Ink Stained

☯ Season 2 | 33: paint it red*

Like your friend. Longwei. He's white. You said he likes me.

The walls and the ceiling and the floor and the stone and even the lights. They're all white.

It's like how it was when you were with him, isn't it?

"The world was white."

Do you still want to paint the white red?

There is no response.

Another coil of worry tightens in the pit of her stomach. For so long, she has wanted Kuniumi to leave her alone. To disappear. Now that Kuniumi isn't answering, she is hollow. It is like something is missing, and she can't figure out what it is, how to fill it in so she doesn't feel that emptiness anymore.

She wants to cry, to kick and scream and cry until her ears shatter, until Kuniumi answers her. Her lips tighten to a thin line as she fights to control herself. She can't let the others see her for as mad as she is, see her as weak. They are like wolves. They will use it against her. She can't let that happen. If she lets them have even a sliver of a chance to, they will torment her more than So Fu already has just to feel powerful, and strong.

She tilts her head up as she drags in a deep breath and holds it before expelling it in a slow, measured stream. "The world was white, and now it is dirty and black."

Kuniumi said that to her once. When Pai asked if she wanted to return it to how it once was, Kuniumi didn't answer.

Just like she doesn't now.

She hops off the treadmill and grabs her towel and a small plastic bottle of water from the low bench pushed up against the wall. Then she takes up a loose t-shirt that is the same shade of dreary black as her workout clothes. She pulls the t-shirt over her head, turns, and makes for the double-entrance doors, heading for her cell. She wants to take a nap before dinner. She hasn't been getting enough sleep, even without the nightmares plaguing her.

The other trainees who don't wilfully ignore her as she walks quickly shuffle away, like she is a disease they are trying to avoid catching. She ignores them as she walks. None of them matter. Nothing, really, matters anymore. Not since she found out that the person she was here to protect never needed it in the first place.

She figures that the correct term for the state she has found herself in since then is dubbed as having 'lost the will to live'. It is an apt description. Not only has she lost the will to live, she thinks that she has also forgotten what 'live' means.

It's...weird. She knows what it is, to want to live, to want to see the next day, but the knowing of it, the meaning of it, slips between her fingers like water whenever she focuses on it too hard.

As she walks towards the doors, she passes by Rikuto and his sister, Noriko. They are talking to each other. Noriko looks irritated by what he is saying, but their voices are pitched low enough that no one can hear them. Rikuto is in all black, as usual, while Noriko is in fitting grey tights and a matching-coloured slim tee. It isn't unusual to see the adopted siblings together. It is odd if they aren't.

Ever since they arrived Rikuto, the older of the two, has proven to be fiercely protective of his sister. It's a little surprising that none of the handlers or Agents have thought to separate the two. Or maybe they did try, and it didn't end well.