Chapter Text
Hitori awoke to the sun beaming rays of light down her eyes. The sun was shining the same way it had been for years, but it didn't feel like it to Hitori. She felt that its rays had dimmed, that sunrises and sunsets had lost some of their colour, and that the once beautiful lights that struck out through the leaves of the forests had lost their shine. It's not like this was a new feeling. It had been here for a while. It blended right in with everything else.
Hitori contemplated staying in bed, but eventually conceded to her conscience that she wouldn't have anything better to do anyway.
She got up and went through the motions of getting ready. It was the same as every other day. Wash, eat, dress. It was something that stayed the same.
Hitori was trying her best to focus in school. These days, it was a coin flip whether she'd be able to make it through the day without melting into a puddle, or whether she'd turn so red from embarrassment she'd create a new shade of crimson. It was anyone's guess what would happen. She pondered to herself which one she'd deal with today. Neither option was desirable, though the first one was certainly the lesser of two evils. “Boredom or anxiety?” she thought. “Maybe I'll just get unlucky and deal with both…”
The day went as well as it could have. Hitori was still anxious, but she didn't feel like turning into a slug and hiding away in a damp corner, so she considered it a win. It wasn't something most people would consider as a win, but for her, it was about taking what she could get. She wasn't exactly satisfied with how her school day went, but she didn't feel satisfied with anything nowadays. Maybe it was just a side-effect of whatever was puppeteering her current gloom, a gloom which felt like it enveloped the whole world.
Well, maybe not the whole world… one bastion of light stood its ground against the murky miasma.
“Hitori~... Hitori, are you there?”
Hitori and Kita had been friends for over two years now. Hitori's dark gloomy cloud could never quite envelop the pure strength of the Kit-aura. Dampen? Sure – it didn't feel like anything was that strong. But it would take a might simply unavailable to the hazy darkness to fully consume the Kit-aura.
“Hitori! There you are, I was looking for you!”
Hitori looked at Kita with a look of… well, bit hard to say. She wasn't upset that Kita was here, but she also didn't feel overjoyed. She just felt some sort of happy apathy. “Happathy”, maybe?
“Oh, um, hi Kita. I haven't seen you in a moment.”
The redhead smiled. Hitori couldn't help but notice her smile was less pronounced than it was before. Maybe it was the same it always was, and she had simply adjusted to the Kit-aura.
Even after two years, Hitori still found herself nervous around Kita. Something about her energy and bubbly optimism was equal parts comforting as it was strange, though these days, she didn't exactly have the liberty of choice.
“What are you doing after school today?”
Hitori looked confused. What? What could she possibly want?
“Uh, I'm not, um, doing much, why? Do you, uh, need something?”
“Ha, well… I was going to ask you something a bit strange, but do you want to… do you want to practice guitar together?’
Hitori looked at Kita with widened eyes. Practice guitar? Now? What could have made her even think of that?
It had been some time since the two of them practiced together. Hitori recalled how they used to do it every day. The memories of those practice sessions were still there, but… hazy. It had been quite some time since their last practice.
Hitori was conflicted. On one hand, she was tired, she didn’t feel like doing another session. On the other hand… she wouldn’t mind doing another session with Kita after all this time. What was a girl to do…?
“I, uh… I appreciate the offer, Kita!”
Kita didn’t look particularly pleased with that response.
“Haha… is that a yes or a no?”
Hitori wasn’t in the mood for this.
“Can… Can I come back to you on that? I have some stuff to do, and, and uh, uh-”
“I understand, Hitori.”
Kita walked away. She had a smile on her face, but it was still just… dim. It wasn’t the old bright smile that Hitori expected of her. Maybe she was just imagining things.
Hitori arrived home in a way that some would call lacklustre. She called it comforting. She went up to her room in silence, and all throughout she was thinking about Kita’s offer. Since when was Kita interested in playing guitar again? She’d have expected her to avoid even touching a guitar after all this time, let alone requesting to play one – requesting to play one with her. Hitori surely didn’t want to play guitar with Kita… or, maybe she did? It had been a while, and her skills had certainly faltered. Maybe… no, she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair. That part of her life was relegated to the past. No use digging up old graves at this point, Hitori thought to herself.
Hitori was tired. She collapsed into her bed, just like she did yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that yet. It wasn’t anything new. All the same it felt to her.
From the corner of her eye, she looked over at her electric guitar once more. Her instrument lay there, silent and covered in dust. Waiting for a strum of life to rejuvenate it. Hitori, for a brief moment, thought about playing it again. Maybe, just maybe, this was it. Something to break her stasis – yes! This was what she was looking for!
With a newfound determination, Hitori jumped out of her bed and towards her beloved guitar. She got herself set up, put her fingers in their ideal positions, and soon, all that was left was to strum.
…she was going to start strumming the strings.
…any day now.
“What is this? Why… why aren’t my fingers moving?” she thought to herself.
Hitori sat in that position for ten minutes. Ten minutes. Just waiting for a final burst to send her fingers across the strings and bring back… …
…
She couldn’t do it. She realised it wasn’t going to happen no matter how long she awkwardly sat with her guitar. “How defeating…” she thought to herself, as she put her guitar back in the case it had resided in for months. Despite the fact that Hitori had lived in this para-low state for a while… somehow, being unable to play the guitar after so long hurt. It hurt differently. Just enough to peek out and be felt through the blanket of lethargy.
She didn't spend much time on anything else that day. She just stayed in her bed, mindlessly scrolling on her phone. Nothing new. Nothing new, right? Yeah… nothi-
A notification suddenly came up. It was from a text chat. It took Hitori a second to read the name. It was… oh no.
Nope. No, no, no. NO.
Hitori was frozen in place. She couldn't move – it felt like some invisible force had taken over her body and immobilised it. Beads of sweat were forming on her forehead. She was panicking.
“Why did this happen today?!” she thought to herself. She was desperately trying to ignore the pit that has formed in her stomach, even as it continued to grow ever larger. Her face was turning a shade of pink akin to her hair – this wasn’t something she was expecting today, nor something she wanted to deal with.
Hitori didn't want to look at it, but she couldn't stop. It's as if she was locked, unable to stop staring at it. But, slowly but surely, she managed to regain some control of her body.
Her fingers, though trembling, slowly floated up towards her screen. She was just going to swipe the notification away. She… she had to! What else was there to do?! What ELSE?! WHAT ELSE?! WH…
Hitori breathed. It wasn't peaceful or smooth breathing, but it was enough to calm her mind down a little. Even after the strength it took just to lift her finger, she remained unsure of what else to do. She just wanted to have a regular afternoon! Why was today trying to be different?!
Hitori knew the longer she waited, the less sure she would become. She needed to make a decision sooner than later, but none of that was going to help her after she’d been this shocked.
After what felt like an eternity, Hitori finally managed to gather the willpower to… swipe the notification away. She wasn’t going to deal with it today.
“Maybe another day, I’ll read it”, she thought to herself. But that day was not going to be today.
It was already getting late. The sun was starting to descend below the horizon. Hitori decided to cut her losses, and just go to bed. Not like there was much worth doing anyway.
She remained there, just scrolling through her phone mindlessly. Every now and then, she’d get a good chuckle, but most of her experience was just scrolling. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling… when suddenly, three knocks on her door.
“Who was it?”, she thought to herself. It wasn’t her sister – Futari would never knock on the door. It was probably her parents, she got out of her bed, and moved towards the door.
“Hitori, didn’t you hear me?” her mother said. Hitori realised that her rumination had taken longer than she thought, and it was almost dinnertime.
“I said dinner’s ready. Are you going to come down to eat with us?”
“Y-yeah, of course! Sorry Mum, I was just busy in my room and-”
“Yes, I know. You’re busy in your room, and you don’t realise where the time goes. I’ve heard it before, Hitori. Just… Come eat dinner.”
“A-alright, Mum. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Michiyo closed the door to her daughter’s room and headed back down to the kitchen. Hitori took that as her sign to clean herself up just a bit before she went downstairs. All it really ended up being was her tidying up her hair.
Hitori descended down the stairs, took a seat, and started silently eating. Tonight, dinner was chicken kastu curry. Her parents tried to prod her with a few questions about her day.
“So, Hitori… did anything interesting happen at school today?” said Naoki.
Hitori looked up from her food, not really being in a very talkative mood.
“Oh… uh, school was fine.”
Michiyo looked rather disappointed with that answer.
“Just fine? You sure nothing interesting happened?”
“No, it really was just a normal day. I’d tell you if something interesting happened, trust me.”
Hitori thought that the conversation would stop here. She hoped it would just stop here – she just wanted to get back to her food in all honesty, and not think about school more than she had to. She didn’t hate school, but she didn’t want to think about it more than she had to.
As Hitori looked up from her curry again, she saw her parents give each other a look. It wasn’t a regular look, there was something… off, about it. Her heart began to sink as her mother turned towards her.
“You know, we got a call today. It was about you.”
Hitori’s heart began to sink deeper.
“Oh, um, really? What was it about? Was it, uh, about school? Because my gr-”
“No, not really… it was from somebody else.”
Hitori’s heart slowed down. Now she was more confused than anything.
“Somebody else? Who could that even be?” said Hitori, as she prodded her curry, beginning to lose her appetite.
Michiyo and Naoki exchanged a glance with each other, just to confirm what Michiyo was about to do. She took a deep breath, and said:
“It was from Seika Ijichi.”
Hitori’s heart plummeted, and started beating at a rapidly increasing rate. She averted her eyes to the table a few seconds after her mother said that. Her mind went from a semi-orderly operation to an absolute mess, filled with intertwined thoughts and tangled scenarios, mixed in with a good dash of tension and stress. This was something she absolutely did not want to happen – not tomorrow, not next week, and certainly not today. She didn’t even know what she had to do, what she could do! She just sat in her seat, trying her best to not go completely off the rails and lose it, right there and then.
Eventually, Naoki looked at his daughter with concern.
“Hitori? Hitori, did you hear your mother?”
No response. Hitori continued to look at the table, desperately trying to piece together some sort of path on what she had to do from here on. She-
“HITORI!”
Michiyo’s voice echoed throughout the kitchen – loud enough to jolt Hitori out of her thoughts. Futari also let out a little scream, while Naoki got his bearings back.
“Hitori, you look like you’ve seen a ghost! What happened?!”
Hitori looked up at her mum. Michiyo didn’t seem all that angry, more just genuinely concerned for her daughter's wellbeing.
“Oh, uh, uhh… you know, I just, uh, I just wasn’t expecting that!”
“Are you sure that’s all that was?” Naoki chimed in. “You looked really-”
“You looked like a ghost, hahaha!” said Futari.
“Futari! Don’t say that about your sister!” said Michiyo, getting more and more worried. “Hitori, are you sure you're fine? I haven’t seen you do… that, ever. You can-”
“I’m fine, Mum! I promise, I’m fine, it just came as a bit of a shock to me! That’s all, really.”
Hitori just wanted to be finished with all this. Her curry had begun to cool, and she wanted to finish it before it completely lost its appetising factor. She started to rush through it, before eventually messily finishing it.
“Goodnight Mum, Dad, Futari.”
Hitori then proceeded to speed-step up to her room, and closed the door behind her.
She didn’t want to deal with Seika right now. She didn’t want to deal with her anytime, but especially not now, when she was already on edge. Her mind, despite having a brief moment of rest, was still in an absolute mess trying to figure out what she should do next. Only one thing remained certain. She was NOT telling Kita about this. The poor girl didn’t deserve to have even more on her plate to deal with, especially something that was exclusively for Hitori. This was Hitori’s problem, and she was the only one who was going to deal with it. But what could she even do, other than just ignore her issues?
Hitori had been tossing and turning in her bed all night. She couldn’t seem to get any sleep. Every waking moment just seemed to be filled with thoughts about Seika, and Starry, and… …
Hitori just didn’t want to think about any of that longer. No matter what she did, they just wouldn’t leave her alone. “When will I be free?”, she thought.
Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, Hitori finally managed to fall asleep. Her brain didn’t dream… Well, except for one.
A brightly-lit stage, with three, maybe four, other people. Cheers emanate from the audience. Hitori stands in the centre, with her guitar in tow. She’s about to strum the first chord, and…
Nothing. The crowd disappeared. She looked around to the other four members for guidance, but their faces were gone, if they even existed to begin with. The four began to melt, as if they were candles over a blowtorch, and soon they dripped underneath the planks of wood. Hitori stood in shock, trying to process what she’s seeing.
That only lasted so long, since she’d promptly be interrupted by the melted substance pooling around her feet. And even that only lasted until a giant, brambly thorn emerged out of the substance and stabbed her in the throat.
…
Hitori was woken up. Her throat still lingered with a feeling of pain where she was stabbed through, but it soon faded. The sun hadn’t risen yet – twilight emanated from the window in her room. But today was another day. Just like yesterday. And the day before. And the day before. And…
Hitori didn't want to think about that any longer than she had to. She had to push on. She just… she had to move through the pain. Just a little longer… surely?