Ink Stained

28: flying slipper*

飛行スリッパ

Pai woke up with the sensation of something thick and wet sticking to the back of her throat, blood dripping down her cheek from her nose to her pillow, an uncomfortably warm and wet feeling pooling behind her ear where it rested on the stained pillow.

She coughed, gagging slightly as she pushed herself to sitting upright, her lips pulling back over her teeth in disgust when she felt that wetness sliding down her throat when she swallowed, nausea settling heavily in the pit of her stomach. Her joints creaked like an old woman's when she moved, and she groaned as she looked about herself groggily. Her eyelids were so heavy, and they burned, like the air itself was fire as she tried to keep her eyes open. She had to blink repeatedly and force herself to remain sitting, to keep from flopping back on her bed and going straight back to sleep.

But she couldn't, because she was bleeding again, again, and this time she thought – no, she knew – that the nosebleed was triggered because of the memory, somehow. She knew, with an itchy discomfort, that what she remembered from that, that dream...it was not just a vivid imagination at work.

That was a memory. It was a memory of something that happened to her in the years she was missing. There were too many details she could still recall even now, when usually she immediately forgot the dreams she had. It felt too real to be anything but a memory.

She didn't know what it meant, and that terrified her, because she didn't know what any of it meant.

She rehashed what she could remember, picking out what made sense in the confused slush of her memories as she tried to understand what they could possibly mean. An image flashed before her mind's eye; she was looking at two people walking out of a bakery near Sapporo Station.

One of the two was a man, the other a woman.The man held a neat little bag that showcasesd the name of the bakery on the side. He was tall and wiry, with light brown hair that blew around wildly in the cool spring wind. The woman he was walking with was almost as tall, in fashionable ankle-length boot heels, sheer leggings beneath a jeans skirt and a loose cardigan over a simple sleeveless white t-shirt.

The man was kissing off a little bit of the white vanilla icing from the woman's cinnamon bun from the tip of her nose. He pulled away, and Pai remembered the deep pink blush growing over the woman's cheeks as she teasingly scolded him, glancing around to see if anyone was watching them.

Someone – was.

Even now, miles and years away from that bit of – of memory – Pai could remember feeling the hot and cold flashes she always did when around Hengen. She knew that that man must have been Hengen, and she knew that, if it was a memory and not just some horrific slice of nightmare because of all the stress she felt, both of them - they were dead.

It it wasn't a dream...she was the one who –

No, no, that isn't true. She shook her head, shutting her eyes. There's no way. I would never do that. No.

Pai opened her eyes looking down at her pillow. All thoughts of what she could remember of her dream-memory in sporadic yet startlingly clear fragments fled her mind. She stared blankly at the small puddle of blood, the size of her hand, on it – when she tilted her head, she caught the crimson glisten of it, as if it was still wet.

Her hand shook with tremors that come every day now when she lifted it to her nose and swiped at the blood that leaked out sluggishly. The buzzing gave her an ache at the joints in her wrists. The back of her hand came away with blood smudged on it. She wiped her palm against her cheek to the same result.