Inside Your Mind

2 - Shinsou

You keep me up at night

Kaori Shinsou had trouble sleeping, as usual. She was tired, that wasn't the problem. She had no nightmares. She was just not able to turn off her brain for some reason. Thoughts kept racing through her head and she couldn't stop thinking and she couldn't sleep. They were stupid thoughts, too. Not even worrying. Just stupid thoughts. Kaori tossed and turned and then gave up.

She grabbed her phone from the night table and checked the time. It was 4 am. She would have to get up in two hours anyway and get ready for university. There was really no point in lying around and waiting. She might as well be as productive as she could. She closed her eyes and let out a loud and annoyed groan.

Then she opened her eyes and quickly sat up. She crawled out of her futon and turned on the lamp on her desk. There were a bunch of opened books and half-written essays lying around. Kaori had made it a habit to start her essays the first day they got them and finish them with minutes to spare. At least that way people couldn't say she should have started earlier.

She knew exactly Professor Aizawa wasn't buying it, but he seemed to get some sort of amusement out of her trying to be organized and repeatedly failing. She looked over the half-finished papers absent-mindedly. Maybe she could actually finish one ahead of time for once...?

Kaori shook her head to herself. No. Not like this. She couldn't go and write papers while she was still in her pajamas. Maybe she should just get dressed for university already. It wasn't like she was going to go back to sleep anyway.

With another sigh she got up from her desk and walked to her wardrobe. She grabbed a pair of knee-highs and some fresh underwear from her closet and then proceeded to grab some clothes from her pile on the floor. Kaori was glad at first when she realized she didn't need to wear her school uniform anymore, but she quickly found out that life had been much easier when there was one less thing to worry about.

So she stuck to wearing skirts and knee-high socks and blouses a lot of the time, simply because she was so used to herself looking like that. She just couldn't imagine anything else looking even remotely decent on her. She tried a few styles and had at this point assembled a wildly diverse range of outfits, but she still felt most comfortable in something that resembled a school uniform.

She quietly opened the door to her room and snuck outside through the hallway. Her parents would get insanely mad if they knew she hadn't slept again. Kaori had been telling them her insomnia was fine again, mostly so she didn't have to take the sleeping pills her doctor would prescribe for her. They made her sleep like a baby, but she hated the side effects that caused some random memory gaps in her brain. And she really couldn't use that while she was in the middle of university.

As she was passing her little brother's door she heard a loud bang coming from the room. Not loud enough for her parents to hear it, but Kaori had learned to hear even the tiniest sounds. Especially when it was as quiet as it was right now. She knocked at the door, careful not to be too loud. There was no reply.

She carefully opened the door just a little bit. Her brother was lying in his futon, eyes closed and his hands folded over his chest. He looked like a mummy. No one slept like that and he should have known better. She looked over to the desk. The lamp on it was still glowing a little, as if it had just now been turned off. There were a lot of open books on the table as well.

"It's just me, Hitoshi. No need to panic." she whispered. Hitoshi Shinsou opened one eye and visibly relaxed when he saw it was only his sister.

"You gave me a fright." he said to her and quietly sat up again. Kaori grinned a little. Hitoshi had a similarly severe case of insomnia as she did and he also had no intention of taking sleeping pills.