Half-Demon, Half-Priestess: A Feudal FairyTale Remix

chapter three | Anonymous Was The Trigger

"It's the unknown that draws people."

~*~

"I'm off!" Sakuya shouted as she closed the front door of her home with a bang.

She turned around, and stared at the open blue sky, feeling free. She took a deep breath, consuming the mid-morning air. And of course, that did not totally satisfied her. Although the environment of her new neighbourhood was not as polluted as the big cities of Tokyo, she could still pick up the slight scents of bad odour created by the pollutants.

She was quite picky in the scent of smell, all thanks to her sensitive nose. She would prefer the air provided by Mother Nature, so refreshing, so comfortable, so natural.

And that was exactly where Sakuya was heading.

Lowering her cap, she dropped her skateboard on the ground that she bought along, and steadily rode it down the street towards her favorite spot in the area. Not the park, neither the runway or the empty streets, but the nearest forest from her household.

However, she didn't know that a shadowy figure was standing on the top of the roof of a house, watching her from afar. Wearing a hood which covered his whole body, hiding his body shape and appearance, and people couldn't tell his exact age and gender by just looking at him.

The silhouette let out an evil smirk, his eyes gleaming at Sakuya, as if she was his precious treasure. The girl hadn't noticed his shadowy presence, as she continued heading towards the small forest.

"Sakuya..." The figure suddenly spoke, his voice quite horse. "It's finally time, ain't it?"

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After a couple of hours of hiking, running, and jumping from tree to tree almost non-stop, Sakuya sat under a huge tree and wiped out the beads of sweat on her forehead, taking a short break.

Not knowing why, she had a great liking to this particular tree she was sitting under, and she always specifically sat down below this tree for shade and resting, admiring the forest scenario around her. The tree was unusually tall, so tall that it seemed to be able to touch the sky. However, excluding that fact, it seemed like any ordinary tree. Why did this tree seemed so important and... special to her? As if it gave her a feeling, a... magical feeling, which sounded really absurd. How could an ordinary tree gave that out to her? Sakuya couldn't get it at all.

"Doesn't matter," She muttered, thinking she had gone paranoid again. After making sure that nobody was around, she took off her cap, revealing her silvery hair more than ever, and her dog-like ears as well. She then ruffled it in a rough manner, and pulled the rest of the short tufts of her hair to the back to her head as she gazed up to the bright, blue sky.

Sakuya let out a short chuckle, couldn't believe that she could still think so much after a lot of running and jumping. Okay, she admitted she could be a little hyperactive at times (mostly, actually), and the time she did several parkour moves without feeling exhausted in the forest had proved it. She could also run a couple of kilometers in a mere hour. She could also lift up an object nearly ten times her weight, as if she had supernatural strength and stamina. But what could she do about it? People even thought that she was diagnosed with some mental disorders like ADHD because of that. An abnormal person. A freak. However, she didn't care about that, she didn't want to.

Since caring too much can risk people to suffer more heartbreak.

Sakuya shook that thought off, and tried to distract herself to clear up her mind. She then pulled out a round pendant from inside her navy blue T-shirt, which was tied into a necklace that hung around her neck. It was made of polished wood, small yet delicate, with two Japanese kanji syllables "Sakuya" ( 朔夜 ), which literally meant 'first evening of the month', carved on it quite deeply. That was where Sakuya got her name by Naomi, who first found her lost in the streets, since that pendant was already with Sakuya during that time.