Ink Stained

47: safety*

安全性

She couldn't say it.

The words were there at the tip of her tongue, hanging by frayed tethers. But they wouldn't come out. She couldn't make the words come out, no matter how many times she opened and closed her mouth in fishing gapes, waiting for her voice to work when she knew that it never would. Not, at least, to say what she wanted to.

As she struggled to say something, her body quaked with cold. Before she was fully aware of what was happening, Shin had pulled her to him again. They ended up with her sitting close to him again, enclosed in his arms. He said it was to keep her warm. From the tremors that had even her lips shaking, she knew he was right.

Shin was leaning back on the elm tree with his right leg propped up. She sat right next to him, nestled by his side, her back to his chest. He had both arms wrapped around her, one around her torso and the other around her shoulders. The warmth from his body seeped into hers from how close together they were, chasing away the cold.

They were outside, in the snow, and maybe going back in the house would have been easier, but she got the feeling that neither of them really wanted to go back inside just yet. She doubted Shin was uncomfortable, considering he didn't feel the cold as she did and he spent a good portion of his time outdoors anyway. Settled this close to him, with his arms around her, she didn't feel the cold so bitingly that it chased her indoors.

Somehow, she managed to get past focusing on the red fires burning in her cheeks enough to be fairly comfortable as she looked down at the fine hairs along Shin's forearm, tracing the veins just beneath the skin with her eyes. She kept her hands curled tight in her lap, unable to trust that she wouldn't be overcome with the urge to touch his arm, to see how it felt under the pads of her fingers.

If she wasn't lying to herself, she could just barely admit that this wasn't the first time she'd had to quell this urge.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he finally said, after minutes of silence had stretched before them. "I'm not forcing you to."

She shook her head, eyelids sliding closed before she snapped them open again. Exhaustion was creeping into her body. She was tired. She wanted to sleep, but not yet. She needed to say something.

"It's not that," she mumbled. "It's – I just – I don't know how – " she pursed her lips as they twitched, frustrated with her inability to just speak. "It's all jumbled up in my head. It doesn't make sense, and then it does, and then it doesn't, and I don't know if I can trust what I see in my dreams. They're dreams, but they're – I don't know." She huffed out a sigh of irritation and muttered, "For all I know, I could just be going insane."

She trusted him, that much she knew. Still, she didn't want him to know about the voice – about Kuniumi. She didn't want anyone to know, at least until she found out exactly who, and what, Kuniumi was.

Kuniumi, and however her existence was possible, wasn't the only problem.

Some part of her still fervently hoped that the dreams of killing were just that; dreams. How else was she to explain the existence of this 'So Fu', when she didn't even know exactly what, or who, they were? How else was she supposed to explain what they did, and why they did it? How could such an invisible entity as them exist in the first place? Everything about the world had gotten to a point where nothing could hide without leaving behind any traces.

No. She wouldn't tell anyone anything until she figured it out herself. She needed to know what she was going to say before she said it. She needed some kind of proof to show for it. She would just make a fool of herself if she didn't have the answers people were surely going to ask her. Maybe they wouldn't even believe her, what with how little she knew of anything.