Ink Stained

65: death god*

Terrified. She was terrified.

She hated seeing that look in her eyes. Being scared meant being weak, and weakness was never a good thing. It reminded her too much of how helpless she felt whenever she attempted to remember what happened to her before she came to Ayashi House after she went missing.

You're never going to figure it out on your own, you know. You need us.

She jerked upright when the voice spoke again, her eyes wide as saucers when she saw the woman staring back at her instead of her own face in the mirror. She saw her clearly now, the reflected image of the woman in the mirror unhindered by the haze of the white gale. Her heart stilled in her chest, body freezing as though it had been touched by the hand of an ice god. A torrent of clashing emotions waged war for attention in her heart, so painful that she felt as though she could cry from it.

Fear, relief, sadness, joy, sorrow...they all crashed into her so overwhelmingly that she stumbled back a step as she stared at the woman standing in the mirror.

"Mi – " her heart ached with such longing as she lifted a hand toward the reflection in the mirror. "Mitti."

She drew in a sharp breath that made her feel like her throat was coated in ice, and she thought she was going to scream, but the sound never made it past its origin deep in her chest. Instead, her throat suddenly constricted, as if someone's iron fist was crushing her windpipe. She stumbled, her hands to her neck as she struggled to breathe in, gasping and expanding her lungs as big as she could but never being able to get enough oxygen into her system.

Do not scream.

Her back hit the door to one of the shower cubicles. Knees weak and chest burning from the lack of oxygen, she slid down the door and landed with a thump on the cold wooden floor as her hands loosened around her neck.

Black spots danced in front of her eyes, and she thought she was going to pass out. A white-hot flame torched her lungs, setting her body on fire. Her muscles shook with the effort to breathe. The walls of her throat were collapsing, falling in and blocking her airways.

Pai's eyes grew ever wider the closer she reached to the horrific realization that no matter how hard she tried, no matter how she scrabbled at her neck and gasped and choked, she simply could not breathe. She could hear the choked sounds she made as she gasped, but even that was muted behind the thundering rush of blood to her head.

Then, just as suddenly as it came, the suffocating band around her throat disappeared.

When the Chimei Yoki was talking to you through it last week. She gave you the clue to his true name.

"The – you mean Shii-chan?" Pai frowned. Did she mean her phone when she said 'gadget'?

Yes.

"How would she even know Shin-san's true name?"

She does not. She unwittingly gave you one piece of the puzzle. We have the other. It is you who must put it together and learn it.

"Tell me."

"How the – how do you know so much about me?"

The confusion in the woman was evident even before Kuniumi spoke again. It bothered Pai that she could feel that so instinctively. What did it mean? Why did it feel like she was so attuned to the every thought and emotion of this unknown, strange woman?