She slid around the corner, barely making it behind the wall before watching men clad in uniform sprint past her, unknowingly racing in the wrong direction. She cussed. That was close, she thought, sliding down to the grass. Too close. Until recently, she had been hiding out in a house for almost two days, walking past or sometimes even stepping on the broken, discombobulated corpses of the family that once resided there. Unfortunately, humans always get nervous when they don't see the same people everyday, so she had to make a hasty escape as she heard the distant cry of sirens acting out on a worried neighbor's suspicions. Another unfortunate thing, the police had spotted her fleeing and chased after her, right until where she was now.

She glanced down at herself, wearing clothes she had stolen from a girl's room after popping her head off like a cork on a whine bottle. There were no signs of blood, making her sigh in relief. She wouldn't look too suspicious if she decided to hide in plain sight, then. She nervously tugged her knitted hat further down her head, making her horns make two bumps jutting from underneath, giving the illusion of a cat hat she had once glimpsed in a store window once when she was strolling around town. Slowly and quietly, she waited until she could no longer see the men or hear the sounds of the sirens until she carefully stepped away from the wall and darted away. It was very quiet at night, a sort of silence that she appreciated more than the annoying chatter of the hateful humans. The way they talked, the way they expressed themselves, just their ugly breathing pissed her off more than anything else in the entire world. The way they backstab, the way they break promises, the way they lied...

Her heart felt sore at the thought of Kouta's horrified face as his sister got ripped in half and his father's head slicing off, the showers of blood drenching him and the ribbons of crimson flecking the floors and walls of the train compartment. Her head ached at the memory of him pushing her to the ground and shaking her uncontrollably. Her fist clenched. It was his fault for lying to me.

Yet, why did she feel this immense, gut-wrenching guilt? She never felt this whenever she smeared innocent (guilty, her instinct hissed, guilty) families' guts and blood all over the living rooms. Or when she induced heart attacks to some stranger (enemy, it spat, nemesis.) just passing by her on the sidewalk. Just being near a human made her sick to her stomach, but Kouta was the only exception; she felt sick to her heart just thinking about him. So succumbing to her natural instincts was like an overwhelmingly warm blanket of relief was draped on her shoulders in this storm of hatred and agony.

She didn't really have a set destination in mind, so she just blindly let her feet do the walking. The diclonius was too immersed in her thoughts as she slowly ascend a set of stone steps, where she walked into a place that had tall, old looking shrines that had kanji carved into them. Sighing, she sat down against a stone, inwardly jeering at the humans as she disrespected their beliefs, and let her eyes close.

"You alright?" a funny sounding voice queried, making her eyes snap open. Her whole body tensed as she found herself in the shadow of an extremely tall stranger, only being able to see the bright red sneakers underneath the long brown coat. What big feet. She had never seen anyone posses such big feet; maybe that one father that she ripped in half at a house once, he had really big ones, but these were just ridiculous. Her vectors immediately reached outwards from her back, ready to attack. Then the stranger bent down, and she couldn't help but stare at how alien he looked. Crazy chocolate brown hair and dark brown eyes and thin eyebrows with a big hooked nose, he was definitely not Japanese. Not even of any Oriental descent. She had often heard about these gaijins from her fellow orphans in the orphanage, but had never actually been near one, nonetheless see a picture of one. He sounded strange as well; a weird accent she couldn't really identify. She remembered an older child once trying to mimic every stereotypical accent there was, and his sounded close to an Englishman's. It seems like she wasn't the only one stunned by the other's looks; his eyes widened as she felt his dark gaze trail over her reddish hair and look into her red eyes. She could faintly hear him murmur, "...Very curious." Then his eyes looked at her hat, and that's when she decided to draw the line.

"Enough looking."

"Oh. Right, sorry," he snapped out of his thoughtful gaze and his eyes seemed to regain an eccentric spark in them as he looked into her own. "Shouldn't you be home with your parents? I bet you they must be going mad looking for you."

"I'm an orphan," she deadpanned. "And no, I am not returning to the orphanage either."

"Why not? Food, shelter, plenty of mates to play with. I've heard they aren't that great, but this isn't much better now is it? Where am I anyways?" he suddenly asked himself as he jumped back to his feet, regaining his towering height that made her almost cower from.

"Kamakura," she told him quietly. Why was she...scared of him? Something about him wasn't right- something most humans had that this man didn't. Her vectors, which had been prepared to strike him at any moment, began to unconsciously lower themselves.

He scared her. She didn't know why, didn't know how, but this man scared her.

"Kamakura.." he said to himself, letting his eyes wander back to hers. And that's when it hit her.

His eyes. They didn't match his face. Not physical similarity wise, but...they just looked...so...old. Ancient. Weathered...

Was that loneliness she saw in the corners of his eye?

"You have very weird eyes," she told him, and ended childishly. "They make you look old."

He only responded, "I do a lot of reading."