The Runaway

Lost In a Maze

The sun was beginning to set and the eldest Ishigawa child had yet to locate her family- whom she had lost when a fight had broken out right smack in the middle of the market way. One would think that after spending minutes upon minutes, you would come across somebody you recognized. How difficult was it to find her over-protective father, a meddling eleven year-old, and her itty bitty, carrot topped brother who never parted from his stuffed rabbit?

'Great' Uno mumbled to herself.

Not only was she short, clumsy, stubborn, hot tempered, and, socially challenged; but, now Uno had to add 'with a dishonorable sense of direction' to her list of short comings.

She had spent majority of the time trying to avoid rowdy pedestrians who had flocked to get a closer view of the fight that had just happened a few seconds ago. This proved to be useless. Before she had even registered what was happing, Uno found herself on the ground again and again.

After that, she let out a defeated sigh and started the other way and began to search.

"Where is it?" the young Oni muttered as she dug inside of her obi, feeling around for her spending money.

She had grown extremely hungry since the last time she had spoken to the other members of her family- as soon as she heard the audible rumbles of her stomach, her mood took a turn for the worse. Uno had always grown irritable when she was hungry. Simply saying 'irritable' would be an understatement, though. The girl grew VERY irritable, and almost, downright demonic.

Once it was evident that Uno's money was nowhere to be found, she let out a loud growl in frustration- her hand still shoved into her obi. She quickly yanked her hand away and glared when a few humans began to stare as she passed.

"Wh-what are you looking at?!" she hissed; and with that, the frazzled onlookers scurried home.

Home. What she wouldn't give just to be able to go back home for the night. There, everything was familiar, not so strange and different. At least at home Uno wouldn't get herself lost. However, Uno's home had become extremely boring over the past few years and there was no way she'd go back to that just yet.

Without any other ideas, Uno made her way back where she had lost her family in the first place. Poor Uno hoped that she'd find them here- but that wasn't reality.

Now, she was hungry and enraged; and, getting hit by small droplets of rain. The droplets turned into buckets and the buckets turned into a falling ocean of rain. The water began to accumulate on the ground until it formed a shallow puddle around her feet. In the reflection of that puddle, Uno noticed a flash of light. It was a very large thunder storm.

"Oh, hell no!"

The soaked redhead glanced in every direction until her eyes fell upon a large board lying against a wall and supported by old crates stacked on top of each other. Without hesitation, Uno sprinted towards the poorly made shelter and crawled underneath.

Here, the young girl sat shivering and frightened by the thrashing around her.

"Come on...Come on...why?" she whimpered "Why did it have to be a thunderstorm?!"

Ever since she was a mere child Uno had been afraid of thunderstorms. As soon as she heard the slightest noise that resembled the sound of thunder, she would crawl into her parent's bed. Mamma was always understanding and gentle- even Papa seemed to welcome her, even with a runny nose and frozen feet. It was much easier to withstand the storm then.

"Thunderstorms bring good luck" her mother would tell her.

Now, as the storm flurried violently around her, she clenched her fist as tight as they would go and lowered her head in terror.

Just before Uno could mutter just how much she was wrong, something, or rather- someone, had darted into her "hideout" so fast that they clonked their head into her chin. The collision was in fact, very painful and Uno was sure that she would gain a slight bruise from this "little exchange".  If they had hit her any harder, she might even run away. 

Uno was just considering the idea of fleeing when the person cursed under his breath.

"Ouch! What the-Oh.."

He must have taken notice of her presence; he might have even became aware of the fact that she was what he had hit.

"You!" he exclaimed " I...I didn't mean to do that!"

In case you had been wondering, it was the boy she had seen get into a fight at the market. His oceanic - blue eyes appeared to be full of a mixture of embarrassment and something else as he stared. He stared at her so long and hard that Uno began to grow uncomfortable; she had grown so uncomfortable that she squirmed a little in her spot. He was awfully close.

"Don't you realize that you're being rude by gawking at my like that?" She spat, hoping he'd snap out of his daze at the very least.

"Blue Eyes" did snap out of it though. 

All he even had to say to her was:

"You're really pretty." 

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