ooo :: dream
...they collided with the door Hey! When are we going to have ramen? and he fumbled Senpai... to slide it open behind her. Eh...You call this training? I need more! Her breath caught in sighs and giggles that echoed Your cool hip attitude is really pissing me off. in his ears and made her pale, flushed breast rise and fall with each new excitement... Your blood isn't like ours; that eye doesn't suit you.
The words ran like a monologue in the back of his mind, overlapping, blocking out and distorting the other voices he could hear faintly behind the text. The words--the story--was as familiar as if memorized from constant repetition and he knew he could recite it back without prompting. But as familiar as it was, the voices behind it were still more familiar, and they were talking to him, calling out to him, trying to break through that running narration as the words were read, slowly, deliberately, in a bored, dull voice uninterested and unanimated in the reading. His internal voice generated an impenetrable barrier, one he was sure he was used to being locked within instead of locked out of.
A steady and devouring rhythm built over everything as the voices of his comrades grew fainter in his memory until, at last, that story was all he could hear as it continued like a bad, undying crutch of a habit. He couldn't shut it off, and he couldn't reach out for them. Broken promises, failed attempts, things he never got the chance to do scattered before him like shards of a desolate city all because he was hiding behind his own selfish, protective masks.
Those who break the rules and regulations are called trash, but those that don't care about their companions are worse than trash.
A child's voice broke through the narrative, silencing it where all other voices had failed.
There was no source for the voice, though, only a simple scarecrow erected in a grassy clearing just in front of him. Nailed to one of the scarecrow's outstretched arms was a garishly covered book, title illegible. In his other, oddly, were a pair of bells tied together by a piece of string. They jingled slightly in the wind. He moved closer to them to take a better look and, catching his reflection in the metallic surface, a young boy with dark hair and even darker eyes stared back at him. Not me. He could not place the name--it was not even just one person--but he knew one thing: he was fascinated by those eyes. Especially when they suddenly turned red...
The bells jingled again, calling his attention back to them. Take the bells...
Go ahead.
There will be a test later. Do you think you can pass it?
He hesitated, unsure, and then reached for the bells. They seemed to slip farther and farther away from him each time he tried to stretch for them and then they fell away.
Darkness. ...He woke up beside a crackling campfire, the ash and embers dancing up into the air like golden, glowing butterflies. He wasn't alone, and...
The bells were in his hand.