❝Speak❞ - A Memoir (Book 1)

04 - Anthrophobia

Chapter 4

***

The light of the sun woke me at a little past dawn the next day. I sat up and yawned looking around my new room. My stomach growled loudly, snapping me out of my newfound thoughts. And so, I got out of bed to try to find something to eat.

As I trekked around the house in my new shoes, I remembered Kakashi and wondered where he was. I decided to search for him, in that I found that his room was empty and so was the rest of the house. There was no food and there was no Kakashi.

Feeling scared and hungry and decided to leave to find something to eat and maybe Kakashi also. As I exited Kakashi’s home, I found my greatest fear; there were people everywhere.

Because of my newfound discovery, I contemplated going back into the house, but decided against it. I had nothing to eat and Kakashi was nowhere to be found.

So I walked alongside the house to avoid the people and eventually I was able to step onto a road where there was almost no one. I scanned the dirt road and finally decided to go right, where there continued to be less people.

I continued to stare at my shoes in order to not attract attention as I walked toward a large building with an even larger mountain with faces on it. This is a weird village… I thought remembering the many times I had been hit for simply walking on the street. Here, no one seemed to care who I was.

Just as my heart began to calm down, I walked right into something soft yet hard, well, I was sure my head hit something hard. I looked up to see what I had hit, but in front of me was a small purple haired girl that looked about my age, maybe older.

“I’m so sorry, are you okay??” she asked, looking apologetic. At first I was shocked that she had asked, but then my heart reminded me that people were dangerous, and that I could not trust them. So I got up quickly and ran the opposite way of the large building and the mountain with faces.

After a few seconds of running, I noticed that I was running to where the many people were, so made a sharp turn right into a forest. It wasn’t really a forest, but it sure had a lot of trees.

***

A knock at the door signaled a visitor, making the old man at his desk raise his head from his abundant number of paperwork.

“Hokage-sama, I came with the report” said the masked man entering the room at the sound of the old man’s voice.

The old man smiles and replies; “What did you find??”

“Quite a few things actually” says the masked man holding up a sheet of paper.

“Well, continue” says the man, putting down his stamp.

“Right, well, her name is Ririn and she appears to be a mute” says the masked man referring to the sheet of paper which he hands to the Hokage. “So basically, it wasn’t that she refused to say anything to Ibiki, it’s that she couldn’t” explained the masked man.

“I see, well, go back and see if you can find out anything else” says the Hokage, putting the sheet of paper into one of his drawers.

“Yes, Hokage-sama” replies the masked man, leaving the room.

***

I was once again scared as I frantically tried to get out of the forest. I had no idea where I was and didn’t have the urge to find out. So following the light of the sun, I was able to get out, but only to find a group of people holding sharp objects.

They looked around my age, though they may have been older. Only one of them was an adult and he seemed to be monitoring them, and that’s when I realized that the girl I had bumped into was there.

I watched her for a few seconds to find that she was looking at someone else, a blonde boy in an orange hooded jacket. He didn’t seem to notice her though. Frowning, I looked at the others and saw that one particular boy had more sharp objects than the rest and he looked like he was about to throw them right at me.

Shocked, I looked around myself and gladly noticed that there were target post things on certain trees. After a few seconds, the boy threw the sharp objects and they all hit the targets on the trees, not a single one missed.

Fascinated and impressed, I continued to watch as the blonde boy came up looking determined with his handful of sharp star shaped things.

When he threw the stars, I suddenly had a bad feeling about the way he threw them. Just as the thought came, one of stars landed right in front of me, barely an inch away from my new shoes.

My heart jumped immediately and I made my escape, but unfortunately, I happened to step on a fallen branch along the way.

I had barely made it out of the forest when I spotted Kakashi. He was with another man and it looked like they were doing something with their hands that I couldn’t see, so I decided to move closer.

Just as I stepped out of the forest, Kakashi turned and looked right at me. “Ririn, what’re you doing here?!” he asked, sounding startled. It looked like he pinned the other man’s thumb and he immediately walked over to me and grabbed my hand.

“I was looking everywhere for you!” hearing that was one of the most surprisingly shocking things I had ever heard in my entire 6 years living. He was looking for me?!

I was too busy being surprised that he was actually looking for me that I didn’t notice that he was taking me closer and closer to the weird man in all green with strangely thick eyebrows.

When I had finally noticed, I tried my best to get Kakashi’s attention. Luckily for me, he quickly turned, but then I had to find a way to tell him that I was hungry. I made a motion as if I were eating and tried to imitate holding some sort of dish. He didn’t seem to understand though.

I sighed and tied again; he still didn’t get it. “I think she’s trying to say she’s hungry” said the man in green, which utterly startled me, and I bet if I could, I would’ve squealed. But either way, I smiled and pointed at the man while staring up at Kakashi.

He finally understood; “So what do want to eat??” he asked looking down at me. Meanwhile, the first thing that I thought of was the noodle type thing that I ate the day before that I had forgotten the name of. All I remembered was that it was good.

So finally I got an idea and crouched down and began drawing the image I had in my mind. When I was done, they were both staring at it oddly. “You want Ramen??” asked Kakashi motioning to the little drawing I made in the sand.

Ramen!! That’s what it was. Knowing that, I smiled and nodded, glad to know that he knew what I meant. And so we went to what was called the Ichiraku ramen stand for ramen, and again I had to point to whatever Kakashi had in order to be able to order.

But that wasn’t what bothered me about that day’s trip. It was the fact that there were a countless number of people at the stand that day. Now I know that’d I’d probably be able to count them all, but it wasn’t a very rational moment for me. So in order for me to avoid the other people, I had to stay close to Kakashi, and at some point in our lunch, I think he noticed that I didn’t have the least bit of liking for people, or maybe I should say humans.

Later that afternoon after we got back from Ichiraku’s, he asked me a question which I wasn’t exactly ready to answer at that moment. He asked if I was anthrophobic, but the problem was, I had no idea what that was.

So after much explaining, I finally answered that yes, I was desperately afraid of people.