Kakuzu was as close to a monster as anyone ever would be. He had come to terms with that. Neglecting the fact that he was covered in stitches, his eyes were enough to send anyone into a nightmarish reality. And inside, where in the clichés of beauty and the beast it was all that mattered, he was just as ugly as the outside.
He never had dreams or aspirations of marriage. He never had hopes or wants for love. In all honesty, he didn't think he could have found it even if he was looking. So, instead of hiding away in shame, he embraced it. If he would be a monster, he would be the type of monster who people feared to even speak the name of.
He supposed that was why he took solace in money. The thought of one thing ultimately being his, and his only, made him the closest to happy he could ever be. So, equivalent to that of a lover, he searched for money as desperately as any other man would search for his beloved.
He dubbed these circumstances as peaceful, or as peaceful as they ever would be for him. After all, he was a criminal; he searched for no happiness, only the forms of contentment available to him. He lived with this contentment for a while.
It was that young girl that he met on a mission with that insufferable idiot, Hidan, who really changed anything. Although small, the impact she made was substantial.
She was to help them get what they wanted in that town. Naturally, as a kunoichi, Kakuzu expected her to be stoic, possibly something close to emotionless: Especially if she was helping the enemy. But he watched her bubbly attitude with some sort of bewilderment. She quickly took to referring to him as "Kakuzu-kun" and, strangest of all, made a point to make direct eye contact with him.
It wasn't unusual for shinobi to make direct contact, but with him, his eyes were generally avoided at all costs. The red sclera was almost as unsettling as his pupil-less green irises. But she stared into his eyes without a single shred of fear.
In the time he spent with her, she very quickly took to tracing the scars of his arms when she got distracted, and he surprised himself by not pulling away until she had traced halfway up his forearm. He wondered at her lack of fear of him, and briefly questioned himself if she knew just what a monster he was.
The final day he was to spend with her, she asked him to remove his mask. He leveled her with an even stare, but she simply stared back with a smile on her face. He conceded in the end, only because they were in private and it would cause no harm. He expected a gasp, a cringe, or even a scream, but she simply examined his face, smiled, and got back to work.
It was often he though of her after their stay had ended. He thought of the way she shamelessly made eye contact with him, touched him, and talked to him. It was the first time in a long time he allowed himself to be treated like a human. And after a while, he hated her.
He hated the fact that she made him feel normal, so far from what he really was. Because in reality, he was a monster, and a mere week with a girl who appeared to think otherwise would not change that fact. Because he couldn't feel anything other than contempt for her even if he tried. And because for the life of him, he couldn't understand why every time she looked at him, she smiled.
For that, he hated her.
Really short, but I just kind of came up with the summary line and built a story off of that…Review!