"A-Are you alright? He-hey…" she heard. With a start that evidently was a large enough twitch to cause those around her to jump back, she sat up, looking around the room with fright. To her relief, there was nothing there that was frightening. No eyes. No darkness. Just her friends and Yuka's mom hovering around her with worry.

"Y-yeah… I guess I was so scared that I, uh, just fainted." Kagome said, blushing.

"Are you sure you're okay, honey?" Yuka's mom, Kaori, said as she place a comforting hand on the high school girl's forehead.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Phew… I think it just was because I haven't been sleeping well. As lame as it sounds, I've been staying up studying lately…"

"You mean that instead of sleeping, you studied for that bullshi-… err, sorry Ms. Hanamura," Eri coughed, realizing that there was in adult in the room, "But you chose to kill yourself studying for a test that legitimately isn't passable?" she chastised, poking Kagome in the arm.

"I know, I know…"

"Well, you girls best be getting to bed, then. You need your sleep for tomorrow; it is a school day after all." Ms. Hanamura said with a hint of scorn in her voice.

"Yes mom. We're going to bed now…" Yuka said with a sigh. All of the girls got in their sleeping bags and the lights went off. It was quiet, and somewhat awkward of an atmosphere.

…so much for a fun surprise… I bought it to scare them, but only ended up scaring myself and ruining the fun…. I'm such an idiot…

Despite being so tired, Kagome found herself unable to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, visions of those yellow, enflamed eyes haunted her vision. Once, she was dozing off, but it felt like there was something in the room with her, and it wasn't just her friends. No, it didn't feel… right.

Now I know how the victim in a horror movie feels… she thought, suppressing a slap-happy giggle. She was so tired that it was starting to physically hurt. The beginnings of a migraine were forming, a rather nasty one at that. With a sigh, she turned over in her sleeping bag and gazed out the far wall. It was entirely windows, made for gazing out at the city's lights much like how Kagome was doing. She shuddered, thinking about what she had seen. It was a pair of golden eyes, round and angry like some sort of feral animal, yet the body that it was attached to was the silhouette of a man. Did she envision the devil? Maybe it was an incubus. That brought a snort to her lips, which she covered as a cough. It seemed rather rude to not only ruin the mood, but laugh at it as well…. Even though the whole event was rather laughable in retrospect.

The city lights twinkled peacefully. As much as New York is called "the city that never sleeps", Tokyo and all of its sectors were much more active than the Big Apple. Her eyes fell to half mast, and the lights blurred, turning into starbursts of colour. One building in particular had yellow lights. They were harmless before, but when she looked at them like this, they suddenly seemed to take the shape of those horrible golden eyes…. Floating with menace…..

Kagome promptly shut her eyes, willing the spectral image to go away as she turned around and hid under the blankets, waiting for the sun to come up.

That morning, all five of them got ready for school in silence, too tired to carry on any conversation. By the time they were a few blocks away from their school, however, they were all chatting about Kagome's "incident" as they called it. While Eri ate up the event, making puns and playful jokes to Kagome, Sango took up a concerned stance, asking how she felt every minute or so. No matter what their intentions were, listening to the constant prattle that early in the morning after another night of no sleep was not conducive to her feeling better. No one had expected her to be so… effeminately frail like that. Sure, she was quiet and girly, but… still. Even she herself couldn't quite believe that she just simply fainted like that. With a heavy sigh, she started her first class… and right away she could tell that today was not going to fun.

Of course it was on the fourth floor, which was naturally the highest in the building. Climbing the stairs felt like dragging a dead body across quicksand as her tired body screamed in protest. Of course her first class had to be the subject that she was worst at. Math just didn't come naturally to her. Asians being good at math? Stereotypes be damned, that sure as hell wasn't true with her. It took hour and hours of deciphering the strange glyphs to find measurements that weren't going to be of any use to her other than an answer on a test. It just seemed so pointless to calculate the degree of an angle on a triangle. It was just a triangle for ye gods sakes—it wasn't going to be a magical number that would earn her thousands in a career. It was just a fucking nummmberrr…

Yuka opened the sliding door and the girls followed suite, going to their seats. The arrangement of the desks was traditional boy-girl in alphabetical order, so she was placed away from her friends. Not that she minded, at the moment. For once, she was thankful not to have them near. Kagome loved them dearly, but she was fucking tired of their constant chatter. With a tired sigh, she rubbed her eyes and took her place near the window. It was light out, but she didn't mind all that much. It was nice to just gaze out and admire the view during lectures. The professor took role call, and dove straight into the next lesson.

"Today we're going to go back to basic proofs, because most of you did not perform too well on that section of the test. Do you remember these?" He turned as he spoke and wrote out an example on the board.

Given:

Segment AD bisects segment BC.
Segment BC bisects segment AD.

Prove:

Triangles ABM and DCM are congruent.

Just trying to comprehend it made Kagome's sleep deprived head hurt more. With a heavy sigh, she slumped forward in her chair, resting her head on folded arms. The chalk diagram and the writing became blurry lines as she started to doze off. Her whole body ached and yearned for sleep, and for the first time, she fell asleep in class.

"Higurashi."

"Kagome!"

Kagome

His eyes flew open. Awake. Asleep, or dead?—he didn't know. One moment the cries of battle and the stench of flesh and forest burning flooded his vision and nostrils, the next, he was sitting in an odd bench of sorts that had a table built into it. There were thirty or so adolescent humans staring at him, as well as one adult that just oozed authority.

"Higurashi, there will be no sleeping in my class." The adult male said as he stared daggers right at him.

Higurashi? That wasn't his name. But what… was his name? For the life of him, he couldn't recall it. However, he instinctively knew that this 'Higurashi' did not belong to him. He felt his brows nit in confusion. With curiosity and slight fear, he looked about the room. It was sterile and uniform, with little tables that had miniature desks attached to them. What was the purpose of this room? One of the walls was open, but on closer inspection, the hole had been cut with purpose and had some sort of barrier over it. Outside, he could see buildings that were slender, yet tall as mountains. Even from his somewhat limited viewpoint, he could tell that there were thousands of people outside. Something told him that this wasn't natural. This wasn't where he was supposed to be.

"Kagome?" the man said.

A girl that sat in the row in front of him stood and came to his table, concern clearly written on her face. Her hair was cut in that of a noble's fashion, yet it was not bound and styled like that of court. Odd. And again with the strange name. Higurashi Kagome. Who was that? Did they mistake him for this person? His hands clenched in preparation for the slightest move of aggression. "Are you feeling okay, Kagome?" the girl asked, leaning on the desk. She looked back at the older man and then back at him, confusion now evident on her visage.

"…I-….." he began, only to cut himself off, nearly choking on his own saliva. The voice that had come from his lips was distinctly female. He coughed, and put a hand to his chest. It was soft, as if he had breasts… which was odd to him. Was he supposed to be male? Why was it that this body felt…. Wrong?

"Sensei, I'm going to take her to the nurse, if that's okay… she fainted last night at my house. Something might be wrong…" Another girl said from across the room as she too rose and came to his desk. This one had hair that was cut in a boy's style, but it seemed to be acceptable here, as there were others with the same style of short hair. The young woman put a hand on his…. Well, her shoulder. Shakily, he allowed himself to be led by the princess-ish girl to another room. The hallways to get there had many doors, all leading to rooms that seemed identical to the one he had come from.

When they reached their destination, he found that this room was smaller, and had raised futons on metal frames lined in a neat row. A woman bid them welcome and asked what was wrong.

"Well, last night, we were sitting around talking and she just fainted. I think that she's sort of dazed from lack of sleep or something… but I'm worried that it might be something more serious." The girl with the noble's hair said as she rubbed his-her shoulder.

The nurse bid him to lay and rest. For a second, the urge to run tingled in his extremities. He had no idea who these people were after all. How could he trust them? That being said, there was little he could do at the moment. Running blindly away without having knowledge of his surroundings wasn't a smart strategy. Hesitantly, he lay on the bedding.

"I don't want you to walk home,"

…as if I knew where that was…

"So I'll call your mom and ask for her to pick you up." The older female said with a gentle smile. Mother? A sense of sadness and longing overcame him. Why did he have the feeling that his mother was gone? Had his mother died? Realising that the nurse wanted an answer out of him, he responded with a simple affirmative. What else was there to say? It wasn't like he could just bluntly ask, 'who am I', when everyone around him clearly know who this person was. Kagome… this body was Kagome's. Then… who was… he? Was he not supposed to be here?

"In the meantime, why don't you rest, Kagome. Just close your eyes and relax."

Just close these eyes that weren't his. Close them. To sleep, or to die? The latter felt much more… real. Somewhere in his subconscious he knew that he shouldn't be alive. The thought was morbid, but it felt familiar. The lids slid slowly shut as he took a final breath, and let his consciousness slip away.