"Rin, what do you think of him?" he asks timidly.
She averts from the deep cerulean blue and faces a dark-haired boy.
"I think he's amazing, passing his jounin exams with top marks. I always knew he could do it," she answers admiringly.
The boy returns her comment with a half-hearted gaze.
"Really?" he replies.
"Yes, don't you think so?"
She surveys his glum demeanour.
"Yeah, I suppose."
A brief silence falls between them until he speaks in a brusque, apprehensive manner.
"Rin, are you going tell him?"
She looks to him in genuine astonishment. His fretful expression disconcerts her.
"Tell him what?"
"I know you have feelings for him," he replies.
His tone is passively laced with nonplus accusation.
She keeps her watch ahead. Her friend's sudden frigid assumptions ignite a deep-seated consternation from the pit of her stomach.
But she is not angry. His immaturity may provoke her but he is her best friend and she has no reason to accuse him of something he finds so juvenile.
He would never understand my feelings.
"I don't know," she answers uncertainly.
She is not in the mood to explain such complexity to someone who has minimal understanding of her current position. That is, she is deeply anxious, and afraid that her feelings may go unreciprocated, that their newly appointed jounin friend may turn a blind eye to the growing admiration and affection she has for him.
She lets out a deep breath, unaware that her dark-haired friend is staring at her with increasing scepticism and angst.
He surveys her with ambivalence. The expression is hard to decipher but there seems to be a mixture of happiness and unease.
"So you're not going to tell him?" he says hopefully.
"Why are you sounding so curious?" she asks suspiciously.
"I-Is it a bad thing to be curious?"
There is a faint tinge of red that lines his cheeks. Then Rin is laughing and he is giving her a wistful stare.
"What?"
"Huh? Oh," he averts his gaze, "I-I like hearing you laugh."
She stares at him in silence, and instantly his response transforms into a brigade of embarrassing emotions and flustered bouts of incoherent sentences.
"No…really…did…that-"
But his voice trails into the distant. The image of their conversation shrinks into an invisible dot, and is now suffused by a dark empty blackness.
Then a sound echoes somewhere in the vast murkiness. A distorted voice. She does not understand what it is saying but she can hear its repetitiveness.
Instantly, it grows louder, clearer and more discernible.
"Protect…protect…"
The word bounces in all directions.
"Protect…"
Silence.
"Rin…"
"Protect…Rin…"
"Protect…"
"Rin…"
"Protect…Rin…protect…Rin…protect…Rin…protect…"
And the whispers are so loud, her ears are bleeding and her eyes are wet from fear.
Then, the sudden sounds of a surging electrical energy drowns the rest of the echoes.
She is falling, faster and faster, as if there is a culmination of a hundred earth gravity pulling her towards a blackened void.
Again she hears it, a blood curdling cry followed by a flood of excruciating pain that pummel its way through her left chest and settles mercilessly against the raw beats of her heart.
Startled, fearful, and gasping, Rin wakes. The cold damp feelings have transpired into the physicalness that is her own sweat.
What just happened? No…it was just another bad dream.
And vivid as they were, the image of a dark-haired boy is a blur.
Hastily, she makes a dash for the bathroom. Her body struggles to balance itself in the midst of her actions and she falls.
So she sits there in a pool of confusion and presses her mind in an attempt to discern the bizarreness of her dreams, as if it was not a dream but a real life event she was reliving.
Dismissing such absurdity, she makes a second attempt to stand. The light-headedness and the rapid beats of her heart are now distant feelings.
The bathroom is cool and placid. Her skin absorbs the refreshing feeling of cold tiles beneath her feet, and the splashes of ice water to her face.
And it is only then that she notices it. Faint grey lines that are barely visible against the brightness of a full moon. It is scattered across her shoulders and collarbone, as if someone has taken a pencil and drawn squiggles - indiscriminate of location and tactic.
She leans closer to better scrutinise, and watches as the lines recede into her skin.
Again, she disregards her scepticism and likens it to her imagination.
In past the bedroom, the crack of dawn is clearly evident in the very little sunlight that is now hovering across the horizon.