…I felt a warm liquid splatter onto my clothes. The arms that held me close against a warm body stiffened and grasped me only tighter. I could feel something sharp jabbing at me in my back, trying to tear through my coat and plunge into my flesh. There was a muffled grunt beside me, and I could feel the hand that covered my eyes tighten, as if to block me from seeing whatever had happened.
The jabbing in my back soon disappeared, replaced by the feeling of the liquid soaking into my clothing at an alarming rate. "…S-Sakura, are you okay?" I heard a shaken voice, and my entire body jolted in alarm as I realized that it was Toga. Did Toga protect me from the hit? Was he hurt? What happened?!
I struggled in the man's grip and felt all the color wash out of my face. If he was hurt… I couldn't ever forgive myself. I was distracted and the Level E could have easily killed me… But if he took the hit… "T-Toga, I'm fine, d-did it hit you?" I gasped and grabbed the hand that was pressed against my eyes and pulled it back. I whirled around in his grasp and looked up…
…And saw Kyoko's cobalt eyes staring back, tinted slightly with pain.
His arm was wrapped tight around my waist, now pressing my body against his hard chest. I could feel his stiffened body tremble slightly with pain and the warm liquid soon beginning to spread onto my stomach. In my shock, I didn't think twice to look down to see just what was soaking me…
Kyoko's blood.
It already soaked through his sweatshirt down by his stomach, and I could see the rips in the fabric where something had ripped through. The crimson red was plastered over my own coat, and I could still feel where it had soaked my back. More crimson blood was leaking from his stomach, but the wound was covered by fabric.
Blood dripped down onto the snow as the blood leaked down the front of his stomach, but it was also dripping down from his back. A stab through his body… Through his stomach, even. My jaw would have dropped into the snow if I hadn't managed to control the sickness that rose up my throat like bile. My body froze and I could feel every thought in my head turn blank except for one thing… This was bad…
This was very, very bad…
"S-Sakura!" I heard Toga's yelp come from behind Kyoko's protective body, snapping me back to reality in a heartbeat. I forced the sickness away and tore my gaze up from the wounded hunter and looked over his shoulder. Toga was staggering on his feet, trying to balance himself on his casted leg while holding his sword tightly in his hand. His eyes were locked onto a creature that stood in front of him, hissing at Toga.
It was the Level E… A female, but that made it no less dangerous. The disgusting creature had long, shaggy black hair that drifted down past its shoulders. Its eyes were nearly bulging out of its skull, vivid with madness, and its lips were peeled back to expose the enormous fangs jutting out from under its lips. The clothing that covered its body were ripped and torn, and there was a fresh splatter of blood against its chest…
But then I saw the red droplets that dripped down onto the snow. My eyes followed the droplets, praying that somehow Toga had wounded it, but my hope soon turned to horror. It came from the chunk of bloodied flesh clutched tightly in its fist, the long claws hooked deep inside the chunk to keep it from sliding out of its grip.
A grin was crossing the beast's face as it took a step back from Toga and looked down at the chunk of flesh tightly clenched in its fist. A cackle came from the beast as it brought the chunk to the lips before biting down into it savagely, nearly biting off a few of its own fingers with it. Happy with its snack, and knowing better than to let the hunters have the chance to attack it, the savage turned and rushed back to the long grove of trees that surrounded the small clearing.
Which left all three of us watching its fleeing form, stunned into silence…
Until Kyoko crumpled down to the ground.
His weight nearly collapsed onto me as he fell down to his knees, his protecting arms withering away as if he no longer had the strength to hold them up. A soft gasp of pain came from the wounded hunter as he tried pressing his hands against the wound in his stomach. But blood was already draining down between his pale fingers, dripping down into the snow and staining the once pure snow into the crimson death streaks. It seemed to be a fountain of blood as it poured from his wound and gave no hint of it stopping anytime soon…
My shock froze me. My body screamed at me to either help Kyoko or run to get help, but I found that I couldn't do either… All I could do was watch as his blood stained the snow, spreading out into a pool on the frozen tundra…
"Sakura, snap out of it!" a hiss came to my ear as Toga's hand grabbed me hard on my shoulder and gave me a shake. Control rushed back into my body as I tore myself away from looking at the blood and looked up at Toga. He didn't even glance at Kyoko… Instead his eyes were wide as he pointed back to where the Level E had disappeared to. "We don't have time for you to shut down on me!"
No, there was no time. There wasn't going to be able to be a moment of hesitation in either of us. My head was already starting to rush with the first aid that Kaien had taught us, with how to bandage a deep cut, how to put pressure on the wounds, what to do when bandages weren't around… I looked back to Kyoko and saw that he had already slipped down to his hands and knees, still desperately trying to stop the bleeding in his stomach. I had to act now. I took the step closer to Kyoko before kneeling down, reaching out to try to press my hand against the wound in his back.
But then Toga grabbed onto my arm and hauled me up to my feet. He gave no hesitation to my stunned form as he started to yank me away, dragging me away from Kyoko's bleeding body. "No, the Level E! We have to get it now before it gets away!" Toga snarled as his ice blue eyes tightened as they met mine.
…The Level E? That was all he was worried about?
I could have sworn that my heart paused in my chest as my mouth dropped. My eyes were locked with Toga's, but his icy gaze only hardened with no sympathy or worry for Kyoko in sight. "…The vampire? You're worried about the vampire? B-but Kyoko…!" I gasped as I tried to find one spark of humor in Toga's eyes to know that he was kidding… He couldn't just leave Kyoko for dead… Not…
…Not when he was injured just because he was protecting me.
Toga's lips peeled back just slightly, though, as anger raged through his body. "I don't care about him! It's his own damn fault he got hurt and it's not our problem if he dies!" my friend snarled at me and I could feel his grip tightening on my arm.
…He couldn't be serious. He just couldn't be. My jaw nearly fell off of my face as I felt my blood freezing in my veins. He really wanted to leave Kyoko to die? Just because of a stupid Level E? "T-Toga, we can't just leave him here to die! He's still our training partner and we're supposed to look after each other! And if that Level E comes back while we're gone, he'll be eaten alive!" I pleaded with him and tried to pull my arm free from his grasp. We didn't have time to argue like this… Not with Kyoko bleeding out while we were bickering.
The ice blue eyes tightened before a dark glint appeared in the icy stare. His teeth gritted against each other as anger and frustration built up in his injured body before he finally snarled, "Why do you care! You said it yourself, that if he gets in your way, that there will be hell to pay for it. You hate him, but you're letting him get in the way now? This is our only chance to prove to Sensei that we're better than him! That we can kill that Level E without getting ourselves killed like he will!"
His grip on my arm tightened before he yanked on it, dragging me to stand in front of him even when I tried desperately to pull myself away. The icy eyes hardened as they stared into mine, refusing to release their grasp on me… "…We'll be better than he ever was. We'll survive. Plus, his blood will make the Level E come back. We can use him to kill the Level E! And we'll finally be rid of him!"
…My body jolted stiff in a heartbeat. An unearthly silence claimed us, and the peace of the tundra around us had now become cold, dark, and deadly as the silence grew. …use Kyoko… as bait. Leave him here to die… While we use his death to our advantage. And Toga wanted that more than ever… to use one man's death to benefit us.
I yanked my arm free from his grasp, even as his icy eyes didn't look away from mine. I could feel my own gaze beginning to chill like the ice around us as I took a step back from him, and then another. Toga wanted Kyoko to die just so he could finish off the hunting mission… When the entire reason that he was crumpled to the ground, dying, bleeding out, was… because of me. If Kyoko hadn't…
"…Toga, if he hadn't protected me, I would be dead. …And now you want him to die because he saved me."
The words were a soft murmur, but the coldness that frosted over each syllable was enough to create a new Ice Age. I saw the once gentle gaze of my friend remain cold and hard… before he turned away. "I'll kill it myself…" he muttered as he grabbed his sword before starting to limp his way towards the grove of trees.
I thought about stopping him… But I refused. I instead turned away from Toga's running form and looked down to Kyoko, his blood still spreading on the once white snow. He was trembling slightly, and I could just barely see his skin paling to match the whiteness of the snow. He had already lost a lot of blood…
Too much blood…
I knelt down into the snow beside him and delicately touched his shoulder, pulling him down to try to lay him down on the snow. But his body stiffened up immediately at my touch, and a soft growl rumbled in his chest. "Kyoko, it's me…" I murmured to him in an attempt to sooth him but I knew that it was better not to waste my breath… Just because I wanted to help him didn't mean that he was willing to accept my help.
But to my surprise, the hunter's muscles loosened before he slid down onto his side in the snow with a soft gasp of pain. I highly doubted though that it was all his own will, though. He seemed to be so weak… and fragile… More than I had ever seen him. Yet he forced himself to regain whatever of his apparent strength that he had left to even move.
"…G-go get the damn thing…" the soft grunt came from Kyoko as his hand remained tightly pressed against his stomach, not allowing me to get a closer look at his wound. I shifted myself in the snow to get closer, but he only stiffened. His dark blue eyes cracked open and looked up at me, and there was a clear shine of pain in his eyes, but they were dulling. So was the life in them… There wasn't much time left to help him.
"I'm not leaving you alone, Kyoko," I scolded him softly before my eyes looked down to his stomach. His sweatshirt was soaked with blood from both the front and the back and the blood covered his paling skin thickly. Who knows how much blood he's already lost… But I needed to put pressure on that wound as much as I could before the rest of his blood pours out. I shrugged myself out of my jacket and slid it down from my shoulders before pressing the fabric against his hand and stomach.
The icy winds of winter soon blasted against my body without a shield to protect me, and I couldn't help but flinch at the sudden sensation. I wanted to pull that coat back over me as soon as possible, but Kyoko would die if that blood wasn't stopped soon… I could handle a sniffle or two from this as long as Kyoko was alright. This was, after all, all my fault that he was like this in the first place.
"D-damn it, kid…" he grunted, his body stiffening up as I pressed the coat to his wound, and I felt his hand soon slide out from underneath the coat. It rested limply on the snow, the fingertips already beginning to be claimed by a corpsish gray… His breath crackled in his lungs as he tried to force in enough air to speak but his raspy voice soon came back. "I'm done… L-leave me out of this…" "Shut up and let me help,"
I had never seen someone die before. I never saw the light begin to die from their eyes, the stillness their bodies become, and the coldness that started to claim their bodies… But I refused to let Kyoko be the first person I see die.
"Kyoko, you're not dying on me!" I snarled, but it took every bit of control to try to keep back a sob. I had never seen so much blood in my life… The sight itself was making me sick to my stomach, and now the sickness was starting to crawl its way back up my throat. He couldn't die… I refused it.
But when no voice answered me, I tore my gaze away from his face and looked back at his stomach. I pulled the coat around his stomach and tied it as tight as I could around his stomach and back to try to keep the blood from flowing, even as I felt the warm liquid stain my hands. Kaien had taught each of us how to carry a dead or wounded person without injuring ourselves… Now it was time to put it to the test.
I wrapped my arms around Kyoko's hips before I painstakingly pulled his legs and waist over my shoulder. The weight already nearly pushed me down into the bloodstained snow, but I refused to give up yet. I couldn't be weak… I needed to make sure Kyoko survived and my weakness couldn't get in the way of that. I heaved his body up to where his lower waist rested on my shoulder and I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and gripped his arms to try to keep him in place.
Once I was sure that he wasn't going to slip, I staggered my way up to my feet. My legs trembled underneath me as I pulled him up with me, but then I took a staggering step, and then another… Kyoko's weight barely shifted on my shoulder, even as I felt his blood soak into my shoulder. I tried not to think of the red blood… Of the wound… The chunk of his meat in the Level E's grip… And I tried not to think of how willing Toga had been to let him die in the snow. Alone.
My hand shifted around his shoulders, moving down to his back. I felt his weight shift just slightly, as if about to fall off of my shoulder and I desperately tried to grab onto his sweatshirt on his back for support …
Then felt something warm under my hand. It was squishy… Wet… And warm. There was a soft pulsing underneath my fingertips, just barely vibrating on the edge of my fingertips. What was it…? My fingers tightened around the warm, squishy object, but then felt Kyoko's entire body stiffen up. A soft hiss slid from his lips, as if he was in pain…
I immediately pulled my hand from the warm object I was grasping. I felt something hard scrape against the back of my hand as I pulled it out, something that seemed to not have any give against my hand. What had I been touching? I hesitantly moved my hand back in front of my face as I adjusted my grip on Kyoko…
…and saw the bright red blood that covered my hand completely.
Flecks of meat stuck to my fingers, each of them soft and different shades of red. Other fluids, some clear and some otherwise, mixed in with the blood as well. The soft flesh… It was his internal organs. The pulsing I had felt had been from whatever blood he had left pulsing through the organs. The hard thing I had touched could easily have been bone or his spine…
I wanted to vomit. The sickness rushed up from my stomach and I could almost taste it in the back of my throat. My vision blurred for a moment, as if I was about to pass out at the sight and realization of what I had touched… I had literally reached inside Kyoko, grabbed his organs… Grabbed the meaty, disgusting strips of meat that lingered in his body…
But I forced myself to swallow the sickness down and moved my bloodied hand to grasp his side, keeping it far away from his horrendous wound. The dizziness that had begun to pool in my head was shaken off before it could fully take its control. I couldn't act like this now… I couldn't act squeamish to the sight of his wound or what remained of it.
Instead I forced myself to focus on the soft mist that slid from Kyoko's lips, even as a soft trail of crimson red was beginning to peak from the corner of his lips and slipped down his chin. I watched the mist appear… then disappear… Appear and then disappear. I watched each precious breath that was pulled into his lungs as I forced myself forward, trudging my way through the bloodstained snow…
And I hoped that by the time I reached Kaien Cross that his heart was still beating and that thin mist still slid in and out of his blood streaked lips.