Black Light (Naruto)

Chapter 48

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Hikaru had left the hospital after a week. It had been another week- and it was reaching the colder days of autumn. When he'd woken up there had been frost covering his window, his room somehow colder than the rest of his apartment. 

Hikaru sipped at a cup of warm peppermint tea, filling out his report as if he'd only been on a mission. He tried his best to push away the flashbacks that echoed in his mind of Hamasaki's voice and Yuu's touch that now brought him nothing but disgust for himself. 

He hated Yuu- despised her, even. While he would admit he'd relied on both her and Daichi, just seeing her step aside to let the kunai hit him replayed in his mind over, and over, and over. 

He ended up skipping over that part entirely in his report. He skipped on the description of the sun, and the light and the dew that he smelled each morning. He omitted the fact he could tell whose footsteps were whose, omitted the fact of the ice cold room. He left out the fact he'd believed Konoha would never come for him and gave up entirely. 

Hikaru hadn't thought he was the type of person to just give up. He hadn't thought he would've stopped and stared back at his idiotic self and wished for another chance to do it over. And all of these thoughts circled and circled and circled until Hikaru wished he could safely shut them up without dying. 

He also hadn't thought that the ghosts of her fingertips would still make him want to burn his skin off, but here he was. 

Another sip at the sharp mint-flavoured tea as the temperature started rising. His apartment, although protected by heat seals, still got cold. His bedroom was colder than every single room in the apartment- ice cold sheets and walls and windows and blankets. It was confusing, but Hikaru had learned to deal with it just like he'd learned to be as silent as possible. 

He'd stopped his rambling and ranting to anybody who would listen, preferring to stay silent as possible. He preferred to stick to the shadows, just how he preferred his eyes closed and his mental blocks so high even Ino had been concerned.

 He'd learned to mask the aftereffects of his torture, slipping a henge over them and the scar that now encirlced his neck. 

He hated it. He hated his mind screamed at him to hide everything, hated the fact it had been almost two or three years since he's been here and he'd only changed things for the worse. 

Hikaru stood up, tucking the report into a folder, deciding to stop at the market for some food on his way back. 

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Hikaru stood in the park, working on another seal that could possibly keep his scars in an undetectable henge. He would go out on missions and he was ashamed of the scars that told him he'd undergone torture. Nobody else seemed to care, but Hikaru saw the way their eyes flitted to his fingers and his neck and filled with pity and concern. 

He didn't like it. Not one bit- he was already ashamed of the scars  on his face, but nothing could really be done about those. 

Crunching of leaves jolted him out of his thoughts, and Hikaru glanced up to see Kakashi purposely stepping on golden and orange leaves. Naruto was right next to him, a wide grin on his face as he crashed through them. 

"Maa, Hikaru, the chunin and I are heading to Ichiraku's. You wanna come with?" Kakashi asked him, eye-smiling. 

Hikaru blinked, sliding his sealing scroll and supplies away. "Sure."

It was short and swift, making his racing heart die down a little bit. A voice whispered it was better this way, short and cut and to the point, that it would be safer this way.