The Dreams

Chapter Forty Two

She was alone. The strange men took Hibiki and left her all alone. She could not stop them. No one thought she could do anything to help in this situation, and with the way she felt right now she was inclined to agree with that assessment. Even Hibiki told her not to do anything, not even to wait for him.

Rina did not want it to be that way. She knew she was better than this. Shock froze her in place and in thought. She felt nothing and her thoughts slowed to a sluggish crawl so she did not react at all for several minutes.

Then the despair came. Her legs buckled and she sat with jelly legs that could not lift her up from the floor. Being stuck like that did give her a chance to get her mind back in order.

At first, none of it felt real at all. She could easily just deny that anything had happened at all. Hibiki might as well be in the next room because it certainly made more sense than him being arrested and taken away to some strange place. Her mind strained to remember what the men had said. She knew it was something unusual that she had never heard before. Diyu. She had no idea what it meant other than it must have something to do with souls because they arrested him for interfering in the reincarnation of her soul.

As her thoughts started to thaw out she felt a bit guilty for being the reason Hibiki was arrested. She had never asked him to do the things he did to her soul, but she was here and she did care about him deeply and maybe he would not have been caught if he had not been here with her keeping and eye on her and making sure she did not suffer anymore because of what he did.

Her mind launched past working at a normal pace and started absolutely racing. Hibiki wanted her to live her life normally and not to waste her life away waiting for him to come back, but she knew that she would never be able to live with herself if she did that. She had to do something to help him.

She might be the only person that could help him. No one else was going to jump to his defense. She did not know how many other people knew the truth about him and she was not going to go around sharing his secret with random people in his life to find out. She was his best and possibly his only chance to get out of this. She needed to get to where he was being held so she could speak on his behalf. It might not be enough, but she had to try.

It had to count for something if the person possessing the soul he had tampered with wanted to speak in his defense. She knew doing so would be going against what he asked, but she did not think that she would be able to live any sort of normal life knowing that he was being held prisoner and possibly going to be punished for his mistake.

She suffered a lot over the past few months because he tried to bring Yuzuki back with her memories intact. She had to wonder if she would be the same person if she had a different soul, or if she still had the same soul but he had not tampered with it. There was no way for her to know, but she did know that her life as she knew it now only came about because of what he did.

Although she did suffer through a lot of hardships, in a way she did feel grateful to him for what he did. She liked who she was as a person, and if he had not altered the nature of her soul she might not be herself. If he had no interfered she might not have met him, and she could not imagine her life without him in it.

That settled it for her. She needed to find a way to go after him. There was no question about it. She had to get him back.

She realized she had no idea where to go or how to get there. Hibiki had been taken by men who did not see a need for using things like doors to enter and leave a room. There was no way she could even begin to guess how to follow them on her own. She needed someone with a much better understanding of the working of the world outside of common human knowledge.