1 Dodgeball?! [Shikei, or Invite] Sat Sep 01, 2018 5:18 am
Saki
D-rank
Earlier that Morning
I’ve battled demons that won’t let me sleep. Called to the sea but she abandoned me.
Sleepless, restless nights, she had them aplenty. Nights where she couldn’t close her eyes without the dank smell of earth mixed with stagnant water, tears, and fear suddenly becoming present once more. Nights where the terrified sobs and screams of those who were freshly captured, or the blank and lifeless stare’s of those who had given all hope or had been so mentally broken they were beyond repair, filled her mind as real and as vividly as they had just two and a half years ago. These were the nights where sleep eluded her, the nights where she spent awake nursing a cup of tea and checking on her siblings every twenty minutes or so, the nights where she counted down the hours and minutes until the sun rose or one of her siblings awakened and she would feel less alone and able to breath freely once more. These nights had become fewer and far between as time progressed, as she had time to get back into the daily rituals and schedules of life’s grinding pace, but they did still happen and tonight was one of those nights.
Even as Saki sat at the kitchen table, pushing her red bangs out of her face for what had to be the dozenth time since sitting down just mere moments ago, her gaze darted to the clock that hung on the wall announcing that it was only four o’clock in the morning: there were just over two hours of darkness left, two hours before the sun would raise and cast its light upon the village. It couldn’t come fast enough in her opinion. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, the lack of light wasn’t what frightened her, but rather what lurked in that darkness: not monsters in the sense of vampires or werewolves or other fictional beasts meant to amuse and scare but rather monsters in the form of human beings that looked and talked just like everyone else. She knew that evil personally, and on nights like tonight after being woken up to nightmares and the overwhelming sense of a presence that wasn’t real beyond what her mind cooked up, she found herself waiting for the moment that she wasn’t alone or the moment that the sun rose and cast its glow upon the world once more.
I’m haunted by the distant past. Called to the skies but she was overcast.
As the tickling of the clock continued to fill the air the red headed female found herself lifting her cup up to her lips once more, her favorite mug - which was a soft pink with a panda bear on one side of it - clutched carefully in both hands. The warmth from the mug due to the hot liquid inside was inviting and comforting, and the sweet milky liquid inside brought an inner warmth to her as she took a sip, giving her a further taste of that comfort. Even still she shivered, a chill running up her spine. Outside an alley cat jumped onto a metal garbage lid, the empty can giving way and crashing over, the sound causing the female to jump startled, the cat screeching and fleeing off down the alley to find a place to hide.
Even as Saki’s racing heart began to slow back down her gaze darted to the door: sure that had been a cat, but her mind was going to make it into anything but that. That was just where her head space was at in that moment. Knowing that she needed to do something to occupy herself with she put her mug down, pushed her chair back quietly, and got up, heading over to the refrigerator where she began to pull out various items for breakfast: if she couldn’t sleep then she could at least do something productive such as ensuring that breakfast was ready for her brother and sister when they woke up. Plus, it would be a nice distraction from herself and her own head, allowing her to fall into the familiar and comfortable routine of doing something she had done for a little over the past five years….
Present Time
No time for rest. No pillow for my head.
There was not enough tea or coffee in the world that could make her not regret agreeing to this idea: dodgeball. Dodgeball as a training method. Sure, she understood the merit behind it - you had to be quick on your feet not to get hit, had to be able to size up your opponent and nail them with a ball before they could get you, you had to be able to take a hit should your opponents ball hit you which in a way would kind of toughen you up a bit - but how in the world did she get roped into agreeing with this? She couldn’t remember, she blamed the exhaustion though. It wasn’t even as if she had agreed to referee the match, no she was going to be playing, participating. ’How do you get yourself into things like this, Saki?’, she found herself thinking with a sigh as she sized up the teams that had been created - they had eleven players total, with the uneven team being the opposing one, meaning a handicap match if they didn’t find someone else to fill the empty space.
As she listened to the idle conversation going on between her team and the opposing one, them trying to hook in several passersby into the game who all declined, she found herself pulling her long red hair up and back into a ponytail, leaving only her bangs hanging down that just barely had begun to cover her gray eyes. The idea of cutting her hair short to keep it out of her way without her having to resort to pulling it up all the time momentarily crossed her mind but she found herself once again dismissing the thought as quickly as it came: she loved her long hair too much to do such a thing even if it was an inconvenience to her at times.
Nowhere to run from this. No way to forget.
Glancing over as she heard her team attempting to call someone else over who was passing by she watched the individual while tugging at a thread from the hem of her white tank top, using a small minut amount of katon chakra to singe it and keep it from fraying further, before jumping to her feet and dusting off the bottom of her black capri-length baggy pants with the cuffs that caused the pants to cling to her legs right below her knees. ”Maybe I could just sit this one----”, she faltered in speaking as she caught the looks thrown her way by the rest of her teammates: right, they thought she needed this as much as she probably did. Unfortunately for Saki this meant they weren’t going to just allow her to sit out and play referee, even if it meant it would even up both teams perfectly.
As she waited to see if this newest individual would end up joining them or passing on by like the last five people the group had tried Saki simply took to kicking the dirt with the toe of her left sandal, sighing to herself and inwardly cursing herself for agreeing to this. Where was an emergency or something distracting when you needed it? It seemed she wouldn’t get the out she was hoping for: she couldn’t be that lucky.
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