When you run,
there's no direction.

A life-size image of Hanabi's quiet face hangs from Naruto's wall. Her eyes stare out at a point infront of her, unseeing and fixed eternally into a space just before. A space that never changes. Her mouth is just barely open, almost smiling. The expression is one of half-amused waiting.

Waiting for him to wake up, for herself to awaken, to come back to life.

As if life was the joke..

The image rests in the center of his home, where he can see her always, from bedroom to kitchen. He walks past this picture with a sliding gait that lowers his shoulders and turns his head.

Hanabi becomes a spot of oil in the middle of his floor, a thing he avoids with careful steps and moving gazes. His eyes slip away from her image unconciously. The unresponsiveness of her face scares him. She does not move, does not speak.

She never ages.

This haunts Naruto's mind, wispy strands of ungrasped thoughts, and his heart beats slower the closer he gets to the glass.

Their eyes never meet.

In the blackness of sleep, behind the backs of closed eyes, she is still there. Haunting him..

Her open stare pounds against his back. And looking makes his heart ache so solidy that the pain travels parallel through him til his head vibrates with equal intensity. A horrid chorus call from inside, paining his body like bleeding.

Naruto lies on his bed and faces the wall, tracing lines into the cool plaster with the edges of his palms.

Against the pale surface of unwashed white, even now he can see within what his eyes will not allow.

Her memory follows him. And his chest throbs with the effort of not remembering.

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

TRAVEL
moving along a course, as in a groove.

Note: Have you a picture of a loved one on the wall..?

After awhile, even though you know it's there, you stop looking.