Pet Shop of Horrors © Matsuri Akino, Urban Vision, Madhouse, Asahi Sonorama
Set just after episode three of the anime.
I did not know that she would follow him.
Words. They didn't seem to hold any of what was in his heart. He whispered them again under his breath, alone in the shadowed pet shop. I did not know. Had had to press his hands nails cold against his skin over his face to hide his shame and grief from the detective.
Was his tea cold already? D held the cup in numb fingers, so numb that he did not feel it as they parted and the blue and gold hummingbirds broke their wings against the hard floor. Sometimes he felt as though he were nothing but a scythe bearer in the retinue of death. Wasn't he supposed to bring love, dreams, hope?
D had never felt anything but entirely comfortable in the cool, dim darkness of the shop, yet now it seemed as though everything within it, all of the screens and couches and incense burners and cages, was being pulled in by some vast force, pressing down on his body and crushing the shards of the broken cup.
He wished that zu fu were here.
His grandfather had always known precisely how he had felt with a single flicker of pale golden eyes and the edge of a smile. In his more vulnerable- human, childish- moments, D imagined that zu fu knew everything, just everything, knew grief and fear and anger and eternity.
He did not think of his father. Or, rather, he thought the whisper of the name and then swallowed it down so swiftly that even he wasn't sure if the word had ever slipped onto his tongue.
In the shadows of the shop, D tried not to think of a lot of things. Perhaps one day it would actually work.