Palette Series: Tinge [AkaKuro Fanfiction]

Second Part - Tinge

Whoops, this came, like, a year and a half late and I apologize for that. Anyway, I lost the original file for this along with all my other fics and stories––*bows head in silence and tries not to cry*––so this turned out different from the original.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kuroko no Basuke. Fujimaki Tadatoshi-sensei owns it. The only thing I own is this story.

As usual, I do not own the cover photo either. Credits go to the owner of the lovely art.

Warning: Unedited

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The first time Tetsuya's consciousness returned, all he could feel was agony.

He couldn't make up whether the mental images his mind were conjuring were real or not.

He was there, standing, right in the middle of nowhere. He was wearing unfamiliar clothes that barely covered his body. The sleeves appeared as if they had been forcibly ripped out by a hungry beast. His legs were almost exposed to the cold air of the night if it weren't for the tattered ends of the robe he was wearing.

Around him were indistinct shapes of shadows hidden beneath the mist's folds. The figures swayed back and forth, back and forth, their movements hypnotizing like the rusty pendulum at the village hall's clock.

He stood not far from the shadows, and, even though barely, he could hear something coming from them. Something... something which sounded foreign to him, but, in the back of his head, he was sure he knew the language. He should.

He tried to look around him, but it felt as if he was watching everything from afar––everything seemed to happen in a distant place and he was just there waiting for the scene to unfold itself, just like when he was reading a book.

The shadows billowed with every whisper of the wind, chants in harmony with their every sway.

He stared at them in a trance, mind in awe at how beautiful it appeared with the fog's concealment.

He watched as a flicker of light, one by one, went to life and dispersed the fog. It was all he could do: follow each movement of the light as they danced around him. It made him drowsy, lethargic, completely unable to think of anything but what was in front of him. All his mind was telling him was how much he wanted the feeling to take over, to completely embrace him.

He was about to give in when, all of a sudden, something sharp pierced him straight through his chest where he thought his heart should be. It elicited a pained gasp from him, and something wet sprayed out of his mouth as he did so.

Soon, he was falling. His knees made contact with the muddy soil, and he could feel the painful sound of his bone reverberate inside of him like an echo.

He hastily tried to pry the knife out of his chest, but when he touched the surface of his skin, he found that there weren't any. He frowned in confusion. He could still feel the coldness of the blade pulsate inside of him. He didn't understand what was happening. He was so close to hyperventilating and losing himself to panic.

The chanting around him became louder at every shallow breath he let out, and the torment terrifyingly only continued with that.

Soon, he felt as if he was being thrown into a fire pit, but he knew he didn't exactly fell. He was just dangling there, from the pit's mouth, cuffs covering his forearms and metal chains securing his arms overhead. It felt as if his wrists were being marked with the extreme temperature radiating against the metal.