Abe Kobo's Coffeeshop Friendship Circle
"My name is Abe Kobo, and I'm looking for ability users. If you're interested, please come to the old coffeeshop downtown; that's where we meet during Wednesdays. It's more of a support group than anything."
AU: Imagine Bungou Stray Dogs with (a lot) more characters.
"My talent was the uncompromising ability to feel spite."
Kirino Natsuo is a mercenary. Enchi Fumiko is a nurse.
"It is done."
She says this into the receiver. Her hands are dripping crimson and her body is battered. The walls are splattered with blood. Three men are dead. There is a bullet in her thigh, but she doesn't wince.
"Excellent. You should expect your full payment in due time."
She hisses.
"You promised me tomorrow."
"Yes, well, I'm not in control of the money around here, so you'd have to wait like everyone else."
She throws the phone to the wall and it shatters upon impact. With a swift flick of her wrist, the blood disappears from the room. The bullet in her thigh bites harder and digs deeper into her leg. She doesn't wince.
When she returns home, she fishes out the bullet herself and breathes quietly into the silence.
"You should have called me."
There is a young woman in front of her, wearing a white button-down blouse and a burgundy skirt, her hands clothed in pristine surgical gloves.
"It was just a bullet."
They both know this scene by heart, the young nurse tending to the wounds of the veteran, but she is no soldier and the younger woman is no innocent nurse. The last rays of sunlight stream into the room and there are parts of the other woman's face that she cannot see in the dim light. She breathes unsteadily, inhales and exhales without daring to move. The wound in her thigh is bleeding, still bleeding, when the woman reaches out to touch it, rubbery fingers skimming against her skin.
"Does it still hurt?"
The woman's hand stills against the gauze and she pulls away.
"No."
The woman looks at her with such warmth that she could almost be mistaken for the sun, but that is a lie. The young woman before her is no sun, although that is what she strives to be: big and bright and remembered.
"Nothing should ever hurt." She whispers as the last rays of sunlight disappear behind dark storm clouds.
Her name is Enchi Fumiko.
"Does it hurt anywhere?"
She asks this to the woman on the bed, bloody and battered is her body, but the fact that she responds with a grunt and a slow, slight shake of her head should be proof enough that she is fine, just tired. But because Fumiko is new to this job of taking care of people and gauging their pain (and because Fumiko wants so, so much to take away everyone's pain), she tells the doctor to give the woman at least three days to recuperate.
She has lost so much blood, Enchi-kun. The doctor chides. Wouldn't it be better to give her a blood transfusion first?
Fumiko sees the woman's eyes shift, widen a little, and hears a pained, startled gasp ripping from her throat. In her mind, Fumiko thinks the woman is saying no.
"I will test her blood, then." She replies automatically, before turning to her and revealing an empty syringe from her pocket. "This might sting a little." She tells her.
The needle pricks into her skin, and she refuses to let it take a drop of her blood, but she is too tired and her crimson blood flows into the syringe. Fumiko searches the woman's eyes for any hint of pain, but there is nothing.
Later, when another needle is struck into the woman's arm to transfer AB+ blood, Fumiko hears the woman scream and sees her rip out the needle. Blood trickles to the floor and there is a thin blade made of blood pressing against Fumiko's cheek and she remembers who this woman is. Her mouth quivers in fear and that is when the woman speaks to her for the first time.
"Please. Don't."
The woman's voice is hoarse and rough and tired. The blade presses into Fumiko's cheek and she is afraid, but the solidified blood soon melts and drips down her face, her neck, seeps into her clothes and falls onto the floor. The woman breathes hard and loud and she has already lost so much blood.
"I'm sorry."
Fumiko says as she ties the woman's hands to the bed and sticks the needle into her arm again. The woman cries and shrieks and Fumiko wipes the blood off the floor.
"This is not my blood." The woman says. "Take it out of me, please."
Her name is Enchi Fumiko and she apologizes again and again until the woman succumbs to slumber. This is how they meet again, the woman a high-class murderer, and Fumiko, the young, utterly compassionate nurse.
A year has passed since then, and nothing has changed.
"Grotesque."
Her blood seeps from the fresh wound on her arm and spills to the floor, flows around her like a viper ready to strike, coils around her like mist on a foggy day. There is a man standing in front of her and he is terrified, just as he ought to be.
"You promised him three days. I will be collecting the money."
She has the man cornered in a back alley where no one ever looks. The man's hands shiver in anticipation before he pulls out a gun from behind him and shoots. Twice. A bullet hits her shoulder and another hits her arm.
"Over my dead body!"
The fear and the frustration in his voice makes the blood warmer, thicker, and when she looks at him straight in the eye, she breathes in deep and dares him to pull the trigger again.
"You don't have the money yet."
She states, eyes levelling with his as the bullets he shot into her exit her body. Blood flows out of the fresh wounds and he feels sick just looking at the sight, but he doesn't waver. He holds the gun steady in his hands against his erratic breathing. A car passes by, but pays them no mind. No one can see them in this place, after all.
"We will give you three more days. If you are unable to comply, we will have your life."
The man doesn't thank her, in fact he doesn't say anything. He lowers the gun and falls to his knees, silently begging her for mercy and compassion; he is just a man, and money isn't everything in this world, right?
Her blood coils around his neck and lifts him easily from the ground.
"Do not ask for my mercy." She says, eyes cold and unfeeling, "You must pay for it."
She leaves the man with a shallow cut around his neck, a choker of blood to mark him as separate from all the rest.
Three days later, the man is found dead in the bathtub of his own apartment, blood spilling from his neck and into the lukewarm water.
Her name is Kirino Natsuo.
"We will be contacting you again if something unsavory comes up."
There is a thick envelope shoved into her hand and the man in front of her sits languidly in his chair as he always does. Three months have passed and she has already rid him and his associates of thirteen people from their kill list, and she has earned enough to pay her rent for the next four months in full and still have enough money to dine at the expensive, exuberant restaurant from across the street twice a day.
"Of course." She replies automatically.
"Many thanks, Kirino-san." The man says as she leaves the door, "You have aided this company far better than any one of those fools."
She breathes deeply as the door shuts behind her. She heads home immediately and sheds her clothes off her body, peeling away articles of soiled, bloodied clothing and thinking to herself if there would ever be a day where she could wear bright colors and vibrant patterns like Fumiko. The younger woman had a stylish air about her person, often dressing herself in bright shades of yellow and green to match the summer season, and warm shades of brown and burgundy come the cold rain.
She sighs as she removes the last piece of clothing. She watches herself in the mirror, almost completely naked save for her underwear, and eyes her body longingly, from the large cut down her chest, to the smaller cuts littering her arms, and to the old wounds and fresh scars on her legs. She doesn't count them, feels that they are too many, feels that they are unimportant, feels that they are just a part of her that have existed from the very start.
"Nothing will hurt." She tells herself. "Nothing should ever hurt."
She rinses her clothes in the sink and sees so much red in them that she considers buying new ones instead.
Kirino Natsuo has only ever worn black.
She steps into the shower and washes herself under the rushing water, rubs her skin and sees flecks of red dripping to the tile, but not for long. There is a reason why she chooses warm showers over warmer baths.
"The blood will wash away. Just as it always has." She mutters as she watches the red turn to pink, and then to clear, clean water and wishes for it to be the same for her.
Kirino Natsuo has always been bloody.
"Kill on sight."
The command was simple enough to follow, and yet she cannot bring herself to do it.
There is a child in the crib and the husband is tied to a dining chair in the next room. The older woman in front of her cowers in fear, tears staining her cheeks and her fingers, shaking. She owes the company almost a million yen and it is time for her to pay.
"Please! Give me more time!" The woman pleads, clutching at her leg, her nails digging into her skin.
"We have given you three days."
"What lunatic would think that three days are enough to earn a million yen?!"
She pushes the woman away. "Do you know how much they have paid me to kill you?"
The woman doesn't answer.
"A lot of money." She answers bluntly. "It doesn't make sense to you, why they would spend even more money when they've already lost so much. But the fact is, once you're gone, everything you own will be turned over to the company." She points to the crib, "Possibly even your child."
"They can't do that! I owe them nothing!"
"Then you will die."
"Please!"
A spike of her blood comes up from under the woman and penetrates her heart. The baby cries loudly in its crib and the husband howls mutely into the gag around his mouth. She failed to state the woman's other option on purpose. It was either she die or she, along with her family, be sold on the Black Market. Kirino has decided that death is the best option, as she places the child on the father's lap and removes the gag from the man's mouth.
"You monster! I hope you rot in hell!"
"Forgive me."
Two spikes come up and pierce the man's chest and the child's heart, and a perverse imagining of Michaelangelo's Pieta appears before her and she apologizes again.
Kirino Natsuo thinks that it is better for them to stay together in death, rather than to live separately in this cruel, callous world.
