Warnings: canon-typical violence, mature language, adult content, found family, time skips, fluff, angst, character death, implied rape, kidnapping, suicidal thoughts, sexism, PTSD, manipulation, cultural shock, tags to be added...
All characters belong to Naruto and the ocs to the original author of this work, who allowed me to translate it. Thank for reading :3
Walking becomes difficult the more she pushes into the forest, she isn't afraid... It's her fault for losing her guide because of the selfish desire to take photos with her luxurious pro camera.
She curses the passion in her hobby that made her end up in this situation. She sighs, and stops to raise her hand holding her cell phone trying to obtain a ray of hope. "Dammit, no signal", she growls at her bad luck. The fanciest phone neither the biggest company in the country couldn't keep her from being uncommunicated in such a wooded area.
She should have guessed this would happen when she decided to enter that tour centered in ecology.
"Just calm down... Everything will be alright and you'll laught about it later," she laughts at herself not wanting to see the downsides of the issue. She carries a small backpack that she easily prepared.
She's paranoid and a little distrustful but above all prepared for inconveniences. "I've got to keep walking," she purses her lips bacause she never learnt this type of things.
She loves travelling, seeing other countries... but she feels stupid by her not attending any survival courses.
It would have been better.
She goes on and trips over, almost scratching her fresh pants. She frowns at the lack of mosquitoes she hasn't seen since she began walking.
Even so Karen is a very professional woman. She analyzes, observes and assures that something changed in the ambience. She gulps as the trees start to become weird... thicker. There are less bushes and the sounds are null. She looks at the sky. Dusk looms.
"It's a good thing I carried a flashlight," she muses opening her bag and puts away her phone to save energy. Despite having an external battery she can't get overconfident, judging from her energy bars and the little water in her canteen.
She could survive five days with that from now one... She hopes someone saves her.
She swallows hard when she realizes movies were never beneficial to lost people, remembering that TV show where a bunch of friends on a plane end up on an island. She sighs... She rambles and starts to think about other things to try to remove her fear of staying one night on a forest alone.
And it not being the last time.
She revises the instructions in her bad memory about the most important things to take into account in these situations. It's primordial to find a place to sleep away from the ground. She looks up at the mysteriously tall tree tops.
She doesn't want to think about the change in the forestation. Sure it's because she's more fucked and pushed more into the woods.
Still Karen... A barely 30 years old woman feels optimistic about it. It's a good thing she has training, although she knows it's different from being in a gym. The fresh air enters her lungs when she prepares to climb the tree.
However... she doesn't get very far when she feels something sharp near her throat. She raises both hands cursing her luck at being arrested and gulps thinking that she could have entered dangerous lands considering the high number of crimes like this that people easily ignore.
Her mother had warned her this could happen if she became lost. This is why she told her not to come here!
"I assure you I just got lost... I'm not interested in revealing your affairs to the police, so please don't hurt me," she tries to negotiate with the first thing that comes to her mind. Her heart speeds up, her feet tremble, she sweats... She doesn't want to cry.
Showing fear is worse... because being a woman, death is a mercy in this case.
She keeps calm, but the stranger's whisper is her only answer.
"Huh?" She gulps again feeling the weapon at her throat tighten. Her eyes glaze. She sighs... She's terrified. "I didn't understand that?", she declares after hearing that distinct language.
Could it be indigenous?
"[...]", the stranger repeats again. It doesn't sound like any local native language she heard about in the trip. It's more like a kind of Japanene, Chinese or Korean that she doesn't distinguish.
She always mixed them up. But she could speak a bit in the first one.
"I don't understand," she tries in Japanese. Seriously, if only she had studied Japanese after Spanish instead of German, she would be better off right now. Her mind isn't making the right questions, neither focusing on the fact that somebody is speaking that idiom in the center of this forest.
"[...]" The stranger clenches harder. However someone arrives startling her. She doesn't want to maintain bad thoughts. Two man start to talk and she doesn't make the effort to understand them.
Her Japanese is limited. But this isn't that language. She should have payed more attention to Mr Tanaka's lessons. And when she feels this could not get any worst for her, being thrown against a tree is the last thing she remembers.
The headache.
Karen wakes up disoriented, feeling thirsty and of course doesn't react for a few seconds. She's scared. She's in a strange place with old-looking decorations that look straight from those period drama movies her little sister adores so much.
She doesn't want to cry... Her logic tells her to check where she is, her head is spinning but is proud enough to continue. She's not tied down so she takes the chance to escape.
First, to know where she is, check for hostile people and that sort of stuff.
Quietly, with silent footsteps she leaves the bed and she feels dizzy. Leaning heavily on a wooden wall, she swallows. She curses but she holds on not to lie down even though she feels such a terrible headache.
She hates this feeling. The need to vomit. Until she touches a light bandage on her head. The blow was strong, she sure needs something more than a diclofenac for the pain.
Hopefully her insurance can pay for it.
However, it is the door that opens that scares her. She turns back, she wants to run but the only thing she does in her poor state of health is fall on her back. The man only looks at her, he looks strange with a weird outfit that doesn't make any sense.
"Get away from me!" It's silly to say it when you're clearly at his mercy, now you know why people have the most illogical dialogues in the worst moments. The stranger with white hair does nothing but observe her with his red eyes.
Contact lenses? She doesn't know and it's what she doesn't process in a physical analysis that she's unable to do. She turns back until she runs into a hard wall. She doesn't move and watches the movements of someone who speaks of things she doesn't understand.
She doesn't say anything. She doesn't speak, seeing nothingness in that white face.
Who is this person? What is someone with almost oriental characteristics doing on this side of the world? Is he involved? She doesn't know what to think... Karen is alarmed when that strange person with exaggerated features from a convention her sister would love to attend keeps talking.
"I don't understand you," she tries English, German, Japanese and Spanish. She doesn't care if she understands enough. She doesn't come any closer and she's glad that this guy doesn't pay enough attention to her when he goes out, leaving her alone.
She sighs with relief at not ending up as another percentage of missing people on this side.
She feels hatred... although she knows deep down that she is already part of that percentage as soon as they realize she isn't answering her cell phone.
"That's right, my things!", she tries again when her world moves, making her fall forward with a lost look and the heaviest pain in her head. The last thing she sees are old-fashioned sandals coming from a point above.
The darkness again... is her friend.
She wakes up again and it's night. She has a cloth on her head and so very thirsty that she cannot describe it. She sits down with heaviness. She's dizzy looking around carefully.
The darkness is firm, the shadows rise oblivious to her problems. Her hands are still not tied so she is sure that she will be able to get out. She swallows thickly with her heart tightly clenched again.
Karen continues with her plan ignoring her thirst and bad taste in her mouth. She continues her walk and gulps. She curses silently, continuing as stealthily as she expects.
She was always careful, attentive to all places and avoiding conflict points only to end up in this situation due to a bad trip. She grunts... Her things are nowhere to be found so she continued. She is walking clumsily, sticking her head out of the door and doesn't see anyone.
A point for her that she is willing to take, completely unaware that it was just a false feeling that she was alone. But she doesn't know it yet. Her steps continued clumsily. The sting is light, she doesn't know if they treated her clinging to that abnormally rustic hallway.
She leaves. The are some sliding doors that confuse her for a moment. She clings to logic and adaptability to get out of this problem and continues. The hallways are confusing without any type of decoration or things that indicate how much in danger she is.
It's empty... that's till good but now it feels suspicious.
If you are in the wolf's den, it's not an optimal sign not to find anyone, no guards with weapons or something like that. She thinks the worst, however she's still optimistic seeing that maybe she found the exit.
Nevertheless, when she sees the sky she stops in her tracks. Karen is obsessive with many things. She has degrees in matters that her family is always critical of because they have nothing to do with her career just because of the passion of understanding what surrounds and fascinates her.
One of those things are constellations. "Damn!" is the only thing she says when noticing that the constellations look so clear, so impressive that she swears if she had her camera she would take several photos.
The moon is high up, surrounded by the majesty of the intermittent glow of such distant planets, but what she feels isn't so positive when she realizes that the view isn't the same from her hotel. It is different... and even more so when she tries to find some known constellations.
Failing in the attempt, her heart stops with suspicion. The disbelief of being in something as silly as this... she's afraid, but most of all she keeps thinking that she's dreaming which causes her to laugh hysterically.
"Yes... this is a fucking dream, that blow sure was hard," she convinced herself by looking further down. The forest is thick, the house is empty and she sees nothing but darkness.
"[...]" Someone calls from behind scaring her, almost making her fall if it weren't for the man who is just younger than her in silly clothes from ancient Japanese times taking her by the wrist. "[...]", he continues saying something.
But she doesn't listen. She walks away, she tries to run. It's stupid, she's clumsy. She falls down out of fear of everything that's happening around, a little effect of hysteria starting to come out. Her tears are running, but not so much to cloud her unique thought.
'Run away.' Not caring about the preparation, the fact that she will die of hunger if she leaves or worse yet, eaten alive by some wild animal... Karen doesn't think much anymore, she just wants to see her family.
But she tops dead when that man appears again. She doesn't want to look at her back, she's sure she didn't see him walking next to her. She swallows thickly when he takes a step forward.
He looks friendly. He raises his hands in peace, so different from the first cold contact she had with that faded man with fake eyes.
This one is... his hair is ridiculously light with a dark complexion very different from the pale one. His gesture is soft, he looks worried. She doesn't let herself be fooled by taking another step back.
"Don't come near me!", she instructs. The girl may be an important manager in an international company, a person so qualified in things that no one would imagine. Nevertheless, deep down she is still a simple human.
One who is terrified at this moment and whose life is in danger.
The stranger stops. He tightens his gesture but remains soft, he trusts no less with the strange words that come out. However, the lack of ability to communicate is the biggest impediment that causes more problems than it solves.
Two people there... They look at each other, they get frustrated thinking about other things that have nothing to do with them.
But not everyone has patience, not when she falls into unconsciousness again for some reason.
Oblivious to the fact that others thought it was better to get rid of them.
Karen... just fell asleep again.
Her head will be the death of her the next day.
Author's notes:
As you can see, this is another story proposal that I will be working for now. I don't know if it will update as quickly as the others but here we are, fighting with the muses to bring out another character so different from the others.
She isn't reincarnated, much less impersonating another character... An isekai? Hahaha well I don't know if this turned out like it was in my mind, but I'll be walking along this direction to see where it will stop.
Does she know this world? Does she know where she is standing? How will they bridge the communication gap? Or better yet... will she live long?
These and more questions can be asked... drawing themselves little by little among the corridors of this world... that I simply do not get tired of forming in my head with these variables.
Thanks for reading, we'll see each other soon.
Author-chan out!