In Love with Crime

Gratitude

The dusk of day begins to fall, the orange light casting down upon the tall buildings, the shadows leaning against the cement sidewalks and roads. A man walks slowly through the crowd of people as they walk past him. His maroon messy hair hangs over his face as he walks silently with his headphones the same color as hair on. He wears a school uniform and has a brown satchel on his back which holds his belongings. He looks up for a moment, and turns his head quickly, noticing some commotion in an area where commotion normally does not belong. He quickly walks over and turns the corner to look in an ally, a couple of girls being pulled by their wrists deeper into the darkness, the guy calling out.

"Hey! Leave them alone!"

The guy then counts, five men stand, three approaching the man. He does not budge nor feel any fear, now looking up to the leader.

"Look at you, you are a small punk are you not? What's your name, I want to add it to the list of arrogant fools that have tried to stop us."

The guy with the sporadic maroon hair does not back down in confidence, his golden colored eyes glare with frustration.

"I would give you my name, but you won't remember it. Leave them alone.

The guy grits his teeth with anger.

"Then we will find out when we loot your corpse."

The maroon-haired guy lowers his head a tad, squinting harder to threaten.

"I want to see you try."

The taller thug attacks, turning the event into a brawl. The maroon-haired guy does different moves, blocking and striking the thugs one by one, even the two holding the girls join in, the guy putting up and easy fight, knocking them all out cold. When the combat finishes, the guy recomposes himself, putting a fist to his mouth, coughing, then puts the hand to his ear with his fingers.

"Attention, this is investigator Todama following up about those city prowlers. They are out of the count and might need an ambulance for a couple, things kind of got out of hand."

There is silence as Todama turns away from the victims, then he talks again.

"It's not my fault, they threw the first punches, I was just trying to defend myself and the victims."

Silence stands again, then disappears once more to Todama's speech.

"Yeah yeah, do as you please. Just have someone come get these thugs before they wake up and I hurt them more than they already are, although I do not think I will have to put any more violence into their ears."

Todama releases his ear, and takes off his school uniform, a nice suit being on his body underneath. He puts the uniform inside of the satchel and carries it in his hands. One of the two girls runs up and approaches him with gratitude.

"U-um, thank you!"

Todama turns his head enough to see her.

"No need. It's my job. You two being okay is gratitude enough."

She grasps his arm, this taking Todama by surprise even though his face hardly expresses it, he turns his body a little more towards her.

"No! You deserve more, please, my friend and I would love to take you to eat for your efforts! I'm sure you should be hungry after a brawl like that!"

There is a short standing silence, Todama turns his head away a little to think, then turns it back towards the girl, a soft smile.

"Alright. It would be rude of me to reject it. What is your name?"

She grins in delight, putting her hands behind her back, her long black hair flowing in the light breeze.

"My name is Sasha, and her name is Angel."