As soon as Aru shut the doors behind her, she made a beeline for her bedroom, flopping blanket over blanket on top of her pathetic body. 

How to make everyone go away? Annoy them? She couldn't exactly kill them anyway, but how? She counted the options on her fingers. 

 Scream non-stop? Breaking into dance at random intervals? Quoting movies twenty-four/seven? Well, she did that anyway, so it wouldn't really make a difference. Playing re-runs of Bill Nye the Science Guy on T.V. during dinner? 

 No. None of those would work. At this point, her brain was in overdrive. 

 Randomly start singing 'Bad Blood' by Taylor Swift? Everyone would start bopping their heads to the beat, then. Make an alarm that went off every two minutes? No that would annoy her as well. Purposefully forget their names? No, no, no, no, no. She sighed as she observed every crevice of her ceiling. 

 Why not just continue being herself? That had seemed to work with Kara. 

 But what even was 'herself' anymore? Kara's disappearance changed her in more ways that were bad rather than good. Her mind created an illusion linked to these feelings. 

 She saw Kara, looking at her with a sad smile. Even though she knew it wasn't real, Aru still ran over to her. Tried to reach her. Just to feel the old warmth of sisterly love again, she kept running, even if she was tired. 

 But every time her fingernail was just about to scrape against the other's arm, she would slip farther away. No matter how fast she ran, how loud she screamed her name, Aru couldn't seem to catch up.

 And, while thinking about the stark white space that was built from her consciousness, where not even a faded shadow was there to accompany her, Aru drifted off into a restless, dreamless sleep. 

'Kara...Where are you?'