Little Innocent // Atsushi Nakajima (p. 1)

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*buckles your seatbelt* I'm so sorry, and I love you so much

《gore warning》
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He was a little ball of sunshine in the dreariest place possible.

If he had been soaring up in the sky among the stars that he outshone, then maybe the darkness wouldn't have rooted itself in his heart of glass.

Kismet willed it to be. I didn't understand why, at first, because I was two decades into a life of crime.

One glance was all it took, really, for me to realize that we were both stuck in the same place, after all.

~

The government gives me quite the run for my life, from which I could possibly end up six feet under.

The algid season is upon Yokohama. Streets are damp, and the wintry bite of the breeze has crept its way into my bones.

Sirens blare indignantly in the distance. My combat boots fail me and slide off the roof.

I am twenty, but no longer in my prime. My body is weary, feeling sixty years older. Such is the feeling that I've overstayed my welcome in this world, but I never heed the nagging desire to retire from this lackadaisical job.

Metal cuffs. I could feel them over my wrists already.

I'm so... Tired. My legs hurt. They hurt... They hurt so, so much... I don't want to run anymore.

My body turns against me, mocking the weakness of my spirit, and picks up the pace.

The police officers in their cars fall behind. A dark cell, the only place destined to set me free, fades into the distance along with them. I am still running.

My feet are made to run, so that I may live another day to kill.

It's rare, that I should lose track of the routes I've taken. However, there's an unfamiliar gate standing in my way, and I instinctively climb over the colossal thing.

'Yokohama Orphanage for Boys and Girls'.

That's what it says on the rusting metal plate. Really, the last thing I want is to scare a bunch of already broken whelps with my pale face and grime caked clothes.

My first stroke of luck comes with the small window at the bottom of the back wall. I suspect that it'd lead to a basement of sorts.

Nobody in their right mind wanders into a basement at night, right?

It's an odd window- but an old one weathered by time. After drawing my foot back and giving it a powerful kick, the metal bars give way with ease and clatter into the room.

I let myself in. The very first thing that my senses pick up, is the pungent smell of freshly drawn blood.

That, and a small corpse haphazardly tossed into the shadows.

"What is this place, really?"

As soon as I start walking towards it, I realize that the objects that I tripped over along the way were knives, nails and hammers. Profanities draw themselves from my tongue. The scene is a new scar carved into my memory.

"Are... Are you an angel?"

My heart pounds.

It isn't a corpse. It is a little ashen boy who beat the death clock, with the sparkle in his eyes alone.

As would anyone with open wounds, the boy erupts into broken howls. He forces himself over on his stomach, in an attempt to reach me, and unknowingly jams a nail into his knee.

"G-Guh!... Guh.. Ow. Ow," He chokes out, and crimson dribbles down his chin. "Help me.. Please..."

My own knees nearly buck. I squeeze my eyes tight, to the point of seeing stars, but I bend down on my haunches anyway.

"Hold still."

"Hurhh... It hurts!.. I can't breathe," The boy hyperventilates. "I can't s-stand up. I feel dizzy. Why can't I stand up?"

"You have lacerations on your thighs, so I'd rather you not do so. I will wrap them from you."

"Please save me from- from here, angel."

Fazed by the thick silence, I open my eyes to find him desperately clamping his mouth shut. His hard gaze is fixated on the far corner of the room. Nowhere else.

"What's behind the door?"

He had an awkward fringe down the side of his right cheek, as though someone had thought it a clever scissor prank. I brush the strands back with a finger, a gesture that he was too weak to even flinch from.

"Headmaster," the boy whimpers through his fingers. "He has more sharp things."

"Does he hurt you?" I ask, only so that he wouldn't see me pick one of the kitchen knives off the floor.

Mercy, by definition, is different for the likes of me. Outside the contracts that I sign, mercy only exists in putting people out of their misery.

They beg for it. My bullets are pricey a shot. I lose one to their hearts and charge none.

This boy was dying, and therefore, he was no different.

I didn't understand why I bothered to elevate his legs over my shin. I didn't understand why the heavily rusted nail above his kneecap bothered me so much.

I didn't try to understand. 'Emotion delays the kill'. Once upon a time, I learned that the hard way.

I slip the opposite side of the blade under the nail head and yank it out, while the orphan spoke of bullies and misplaced blames. Blood spurts.

He screams. I almost do.

Next to the escape I'd endured previously, performing first aid on the little boy is the longest ten minutes of my life.

The cloth scrap on one of the tables outside his cell suffices for cleaning, so I reach through the bars and let my fingertips reel it in.

I know only one way to do this kind of thing. Escaping fists and gunpoint with wounds that cut through muscle became nothing but an irksome buzz in my ear overtime.

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