Thick, metallic. Already foreshadowing the complete carnage you were soon about the witness.
The carnage of your adopted family. It was a slaughter. A massacre of the innocents.
You were used to waking up to discover another one of you had died during the night, caught by the silent killer - disease. But this... this was murder.
The monsters responsible were still there when you arrived; you recognised them as the thugs you'd overheard discussing a shipment to Port Mafia.
Wrong place, wrong time, apparently.
That one mistake had cost you your entire livelihood. The thing that kept you going - kept you sane. Kept you from being devoured by the shadows.
You were frozen on the spot - both of you were. Your eyes slid left to right, seeing nothing but red, whilst your feet were cemented to the ground. You could barely bring yourself to move when a shout rang out through the night like a bullet.
"Oi! Over there - two are still alive!"
Seeing nothing but red, you grabbed Akutagawa's hand and took off running.
You didn't get very far. All of a sudden, the boy was struck down by a figure clothed in shadow, his hand ripped from yours as you were thrown roughly into the wall. The attacker kicked your companion in the ribs, followed shortly by a gruesome crack.
Driven into a blind rage, you lunged forward and grabbed at the man's neck, a guttural cry leaping from your throat. You squeezed and squeezed, your fingers almost ripping into his flesh, until the man fell limp in your arms, his head lolling back. You let him slump at your feet, nose cracking against the toe of your shoe, and pushed him away with a sickened cry.
Grabbing Akutagawa's arm, you drew a curtain of shadows over the two of you, staggering away from the macabre scene. His face was blanched ghostly pale, mocked by the vibrance of red crawling down his face. Cries of pain whistled through his lips with each stumble, his legs almost buckling until you pulled him upright again.
It hurt you. What you had seen. What Akutagawa was going through. It hurt a lot.
"Bastards. Damn, stupid bastards," you muttered, your voice straying pitches, trodden over with cries of anguish. "Bastards. They're going to pay. They'll pay for what they've done."
Akutagawa said nothing. His cheeks rippled as he gritted his teeth, fingers biting into your arm. At times, he seemed to slip in and out of consciousness, his eyes fluttering drowsily, his balance tilting sideways before catching himself in the act.
"Hang in there," you whispered repeatedly, your footfalls carving an uneven beat.
Your surroundings passed in a blur - a monotone streak of grey and black. You didn't recognise where you were; the buildings here were lean and narrow, craggy little things with mismatched bricks and slanted rooftops. Nowhere was safe so long as you were in the vicinity of the slums, so kept running. Running, running, running. It's all you could do. With burning lungs, throbbing muscles, a skyrocketing pulse.
You had to keep running.
But then he finally gave way. Just as you passed the cover of trees, stemming from the ground like sitting giants, he collapsed, sinking to his knees without a word.
He was silent.
Yet there was a fire in his eyes. Wild, dangerous - a raw element. Raw emotion. Raw anger. It was the first time Akutagawa had really felt.
"'If anyone hurts any of us," you began, treading softly as you laced the boy's hand through your own, "we'll go make them pay for it together'. D'you remember that promise?"
Akutagawa nodded.
"We'll kill them all."
❖
Akutagawa wasn't afraid to die.
He once told you hell would be a better place to live than the slums.
Death didn't faze you. But pain - pain did. You didn't want to suffer any longer. You'd had enough suffering. Surviving on scraps you'd scavenged from bins, enduring countless beatings from the criminal gangs that infested the streets, waking up to find half of you had died in the night. It was all pain and suffering. When would it stop?
Twigs splintered and dashed under your feet as you ran through the woods.
The canopy above dispersed the moonlight, making it swing through the branches of the trees like ghostly apparitions. The night was humid. Your skin was damp with perspiration, beads of sweat arching down your neck and spine.
You pushed back matted [h/c] hair, feet tripping over the uneven ground.
Akutagawa didn't look back once to see if you were still following him. He was driven; blinded. Blinded by rage, by violence, by hatred.
He had only the desire to kill.
As you broke out from the trees, the distant screeches of steam whistles igniting the air, you both skidded to a stop, caught off guard.
You froze. Akutagawa, panting heavily, was equally taken aback, his lips hanging ajar, highlighting the air with rings of smoke.
"A lovely night, isn't it?"
A young man was leaning against the trunk of a tree, inspecting his nails with casual indifference. He didn't bother lifting his head as he spoke, inspecting you from the corner of his eye. With brown unkempt hair and a bandage secured across his right eye, the man was more of a youth, appearing to be no older than eighteen.
And in front of him; in front of him was carnage. A slaughter. A massacre of the wicked.
The criminal you had been hunting. All dead.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Osamu Dazai, Executive of Port Mafia."
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