V.
If
A ray of light poured through the cabin window and warmed my face. Dawn had long come, but I could not rise with it. I was too tired, too much in pain, too... everything. Laying here on the cool floor all night made my thoughts wander. I began to think about the one word that I truly loathed: if. Why such a word existed was beyond a mystery to me, for it only consumes your sanity with regretful possibilities.
If...
If my parents never had me, they could still be alive...
If they never took me, I could've lived a good life...
If he didn't make me become this way, I could've stayed human...
If.
"Ah!" I cried in frustration as I pulled out the broken shard from my hand. I sat up and held my palm in front of me, watching the blood leak from the wound. I hadn't seen so much of my own blood since I left that horrid place...Zaibach. It still surprised me that I bled red. Perhaps I was still human after all.
I quickly pulled out a roll of dressing to tend to the cut on my hand before I bled to death. It was a small injury, but the pills I constantly took had thinned out my blood. Sometimes I wondered why I continued to take them, for they seemed to do more harm than good. They did help alleviate the pain I was constantly in, but only temporarily. And now, it had made my stomach so weak that I couldn't handle eating food.
But I knew that I couldn't just give up. I still hadn't found an effective cure yet, and there was no other way of testing out my batches of medicine, for I was the only one with such an illness, and even if I had a test subject to perform on, I couldn't subject them to what I was going through. I sighed heavily, wondering how the children were doing and how long they must continue to suffer until I was ready. Not just ready to cure them, but ready to save them.
I stood up and felt my chest through my shirt. On the pads of my fingers, I could feel the mark that had been branded on my skin through the thin fabric. It scarred deeply in my skin with crystal pieces lodged in the grooves. I tried to pry them off once, but it wouldn't come off no matter how hard I did it. It made me wonder if it was lodged into my heart, for it hurt the most every time I tried to take the crystals off. "Dornkirk..." I whispered. Saying his name out loud sent shivers down my spine and made me angry all over again. "You will fall by my hand."
Though it bled, my hand was still strong, and that attribute was something I needed to regain in my heart. "Why are you so weak, Hitomi?" I asked myself. "You were never like this." I walked into the bathroom and leaned on the sink. Turning on the facet, I filled my hands with water and splashed it across my tear stained face. Staring at my sad reflection in the mirror, I told myself, "Be strong, Hitomi. You have to be."
With a sigh, I nodded with a new found strength and proceeded to clean the room up. Van never returned after walking out the night before, but it was better that he didn't come back. After our heated argument last night, I wasn't sure how I would be able to work with him.
I still didn't know if he was right or if he was wrong about me. I would've thought he was wrong before, but now that I thought about it, perhaps he was right. Maybe the idea of seeing such youth be lived so freely and carelessly had made me envious of them. After all, they had what I didn't: a normal life. They didn't have to worry about whether they'd never wake up one morning or having to hide from assassins with a bounty on your head. And they certainly didn't have the burden I carried on my shoulders.
But was Van right? Knowing now that I thought this way, who was I to think that others didn't feel pain? Or that their pain was immeasurable to mine? Had my suffering made myself so arrogant? To be alone, I had allowed myself to be selfish. But for my mission, it was necessary. That's what I would like to believe.
I halted in my tracks and frowned. I was thinking too much again. This was not a time to think, but to act. Van and the others were not involved in what I needed to do, so thinking of them would be a waste of time. What I needed to focus on was how I make Dornkirk fall. But to get to him, I knew that I had to defeat someone else first. My once dear and only friend... Folken.
"Hitomi!" Dryden called out. "Nice of you to join us so bright and early in the morning!"
I approached my professor and classmates who all snickered at my tardiness. "I got lost," I lamely replied.
"Right," Dryden squinted his eyes suspiciously. "Anyway, for the rest of us that got here on time, you all know what to do. We'll meet again for lunch at noon. If you finish your assignment early, then you're free till dinner at six. Turn in your work before then, got it?"
A chorus of acknowledging grunts echoed in waves within the ocean of students as they all headed towards the harbor. I looked around and stopped when my eyes caught a glint of red in the crowd of my classmates. It was the color of Van's shirt. He stood there with his arms crossed, unmoved, facing the harbor. I took a step, then two. The closer I got to him, the more I realized how broad his shoulders were. He was like a pillar of strength, never breaking at the aggression of the wind. What was he thinking? I wondered.
When I reached him, I found myself unable to tap his shoulder. I wasn't sure what I'd say when he turned around. I was almost too ashamed to face him.
"Did you finish dinner?" I could almost feel his voice vibrate from his back. It caught me off guard that he could sense me behind him without even turning to see me.
"It's gone," I answered. It wasn't really a lie, but he didn't need to know the details.
"Did you have any breakfast yet?" he asked.
No... I thought. I had completely forgot. But after the episode we had last night, I couldn't answer him.
I heard him let out a heavy sigh. "Hopeless," he said as he walked towards the harbor.
I frowned. I didn't understand why it bothered me so much that he thought of me this way.
Ever since I escaped Zaibach and hid in Asturia, I had only one worry in my mind, and that was to complete my mission. I couldn't live freely just because I escaped, not now, not after I'd seen what I'd seen. Not when the children were still suffering. Not when I could stop it from happening anymore. To stop it... that was my wish.
I knew my own truth, and I'd seen others' truths with my eyes. Perhaps my interpretation of others' truths was not correct, but what I thought would never change what it really was. That's what I always thought. So why should I care about what others thought of me when there was no way they would even begin to fathom the brutality of the life I'd been forced to live?
What I needed to focus on was my mission. And yet, this one person's perception of me has bothered me. For once, it mattered to me that I was not misunderstood. But how did Van, the one person I hated for some inconceivable reason, become the person with an opinion that mattered to me?