Ink Stained

20: shinobu*

She was dressed simply now, in a pair of loose red pyjama trousers and a matching long-sleeved shirt with a sweater on top of it, and a heavy white-and-black patterned haori thrown over her shoulders at the last minute as she had quietly snuck out of her room.

Despite all this already, she knew she still wouldn't feel any warmer away from the wall without layering up even more. She didn't know how to keep the cold at bay, and after almost a year like this, she had given up, just trying to make do how she could. Her increased sensitivity to cold wasn't normal, she knew, but no one knew what to do about it besides wrapping her up in blankets until only the top of her head was visible.

Haru did that once. She was not amused.

Her white braid fell over her shoulder as she shifted to a more comfortable position. She idly reached up to tug it forward, and looked down at the silver ends of her hair, twisting the braid around between her fingers. It was tied off with her usual dark blue silk ribbon that she kept solely for the purpose of keeping her hair in a tameable braid down her back.

She couldn't quite recall when or where she got it, only that she had had it for a long time. She stared down at the ribbon, dimly noting that she was looking at it but not really seeing it, as her mind drifted.

"Are you –" she hesitates. "Are you....sure you don't remember what happened, Shii-chan?"

Shiori's gaze slides away as she picks up the pencil and starts scribbling in her exercise book again. "I told you, I don't remember. Same as you. It's not like I haven't tried, but I just – don't, I guess." She shrugs, nonchalant in a way Pai can't be. It would work, too, if her shoulders weren't so tense. "Maybe we're not supposed to remember.

Pai isn't convinced.

She turns back to her own exercise book, staring at the catch-up worksheets the teachers printed for her due to her absence from school. She stares, and she wonders what's the point in doing any of it.

Pai glanced up when she heard the door slide open, up ahead. She pressed herself closer to the wall and hunkered down. She knew no one would see her where she sat behind the row of neatly-clipped shrubs planted a few feet from the wall – it was why she chose this spot to hide out at – but still she ducked, paranoia getting the better of her as she kept her eyes focused on a single blade of grass by her foot and sitting as still as possible.

There was a loud wooden clacking making its way across the floorboards of the house. Pai guessed it was one of the Tsukumogami carrying out their duties. A minute later, maybe two, the door slid closed again. She waited a few more seconds before she allowed her tensed muscles to relax.

Even though they were just animated objects that Kouta had contracted to help keep things in order at the house, the Tsukumogami could still get her in trouble by going and telling someone that Pai wasn't in her room. She honestly wouldn't be surprised in the least if Kanou had already tasked one of them with the specific duty of keeping an eye on her.

She wasn't supposed to be outside, at least not for another week. She had already spent two weeks recuperating at Dokokokai Hospital before she was released. Then, Kanou declared her be, essentially, bedridden for another week. Even after that, she was to avoid any 'strenuous activities' for yet another week before she could even think of returning back to her usual chores around the house.

It was overkill, in her opinion, but Kanou was the healer, and he used the power of the human doctor's 'advice' behind him to enforce her mandatory bed rest.