BIG FISHES, rizuna ann

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Here comes death.

Unlike her frantic movements, Saki's thoughts were slow, softening more and more as her throat contracted and her lungs burned her chest. If it wasn't for her consciousness still in control, she would've guessed pain and peace came both held by the longing arms of dying, as if a caress and lipless kisses could erase all aching off her body the second she stopped fighting back. Saki knew, deep down, that she would've ditch everything in that moment if she hadn't heard him laugh.

Niragi's hand had found a place around her neck, making pressure with his fingers instead of his whole palm in a desperate try to get her to give oxygen up. His torso was pressed against hers, looking for all contact he could earn, but the only obstacle he had in-between from it was that as his strength increased, Saki's nails teared down harder the flesh on his cheeks.

"We have no time to waste!" He was raving, so out of his mind Saki feared he would simply start banging her head against the floor without any warning, "If you just cooperated, it'd be much easier, don't you think?"

"What are you so mad about?" Saki giggled, feeling the rush of hatred running up her stomach in the form of Niragi's fingers, touching with no shame. He grunted as he pushed her right knee open with such force she heard something crack. "Are you angry because a girl almost blew your head up or because that girl is, in fact, blind?" Perhaps it wasn't the best time to joke around with a man capable of taking her life, but time was all she got spilling through her hands.

Saki tried stretching as cautiously as she could to be able to reach for a handful of petals that got spread around them the moment Niragi decided to attack her. If he hasn't noticed yet, this is it, she thought. It was do or die, and she wasn't letting that last chance escape from her grip.

"Fucking answer, you coward!"

"Shut the hell—!" Now.

Saki sewed her fingers inside his mouth, like flower roots in the soil, pushing further down his mouth. Niragi's jaw contracted in an attempt to close unconsciously at the sudden invasion, losing focus on the hold around her esophagus.

All her life, Saki knew plants as a mother tongue; she took care of them, let her hands at their mercy, and her blood stained in their beds. With time, she learned how to welcome their bites, and as a familiar itching running up her knuckles made her press harder into Niragi's cavity, who gave up the control twirling and gripping her arms to get her away from him, she knew she had him on the palm of her hand.

Azaleas had a very peculiar quality, one she'd discovered by being too curious when she first started working along with her father. Unlike large ingestions, that caused drowsiness and changes to blood pressure and heart rate, she only needed to feed him a small one to get away with provoking him a burning sensation on his mouth, tongue, lips and throat. At that point, she didn't have time to intoxicate him at that level in between the two fighting against each other in the middle of a witch hunt. She just wanted the upper hand, however, as he realized what she was doing, her trump card almost split in half.

Saki screamed at the feeling of teeth biting her fingers to the bone. Her hips went up involuntarily, using the heel of her feet to push Niragi's quadriceps in an effort to put space betwixt their bodies. She pushed, and pushed, and pushed until one of her feet slipped and the man fully hovered over her cries, smiling through the blood and the pain he was inflicting on her.

And just as one moment he was gambling on the satisfaction of hearing her beg, the other it was his turn to shriek when she pulled his tongue piercing out.

"You bitch!" His hands finally let her free.

Saki didn't waste a single second to drop the metal stud, kick him straight in the chest and roll out of his reach, even if that meant she had to crawl away from him and run blindly through hallways full of people hoping to find themselves alive at the end of the game, 'cause she was one of them too. She wanted to go home, to wake up in a place where she didn't have to fear of a VISA expiring and the breath of death igniting her neck, to taste the comfort of a bed instead of cold floor tiles and a back pain.

She just wasn't ready to die yet.

"What?" Saki heard in the distance, as if the soundwaves were taking too long to lick her ears.

"I'll leave it to you to help us clear the game."

Words buzzed and purred, and even when phonemes died on the tip of her tongue, Saki still tried to save them.

"Kuina?" Her voice cracked.

Kuina's eyes widened momentarily at the sight of her trembling body barely holding itself against a wall, with half her beach shirt hanging loosely on one forearm, missing the other part, and blood soaking her skin from chin to chest and arms to legs.

"You two go!" She pushed Ann towards her friend without a second thought, "Now!"

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hiiiiii i had to take a break because of a health situation (probably caused by stress lmao) but here's chapter 17!

breaking news, we're almost at the end of the story 🤠