"…Alright, I'll call back in the morning. See you tomorrow you two."
Heavily she pressed the screen and saw the lights fade. She gently tossed her phone somewhere on the sheets. Its shape disappeared in the darkness. The busy nightlife of cicadas was occasionally interrupted by the passing of cars beyond her opened window. The soft din filled her ears but couldn't invade her thoughts. Her eyes drifted to her billowing translucent curtains as she curled into her knees, but they could not entrance her. The night hung low, a tree branch bent with the weight of a hung criminal.
Instead she buried her head and sat still. Memories bubbled from the lake of her conscious as if flipping a switch behind her closed eyes. She clenched her hands, watching herself and Umi drive tent stakes as Umi yelled for Rin's help. They'd heard her groan before shuffling over, sweating as she'd lifted their tarp. Seemingly moments later, they'd counted stars under the summer moon lighting them like models dipped in silver. Their dried sweat made their clothes into another skin while they picked constellations; insect songs had lulled them to sleep.
The bubbles shifted, she split manju from a basket as the others gathered around, then, then she ground her teeth. Her lip stung when one slipped and a thin stream of blood tricked down her chin. She shook her head violently, as if ignorance could quench the blame branded on her chest. She carefully wiped her mouth, clenching her stained fingers into a resolved fist. At last her eyes reopened and she slowly blinked seeing anew, the way it always was. One by one she uncurled her fingers, fixing hypnotically onto her open palm.
It's uncountable lines were barely visible in the darkness. They carved thin shadows against her pale skin, leading a road to nowhere. She cocked her head. Perhaps not nowhere, but anywhere, she thought. Her eyes strained to trace them. Her head began pounding, her eyes were far away. The others hands were conjured within her thoughts, linking against hers a thousand times. The memories of their touch interchanged yet strangely, perhaps in truth inevitably, channeled even their same emotions into differing sensations.
She gripped her chest and curled her shirt. The pulse of her heart lit warmly under her skin. It stretched on, at once infinite, beyond something she could explain. Though the night draped an end over her shoulders, the others too knew this sensation. The tears pooled between her lips.
Apart they were still waves, drifting along the same ocean beyond their curtain's call.