She stared between the box her fingers made, focusing on the body on the bed. A touch of chakra, and she pulled herself into the man's body, wrenching his mind away from him. His body was large, clumsy, fat with age and a too opulent life. When she moved off the bed, his feet creaked on the floorboards, and she could feel his flesh weighing her down. She walked him across the room, ignoring her limp body in the far corner.
A knife was easy to find. A bejeweled and shining letter opener, lying carelessly on a table in the next room, next to piles of letters and papers. She leafed through the papers quickly, then grabbed the knife. It was dull from ripping open envelopes, but it would work. She touched the end of the blade to the side of the man's neck, beneath his heavy jowls, and ripped.
Falling out of a dying mind felt a little bit like drowning. She never did get used to it, the way she lost herself, scattered and torn apart, or the way she had to push and pull so much just to get back into her own body. It was tiring and disorientating, and when she finally hooked herself back into her own body, she always had to lie still, waiting for her heart to work the right way, and for her mind to calm down and figure out where things went, and how things worked.
She rolled over, shoving her head against the cool floorboards. She was dizzy, out of control, and she needed to get out. She stumbled from the room, scrambling through the shadows until she was out of the mansion, and past the iron gates. When she was in the forest she ran, tripping and falling and running again, until she fell halfway into a stream. She tore off her mask, shoving her head under the water, and when she finally pulled it back out, gasping for breath, her wet hair stuck to her cheeks.
The forest was dark and cold, barely lit by the stars and sliver of a moon, and when she looked around, she felt small. There was something there, just on the edge of her sight, and on the edge of her mind, and on the edge of her reason, but she couldn't reach it, no matter how hard she reached, or how fast she turned. And, this time, like every time since she'd said yes and they gave her that damn mask and she ran from a dead body, she wondered just how much she'd lost.