InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Miscellany ❯ One of Those Days ( Chapter 5 )

Here's a piece of relatively un-beta-ed angst. Thehroda saw an early version of it and Kagurathewind gave a quick scan of this version. Special thanks go to the folks at Green Tea for catching my more blatant typos and grammatical errors.

Enjoy!
Err...I guess...
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One of Those Days

I woke up this morning, and before I even got out of bed, I knew it was going to be one of those days. It would be a melancholy day, full of loss and what if. Sitting half dressed, I stared out the window, lost in the swaying motion of the leaves and yet not seeing them at all. It took a knock at the door and a gentle reminder to pull me back from that place inside me that wasn't. I resumed the motions of normal but inside was still the same empty.

One last look at the Goshinboku, taunting me even as it watched over, and my hollow shell fled down the great stone steps to where I could hide among the many. There but not. Ghosts haunted me, hiding in the crowds of commuters. There were glimpses - a man with a ponytail smiling at a girl or a flash of clear green glass in a store window, bright as eyes. Something, always at the edge of vision, that faded to the crowd if I tried to catch it.

At school I could lose myself in routine, notes taken without comprehension. Smile, nod and laugh in the right places. If my friends noticed that the girl they'd known was dead, they were too polite to mention it.

A few hours at my part-time. Smiling, lying, flattering through the tightness in my chest that came from a flash of white on red. I'm told it's therapeutic for me to be away from the shrine. I need to be busy, to not live in a fantasy dream and memory. It's therapeutic but it's not real, no more than the girl with the smile that doesn't reach my empty eyes.

Ghosts follow me home. I hear my name, I feel the tug of shattered purity made whole. I go where they lead me, to the place where I am lost. Someone will come with comforting, empty words. They'll find the girl curled among the splinters of wood in this dark, empty space. They always do, it's one of those days.