Vuyisile_Sibeko

Hundreds of people across the planet disappeared for a week before returning with no recollection of the phenomena.
The media, government response was nonexistent, life carried on quickly.
A month later inside the Japanese apartment home of Paige Stevens, an old friend considered long dead, appears.
He remembers everything, even seeing Paige there too. She’s a big a part of it too.
With what he has seen lies a warning.
There's war brewing and it's about to boil over. Only, there's more to Paige than she ever imagined.

Jin's War

"Naya?" She whispered, looking at the covered lump in the centre of the pink king-sized bed.

There was a low groan. Naya's mother stomped in and shook Naya's thigh as if she was flattening a lump of dough. Her mother's fingers were daggers, stabbing into her and raking. Fingers unable to massage, the woman was incapable of producing joy.

"Naya what's wrong with you? School started an hour ago! Why are you here?"

Naya opened an eye. The plan had been to squeeze in an hour.

"I'm awake, I'm awake mom!" Naya cried like a wounded seal.

She looked through squinted eyes. Despite the flowing black dress, her mother's hair was tied in a perfectly tight spiral bun behind her head. She looked as though she were headed to court and a picnic.

"Why are you still here?" She demanded.

"Long-Sama has pneumonia and I decided to get extra sleep instead of just sitting in class."

It wasn't a good lie. It wouldn't have worked on her dad, but she wasn't dealing with him.

"That's no excuse to sleep! Do you have any idea how many families are watching you? It's bad enough that your father let you in that school."

Naya could've written the whole dialog; it was so predictable. Good news was, she wasn't in trouble, merely a victim of inefficient decision making. There was pathetic patch work around the reactor, and not all of it was patched together with spit and the power of friendship. She could move, function, it just hurt to.

"You're right MOM. I'll get ready and study. Mr. Long's class should be ending anyway," Naya sang, bouncing to her feet like a pro-wrestler.

Her hair flipped up slapping her face. It felt stupidly good, but that had to do with the fact that she was beyond pain, but it'd catch up. It'd just wait until her mother left along with the adrenaline.

She made for the shower when a claw like hand locked onto her elbow fast enough that it should have hurt. But the only muscles her mom cared about had to be cooked in garlic butter. Naya contemplated that she was adopted, how else could she have come from those narrow hips. But the woman was her mother. It meant there'd be no fighting back.

She folded, twisting to match the grip.

"Look, you need to be on our best foot. Your future is in front of you. These little indulges will cost you. And remember baby, there's only you. No brothers, no sisters. And there will only be you. You're set up for being best, and that involves listening to your mother."

Naya freed her elbow only to be pulled into a hug.

The reactor's warning rang, the clean-up operators all stopped what they were doing to look up as a siren howled.

Darkest of Dawns Part 4.2 (Naya)