@harukacoconose ► starter call!
THE HAZE HAD BEEN UTTERLY ENDLESS ; KONOHA COULD RECALL BITS & PIECES OF IT WITH HIS RETURNING MEMORY FROM LONG AGO. memories of watching hiyori & hibiya time after time, always slaves to their never-ending fate in this world sat sour in his stomach. yet even more unsettling is the feeling of — darkness, darkness one should not trust, one that would surround a snake & swallowed it whole. the latter had remained more foggy to him, spilled blotches of ink that cloud what little recollection that he could scrounge for over the years of his existence & certain events triggering another moment to be restored. there had been a jogging of his memory ; that he is not haruka. that he is nothing more than a snake, whose purpose is to grant wishes & this overwhelming urge to protect his friends, most likely sent by the master who had commanded him so.
( but still, certain things had lacked understanding. he had been given some information, but not everything. )
his footsteps are the only ones that he can hear in this world, with the distant sounds of cicadas buzzing ( something he would normally find to be calming, & yet here, it fills his body with tension instead ) in his ears. in here, he is … lonely. endlessly, endlessly, endlessly lonely ; he recalls clearing eye’s voice before he had crushed & decimated what remained of his soul in that body. 「 be at ease,」 he had hissed, in that ever-mocking tone of his. 「 did you not get what you so selfishly desired? to be with your little friends? 」 he had mocked it with such a taunting grin, holding the happy memories over his head. for once, it had made konoha bristle with anger – managed control of his taken body enough to reach a hand out & attempt to strangle him, only for it to remain futile.
( was it so wrong, to want to be with friends? was it so wrong to want to protect them? if he had eliminated clearing eyes – then his friends would be safer, right? )
however – his thoughts had come to a halt when the cicada’s songs had been thrown off base by… beeping? his gaze had left the cloudy emptiness of the haze, instead his eyes narrowing upon a door – one that smelled clinical, sterile, something that belonged in a hospital. in his gut, something had twisted – familiarity? fear? what was this sensation that had been washing over him? slowly, his arm raised, & a hand grips over the fabric that rested over his heart.
( … had he been here before? he feels as if that sounds right. )
with little hesitance, the door is pushed open – pink eyes searching for the sound of the thrum of machines, & freezing on the sight that they find. a hospital bed, a spider’s web of ivs, & — a boy. a boy that looks awfully like him, with a sullen, sickly face that he remembers. it forces himself back into his memory harshly, causes the android to freeze in his steps & physically wince for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut. he remembers, he remembers, he remembers—
( .. he remembers the boy’s screams & pleads. )
his teeth click, & his eyes re-open, back to their half-lidded, expressionless state as he stops at the foot of the hospital bed, creating distance.
there are no windows, either.
in a regular hospital room, haruka could at least find comfort in the slow passing of time. ( it’ll pass. ) the bright blue of a brilliant sky would fade into reds and yellows across his pure white sheets as the world is laid to rest in preparation for another day.
there is no substitution for this simple luxury in the vast abyss of the heat haze.
he always found himself coming back to the thought that this type of environment should be relaxing. in a silent, minimal room, far from the greater troubles of the general public, all the time in the world is reserved for him and him alone.
but this silence is deafening,
this empty air is suffocating,
this time was never his to have.
it was so, so easy to lose himself here. only the desperate blips of the heart monitor were there to remind him that it was possible to remain calm—that working himself up into a frustrated, panicked frenzy would help nothing, let alone his heart rate—that no one was there to pull him down anymore.
—he just wants to go home.
a sound floats over from the other side of the room, one he can no longer recognize until the visual is paired with it.
( ah, yes. there’s a door here. )
before he can get excited at the thought that someone has paid him a visit—the haze works in mysterious ways that apparently makes crossing through it unpredictable—Haruka registers the familiar face that pops up.
from head to toe, there isn’t a single thing about Konoha’s attire that Haruka can’t vividly recognize. if you told him at seventeen that his oc was going to become a real person, he would’ve flipped his lid. now, the mere sight of him brings bitter, disgusting jealousy surging up from his chest.
haruka forces a smile and sits up.
→ “ you don’t have to call me that. i’m just haruka. ”
( do you remember that name? ‘haruka’? maybe you forgot it while you were playing around with my friends. )