Shaman King belongs to Hiroyuki Takei, not me.
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"I don't want it."
Kino continued her even pace of writing, sending smooth slick strokes of black ink across the creamy parchment. She ignored the presence of the one standing behind her.
"Come on," he egged. "Certainly there's something you can do with her."
"I'd rather die," she said coolly. Kino ignored the loud sounds of the sirens in the busy Tokyo streets and continued the slow movement of the calligraphy brush. She had no need for a child. Her son was in his thirties, happily married, with a toddler of his own. She'd rather endure death than take in a child.
Especially that one.
"I heard that." He leaned over her shoulder. Look out the window," he pestered. "Just a single glance. Not a study, not a stare. Just look at her for a moment."
Kino paused the brush and looked.
The child was curled up in a tight ball in the doorway of a grocery store. Long dirty hair hung over its face, shielding the features from the cold. The child's body was not as fortunate. A thin gray shift was the only thing protecting the scrawny limbs from the Tokyo winter snowfall.
"I asked for just one glance, but now you can't turn away, can you?" he smirked. "Guess what will happen if you do?"
Kino tore her eyes away. "I don't want it," she repeated.
"She, not it," he corrected. "That changes matters a bit, doesn't it? That 'it' is a little girl."
"A little girl," Kino repeated. She gripped the brush tighter. The siren wails were breaking her concentration.
"Yes, quite a little girl, actually. Just barely three years old." His smirk twisted. "Only a bit younger than your beloved grandson, I believe." He edged closer until she could feel his hot breath on her old ear. "And you would never leave your little Yoh to die in a gutter, now, would you?"
"I still don't want her," Kino said. "Nothing you say affects me."
His dark eyes were unfathomable. "If you don't take her, she'll belong to me."
Kino closed her eyes tightly, blocking out all sights, focusing on the clean black on white. "Have you ever seen a sapling break in a windstorm?" he inquired. He took the extra brush from her table, toying the silky and sensuous bristles along his long fingers. "How the tiny tree bends and bows in the wind, trying to cling to the ground, until finally, finally, at long last, the baby tree snaps." He expertly broke the brush and dropped the splintered halves on the paper. The ink smeared. "The same thing happens when you break a child's arm."
"She's just a street rat," Kino countered. "They're a dime a dozen on these Tokyo streets."
"Hm, you're right about that," he mused. "So no one will care if something happens to her." He smiled. "Something horrible."
He wasn't looking. Kino glanced towards the window again. The child had shifted positions. The long hair still fell across her face, but white snowflakes were clinging to the blue tinged body.
"Aha!" he crowed. "You were eyeing my little treasure." He popped over to the window and crouched on the sill. "Such a pity. She can already feel the pain."
Kino made an even mark on the paper. He frowned, then opened the window. A blast of icy wind shuffled the parchments and shook the inkwell. Kino shivered.
"It's cold," he commented inanely. "Even you with all those layers are cold…but she must be all right. She's just a street rat. She's used to the weather." He looked Kino in the eyes. "Isn't she?"
Kino closed the window with a definite hit. She reorganized the papers. She turned the desk to look towards the wall. She resumed her work.
"She has a name, you know," he continued. "She was given a name. The little thing doesn't remember her last name. After all, it's been so long since her mommy and daddy abandoned her. She can barely remember them."
Kino's finger trembled slightly as she made another stroke. A droplet of black ink fell on her knuckle.
"You're ignoring me," he frowned. "I guess I haven't made my point clearly enough."
He flung the window open again, this time all the way. Kino gathered up her papers as she watched him leap the story-and-a-half distance to the ground. The little girl was lying on her side on the concrete steps. He touched his hand lightly against her cheek. A black bruise appeared. A touch to the arm brought a bloody scrape; a touch to the ankle twisted it. Kino watched in mounting horror as the girl's body became mangled beyond recognition until she was lying on her back on the steps, mouth open in a silent moan of pain.
"Isn't it lovely?" he called up to Kino.
He stared at the little girl for a long moment, almost fondly. With a last wave of his hand the tiny body returned to its former state, and she relaxed. He glanced back up to the open window. He smiled. And he disappeared into the darkness of the midwinter night, blending in effortlessly with the navy of the sky and the gray of the city, his footsteps lost in the wail of the sirens.
Kino stood by the window. There was a choice to be made tonight.
Kino stared at the little girl. She slept on, in a deep, dull state of unconsciousness. Without knowing it she had drawn into a tight ball again, pulling and tugging at the skimpy gray rags to cover her chilly nakedness. She made a tiny snow covered heap in the front stoop of the grocery store, unprotected from the cold and wind and snow.
There was not a doubt that she would be dead come morning.
Tomorrow morning the grocer would come down from the apartment above the store and open the shop. Imagine his surprise when he finds not milk bottles on his steps, but the frozen body of a baby girl. He calls for his wife as he frantically searches the streets for a sign of a mother or a murderer. The wife is sleepy eyed, but screams when she realizes what her husband has discovered. She sends their own children back up to their rooms, shielding them from the sight of the cold tiny corpse. The grocer covers the little face, still chubby from babyhood, with a blanket as his wife calls the police. The detectives come. The child is taken away to the morgue where she lies alone amongst strangers. There is no record of a missing child that matches her description. There is no name. There is no family. And so the child is buried in an unmarked grave. She could have told her name, had she lived. But she wasn't given a chance.
Kino made her way downstairs.
Her son and his family were in the living room. Mikihisa read a book as his wife dressed their sleepy-eyed toddler for bed. "I love you, Yoh-chan," Keiko crooned to the three-year-old.
"Where are you going, Mother?" Mikihisa asked.
"Out," she said. "There's something I have to fetch from outside."
Kino made her way towards to grocer's. The child hadn't moved; there was something eerie about the stillness of the little one. The death he had promised was approaching faster than she had expected.
She brushed the dirty hair away and stared into the child's grimy face. It was thin and pale and pinched, not round and rosy like a todler's should be. Kino lifted the light burden into her arms; the fragile pointed limbs jutted out. But the slender chest rose lightly, shallowly, with each frail breath.
Kino filled the bathtub with warm water and placed the baby in it. She moaned as her nearly frostbitten body touched the soothing warmth of the water. Kino rubbed shampoo gently through the little girl's hair, washing away the dirt and revealing soft, fine, blonde hair. She washed away the dried blood and mud on the scrawny body. The child winced each time Kino touched a sore spot.
"There, little one," she said. "That's all better." She drained the bathtub and wrapped the tiny girl in a big thick towel. It wasn't until after she had dressed her in a clean white nightdress and brushed her hair smooth that Kino realized the child's dark eyes had begun to open.
"Hello," Kino said. "Are you hungry?" She nodded, her dark eyes frighteningly huge in her narrow white face. Kino picked up the little girl, who quickly slipped the two middle fingers of her right handd into her little mouth.
Keiko was in the kitchen when Kino came down. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Who is this little one?"
"A possible new student," Kino lied smoothly. "She's hungry." She reached for a bowl to put rice in.
"Oh, she looks far too weak to manage that," Keiko said. She took a baby bottle and filled it with warm beef broth. "Let me feed her. She looks exhausted."
The small child settled comfortably on Keiko's lap. At first she sat in silence, sucking on her fingers, but finally she took the bottle and drained it, clutching it in her small thin hands. Keiko stroked her clean smooth hair. The only sound in the room was the toddler's quiet sucking on the bottle. Keiko kissed her.
The large dark eyes began to droop, this time in healthy sleep, not the dazed frigid unconsciousness. Keiko handed the soft little bundle to Kino. "Where is she going to sleep tonight?" she asked.
"The crib in the study," Kino said.
"What's her name?" Keiko asked.
Kino shifted the drowsy child and made her way up the stairs without answering.
She took the baby to the study and laid her down in the crib. "It's no palace, but it's better than the streets," she said. Kino tucked several thick blankets around her. She sighed heavily. "What is your name, little one?"
The dark eyes seemed to glow in the dark as she watched Kino. "Anna," she said softly. "Me is Anna."
Kino turned out the light. Anna's dark eyes closed in sweet child-sleep, warm and safe and sheltered at last, with no more pain and no more fear.
And in the darkness, he smiled.
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