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"S— Sumino-kun...? Are you here?" Nozomi stuttered, stumbling around the school cloaked in darkness. She moved her hand against the walls as the hallways warped around her, desperately trying to make her way through each room— searching for him.
Everything had been fine yesterday, hadn't it? The lights were all on then, and every corner of the school was filled with chatter or the mechanical whirring of the school's usual operations— sounds so mundane in the midst of shrieking sirens that they became her comfort.
Colored specs and noise filled her vision no matter what doors she opened, her eyes never seeming to adjust to the dead of night. Her blinded eyes, unable to find him in the dark. Unable to find him, when she swore she heard his voice only moments prior.
It was then when she remembered that she always wanted to play a game of hide and seek with the boy in the capsule. She remembered wanting to do what all the other kids did with the boy she liked the most. The boy that would protect her when no one else would. To close her eyes and count to ten and run around across the TRC, past emerald green trees and perfectly smoothed pavement. To trip and fall and be pulled back up by him, to be taken care of in a way that Mom or Dad or even that old lady couldn't match. He was the boy she wanted to patch up every wound of hers, no matter how unsightly they were, no matter how much blood oozed from it or how much she'd dampen his shirt with snot and tears, because he was the only one that would accept it. She... trusted Takkun, even if she didn't deserve to see her selfish fantasies in action. It was beyond cruel, the way she had molded his mind like wet clay on a pottery wheel— every indent and curve and imperfection and pain, right at her delicate fingertips. The thought of that selfish, bratty, good-for-nothing child enraged her even now, twisting her gut with self-loathing nausea.
She collided with something, warm and breathing, and a pair of arms loosely wrapped around her like a blanket in the cold. A blanket threatening to stir another deep, restful sleep in her, like the one she received last night.
"I found you, Kirifuji."
His voice cut through the dark, a pillar of light for her to take in her hands. The unsightly hands of a girl so pathetic and unlovable, that there was only one who could care about her. Carelessly, she let her head fall onto his chest, and then there was the smell.
Whether her eyes were closed or open, she couldn't see a thing, but she knew. She knew, even when she couldn't take even the slightest care to jerk her body out of his gentle grasp.
Takkun was caked in blood.