Sunlight dapples their bodies, and the scent of mossy trees and water is prominent. Tsukiko's kimono is the way it should be, silver sleeves on her arms and obi tied almost perfectly, and it's wet. Very wet.
She struggles to sit up, her body and mind refusing to comply to her demands, and she feels the bruises on her back, it aches again. Something hot trickles down her arm, and when she takes a glance at it she sees that it's blood.
There is no sun, only her namesake, only the moon. It's only a thin sliver in the sky, but it's enough to illuminate the land below, shining white down on this dark and dank place.
Tsukiko looks down at Kyoko, and it seems she got reckless in a fight, a bruise covers her left eye. The girl's appearance must be as bad as Tsukiko's because their hair is dyed yellow and mud cakes the bottoms of their faces. Whatever happened must have been something bad, because Tsukiko has no recollection of any events leading to this.
She only remembers Chikako's deathly face.
This time she can't keep down the bile, and struggles to move out of the way of Kyoko, puking in the crooks of an old tree. She wipes the excess contents of her stomach off the side of her mouth, glaring at the tree as if it's the reason she vomited.
A sigh escapes from Kyoko's lips, and Tsukiko hears rustling of damp clothes and the squelching of mud. Tsukiko looks back to her friend, and Kyoko gives her a dead look.
"We got out," she mutters, "We got out and left them all behind. The memories, the abuse. All gone."
Tsukiko doesn't know whether to rejoice or cry.
"We left behind Chikako-sensei." Kyoko continues, "We left behind-"
"We left behind a corpse," Tsukiko snaps, her voice raw and guttural. "We left behind the memories of the past and what could have been. We're alive because of it, and we'll stay alive."
It's silent for a moment, and Tsukiko finally musters the strength to stand, her knees bent and shaking at her struggle. Kyoko gives her an odd look, but Tsukiko doesn't care, she needs to see where she is, see what's around her and what she can do to survive. There isn't a lot of shrubbery here, so there are no smaller animals that could possibly be hiding anywhere, but there are tall trees that almost block out the night sky.
The soil underneath their barren feet is wet, moist and possibly filled to the brim with disease, and that means that there should be some sort of delay in their movements. The duo is so used to walking on the stone they have no knowledge on how to walk in anything other. This is something that Tsukiko knows because of her prior knowledge of the world, and if she didn't know this, didn't remember her past, then she is as good as dead.
The forest is silent. Nothing moves other than their breathing and the sways of the trees.
It's something that Tsukiko hoped she would see again someday, but now it only seems to be after her and her friend. It only seems to haunt her every move.
This is a mistake. She should not have left, and even if she did remember she's sure she would've done something different, she shouldn't have made the moves she did.
Tsukiko feels a small hand on her shoulder. It stays there, doesn't move, but she knows that Kyoko means for it to comfort her.
"You overthink everything, and that makes everything seem scarier than what they really are." She states, placing her other hand on the remaining shoulder, keeping her eyes on Tsukiko's face. "You know that this is for the better, but this is something you've never done before; you're scared."
"I know that this is for the better, but I'm not scared. I'm intimidated, I'm confused." Tsukiko responds with a small voice. "This is new, and this is something we've never done before. We might die an untimely death out here, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"There's everything we can do about it, Tsukiko, don't you see that?" Kyoko responds, her voice raising in pitch but remaining the same volume. She leans closer to Tsukiko, her dirty eyebrows rising to her hairline and crusty blood and dirt flakes and chips off, "We are free, we are where Chikako-sensei wanted us, why don't you see that?"
"I don't see that because she warned us about the dangers of being ignorant, no matter how unwillingly, and she told us that there are people out here for our heads for simply existing." Tsukiko answers, her muscles tightening in response to the stress and dread she feels, the urge to run, to do something but sit and wait for death, take over her. "I just don't want to die so young, I want to have more friends, see more than my namesake in the sky, to know what it's like to swim and to fly and to dance knowing I won't be thought of any less, knowing that I won't get dirty looks and frowns."
"You-"
"And I can't do that knowing nothing, knowing that I could die so young."
Silence envelopes them, their eyes stark against the natural white of their skin, stark against the blood and mud and darkness that surrounds them. They both understand what the other is saying, yet they don't know what they mean.
Kyoko is the first to speak.
"I understand that you want to do so much, but you don't have to be so… down about it." She starts, her breath fanning over Tsukiko's face, "We will get to them, I promise. But you have to promise me you'll think happy things. Promise me you'll stay safe."
A pregnant pause, then a sigh. Tsukiko drops her head, and begins to hum a tune. Kyoko knows this, but she doesn't do anything.
"I know I just said something that made you spontaneously create a song." Kyoko starts, her voice soft and hands placed on her friends face. "Will you sing?"
"I'm not the best singer, you know."
"I don't even know what a good singer is, anyways."
Eventually the duo gather enough energy to move, to explore the new world around them. The moon is still out, still taunting their every move with it's white glow.
They've only made twenty feet before something catches the attention of Kyoko. She stops moving, her grip on Tsukiko's arm tightening. Tsukiko doesn't know what she's looking at, and sure her friend has finally lost it.
"Do you see that?" Kyoko asks, beginning to lean towards whatever she looks at, "I- I think that may be something edible."
"Is it a plant?" Tsukiko responds, knowing that they shouldn't eat anything they don't know.
"Yeah," Her friend whispers.
"Don't eat it. Keep moving."
"Why not, it's something that looks better than the others."
"Poisonous."
"And how do you know."
"I just do. Keep moving. We need to get out of here. We need to find a dryer place."
Kyoko retracts from her daze, eyes becoming half-mast and exhausted. "I'm sorry." She mutters.
Tsukiko is the one to lead this time, making sure her hold on Kyoko's hand is secure and sure. Smells invades her senses, and so does color, and it's very confusing. She smells the rot of the trees, the musk of the water that pools around their feet as they walk, the freshness that comes from the moss that grows by the roots of trees and anything it can grab onto.
As of now she only realises what she put herself into.
She's lived in the cave system for half of her physical life, eaten only grum and rodents, and has had literally no vitamin intake. No wonder why the shikotsumyaku children died of disease and bone tumors, the lack of white blood cells and the introduction of disease is fatal, especially after the fact that their shikotsumyaku only keeps their bodies as healthy with what's taken, not what's being withheld. And the bone tumors, bone cancer in many ways, that's self explanatory.
The usage of how the bones are used greatly depends on the user and how it's used, the less it's used to more likely it is for the user to use it, like Tsukiko's old friend. Tsukiko knew that her now nameless friend was terrified of what she could control, that things shouldn't be her way since she's such a young child.
That nameless friend may have made more sense in many ways, now that she thinks about it.
But that is the past, and this is the present, there is no point in dwelling into something that she can't control. There is no point into dwelling into something that has been coming for some time.
Tsukiko only pushes on, her hand clasped around Kyoko's, and face already wet with precipitation and sweat. It's ungodly warm out here, where the water is thick in the air, where even the moon gives off a certain amount of heat the girls aren't used to. The caves have been always cold, frigid and the color of sulfur and only sending off the wrong waves.
She imagines that they won't last very long. She imagines that their bodies will rot within day and be gone in weeks.
But Tsukiko has made a promise, and she'll keep that promise, regardless of her thoughts, regardless of her foreknowledge.
She's made a promise, and she'll keep it.
It should be common knowledge that Tsukiko doesn't have many fears. Many of them have not been introduced to her, thus giving off the impression that she has none.
Only that isn't the case as she clings to Kyoko, the other girls face contorting into an equivalent amount of fear. Tsukiko's yukata has now fallen back to her favored place, around her waist, but wet and dripping mud covers her, and so does the open wounds of the protruding bones that may originally have been her ribs.
The yellow bones stick out, jagged and pointed in many ways, almost that of razor wire, and it cages around her body like it cages a wild animal inside a zoo. She lets out a shrill whine, eyes wide and hands clutched to Kyoko's rugged yukata.
The thing that induced such fear, the small(not small, the size of a fucking adults hand, the size of her damned head, not small), eight legged(too many legs, the devil's mascot, his right and left hand with all of those legs) creature, clutches its body close to the brown-black bark of the poor tree that has to host it. The tree is only four and a half feet from the duo, but if it's enough to scare Tsukiko, then the thing is enough to scare Kyoko twice over.
Tsukiko has no fears, so, in Kyoko's logic, this creature of hell and pain and misery is to be feared and to be avoided at all costs. Kyoko mimics Tsukiko's shrill whine, hoping that it's a noise that the demon hates, that it will soon enough find it's own way back home in this dark and dreary world.
The sun has yet to rise, but the tell tale signs of the moon falling is nigh.
Both girls have activated their bloodline, Kyoko using having used it to make herself a staff, while Tsukiko went full on battle regalia, bones to chamber her nude top, and a rugged form of what must be a staff, something akin to a dagger formed at the tip. Kyoko feels like she's underdressed to this party, but she feels it's a little too late to do anything about it as Tsukiko has already stabbed the brown and hairy creature to its damnation, back to where is belongs with her spear-esque staff.
It doesn't take long before the girls are ready enough to begin their adventure throughout this new world, where all is terrifying and all is dangerous. Only five minutes pass before their gather enough energy and motivation to move again.
Tsukiko knows that her ankles are swelling, the different terrain is far different than the one she grew up with, and she knows that they aren't going to go down for some time. She wonders if Kyoko's ankles are like hers, but the dead foliage and soil that suck up their feet blocks her view.
Things are bright, oddly enough. It may be because of the fact that they lived in a dimmed world hidden away from any sunlight, but the way she can clearly see things in this darkness is almost ridiculous. Although everything is fuzzy, and looking any further than maybe ten to twenty feet is enough to make her mind contract and eyes water.
She knows that she won't be able to handle the sunlight, years of hiding away from it must have made her eyes susceptible to the slightest change in light, possibly blinding her in any form of brightness. Tsukiko isn't stupid, she knows what consequences will emerge after escaping a hell like those caves, she knows what will happen physically, but she is no psychologist.
Kyoko and Tsukiko move on, trying to get further away from where ever they escaped from, keeping their eyes peeled for the next threat or anything potentially edible. They know they will survive this, they've had worse.
Eventually they get tired, their feet dirty and cold, hands wet and wrinkled, old wounds aching and possibly reopened, and new wounds still bleeding and stinging. They still have their staffs, but Tsukiko has shed her bone rib-cage as soon as she eliminated the threat.
Tsukiko's mind isn't working right, the shit that they've gone through only making her mental wounds seem more the pathetic and pointless. She knows that something's wrong, but she doesn't know what, she doesn't know how to deal with it. It hurts to think.
The duo don't find a suitable place to take a break, they don't find any nooks or crannies like they would in the cave systems, so they make the choice of resting in between a tree and a dying bush. The ground is still wet, but they're so exhausted that they can't find the motivation to care.
Kyoko hasn't spoken a word since that ordeal with the spider, seemingly lost in her thought as if she is contemplating something. Tsukiko knows her friend, and she knows that children of nine years should look this way, she knows that this isn't right through her foggy thoughts.
But she's too tired to ask anything. Maybe if they wake up she'll ask. Maybe if they wake up they'll make more progress.
Only hours later do they wake up again, face scrunched up as the already risen sun burns into theirs eyes and skin, their arms thrown over eyes as an attempt to block the rays from their face. Kyoko lets out a strangled whine.
"What's going on?" She whimpers, and Tsukiko can feel Kyoko's body rolling closer to her, sharp elbow digging into her chest as her friend rolls on top of her, "What's happening?"
Tsukiko lets out a groan. "The sun's up." She answers, "Don't you remember?"
Through her haze of memories, she can see the rays of sunlight peeking thru the grey clouds. It was never sunny when she was younger, but with the plethora of memories she has she knows almost everything that she needs to survive long enough in this world.
Bird songs erupt from somewhere. Tsukiko is thrown into an overwhelming amount of emotion as she hears the noise again. Trees move, their leaves creating a rhythmic scratching sound that reminds her of waves, and she remembers bright faces, of all colors and joy- smiles, white teeth stark against their natural shades of tan, white sun blocking out the falling sky.
Tsukiko can remember when times were happy. She can remember when she was with her friends.
Kyoko sighs, finally stopping her movements, and has now settled on the other side of Tsukiko. "No."
"How?" Tsukiko asks, trying to further their conversation. If she loses her ability to see after spending only hours of her new life outside, then she's going to do it with Kyoko and in a conversation.
"What do you mean?" Kyoko's voice is strained, and obviously in pain. Tsukiko doesn't know what to do, so she curls up to Kyoko's side, her should blocking the ever incessant sun from her view.
"How do you forget about a giant fireball in the sky?"
"How do you remember such a thing? Weren't you only four when they brought you in?"
"..." That is actually a good point. An excellent one, at that. What's she supposed to say? Oh, yeah, I've actually been awake and in it's presence for nearly three decades, but now that I'm in a seriously malnourished and abused little asian girls body it's the first time I've seen it in almost a decade and I don't remember it being so bright before. Wow.
How stupid can Tsukiko get? First with the rebirth and universe with Chikako, and now she's going to blurt her entire two life's story to a friend she's only known for almost five years and only know because she's the only one with a mental capacity to handle her general nonsense and whimsical ideas of life outside the box and now the knowledge to figure out poison from not and deadly from cuddle.
If she's going to act young and naive, she has to learn how to do it better.
"I don't know." Is her final answer to Kyoko. Their eyes are still closed, so Tsukiko can't gauge what Kyoko's thinking, but by the stilled body movements she's sue that Kyoko is nervous. "The sun doesn't hurt."
"But why is it so bright?"
"I just said it's a giant fireball in the sky, obviously it's going to be bright." Tsukiko snaps, finally getting sick of the red that she sees through her eyelids, and slowly peels her eyes open. She's sure her eyes are going to become blood red in this light, and she's sure she's not doing herself any favor by potentially blinding herself.
The sunlight pierces her eyes, and Tsukiko immediately regrets her decision to do this. Her pupils contract at the sudden flow of light, and tears edge her vision. Letting out a strangled whine, she curls into herself, digging her face into the ground. Tsukiko tries to keep her eyes open, but now with her back blocking the sunlight now, there isn't as much stinging as there used to be.
Hopefully with her half assed formed thought she'll be able to get used to the damned light. Tsukiko knows that it's almost pointless to do this, since she's been lost for so long under rocks and earth where no sunlight ever reaches, but she has to at least try to do something.
Throughout her entire endeavor with the sun and mud that she lies on, Tsukiko knows that she's made a mistake. She knew that there were children in her groups that were stronger than her, she knew that she once had a sensei who would have killed her if she did something he didn't like, but what she didn't know is that defeating them and living was possibly the worst mistake she would ever make.
She should've just let Yuuguremaru kill her back then, she should've let Chinatsu kill her before she left, she should've stayed still when Bishamon-sensei was after her for not doing what he told. If she had known what it's like to live like this, then she would've just let them kill her.
But then…
But then what?
What would she have missed if she died for the second time? What would have been different if she wasn't around?
Tsukiko doesn't know.
The sun beats at her back, and she can't believe how warm it is. It's like a warm and constant caress, or a pot of boiling water has been spilt on her back; either way, she feels unnecessarily warm, and she wants it to stop.
It feels like an eternity before the sun starts to fall, and in that eternity Tsukiko gets no sleep, eyes slowly getting used to the rays that burns her white flesh. Kyoko, somehow, manages to sleep for a few hours, but then later wakes up again, saying that she feels bad that Tsukiko can't rest like she can.
When the coolness of the falling sun and rising darkness reaches her back, Tsukiko turns over, blocking the red sun rays with her arm over her face. A sigh passes her lips, and she tosses her hands over her head, cracking a few joints in her back. Kyoko is still beside her, and Tsukiko can feel the girl's soft breathes playing on the squelching mud that now lays dried of their faces and bodies and is quickly layering up.
Tsukiko feels disgusted, a once buried emotion of filth and physical disdain affecting her more than ever. Her body feels greasy, once controlled by the coldness of the hellish caves she used to sleep in, and it's enough for something to get caught in her throat again. She feels nauseous again.
The dying songs of birds slowly fade in and out of her consciousness as she tries to stay awake, but she doesn't know why she's so tired all of a sudden. A sigh escapes her friends mouth, and Kyoko rolls over to face Tsukiko.
"You used to be so… alive when you were sleeping, Tsukiko," She states, her voice rough and raspy, "Why are you so still?"
A silence passes over them. Tsukiko still has her eyes closed, face still half buried in the wet dirt. She doesn't answer quick enough for Kyoko.
"It's about our sensei, isn't it." It isn't a question. It's a statement.
Tsukiko wants to make a continuum of that, she wants to say "And so much more."
She doesn't.
She remains quiet.
"You're not acting right. I want my Tsukiko back, where is she?" Kyoko's voice cracks, and Tsukiko can smell salt. "I don't know where she is, and I want her back."
Somewhere in the back of Tsukiko's mind, she calls Kyoko selfish. Selfish for wanting something as malleable as a person, selfish for wanting something ever changing like the moon.
Something else whispers that the moon is a constant. That the moon will always come back.
Tsukiko doesn't want to stay the same. She doesn't want to come back.
She's then slowly turned on her back, and Kyoko straddles her bare chest. Opening her eyes, she sees the Kyoko holds a bone knife in her hand - an overly sharpened stick, really - and currently has it pointed at Tsukiko's face.
Kyoko's eyes are wet, and a drop splats down on Tsukiko's cheek, falling down to the ground. Tsukiko doesn't know what she did, but she knows that she did something.
"Where the Tsukiko that I knew?" Kyoko whispers, her demand falling almost deaf on her friends ears, "What has happened to the one so collected and calm in rough situations, what has happened to the one so observant and ready in new situations? What has happened to the one that I call friend?"
Silence covers them, and Tsukiko doesn't know what to say. What has happened to the one Kyoko calls friend? What has happened to the one that Kyoko knew so much about?
The one Kyoko knew so much about and calls friend has never existed. The one that Kyoko fantasizes about is nothing short of a dream. Tsukiko is not collected and calm, she's secretive and serious, she's not observant and ready, she's…
She's only Tsukiko, friend of Chikako, friend of someone once called Aino. Friend of the dead.
"I-" Tsukiko mutters, her face contorting and eyes closed, voice as rough as a sand paper, "I have never had a companion as good as you."
"So I'm just a companion?" Kyoko's voice is strained, tight and wavering. Tsukiko hears the splat of a bone dropped in mud, "I'm nothing more than an adventure buddy?"
Tsukiko opens her eyes a little, tears tickle the edges, and looks into bloodshot eyes. Her throat constricts harshly, and she would've choked if she hadn't already knew what to do in a situation like this. Regardless of the blood that stains her tattered clothing, the mud that cakes their faces in layers, and the dead look in the prepubescent eyes, she still knows what to do.
"You are a comrade, a companion, a partner, my only and closest friend." Tsukiko says, "I won't leave you, I won't never do that, and I can promise you that."
"I- I know that." Kyoko starts, her voice nothing but a whisper to Tsukiko's ears, "I've made you promise me so many things, and I know you'll do your best to keep them, but... I now realize that they may be too much for you."
Tsukiko shakes her head, and she can feel her scalp dampen more in the moist soil. "I can keep them, that I can assure you," She starts off, her rough voice a little too loud for her ears. She then notices the position she's in with her friend, and realizes how much she trusts Kyoko, "Get off me."
The weight on her chest is taken off with little hassle, but now there's a brown stain on her white skin where Kyoko sat on her, where the mud is still there on Kyoko's yukata. Tsukiko doesn't mind, but she grimaces a little as her cold hand brush over the spot.
"I'm sorry, Tsukiko," Kyoko says, her back now to Tsukiko as she hunches over her own knees, her voice a rasp. "I- I think I'm just stressed out."
Tsukiko doesn't respond, but she does stand up, swaying a little as she stables her stance. The moon above them is a little fatter than yesterday, Tsukiko notes, but that doesn't really matter now. What matters is that she needs to comfort her one and only friend that still lives.
Squatting next to her friend, she crosses her arms and rests her elbows on her knees, then rests her chin on her arms. This is a comfortable position, and she needs to be comfortable to comfort a friend.
Looking at nothing - just some shrubs and and a fallen log missing a stump and a fuckton of puddles - she places her hand on the back of Kyoko's yukata. Her hands are dry and cracked, and she just knows that her peeled skin on her fingers will catch the loose fabrics of the shitty woolen cloth.
"Sorry," She mutters, not exactly knowing what to do any more. "It's alright; I'll be alright; you'll be alright; we'll be alright; Alright?"
Kyoko mutters something that Tsukiko doesn't catch, but she could understand it being something akin to a positive response to her words. Lost at what to do next, she retracts her hand from Kyoko's back, bringing her hand to her mouth to chew off the dead and dying skin.
She can taste her blood, hear the wind rushing through the branches, and smell the quiet and delicate marshland. There is nothing more elusive than being exhausted and in a little pain at the same time, and Tsukiko's sure that this is what the rest of her life's going to be like.
A sigh escapes her lips, and she can sense Kyoko move beside her.
"What are things like for you?" Kyoko asks after a while.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean, what are things like for you?" Kyoko asks again, her voice wavering and Tsukiko can hear Kyoko's breath catches in her throat. "How do you see the world? Your eyes are different than mine, and so is your mind, and I want to know what it's like for you."
"Oh," Tsukiko sighs, now pressing her forehead onto her arms now, face hidden from shoulders, "I guess everything's... blurry? Like, a haze... That doesn't matter, though, what matters is that there are a lot of things out here that we can eat, and we can make sure we don't starve again."
Kyoko nods her head, and then stands up to her full height. Tsukiko follows, and senses that she's upset Kyoko. She didn't want to answer her friends question, and she didn't want to lie, so she made an escape route for herself. Tsukiko doesn't want her friend to see how fucked up she is in the head.
"We need to eat," She tries again, "We never had an opportunity to eat while down in the caves, let's take the chance while we still have it."
"I don't know how," Comes Kyoko's flat reply. "And I don't want to."
"Aren't you hungry?"
"Yes. But I don't want to hunt."
"And why not?"
"I just," Kyoko stutters, "I just don't know how. I noticed that anything living seemed to retract from our presence, and that rodents would run away."
Tsukiko didn't notice that, but she's sure she knows why. "We have to be quiet," She starts off, "And collect our chakra, do you remember how to do that?"
Kyoko passively nods her head. Tsukiko smiles.
Taking her friends hand, Tsukiko the makes sure that they both are standing. They face each other, and Tsukiko can feel Kyoko's eyes on her.
"Contract your chakra, push it all into you." Trying to make an example, Tsukiko pulls her chakra into her veins, pushing them into her core and feeling the warmth as they pool into her body. She's known this technique for some time. Takeo made her do this when he taught her how to make bones outside of her body. "You'll feel warmth pool into your veins and stomach."
She can sense her friends chakra reserves slowly push themselves into her body, effectively hiding her presence. Since Kyoko is so close to Tsukiko, she can still feel it buzzing in her ears, but that doesn't matter as now they've both completed the task at hand.
"This should make us seem less threatening," Tsukiko comments, taking a step back from Kyoko. She can feel the sudden lack of chakra in her ears, and feels proud of her friend. "This should make it easier for us to hunt and hide."
Original word count; 5,321
I wrote most of this in 1 in the morning, it wasn't good, lost a good 1k words editing. Half of this is just filler, I guess. Too lazy to put anything good in here. Shit'll happen next chapter.
Also, thank you so much for those who have been commenting, they make me really happy and looking forward to writing and posting new chapters. There're like fuel to me, so keep them coming :D
