IT BLOSSOMS, hatori sohma [Fruits Basket]

Chapter Eleven

Ryu stirred awake in the quiet sanctuary of her room, her body sinking into the familiar warmth of her futon as the veil of sleep clung stubbornly to her. Her eyes fluttered open, revealing a hazy world bathed in dim light.

Disoriented and heavy with exhaustion, she blinked sluggishly, attempting to piece together her surroundings. The low hum of the night seemed to press in around her, accentuating the stillness as a dull, aching heaviness settled behind her eyes.

Her mind, still caught in the fog of slumber, grappled with a flood of disjointed thoughts and elusive memories. Fragments of half-formed sentences drifted aimlessly through her consciousness like debris scattered across a restless sea. Questions arose and tumbled over one another in a chaotic swirl, each one demanding answers she could not yet grasp. The sheer weight of her confusion bore down on her like a thick, suffocating blanket.

A frustrated sigh escaped her lips as she pushed herself upright, the soft rustle of fabric accompanying her movement. She cradled her head in her hands, fingers pressing gently against her temples in a futile attempt to ease the throbbing ache within. The pounding of her pulse seemed to echo in her skull, amplifying the disarray that clouded her thoughts.

Her voice, hoarse and barely audible, broke the silence as she murmured, "What... am I..." The unfinished question lingered on her lips, a reflection of the gnawing uncertainty that gnawed at the edges of her mind. The words felt foreign, hollow, as if uttering them brought her no closer to understanding.

Memories flitted just beyond her reach, tantalizing and taunting as they danced in the periphery of her consciousness. She recalled the grand, imposing walls of the Main Sohma estate, a place heavy with the weight of generations. She had walked its shadowed halls, each step bringing her closer to a meeting with Akito. The memory of approaching the family head's chambers burned faintly in her mind—but what came after was a dark, impenetrable void. A flicker of her vision going black, a sensation of being swallowed whole by emptiness, was all she could grasp before everything dissolved into nothingness.

Determined to unravel the mystery, Ryu dug deeper into the recesses of her mind, but it was as though she had come upon a sealed door. Each attempt to force it open caused a sharp spike of pain to lance through her skull. She clenched her jaw, her teeth grinding together as her frustration mounted. The harder she pushed, the more resistance she met, as if some unseen force had erected an unbreakable barrier within her own thoughts.