Ink Stained

15: long time no see*

When she was bored and wanted to sleep, she would often pick out one of the books her father was always reading, about politics, and soon after she would be out faster than a light. Her father is the one who carried her to her bedroom to sleep, doing it more time than she can count.

She swallows past the sudden lump in her throat, blinking furiously against the stinging in her eyes as she looks around her childhood home.

Shiori remembers how she was the one to ask her parents if they could move somewhere closer to her father's work. His office was far from the apartment, and sometimes catching the train back home would take too much since he always got off work late, so he would sleep in a capsule hotel more often than not. Shiori remembers, as a little girl, sitting at the kitchen table and having a lonely dinner while her mother watched the news on TV and cajoled baby Ryu to eat. She'd felt so sad and alone.

She'd known what she asked for was selfish of her, but she just wanted her family to be together, all of them, not just three of them while her father had to stay at the office instead of coming back to the warmth and comfort of home and his family.

Before long, and to her surprise because she hadn't thought her parents took her request seriously, they moved here, to this house. Pai lived a few blocks down the road from her, right up until she and her entire family disappeared three and a half years ago.

This...is weird. There's no one here, and it's so weird. She's used to someone always being at home. It's rare to find a moment when there's absolutely no one at home, and even though she hasn't looked through any of the other rooms in the house, she knows that she's alone here. She doesn't like it.

But, when she thinks about it, she can't say she's really all that surprised, for some reason. This place, her home – it's her subconscious mind. Wouldn't it be weird, then, if there were random strangers in her mind, even if they were just conjured and not real? But does that mean her subconscious mind and the state her mind is in while dreaming is different? She knows people turn up in her dreams, even if she can't remember their faces.

Shiori speeds up and walks quickly over to the grandfather clock that's almost hidden by the bookshelf. It's ticking, but...

The time is wrong, she thinks, confused .she remembered it was only a few minutes gone by six o'clock when she drank the jade water. From the slanting light thrown by the sinking sun, the day is clearly falling headfirst into night. But the clock says it's 12:07.

She gives the clock one final look as she turns her back on it and tries to ignore the phantom memories that play in her mind's eye, of her helping Ryu as he learned to walk, of chasing Ryu around this room, of giggling with Pai as they sat at the table and made an absolute mess of painting their nails.

I need to find her, she thinks, reminding herself of why she's here. I need to find the gap in this place to get to Pai, and get her out.

She looks around herself, a pit opening up in her stomach. She...she has no idea where to even start.

Panic at her own obliviousness seizes her heart in a vice grip, and she almost stumbles from how abruptly afraid she is, of failing, of what it will mean if this doesn't work. She drags in a deep breath and shoots it back out through her flared nostrils as she grits her teeth and stomps out of the living room, turns right, past the staircase, and heads straight for the front door because she doesn't know where else to start.