Brightest of Shadows Chapter 2: Naomi
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Hey everyone! Um, so I got really involved with wrighting this chapter today so I got it up pretty fast. Don't expect every chapter to be up so quickly though sorry to say. Anyways, on with the chapter!
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"So Sachiko-san you're a ghost huh?" Yami asked, trying to strike up a conversation between he and Sachiko as both children strolled down the halls of heavenly host, past innumerable amounts of corpses and dying wishes scratched onto papers. It was all rather frightening at first for Yami, but for some reason he couldn't quite explain, with Sachiko walking alongside of him, he felt the fear wafting away into the cool musky air of the haunted school, never to see the light of day again.
"What was your first clue? My glowing pale skin, or my torn to hell dress?" Sachiko asked with a slight amount of hubris, although even she was not sure why her question came out in such a way; she had even surprised herself enough that she felt compelled to change gears and switch to a different subject as fast as she could. "Do you like the school? Mother and I do our best to-... Don't stand there."
Quickly registering what his new companion had said, Yami glanced down at his feet to find that he was standing in front of a large hole in the floor that appeared as if it went down forever, with no conceivable end in sight. Stopping as fast as his feet would allow, Yami fell back onto his behind with a small grunt while Sachiko rolled her eyes.
"Um... Sachiko-san?" Yami asked nervously as he peered down into the abyss once again; shivering in fear when he saw what he suspected to be a chunk of human flesh attached to a sharper section of the floor. Turning to Sachiko, who had also stopped walking in order to hear Yami out, the young boy continued in his questioning streak. "Can you fly? Like above this hole?"
"Of course I can, why?" Sachiko scoffed, crossing her arms in a show of distain, although in reality she wasn't annoyed with Yami at all; a first in over twenty years for any living soul, that much was for sure.
"Would you mind flying me over this hole please?" The young boy asked with a genuine smile on his face, while Sachiko stared blankly at him, her eyes boring into his soul. This boy was different, that much was for sure, but Sachiko wasn't about to sit around and ponder as to why. Instead she merely shrugged and nodded her head in affirmation before floating into the air, much to Yami's amazement. "Wow! That's so cool Sachiko-san, I can't believe how amazing you are!"
"...ArigatÅ..." Sachiko muttered simply, before floating behind Yami and sliding both of her hands under his arms. Without giving the boy much of a warning other than a small click of her tongue, Sachiko began to slowly raise Yami off of the ground, listening silently as he giggled in delight as she began to float across the large pit that separated the two different sections of hallway.
Sachiko couldn't help but to glance between Yami and the large chasm below her. It would be so easy, so easy to just release her grip on the boy and watch him fall into the darkness, where not even the other spirits would ever find his body. It would be another child for her mother to play with for all eternity. It would just be so easy to snuff out the little ember of life in Yami, to just let him fall; to just let him die.
But she didn't.
Instead she completed the flight over to the other end of the hall silently, letting Yami down on a stable and safe section of floorboard before landing next to him, accidentally letting a small sigh of confusion escape her ethereal lips. Her mind was absolutely racing with a myriad of thoughts that had not been present in her mind for years now. But that was not her primary concern; right now her primary concern was Yami and spending a few hours with him so that she could get her fix of humanity before she slaughtered him for her mother. That is if she could bring herself to do it.
Why was it even an issue for her? She had killed so many at this point, without even a hint of remorse or hesitation, letting her stabbing arm strike her victims true without giving them an inch of mercy or hope. It wasn't that she wanted to sap them of all hope before she ended their life exactly, it was more of a circumstance that if they possessed hope that they would live through her attack, then there would be a chance that they would not accept her mother's love for them, and that was a chance that Sachiko was not about to take.
She couldn't take it anymore, she had to get such thoughts from her mind. Deciding that it was useless to worry about such things until it was time to concern herself with them, Sachiko turned to Yami and braced herself, spitting out the first question that happened to fly out of her mouth. "So... Yami-san. What exactly happened to your mother?"
"She..." Yami trailed off as his eyes became downcast, something that did not pass Sachiko's peripheral vision, although she decided to ignore the change in Yami's demeanor as he continued his explanation. "My father was drinking saki and instead of becoming funny he became mean... He hit my mom and I until she couldn't stand up anymore... I hid and he carried her in to where I was hiding and hit me more... I ran away when he got bored, and ended up at my town's local high school for the big kids... I'm not sure how I ended up here though..."
"Your father deserves to die..." Sachiko whispered, bearing her teeth and clenching her fists as she imagined what sort of terror that her friend could possibly have gone through because of one man and a bottle of saki. Sachiko laughed darkly as she thought of this; she, the very being of terror and fear in Heavenly Host Elementary, was angered that someone was forced to live through something that most likely caused them terror. How ironic.
"It's not all bad though..." Yami pointed out as he shrugged dismissively, although the smile on his face which had previously vanished had now returned, giving off a sort of subconscious glow that very nearly mesmerized Sachiko. She wasn't about to let her emotions get the better of her though.
"Why not?" The ghost girl asked with a little more venom than she had originally intended, which resulted in her coughing softly in an attempt to change her tone to one that was more of a comforting one, rather than the dark malicious one she had grown accustomed to using. "What on earth about such a situation is good? As far as you know your mother could be dead, and your father could be the murderer! Doesn't that bother you?..."
"Well yes... But-... But at least I made a new friend. That's always a good thing!" Yami informed Sachiko, causing her to stop and tilt her head sideways slightly in curiosity in a silent attempt to have Yami inform her of who exactly he was talking about, but in the end she realized that she would need to speak up in order to learn who exactly had earned the title of friend in the boy's eyes.
"Who?" She asked, while simultaneously pointing at a nearby staircase, signaling that they needed to travel up them, a signal which Yami took, although His first concern was to answer Sachiko's question.
"You Sachiko-san!" He said with an expression on his face that reminded Sachiko of herself whenever she received a special gift from her mother. No! He wasn't like her, she had to stop comparing herself to the boy next to her. If she didn't stop, she was relatively sure that she would be cutting this little play-date and Yami's life short before she had planned.
Suddenly, before Sachiko could even think to reply to Yami's completely unnecessary statement, a blood curling scream was heard from the classroom adjacent to both of the young children, and no more than a few seconds after that, a high school aged girl with short brown hair in a yellow and blue school uniform ran out of the classroom as fast as she could, followed closely by a tall and broad man that appeared as if he were no more than a walking shell.
"Hey! Blockhead, stop running! You're going to break the floor!" Sachiko ordered, prompting the massive zombie like man to freeze in his tracks, just as he caught up to the girl, lifting her off of the ground by her collar, so that she could do no more than struggle fruitlessly, swinging her arms and legs around like a crazy person.
While Sachiko didn't appear as if she was fazed in the slightest by the sudden appearance of the young woman, Yami's reaction was on another plane entirely. He knew this girl, and he knew her very well; this was the girl who had first invited him to hand out with she and the other high school students when Yami first started his little adventures into town. "Naomi-senpai?! What are you doing here?! Aren't you supposed to be at home?"
"Yami-san?! I could say the same for you! How on earth did you end up in this hell?!" Naomi cried, before finally noticing Sachiko standing next to Yami with a sick smile on her face. Building up air in her lungs, Naomi gave one last meaningless punch to the strange man, before shifting her gaze back to the two children watching her and bellowing out a warning to Yami. "Yami-san! Get away from her; that thing is a ghost, she'll hurt you, just like one tried to hurt me earlier!"
"Hurt me? What do you mean?" Yami asked in confusion, his head tilting slightly as he glanced over at Sachiko, who was currently glaring daggers at Naomi. "Sachiko-san? What's Naomi-senpai talking about?"
"The only person around here who's going to be hurt is you..." Sachiko uttered darkly, before producing a long pair of scissors in her hand, letting her grip tighten around it with such force that the metal was beginning to visibly give way to her ethereal granted strength. "As long as Yami is with me, then nothing is going to hurt him... I can't say the same for you though..."
"Fuck you! Let Yami-san go and tell me where Seiko is, and where Satoshi is, and where everyone is!" Naomi hissed in reply, seemingly unfazed by Sachiko's threat, although in truth she was absolutely terrified, but she just had to put on a brave face, if only for Yami's sake.
"Insulting me? Are you sure you should be doing that given the... Situation you're in?" Sachiko taunted, while running her scissors along Naomi's covered stomach with agonizing slowness, letting the tip of the cutting tool catch on several of the school uniforms threads.
"Wait, Sachiko-san, don't hurt her! She didn't do anything wrong..." Yami begged, stepping in between Sachiko and what would have been her latest victim, causing the young ghost girl's eyes to widen in considerable surprise, although she regained her composure rather quickly, only to catch a glimpse of Yami staring at her, his hands curled into a ball in front of his chest. "Can't you just let her live?..."
"...Fine..." Sachiko finally grumbled after a few seconds of silence, before she turned to face the zombie like man holding Naomi. Why was she listening to this boy? This was becoming a major issue for sure, and her mother would be less than thrilled to know that not only one, but now 2 potential new eternal friends were being held away because Sachiko had decided to spend time with one of them. Well she had a way to fix that, and it involved this Seiko girl; whoever she was. "But I'm not letting her off so easily, wait here, Blockhead and I are going to go and find this Seiko girl and... Reunite them..."
"But-..."
"Wait here..." Sachiko ordered once more, before silently ordering the man she referred to as 'Blockhead' out of the room, following closely behind. However before she left she couldn't help but to turn her head to give Yami a small, but genuine smile; small as it may have been, before following the man and Naomi down the hall, leaving Yami alone with nothing more than his thoughts...
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So I hope you all enjoyed that little chapter, and I hope you enjoy all the future chapters to come! Until next time my minions!