Ink Stained

24: tell the truth*

本当のことを言え

Haru wanted to sleep, saying that he was tired and wanted to rest before the Daitengu were to meet.

Pai made sure he was comfortable, bringing a glass of water to put on the table by his bed if he got thirsty, and an extra blanket – more for comfort than risk of him getting cold. Hengen didn't feel temperature the way humans did, but she wasn't sure if that was the case for severely injured (but healing) Hengen.

He seemed to very much appreciate the blanket, at least.

For a second, as she stood by Haru's bed and watched him settle in to take a nap, she waited. She waited for him to say something, anything that would bring back the witty, humorous Haru she knew.

He said nothing. He only thanked her for the water and blanket before he closed his eyes, turning so that he was facing the window.

Pai left, her sandals slapping gently against the floor as she quietly closed the door behind her. She glanced down the halls and saw Kouta already at the corner of the long hallway. She turned the other way, to go to her own room.

And do what?

What could she do, alone in her room? Haru...he didn't say anything, when she thought he would. For some reason she couldn't fathom, that was the most disconcerting thing about all that had happened since he collapsed outside the gates of Ayashi House. He was always making light of situations, not to demean them but just to make everything seem less dark and dreary. Even if it was a poor choice of a joke, at least he said something.

Haru always had something to say. This time, he didn't. He said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

If he was so disheartened by their prospects of saving Shin, what could she do, besides twiddle her thumbs uselessly and stare at the forest that Shin was most likely in?

Pai stopped walking abruptly when a pain, like a sun flare blazing in her brain, right behind her eyes, made her wince and put a hand up to cover her eyes. She blinked, black smoke swirling in front of her, and she sees a pristine white room. Everything is white. Always white.

White like the world was before he betrayed us, she giggles. Do you think it's pretty?

Pai ignores her.

There are rows of sleek grey tables bolted to the white-tiled floor with matching chairs on either side of her. A white interactive board is at the front of the room, stuck to the wall. It's off. Screen dim, life dead.

Sitting in the chairs are figures, people, bobbing and moving as they shuffle about. She can't see them, their outlines hazy from the periphery of her vision. She doesn't bother to look at them.

She sits in a char in the middle of the rows. A man stands at the front of the room, blond-brown hair cut stylishly, the top rising up in a quiff young men seem to favour. The interactive board behind the man lights up.

Blue background. Thin, white squiggly lines spread out like a spider-web over the blue expanse. It's the blueprint of a building. She wonders, idly, which one it is, if she's been there before.

Stuck next to the blueprint on the board is a picture. A photograph she had seen the picture before. She recognized it with a sickening lurch of a speedboat wading through water, in front of a large ship with a nine-tailed fox painted in white on the massive hull of the ship. Above the fox is the name of the company that owns the ship.