Ink Stained

37: forgiveness*

Pai nodded, giving her two thumbs up. She turned and left, leaving the classroom and trying to figure out a way to get to the roof of the multi-purpose hall. It was only when she was already out of the classroom did she consider that perhaps Shin had just flown there, and there was no way to the roof from inside the building.

She shook her doubts away. Since she was already going, she might as well try.

There were no students inside the school buildings during the lunch hour. Everyone wanted to go outside to enjoy the fresh, cool air, while Pai was reluctant to leave the building because of the cold of the Yori Chiisai that waited on the outside. Some students still remained in the classrooms, with the doors wide open to welcome any others wanting to come in. The noise from inside each room was loud enough that it would have scared her off, if she ever had the thought to enter. She didn't like loud places.

The multi-purpose hall was completely empty when she closed the door behind her. It was weird to walk in and not see either the boys' or the girls' basketball teams practising, balls dribbling and swishing through the nets. The bleachers for the audience were clean, with hardly a mark to show any dirt. The wooden floors, with the white lines of the basketball game layout painted on, were scrubbed clean, shining as the sun's light reflected off the window lining the top of hall close to the roof.

She looked up, and realized for the first time that the multi-purpose hall was a really, really tall building, with a roof so high she had to tilt her head all the way back to look at it.

A wave of dizziness rolled through her, and she stumbled back against the door when her legs buckled. She swallowed thickly as bile rose up at the back of her throat and as she uses his momentum against him and rolls them backwards. When they stop it is with her arm around his neck in a chokehold, her right foot pressing in his stomach, hard, and keeping him on the ground half-on half-off of her with his arms pinned under his back as she lay under him, staring up at the harsh white lights of the training room. The adrenaline of the fight had begun to build up in her, but it isn't enough. She still feels dead on the inside as the nausea, and the image of white walls, a white floor with dark blue mats over it, and a white ceiling with swinging fluorescent lights faded away.

She blinked and lifted a hand to her face, covering her eyes for a moment, her breath trapped somewhere in her chest. It felt like a memory, but more like a dream than something she was remembering. The images that flashed through her mind's eye came so quick and vanished an instant later, she couldn't even be sure of what it was she'd just seen.

She stopped thinking about that as soon as her hand touched something wet on her face. She brought it back down to stare at the blood painted across her hand. It looked like she had slashed open her palm. She reached up with both hands and wiped at the blood dripping down her nose, leaning forward so that it didn't fall on her shirt, but on the floor.

She was bleeding again.

She pulled out a white handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt, dabbing at her nose and lips. She was about to tilt her head back to slow the blood, but stopped herself when she realized the blood would only go back up her nose. She didn't want to gag on her own blood.

The thought alone made her nauseas.

She wanted to know why she bled every time she started to remember something. The day that everything happened with the Torimaku, she bled so much that her pillow was covered in it. This morning she'd woken up with a small trickle leaking from her nose onto her hair, despite not remembering anything besides the vague sense of an unfeeling numbness, then a blinding panic, a paralysing fear, and sudden fury aimed at something – no, someone. She was pretty sure that towards the end of the dream she was angry at someone for promising to do something, and not keeping that promise.