Ana

My name is Ana Utsukushi, and this is my view on this whole mess.

I was Anya’s friend and frankly I wish I had never got involved in this horror of a game. This all started the day she came to school with bandages and bruises riddling her body. I had known that the severity of her wounds was not that equivalent of a small wound from some glass. I knew something was wrong, but if you knew her you would know when something was wrong and she didn't tell you you had better just butt out.

This time was different though, she had never been the clumsy type, or the one to get into fights, frankly she hated being social I would even go as far as to say she hated people. So this time I knew something was really wrong, I made the mistake of worrying and got myself involved, while I look back though I comprehend that I would have got sucked in whether I had tried or not.

I had blown it off as her getting hurt and that I should just stay out of it, but when lunch drew near end, she took off with Flynn. Which wasn’t too odd of her but when she didn't come back for weeks I knew something was really wrong. Anya never missed school, she once came to school with pneumonia. So if she was missing weeks of school, I consummated that something was mortally wrong.

Weeks went passed with me wondering if she was even alive. Nether Flynn or Anya came to school or were seen at their homes for 3 weeks. I almost started assuming they were dead.

The day they came back was the beginning of a long horror story for me.

When Flynn's car pulled into the student lot on October 1st it instituted a lifetime of sorrow.

Flynn came out of the car first, he looked so broken down and haggard with severe bags under his eyes as if he hadn't slept in that whole 3 weeks he was gone, his skin sagged over his cheeks like that of an old man.

Anya came out second, pale as a corpse, with the same dark circles that plagued Flynn, she had seemed to have lost all of the meat on her bones for she was thin as a twig, as if when you touch her she would break. Her ribs jutted out like knives and her collar bone seemed to be pushing out of her skin, trying to escape.

I gasped in horror at this awful sight. I fell to my knees with tears in my eyes for her. I assumed she was dead, but when she came out of that car, I knew she had come quite close to it.

Flynn was helping her out of the car, ever so conscientiously trying not to hurt her fragile frame.

She noticed me, on the floor with my jaw practically hitting the floor

“Hey!” She said. You could hear how fragile she was just by the way her voice faltered and cracked.

“H-hey,” I said with shock still traipsed in my voice. She got up on her own and walked over to me.

“Come on, let's go to class we’re late.” She whispered with her arm outstretched.

“O-okay,” When I grabbed onto her hand I could feel her bones cutting into my flesh.

As we headed into class you could see every face light up, first with joy, then with shock, then sadness as they realized how completely decimated her body was.

Math went by like no other, Anya was not herself on this day, she was more scared, anxious. Anya looked at her phone constantly, which wasn't weird for her, but this time she looked at the thing like it was going to come alive and kill her. She jumped at the slightest buzz, and her eyes never lost the shine of horror.

As the time passed and we went from class to class, she seemed to be plain old Anya. She seemed to be telling her jokes, playing on her phone, that she had looked at with such fear in math. She seemed to be perfectly normal. All but the gaping holes in her cheeks that used to be full, the ribs that seemed like knives cutting into her flesh, and the escaping collar bones.

Lunch rolled around and once again Anya and Flynn were nowhere to be seen.

That night, I dreamt of her, dreamt of her withering figure, of her shrinking stomach, of the way she jumped at the very sound of a phone, and how her eyes looked so worn, with the insight of a man just back from war.

The days passed just like this one for a week, Math class seeming to be the worst of it. She jumped at every sound, looked vigorously at her surroundings. Every other class seemed to be normal, she laughed, she joked, she was just Anya Kyoki, the one and only. At lunch she was aloof, her and Flynn both.

That week her cheeks got fuller, her ribs sank back into her pale skin, and her collar bones withered back to where they once were. Her appearance went back to what it once was, but her persona was forever changed. She always had the look of fear somewhere in her, the worry, the hate.

That never left, that was the new her.