The First Day; The Rest of Your Life
-Ken Genda-
-and the world snaps back to her eyes, the sudden motion she doesn't even remember making brings a rapid nausea, her body stumbles forwards.
The cold stabs through her and panic rises in her skull, where is she?
The darkness, the subtle sense of grime pervading the air, the darkened bricks on all sides…an alleyway then. But one she has no memory of entering. She remembers placing her books for the day back into her locker, sliding her notebooks into her satchel, the jeers of her classmates behind her.
Embarrassment.
Fury.
Pressure.
The memory fuzzes behind her eyes as she concentrates, unable to discern what had brought her from her locker to this place. With a jolt, she registers the lack of weight on her shoulder and realizes that her satchel is not hung at her side.
Her notebooks!
She whips herself around, intending to begin the search. Those notes are her research, her work and she'll hunt all night in this strange place if she needs to, but
BLOODSTAIN FEV-
The word slides before her eyes, becomes all her mind can focus on, as the explosion of gore behind her becomes known.
Blood
Scissors
His lifeless eye
She scre-
-Takeshi Shouji-
The smell after the world tears back into focus is familiar already.
What is not is the pressure at her right thigh. Fingers travel, discover leather and steel, the rust of old blood under her nails.
The left stings with a new mark, she'd investigated already once before, knows what she'll find.
Laughs herself (or somebody else) to sleep.
-Tetsuhiro Honda-
There's a postcard in her hand.
'Welcome to Shikoku!'
The puddle she is ankle-deep in ripples as blood seeps from the tips of the scissors in her other hand, red forking languidly through the water.
She catches sight of the dozen other matching pairs rammed through his wrists as the world rushes past her in a dizzying drop.
-Taro Komatsu-
"Stop it please I'll never look at them again, I'll never think about them again, I'm begging you, please stop."
-Takeshi Yoshida-
His hot breath on her neck as her hands force the scissors through with a
snap
crunch
and his agonized howls are joined by slick laughter from her own tongue even as she breaks away
-Kazukiyo Kanno-
-e's only a child she can see the uniform and there's so much blood this time what had she done oh god oh god oh god oh go-
-Takefumi Satono-
Vomit spews from her mouth, sharp and choking.
She'd never tried putting them through the neck before today.
Blood foams through the holes, across the handles, dulls the silver.
Wet gurgles from his lips.
She mimics the tears in his eyes.
-Yoshito Yumejima-
She laughs for ten minutes.
Can't remember the joke.
And when she does she bla-
-Youji Okuda-
-with his left wrist hammered to the wall, pinned like an insect to a board
her brain whirls formula
she's much better than any textbook now
involuntary motion knows where
to play
now for the right wrist and we can start she laughs
at the horror in his thrashing
this is the most fun she's (n)ever-
-Erio Takeda-
stopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstop
"No."
-Naoji Ishi-
Finger painting is like writing a novel, she finds.
BLOODSTAIN FEVER
-Shu Tsuji-
a rhyme in her head she doesn't remember composing, though prose has always been more her style.
and when she can remember to breathe through the laughter
she wonders what the reviews would say
so overly critical, she's a true artist you know?
though it's hard to be scathing, with scissors in your veins.
-?-
She strips down to her underwear, the bolted plates covering the windows lending a certain muggy quality to the air she knows she won't sleep though fully clothed.
This is like a nightmare. Trapped, forced to kill...and there are other complications, reasons why she does not want to be around these people.
Her fingers fiddle with the tight strap and buckle of the holster at her thigh, remapping every scar in the leather where excitement cut the hide. The worst of old friends.
Intending to slide it from her legs, she looks down, but
stops.
Her thigh. The scars. Something's changed.
"No. No. No…"
She counts, finger pulsing from one mark to the next, circling around to the start as she desperately runs numbers in her head against what she knows.
Ten.
There are ten more marks from when last she counted: five kills per completed mark.
"W-when…?"
Faces roar though her head, visages of terror she could surely never forget, but there is nothing new. Sweat gathers on her palms as she clutches her head, willing the corpses forth in her brain, shaking with the effort.
But nothing. These unknown dead do not rise, and tears flow thickly from her eyes. Syo was getting stronger, robbing her of more time than she even knew.
She was winning.
Her wails never make it past the soundproofed walls.
AN. Just try and tell me that getting into Touko and Syo's head isn't the most fun you can have as a writer.
Hope you liked it~