Aki Kitsune (20/?), original fiction
Title: Aki Kitsune (Autumn Fox)
Setting: Present Japan
Type: Multi-chapter
Words: ~2300
Beta: None
Summary: Of an anti-social girl, with secrets half of which she has not yet uncovered, and a boy who wants to learn everything about her. What is behind the thick cold walls that she has built around herself?
Chapter Twenty
Familiar Nightmares
Torikawa Sekai
Sender: Kuromura brat
Time: 12:10 PM
Message:
Torikawa-san, you have not messaged me since Monday this week. Nothing happened to onee-san, I presume? Remember, you agreed to help.
With an angry press to my mobile phone, I deleted Haru's message and snapped the device shut with more force than needed.
Erika turned around in her seat at the loud click and raised an eyebrow at me. "You're gonna spoil it one day, considering your rough handling these few days. You okay, onii-san?"
"He's just frustrated about the expanding vast space within his skull," Kuromura said as she stood up from her seat beside mine, a ring of keys hooked on the ring finger of her right hand while she pushed up her spectacles. "He'll get over it soon."
I leaned sideways against the back of my chair and looked up at the girl, "You don't have to be so mean to me all the time, you know. Do a good deed a day by cutting down on the use of sarcasm on me sounds good. Offsets your karma too."
Especially considering the sleeping and gaming hours I was giving up to help with your art assignment, I added silently. Not to mention making sure Kuromura's own brother would not have the chance to double-cross her- but, of course she did not need to know that. I knew better than to expect any kind of straightforward gratitude from her.
"I'm not superstitious enough to do that." A mute 'As if you didn't know already.' followed after in the stiff way Kuromura peered down at me, eyes expectedly cold behind the thick lenses.
The dark-blonde pushed herself up from her own seat and smoothed out her skirt, "Going for lunch, Aki-sempai? Let's go together!"
Bending to pull out a folder from under her desk, the taller girl waved Erika off.
"I'm not having lunch today. I'm going back to my dorm to bring my art assignment to the studio for project consultation so my slot can be cleared earlier and I'll have more time to work on it later."
"You can't keep skipping your meals, Kuromura," I frowned at her. Erika nodded vigorously beside me.
Kuromura straightened up; firm posture intimidating even though her glare was hidden by her glasses.
"And you can't mother me," she said, and I was certain of the double entendre of her words. She then turned to the other girl and her tone softened, "Don't come to pick me up from the studio, I won't be disappearing anytime soon."
Erika gave a small wave before Kuromura walked out of our classroom.
"Let's go get lunch?" She suggested, placing a gentle hand on my elbow.
I sighed and shook my head, "I'm not feeling hungry. I'm going to the computer lab to check that elf shoemaker thing you said yesterday. You have other friends to have lunch with right? Although that doesn't make a difference since you wouldn't miss a meal even if the end of the world was coming."
"I'll go with you," she grinned reassuringly at me, her auburn eyes twinkling softly. "I had a heavy breakfast this morning anyway, remember?"
Allowing a smile to form on my face, I joked, "You have heavy everything, everyday."
The younger girl laughed, "I won't even dignify that with a response! I'll race you to the lab!"
I chuckled and left my mobile phone in my schoolbag, then ran out to catch up with Erika.
Kuromura Aki
"I must say, for the difficulty of how your piece turned out to be, the progress is faster than it would normally take for one person working on it," my art teacher commented, attempting to hide her suspicion with a fake expression of being impressed that I picked up with little to no difficulty.
As she continued to examine the board that was almost a-third complete for loose acrylic parts, I lifted my left forearm to check the time on my watch. With the time that I took walking to my dorm and back to the classroom block just to bring the heavy wooden board to the art studio, she would have to be done poking and prodding soon to say whatever was left to add so that I wouldn't be late for my next period.
The adult sighed and straightened up. "Aki-san," she began, her habit of using students' given names rubbing in all the wrong ways on my nerves. "I am sure you are aware of your reputation among the teachers in this school. As much as that doesn't matter to me so long as you are genuine about art, other people are much more superficial than that.
"This," sensei gestured to my art piece but seemingly indicating art generally, "is one way for you to prove yourself. Not to change the way you are, but to show your real worth. Not by fighting with school bullies, even though the discipline department is appreciative of your efforts."
I nodded hastily while mentally planning the fastest route back to class.
"Don't screw this up, Aki-san," she added with a pointed look. "I'll count this as your consultation slot so you can work on your project right away when you come back in the afternoon. You can go back to class now. I'll put your work on your workstation for you."
Nodding curtly, I turned to leave, but not before noticing the white pin that I used to indicate where I stopped so as to make it easier for me to find the colour code on the papers where the colours were pre-marked.
There was something off about the pin that I could not put my finger on at that moment. Deciding to let it go for now, I hurried back to class.
"... Die Wichtelmänner..." I caught a snippet of Nakamine's conversation with Torikawa when I reached the classroom just one minute before the bell would ring.
Allowing a single eyebrow to rise above the lenses of my spectacles at the foreign language rolling off the younger girl's tongue with stiffness at the unfamiliarity of the words, I pulled out my chair and sat down with a remark, "Aspiring to be a linguist?"
Nakamine turned at the sound of my voice and gave an easy smile, "It comes in handy sometimes, knowing phrases of different languages."
She took the absence of a reply from me as an acknowledgement and shifted in her seat to face the front before pulling out the textbook for the next period.
The bell rang then, while Torikawa slipped back to his seat beside mine. He seemed as if having a question for me at the tip of his tongue but swallowed it back when the teacher came in and told the class to pass our completed homework down to the front.
I could feel his dark gaze on me, lingering even as he sat down and began to slowly rummage through his schoolbag. Defiantly avoiding any eye contact with Torikawa that would surely prompt him to blurt out whatever he wanted to ask, I reached for my own bag and pulled out my finished assignment.
Die Wichtelmänner... The two words resonated in my mind, trying to match themselves to a memory that I could not sieve out at the moment. It would come to me, I assured myself while the phrase continued to swim about with the image of my white-headed pin on the large board of my art project.
* * * * *
It was night; still early in my opinion, as I read the thick metal-framed analog alarm clock on my desk.
9:03P.M.
Slotting my now completed homework into my bag, I retrieved the brown paper bags that contained the acrylic pieces and prepared to inlay them onto my board that had taken me another fifteen minutes of my life to lug back to my dorm from the studio.
Picking up my colour plans, I searched for the colour code of the next acrylic piece and knelt down to begin a repetitive process: brush on a coat of special art glue, aim it perfectly into the designated space, press it firmly in place and go through Step One again with a new piece of acrylic.
I lost track of time in the silence of my dormitory and the near-robotic movement of swipe-glue-aim-paste-press-repeat. The air so quiet with tension it felt jarringly out of place for my breaths to be even audible and I had slowed my breathing so much it was uncomfortably shallow, my lungs complaining of the lack of air to fill it whole.
Just then, there was a sudden sting from under my flesh, beneath the skin at my right temple, and I inhaled sharply from the lack of warning of it.
The piece of acrylic dropped from my hand; barely realising that I had even released the square to brace myself from the pain now spreading to the area at the front of my head, just at the hairline.
In an otherworldly feeling, I took notice of the sheen of sweat breaking out across my forehead, and absentmindedly heard my breath quickening with the incessant buzz at the back of my mind.
I shut my eyes, mashing the upper and lower lids together in a failing attempt to cope with the pain throbbing loudly in my head like war drums; faster and louder with every passing second.
Eyes shut too tight, those thin muscles started aching and sparks bloomed swiftly behind my lids like a wayward kaleidoscope turning in crazed loops over and over and over-
I shook my head with a harsh twist and forced my eyes open only to have the midnight-black of my wooden board slammed into my sight with brutal insistency, threatening to suck me in along with the bright spots that were slowly dispersing from in front of my eyes.
My vision swam dangerously and the first conscious thought in what seemed like eons slipped through, carrying the comical pondering that perhaps my head would burst any moment now and shower my room with glittery bits of blood, gore and random skin tissue.
I would have laughed at that thought, if not for the whirlwind of imagery convulsing around me like a slideshow put on inhuman speed.
The headache subsided mercilessly enough for me to recognise the vision, familiar to me from the many dreams that filled the small hours of sleep; the only luxury I had these few weeks.
The first was the usual red. Blazing, yet seemingly soft if I were to reach out for a touch. Then it was the yellow dryness around the silky bundle of crimson. I braced myself for what was to come next, too accustomed to these that I did not bother to decide if I had started to dream in the midst of my glorious headache.
A wave of sadness crashed heavily, like a wall that had lost its support. My world begin to spin and one side of me felt crushed, as if I had flopped onto the carpet of crisp saffron. A haze of purple clouded over with an alien sense of hatred, strong and vile, feeding on the underlying sorrow that was surging up and I could feel my lungs being squeezed until I had no breath left to choke out.
I began to fight the visions and sensations, mindlessly reaching out with panic to steal some semblance of control back from whatever that had taken over with far more horrifying strength than my dream-demons.
Struggling for air against my tightening chest, I hastily forced out the hallucinations with any sliver of strength I could gather to concentrate on a sense of blankness and some sort of calm.
The oppressing feeling of rage and the need to lash out left after I realised that I had begun to breath again, albeit still shallow and too gaspingly weak for my liking.
I opened my eyes after pushing away the dream- or perhaps I had been awake the whole time- to find myself pressed against my dark wooden board, my right hand palmed on top of it to give myself some sort of hold on reality...
One hour.
Blinking at my clock, I brought a hand up to wipe away the sweat from my forehead. Had it been that long? I lowered that hand to find the cause of the stretching ache across its skin. Marks from my thread-marked squares were imprinted red into the palm when I had pushed it against the board sometime during the haziness of the past hour.
I stood up, still minutely disoriented from the headache and visions, with purple hues accenting every object in my room and their shadows. That was one thing that came with the recurring dreams; purple coated sight. It must have been born from those dreams, steadily taking longer for colours to revert back to normal after each time.
Nothing ever turned purple even when my eyes altered to a more violet shade.
My cell phone blinked from its spot on my desk. A new message.
Sender: Nakamine Erika
Time: 21:54 PM
Message:
Sempai! I've left something outside your door! You're not asleep yet, are you? Still working on your art project? Remember to get a good rest! See you tomorrow!
The colours on the small screen slowly blended back into its bright whiteness while the swimming exclamation marks subdued. Outside my door?
A small can of strawberry milk beckoned innocently at me when I opened my door. I picked it up and pressed the cool can against my temple, taming the headache that was diminishing at a sluggish rate.
Turning back after locking my door, my eyes were drawn to the pin at the side of my wooden board. There was something about it that tripped my instincts but the reason was out of grasp.
Die Wichtelmänner...
Nakamine's upbeat voice repeated the words in my head. Where have I heard those words before? I continued questioning myself while the innocuous white pin stared up at me.
... To be continued
Crossposted:
Musings and FictionPress.com.
For explanations of Japanese terms, check my Terminologies page here.