Work Text:
Sayori is out of breath when she ducks into the hallway, sagging with her back against the wall.
Tag could be a physically strenuous game. Especially against Yuri, who had an advantage in length, and Natsuki, who had an advantage in overall ferocity. Sayori pants openly for a moment, palms flattened against the wall behind her, eyes shut.
Tag was a typical school activity.
Sayori opens her eyes.
Everything is quiet; the sun streams through windows on the opposite side of the hall, catching flecks of pep-rally glitter left behind on the off-beige linoleum flooring beneath her feet. She couldn’t hear any excited, tag-like noises...
A full minute passes, and Sayori decides she’s thirsty, and reasonably safe from being caught, and turns down the hallway in search of a drinking fountain.
The silence barely eases up as she walks, shoes making a faint tap-tap-tap against the plastic-like floor. Idly, she stares out the windows; rows and rows of the same view of the courtyard, green trees, fading brown benches, a decorative statue of the school mascot half-reclaimed by local mosses.
Idly, she turns her head from the view to look to the other side; rows upon rows of numbered lockers, interspersed by closed classroom doors, the windows covered by blinds, as usual. Quiet.
The noises are Sayori’s shoes on linoleum, are yellow-fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
Sayori closes her eyes.
The classroom doors are shut, one passing two passing three passing four. There are no water fountains yet.
The lighting is harsh. It’s the way it bounces off the tiles, the lockers, already yellowing - there’s no escaping it.
Sayori opens her eyes.
The lighting is harsh.
The noises are Sayori’s shoes on linoleum, are yellow-fluorescent lights buzzing constantly overhead, are muffled behind the classroom doors.
Conversation? Lecture? Maybe. Sayori doesn’t press her ear to the doors, eight passing nine passing ten, but the murmurs promising speech ebb and flow through her anyway.
Eleven passing twelve passing thirteen.
The lockers are all uniform, tall and gray and metal. They reflect the yellowing light in an unflattering manner, pricking Sayori’s pupils with thin, painful spears.
Sayori blinks, rubbing at her eyes. Painful. She would like to find a water fountain.
There are no water fountains yet.
The windows to her right display a bright blue sky and green grass and tall trees and fading benches, and Sayori turns away. The courtyard isn’t interesting. Nobody is outside.
Murmurs in the classroom doors ebb and flow.
Sayori’s shoes tap against the flooring like a metronome. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
There’s tape on the windows from drawings, posters, art class paintings. Those are interesting. Sayori’s head turns to the right, observing FOR TREASURER and bowls of fruit and skulls, FOR VICE and Dragon Ball, FOR PRESIDENT.
Light glances off of the lockers.
“Monika?” Sayori says into the air, feeling eyes burning into the back of her jacket.
She turns around, but nobody is there; just windows to the courtyard to the left and lockers and doors to the right. Monika had shooed them out of the clubroom to play. Sayori’s shoulders and the back of her neck are burning, and she turns in a full circle three times, frowning.
There are no water fountains yet.
Sayori wonders if she should turn back and play.
The intercom overhead fizzles, pops, gives a feedback drone, then goes dead.
Sayori is thirsty, so Sayori walks forward.
“Monika?”
Sayori’s shoulders prickle and burn so Monika could not more clearly be not in the clubroom, but Monika isn’t in the hall, either. The posters are less interesting now and the lockers beat in and out of her vision on a pulse with her stride, flanking murmurs on both sides, louder.
Louder.
Almost speech and not words at all. Meaningless. Sayori’s ear is pressed to the door (27) and cannot make out a single word, just the flow of it.
Ebb and flow. Sayori is in the classroom under halogen lights, squinting uncomfortably, seated in a firm wooden desk. The carpet is thin and smells like the back cover of a book and the lecturer is a brown desk and a smeared face in a sweater, ebb and flow.
Sayori opens her eyes.
There are no water fountains yet.
“Monika?”
Monika must be somewhere. She cannot, after all, be nowhere. Glinting lockers pass by and muttering doors pass by and yellow-fluorescent lights buzz incessantly, shoes tap, no water, no Monika.
The hallway.
Sayori spins. She means to see behind her but she starts and doesn’t stop, twirling lightly around on her heel. She sees, of course, that the hallway behind her is empty except of all the things she had seen. The hallway is very long and forward and the end of it is not in sight, forward, backward, window covered in paper, door locked.
Strange. Not strange. Schools had doors and windows, Sayori walked past them.
No water fountain yet.
The classroom 54 has a window that isn’t covered by blinds, thin and rectangular and crossed by wiry black lines. The room inside is dark. Sayori presses her face to the glass.
The room inside is flashing, the projector rolling onto the whiteboard. Sayori is inside watching the movie, pen removed for taking notes, but there is nothing to take notes on. There are colors and they are there and not and yes and no and Sayori cannot look at anything else. There are colors. There are too many colors. The classroom is dark and Sayori is sitting obediently and there are so many more colors than she knew and ebb and flow. The teacher will not turn the movie off. Ebb and flow.
Sayori~.
The window was never open in the first place, and faint colors flicker suspiciously over the white blinds as Monika calls her name, from somewhere.
“Monika?”
Sayori asks, nervously. It’s definitely a question. This hallway is so long.
Sayori.
Sayori is running because something thin and cold trailed up the back of her, and she’s thirsty and wants to find a water fountain and Monika wants her to run. Sayori runs until she crashes onto her hands and knees, which doesn’t hurt, but she is trembling.
Sayo... ri~.
Sayori stands up and reaches for the door of a locker, fingers shaking, and the door rattles shut behind her just as something else shuffles by, darkened shape passing by the slits in the locker, lopsided footsteps scraping further and further away.
A shuddering breath leaves her.
Sayori is in a locker now, and the air is hot and suddenly heavy as her fingers trail slowly down the inside of the door, as if she forgot what purpose she had for touching it.
The inside of the locker is hot. The metal her back is pressed into is trembling.
Sayori~.
The sides of the locker brush against her shoulders, and Sayori dimly wonders if it is getting smaller or if she is getting bigger.
The air is hot and heavy and cloying and sweet, and Sayori takes a heavy breath, dazed as she reaches out for the door again. The door is quivering and soft and her fingers and thumb fumble for the trigger, the knob, handle, the inside of the door is so soft and the walls are pressing in on her gently, hot, hot air, can’t breathe. Rattle. Soft. Hot.
Push.
Sayori heaves in breaths of air on her back in the hallway, papers taped on papers all cross the left wall and a glinting open locker on the right, air. Air.
No footsteps, no water fountain, yellow-fluorescent lights buzzing maddeningly into Sayori’s eyes, dizzy even on the ground. Fingers scrape weakly against linoleum.
Papers on papers, covered in eyes, covered in words. The lights are buzzing and pulsing, barely, then not barely, as Sayori stares and her eyes water and the buzzing pulses and the light pulses and the floor pulses. The papers do not, but Sayori isn’t looking at them; they are looking at her.
Light pulses.
Something dangles from the ceiling, either side of the light, but Sayori isn’t looking at them as they touch the sides of her face, tipping her head gently from side to side as the light pulses. Same rhythm. Sayori’s eyes stay, fixated, as her neck ceases to resist.
Sa... yo... ri~.
Something dangling slips under her arms, hips, knees; all as limp as the rest of her. Sayori isn’t going to walk anymore. Sayori sees the light, but not the eyes, and not the words, and not what is grabbing at her, what is laying a heavy arm over even breaths, chest rising, falling, pulsing.
Sayori ebbs and flows, docile.
Something dangling tightens, draws her up slowly towards the ceiling, and Sayori ebbs and flows, docile. The light pulses. There’s nothing else for Sayori to see.
It opens for her, curls itself around her, slots her perfectly into hot and heavy and pulsing, and Sayori ebbs and flows - docile - as her vision goes black.
“Sayori!”
Sayori opens her eyes, and sees Monika.
“There you are,” chirps Monika, who is always a welcome sight, especially when she’s carrying a water bottle. Stepping cheerfully towards Sayori, she passes the flask into the other student’s hands at the same time she deftly loops her fingers through Sayori’s collar ribbon, tugging her down the hallway with a no-nonsense air. “I was wondering where you went, you know! Natsuki and Yuri finished playing ages ago!”
“Huh,” says Sayori, mostly preoccupied with taking a drink (why was she so thirsty?) than in letting what Monika said really sink in. “Sorry, Monika, I think I got lost.”
“In a straight hallway?” Monika giggles. “You really do need your directions checked, huh!”
“I guess,” Sayori says, bashfully.
The courtyard to her left is sunny, wind blowing gently through the branches of the trees, but there are still no people in it.
“Come read the poem I wrote, okay?” Monika asks, eyes aglow with excitement, delight, (adoration). “It’s for you. I made it for you.”
Pulsing.
“Okay,” agrees Sayori, a smile spreading across her face from somewhere she doesn’t know at all.