A/N: I put up really short drabbles and excerpts on my Tumblr every once in a while... But this is my first time on any site posting a story that isn't just a 700-word-or-under oneshot of some sort; I feel like I'm really going out on a limb here, aahh! However, I don't want my over-analyzing ramblings to be a deterrent from reading this fic right off the bat; instead of including them here at the beginning, they can be found as Post-Chapter Author's Notes at the bottom of this page. Please do give them a read. :)

That said- and be warned- although the first chapter is quite clean, this is not a fluffy fic in the least. If anyone is curious about the rating, warnings, and selected genres, elaboration can be found in the ending notes mentioned above.

Putting aside my forewarning thoughts, I hope that you will enjoy this beginning installment!

Closure

The girl who was just a little mysterious turned into the classroom doorway that morning as always.

It was her everyday life, and it was not abnormal. She simply lived as any other 16 year-old girl in high school should, sitting quietly at her desk listening to the classroom lectures, as was expected of every student. Her grades were more than decent and her parents were proud. At last night's dinner her father had shown her a warm smile as they all sat around the table eating their stew; he inquired about her day. She had passed last week's test and earned a fair B+. Her mother beamed.

The girl's parents did not push her. She was a good student who brought home good grades. There was no cause for concern with her attendance and her school record was clean with no signs of troublemaking, nor did she partake in risky extracurricular hobbies that might have worried them. She simply lived the life of a healthy teenage girl and played her part well; it was not an act, although there were times when the memories and worries that swirled about in her head were of the sort that brought reality to a surreal and disconnected pause.

She learned to push them away quickly, when the thoughts had been often and disruptive. Enough time had passed now for the events to seem oddly out of place in her mental timeline, and, at some point in the past year, they had become blurred and repressed. The words that had changed her outlook so profoundly stuck with her as a soft comforting mantra whenever she became sad, which was less and less frequently. The past few months in fact seemed to be completely void of the gloom that had haunted her.

It was a calm and content apathy that ruled the young girl now. She found that, much like the years before, it was hard to truly connect to the things society deemed fundamental aspects of a young modern life... The difference being that such little disappointments mattered little to none these days, where as in her past it was the simple joys whose appeal escaped her. She had been lost, a shell wandering through the routine that had used to be hers. It was as though her very soul had been dislodged by the threatening circumstances that found their way into her seemingly mundane family life, and she had let the problems of others consume her until the only purposeful option was ultimately to cease to exist.

The girl was out of that darkness.

She ignored the pain that plagued her in the weeks after her only support revealed itself to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. And she had been fine, at first. But eventually it was the passing of time that began to pick at her scars instead of healing them. Perhaps she had forced herself to recover too fast... Yes, that had to be it. Such enlightened bliss could never last without the true impact of what had happened hitting her hard and heavy soon after. When at last there was enough distance between those events and her newly embraced optimism— only when she realized that it was truly over— did the girl allow herself to grieve.

But thankfully, it was a phase that she did not dwell in. She decided that she had to fully accept what had happened if she could ever forget it. She had been a fool. In the end, her selfishness had been the root of all her troubles, after all. It was her fault. And, at the same time, it had never even involved her.

The girl who should have died chose to accept both truths from that night. First, there were the words that the cruel man she'd known as Nakura had drilled into her on the roof; despite the woes she had bestowed upon herself to carry, Kamichika Rio was not special; and, second, the world was not as bad as she'd made it out to be.

One year wiser as she departed Raira Academy later in the day, Rio wondered if her strange savior knew that the glowing message on their phone's screen had stuck with her so strongly all this time. Thoughts of the Black Rider filled her with a mix of security and hopeful uncertainty. Did they know the difference that such a phrase made in the girl's life? And, the other, did he now look back on his actions guiltily, or with a more sinister satisfaction?

Stopping at the school gates, the sophomore's gut did a small lurch.

For that split second, she had thought of him.

The second Rio sensed her thoughts grasping at the face of the one she'd poured her feelings to a sort of lockdown would take hold of her mind. She would push it away, just as she'd taught herself in the couple of months after their rendezvous, and move on with her life without delay.

What she hadn't yet learned was the pure damage this kind of avoidance could cause.

In forcing herself to forget, to simply move on without a single second of acknowledgement, she had set herself up for something far more torturous and self-inflicting.

She was not over him.

Until she brought herself to face that simple fact, to examine the unsaid words she had held back through his monologue; her feelings; her reasons; and everything that the person 'Nakura' had represented for the lonely girl who had been ready to give him her heart, Rio would not be free.

I never even told him. But perhaps she hadn't needed to...

It was this what-if thought process chock full of could'ves and should'ves that sent her reeling dangerously close to her old cycle.

And so, taking a deep breath as other classmates in their uniforms passed her by without a care in the world, Rio put one foot in front of the other and held her head high. Such unresolved angst had no place in her heart today.

As she overhead a student cagily mention to the bespectacled girl beside him that he'd seen Orihara Izaya in town today, she paid them no mind... for this name meant nothing to her.

Such dramatic irony held little significance at that particular time, but whether she had been attentive enough to perceive the presence of this man her fellow student spoke of so nervously as a warning or not, perhaps it would not have made any difference; an impulsive heart desperate for answers is known to seek closure in the boldest of ways.

Unfortunately, for Kamichika Rio, the girl who should have died nearly one year ago to the day, the bad luck known as coincidence— or perhaps fate— wasn't done with her yet.

"I figured I should get a head start on a vacation day, right? It's really early now, but that just leaves me with more things to do and more people to see."

Orihara Izaya had told his Raira student acquaintance this as they happened to pass on the other's way to school. It couldn't be blamed on pure accident he had managed to encounter Mikado. Hanging nearby the school's campus with an eye out for familiar faces was certainly likely to produce results, but it still had the quality of a pleasant—and, for the student, uneasy—surprise so early in the morning.

"Don't worry. I didn't come to see you or anyone specifically, not really. But I figured I should still stop by, just in case."

"Right." The boy had glanced towards the school entrance as they neared the building. "W- Well... I don't want to be late... So..." It was at least ten minutes before class would start. The informant offered a small smile at the obvious excuse and said nothing. "I mean," Mikado added quietly, "it's just that there's a short representative meeting before class."

"Bye, then..." Izaya tilted his head and remained at his spot outside the gate. As the seconds went by he began to count, wondering how long Mikado would delay his exit in order to not appear so rude.

1. 2. 3... 4? 5...? Really?

"...Yeah. Bye."

He watched the teen's turned back until it became blended into the crowd of students near the front. "Heh, did you really think I would take my leave first...?"

The hours had passed uneventfully. It was afternoon, and Izaya now stood beside the Alpa mall fountain in Sunshine City. So far the day had been spent strolling along the busy streets, treating himself to a rather indulgent lunch at Namja Town, and merely kicking back and relaxing on a couple of benches to people-watch. He did this for hours with no sign of stopping. It was more or less a casual outing than a true vacation.

Nevertheless, Izaya had taken off work and left the office for a day. He planned to have no real plans, enjoying Ikebukuro for recreation rather than business of some kind. It was a go-with-the-flow sort of attitude that the info broker took with him on the train. It was eight minutes from Shinjuku to use the commuter rail, so he'd started his day no earlier or later than was needed on any normal workday.

Visiting Ikebukuro was not an everyday occasion in the least; sometimes Izaya went weeks without the need to go anywhere else than his own apartment. In fact, this very deprivation was Izaya's motivation that morning for such an outing. He yearned to experience and appreciate the city crowds once more and completely unwind.

As luck would have it that day, no aggressive confrontations stumbled upon him. Mikado so far was the only person with whom Izaya even bothered to directly interact—no one had approached him, either.

He was merely an observer—

As was the young girl who had entered the mall some seconds before, laid her eyes on the man in the fur trim coat, and stopped dead in her tracks.

Post-Chapter A/N: Forgive me, I typically wouldn't write an author's note of such length, but for this fic in particular, and especially since it's my very first submission here, I have a lot to say. So here we go!

This fic, by the time of its completion, will actually be the culmination of several scenarios and ideas that have been floating around in my head for months. When I started it, I was in bed on my laptop at 2 a.m. with the irrepressible urge to start typing up at least one of them. While going over what I had written (Rio's first section) that next morning, I realized that I could very well transform this fic in such a way that it encompassed virtually all of my ideal situations and headcanons for the rarepair that is IzaRio. And what a lonely ship it is... I always feel a bit isolated admitting that Rio has always been a favorite character of mine.

On the subject of the dynamic between Izaya and Rio, there is no underlying vibe of happiness or sweet infatuation to be interpreted in this fic, nor is there much coming close at all to the endearing concept of 'ROMANCE'. In fact, in the process of publishing, I had an extremely hard time picking which two genres to label it with, so I will list the favorable ones here:

DRAMA (check), TRAGEDY, and with that comes the given ANGST- but I should note that for many people this eventually may fall under HORROR due to the intensely dark nature of some elements. If I could give it a more accurately customized category, it would be listed under HURT/HURT. Haha... I wish that submissions had a section of input for Warnings and potential triggers themselves while publishing. I don't mind personally listing them in the description, but I would think it'd be more convenient! In any case: The later chapters of this fic will contain emotional manipulation, dubcon/coercion, and violent sexual assault. For the latter circumstance, I please ask that you hold off on any assumptions of the 'obvious' or predictions and expect the unexpected..

The first section of the next chapter is already written and I'll be finishing it up soon, striving for much longer sections and longer chapters as I go along! I'd debated uploading Rio's start as a prologue, but I wanted to make it apparent as a first impression that the character-centric perspective intermittently flips.

For my last words, I hope and wish that any readers will stick with me through the grisly premise and be my encouraging light at the end of the tunnel so that I may follow it through to the end! It will be a long and winding ride.