A/N: Hello again, my lovely little readers!

So, a person on tumblr got me completely in Psychic Detective Yakumo, and I ended up writing this little one-shot.

(I know the PDY part of isn't very big, so I'm happy to add to the archives :3 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Psychic Detective Yakumo/Shinrei Tantei Yakumo, and am not getting any sort of profit from this.

He could barely remember a time when he wasn't alone.

At first, he hadn't understood why. He was just like all the other kids, just as happy and friendly and playful. He could just as easily make friends, and just as easily lose them.

After a while, he began to realise what it was. His ability to see what could not be seen - ghosts, and the supernatural - made him unnatural. And, for some reason, that scared them.

"Freak..."

He started getting a little distant. In the morning and evening he would gaze in the mirror, staring at the almost demonic red eye on his left side, and hating it. Hating what it represented, what it meant he could do. He just wanted to be normal, to play like the other kids...but that would never happen. Because of his eye.

The same eye which made him lose his friends, made him lose his mother.

As she clutched at his neck, tightening her grip as she stared at him with uncontrollable fear and hatred, he nearly wanted to chuckle at the irony. She hated his eye? Guess that made two of them.

"Monster!"

And yet, inexplicably, just as his life was about to end, he was saved.

His mother was gone, however, and he found himself as he was before - alone.

He had a slight reprieve when his uncle took him in; at least someone accepted him for who he was, and what he could do. His uncle even took it so far as to put in a red contact, to try and understand how he felt - the fear, the loneliness, the way he was ostracised in public.

Because of his damn eye.

"Demon...!"

The policeman who had saved him also didn't seem to mind it too much, but more for the fact that it could help with cases rather than that he actually cared for him.

Still, it wasn't enough. As he walked through the streets, he tried to avoid people, but still they would notice his eye and shiver or hurry away or scream and call him a devil. The fact that he was so young, so impressionable, didn't seem to occur to them. That he was merely a lonely boy was something they never considered.

All they saw was the eye.

"Devil child!"

In the end, even his uncle's house was too much for him. Too many dead, too many wandering spirits to remind him that he wasn't normal, no matter how much his uncle acted like he was.

He found a little solace by helping the ghosts now and then. At least someone benefitted from his eye, even if it wasn't him.

But he could never make friends. No matter how much he pined for light in his darkness, an end to the loneliness, he could never find it. Not like the ghosts he helped. Not like the people he met. He was alone, and it hurt.

"T-That's a mark of evil!"

He had considered, once or twice, an act of suicide. But then, he'd likely be stuck as the thing he could see anyway, so what was the point?

As he got older, he started staying away from home more. It was easier for him when he was alone, without ghosts around, to believe that he was a normal person. Not the hideous monster most of the population believed.

He enjoyed sleeping, too. When he slept, he didn't have to see all the ghosts. He didn't have to see all the looks of fear or hatred when people saw his eye. He didn't have to pretend to be normal. He could sink into a different reality and ignore the world.

"You...you monster...!"

When he was old enough, he got a contact. His uncle had given him the idea; if he could pretend to have a red eye, he could pretend to have a normal eye, right? So he purchased a dark lens which matched his other eye, and put it in.

As he stepped outside, the effect was instantaneous. People didn't gaze at him in fear. They didn't spot him and run away. They didn't view him as a monster. Maybe they didn't notice him, but they weren't afraid of him, and it felt so good.

He was happy, for a while, but his naturally introverted nature meant that he was awkward in social situations. He couldn't communicate normally with people without insulting them - due to the fact that he hadn't really had to learn the need for tact growing up - and neither could he find himself able to trust them enough to tell them when there was a problem, or when he was hurting or upset. He became a blank wall that no one wanted to deal with.

"Self-centred jerk."

So he shut himself away. When he got to university, he kept entirely to himself, refusing to communicate with the people around him. He started living in the fake club room that he'd made and it was good enough, seeing as this way he didn't have to worry about ghosts.

But it still...wasn't what he wanted. He had his own place, a little scam going on, and he didn't need to worry about people seeing his red eye, but...It wasn't what he had dreamed of.

He started to give up. There was no way there would ever be a time when he actually gained happiness. He was destined to live in the darkness for all eternity.

"Pretty..."

She had said that. Saw his eye, and instead of recoiling in fear or disgust, or running away and refusing to look at him, she had gazed at that hated eye with something akin to wonder.

And even after that, she stayed. Accepted his tactless insults, his silly quirks, his inability to express himself, she accepted it all and she stayed.

Of course, she attracted trouble. He got into more scraps with her than he ever had before, but it was worth it because she was safe, and she was alive, and she was with him.

And finally, Yakumo found that he was happy.

A/N: Review?