Disclaimer: Hikaru no Go belongs to Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata.

Flashback - Bold and Italics

"Speech" - Double Quotes

'Thoughts' - Italics and Single Quotes

Narration - Nothing

Enchanted Curse

Chapter Nine - Grounded Nightmare

He awoke to a horrendous cacophony of screeching metal, distant screams, and startled yelps. The sky still bright, illuminated now with glowing sparks, clashed against the tense atmosphere inside the car. Someone was holding onto him and Akari, grounding them to the fast-moving floor as they all leaned against one of the walls; Akari shut her eyes tightly in fear, something he registered even as the dregs of sleep clinged to his clouded mind. She looked particularly spooked by something.

His hand finally tightened against the loop above him.

Minutes seemed to pass as the wheels screeched, screams and yells barely filtering through the wall of sound. He leaned against the man holding him, a young man looking around his late twenties, business suit and all, who was looking worriedly towards the door connecting the next car. As if feeling Hikaru shift, the young man focused his worry towards Hikaru. Understanding and concern passed within an instant, eyes locking before each looked away once more, the man looking back at the door and Hikaru holding onto his sister with concentration shining in his eyes. Around him, huddled into groups or grasping chairs, poles, anything, stood people struggling to cope with the new situation. A mother holding onto a wailing child as she grabs the back of a seat. A young girl embracing her elderly grandmother, preventing them both from collapsing onto the slightly tilted floor. A group of highschool boys leaning on each other with fierce scowls marring their faces, helping their neighbors when they stumbled. The car plunges into darkness, with only dim light streaming from the tunnel entrance to provide dulled color around them. The screams emerging from the front train cars remained ever present.

That is, until a gruesome, crunching sound silences the entire train. It is sound that gets to Hikaru the most. The world suddenly stretched around him. The cars roll over a bump painfully slow for a machine meant for speed. Something has gone horribly wrong, something is horribly wrong. The train creaks, as blood paints abstract art onto the once pristine windows.

The faint darkness fit perfectly with the mood, stuck between extremes.

Hikaru watched with terror through the small window of the door at the back as the train car behind them slowly rises off the ground. As if his vision narrowed, the car cramped his large world into focusing what was happening just outside: tunnel vision. Something gives, and the passenger car squishes downward. An object pops up from the bottom, just barely in his line of sight but evident enough for him to pick out every detail. There's a tangled mess of sanguine against battered cloth stuck between the wheels, preventing movement, not that Hikaru would know. His eyes were busy analyzing a leg, he would later realize, a portion of the body part flattened from the metal wheels of the train. He watched helplessly with morbid fascination, his mind trying to process the images his eyes registered.

The train stops completely, deathly silent. Hikaru winced as the car finally landed back on the ground with a thunderous boom. Likely, he winced more than once. But the train continued unimpeded. And there was no boom. It was with a final screech that the train truly came to a complete stop.

Akari finally let go of the young man, turning to Hikaru to hug him from behind. Her face buried itself into his dark hair, tears dampening his head as the panic slowly drains out from everyone. There's a sort of desperation in her sister's grasp, but he doesn't comment on it. In its place remains shock, concern, confusion, and an uncertainty prevalent in everyone present. There's an announcement, an odd tone of voice speaking through the speakers, obviously affected by the transpired events.

They were to wait for a new train to transfer cars, stuck in this uncomfortable situation for who knew how long.

"We're s-sorry to inform e-everyone that due to our currently remote location and d-difficult accessibility, the transfer train wil-won't be arriving until a f-few hours later. Again, I-we apologize for the inconvenience." A shaky voice leaks through the intercom.

Murmurs and a sea of whispers break out.

"How the hell did someone get onto the track tracks in the middle of nowhere?"
"Mm-Mm-Waaaaaaaaah!"
"Who would be insane enough to do this type of shit."
"Obaa-san, I'm scared."
"Unbelievable. Why would someone do something like this? Who would do something like this?"
"Shh, everything's going to be all right, little one. Kaa-san has you. Shh. It'll be alright, Soujirou."
"I am here for you, Meiko-chan. Sit next to me, I'll hold onto you."
"What a terrible tragedy."

"Are you two alright?" The young man asks; there is a sort of weariness that racks his figure, as if he aged twenty years in a matter of minutes. And Hikaru seems to dawn on a thought, that this whole thing happened within a handful of minutes. That someone had died in seconds.

Something so tragically long wasn't actually all that long.

His mind seemed to shut down at the thought, his entire world blanking out.

He can hear his sister stumble out a reply, a nudge of his shoulder. Her voice has a strange quality to it, as if she has been screaming for hours. He can hear concern from Akari, but his body didn't want to respond, didn't want to assure her that he was going to be fine. Because he was not fine. Someone ruffles his hair, most likely the young man, as something is draped over his shoulders. Instinctively, his arms move to clutch it closer to his surprisingly calm heart. Or maybe he's gone temporarily deaf from the entire circumstance.

He doesn't realize how his arms wrap around Akari's, both of them quietly holding onto each other with the assurance that both were still there.

All the while, his eyes could only focus on the nearly insignificant splatter of red outside the nearby window, a shoe barely outlined in the dim light behind it.

[Obaa-san]: Formal version of "grandmother"

Belated Merry Christmas. A new chapter. Previous chapters have been slightly edited.