To Bone, Through Marrow

PREFACE OF MEN AND WOMEN

Prologue 000

    MINEKO lost her virginity at the age of 14 with a boy she had met on a Sunday evening. He was walking by, clothing nice and pricey, when Mineko came up behind him and threatened him with a pistol to his back. Of course, the boy was shaking; hell! He practically shit his pants, but he clumsily reached into his pocket and handed the hooded girl his wallet. She was pleased, and lowered her weapon for only a second when the boy had flipped around and shoved her to the ground with the weight of his body.

    The moment it happened, neither Mineko or the boy really thought of their current situation. One, dazed with the sound of his heart flooding his ears blocking out any and every noise, while the other felt her stomach rumble and sense of fight or flight kick into overdrive. The next few seconds were the deciding factors to how their lives would play out forward on.

    With the air knocked from her, Mineko coughed and sputtered at the impact, losing her hold on the gun and wallet in the process. Mineko was frantic, daring to sink her teeth into his neck before she caught sight of the boy's face. He was incredibly attractive, pretty and with a cheek the color of a ripe red apple. His eyes watered, Mineko couldn't tell if it was from her threat or, what she guessed, to be a slap to his right cheek. Her hesitance to gnaw at him confused her, as did the feel of his touch.

    His hands clasped her wrists, but didn't dig into her skin like teeth sinking into an apple. He was soft with his hold, yet firm in the sense she couldn't escape without a struggle. Well, Mineko could've, but she bit her tongue and waited.

    "You get slapped?" She questioned shortly.

    It was obviously what happened, but she couldn't help but be a bit snippy. Her heist for money was foiled, and now she was being straddled by a strange boy; it was a shock she hadn't bit his head off by now. There'a still a chance though, yeah? 

    "No," the boy sniffled, nose crinkling as he averted his eyes. They were green, like the grass Mineko remembered being outside her childhood home. His lashes were long and went straight outward, enhancing the slimmer shape of his eyes. For being a man, she found him eerily pretty. "Just... Ran into a pole."

    Mineko blinked, pursing her lips in an attempt to hide her laugh, but she failed when her tongue pressed to her teeth and pried her mouth open before she could act. "Well, that's much better than a slap to the cheek." She continued to giggle, long forgetting her will to escape as she laughed away.

Her laughter was contagious, airy and light, traveling throughout the empty street on the molecules within the air. Soon, the boy began to laugh, too. His grip slowly loosened until his hands were gone and he was slipping himself off of the girl to come and lay by her side, laughing like what happened didn't actually happen. It was like the atmosphere seemed to ease up, like Mineko didn't just threaten a strange boy with a gun, and like said boy didn't tackle her to the ground in defense. They were just two teenagers at the same place, at the right time.

"Ha! I'm Sosuke," the boy, Sosuke, breathed between his high-pitched laughter. He was just a young boy with a name, like Mineko was a young girl with a name, and she realized how silly she truly was with her threat. "There's also only around ¥573 in that thing," Sosuke gestures to his discarded wallet, "not really worth taking."