Chapter 1: Conscience Decides
"Get off of me!"
"Come back here, you troublemaker!"
The girl muttered under her breath, "Yeah right I'll come back here." She kicked up dust as she ran and soon the footsteps of her pursuer faded away. Relieved, Kyokki slowed down to a walk, looking down at her chest; the fruit and bread she had stolen were still there and she hugged it closer to her body. Just the scent of food made her stomach growl even louder.
It was a hard life in the outskirts of Rukongai; the houses were made of wood, streets were lined and covered with dust, and the people lived simply.
Too simply, she thought. People didn't stand up for themselves anymore; gang fights were becoming more and more prevalent as people became increasingly desperate for food and space. But even then, the people did nothing. Kyokki couldn't stand it. She, for one, wouldn't stand by and be pushed around. She would survive.
The place she called home was a crudely made shack suspended in the branches of a tree out in the edge of Rukongai's first district.
The bread was still soft when Kyokki rolled it onto her table. She sighed in contentment as her exhausted limbs settled into her bed; it'd been a long week in her search for food and finally, she'd get to eat. Finally.
After a moment's reflection of the past several days' events, hunger drove her to pick up the bread. She could feel her mouth watering even as she tore it into chunks but before she could wolf it down like her stomach wanted her to, an image floated into her mind - the image of a grandmother she saw through the window of a house during her week's forage.
Seriously? Kyokki looked at her hard-won reward, unbelieving that she no longer wanted to eat. Hissing, she threw it back onto the table and stomped to a lopsided cabinet, swinging out a piece of cloth. She divided her food into two equal portions, setting aside her own and wrapping the other in the fabric.
It was a fifty foot drop from her treehouse to the ground, but she didn't even look twice before leaping.