You were despised. Feared. Labelled a freak - an outcast.
You were a killer.
You were a survivor.
"Did you ever meet your parents?"
Akutagawa hissed a breath. "No," he replied shortly, before adding in an undertone: "they say I'm a child of the Devil."
You glanced sharply across at him, eyes dimmed with hesitation. "Are you?"
The boy blinked at you, his lips crawling into the faintest traces of a smile. A wry smile. "I guess I'll never know."
"Oi! You two - what do you think you're doing out here?"
You whirled round, fingers twisting at your side as shadows already began to pool at the stranger's feet like a puddle of ink. He was completely oblivious.
His pale eyes lingered on yours for a long second, conflicted. "Shoo. Get out of here before someone else catches you."
He turned his back to you then, raking a hand through his cropped grey hair, and you scrambled out of his sight with Akutagawa dawdling behind.
Most adults were not as lenient as him. Most adults would not tolerate slum rats like you. Even Akutagawa had been beaten senseless by an adult for straying into criminal territory.
Criminals. The streets of Yokohama were infested with them. Crawling about like rats. Spreading death and corruption in their wake.
"We need to look for somewhere to stay. Your old den is attracting too much unwanted attention."
Akutagawa quickly covered up his mouth, a cough harrowing his lungs. You watched him wipe away the small flecks of blood on his palm, his face coated with a ghostly pallor. In the few weeks you'd been with the group, Aku's illness appeared to be worsening. He would cough blood often, suffering fatigue and losing weight faster than anyone else in the den.
It was troubling.
"Everywhere we go, it's infested with rats and criminals. We might as well stay where we are," he replied coldly, quickening his pace to walk ahead of you.
Clenching your teeth, you fell into step with him and kept your head low.
That tone he used irked you to no end.
You strangled a scream as something jumped out from the gutters, clamping a calloused hand across your mouth and pulling you up against the wall. Something icy grazed your neck, nicking the skin to draw blood.
"Take one step and I kill her," a voice rasped near your ear, hot breath falling against your skin, breaking out a sweat. Akutagawa was slouched a few paces away, hands tucked in pockets, face blank.
"Oh look, another rat."
The man snarled - a grotesque sound - and a wisp of greasy hair fell against your cheek. With a shudder, you curved your wrist and whispered a simple command under your breath.
The man gave a start.
"W-what the fuck is-huh?" The knife fell away from your neck as he began clawing at his face, trying to grasp the shadows eddying around his vision. Bringing your elbow back against his gut, you spun round and pinned him up against the bricks.
"Nobody likes rats," you said gravely, before crushing his skull against the wall.
Letting his body crumple at your feet, leaving a bloody mural on the side of the building, you ripped off a piece of your dress and secured it around your bleeding throat.
"You manipulate shadows," Akutagawa stated, already leaving the scene without any regard to your wound.
You jogged after him, biting on your tongue to quell any snarky comments. "I do."
"You can do much more than merely move them," he continued, taking a sharp turn into the urban jungle of backstreets. The guttering hung loosely from the sides of the buildings, rattling and clanking against the wall.
You shot your companion a puzzled glance. "How do you mean?"
He stopped then, angling his face so that you glimpsedhis ghostly cheeks, the sharp groove of his nose, the sunken shadows of his eyes.
"Figure it out yourself."
And that was that. He took off without a glance back.
Still, considering he walked away a lot, he was always waiting for you at the end of the street.
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