Beta'ed by the wonderful enemyanemone!


Sakura bolts awake, sweat trickling on her brow, heart thudding furiously against the walls of her chest. She's back in her room.

She startles when someone raps on the door.

"Sakura? Breakfast is ready. Open the door."

A pause, and then a sigh when no one replies.

"...Still sleeping in, I see. I'll leave this out here for you, then," her mother's voice floats from the other side. Something gently clinks on the wooden floorboards.

Sakura pulls the covers over her head.

She doesn't want to see anyone.


"Sakura? Sakura, darling."

Her mother knocks on the door for the third time.

"Sakura-chan. Sakura?"

The doorknob jiggles futilely.

"Dear, can you help me open Sakura's door? I'm getting a little worried."

"What's wrong with that girl?"Another voice grumbles from downstairs. It's Tou-san's voice, but today it sounds weird and distorted and deep.

It sounds like him.

"I'll go take a look." A chair scrapes across the floor downstairs.

Sakura flinches and burrows deeper into the blankets, desperately trying to make her body smaller, unseen. Beads of sweat start trickling down her neck into her pajamas. It's hot, but she can feel herself starting to shiver. Her teeth begin to chatter. She covers her ears with her hands, but the sound of heavy footsteps ascending the staircase to her room trickles through her fingers.

Thump, thump.

Thump, thump.

Go away go away GO AWAY, she screams internally. In the darkness of the blankets, there's nothing but the sound of her quickening pulse overlapping with the steady thump of footsteps on the stairs.

Thump, thump.

Thump, thump.

I-It's only Tou-san, a voice inside her head tries to convince her. B-besides, he's dead.

N-n-no, no, not d-dead, she thinks, clutching her pillow, breaths ragged and uneven. Dead men didn't move. Dead men didn't weep tears of blood from empty eye sockets. Dead men didn't crawl towards her, flesh dripping off in waxy puddles to expose the white bone inside.

"Sa-ku-ra," the Man whispers. He grins at her with gleaming, white teeth still unblemished by the rot and decay that comes with death. His lips have rotted off to expose all of his teeth, locking his face in a permanent rictus of amusement.

He has no eyes.

"Sa...ku...ra."

He knows her name.

The Man slowly picks himself from the ground with unpolished, jerky movements.

Get away from me, she wants to scream, but her mouth is locked shut and all she can do is stand there, petrified, as the man steadily advances towards her. As the man's face looms closer and closer to her own, she can see grains of rice that line the festering sockets of his remaining flesh hatch into wriggling maggots before crawling into the darkness of his eye sockets.

The man doesn't seem to mind. He fists her hair and yanks on it hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, forcing her to look up at him, before caressing her cheek with a skeletal hand.

She feels the cold tips of stiff fingers pressed against her skin. His fingers scrabble over her skin and she begins to cry, tears trickling from wide-open eyes that refuse to blink. His clammy touch feels disgusting and gross and all she wants is Kaa-san to save her.

"What...lovely...eyes...you...have..." The Man's teeth clack against each other. "Like...jade. So... green…." His fingers slowly inch towards her right eye.

No, she wants to scream, they're mine, not yours, stop stop STOP-

-Kaa-san it hurts IT HURTS KAA-SAN KAA-SAN HURTS IT HURTS SOMEONE HELP ME-

Then the pain in her right eye lessens and the Man collapses like a marionette with its strings cut loose. A diagonal cut on his back slowly darkens with blood, a shadowy figure standing behind the corpse it just cut down.

"Burn."

Tongues of fire lick at the Man's clothes, and the overwhelming smell of burnt flesh permeates the air.

—…KURA? SAKURA? Can you hear me? SAKURA

Someone calls her name from a distance, but it's hard to hear; it sounds static and tinny, as if it's coming from a radio.

"...Sakura!"

"SAKURA!" The Man's voice screams. It sounds a little different and more familiar, but Sakura doesn't stop to wonder why. She snarls.


"Now behave, and eat," Tou-san growls. He shifts his arm, wincing. There are thin red lines that criss-cross his arms and stand out starkly against his suntanned skin. Sakura had screamed and clawed at him like a crazed animal until her father finally wrestled her down and pinioned her wrists above her head. She doesn't go down without a fight, but there's only so much a half-starved nine year old could do against an ex-chunin.

She only calms down when she sees the blood trickling down her father's arms. Living people bled red blood. The Man didn't bleed, not even when the tree branches and shards of glass from shattered windows cut through his clothes and his pale, rotting flesh.

"Eat your meal," Tou-san repeats, looking at her with a faintly worried look on his usually stoic face. Despite how much she wants to tell him that she doesn't have the appetite, Sakura hangs her head.

"Yes, Tou-san," she mumbles automatically. When her mother also chimes in with an "Eat, dear," Sakura finally looks down at her plate.

The pink, exposed flesh of the tomato slices in the salad glistens under the dim light and leaves trails of ooze all over the wilted greens. Her mother has also added a few of the expensive imported green olives to the salad. When Sakura pokes at them with her fork, two of them roll around her plate and settle next to a wedge of tomato.

They look like eyes.

The egg timer goes off and her mother bustles off to the kitchen, murmuring something being done.

"Sakura," Tou-san warns again, this time with an edge in his voice, and Sakura flinches before jabbing some of the lettuce leaves on her plate. She raises her fork to her mouth and Tou-san stares at her until she takes a tiny bite. When her father turns his attention back to his own salad, she lowers her fork. It feels and tastes like ashes in her mouth and she desperately needs to gag but Tou-san is right in front of her, watching her eat. So Sakura remains silent and forces down the salad, sipping water in between bites.

At least the water tastes normal. She tries not to think about the dry, sooty stuff that coats her tongue and the sides of her mouth, or how it reminds her of the grey dust that whirls around in the air like snowflakes, in that surreal world of black and white and red.

Sakura takes another bite and chews furiously.

Lift fork.

Chew.

Sip.

Repeat.

Then her mother places something in front of her and everything goes to hell.

"It's...your favorite, dear," her mother says hesitantly, watching Sakura with a crease in her brow. "Hamburg steak."

The smell of cooked meat fills the air and Sakura gags. She feels the bile rising in her throat.

"Ah, meat," her father says appreciatively. "Lovely."

No, she desperately wants to scream. No, that's not meat, Tou-san, you're wrong—it's flesh, red flesh blackened by fire and rot and swarms of flies that'll lay their small white eggs in the gaping holes where people's eyes are supposed to be—and Sakura sways a little in her seat.

She closes her eyes.

The buzzing of blowflies echoes in her ears.


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