Chapter Text
Discovering that you survived a horrific car accident was one shock, but learning that you had essentially been reincarnated was something entirely different. You had always thought that reincarnation was a concept found only in anime; it seemed far too fantastical to be real. However, deep down, you just never believed it could happen to you.
But fate seemed to have other plans.
You played the role of the memory-confused daughter as best you could. At least it was good enough for your mother to recount the past few weeks to you. You were indeed hit by a car while walking home from school. Apparently, the driver had passed out at the wheel, and you were just the unlucky one who happened to be in the car's path. The doctor said it was a miracle that you only walked away with a minor concussion and a sprained wrist, considering the situation. In another interesting tidbit, you were told something else. To add to the craziness, you found out you were currently living in Japan.
Japan.
The place that you could only dream of visiting because the plane tickets were too expensive. By coincidence, you discovered that you could understand Japanese and that extended to the writing as well. Which, when you thought about it more, made sense since you were just told that you were living where you were.
Other than that, you stopped paying attention to what the Doctors and your mother were saying. Not to be disrespectful, but to grasp all the information that was given to you. All things considered, it was easy enough. Sure, you’ll forever live with the trauma that you experienced death and rebirth, but hey, at least you were alive. The only other pressing thing that weighed on your mind was the fact that you had to repeat high school again. Something you definitely weren’t excited for.
You sighed as you leaned back onto the bed with your hands blocking the fluorescent lights. Your thoughts were struggling to piece themselves together, all the while a blistering headache was manifesting in the back of your head. This was a recurring thing that you were both starting to get used to and getting sick of. It wasn’t anything pressing that you had to inform the Doctors of, but it was starting to get annoying. Paired with the headache, you could feel your chest start to tighten like someone was squeezing your lungs like some gross stress ball. Again, it wasn’t painful enough to notify anyone, but you sure were over it. You turned your head to gaze out of the window from your hospital bed. People hurried by in a blur, carrying clipboards or attending to patients. It was kind of interesting to observe the bustling activity, almost as if you were watching a medical TV drama. As you watched, you began to notice something unusual about the scene. It wasn’t with everyone, but there were moments when you could see something lingering on them. It wasn’t anything major, just a black whisp of smoke that was gone the moment you blinked your eyes. You chalked it up to a side effect from having a concussion. Honestly, the more you thought about it, maybe you should tell a Doctor what you were experiencing soon.
You were pulled from your thoughts when you saw your mother enter the hospital wing through the double doors. The headache seemingly disappeared the moment you saw her. A smile bloomed on your face as you sat up to get ready for her visit. She waved at you through the glass and hurried her way towards you with her purse clutched to her chest. She opened the door and slid in like she was sneaking into the room with some contraband….
Which she was.
“Here you go, honey. They might be a little cold, though.”
She pulled up the chair and sat next to you while pulling out a bag of McDonald’s. A delighted gasp left you as you snatched the bag out of your mother’s hands. You tucked it away at your side to hide it from the eyes of the medical staff. You shoved a handful of warm French fries into your mouth and groaned at the salty taste. It tasted like absolute heaven compared to the food you were stuck eating. Not that there was anything wrong with the food, it was honestly a lot better than American hospitals, but when you’re stuck eating the same food every day, it gets kind of old.
“I also brought your homework. Though, are you sure you should be doing this? You haven’t fully recovered….” Your mom said worriedly
You waved your hand dismissively and dusted off your salty hands to grab the binder in her hands.
“It’s fine, Mom. The doctor literally said I should keep my brain ‘active’ anyway. Plus, with this, I won’t fall behind in school!”
Your mother sighed longingly and shook her head, “I suppose I can’t fight that logic.”
You tugged the overbed table and opened the binder to skim the lessons that your teachers had written down for you. As you suspected, it was all the subjects that you had already learned back in your old life. So going through these should be relatively easy. You snapped the binder shut and looked over to your mom. A soft smile on your face as you listened to her start to talk about her morning. It was both a relief and strange to be with your mother again. A relief because you didn’t lose her, but strange because despite her still being, well, your mom. There were things about her that were slightly different from the mother you knew. Like the length of her hair, the change of her clothing style, and the way her mannerisms were different. Even now, you noticed the way she tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair, a habit that used to drive her crazy when other people did it.
“Are you even listening to me?” Your mother’s voice interrupted
“Oh, absolutely not.” You said honestly
“Ugh, you could have at least lied.”
The two of you shared a laugh before continuing the conversation.
Time seemed to fly in an instant because suddenly it was the end of visiting hours. It was always so sad to see your mother leave. Nowadays, it always feels like you didn’t spend enough time with her. That you should have done more, spoken more, but with how you were basically trapped in a hospital, there was nothing much you could do. The only hope you had to help ease this feeling was to plan days that you could spend time with her once you were out.
In the meantime, you sat at your bed while doing your homework, not even bothering to look at your textbooks since you knew the answers already. You yawned as you glanced at the clock to see how late it had gotten. You shut your binder and placed it on your bedside table to get comfortable. Since it was so late, the number of hospital staff lessened. From what you could see, there was only one person at the nurse’s station, while only one or two doctors passed by in the hallway. It was a little eerie at first, but once you got used to it, you were thankful for the quiet. You shuffled around until you found the remote for the tv. It was comically small, considering how it sat at the far corner of the wall; however, for something so small, it was pretty loud.
You got comfortable as you switched through the channels, just wanting some background noise to listen to so you could fall asleep. But as you were flipping through the channels, that heavy feeling in your chest started to grow. It was barely noticeable at first, but as the seconds passed, it started to grow. Only this time, instead of it feeling comfortable, it filled you with a sense of dread. Like, somehow something inside of you was prepping you for an impending threat.
Your heart started to hammer inside your chest, and your hand gripped the remote so hard that your knuckles turned white. You tried to just brush it off as overthinking and an overactive imagination. Even though you said that the hospital didn’t freak you out anymore. It didn’t erase the fact that it had its moments….
But none of those thoughts could warrant a reaction like this.
You took a shaky deep breath and fixed your eyes on the tv, the want for sleep completely disappearing now. It didn’t make sense. You were fine just seconds ago. Hours ago, when your mom was here, if you wanted to be more specific, so why now?
Were you going to have a panic attack?
No, there wasn’t anything that triggered you into having one.
You clicked your tongue when you felt the back of your skull start to tighten as if someone was gripping the base of your neck. You rubbed your cold hands against the area in hopes of it calming down. But it didn’t…
Questions bubbled and popped in your mind so fast that you felt dizzy. However, before you could call a nurse, your questions were answered.
In the form of a tap at the door.
It was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Both the headache and the ache in your chest had vanished as quickly as they came. The only thing left in the wake was the agonizing sense of dread. You ignored the tap at the thin window and kept your focus on the tv. Hoping that if you ignored it hard enough, it would go away. The thought of it possibly being a nurse or doctor came to mind, but something inside you knew that it wasn’t.
No.
Whoever or whatever tapped on the glass wasn’t a person…
You didn’t know how you knew that. You just did.
When there wasn’t another knock, you had thought what it was had passed, or maybe it was just your imagination. But that all came to a stop when, instead of a knock, there was a loud bang on the glass. Almost like someone had slammed their fist against it.
That was enough to have your head snapping towards the door, and that felt like the biggest mistake of your life. Your eyes were met with a horrifying sight: a creature with long, spindly fingers had pressed its grey hand against the small window. The dim light illuminated its figure, not enough to reveal it, but enough to outline it to see how its neck was bent at an impossible angle so its eyes could peer inside the room…
Your room.
You held your breath, your eyes glancing over to the nurse’s station to find it empty. You could hear your heartbeat staggering in your chest. You thought about looking away, to try and ignore it again, but you knew it would be all for not.
Whatever that thing was…it knew you saw it, and there was no turning back.
You watched and listened as what you guessed were bones snapped and clicked into place as the monster’s head lowered. Now, instead of only seeing soulless wet eyes was a white, toothy grin.
Then in an instant, everything went still.
Too still.
The only sound that filled the room was your own rapid heart and breathing. The grip you had on the remote tightened impossibly harder. Almost as if you were scared that if you had dropped it, the noise would break whatever twisted stand-off this was.
“Hungry…” a small voice said
Your heart sank in your chest.
A soft clicking sound echoed in the room, and to your horror, you realized it was trying to open the door.
“Hungry…!”
The door began to shake so hard that you thought it would fly off its hinges, which it did. The door slammed open with a loud ‘CRACK,’ and the creature wasted no time in clambering in. Its limbs were much too long, leaving it to crawl on all fours like some humanoid spider. You scrambled off the bed, ripping out your IV on instinct to get away from the thing. Its long neck lunged at the spot you were in like a whip, and if you had been slow enough, that monster’s head would have cracked your skull open. It let a horrifying screech as it realized it had missed, its head snapping around to find where you had gone. Fear and adrenaline coursed through your veins, giving you the courage to scramble to your feet and slide under the thing and out the door. Another screech echoed through the halls, and you knew it was only a matter of time before it was on you.
So you ran.
You ran as fast as you could to somewhere. Anywhere that was far away from that.
Luckily for you, the door to the stairwell wasn’t too far away, and all you had to do was make it. Sure, you could have used the elevator, but you weren’t risking the possibility of it destroying or causing it to fall with you inside. You ran down the hall and gripped the edge of the wall to keep yourself from slipping from how hard you turned. However, instead of an empty hallway, you were met with the monster slamming into the wall and b-lining it to you.
“Oh, Jesus fuck!”
You turned on your heel and sprinted back the way you came from. If it were dumb enough, it would follow you instead of going the opposite way. The floor you were on formed a circular hallway, ensuring that no matter which direction you took, you would always end up in the same spot. Meaning that if you kept running, you would eventually end up where you needed to be.
You glanced over your shoulder to thankfully find the monster chasing after you. An extremely weird feeling considering the circumstances. Your lungs burned in your chest, and your legs were starting to burn from the sudden exertion, but you ignored it in favor of pushing yourself to go faster. A mistake on your part because just as you tried to go faster, you felt the joint of your foot give out. You started to stumble before you found yourself falling face-first into the ground. Pain shot through you as your nose struck the ground, not enough to break, but enough to hurt. You scrambled to get back onto your feet, but the monster was faster. Its massive body loomed over you, and you could feel its intense gaze fixed on you. You turned over, now face-to-face with the being that was chasing after you. Your breathing fastened for a completely different reason, and you watched as its jaw cracked open wide.
“Hungry…!!”
Your hand reached out to find something, anything, to help defend yourself with. When it finally hit something, you wasted no time in grabbing and hitting the monster square in the face. The impact was enough to send the monster flying back into the far wall at the end of the hallway.
Wait….
Flying back…?
“What the-?”
You looked down to see what you hit the creature with, only to find that you were holding a ‘Caution Wet Floor’ sign. But before you could question it, the creature was already up and running towards you. You tossed the sign to the side and scrambled back up onto your feet. This time, you managed to reach the stairwell with the creature seemingly struggling to catch up. It was far enough that when you had turned the corner it wouldn’t see the entire stairway. Hopefully, that meant it would circle the floor before realizing you had left. You heard the creature shriek and its hands slam into the walls. You clambered down the stairs enough to be out of sight. Your body tensed and your eyes instinctively shut as you waited for either the monster to emerge from the doorway or run past. You heard it coming closer, the stairways rattling from the movement before stilling.
It didn’t know you were here.
You wasted no time descending the stairs after that. Your movements were quick and quiet in hopes that you could stall for enough time by keeping your location unknown.
It was when you reached the second floor that you heard the door to the fourth floor break open. You looked up to see the head of the creature looking down at you. It released a scream and began running down the stairs.
“Shit-!”
In a panic, you scrambled down the stairs as fast as you could, skipping a few steps along the way. You burst through the door, a hysterical laugh escaping you when you saw the sliding doors of the hospital. Glancing over your shoulder, you noticed that the monster had not yet made it down the stairs. But by the time you turned back around, your vision was engulfed in darkness. You collided with whatever had positioned itself in front of you and landed hard on the floor. Your mouth opened to scream, only to stop when you noticed that it was a man.
A familiar-looking man.
“Are you alright?” He asked
“I…There’s…” You started to stutter while pointing to the staircase
The man was kind enough to help lift you back onto your feet, his gaze fixed on the place you pointed to. Suddenly, the door cracked, banged, and was blown off its hinges, revealing the monster. It struggled and writhed, its large body stuck in the narrow doorway. The man positioned himself to fight while tucking you safely behind him.
“Wait, what are you doing-?”
“Please stay behind me, ma’am.”
You complied silently as instructed. The creature broke free and dashed toward the two of you. You covered your eyes and pressed yourself against the man’s back. You heard a sickening snap and a garbled scream before it fell silent. You waited a couple of seconds before you opened your eyes. The monster was seemingly gone, and in its place in the middle of the room was a small stuffed rabbit. You let out a sigh of relief that you didn’t realize that you were holding. The man turned to face you, his eyes scanning you to check to see if you were alright.
“I…What just happened?”
The man stood in silence for a moment, as if he were contemplating what to say. He turned and walked over to the stuffed animal lying on the floor. After picking it up and dusting it off, he returned to stand in front of you. Awkwardly, he held it out to you, and you, in turn, awkwardly took it from his grasp. It was a cute little thing, bright and somehow warm in your hands, which contrasted with the dark, cold atmosphere of the hospital. You held the stuffed animal close to help ease the swirl of emotions that swelled inside of you.
“I’ll explain later. For now, it’s late. Please let me escort you back to your room,” He said formally
“Oh...okay,”
You followed him to the elevator, where you pressed the button for your floor and settled next to him. You looked between him and the stuffed animal with an odd sense of familiarity bubbling up again. He seemed so familiar, like you knew him from somewhere, but you didn’t know where.
“Um...can I ask for your name…?”
Again, the man went silent. This time, he was the one giving you a you the once-over before responding.
“My name is Masamichi Yaga. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Your jaw dropped, and you were lucky that his attention turned back to the doors to miss your reaction.
‘Did this man just say he was Masamichi Yaga?!’