Ink Stained

63: kyoto, day six (1)*

She hadn't particularly wanted to go shopping. It was hard to walk on the streets knowing that the possibility of Midori doing the same, maybe even being just around the corner, was very real. The paranoia of it all was driving her crazy. All she wanted to do was lock herself in her room and cry endlessly because of what she dreamt last night – what she remembered.

Midori. Her sister. Wearing Agent's standard uniform, arguing with the boy in her memories that looked so like her, yet different at the same time.

But maybe the dream was just that; a dream. A horrible, devastating nightmare, but a dream. Conjured by the heaviness of the loss and grief and rejection she felt after seeing Midori in the streets, just a few feet ahead of her, and then losing her barely five seconds later. Maybe the dream had just been a dream, her mind's way of coping with the loss of it.

After all, it wasn't like her dreams were only memories. Sometimes she had regular, nonsensical dreams she didn't remember the next morning, or nightmares that's haunting claws stuck fast around her neck even if she didn't remember any details about them. Maybe she just projected her fear into her dreams, fear from the way Midori disappeared from the street the other day instead of saying anything to Pai.

The extent to which you go to deny something so clear and plain as day is astounding, Bibari. Kuniumi idly commented when Pai decided that she wouldn't jump to any unsound conclusions until she could remember every single detail of her time missing, until the gaping hole in her brain spilled over with memories.

How do I know you didn't just make me see that dream, like you made me see me punching you in the mirror but it didn't break?

Even as she'd demanded it, she knew that she was grasping at straws. She hadn't entirely ruled out the possibility, but she knew how unlikely it was. Not with how insistent Kuniumi was that she remember everything, and on her own. Kuniumi toyed with her senses – making her see, hear, and feel things that weren't real – but she never, ever did anything that could confuse Pai into thinking it was her memory if it was really just a delusion.

Kuniumi wanted her to remember, and it was the truth she wanted, not a figment of illusion.

We don't hate for no reason, she'd replied glibly, like it was supposed to be so obvious. Midori is just another inconsequential human to us. If not for you, for what she did, we would not look her way.

Numbness met her. That was all she could really feel.

Numb, and cold, and so empty that it was like she could fill herself up with every colourful thought and feeling in the world, yet still remain like a vast desert of nothing stretched out inside her. The numbness spread over her with icy fingers that danced along the nerves of her skin, dulling her volatile emotions just enough that she didn't crumble beneath the weight and scream in madness.

She knew it had nothing to do with Kuniumi's influence – this apathy, the indifference; it was all her own doing. The fact that she was able to do such a thing without Kuniumi's help spoke to the deeply ingrained fear that she was slowly turning – or returning – back to that Pai, the horrible person she was before amnesia swept into her life.

She didn't know how to stop it. She didn't know if she wanted to. She remembered how much less things hurt, when she was fully entrenching in this freezing numbness. She remembered how horrible things could get and how little it hurt her when they did, and she didn't know if she wanted to stop the numbness from crawling over her again.