Sui Ryu
10: Nightmare
There is water everywhere. She drowns in it, she feels her lungs filled with it, she feels it in her eye sockets, she feels it at the tip of her fingers...
Her mouth and eyes are closed shut and she resists the urge to scream. Hiashi-sama has forbidden it, he told her to stop.
He stands tall, before her, his hand holding Hanabi's. "Good job, Hanabi. You are making excellent progress." His voice is proud. So are his eyes.
And there is Neji, standing a childish smile on his face as he asks her to play hide and seek. "You hide and I'll count to ten."
Suddenly his smile is nothing but a twisted grin and she is running for her life down to a river, and she is looking to hide from her cousin but his smug and cruel words follow her everywhere. But she doesn't want to go hide in the river.
But you are already drowning. What does it matter?
No!
I need the water.
"Leave me alone!"
And it's her own, shaky, panicked voice that wakes her up in her cold room. And as she stares at the wooden walls, she fleetingly wonders why.