Your eyes stung with the heavy atmosphere, thick with exhaust fumes and dust. Your lungs burned as they fed on noxious air, flooding poison through your blood.
Not many people survived on the streets. Disease was everywhere. It had driven your numbers into single figures at one point. It had wiped out your family. It had almost taken Akutagawa; even now, disease was eating at his body, leeching his strength. He was cursed and diseased. A deadly combination.
You covered your nose and mouth with the sleeve of your coat, listening to the ceaseless drip of a gutter above as fluctuating moonlight through a gap in the tiles highlighted your dank surroundings every now and then.
You stifled a yelp as a large shadow suddenly detached from the wall, lunging at you with something glinting wickedly sharp in the silver light. Quickly rolling over, you narrowly missed being impaled by a dagger as it curved straight past your ear, burying into the ground.
The stranger wielding the weapon - a man with shaggy brown hair and hollow grey eyes - barked a guttural sound, tearing the knife from the cobbles and brandishing it against your throat. "Give me everything you-"
The man howled as your foot caught him in the groan, striking him back several paces. You were on him in an instant, wrestling the knife from his hand and pressing your kneecap against his collarbone, pinning him to the ground.
Frantic grey eyes met yours, begging for mercy.
Mercy.
You knew no such thing.
Keeping your breath locked in your throat, you lowered the dagger into his abdomen. It ripped easily past the flesh, lodging deep between his ribs. His screams died in his throat as terror froze on his face.
You stabbed the man three times.
Three times, before you laid the knife carefully beside his head, climbing off his chest and edging slowly away.
The man bled out slowly. Painfully.
You were never shown mercy.
Revenge was bittersweet.
"You enjoyed that, didn't you?"
You wheeled round with a start, heart jolting at the familiar voice.
Akutagawa was watching you from the mouth of the alleyway, shoulder propped against the guttering of the adjacent building, eyes glinting charcoal.
"What?"
"You enjoyed that," he repeated, gaze falling to the man lying still at your feet. His eyes were wide open in terror. "Killing him. You miss it."
You breathed sharply, nails digging into your palm as you clenched your fists. "Don't fuck with me. Of course I don't. I did that for survival."
"Don't fool yourself. You were born a killer."
Your voice caught in your throat, unsure of how to respond.
You weren't born a killer. Nobody is. You were made into one; from the moment your parents surrendered you to the streets, leaving you to fight for survival, to when you were recruited by the mafia and trained as a ruthless assassin.
"I never thought you'd be one for third chances, Akutagawa," you ventured, changing the subject. Taking your eyes off your former companion, you dropped to a crouch and closed the man's eyelids, your fingers lingering for a moment on the cold corpse. "You've had ample opportunity to kill me, and yet here you are, still inviting me to 're-join the mafia'."
"Do you want to die?"
You rested your tongue in the crook of your mouth, shooting him a stony glance. "If I did, do you think I'd still be alive?"
"Then stop moaning. I won't kill you," he finally admitted, his voice bitter.
"What about when I'm not useful anymore, hm? Will you kill me then? Discard me like a pawn?"
Akutagawa licked his lips, chapped and ghostly white. "We're all pawns. There's always a higher power controlling people like us." He glided toward you like a lost spectre, eyes hollow, skin sickly. You were backed slowly into a wall, Akutagawa stepping indifferently over the man's still body. "You think we get choices in this life? You're wrong. We're sons of the devil; cursed. We're feared. But we're also easily manipulated - so easily controlled. Why? Because we yearn so desperately for a purpose - a chance. We had nothing, until the Mafia gave us something - a life, a purpose. Our purpose is to kill."
You stared, pathetically, at the man before you, unable to give voice to the words fizzing on your tongue.
"No matter what you want to believe, you never really have a choice."
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