𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆. kny

𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆.

Throughout your childhood, there were a number of things you had grown to accept about the world you lived in.

Things like the sky is blue, summer is warm, the chirping of birds means dawn has arrived.

You are ten years old. And your parents have been killed.

Everything is a blur as you run desperately through the thick woods, wrist held tightly by the hand of your elder—and only—brother. You hold a large oversized backpack at your side; it's heavy and old and if you weren't holding it so tightly you would have dropped it long ago. But Hiro did not give you any time to properly adjust the straps, instead immediately pulling you out of the only home you ever knew.

"Just don't look back, okay?" He tells you as you both run far away from your home, down the path and away from the rest of town. You know you should listen, because the only thing that waits for you back there is nothing but the sight of blood and lifeless eyes.

But there is something burning holes in the back of your head, something that creeps right at the heels of your sandals and refuses to be shaken off no matter how fast you run or kick your legs as you step.

And so, against your better judgement, you turn your head back for just a second.

Your feet almost stop in their tracks, your eyes wide with a fear you have never felt before—not even when you first stumbled upon your parents' still bodies.

There are two men. Both whom appear otherworldly, like they are not humans, like they are not meant to be here. Regret settles in the cracks of your chest before you can even identify the feeling. Their appearances are burned into the depths of your memory, and they will remain there until you are nothing left but ash and dust.

Unnatural skin, unkempt hair, unorthodox clothes.

Piercing red eyes that match only the blood which drips down from the wooden floors of your once home.

A tug pulls you back to reality, and your brother faces you with panicked eyes as you continue to run. And it's only then, when you realize that what you thought was a newly worn red kimono was actually stained with the blood of his own. He bears a heavy gash along his shoulder, the same one that connects his hand to yours.

"Ah—You idiot! I told you not to look! I said not to look back!" His voice comes out frantic, scared, as if he is a madman on the loose. "Why did you look? Now he knows we know, don't you get it?!"

You don't. You don't understand, you don't understand anything. Because your parents are dead and you were not even allowed to mourn before a bag with your father's old medicine was shoved into your hands and you were pushed out the back door. Of course you don't get it.

But you dare not to voice this out loud, because Hiro is already stressed, and you would be out of your mind if you even tried to argue now of all times.

So you do the only thing you have been told to do since the night began to fall — you keep running.

You wake up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath and boldly tightly onto the sheets of your futon. Just a few ways away from you, Hiro is peeling potatoes with a knife. He looks at you with a raised eyebrow.

"What's up with you?" He asks. He doesn't need an answer, because the look in your eyes says enough for him to know.

Hiro sighs, setting the knife down and wiping his hands with a wet cloth before leaning down to sit next to you. "You had a dream about it again, didn't you?" He says.

"I'd call it a nightmare rather than a dream."

"Nightmares are just bad dreams.  They're still dreams, you know."

You don't have anything to say to that, and instead turn to look outside the window. It's daytime, and the sun is out. It will be summer soon, which means the heat will soon become unbearable, but at least you won't be on the verge of freezing to death every night any more.

"I just wish I could get over it, I guess." Is all you say. To which Hiro only rolls his eyes and rests his hand atop your head.

"You were just a kid, you still are. It's not easy to just get over that kind of stuff, so don't be too hard on yourself. Sounds harsh, but it's all in the past now. It only gets better from here on out, right?"

At the time you believed him. Or at least, you wanted to believe him.

But really, you had no idea just how much worse it could get.

—the first few beginning chapters will be more focused on the reader and her backstory, thank you for reading !