Ink Stained

55: nightmares are memories*

    悪夢は思い出です

"Since when are you afraid of heights?" Haru asked, an amused smirk growing on his face.

"Wipe that grin off your face." Shiori snapped. Her voice trembled ever so slightly as she clung to the armrests of the airplane seats with a vice-like grip. The tremor dampened the bite of her words. "You look like a lecherous pervert."

"If you fall, I'll catch you."

"Shut. Up."

Pai continued to stare vacantly out at the tarmac airstrip out the window. The plane had just started moving. It was going so fast that everything in sight was melding into a blur of grey with steady stripes of yellow. She began to open and close her mouth repeatedly as the plane started its ascent, slowly, and the pressure in her ears plummeted.

Barely a quarter of her attention registered the exchange between Haru and Shiori, who sat to her left on two of the four seats they occupied. Ryosuke sat on Haru's side, ignoring them with a pair of headphones over his ears and a book in his hand.

"Shiori-hime, you need to breathe." Haru continued, still teasing and digging his own grave.

"Shut up, moron."

"Well, you are forgetting to breathe." He pointed out. His voice was gratingly bright and chipper, as if he was oblivious of the fact that they were in a flying metal cage that could spontaneously combust at any given moment.

It was Shiori, though, who seemed all the more intensely aware of the fact than anyone else.

"Maybe there's some Ayakashi that can do it," Shiori hissed through clenched teeth, nails digging into the armrests. "But humans can't 'forget' to breathe, dumbass."

Of all things, it was the sound of Shiori's nails scratching against the material of the armrests that brought Pai back from staring out the window with her mind completely blank and empty. She had been wandering in a perpetual daze ever since leaving Aihara's office, working on autopilot to get her through the days.

Not only was there the confusion of dealing with everything Aihara had said and implied, there was the disturbing fact that Kuniumi could, essentially, possess Pai whenever she wanted to. She'd made her feel calm enough to handle Aihara without running, screaming out of the office. For that she was grateful.

But then she slipped.

Somehow, control of her own body momentarily slipped, and gave Kuniumi enough leeway to speak directly to Aihara, through Pai. She couldn't understand how it was possible that she could lose control of her body like that. Whenever she tried to get Kuniumi to tell her how, so she could prevent it from happening again, Kuniumi simply deflected every question.

For the first time since she'd acknowledged Kuniumi's presence in her mind, she realized that despite her interests occasionally aligning with her own, Kuniumi was still someone – something else. She had her own past, her own secrets. Her own plans. If those plans involved her, involved using Pai's body like her own, there was no way Kuniumi would admit it, or tell her how to stop it from happening.

Stupidly enough, Pai hadn't told anyone about what Aihara said to her, either.

She felt horrible that the number of things she was keeping secret was growing. It was like the secrets were trucks that were thrown at her, piling up on top of each other and getting heavier the longer she remained silent. But she didn't know how she was supposed to explain what happened even if she tried telling someone. She had no idea what Aihara wanted to tell her, and until she got back from this trip, she wouldn't know.