Ink Stained

38: when they fall down her face*

彼らが彼女の顔に落ちたとき

"You – you've said that to me before."

The frown he wore deepened as something wet tracked down to her parted lips.　She reached up and swiped away the blood, the red stark upon the pale skin of her fingers.

Oh no.

Her stomach twisted to painful knots. She quickly reached into her pocket and pulled out her handkerchief to dab the blood away. But before she could, Shin twisted, swinging his legs over the wall and dropping down to the snow-covered ground beside her. The move was quick and fluid, hardly giving her any time at all to react.

She flushed when he landed close to her. She could feel the warmth radiating from his body, and instinctively wanted to lean in to it. She stopped herself from doing it, and instead stared woodenly at the hint of black ink she could see on his chest.

She hurried to finish wiping away all the blood but froze when Shin reached forward, snaking his finger under her chin and forcing her to look up at the intense blue of his eyes. It was like looking into a deep, fathomless ocean that threatened to drown her, yet she couldn't force herself to look away.

Please don't say anything, she thought desperately. She didn't want to explain why she was bleeding, though she knew that even if she wished as hard as she could against it, he was going to anyway.

He did.

"Why are you bleeding?"

Pai pulled away from his grip, though she didn't move an inch from him. Her cheeks were burning, and she wished she wasn't quite so pale. At least otherwise it wouldn't be so obvious how much she was blushing.

She closed her eyes as she thought,Why him?

Why was Shin always the one to find out about the things wrong with her that she tried to hide from everyone else?

Shin tapped her chin again, lifting it, this time more gently, as if she was a porcelain doll that would crack if he handled her too roughly. Her heart clenched tight in her chest at the thought. She kept her eyes focused on the curving line of his tattoo, unwilling to look in his eyes and see him imploring her to tell him what was wrong, just the same way he'd gotten her to tell him about her hands shaking.

She didn't want to tell him, not anything, but she did at the same time. Pai had never felt more torn than she did then, fighting with herself, her heart telling her that it was fine to let Shin know what was happening, while her brain worried about how he would react once he knew.

Heart won out. She didn't want to keep it to herself, to keep it all in, not really. She was tired of hiding the bleeding and the fear of what her returning memories meant. She wanted to tell someone what she was feeling.

And that someone was Shin, right now. Maybe she would regret it later, but right now, she just wanted to tell someone – and he was right here. He was right here, asking her to.

"When I remember something," she slowly admitted, hesitant, second-guessing herself, wondering if this was a mistake. "I – my nose starts bleeding."

"When you remember something?" Shin repeated, watching her closely.

She hesitated. "I – I'm starting to remember. Little things, pictures in my mind. Sometimes I say something that doesn't sound like me and I don't remember ever saying, but at the same time I do. And, when I'm asleep, I have dreams that are too real to be just – just dreams."