Repeated Fear || Subaru & Akechi
@charismaticprince
The sight that met Subaru’s eyes as he stirred awake was not the expected, familiar sight of his room that usually greeted him. Instead, he found himself peering up at a ceiling obscured by darkness in a strange, gloomy room with dilapidated walls and rickety floorboards. The floor had collapsed in places, and fell away to endless, bottomless pits. Strewn carelessly about the room were school desks, too small to fit someone as grown as him. It looked to be an old, long-abandoned elementary school classroom.
As he pushed his body up to get a better look around, a sharp, stabbing pain flashed through his skull, temporarily blinding him and forcing him to set his head back down as he fought against an onset of nausea. He slowed his breathing and waited for the excruciating wave to diminish, then reached a hand back to feel around the back of his head, where the pain had originated. Pressing his fingers into his scalp brought tears springing to his eyes as fresh, stinging pain shot out in response, engulfing his senses once again. His hand came back slick with blood, and the grimness of reality began to set in, latching dread claws into his stomach.
“The fuck…?” Desperate for any answers at all, Subaru frantically searched through his memories for what had brought him here. The relentless, sickening pounding in his skull hindered his ability to recall anything clearly, and the only thing he seemed to remember was the earth opening up abruptly beneath him and devouring him whole. Anyways, it wasn’t really important right now. What was important–
“Gotta find a way out.” Although his mind was still foggy and thoughts disjointed, this solution stuck out to him as an absolute. He absolutely had to get out of here. Something in the stagnant air sent chills crawling down his spine and imparted a sense of urgency on him.
Biting down into his lip, Subaru once again moved to push his body up, ignoring the searing pain the movement sent flaring into his skull, resisting the subsequent urge to vomit. Using one of the nearby desks as a support, he struggled all the way up to his feet. Putting pressure on his right foot brought more pain and a crunching sound, and when he looked down at it, it was jutting out at an odd, unnatural angle. It was definitely something he wouldn’t be able to fix on his own, so for now he settled on a hobbling, limping gait that kept most of his weight on his left foot and only briefly the heel of his right. Though each step still brought electrifying pain lancing up his leg, he could manage getting around this way for now, although his movement was definitely restricted and he couldn’t go very fast.
Moving like this, he managed to shuffle out of the classroom he’d awaken in and out into a hallway, which carried the same gloomy, rundown look. The pits in the floor were out here too, which meant he had to watch his step.
A torn scrap of paper on the floor by the door he’d just exited grabbed his attention, and he carefully knelt down to pick it up. The lighting in the hallway was dim, but if he squinted, he could just make out the words scrawled there, although some were too blood-smeared to decipher:
If you’re reading this, you’re cursed, there’s no way out! ******* said there has to be one, said it has to do with the ************* wandering these halls. But then after saying that, one of them caught her and *********…
The rest of the note was too torn and smudged to read. But from the part he could read, it was enough for him to pick up on the utter hopelessness of the situation here.
