To hell with my life, she thought. She slapped herself afterwards for looking like a brainless alien with him.
No Ice, Please
By Enf
Disclaimers, yo: I DO NOT OWN NARUTO!
-I Understand, Don't Worry-
"Temari?"
She flinched as she heard her name and frantically compiled the pieces of unevenly-sized papers on their coffee table. Inserting the disheveled mass of papers in between random pages of her Algebra book, she scrambled off her seat when her Bic stick fell on to their red floor. She hit her head in the process, and Kankurou cleared his throat.
He called her again, firmer this time. "Temari."
He watched painfully as his sister finally found the Bic stick and gripped it tightly. She's holding it back. His heart ached at the sight.
Temari stood up and gently placed the pen in place, beside the book that had torn paper edges sticking out of its thickness. She sat down.
What are you holding back, Temari?
"Yeah?"
Kankurou stared at her in mixed awe and sympathy.
What do you hate…?
He felt a lump in his throat for the first time in six long years. The feeling of wanting to burst in tears. The throbbing pressure coiling around his neck. That raucous scream of his heart.
He tried to fight it back. He could, and he would, especially if Temari was there.
She shouldn't see someone crying.
"…Nah," Kankurou summoned an incredibly forced toothy grin on his face and looked at Temari with apparent glee. "Just…it's cold, huh?"
Temari never noticed before. She was sweating, even as she wore only a black tank top and dirty white knee shorts. Her hair was messier in four pig tails, and her eyes—her blue ocean eyes seemed as if they were about to pop out from exhaustion.
"…It is…"
Kankurou stared at the dark rings below her eyes. He observed how Temari's chest moved unevenly and in ragged breaths and how her shoulders appeared too stiff.
"You should buy yourself a jacket," He managed.
She never paid attention to how Kankurou discerned that Temari had grown too skinny over the years and looked to be an alcoholic woman at twenty-three.
Yet she was still only a thirteen-year-old, over-working high school student.
"Um, just…" Kankurou stammered and placed his bag on the wrecked couch. It had never been fixed, that couch. "Don't…don't overdo it, okay? Just…Shit, I'm going to bed. Night."
He opened the door to his room—which was also the baggage room—and left his sister to decipher exactly what Kankurou meant.
She didn't need to decipher. She knew exactly what it was—Kankurou had known what she was doing from the beginning.
Temari just didn't want to pay attention and accept it.
"I'm so sick and tired," She said, slamming her head on the desk. Tears stung her eyes. Her heart throbbed painfully. It was always like that, day by day, and every night she would come to this scene. It was repetitive, too repetitive not to be considered immense torture.
More pain came as she bit her wrist.
She had no right to complain. Her brothers never once complained about the kind of shitty life they lived. She never once heard Kankurou or Gaara whine about how unfortunate they were, how their lives sucked, and why the hell they were still alive. Temari heard none of that, and, as their one and only oldest sister, she was proud of their endurance.
But not of herself.
She was supposed to be working to keep them alive. She had survived through everything, right? What would happen if she got fired, whatever the cause might be? She would just look for another job, and maybe hope for a pay rise. That wouldn't be so hard.
So why was she complaining? Because she lost her job for the eleventh time? Because every night she went home, she would lie to her brothers that she had a new job and she would bring better food for them at home? Because they were fucking stuck at the end of the world and no one gave a damn about it?
Nothing was new. Nothing was ever new.
"Sick…and tired…" Temari managed in a muffled voice as she kept biting her wrist, and soon, blood oozed out from a small wound. Tasting the unexplainable sweetness of her own crimson blood, she let go, burying her face in her folded arms.
"I'm so tired…"
She knew, and sometimes she noticed, but she would hardly accept defeat.
So why now?
And of all things that she couldn't notice, why was it Kankurou sobbing madly in his own room, just against his door?
~NIP~
Enf: This is only the first part of this meant-to-be-a-oneshot fanfic. I tried this WB cure exercise and this came out.
Please review. ^^ Next chapter will be updated tomorrow.
thanks for reading :)