Blood Blossom - Ch. 1

    Maia Shirakawa was not shy person.  She would speak her mind even if it earned her a detention and an enemy for life.  So why could she not speak right now and was mentally checking off any clues that could determine whether she was insane or not?  Because her dreams just came to life.

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    It was the middle of the school year and everything was going as well as could be expected to be.  She had no friends; she didn’t need any anyway.  She was used to being alone.  But, she didn’t have any enemies either, which was something she wasn’t used to, but liked it nonetheless.  There were a few people she would occasionally talk to if she needed help on a subject, but that was about it. 

    Otori High School was not a prestigious boarding school where only snobs and rich kids would attend; though there were a handful of those like that.  Otori High was where people sent their children if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t as the case may be, take care of them.  That’s not to say that Otori High was full of delinquents, mostly everyone was well mannered enough not to start fights every Tuesday night.  But, rumors spread.  Fast.

    The new rumor was that a group of five, three guys and two girls, were now transferring to this school –although this wasn’t a particularly new rumor, everyone had heard this one a dozen times or so, but as the rumor goes, the new kids were here.  And they were dangerously hot.

    Maia didn’t care much for rumors, and this one was no exception.  She just rolled her eyes and continued her short, but annoying, walk to her locker, which was conveniently located next to the new kids’ lockers.  Normally she wouldn’t mind if new people were moving into the lockers next to her – which had been emptied when people complained about her – but people were surrounding her locker trying to sneak a peak at the people who were trying, and failing, to open their lockers.

    Pushing her way through the crowd surrounding her on either side, she finally made it to her locker without so much as a bruise on her arm for elbowing nearly twenty students in the gut for making her wait to open her locker.  Carefully she spun the dial on her lock to the correct numbers – 23, 5, 12, 30, 16 – then came the satisfying click of her lock as it opened.  She hardly noticed that the whispering around her had come to a deafening silence until she started to feel dozens of eyes boring into the back of her head.

    She abruptly turned around and was about to snap until she caught hold of someone’s eye.  Maia could feel her mouth drop open in shock as she tried to say something, and that many people were glaring holes into her.  But that didn’t matter.  It was only her and the five familiar faces of her dreams.  She closed her mouth and started to wonder if this was all some joke to make her think she was crazy, but no, that couldn’t be it.  She hadn’t told anyone about her dreams.  Not even her therapist who she was supposed to tell these things to.

    The tallest of the three males reached his hand out to her, “Hello, my name is,” please don’t say Satori Minami, Maia silently pleaded, “Satori Minami.  And you are?” he smiled pleasantly, but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes as she stuttered in shock and turned away, slamming the locker door shut, and pushing through the equally shocked crowd.  Luckily for her, her first class of the day was only a few doors down from where she was now, and she easily made it there in just matter of seconds.

    She quickly went to her usual spot in the back, right hand corner near the window and slammed her head on her desk.  This has to be a dream, or some weird coincidence.  Satori isn’t that rare of a first name, and the same goes for Minami.  She pinched herself, just to make sure it wasn’t a dream, and idly wondered why people pinched their arms when they were awake, trying to make sure it was a dream and not reality, but they never think to do it when they were actually dreaming?  Finally, she decided that this was just some sort of freaky coincidence that she was definitely over thinking.

    The bell rang and the English lecture began about the book Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe(1) and about the project that was due in a week’s time, but she hardly paid attention.  Fragments of her dreams began to flood her mind.  Never could she remember all her dreams completely, but the parts she could remember haunted her.

    The blood red blossom stuck out beautifully among the dull, off-white colored flowers that surrounded it.  She reached for it, knowing only that the flower seemed to call for her, and that she needed it.  She would do anything to get her hands on it.

    The scene changed in her minds eye.

    Slowly, turning her head to face the dark man who seemed laughed at her with his eyes as she rose off the dark, wet ground that seemed to bleed.  Eyeing the man warily, she returned to his side as he held up his devilishly clawed hand that beckoned her.  The man put a hand on both of her shoulders and forced his claws into her shoulders, making her gasp at the unnatural burning pain.

    One last time the image faded into another.

    Satori and Rin stood over her smiling sadly with tears in their eyes and holding her both her of hands, whispering sweet nothings into her ear.  Naomi, Rikku, and Ryuma told her she was doing great, that she wouldn’t feel a thing.  It was going to be over soon.  She didn’t know what was happening, or why her vision was fading.  She didn’t know why she felt as though her entire body was on fire, or why she knew that everything was going to end very, very soon.

    Maia heard screaming.  Her screaming.  And then she felt the pain; not quite like the pain that made her wake up, gasping for breath from her dreams.  She doubled over and coughed, remembering vaguely she was sitting in the middle of class surrounded by twenty-five other students that already thought she was insane.  Someone was by her side and thought it was the boy who reluctantly sat by her everyday, Ryu or something like that.  But with more than a little effort she made herself look into deep, shining onyx colored eyes and realized that it was Satori along with Rikku whose lavender eyes seemed to be telling her that he was sorry, but for what, she didn’t know. 

    And then, without warning came another spasm of pain and she blacked out with the image of a man with crimson eyes and hands that resembled claws dripping with blood she felt for certain was hers.

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1. – Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe is one of the only Japanese books I’ve read besides Tales of the Otori Trilogy by Lian Hearn, and frankly, I like Brave Story a lot more than I like Lian’s trilogy (though I found the first two books excellent, I couldn’t really get through the third book without feeling bored, no offence to Lian Hearn fans!) and I thought it was a great book.  So, I figured, why not?