The Butterfly Effect

Chapter One: Initialize

Initialize: transitive verb, /ɪˈnɪʃ(ə)lˌaɪz/

1. to set to a starting position, value, or configuration
2. to make a system ready for use

***

Rain pattered off the uniform dark surface of Uryū's umbrella, and a quick glance at the clouds ahead confirmed that a storm threatened for later that night. A normal occurrence, for Karakura in the spring. The leaves had only begun to bud, so the clouds had made everything grey, from the sidewalks to the houses to the bare trunks of the occasional tree, branches forking dark against the pale sky like inverse lightning.

Uryū stepped left to avoid a puddle, mindful of the glass bottle with its sad, drooping flowers that leaned up against a nearby telephone pole. The color in the petals was stubborn, refusing to yield its stark whiteness to the overcast haze, and he moved his eyes from the blooms to the boy sitting beside them. He was grey, becoming indistinct at the edges, what had once been a bright crimson shirt faded to almost brown. His knees were pulled to his chest, his arms draped over them, face hidden from sight.

Spirits could not, of course, feel the rain in the same way the living did. Not in this world. The boy was dry, but still he shivered. Uryū's feet stopped moving, and he sighed under his breath, turning himself ninety degrees so he was looking down at the child from the front.

"No one is coming for you," he said, his tone flat.

The child startled, his head lifting sharply to peer up at Uryū, who stared impassively back for a moment, adjusting his glasses with the first two fingers of his free hand. A car drove past on the road, its wheels sending up a sheet of water from near the gutter. It fell just short of the telephone pole, receding like a wave on the ocean, leaving a thin layer of silt behind.

"You-" the boy started, and Uryū pursed his lips.

"Can see you, yes." He adjusted the angle of his umbrella slightly, so that the water dripped off behind him instead of in front.

"Then you... can you tell my mom that I'm here? I got lost, and I don't know where-"

Uryū shook his head. "She is not coming." The newspapers this morning had made that clear enough. "No one is-and you shouldn't wait."

The child continued to stare at him with wide, dark eyes, and Uryū resisted the urge to shift his weight, or look away, even when the boy's eyes gained a glimmer that could only be tears. "B-but... mom... I want my mom!" He started to sob, and Uryū fought to keep his face from changing, swallowing thickly.

Shifting the bag over his shoulder, he crouched in front of the child. "You should-" but he was cut off by a wail, and for a moment doubted his decision to stop. The spirits of children were... difficult, in this way. He turned his face skywards for a moment, grimacing to himself. A few drops of rain spotted his glasses, evading the plastic barrier over the rest of him.

Laying a hand on the child's head, he waited a few moments for the sniffles to quiet before he tried again, making his tone softer than it was firm. "What is your name?"

The boy looked up at him, Uryū's fingers dragging through his hair and ruffling it slightly. "Kenta. Kenta Sawada." He leaned slightly into the hand on his crown, and Uryū left it there. The strands had a fluffy texture to them, like goose down.

"And your mother, she is Mayu Sawada-san, isn't she?"

Kenta's eyes rounded, and he regarded Uryū with something like awe, his mouth falling open slightly. "Y-yes. You know her? Where is she? Where's my mom?"

Uryū resisted the urge to sigh. "Kenta-kun. You've been feeling a strange thing for the past few days, haven't you? Something that feels like it's pulling you, from here?" He pointed at the short chain protruding from the child's chest. As usual, Kenta did not appear to have noticed its presence on his own, and he fell out of his seated position into an ungainly sprawl when Uryū drew his attention to it. He nodded slowly, his eyes moving back up from the chain to Uryū's face.