The Lightning Flash

Chapter 39: It's Not Fair

1 Year Ago:

"Shino, are you sleeping, again?" asked a voice that awoke Shino from her nap, where she was dreaming of being able to hang out with her mother and father, again, who were both still alive in the dream.

The voice that had woken her up was her math teacher, who was scowling at her, displeased that she had fallen asleep during his lecture.

"Ms. Asada, I know my lectures can be boring, sometimes, but, at the very least, you can show me a little respect by staying awake while I'm talking," lectured the teacher. "I know you're not interested in taking notes or even doing well on any of the course material which, at the end of the day, is your choice, but, please, try to stay awake, from now on, or I'm assigning you after school detention, understand?"

"Y-Yes sir," answered Shino, groggily, still in the process of waking up. "I-I'm sorry."

"Apologies don't mean much unless you act on them," was the teacher's only response, before he returned to his lecture.

Shino took notice that a couple of students were snicking and commenting about the fact that she had fallen asleep in class, again. It was a common occurrence, these days, unfortunately. Shino couldn't deny that. She didn't do it because the lecture was boring, though. It was because she never got any sleep at her house...how could she when every single night she would have nightmares about the incident at the post office, where her mother died and she killed a man in cold blood. Whether it was her mother's empty eyes as she was falling onto the floor of the post office after being shot or the look of shock and terror on the face of the man with the beanie, once Shino had emptied an entire clip into him with a sadistic smile on her face. The worst nightmare, by far, though, was the one, where her mother ended up surviving just long enough to see her daughter commit such a violent act with a smile on her face. Her mother would call her a...monster...a killer...or something along those lines and then Shino would wake up, sweating. She'd tried everything to help with this...medication...meditation...going to bed earlier...but nothing helped...nothing would stop the nightmares. Every day that she came to school, she felt like a zombie, barely, able to function, normally. Although, this could have also, been because of the medication that she had been taking as well which was supposed to help her handle some of the trauma symptoms better. It didn't matter what the reason was, though, because nobody even bothered to care. The teachers just got mad at her for being "lazy" and "tired" all of the time and the other students just thought she was "weird" and "depressed." That's why...Shino hated them...all of them. She hated them for treating her this way and not even attempting to understand the horrible things that she'd had to go through. Or, at least, a part of her hated them...a part that Shino, herself, wasn't even aware existed, at this point. The real Shino Asada didn't hate anybody...she just felt guilty, like she wasn't trying hard enough to overcome her trauma. She felt like she was letting everyone down, especially her grandparents, who were paying for the home that she was currently living in. After all they had done for her by paying her rent, for her groceries and for the psychologist that she saw...Shino couldn't even force herself to stay awake during class. The only person that the real Shino Asada hated...was herself. There were even some days that she wished she would just die so her grandparents wouldn't have to take care of someone as broken as she was...plus, she wanted to be reunited with her mother and father...so badly. She wanted to see them both, again. Every night, before going to bed, she would ask herself why she was the only one, who ended up surviving? Was God punishing her for some reason? Did she do something to anger him? If so, she wanted to know what it was because she would apologize in a heartbeat...if it was possible, she would even trade places with either her mother or father so that one of them could live. But, she knew that wasn't going to happen. Shino continued to have these depressing and self-deprecating thoughts for the remainder of the math lecture which blocked out all of the information that the teacher was going over.