Chapter 1 {Y/N}

I see an appearance. A person walking in the enveloping blackness. Light seems to follow wherever they go, but somehow it doesn't illuminate the silhouette. The figure keeps pacing forward. Swiftly. Steadily.

Without my knowing, I'm walking after them. All around me is the blinding dark. My sole guide is the advancing person, the only light shining. I approach nearer. The shadow showering the figure seems to lift to every new step my feet make. Black shifts to gray, then gray shifts to the faintest of a color.

Of violet.

A sudden overwhelming sense of nostalgia washes over me. My arm reaches out to the figure, fingers spread out as if they could simply trap the person in my grip and keep them from walking further. But I'm too far away. My lips part into words, shouting my lungs out, yet sound does not exist in this awful realm.

I feel wetness on my face. Then I realize I'm shedding tears as I struggle to keep up with the person ahead. Always ever ahead. Always ever so out of reach. The distance between us grants no mercy.

Something painful rises up my throat. A single word. A plead. A name. I open my mouth to scream. The figure abruptly stops.

Whatever I wanted to say dies on my tongue, all the sudden forgotten. The wistfulness that clutches my heart renders into oblivion. I no longer know what am I running for. My unknowing eyes avert to the figure before me, the reason of my tears lost.

He turns around.

Shadow cloaks his face except for his lips, in which move into noiseless a word. Then in a flash he leaps to me, a silver blade in his grip. The man slashes down.

Blood spurs from my body as I drop to his feet. He steps closer to me, his features coming alight. Malice curves his mouth no more. The stranger has a deep green eye that stirs a certain familiarity I can't remember.

The man lifts the bloody tip of his sword, and without hesitance, thrusts it to my face-

I jolt up, gasping.

My heart pounds so loud it echoes in my ears. I crush the soft material in my hands, breathing hard. Soon a pair of warm hands come over my back. The sight of Senya almost brings me to tears. I release the blanket and sag into her embrace.

I haven't realized my body is shaking until she brings her arms around me, constantly stroking my back in a calming manner. I try to shut the dream away to a far corner of my mind, repeating to myself I'm safe and sound. Sweat beads my forehead when I pull back from her.

Senya looks like she's just witnessed a corpse bolting up right from a grave. For a moment her eyes are wide and petrified when she stares at me in the darkness. She must've had rushed to my side the minute I jerked up. Her blanket is still covering a part of her.

"I'm sorry about that," I say to her, feeling my heartbeat slowing. My voice sounds strangely thick. "I'm okay."

Senya rakes her face with a hand, trying to break her trance. She pulls the blanket from her body and tosses it back to her bed behind. Her breath comes out like a sigh when she asks me, "Then why are you crying?"

I blink twice before feeling the moisture on my face. I quickly wipe it dry. "I'm sorry," I say again.

She brushes a lock of hair behind my ear. "Just what did you dream?" she asks, a little breathless.

"It was just a nightmare," I reply, not wanting to recall it. "Don't worry about it."

The girl doesn't look a bit convinced. "Are you sure you're okay?"

I nod vigorously. "Now let's go back to sleep."

"Wait," she says before I can lay back down. "Before that, don't you think now's a good time to explain yourself?"

I look at her innocently. "Explain myself?"

"Yes. No wait. You are going to explain yourself, young lady," she says, then gets up to pull her futon adjoining to mine. She hops down the mattress, her demanding gaze fierce. "You said you're well enough. So speak."

"But it's in the middle of the night," I protest, gesturing to the darkened house. I stifle yawn, though I could bet on anything against the thought that I would be able to sleep now.

"We can wake late tomorrow," she simply states. "What happened to you to have you ended up like this? How did you end up like this anyway? Do you know how many times you've jolted up in the middle of the night these past weeks, crying? You nearly gave me several heart attacks. Why-"

"Slow down," I cut off, holding my hands up and surrendering. My mind spins along her questions. "I can't answer those all at once."

Senya throws me a look and huffs. Her sleepiness, it seems, has completely abandoned her. Scrambling for a way to escape her inquiry, I avoid her gaze and pretend to take a sudden interest in the sunken hearth across the one-room house.

To be honest I've been neglecting the chances to tell her of my past. Weeks have passed since that fateful day when she found me and dug me from my grave. My body heals by a good portion for me to help her around the chores a little. Senya lives alone with her pet dog. And living a peaceful life as hers, I don't know what should I tell her of the short yet most complicated chapters of my own. I don't know if I could even speak, having to remember all those moments which took my tears to be able to suppress them back.

"Well?" Senya urges. I avert my eyes to her.

Seeing the impairment written on her face, I think of something to speak. I take a narrow path of the truth.

"The reason why I ended up like that was because I...kind of got involved in some conflict," I tell her. Her eager face prods me to continue. "I tried to make a run for it, but then a guy mistook me for his enemy. Thus resulted my wounds."

Senya listens carefully. "So you just involved. But if you weren't part of the mess, then why on earth were you poisoned?" she demands. "What conflict did you get yourself into, Y/N? And why were you buried alive?"

"Umm, maybe they thought I was dead after all," I say, because I share the same thought. I felt it.

"Who are they?"

"Oh, they..."

"No. Stop." She shakes her head and says, "You're either lying, or you're still keeping things from me."

I open my mouth to speak, but another lie won't come out at the look on her face.

"Was it some event so secretive that you can't talk to me, Y/N?" she questions soberly this time. "You can trust me. Anything you're worrying about. I've seen how you look sometimes, as if you're still in pain." She brings a hand atop of mine, the signal to reassure me opposing her troubled expression. "I think of you as my sister," she mutters. "I care about you. So please tell me."

She appears small at this moment. Curly brown tress falls near her face. The tightness of her lips is the same as back when she related to me of her mother, who had passed away two years ago and left her in loneliness. Unlike me, she told me everything she's gone through, every truth she knew. How I am still breathing now is the prize of her effort. My ability to move comes from her constant work of traveling into the forest to pay for my medicines.

All those for me, whom she never knew. And what am I doing?

Instead I lied and neglected her rights to know. Instead, I've became a burden on her shoulders just because I couldn't get myself out of a mess I voluntarily joined. And to what end? I've only caused more trouble to those around me.

Remorse coils in my stomach. I clench the fabric of my blanket, unable to face her. I stare at her hand on mine, her fingers slender much like the rest of her.

"I'm terribly sorry, Senya," I apologize after a moment of silence. "Of course I trust you. I just..." Swallowing the guilt, I search for her gaze. Our eyes lock in the dark.

It doesn't matter if she finds it foolish. Or if she thinks she's saved a foolish life. My choice might have been so, but nothing can describe what I've been through. It's an irreplaceable part of who I am now, and I wouldn't choose another way even if there's another chance.

I squeeze Senya's hand. A fresh truthfulness opens up between us. "Would you listen again," I ask anew, "to my real story?"

Senya returns my gesture and nods.