“The snow was endless, a heavy blanket on the outdoors; it had a way about it. A beauty. But I knew that, like many things, beauty could be deceiving.”
Haruka ignored Asuka's offer to leave, and instead focused on the house around her. She walked soundlessly through the old rooms, momentarily forgetting that Asuka was even there, and instead focused on all of the old memories she had pushed down for long that were now resurfacing like wound reopening. Suddenly, she found herself talking to Asuka, through she was still lost in her own world as she spoke. "It not what you think... Her fingers trailed over the have burnt coffee table, the pads of each finger being stained a coal black color that made her stomach chum in disapproval. "I didn't lose my parents in some tragic house fire, I didn't watch them die while being helplessly useless, I didn't even go to their funerals when-or if-they did die." She shrugged meekly way picking up an hold picture frame from the ground.
Haruka had traveled across the living room and was now crouched on the ground, holding a half burnt picture of her and her family. Her mother, a stunning woman with long blonde hair stood on the left, while a man with reddish brown hair room on the right. Between the two, stood a small pale girl with long vibrant red hair and the most happy smile a child could wear upon her face. Each of her hands were in one of her parents, and they were lifting her up off the ground, swinging her back a forth as she laughed gleefully, her chin tilted back and her eyes looking up at the sky with pure and utter happiness. The picture would have been perfect for any model family, except that it was brunt straight down the middle, right where the little girl was, making it harder to see her happiness while she looked like a small broken, burnt angel. The only reason Haruka could see the picture so clearly, when it was so painfully not clear, was because that little girl with that huge smile, was her.
She stood up, still holding the picture in limp hands while staring down at it with a blank face. "My parent's just left. I never really found out why. They dumped me off with an 'uncle'-" There was a soft scoff after the name and a sound of bitterness in her voice. "And they never came back. I was thrown around from relative to relative until I came back here and enrolled into the Academy." The phone fell from her hands and hit the ground with a loud crack, the side of the frame splitting open and the glass shattering more so than it already had. The red head just started down at it with a blank expression. It was an expression she was becoming painfully close to using a lot, it was so blank and emotionless, so dead and empty, that it could almost rival Zenith's expression, almost, but it needed more work, perhaps for pain had to be experienced before it could become perfectly void of all emotion like a black hole.
"This was the house I grew up in, for the most part, and this is the house I never got to return to. It burned down before I came back to enroll into the Academy..." She was walking around once more, her fingers trailing along things here and there, before she climbed up the surprisingly steady stair case and went towards the first door on the right, her old room. Yellow, almost golden wallpaper had once hing on the walls, a small twin sized bed with a crimson colored bedspread had one sat by the window out looking the forest, a desk had been across the room from the bed, and a large dresser had sat on the right. The room hadn't changed much. There was still golden wallpaper, however only small dots of gold could be spotted, and her bed still sat by the window, but it was burnt to a crisp. The desk was now a pile of ash, and the dresser had fallen through the fool and was now down stairs. "They said the fire had started right here, in my room. It's the only place with the most damage." She shrugged and moved back out of the doorway.
She moved silently down the hall, she firmly ignored the shut door on the left side of the hallway. Old memories had plagued her mind recently, things she had kept blocked out. Haruka could remember nights when her parents door had been shut and shouting could be heard from the other side, she had blocked out the fact that her parents often fought a lot, at night she could remember all of the times there had been monsters under her bed or in her closet, but she couldn't run and seek the comfort of her parents, because they had been to wrapped up in fighting with one another. Haru had ended up curling up in the corner of her room at night and crying to herself, giving herself false comfort. The monsters now hid behind that door, she hadn't dared opened it since they had all left that night, she dared not even try, she wasn't sure if she could bare the memories that would return if that door was opened. She didn't want to see the condition of the room, she didn't want to be reminded of them, Haruka had never asked if there had been bodies in the house, the police had said that no ever ever investigated at far as her own room, which meant this door had never been opened since she last left it, what would be waiting inside if she opened it now? Haruka paused in front of the door, staring at it without words and she tried to build up the courage to open the door, to reveal maybe whats been hidden from her for so long...if only she could.
Slowly she reached out with a shaky hand, fingers brushing across the ice cold doorknob as snow fell in through the open, broken roof, she wasn't sure if she could do it, the monsters that hid behind this door seemed so much worse than the Vampires awaiting their return to the school, so much worse than everything else she had faced so far, not once since Haruka had been at the damn school, had she feared for her life. She hadn't been worried about death when Asuka bit her, nor when the Academy was attack and that brown haired vampire tried to slice her in half, she hadn't been worried when she hit her head and started to remember things no one should remember, and she hadn't been worried when walking alone in the woods by a Vampire infested school, but now she was worried. She was worried for what would happen to her life if she opened those doors and let all of those memories resurface. I wonder if there is anything in there that would explain it all...or maybe I'll just be restless for the rest of my life, without an answer...'