AN: Pfft, after so long I'm writing again! Ahh, thank Sara-chan for this baby born..
I hope I can finish writing this, I didn't have any finished projects before Dx~
Disclaimer: The parallel universe this fic happens in is partially borrowed from Mede Shireru Yoru no Junjou A manga all of you must read! XD Well, actually its pretty similar =w='''~ Hnng~~Anyway if you're lazy, this fix is based in Japan in almost the same time period as DGM, without akuma, and innocence in the literal sense. Figuratively, many people are not innocent too :D
Monochrome Butterfly
Chapter1
Chrysalis
❀Flower under harvest sun - stranger To bird, butterfly. -Matsuo Basho❀
Bright lights.
Glamour.
Allen wasn't used to that, having come from much darker streets of London.
Trying his hardest not to attract any attention, he struggled his way through the nightly teeming crowd- though he's not looking forward to his destination very much.
Wide variations of Machiya lined the streets, ranging from low, broken down huts to the brightly lit mansions with sprawling yards. Shopkeepers bartered loudly with their customers as they traded myriad selections of goods over the counter. Money handed over, item checked, sold.
Allen found himself sympathizing with the steaming bun being sold to a whiskery gentleman as he watched with hungry eyes, shivering lightly in the chilly November wind that his tattered clothes let in.
His stomach growled, but that's normal.
A surge of emotion rode Allen, far more than simple hunger as he reckoned that he's being sold the same way too, just like that bun…only to serve till his debt was cleared. Watching the bun disappear very quickly while ignoring his noisy stomach, he wished it was as simple as being eaten in one mouth.
Disallowing any chance for self-pity, the lightly-built boy wiggled through another gaggle of obese men and found himself at the lavish front door of his dreaded destination; Barayakata.
I'm not going to make it out of here..
Just for a second, Allen considered running away for the thousandth time since he set off from England, and his knees weakened at the thought that he might not run away from the building in front of him ever, if he stepped through the doorway.
Yet he could never run away with so many hot on his heels. He did not want to be caged..again.
"Oi how long are you going to stand there? Are you a first-timer?"
Opal eyes glimmered a second before a lithe figure strode out from a side entrance Allen had not noticed. Sweeping long, dark hair out of his face, the proud figure confronted Allen and shoved a finger painfully onto his forehead.
Allen couldn't help but shrink a little in embarrassment as a beautiful doll-like face, albeit angry-looking, filled his vision when the person glowered right into his eyes.
"On second thoughts, are you that stupid kid I'm supposed to get? You look too poor to afford any of us here. I would want to get some hair treatment if I were you, and had money of course."
A subdued blush quickly flooded his face as Allen was rudely remembered of why he was there in the first place..and that he..
"Hurry up."
The rude youth blended into the night so quickly that Allen only had moments to catch sight of the white ribbon trailing from his dark hair before he turned the corner. Jogging to keep up while pulling his cloak's hood over his head to cover his hair, the boy found a small wooden door left open at the side of the building. It would have blended into the alley if it was closed.
"Come in, idiot. And close the door after you."
Allen hurriedly followed the curt orders and peered up the wooden stairs, where the voice had came from. Upon hearing a short-tempered growl, he scurried up to the third floor.
"My name's Allen, wh-"
"You'll find the boss up there, stupid bean."
"What?"
Without another word the youth turned away, leaving a very annoyed boy in his wake.
Wood creaked lazily as Allen placed a foot on a stair, positively fuming.
What the hell? How can anyone be so beautiful but so..mean?
Not knowing what to expect, he trudged up the flight of stairs to the top floor whilst grumbling under his breath about the strange, rude, annoying, stupid pretty boy.
Rose Mansion, indeed. Prickly rose, that was.
"He's here, Sir Leville."
"Finally, I was about to think you had ran away."
Allen grit his teeth as a couple of hooded men muscled him down to his knees.
"No, Cross released me from that place. If I did not come here..where could I go?" Allen defiantly tried to fight back, but was easily overpowered and shoved even closer to the ground.
Plus if I ran away..he said he'll find me and..make me clear his debt. On top of my own debt. And..that place would probably hunt me down too. I have no choice..
"Indeed. He told me about you." The black-suited man crossed his fingers and leaned forward on his desk; something that Allen immediately didn't like. The tiny, slanted eyes gave him the feeling he was prey under the nose of a very hungry snake. "You belonged to a freak show, was it?"
Allen fought the urge to lash out as his head was pushed flat onto the ground.
"Its a circus-"
"No matter. Strip him."
Allen let out a short yelp of refusal as his threadbare cloak, shirt, pants and underwear were ripped from him in seconds, leaving him shivering with nothing but dirty gloves covering his clenched fists; which Allen quickly used to shield his private areas. Glaring at the blonde man, he squeezed his thighs together in humiliation as he waited for the expected outrage.
"What the hell? Why would that bastard send me something like this?"
A bark of fury sent Allen self consciously turning his left side away from the shouting man. There was nothing to be done for his hair, and he bowed his head, hiding the blood-red scar on his face dismally.
"I'll kill him for this! Sending me a freak-"
"I..he said..as long as I don't show my left hand its okay..and I can do something about my hair and face.." Allen mumbled, trying his hardest to hide the offending parts. "I did tell him I'm no good for this."
"He-" Leville spat at the ground and hissed. "He better be right you can do something about it. That bastard owes me ten million times of what he's worth. You better pay your value back for him."
The man got up and strode to Allen, appraising him with the exact aura of a shark worrying its prey.
"Turn around."
Not daring to question the angry man with those two gorillas ready anytime to make him obey by force, the boy complied and quietly turned his back to the man. He definitely didn't feel great about that, but he didn't want to infuriate them further; not while he was feeling so vulnerable and shivering in nude.
"Agh..!"
Without a word of warning, one of the gorillas delivered a quick punch to Allen's abdomen, immediately making the boy haunch over to protect his body.
"Don't ruin him, Goushi. His undamaged skin is worth quite something. Other than that arm of course."
Allen fought the urge to gag as he felt a hand stroke his back, proving Leville's point.
Sensing the jolt when he made contact, Allen could almost feel the triumph in the man voice as Leville felt all over him, judging his value; almost as if the boy was a mule or cow in the market.
"Don't..touch me!" It was really hard to shy away from the invasive hands, but Allen tried anyway.
"Sensitive. That's good, the customers would like him."
The other men grunted their approval as Leville prodded Allen's entrance with a pen, eliciting a soft hiss from the subject. "Perfect condition. Never been taken, had you?"
Not waiting for an answer- not that Allen would have replied- the blonde stalked back to his throne and signaled for the guards to take the boy away.
"Not that bad. I would say some would find him exotic. Perhaps he would have a chance to prove himself in the brothel."
Allen glared at the snake-eyes on the blond head with all the disgust that he could muster while he got up, attempting to recover his very bruised dignity.
"Let's see how much we can get out of you."
Grabbing whichever clothes he could when it appeared to him the guards won't mind dragging him out in nude, Allen hastily threw his cloak over himself and snatched his arm away from the guard that punched him.
"That'll be two thousand off Cross's bill for now."
"Let go of me!" Allen snapped at the guard and shoved their hands off him as soon as the door closed behind him. Nursing his pride, Allen held his head high and his cloak tight around him, quickly stepping away from the two. "I'll find my way around here myself."
"But Sir said-"
"Myself. Your boss can't know what he didn't see."
The guard Goushi sort of stared stupidly at his friend, and the friend in return grunted in similar level of intelligence.
Not making any sense of the exchange, Allen creeped his way silently to the stairs; one of the things he was really good at. Before any of them realized their topic of sub-intelligence discussion had disappeared, Allen found himself wandering down a long corridor lit by red decorative lanterns, with one side opening to the streets framed by an ornate wooden railing.
"Stupid guards.." The boy sighed as he peered over the busy street. Long periods of isolation had instilled a habit of him chatting whimsically to himself, though Allen's pretty sure he was mentally sound no matter how weird it seemed. Though not much of a trouble on normal occasions, that habit had an unfortunate side effect of making Allen vocalize and announce his thoughts more often than he wanted. "Now what?"
"What, what?"
Barely keeping himself from shrieking and attracting the attention of the hundreds out on the district, Allen swiftly turned around and received a painful flick on his forehead; the second painful attack on the exact same spot within the hour.
"Watch where you're going boy, assuming you're one since only one girl ever comes here and I know her too well that she won't be wearing a tattered rag like yours, and she has long pretty hair," Glib words spilled from a grinning mouth as Allen rubbed the spot on his head, wincing at his luck. "Come to think of it I had never seen hair like yours before around here; new boy?"
Allen kept himself from commenting that he had never seen that brilliant shade of amber on anyone's head before, either, and it took him a second to realize he had been asked a question. Caught off guard at the stranger's pace, he could only manage to nod indecisively as a reply.
"Uhm..Do you always do this to people you don't even know?" Allen tried not to stare too much at the black eyepatch beside the wickedly emerald eye of the stranger.
"Nope!" The redhead's cheer was highly infectious and Allen soon found himself warming up to the teen, who reminded him of an old comrade he lost at his old home. "Sometimes I pinch their ass, depends on my mood. My name's Lavi."
"I'm Allen, nice to- HEY!"
"Just checking if you're really a dude." With a lopsided grin, Lavi good-naturedly replaced the front folds of Allen's ragged cloak, acting as if he had only accidentally tugged a scarf out of place. In midst of the boy's self introduction, he had abruptly lifted the hem of the covering and bared all that is under to his eye (and anyone who happened to be looking up from the street).
"Welcome to the team little brother!"
Allen self consciously patted his front and fidgeted with his cloak.
"Wh-what do you mean?"A deep blush started to form when the white-haired boy realized he could be talking about his..body, and that its-
"You prefer sister?" The green eye twinkled merrily with mischief. "I'm fine with that too!"
"N-no!" Allen almost shouted and feigned a cough to cover it up. "I-I mean, I barely know you and-"
A low grunt froze Allen in his words, and Lavi reacted sharply, glaring at something behind Allen's back.
"Goushi said we should do what Sir said and bring the boy to…" The unnamed guard scrunched his brows in effort to remember the name. "To.."
"Komui, was it?" Lavi grinned at Allen reassuringly, and grabbed the boy's left wrist. "I'll bring him over for you, I need to find the head, anyway."
"But-"
"Did Jerry say he made too much tonkatsu for dinner? Or was it Udon?" The way Lavi put it so tantalizingly, Allen could almost smell the fried pork even though he didn't even know if the claim was true. His stomach growled, but he ignored it and watched the reaction of the man. He did not want to get manhandled so quickly again.
It did work on the gorilla-like man like magic though, and Allen stared in disbelief as he left shambling for the lower floors at the sound of food without question.
"Same trick works everytime snake-head pops over for dinner." The redhead mused, answering Allen's unvoiced question. "Though I'm pretty sure its Udon today. We're lucky Snake doesn't feed his boys very much, despite how they look."
"Now that I'd helped you and saw you, not in order, I know you right?"
Allen didn't know what to make of the strange logic and simply laughed at Lavi's childish grin. No one could reject the redhair's charisma.
Once Lavi was sure nobody was after his charge for sure by running a check upstairs to find the other guard discussing business with Leville (though it was mostly the boss shouting), he grabbed Allen again and scooted him right out of the red corridor.
"I suppose you're hungry too, seeing how you perked up when I mentioned food?" The seemingly older boy speculated, as Allen put his age around 18, 3 years older than him.
"Yeah..sort of. Its been two days since I had a proper meal.."Allen surprised himself as he recalled the past few days. How did he even survive till here?
"We'll feed you proper after you meet Mommy," Lavi winked with his single eye, and it had a pretty odd effect that seemed to Allen that he had winked both of his eyes behind the eyepatch. He would never find out. "And we don't want to bump into hungry Orci before he goes home with his mom."
"Mommy?"
"Well he does act like one. We don't call him that in his face though. Usually." Upon seeing the confused expression on the white haired youth's face, Lavi laughed and pinched the smooth cheek. "'He' refers to Komui, our brothel Mamasan to put it simply. He prefers to be called Supervisor though, but we call him Mom behind his back cause that's basically who he is to us."
"Ah.." A small shadow of grief crossed Allen's features as his new friend's words reminded him where he was. A male brothel..
"We're here." Announcing cheerfully, Lavi shoved an oaken door open without waiting for an invitation after a quick impatient knock.
"Who the-LAVI!" A dismayed voice shrieked the moment the door banged open, and Allen hid his eyes with his hands immediately, blushing a furious crimson.
"I told you for the thousandth and one time, not to just crash in without knocking!" A tall man cried despairingly as he scrambled from his desk, and the other stranger made to leave the room in a hurry, without bothering to dress properly.
"Sorry to spoil your fun Reever," Playfully shoving the leaving man's side, Lavi dodged a retaliating punch with ease of experience and grinned at the younger boy- still covering his eyes- behind him. "I had to give our new little brother an orientation, you see?"
"You always do this..damn you, if I were Supervisor I would have kicked you to the fiftieth district."
"You wouldn't do that, plus there's only twenty districts in Kuroshi, how would you do that?" Reever grimaced and tramped off, but not before giving Allen a friendly pat.
"A few more tries like this and you would be cutting it pretty close." Unsure if looking would be decent, Allen resolved to peeking though his fingers first , and removed his hands only after he was sure the man on the desk was properly dressed.
"Its okay Allen, I presume that's your name?" Strongly asian features smiled at the shying boy. "You would have to get used to seeing that if you're going to stay here. Its quite normal, at least for us. I'm Komui Lee."
So he's not local, after all. It made Allen feel slightly better, and for a second it made him wonder if Lavi was foreign too; he couldn't be totally sure. Reever was definitely western. Perhaps many of them were strangers on this land, too.
"He's been approved by Snake." Lavi piped, throwing himself onto a nearby couch.
"Its Leville, show some respect for your boss. I can't cover for you all the time." Yet even as he said it, Allen could see an open smile from Komui and it made him relax by a large fraction. Anyone who wasn't quite on the side of that shark-man couldn't be too bad.
"How old are you?" The question was directed to Allen, and the taller man settled comfortably back to his ornate chair behind the desk, flipping through mountains of bound books.
"I'm not a hundred percent sure but I'm around 15 I guess." He had never knew his exact birthdate, and Allen had always made do with a general estimation. A second concern quickly made itself known to him; did they have any prohibitions on minor sex workers?
He wasn't sure which way would be better. If they didn't, he might have to start working right now and he wasn't prepared, but if they did..they might have to kick him out, or something.
Allen immediately wished he had exaggerated his age, since already he wasn't too sure about it from the start.
"Not too bad, we should be able to find a use for you right now."
Allen steeled himself and prepared himself for the verdict.
"The kid looks like he's about to be raped any moment." Lavi chortled from and lounged lazily across his seat to face Allen, tossing the boy a sweet. "Relax, here in Bara we don't initiate kids till they're 18. We're not like other sleazy slave shops that try to get every dime out of their boys; Komui takes care of us perfectly. Right, Mom?"
"Don't call me that!" Even as he rebutted, Allen could still see the small grin of pride lingering at the corners of the Asian man's mouth. "But Lavi's right, he summed it up for you. Until you're 18 and have your mizuage, you'll be working as an attendant."
"It wasn't too bad though, the main job." The redhead chipped in again, still lounging on the couch. "Life here's much easier than in places like district twenty."
A tinge of darkness in his tone made Allen quite sure he wouldn't want to be at district twenty, wherever that was.
"You chose to be Kagema even though Bookman kindly took you in as apprentice for treasury," Komui sighed, and ceased flipping his books to look at Allen in the eye. "A choice means everything right?"
"Being just an apprentice would have bored my hair off.."With a wide yawn, Lavi curled up and closed his eye. "Wake me when you're done with him."
"You're so lazy, it'll only take a few minutes.." Rubbing his temple, the older man shuffled more papers and gave them up as a bad job. "Its my job to brief you Allen, before I let you off to bed or dinner."
Stomach grumbling again at the sound of food, Allen found a seat and listened with rapt attention, hoping that it would end preferably soon.
"This place, as you know is Barayakata, but we just call it Bara in short. Its your home now."
Allen thinned his lips in a small smile. He had not heard that word in a long time. Home, it arouses a small comfortable feeling.
"We're located in Kuroshi first district, the top place to go for customers who want the best service from Kagema, which just means male prostitutes. No point shielding you from hard truth."
"Here we do not allow our young ones to get involved too much, though that is not to the knowledge of the higher ups." At that, Komui did an uncanny impersonation of Leville crossing his fingers, which made Allen involuntarily giggle.
"Thanks to our high fees and standards, we're able to avoid questions and provide the best we can to our family..yup we consider each of us as one strange family. However, you do have to help out, and get trained till you come of age and have your mizuage… then you'll work as a full fledged courtesan."
"That's pretty much the summary." Komui sipped from a cup and made a dour face. "Oh and a couple of things to note. Due to the bosses' habit of recruiting through monetary trades, most of us are not allowed to leave the city being 'property' of the company. Also, they don't like sexual relationships between said property as they would much rather have them using the chance to earn them more money."
"Though sometimes we're allowed to have some fun, as long as they never know." Smoothly cutting in, Lavi gave Komui a pointed leer and yawned again. "I hope you're done with him, I almost fell asleep for real. i must have heard that thing for at least twenty times."
"I wished you did." Komui groaned and Allen had the image that Lavi was a traveling migraine to the older man. He had to stifle a laugh.
"Come on then, I'll take you to grab a bite and we'll go to see your room, then you can change out of your rags." The red haired teen rolled off his spot and strolled out of the door. "He's sharing with Yuu, right?"
"Assuming that you're not joking that he's sharing with me, yes he's sharing with Kanda Yuu." Almost as an afterthought, Komui called after the leaving pair almost desperately. "Make sure you introduce them nicely!"
"Who's Yuu?" Allen questioned as he struggled with his armload of snacks, peering over his stack to see Lavi almost dropping his; that was Allen's share, too. Even after eating out all the leftover food to Jerry, the cook's, delight, the boy still felt hungry from two day's worth of starvation. The overjoyed cook had showered him with midnight snacks for him to bring back.
"He's our local princess." Seeing the questioning look in Allen's face, Lavi dropped a pack of dorayaki and did not attempt to pick them much to the other's dismay. "No, I'm serious. I fell in love with him like, eighty times since I met him. STRIKE!"
To prove his point, Lavi did a dangerous looking stunt of balancing everything onto one hand and hitting his chest with the other.
"But he does have a prissy temper and broke my heart all the eighty times." He sported a surprisingly cheerful tone despite his statement. "Yet, after every time I would still fall in love again. Worth it!"
"Good luck with him." Allen vaguely wondered if anyone's temper or looks would be able to rival the beautiful doll he met earlier, and that maybe peoples' temper tended to be pretty short if it was the redhead bugging them all day, taking Komui as reference. He, though, personally didn't mind Lavi all that much.
"You wouldn't be saying that so easily once you met him. Half the brothel's in love with him, not counting the rest of the districts." Carelessly weaving around the myriad of corridors, Lavi knew his way around very well; but Allen was willing to bet the money he doesn't have that he would be lost the next time he has to venture around alone.
"Not a chance, any of us, not a chance. You can bet that once he's willing to go through his Mizuage half the city would be lining up for him. Princess Yuu, I would be too. If he wants to, that's the thing." Seemingly to Allen that there just couldn't be any more turns and stairs in the great building, Lavi stopped at a tidy door at the end of a quiet passageway. "Here we are!"
Unsure if he should just knock or go in, Allen stared blankly at the door; slightly anxious of his unknown, infamous room mate.
"You know, I'm pretty jealous now, but Kagema are not allowed to share rooms with anyone." Sighing dramatically, Lavi ruffled Allen's snowy hair and grinned. "Good luck to you, too."
"Uhm, is he in or.."
"You'll never know till you go in!" Ignoring Allen's protests, the older boy carelessly threw open the door and dragged an unwilling Allen in after him, dropping lots of food on the group in the struggle. Upon realizing this he simply dropped everything noisily into one corner. "Neh Yuu! We've got you a new room mate so you won't be lonely anymore!"
"Nice to me-"
"What's bloody wrong with all of your ears? I said I don't need a room mate, which part of that did you not understand?" A familiar figure rose from a low table and prowled towards them furiously. "And I totally remember reminding you not to call me that merely an hour ago."
Grey eyes widened in shock as Allen took in the appearance of the pretty doll-guy he met earlier; the straight dark silky hair, deep sharp eyes, slender figure..
"Get out!"
And a door slammed millimeters away from Allen's nose before he knew it.
"Vivacious as usual." Lavi muttered mischievously, then turned to his new friend. "That's his typical-nice-to-meet-you, and you've met our princess Yuu."
"And now comes the problem of coaxing him into opening the door for you."
"I don't think he likes me.." Or you, Allen added silently.
"Don't worry, he's just shy."
"I definitely hope so." With a pang of hunger, Allen remembered that Lavi made him leave all his food in Yuu's room… "Now what do we do?"
AN: Not being a native Japanese, I'm not very good at these terms… but here's a few notes anyway (I hope I used them correctly :x)..
Machiya- Traditional Japanese wooden townhouses.
Barayakata- Lit. Rose Mansion (A small reference to Black Order's Rose Cross).
Tonkatsu- Fried Pork.
Kuroshi- Lit. Black District (Black 'Order' just doesn't fit here x'D)
Mizuage- A coming of age ceremony, where the Courtesan in question typically sells his/her virginity to a bidder (or sometimes someone he/she chose).
Kagema- Male courtesan.
Dorayaki- A red bean pancake-thing.
Hopefully I can has some reviews!-throws cookies-