Ink Stained

09: hiss*

I'm...I'm going to die, she thought dimly, frowning, almost confused by the thought, by the idea of it, how both real and impossible it seemed. I'm going to die.

Through her dimming vision, she spied a dark shape behind the Oni, outside the dusty windows. An instant later, there was a loud crash of glass as the windows of the warehouse were broken through.

Unable to move, she just barely managed to turn her head to the side as the shower of glass fell over her. One particularly large curve of glass struck her cheek, drawing blood. It dribbled down her chin as she struggled not to succumb to the blackness calling to her, the idyllic darkness of unconsciousness.

She – she wanted to. It would be so easy. She was so tired, so, so tired, and the darkness that beckoned to her every time she blinked was so tantalizing, so welcoming. Her eyelids drooped heavily, and she couldn't bring herself to force her eyes open again. She thought she was finally going to fall away into the darkness. She was exhausted from all the running, the powerful fear in her blood, everything.

She just wanted it to stop.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she gave in. The pain would stop, the fear would drain away. That was what the darkness told her, in its simple quiet. If she was going to die, being unconscious as it happened will be better than having to live through those final moments, wasn't it?

When her vision winked in again, her eyes pulling open almost against her will in a final bid to see, she didn't understand what she was looking at.

Shin stood over her, back to her, twin katana blades drawn and nestled comfortably in his hands. She could just see the flicker of an ethereal, white light fading away as Shin drew his wings in. A light sprinkling of the glass he just stood through dusted his black hair, shimmering like diamonds in the sky as he stands under the lights. Hostility and deadly intent flowed from his silent form as Shin stood facing down the Oni, waves of barely leashed anger coming from him that even she could feel in her quickly numbing state.

He was the most beautiful thing she was ever seen.

Shin moved, just enough that she was in his periphery while still facing the monster, ready to leap into an attack or defence at a moment's notice. He stood mostly in front of her, shielding her with his body.

"Can you stand?" his voice was frigidly calm despite the way it seemed to double and echo in itself.

For a moment, all she could do was stare. Shin's form seemed to glow with a thin layer of dense but blurry red light that outlined his firm body – she couldn't tell if she was imagining that light or not. Despite his casual stance, she could see the tension in every muscled line of his body. All it would take was one small movement and he would whirl into action.

She wondered what that would look like.

He glanced back at her quickly when she didn't immediately respond, and – his eyes.

They were not the deep blue she knew. They were a burning crimson that glowed with a life, a fire, of their own. The effect they had on the angled planes of his face was beautiful and sharply inhuman, striking a chord deep in her, and not at all settling to her already completely frayed nerves.

This was Hayashi Shin, who she had grown so used to around Ayashi House. But that person was a seemingly ordinary man who was never too far from his blades. She had been around him for a whole year now, and she had never seen him like this.

This person in front of her, she didn't know. This unrestrained, lethal edge to him was wholly new and unfamiliar. She knew what he was, she (thought she) knew what he was capable of, but she...she had never seen him like this. It had never struck her so completely as it did now, in this moment, just how not human he was.