Friends With Benefits | Chishiya x Reader

Chapter Twenty-Nine

☆ In which you make one last friend, and are reminded of another in the process. ☆ 

The exit is long and winding, an endless and narrow set of grey stairs that begin to blur together as you trail your palm along the concrete walls. Messages have been scratched into the mottled surfaces, but your fingers pass blindly over them and render them meaningless. They remind you of the post-it notes on your mirror, mementos that you could now never return to. You feel a single, brief flash of regret. There is no moon in the darkness of the exit.

"Nao?" You call, wincing as your voice scratches your throat. Something burns suspiciously like smoke as you breathe in, and the sensation is a little less than pleasant. You try to wave the feeling away, unsure of where it could be coming from - surely no remnants of the Fire of Judgement could reach you from here. You call again, picking up the pace as you descend the steps. How far could she have gone? More carved words run under your palm, and you feel the crevices run with something electric. "Nao? Are you there?"

Like before, there is no reply, but when you turn the corner you can see a light; a clean-cut square of orange at the bottom of the next flight of stairs. Relief floods through your body. The light promises safety, warmth, escape from the looming prospect of suffocation. You can deny it no longer - the ashen ghosts that reach for you from behind are unmistakably conjured from smoke. The doorway illuminates how it curls, snake-like, in a billowing spiral from a point high above you that you cannot see.

There is another fire inside the building. 

You grimace. It was only a matter of time, you suppose. It's a little too late to wonder how the inside of the hotel was now also on fire, and you cannot bring yourself to put much thought into it either. Your arm throbs. A bit reluctant to get fried in a hotel exit, you speed up as much as your screaming injuries allow. 

You try your luck once more before reaching the last flight of stairs. "Nao?" 

Startled, you stop short. 

Someone at the foot of the staircase responds.

"Hello?" They call back. They don't call so much as whisper, but the hollow exit bounces the voice off the walls in an echo that ricochets all the way back up to the exit's entrance. "Is someone there?"

"Yes, I'm..." Your sentence trails away, unsure. The voice is different, and older. It doesn't belong to Nao.

When the smoke begins to wrap around your body, discreetly replacing your oxygen supply with something heavier, you decide to hedge your bets with the person downstairs.

Breathlessly, you stumble down the last flight of stairs. The smoke flows glibly behind you like a dance partner, gripping your wrists and shadowing your footsteps until you finally break into light. The fumes twirl away, seeking more open space to fill, slinking into the corners of the brightly lit room. You clatter to a stop just outside the exit doorway, gasping for air.

You are unable to look up just yet but you register the person who had replied to you, a woman standing a few feet away from the door you had just popped out of. Even after you breathe in the new air shakily the smoke does not seem to dissipate completely from your lungs. 

"What happened to your arm?" The woman asks, horrified.

You choke a bit in response. 

Before you can collect yourself enough to give the woman a comprehensible answer, someone chimes in. It's a new voice this time, you realise. It is smaller than the first person's, and riddled with relief.

"You made it back!" She exclaims.

You allow yourself a weak smile, as a girl with dark eyes and a neat fringe beams like heaven is down on earth here with you.