The Dreams

Chapter Thirty Nine

Running out of the house because she did not know how to deal with the fact that he had kept such a huge secret from her might not have been the best idea. Rina's jacket was not made for walking around in January temperatures.

She could not bring herself to turn back, not just yet. She knew she needed to think things through before she could face Hibiki again. To think she needed to walk.

As long as she kept moving she thought she could tolerate the cold for a while. It would be a good way to motivate herself to focus on the problem at hand instead of pushing it to the side. She could not go back until she knew what she was going to do about what she knew now.

His whole identity was a lie. She fell in love with that lie. Everything she thought she knew about him was in question now. She did not know where to begin.

She needed to rethink everything about her life the last few months. Everything from the moment she met him was suspect now. He kept this from her from the start and it was not an innocent little lie of the sort that could be easily forgotten or overlooked. He misled her into believing he was an ordinary human like her.

Except...

It turned out she never was an ordinary human. She had no idea about her past life until recently though so that did not count against her. As soon as she knew she told him. She had been honest and he had deliberately hidden the truth from her.

The more she thought the more questions she had, and she realized she did not have the ability to answer those questions herself. If she ever wanted to get answers she would have to take the chance and ask Hibiki, and hope that he would be honest with her.

Getting answers would mean going back, and doing that right now felt like she would need to ask him to forgive her from storming out like she did. In her opinion, she felt completely justified to react the way she did, but she had no illusions about their next conversation going well if she was not willing to present some form of peace offering.

Her anger and frustration had her trapped. She could not swallow the idea of going back while she felt like this, but she knew it would take a long time for her to start to calm down unless she started to get some answers and a better understanding of why things came to be this way.

By this point, she had wandered quite a way through the neighborhood and she realized she had not been paying attention to where she was walking and was not entirely confident she knew her way back from this point. This only added further fuel to her frustration. Tears pricked at her eyes and she blinked them back before they had a chance to spill down her cheeks. The last thing she wanted to do in this cold was start crying.

She managed to stop the tears for the time being, but she still ended up with a stuffy nose and a bit of a headache. The last thing she wanted to do now was continue wandering around aimlessly to try to regain her bearings.

If she could just get her feelings to settle down a little bit she knew she would be able to think more clearly. In the mean time, she could do herself a favor and not make herself any more lost.

A short way up the street she saw a bus stop shelter. She made her way to it, her pace slower now that her frustration was tempered by feelings of helplessness, and sat down on the bench. The bus stop was deserted like most of the rest of the neighborhood. Everyone was either at work or school at this time of day so no one was around to judge her from huddling on the bench with her knees pulled up to her chest.

The bus stop shelter did provide a bit of a buffer between Rina and the wind, but now that she was not moving she noticed just how cold the air was more so than before. Without moving she just was not generating enough body heat to ward off the chill.