PROLOGUE
CONFIDENTIAL
Name: Sawada Tsunaki
Age: 16 years
Status: Neglected, soon dying
The man chuckled, and threw the file aside, hearing the papers flutter. He didn't need to read more.
His calculating eyes surveyed the chess board in front. The pitch black and deathly silent room pressed in, forcing the two candles sitting across from the mahogany board to flicker quietly, as if all sound has been absorbed in the darkness.
Those mismatched eyes looked up to examine their blank faced opponent, revealing a perfectly chiselled face that was still handsome despite the horrors it had seen. A lazy smirk grew on his face, and the face once again lowered down to regard the board, chin lethargically propped up on a fist. He rather liked chess, he decided.
In chess, white pieces generally went first.
But in life, no one played by the rules.
He smirked. "Kufufu…" he chuckled, long, elegant fingers stretching out and nudging a black pawn onwards two steps. "What will you do once the first move is made?"The man looked the file that had been thrown carelessly onto the opposite chair.
"Tsunaki?"
CHAPTER 1
"Tsunaki! Get down here!"
Tsunaki sighed, tearing her gaze away from the window. Brown locks tumbled down in small cascades a little past her shoulders, framing a fair face that despite its youth bore small creases of worry, while her amber eyes were dulled from their previous gold.
Tsunaki padded towards the combined kitchen and dining in the house that she and her older sister shared, automatically wiping away the dust on the table. She withdrew her hand and dully glanced at her palm. Rough, calloused, strong, like her father's, who went away seven years ago. He said that he would only be gone for a bit, but he never returned.
What a father.
If her hands were her father's then her feet were her mother's, muscles strengthened by days of hard walking and running for her life. Her mother was a strong woman, and refused to accept that he was gone. She followed him five days after he was supposed to return into the very same forest, determined to bring him back, rebuking everyone's calls for her to stay.
She disappeared also.
Tsunaki scowled, and tugged at her hair. It was all these eyes' fault. If only they didn't have to be so unnatural. Like seriously. Gold. Really? No wonder everyone thought she was a demon child.
She trudged into the kitchen and sighed. A palm immediately flew up to slap her cheek, leaving it stinging red.
"Tsunaki! Stop your idling around and sit! To think that I actually bothered to prepare breakfast for such an unappreciative runt like you. I can't believe I allowed myhappy mood to influence my opinion on your scrawny self. Why don't you go and get lost already? It'll be one less problem for me to deal with". Tsunaki frowned at the face of her cousin, Bianchi, whose startling grass green eyes flashed with annoyance once again. Her pale red hair almost seemed eerie in the relative darkness of the cabin.
"Oh hurry up! Anyway, don't expect me back for lunch or dinner, so fix your own food. And remember to do your chores. Old Marge expects you to wash and return her clothes after she just grabbed me the other day and dumped a load of stinking fabrics on me! The nerve of that witch! You won't believe how many times I suggested that she be burned at the stake. Oh, and don't forget to buy some trinkets today. Emeralds would be the best because they go with my eyes, but of course, you wouldn't be able to understand. I'm going to a party at Romeo's and people expect me to bring something. Don't even think about using my money".
Bianchi grabbed her woollen cardigan and paced to the door, wasting no time heaving it open and slamming it behind her, leaving behind silence and a virtually empty cabin.
Tsunaki sighed, and stared at the single piece of stale bread on her plate, accompanied with two miniscule berries that were obviously unripe.
"Thanks", she drawled sarcastically.
The town bustled with colour and noise. There was sound everywhere, but it only ended up irritating Tsunaki like a fly's buzzing would.
She smirked to herself. Maybe other humans were just like flies. Annoying, persistent and intent on making her life a misery.
She sidestepped another man with an armful of his pies, enthusiastically advertising them to the public. There goes one of my eardrums. Shaking her head, she kept to the side of the crowd, restlessly shifting the washing basket from her right to her left. She just had to return Old Marge's clothes, and then it wouldn't be any of her business.
'This is what I've been reduced to' Tsunaki paced along with subdued eyes. 'Friends have each other, while even enemies have someone to spar with. I have no one. Good job, Tsunaki. Good job.' The girl looked to the skies, and saw two skylarks flying overhead, looking like they were mingling with the clouds and singing to the sky to cheer her up. She felt the faintest smile tug at the corner of her mouth as they flew past her, but as soon as the smile came, it left.
Tsunaki walked a few steps before letting out a yelp as a splinter found its way into her finger. Belatedly, she realised that the washing basket she was delivering was groaning pitifully under her wrath. Small cracks were starting to form from her white knuckled grip, and it would be tedious to purchase another basket with her limited money. She scoffed. More like nonexistent money. Sighing, she loosened her clenched fist, and once again shifted it to her left side.
Yah... it seemed that everything besides the animals hated her. What did she ever do to anyone to deserve this hate?
Tsunaki snorted.
Go on. Go and trample my reputation with your feet and to stand on my bleeding body to alleviate yours, and see if I care.
A movement caught her peripheral, and she turned her head towards the silversmith's stall, where the smithy was chatting amicably to his customer, who had handed over a silver necklace for adjustment. However, if she looked harder, his hands were hard at work in the dark under the counter, stealing a few loops off the necklace, all while sporting a totally extroverted expression on his face.
She could only wonder how much practise must have gone into perfecting that fake smile.
This was the result of the cruel streak that had entered and churned within each of her race's hearts, shining like a dark light.
After all, I do see its greatest result staring up at me every day as I look down upon the river.
Tsunaki wandered away from the busy town square to Old Marge's house. The babble eventually faded behind her, and she heaved a shaking sigh of relief to the quiet that accompanied the woods.
A smile flitted onto her face.
She could never stay resentful in the presence of ancient trees which had seen events countless times longer than her own life. Tsunaki frowned, and muttered "I hope I don't jinx it".
Well.
Too late.
A pained cry pierced the thin film of supposed tranquillity that erupted as soon as the first sound left. Tsunaki yelped, and fumbled with the wash basket, dropping it to the ground. She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw that the clothes were undamaged, and then started panning her head around for the source of the cry. The scream resounded again, and Tsunaki took off towards its direction, uncaring of the countless twigs that whipped against her face.
She needed not run for long.
To her far left, she regarded with horror a burly man, face scrunched up in a soundless snarl, greasy hands enveloping a struggling crow. The crow was trying its best to flee, feathers already littering the floor and legs scratching and kicking. But what was most repulsing of all was the knife that the man held in his right hand that he was slowly succeeding in bringing down upon the crow.
No, he couldn't do this.
Tsunaki vaguely felt her feet turning and carrying her towards the scene, her soft footsteps pattering on the harsh debris. But just as quickly as her movement started, they lurched to a stop, and her bangs shadowed her lowered face, body still like a rock, foot poised as if to take another step forward.
I was weary of the pain that would come if I was caught doing yet another 'useless' act.
No. I was afraid.
Her eyes grew dark and hollow, and she gasped as a sudden sensation flooded her being, while one of her memories involuntarily triggered and dominated her mind.
I could feel the sting on my cheek, the abruptness of the kick, the sudden impact as my knees gave way under me and smashed pitifully on the jagged ground. Beside me was an abandoned squirrel pup, newly born and shivering within the familiar thin, chequered scarf wrapped around it.
I couldn't hear anything, think anything.
But as I blearily looked past the thugs and scowled up into the flawless face of the person who had made my life a burning misery, I saw her mouth two words – two words that had followed me over the years, two words that, despite my outward indifference, cut a gaping rift inside my heart.
Useless child.
The words reverberated within Tsunaki like a haunting catcall, masking the last of the man's heavy footfalls receding away. As she once again looked upon the scene, her eyes grew wide. She felt her insides convulse and her chest clench, and shook, wishing she would have done something that may have brought herself pain but might have saved an innocent life. Bile built up in her throat while a small sound escaped her, and she cupped both hands around her mouth in an attempt to keep it down. Tsunaki barely registered her legs giving way under herself as she sank numbly to the ground.
The man was gone.
And so gone was the crow's right wing.
No.
An animal was about to die before her eyes, and she was going to do nothing about it.
Shit.
No bird could fly with a missing wing, leaving it with no means to gain prey.
Effing hell.
The crow was about to die, agonizingly and slowly, condemned out of annoyance. And the pain, oh the pain that it must have felt that was evident through its once proud but now broken eyes… Tsunaki felt her shatter with each fluctuating gush of thick, copper liquid spurted out of the wound as the crow limped away in vain to reach the cover of an ash tree, as if its mere presence would heal it once more.
So what if crows were pests and ate practically one grain out the village harvest? Are people oblivious to an animal's right to life? Or do they simply decide to bestow this one crow out of thousands a blow that judges life or death?
"Demo..." Amber eyes stared down at trembling hands and the well worn track. "The crow has more strength than I ever will, despite the... extraordinarily similar circumstances..."
She could do nothing to help.
She couldn't interfere and draw attention to herself.
Conscious of the pleading eyes upon her, Tsunaki grimaced and continued down the trail, propping herself up with a hand upon a bent knee. Old Marge's jostled clothes that used to be folded neatly in the cold wooden basket felt heavy in her hands. Fists clenched, she forced her feet to move, move away from the stare on her back and towards the guilt that tugs at her heartstrings the further she walks.
They would always know when she did another 'worthless deed'. And they would make her pay for it.
Every single time.
It was as if the whole world was against her, no matter which way she walked.
She was thrown onto a lonely road with high walls, a stone bocking the intersection and no end.