So I've been working on this for about two or three weeks now, on and off, what with many different other things like reading Homestuck and Tumblring a lot and common tests and stuff that is completely irrelevant to this story.
I've always been wanting to do this. Emo!Erika with an awesome back story. Because she is underrated. And because all awesome side-characters have unspoken backstories.
Here is my version.
Enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Durarara!.
The sky is a dull grey when she alights from the bus, the cold wind tumbling down the narrow streets and junctions.
Erika likes it.
She plops herself down on the bench at the bus stop and pours the coins from her tattered purse into her tattered hand. $5.20. Probably enough for her to eat something and survive the night, before she travels down into her destin(y)ation.
The wind is cold, the streets barren, like some old Western movie, just that everything's hued grey. She hugs her arms closer to her torso in order to preserve body warmth, as she stands up. Slinging her limp, worn bag on her left shoulder, she runs across the street to the brightly lit convenience store, contrasting with the darkness of the area.
The store's too overpoweringly white. Erika grabs a plain bun and a bottle of water off the shelves, impatiently waits in the queue for her time to come, and vacates the building as soon as she pays for it.
Raining outside now. Shit. It's cold and it's raining, and the droplets fall like shards of ice against her skin. She dashes into the neighboring office-like building lobby. Sleeping in alleys are so clichéd and silly. There's such things as being a hobo – in class.
Men and women clad in business suits take no notice of her as they briskly saunter out the door, into their cars and back to their homes. Despite the contrast in their appearances, they act like she's not even there – everything is crisp and straight about them, clothes and hair, while she's a mess, wearing dirty, messy $5 jeans and a black tee she bought at a cheap night market, the worn out sneakers on her feet found dumped outside a shopping mall and her hair frazzled over her shoulders, trampling all over their perfectly powdered lobby.
She doesn't care. Her shoes thump on the marble floor, leaving musty shoe-prints, as she navigates herself to the stair well, lumbering up the steps in search of an unknown something.
In between level 2 and 3, there's a huge arched window with an indoor ledge. Perfect for a window seat. Erika hops on, stretches herself like a cat, and settles down, watching raindrops race for entertainment.
When she gets bored of that, she rips open the plastic wrapping off her bun, and looks past the specks of precipitation on the glass to the road and city beyond.
Not a lot of cars, but those that are there take their time, down streets and past junctions surrounded by two-storey houses. Night is falling fast. Tungsten lights behind window frames turn on. Erika can almost smell the curry cooking; hear the motherly shouts of concern to her children. She stares at the brunette toddler reluctantly get pulled away from the swing set, a sulk pasted on her face, probably to disappear the next time she goes to the playground again.
The girl down there reminds Erika so much of herself- no.
After finishing the bun, slowly, she downs a gulp of water and is just turning back the bottle cap when a young man appears from the third level.
He's got black, semi-spiky hair, and he's wearing a black coat with fur trimmed at the edges.
His eyebrows raise when he sees her. It's yet another stereotypical working adult. Erika turns her head back straight ahead, and observes him with her peripheral vision.
But he actually isn't really like one of them, because he disappears back wherever he came from, emerges with a small piece of sushi – some pink fish – and approaches her with a carefree disposition.
"Here you go~ It seems to me like you need it. It's ootoro. And it's not poisoned. I promise," The man, probably in his twenties, winks at her as he hands over the sushi. "What's your name? Mine's Orihara Izaya."
She cautiously receives the sushi. "...Erika." without giving away her family name.
He probably knows that she isn't a very social person, so he gives her a knowing smirk, and returns back upstairs to wherever-he-came-from-land.
After slowly unwrapping the sushi and taking a hesitant bite, which is delicious, she pops the rest in her mouth and takes her time to savour.
She gets up and goes to the bathroom to wash up and stuff, praying there's a shower of some sort. Even if she doesn't have a towel, but she does need to get some of the grime off her skin.
There isn't a shower, but the cubicles have some sort of spray thingy that she can use to give herself a rinse, and she's grateful for that. So she rinses herself with the small spray, tries to use toilet paper to dry herself (doesn't work very well), and changes back into her old clothes.
Then she heads back to the window seat, which she's grown quite acquainted with.
And does some sort of recap.
It's been a week since she's fled home, her parents in the recent years constantly shouting and complaining about her and how she cost money to feed and clothe her and whatever they found fit to complain about. It was hard to take. But she guessed if she had to live with it, she could, because at least she was still being taken care of. In some weird, morbid way, or another.
For some reason, her dad took her mom out somewhere. For some reason, her mom never came back. For some reason, her dad came back on foot, drunk, violent, wielding a kitchen cleaver. For some reason, he had bright red eyes, caused by definitely more than contact lenses. A lot more.
The moment she saw that sight, especially the fact that the knife was bloody, she knew she was in some deep shit.
So she fled.
In a huge, tremendous flurry, panic, and feeling of breaking down right at that very spot, she crammed her wallet, $20, a notebook and her pencil case to make a living if she had to, and an extra shirt, all into her reliable sling bag, and took a final glance at her room before she fled by the back door
and kept running
and running
and running
until she was around 5 miles out of the sight of her house
and knew she was safe for the time being
and there she planned.
She never regretted her move. It was what she needed to do. If not she'd be pretty much be a corpse by now, probably kicked over in the backyard of her house, left to let her carcass rot and be eaten by flies while her dried blood stained every inch of her body.
Somewhere along the road she found a map, and that helped her get to a bus stop, which helped her plan out how and where to go. Then she discovered Ikebukuro.
She estimated about 5 days to reach from the place that she currently was in.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
She doesn't know when she falls asleep, but when she wakes up, the sun hadn't exactly risen yet. It casts a slight glow over the horizon of the multitude of houses, and the sky's shaded rich blue instead of black. Good timing. She stretches on her makeshift bed, groggily wrapping her fingers around the strap of her bag, and heading to the wash room.
Washing her teeth and cleaning her face is a good way to distract herself from the fact that the end of her journey is today. She winces at the fluorescent lights, and does some more stretching to get her blood flowing.
It's going to be a long day.
Pushing open the door, she lightly steps one foot at a time down the flights of stairs.
The marble floored-corridor which she tainted with her dirty shoes is in the process of being cleaned by an crinkled and wrinkled old woman, her head a curly, completely white muss, pitifully holding a mop. It's almost painful. But Erika doesn't take time to care about that. She again passes people in the same business suits, all blue and gray and black, and again assumes the same air of indifference. Some of them stare. They recognize her, Erika infers, and they're actually wondering if she stayed overnight in their, THEIR, office. Some of their faces depict a shocked expression, some, an expression of outrage. Whatever. Too bad for them. Who's laughing now?
Today is The day.
She gets on the bus again, and she's not going to get off midway to sell her drawings because she's too much in a rush to get to Ikebukuro, even if her face doesn't betray anything. It's past the early morning rush hour already, so the bus is empty, and the moment she makes herself cozy in the seat at the back corner she takes a nap.
The ride's probably going to take 3 hours, straight to Ikebukuro, and she's not much to entertain herself with except through dreams.
She awakes later from her dream of living with a dog who's fur is hot pink, and finds the bus moving steadily along the highway. It's been two hours. About an hour more. Probably.
Then she names all the lamp posts the bus passes.
Then she sees how long she can keep her nose on the glass window. Her record is 4.24 minutes.
Then she looks at all the passengers on the bus and imagines every single feature or characteristic about them, and their possible life story.
By the time she's through, the bus has exited the highway, and towers of concrete start to appear. She starts to see less tress and more man-made structures, and the number of cars build up, and build up…
She passes a huge billboard by the side saying "WELCOME TO IKEBUKURO".
Tension in her stomach increases. Frantically relieves the stress by curling and uncurling her fingers, and frantically searches through her brain for something to occupy her mind and take away the unfamiliar feeling of anticipation. Her muscles tense, her whole body tenses, her eyes pulling her gaze to see what the outside is like.
She dares herself to peek out of the glass panels.
Her mouth fall open for the first time in… in…
There are skyscrapers. A lot of them. They look like they're scraping the sky. She can't remember seeing buildings that high. Then again, she can't remember seeing a lot of things she's seeing now. The roads are abuzz, effects of the lunch hour. There's so much more noise here, and the busyness and rush and pure excitement in the air is so evident and contagious and bubbling and buzzing that it gets to Erika even while she's still stuck in a moving vehicle.
So this is the city of hopes – she likes it more and more by the second.
She gets off at the bus/train interchange with a skip, and laughs to herself as she muses about her sudden change of emotions. Just barely a few moments ago she was completely controlled and tight and enclosed, and now she feels like she could let free the feelings she's been keeping in for so long. Like she was meant to be here her whole life. Then again, maybe she WAS meant to be here her whole life.
All that matters is now.
And now that she's actually made it here alive, she has no idea what to do.
She follows the masses who alight from the buses or who've exited the train station, and they lead her to a huge, bustling junction. And soon, after looking around the area for a bit, she decides to go check out the enormous library along the road. It looks, uh, enormous. Should be able to keep her entertained for days, weeks, even, and she does like reading manga even if she hardly got the chance to in her 'past life'. Library's a good option. A nice hang out spot. She prides herself on her smart decision as she makes her way over. But first, she ducks into a washroom on the ground floor of the library – can't have people staring at her, you know. The security's probably a lot tighter here, considering it's a major city AND noting the envoy of police motorcycles back there.
Although all she can do is smoothen out her hair and the creases in her shirt, the minor improvements do make her look a little less like a hobo and a little more
normal.
Today, she will use her spare $10 to buy herself a nice big meal, something like sushi, which she's been craving since her tastebuds awoke at the ootoro given by that creepishly nice guy.
She spends her first few impressions in the library, browsing through walls and floors of volumes of manga and magazines and novels, revelling in literature and art, peeking over people's shoulders to see what the majority of the population like reading. Grabs a copy of Jump, some magazine that a lot of people seem to be reading, and just soak in all the different styles and stories of manga. Then she explores a little more, with the assorted categories, and captures this huge image in her mind because she's never seen a place with so many books. Books and books and books. More books. The whole place was practically flooding with books. Like a library should. Like every library should. There's so much to do here, so much to read, that she feels like she could spend her whole life in there reading and she still wouldn't cover all the books there are.
Then she gets hungry enough to head out and go grab some real food. And so she takes the elevator down, and walks out the building in search of that Russian Sushi place she saw on the way in. Once again, she soaks in everything, it being so different to what she's used to. The crowd's gone down a bit, however - it's about 2pm, and past lunchtime already.
Right as she's about to cross the road, a black van drives past her, then slows to a stop a few metres ahead, and reverses. That puzzles her.
What puzzles her even more is the fact that she notices a redhead in the front passenger seat pointing at her and narrowing his eyes, and the guy on his right raising his eyebrows and saying something, something possibly maybe perhaps along the lines of "Is That Her".
Huh?
Maybe her dad's friends or something out to bring her back to the place she's been trying to get away from for so long?
Something she absolutely does not want.
DOES.
NOT.
WANT.
Terrified, her appetite lost, her mind gone awry, she runs, keeps running, sweat dripping, legs pumping, heart pounding, head reeling. No. No. NO. That keeps replaying in her head. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.
NO. NO. NO. NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
Keeps whirling and whirling and spinning in circles and blinding her thoughts and movements and speech and making her dizzy and making her want to collapse on a heap on the floor but NO! she can't and she keeps runningrunningrunning NO THEY WILL NOT TAKE HER AWAY NO all she can see is the narrow bit of path in front of her is it carpal tunnel disease? as she gets fasterfasterfaster and keeps runningrunningrunning and stressing out her entire body and her legs and lungs are heaving and want her to stop but her mind goes NO NO NO NO NO NO and it just keeps movingmovingmoving onandonandon and everything's slowing down and people are slowing down and time is slowing down as she keeps runningrunningrunning and as her mind is screaming NO NO NO NO NO she wants to escape from the pounding and riot in her brain but NO not this time NO she can't escape from herself.
RUNNING.
RUNNING.
RUNNING!
…
She wakes up.
She finds herself in a dark, dark alley, a dead end, at night. She vaguely remembers running into some dark corner and simply letting go of her muscles and falling and blacking out.
She doesn't even know how she remembers this stuff.
Then she finally wakes up, for real, and realizes her predicament.
Wide-eyed, and shaking, and the fact that her dad's probably after her, and going to come anytime with those bright neon scarlet eyes holding that same cleaver and creepily smiling at her and wanting to slice her up into pieces –
Erika can't get back to sleep. So she huddles and tightens her knees to her chest and sits, wide-eyed in the corner.
She stays this way through the night, into the next day, and into the next night again, and finally into the next day, and that night she falls asleep due to utter exhaustion of the mind and feeling a little too faint from lack of food.
"Hey. Hi there. Uh… yeah, get up, would you? Please? This is so weird... Yeah, hey, get up."
It's still dark. Like the time she slept. She opens her eyes a little, and takes a look at the world.
There is a random caramel haired guy who looks like he's about the same age as her, with as slitty eyes as she currently has, who's shaking her awake, anxiously trying to get her to come to her senses.
Who is this guy, anyway?
Meh. Go away. She flails her hand a little weakly at the disturbance. Let me go back to sleep. She shakes her head from left to right, in hopes of showing the random stranger that she's not interested in whatever Girl Guide cookies he's trying to sell.
Wait.
That just made no sense.
Wait.
SOMEONE IS STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER AND MAKING CONTACT WITH HER
DAD
NO
Erika tries to let out a ear-piercing shriek, but finds that she can't. Her throat is too dry. OH SHIT.
So here she is, vulnerable, weak, and trapped.
He automatically sees her distress. "Hey, hey," he says in attempt to try and calm her down, "I'm not here to harm you or anything, or to try and get you to do anything evil, or anything like that. I'm just your age. I'm not someone evil. I promise."
Slowly, she tilts her head, and softens her gaze just the tiniest bit, but definitely keeps that glare there – people can't be trusted.
"You're Erika, aren't you?"
"Huh?" she's still slightly illiterate, her voice not having been use for a while. How does this guy know her name?
Looking a little confused himself, but also concerned, he squats in front of her, scratching his head. "Um. I guess I'd better tell you the whole story."
"My name is Yumasaki. Yumasaki Walker. I'm 11. Two days ago, I was in the black van that you ran away from. They're my good friends. They don't mean any harm at all. Really. So Kadota, who's one of the guys, got a call from this infamous information broker called Orihara Izaya, saying that there was a girl who fit your description, coming in from Shinjuku to Ikebukuro, called Erika and that he wanted us to take care of you."
"Orihara… Izaya?"
"Yeah. You might have heard the name before, I guess. As I said. He's pretty infamous. Anyway, so then we found you, and so I guess we need to take care of you because it looks like you don't have a home and stuff."
"Then what about you, Yumasaki-san?"
"Haha, just call me Yumasaki. Titles make me nervous." Walker scratches his head again. "My parents got killed by some knife-wielding people, and I kinda saw them get killed, so I kinda got traumatised. And my relatives sucked, like occasionally venting on me by beating me up. So I found my way to Ikebukuro. So then Kadota and Saburo, the red-haired guy, found me and picked me up, so I was pretty much adopted by them and stuff. They're like my family now. And I guess you'll be one of us too. I guess, if you want to be."
He leans in, in a confiding way. "Karisawa, please join us. It's really kind of lonely when I don't have anyone else to talk to. Please?"
Slowly, she relaxes and leans against the wall, relieved at the fact that it's probably not a conspiracy, and that she might have someone better take care of her. But she doesn't know if she can go with them yet.
He sits next to her, anticipating, hopeful.
Erika thinks that's adorable.
"…okay, I guess…? Yeah, I probably have nothing else to do," she says, being amazed at the amount of words she can actually articulate. Her voice is still kind of rusty, though. "Are you sure you aren't in cahoots with my dad?"
"Huh?"
She guesses that's a good sign.
But she explains her whole story anyway, to Yumasaki, who doesn't seem to be in a rush or anything. He's a nice guy. They could probably get along pretty well. He nods at the right times, and knows exactly how to react when she tells him something that would seem macabre to most, and stays quiet to let her emotions and thoughts flow. Because he's gone through this sort of thing before. He lets her rest her head on his shoulder, as she continues on ranting, and his lips raise a little that she seems to have trusted him enough already.
And as he, in turn, tells his story to Erika, and how Kadota and Saburo treat him like family and they do everything together, she starts wanting to join them, their crazy antics and stuff they do.
They head to Russian Sushi afterwards, Yumasaki waving a $50 bill in his hand. A treat from the guys, he says. They're both famished, Erika especially, and they head inside and sit at the counter and buy all the sushi they could possibly want, while laughing and chatting like old friends - soon, they're on first name terms. Walker also introduces Erika to Simon, who amuses Erika to no end with his enthusiasm.
Afterwards, Walker grabs Erika by the hand and pulls her along to the van, where she's hesitant and wonders if this is really what she wants. She gets no time to decide, however, when Walker slides open the door, pulls her inside, and they drive off, she gets to know them.
There is a lot of laughter in the van that night.
Hope you liked that :) Edited some parts, and stuff.
Oh, and I hope you realised the reference about Erika's dad and Saika.
Reviews much appreciated!