Inspired by: "Someone Who Cares" - Three Days Grace
And I'm working on a sequel to "Yo Ho" and it doesn't want to come off my fingers onto virtual paper... The sequel to "Farewell Thee Love Forever Thy Baited Hooks Shall Tangle Me No Longer", however, wants to be written. I'm only a vessel, I don't decide the big things, and when I force myself to write things that I don't want to, it's not ever anything worth reading so... Here you are!
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Anyone who has lived long enough will eventually turn into a pessimist. It's just a fact of life, a result of Murphy's law, that bad normally outweighs the good. This is simply because things that are wrong are so often the easier choice over what Is righteous To stand up for what was right all the time tired and the sentimentality of the act became empty words and phrases once repeated so many times, they lost their noble meaning. In Rukongai, everyone knew this rule without having to be told, and any optimist was more than likely acting or else they were a new arrival in the damnable place.
To find new arrivals was to find a faint glimmer of hope, or so that was how some saw it. To see someone who hadn't been broken by constant disappointment was to see the possibility that things might change, honesty might be incorporated into the rotting system that was so loosely tied together in the cesspool that was Rukongai. A district drowned in blood, where cries from a woman being assaulted and even raped weren't out of the ordinary, and normally they were ignored like a car's siren. Thought only to be an annoyance, something to be stopped not with action but with time. The false possibility of hope was cruel, because it was an unfulfilled promise which would never change for a simple reason; There happened to be nothing that would deter a criminal from doing as he or she pleased.
Rules weren't enforced by Soul Reapers often, and when they were, it was only to protect rich and noble families. Fear for laws hardly existed in many of the areas and therefore criminals found the town a paradise. A festering paradise in the mist of unlawful pleasures and unspeakable crimes, an abominable version of Eden with streams of blood and broken dreams, fruit of hatred and creatures of malice inhabiting the awful place. It maintained it's festering pathetic nature for the simple reason that these primal pleasures could be enjoyed easily in town, there was no one who wanted to bother with the secrecy of the forest or underground operations, and even if someone did hide out for the novelty or plain paranoia, they avoided swampy parts of the woods.
Yumichika actually grew to like the forest even more than the town he had lived in. No one really noticed him seeing as no one wanted to brave the swampy grounds in the part of the woods where he made his home. He found that he could carry out his old work with less necessity, as there were edible herbs and such around the woods. After he got used to the extra work, he actually thought he was living more beautifully than before, and hardly even went into town for anything more than selling what he found valuable in his new domain. Eventually he was able to buy himself a decorative mirror with the money he was able to save by not relying on stores for his food or paying for shelter over his head.
He was even more well off than when he worked in the conventional sense, while the man he left behind looked worse and worse each time he left his small apartment. There was no going back to the friendship they had, both of them knew the idea would not work. Or, at least Yumichika was quite sure the awkwardness could never go away, despite the fact he'd forgiven Ikkaku for acting out while he was in a drunken haze. Maybe just to tell him that he was forgiven, Yumichika thought he would visit and leave as quickly as he came to avoid unpleasant conversation.
Every single time he went to the door, though, something went wrong and made him rethink the whole idea. Last time, he was scared away just by some shuffling around from the inside of the room before he even got the courage to knock on the doors. The time before, Ikkaku wasn't home, and once before that, the bald man had a lady that he was "entertaining."
During a trip to the market where he went to sell some berries that were in season, after he picked enough for him to enjoy for awhile, he found Ikkaku stumbling out of a bar. He didn't look as drunk as he usually would, and instead he was stumbling because he didn't seem to care enough to even pay any attention to where he was walking. Yumichika couldn't resist the opportunity; "Ikkaku?"
The man looked up with desolate and broken eyes, but when he saw who he was looking at they suddenly came alive. "Yumichika? I-"
Before he could babble or go into a long apology, Yumichika cut him off. "I forgive you, Ikkaku." Then, before Ikkaku could come up with a response or say anything to ruin the beautiful moment, the raven haired man walked by to finish his errand. Ikkaku had no time, or any idea on how to react.
He wasn't often caught speechless, but what had just happened left him as clueless as someone who was stumbling in the dark for a light switch. He thought he should follow Yumichika at first, but what would that do? If he wanted to talk, he would have stayed. Instead, he went home to contemplate what had just been said, and if he thought of anything worth telling Yumichika, or asking of him, he would see the man another time. He was probably still in the same area of the forest, actually.
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