned to this place. Dear child, I know you felt something for that stranger, but that is all that he was: a stranger. No one wanted any of this to happen. You understand that, right?’
‘Daddy, I…’
‘I’m sorry you had to go through this, but that is no reason to neglect yourself now, is it? Come, have some dinner. You will feel better in the morning.’
I don’t want any dinner. I just want to disappear.
“How is she doing?” Kataki said, getting to his feet as the doctor approached him from an ominous looking door from down the hall, his face drawn taught and serious. It had been several hours since he arrived at the hospital after hearing that Sakura and Hisoka were nearly hit by a car.
“Please sit down,” the doctor, a well primped female, said, motioning for the boy to take his seat once again. Once Kataki did as was asked of him, the doctor sat in the seat next to him. “As far as we can tell, she is in perfect health. I don’t know how close she really came from actually being struck by the oncoming car, but she received no injury from the vehicle.”
“No injury?” Kataki was puzzled. “Then, what’s wrong with her? Why won’t she wake up?”
“That is what troubles us as well. I don’t mean to worry you more than necessary, but her lack of consciousness could mean several things. Only time will tell, I’m afraid. But to the best of our ability, we believe that she is merely suffering from shock. Once her body recovers from this trauma, she should regain consciousness.”
Kataki looked away. Time. What time did they think he had? He had to quickly get his plans underway. There was no extra time to take care of Sakura and complete his plans for revenge. Just as Kataki began to drift off into his own thoughts, his mother and father rushed into the room with grave looks upon their faces.
“Where is she? Where is my baby?” his mother said, with seemingly fake tears streaming from her eyes. He had seen this before.
The two parents came into the room, their eyes lay deadly set upon the doctor. Standing, the doctor spoke, “Are you the parents of Sakura?”
“Of course we are,” the man said. “Who else do you think we are?” The man’s gaze fell upon Kataki, who sat still, trying to ignore the presence of his parents. “What is he doing here? He was the one who should have been hit by that car! After all that talk about protecting his sister! Ha!”
With a foul grimace piercing across his face, his eyes closed, Kataki stood in his own defense. “You are one to talk, always out doing your own thing. Your presence here surprises me more than hers,” he said, looking down at his mother.
Kataki’s father exploded at him. He gripped a hold of the boy’s shirt at his neck and shoved him against the wall behind. The force into the wall would have caused him to gasp for breath before, but Kataki only grinned back into his father’s cold, dark eyes. He was neither hurt nor stunned, and this shocked his father. Letting go of Kataki’s shirt, the man withdrew. His mother flinched not an inch at the sudden attack, although the doctor did. She didn’t know how a father could blow up so fiercely at his own son, but she did not wish to get in the middle of it. Turning back towards the two parents, she continued on with her analysis.
“I don’t think there is any need to be overly worried at this point. Your daughter is perfectly healthy and received no injury at all from this event. We believe that she is just resting, recovering her strength from the trauma of it all.”
“That’s it?” the man said. “She’s just sleeping?”
Replied the doctor, “Yes.”
“How can this be? I don’t understand,” he said, falling into a seat next to his wife, who hid her face into his shoulder and continued to sob.
“I truly would not put too much worry on this just yet. If she does not regain consciousness within the next few days, then perhaps… But as things are now, she is resting quite comfortably. That should be comforting enough for now.”
“How ridiculous, the both of you,” Kataki said, disgusted. “Do you really think that she believes that you feel compassion for your children? Is that all you try to gain in the eyes of those around you?” He turned and began to walk out of the room. “Don’t make me laugh.”
The incident played over and over in his mind, trying to find the answer, somehow to understand what went wrong. Hisoka sat next to Sakura in her hospital room. She looked so frail lying there with all those instruments hooked into her, all the beeps and cranks of the equipment around the room just made it seem all the more horrifying. And to think that this could have been avoided if only he were stronger, more experienced. If only he didn’t run from that strange power that dwelt in the depths of his being at the beginning, maybe then he would have been able to master it in time to save her that night. But it was too late now. He tried to call upon whatever strength he had to get her out of harms way, and it worked…sort of. She had no physical injury that the doctors could find, but then why wasn’t she awake? Maybe the voice he had heard before was a clue to understanding what happened, that same devilish voice that he had heard so many times before, nagging at him, taunting him. Maybe it was true that by unleashing his power he inflicted some sort of wound upon Sakura without meaning to. If it was his fault that she was suffering now, he could never forgive himself…
“What the hell are you doing in here?” a voice came from the hospital room entrance. Hisoka turned to look to whom addressed him only to find that it was none other than Kataki, the very last person he wished to meet now.
“Kataki, I…” Hisoka said. He couldn’t keep his eyes on Kataki for long and found himself staring at the floor.
“Get out,” he said, a crude but simple command. “Now.”
There was nothing more that Hisoka could do. He slowly stood, his eyes still downcast, and walked nearer to Kataki who appeared to almost block his exit.
His face tilted downward and yet his eyes piercing up into Hisoka’s brain, Kataki growled, “If I catch you here again, I will kill you.”
**********
“Sir, everything is proceeding exactly as planned.”
A middle aged man sat behind a blue-polished desk with several documents of undetermined classified material spread out in some sort of order. The man was unlike any other the young officer had known before. He had silver hair that shone blue and purple in the artificial lighting. The officer wondered what color it would appear in the light of day. “Very good,” the man said. He didn’t bother to raise his eyes to greet the officer but kept his attention solely upon the documents in front of him. “Soon the dragon will awaken and we will have it’s power for our own salvation. Please relay the message over to Sir Chryarnth. I’m sure he will wish to know of this progress.”
“Yes, sir,” spoke the young officer
and stepped out of the room.
“If
only we knew the exact time the dragon will show his face… Now that
would be a great help…”
**********
“Sir,
Master D’lyle wished to inform you that he anticipates the dragon to make it’s appearance soon, sir,” the officer relayed the message.
Chryarnth
was, as usual, alone in his dark office, rolling a black ball in his
fingers. “Good,” he said quietly,
his breath coming out like a hiss. “Very good.” He
remained sitting in his seat in the far corner of the room, near a large
window, covered with a burgundy, velvet drape, that stretched
all the way to the high ceiling above.
No light from outside was allowed to enter this room, and thus the only
light in the room was emitted from a strange round object in the center of the
room, just in front of Chryarnth’s desk.
It was almost like a crystal ball that the gypsies used to tell people’s
fortunes. But this crystal ball
wasn’t used for that purpose. It was
commonly called the Light Ball by Chryarnth even though the light that it
emitted was of a dark bluish-purple hue.
The officer wondered how Chryarnth could see to do his work in such poor
lighting.
The
officer remained at the entrance of the room, awaiting his dismissal, but none
came. He tapped his feet once and
then twice when he received no response.
Chryarnth looked up, his eyes glaring at the officer. The officer thought he saw an odd red
color come from the Light Ball in the center of the room, but he ignored it and
focused on Chryarnth across the room in the shadows. “You may leave now, child,” Chryarnth
spoke.
“Sir,”
the officer said, turned on his heels, and stepped quietly out of the room.
Chryarnth
continued to stare at the door where the young officer both entered and exited
from and frowned to himself. “What
annoying bunch of flies they all are.”
Rolling the little ball in his hands, he closed his eyes and took a deep
breath. Soon he would see the face
of his brother once again, and that will be the last time ever.
**********
Sakura
was walking down a crowed hallway in her school. She waved to her friends all around,
avoided bumping into other students she didn’t know, and continued on her way
down the hall. For a moment she couldn’t
remember where exactly it was she was going, but she knew if she kept walking,
she would remember. She had this
sort of feeling happen before. Like she’d get up from watching TV to get a drink of water or a
book from her room only to completely forget why she got up in the first place. She’d stop in the middle of the hallway,
trying to remember what she was going to do, but couldn’t remember. She’d keep walking to her room at the
end of the hallway and just as she approached her room, she remembered what it
was she got up for. But this time
was different. Even though she kept
walking, she still couldn’t remember what she was looking for, or why she was
even at school after hours in the first place. The last bell of the day had rung. Normally, she would go down to her
brother’s homeroom once classes were over and walk home with him. Maybe that was what she was supposed to
remember.
She
kept walking down the same hallway, passed her math teachers room and science,
took the first turn down a hallway to the left and stopped at the second room
on the right: 4-B. This was Kataki’s
homeroom. She would come to this
room every day and walk out slowly with Kataki. But he wasn’t there. Nobody was. She stepped into the room and looked
about. All the chairs were pushed
in neatly, the chalkboard was cleaned and already dry,
all the windows were closed and locked.
Maybe Kataki was waiting for her to come but got tired waiting for her
and left on his own. She accepted
that conclusion and stepped out of the room. No one was in the hallways. They had been crowed with students a
moment ago, but now…no one. There
wasn’t a sound in any of the hallways.
Starting
to panic, she ran down the same way she had come, and as she passed her math
teacher’s room, she heard a slight noise come from within. She stopped almost not wanting to know
what it was. The doors were closed,
slid shut like any other door in a Japanese high school. She would have peered in through the
glass window in the door, but her math teacher became annoyed at students
looking in or looking out to their friends, so he replaced the clear glass with
a kind of non-see-through plastic.
The only thing left to do to explore the sound further was to slide open
the door.
The
sound from inside the math room grew gradually louder. It started out like a low pitched
whisper or the wind through a cracked window. That’s what it must have been, a window
that wasn’t closed all the way. But
that didn’t explain why the sound grew louder, she thought. If there was a window that wasn’t closed
all the way, there’s no way that it could gradually make more
sound. On the contrary, the
only thing a cracked window could do on its own is slowly close, creating less
sound due to the wind. But what
started out as a soft whisper turned into a higher pitched scream that wouldn’t
stop. It grew louder and louder
until Sakura couldn’t take it any more and quickly slid open the door to see
what was inside making such noise.
But nothing was there. The
moment she opened the door, the sound vanished, disappeared as did everything
else in this school.
“What’s
going on here…?” she said. “What’s
going on here? Where is everybody?”
She
ran out of the math room and stopped in the hallway to look down one way and
then the other. Before she had the
chance to turn down one way, the sound started up again, the
door to the math room still open all the way. She looked back toward the room, saw no
one, nothing, but the sound still came from the room. She felt her heart start to pound in her
chest, faster and faster as the sound again grew louder. She wanted to run, but she was frozen,
frozen in that one spot in the middle of the hallway, staring into the math
room. She wanted to run back to the
4-B classroom to find her brother, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even turn her head one way
to avoid looking into the room.
Then
from the far end of the room, something flew into the room through one of the
windows with a loud crash. The
sound stopped. Whatever came
through the window she couldn’t see from the angle in which she was standing. All
was silent except for the pounding in her ears. She still wanted to run even though the
sound had stopped again but something was drawing her to explore what came
through the window and whether or not it was the source of the strange sound
that struck such fear of the unknown into her heart.
She
tried to move again and this time she could. Step by step she slowly entered the
classroom again, her eyes darting here and there to
search to whatever it was that came through the window. She didn’t see anything but broken glass
spread along the floor at the base of the window. As she stepped closer to the broken
window she thought she saw something laying near the
shards of glass on the floor.
Kneeling down, she took a closer look at the object. It appeared to be nothing more than a
student’s notebook. She picked it
up and looked at the red, cardboard covering that had strange writing carved
into it with a dead pen, parts of the red cardboard were scraped off in this
fashion to form letters, a sort of message. But she couldn’t read it. She felt like she should have been able
to read it and yet somehow how she couldn’t, like something in her brain wouldn’t
allow her to read it even though she possessed the ability to read it.
Opening
the notebook, she flipped through page after page and found nothing out of the
ordinary. It was an average student’s
math book, with exercise math problems and such written in light pencil. But towards the middle of the notebook,
she found more of the same strange writing as on the front cover.
“What
the hell is this? I know I can read
this stuff, but why…?”
She
stood up again and looked out the broken window. There wasn’t a soul outside either and
she wondered how the window could have been broken by a mere notebook. She was on the second floor, too. The only thing that could have broken
the window had to have been a rock or some other kind of hard material. Again, she looked about the room,
looking for any kind of object that potentially could have been thrown up from
the ground below to break the window.
But there was nothing. The
only thing there was the notebook in her hands, with a secret message beyond
her comprehension engraved on the front, red cover.