As the darkness of her unconscious mind started to fade, Noelle could feel the back of her head thudding with a dull throb painfully. She could hear the voices of two people speaking over her for some strange reason as well.
"Look! Fresh meat!"
"Why are you saying that when you're standing over her holding a cleaver?"
Noelle hadn't been fully awake when she was aware of other people being near her, but the last comment combined with the first had her mind kicking into high alert. As her mind quickly started to formulate a plan to get away from the people immediately, she heard a third voice interrupt them.
"You do realize that she's listening to your every word right now, don't you?" The voice said dryly.
"She is?" The first two voices Noelle had heard speak said in sync.
There was a sigh and the third person, an older male, spoke. "Yes, she is." The male's sighed again. "Alright, you don't have to fake it any more."
Against her better judgement, Noelle forced her eyes open. Once her vision stopped blurring, she realized that she was lying on the hard floor and leaning over her were three people; two boys and a girl who were similar to her in age before she had died. The oldest of the trio, a guy, appeared to be her age while the other two were around the sixteen and seventeen range.
As she recalled the earlier conversation, the first voice that she had heard had been male and the second soon following after it was female. The boy who was holding the giant butcher knife in his right hand was no doubt the person who had spoken first.
Noelle could do nothing but stare blankly at him.
The girl who had no doubt been the one to question the boy on why he was holding a dangerous kitchen utensil in the first place smacked him across the head hard.
"Hey! What was that for?" The boy complained. He had golden blond hair and blue eyes that were darker than Noelle's as well as an authentic sounding Australian accent that Noelle was sure would have had the girls at Hollywood High squealing like fangirls.
"What do you think?" The girl snapped at him, scowling. She had shoulder length auburn hair and emerald green eyes that were flashing with anger as she glared at the boy. "You're scaring her with your stupid cleaver!"
"I am?" The boy looked puzzled... and annoyed.
"No. I'm sure it was a pleasant thing for her to wake up with someone holding a butcher knife over her." The girl's voice was dripping with sarcasm.
But before the two could break out into an argument that would have resulted in yelling and trying to throw someone into the wall, the oldest of the three interrupted the them again.
"Are you two really going to start this so early in the morning?" He asked dryly. He had black hair and hazel coloured eyes; he looked Japanese, but Noelle wasn't too sure. He appeared to be used to the boy and girl's quarreling.
The only response he got was an awkward silence.
"We should probably introduce ourselves." He said with a tired sigh. "I'm Arimoto Tsukasa. Tsukasa Arimoto if you go by the western pronunciation."
"I'm Stephen Carter! Nice to meet ya!" The blond haired boy winked at her.
"And I'm Heather Rosenfeld." The girl introduced herself. "So what's your name?"
"Noelle Kennedy." She tried to push herself off the floor, but after a minute of struggling, the only thing she was able to manage was rolling over on to her stomach with her face meeting polished wood.
