Title: The Silent Game
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Rate: T
Pairings: Main: GaaHina (I wanted to try! XD), Minor: NejiTen and others when I will judge it necessary. (You may give suggestion but I can't promise anything if it doesn't stick to the plot... :S )
Genre: (modern ^ ^) supernatural, mystery and romance.
Key:
Italic: Hinata inner voice. It in her POV anyway.
A/N: I just love the Mystery gender... -_-' I have tried a new style so I don't know... I hope you will enjoy, though. =)
The Silent Game
By Mahakali
Prologue
A silent chanted sound, a gleaming light riving the darkness, the hatred dancing among the unspoken words; everything took a new meaning, growing as fear.
The prayers were musical, cold, ringing nauseously to my ears.
I wished I could have shut them up. I wished I could have scream for them to stop. They didn't know her, her smile! They didn't know anything.
Too miserable.
I bowed my head, letting the tears escaped their prisons, now running freely on my cheeks. A river of lies cascading down ivory skin. A furious wind pushed aside my navy blue hair as violent teeth jagged into my neck. There was a loud roar, the wind, still screaming in front of the cliff, but there was no blood. Only the sound. Dark ink clothes everyone was wearing around me. The grief…
I looked away as the priest held his cassock continuing to recite the Bible.
The clouds fought above my head, a bloody rain falling and crashing on the ground but there was nothing else snaking at my feet. No warm liquid accompanying the feeling of several razors digging pitilessly into my flesh.
They closed the coffin, veiling her face with a wooden surface. I sobbed defying the silence to stop me again.
Another weakness.
They were already walking away. Everything was paid and the priest was done. She was lying under ground.
Another fall.
The earth shook under my feet as my knees meet it like a bustling ocean taking the colors of the horizons. The sound of the waves was muffled but I heard a rock falling in the abyss in front of me. There was no end, a beginning without an end, a life without death, an old vinyl playing without the music.
There was only a feeling, tamed to push me down, to hear and to bear with my quiet screams, to fill the silence. I was shrinking, eyes banded, and before I've even realised it, it was already too late. No end awaited me under and someone was already filling up the hole like nothing had ever happened. The grave stone was triumphant shining with her death. Like the notes had never been played, like the silence had always been everything, a journey colliding where the past and the present meet.
I've become fear, a long forgotten nightmare no one could name and it was only a game. A silent game.
To use the cell phone or to face the consequences, the silence, the music?
To kill or to be killed?
But again, there was no end, no way out, only the game, the victims and me, playing it through eyelashes filled with remorseful tears.
In silence.
Everything in perfect silence…
Chapter One: Awoken
I admired it; the ebony wood sculpting a melody I never got to hear finished. Dust had clung on it but the piano was still cordial, waiting among the beams of light for touches, for the music to rise tranquilly in the living room.
I continued to watch.
Crumpled, the piano scores refused to play along with her ghostly fingers. They kept running on white keys, hitting slightly the black ones, the dream already beginning to fade away. My humming was void, empty and sore less. I imagined her pushing back her vaporous hair before winking at an invisible crowd. Then, she leaped away before my eyes. Normally, I would never sit in front of the piano, waiting with it for the notes, the soft tune my mother used to play. I sighed closing my eyes. I tried again, the humming, to touch the keys, to feel my blood, my heart pouring my own breath into the piano.
Too weak.
In a muffled sound, my hands fell on my laps. I dropped my head as the yellow-sunflower light continued to haunt me, gliding down the curtains of the room.
My mother was dead.
My father couldn't handle the silence, the music fading away.
We were moving out.
I closed the keyboard, pushing myself away from the piano, but still tumbling into her scent, her laughter, the sweet notes filling the room. Still refusing to hand over the memory.
Too pathetic.
"Straighten your back, Hinata." The bitter cold wind swept in my coat as my father's voice snappily reached me. "Does everyone have to perceive your weakness?"
He had abandoned the piano behind. He sold it cheaply on internet not even bothering to accept the highest offer but only the first.
"Your coldness is giving away yours, father." I slammed the car door shut, turning away from him and the coldness playing with my navy hair. It was laughing, sidling with his fearless greed.
It knew.
I knew.
It would always refuse to stop and I would never shut it up.
I didn't need to lock eyes with him. I would never dare but he understood. He had abandoned her behind. His fault. His car driving away, his tires were still going on and on screeching, taking us away; making us run away.
His jaw clenched as he turned to me narrowing slightly his eyes before snapping something in my sister's general direction. I didn't matter, even less than my mother. I felt Hanabi shifted next to me, aching to tell him to stop but she treasured the silence, her lack of reaction.
Contrary to her, I hated it. The silence, the notes, everything! It was like a tasteless joke, a bad movie in black and white playing over and over again... Never once stopping, always the same. Trodden, they were still clinging to my coat, biting into my flesh. The silence heavy, lurking behind the notes… They wanted me to hear it. They wanted to understand that she was gone, that my mother had been the one to take the piano away. The music seems so weighty, weightier than my hatred, beyond the nightmares but still teasingly in my reach, taking the form of a mirror, a reflection I thought to have seen buried. I hated the notes, the piano, the humming, the silence never lingering. Never leaving me in peace.
And myself. I loathed even more myself because I was unable to break the dance, to stop the notes for good. The cage, the silence, my father. Unable to stand up and walk back to her. The graveyard, the piano, her faint memory.
Too fearful of what I may hear.
"You are starting school tomorrow. I'm counting on you two to bear proudly the name of Hyuuga. Don't gnaw your lips, Hanabi."
I pressed my forehead against the cool window. The clouds were thick and the sun incapable to escape its prison. I was looking at my life in the eye.
No light.
Only death abandoning a soul filled with enchanted noted, pushing us towards a new home, a new beginning.
And the cell phone.
"What's your name?" The woman asked with a caring voice, perched on her desk looking straight down at me. I was meek, fidgeting nervously my lips but no answer slipped from my mouth. I was small, she was a giant and the high school was even bigger. Her coral red lipstick curved slightly letting surprisingly neat white teeth marking my first real smile in town.
"I am not going to eat you, sweetie." The secretary sounded amused as she eyed me up and down. Could she sense it, too? Fear's coat wrapped around my shoulders?
"Does everyone have to perceive your weakness?"
"Hinata Hyuuga." I stared blankly at my feet.
I could smell her smile. It was soft, unmoving as her wrecked hands by work searched through the papers on her desk. The computer buzzed slowly, coughing painfully some waves in the room.
"Strange…" She leaned back in her seat frowning down at me. Then, her emerald eyes flew back to the paper. She straightened her back and I already missed the smile.
"They gave you the locker number..." She stopped shaking her rosy grey hair before standing up abruptly. She tossed me the papers a thin line of red drawing her lips. I didn't see the teeth anymore.
A wild shadow crossed her eyes spreading its poison to her wrinkles. I stepped back, holding the papers to my chest. Something in her eyes was burning me, urging me to disappear. Savagely, the tension grew. I could feel its harsh breath next to my ear as I realized that she was scared of me.
For the first time in my life, someone feared me.
The feeling was powerful, somewhere between aggressiveness and pain. Somewhere in the past. It was such a vase falling down. The time modifies the scenery, giving each detail a new meaning. The movement is slow, coordinated, until it touches the floor. Then, there is an explosion. Loud enough to fissure the silence. At the impact, the glass breaks under the startles of everyone in the room.
I pressed the bronze doorknob on my palm, my eyes widening, refusing to give in to the tears.
How many times did I have this expression painted on my face? How many times did I have pushed away fear only to shutter it instead?
"Good day." Her features were like a door. A second ago, open, warm waiting for me to stare up to the smile. But it was now slammed shut by bitterness. Unspoken doubts about me.
Another door slammed shut. My body trembled, my pearl eyes trying to focus on the papers.
(My name is Hinata Hyuuga. I have navy dark hair that danced quietly around my silhouette, following my broken shadow in a piece of memory. I was a new student, completely lost in a world devoid of musical note, of the words forming the lullaby. Until I found the cell phone. Rather, until it found me…)
Locker 138. Just 138. Not 666 or 999 or any other numbers just as meaningful but plainly 138.
I shrugged off the fear folding neatly the sheet before reading over the one with my schedule. Science, Math, English, History… Music.
138.
I stopped in front of the discoloured grey locker, trying to regain my composure. I should probably forget the instruments, the piano, and live on. Yes, right. I should but I won't. I don't have the guts to.
Too useless.
Too shy.
The locker's door opened in an awful sound, crying out its age on its own. The dust took in the lights of the hallways followed by whispers. Inquiring eyes looked at me. The girls passing by stepped on each other's feet all looking at the locker.
"You know, no one had used this locker for thirty-five years now?"
I jumped slightly as the girl raised her brows at me while pointing her chin towards the number, 138, engraved on the door. Genuine, her warm coffee eyes sparkled with strange flames. Her hair was tied in two buns, hiding lustrous chocolate hair. Her dark sweater doing the same with her curves. Her baggy pants just as worst.
She held up her hand in a boyish manner while her back hit the locker next to mine.
"The name's Tenten."
Meekly, I reached for her hand. My muscles tensed ready for the strength but at the moment I touched her, it was already back on her sides. The strength of hiding swelled on my palm for a moment before fading away with the surprise.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Tenten. I am Hinata Hyuuga."
She laughed. Holding her sides, she bent down her eyes holding something I didn't understand. I flushed staring blankly at her until she grinned up at me.
"You are too innocent, too polite! It can't be!" She laughed even more throwing back her head on the locker. "You can't be related to Neji!"
I froze. Something had fallen at my feet. Another fog of memory. Another death. It was still there, laughter as a chorus, as it tried to climb back. The silence had jumped from the corner and it was smiling faintly.
"Sorry!" Tenten waved a hand dismissively. "It's just he can be such a bastard and you…"
She stopped, raising her head towards the ceiling.
"O-okay… It's okay!" I stammered out, turning back to my locker.
"Well, see you, Hina! Don't get lost, boys are nothing but friendly here." She winked at me pulling her body from the locker. "Especially, the one who got this locker last."
"W-what?! Wait!" I shouted but her back had already disappeared, hidden by the crowd of teenagers walking to class.
I sighed turning back to my locker. It was a mystery, like something so insignificant could have a past on his own, an album of pictures regrouping his life. I swallowed the air, the rich perfume of the distant past. Something silver shone in the obscurity, staring back at me without sharing its secret yet.
I reached for it, jumping slightly at the cool contact.
The cell phone lay on my hand, the light reflecting my speechless expression on its screen. It was brand new. It surely didn't have thirty-five years old. Someone had been here recently.
A sound held my stare as the screen lightened up. The message popped up before I could even protest.
The game begins for the second time, Hinata.
Get ready.
I coughed out the air, my eyes flicking to a side than to the other, searching among the teenagers for someone or something. My blood pounced wrapping a cool, unmistaken scent around me.
Fear was perched on my shoulder.
I ran, the sound of the bell still ringing to my ears. At that moment, I didn't realize I was running towards fear, stepping unwittingly in the game.
The moment I touched the cell phone, it had already been too late.
I had become fear and the music was finally freeing itself, forgetting the piano behind for the second time.
The silent game had already begun.
modern supernatural ^_- I hope you had enjoyed!
