『Author's Note;』
7/16/15
Sorry for such a long time before an update! Summer is actually a lot more busy than I anticipated.
But here's a new chapter back to Touka!
It's sorta short but please bear with me.
Thank you for your patience and enjoy! :^)
one
Touka's been hurt.
And, as it turns out, a concussion is even more uncomfortable than she had imagined.
Her skin is cold and clammy; she's making a herculean effort to breathe. Torture is roaring through the right arm she fell on and making it difficult for her to focus. She has to squeeze her eyes shut, grit her teeth, and force herself to pay attention.
The chaos is unbearable.
Several guards are shouting and too many of them are touching her, and Touka wants their hands surgically removed. They keep shouting "Mrs. Kirishima!" as if they're still waiting for her to teach them English, as if they have no idea what to do without her instruction. The realization exhausts her.
"I can't get up," the lavender-haired woman manages to say. She opens her eyes. "But I haven't gone deaf."
All at once the noise disappears. The guards shut up.
Touka coughs.
"Alert the medics, please," the teacher tells them, shifting, just a little. The world tilts and steadies all at once. "No. Wait...Take me to Ken. Please."
Two of the guards run off to the prison infirmary while another stays behind to watch her. He doesn't say anything about her other request.
"What happened to him?" she blurts almost automatically. It's getting harder for her to speak. She takes a small breath and runs a shaky hand across her forehead. She's sweating in an excessive way that isn't lost on her.
The young woman is suddenly too aware of everything in the air around her, the scents and small noises and footsteps outside the door. She hates the hard, tiled floor.
Ken. What exactly happened..? He's a..
Her eyes flash a bright, dizzying white behind both eyelids.
That's when Touka realizes that her mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions. She can almost see her brain as it functions, filing thoughts and images away. She locks away the things that do not serve her. She focuses only on what needs to be done: the basic components of survival and the myriad things she must manage throughout the day.
But Ken..
What was he?
two
The dark-haired woman with a bandage around her head runs four fingers along the jagged edges of the torn-apart cell bars, careful not to cut herself. There's no design to it, no premeditation. Only an anguished fervor so readily apparent in the chaotic ripping-apart of this barrier. She can't help but wonder if he knew what he was doing when this happened.
Ken ripped through these bars..something a human clearly wouldn't be able to do.
The guards and prison staff are saying he could've possibly had a tool to melt the metal and escape. But this was a maximum security prison; how would anyone get a tool like such past hundreds of guards, let alone escape without being caught?
She doesn't believe it.
With heavy eyes, she carefully catalogs the dimensions of the hole; she tries to imagine what it must've been like for him, to be here, trying to get through. Touka wants so much to be able to talk to him about all of this.
Her heart twists so suddenly.
She's reminded, all over again, that he's no longer here. He does not live in this place anymore.
And to her..it was her fault he was gone. She'd allowed herself to believe she was finally teaching well and it affected her judgment. She should've been paying closer attention to details. To her students. She had lost sight of her purpose as an educator and her greater goal; the entire reason she came to the prison.
Touka sighs.
Ken was a soft, deadly creature. Kind and timid and terrifying. Touka's enchanted by his pretend-innocence; jealous, even, of the power he wields so unwittingly. She wants so much to be a part of his world. She wants to know what it's like to be in his mind, to feel what he feels. It seems a tremendous weight to carry.
And now he's out there, somewhere, unleashed on society.
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What a beautiful disaster.
