This would be the second time she left him, swept away in the back of a speeding car. He could've stopped her, but he wasn't sure if she would be so inviting this time around. "Dammit," he hissed, "dammit, dammit, dammit!" He clutched at the roots of his blonde locks in frustration.

Tom showed up then, placing a cautious hand on his companion's shoulder. "Let's go." Shizuo had hardly heard him, his feet mechanically following his boss's order. His shaking hand fumbled to draw a cigarette from the pack within his breast pocket. When it rested, quivering but steadily, between his lips, he made to grab his lighter, but it fell between his trembling fingers.

"Dammit!" He crushed the unlit thing between his index and thumb, discarded it harshly to the ground. He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as a low, grumbling sound vibrated in his chest, erupting into a full out roar of infuriation.

He knew Tom was saying something to him but he just couldn't make out the words. How could he be so careless? It wasn't often that he met someone who didn't tremble in fear in his presence, much less a woman. And yet, there she was, a woman who not only trusted his ability to control his awesome strength but also admired his will to try. In the notorious city of Ikebukuro, they had grown accustomed to people of power to use it in such dirty ways. And although Shizuo's employment was hardly a job of a saint, he only meant for his power to help Tom collect debts, not to elicit violence. And she knew that, perhaps just as well as his employer.

But he messed up. It took him six years—six long years—to come to terms with his feelings towards this woman. And just as things were beginning, he had managed to put it all to a screeching halt. It only took one night. One night, after six years, to screw it all up.

Shiori was never quite like the other girls Shizuo had encountered. She preferred the company of books rather than that of gossipers. She favored finding things out on her own to "facts" carried by word of mouth. She would gladly settle for a night-in, wearing nothing but an oversized shirt and panties, watching a classic film adaptation of a novel, eating vanilla ice cream straight from the tub, instead of dancing and drinking the night away. She was something else, something Shizuo didn't fully comprehend but appreciated to have stuck with him for as long as she had.

She had loved him from the moment she had met him. He reminded her so much of the grieving characters from the novels her button nose were always buried in. He was real; a suffering human being who's flaws wouldn't allow him to fit properly in society. He was out of the norm like any hero of a classic tale. And she was mesmerized by him.

He enjoyed the girl's company but never realized her feelings towards himself. She was a sweet but timid thing, carefully tending to his wounds when he was hurt, lighting his cigarette solemnly when he was too enraged to get the lighter to work, waiting for him in the corner booth of the bar with a book as she waited for him to close shop so that he wouldn't be without company on his walk home. Only when she stopped showing up to the bar was when he realized the truth behind Shiori's actions.

She had planned to be gone before he was due back home. They lived in neighboring apartment complexes, and she was sure he would spot her if he were to return home from work early. She thought she had given herself enough time to have packed and disappeared, but when the blonde slowly strolled up the sidewalk and into plain sight, she realized that maybe she had hoped he would catch her before she left.

When he reached her, he stopped and flicked the dying cigarette butt to the ground, stomping it out completing beneath the sole of his shoe. She avoided eye contact as she mumbled a feeble "hello," shifting the weight of a cardboard box between her arms.

"What are you doing?" He reached to hold the box for her but she stepped away.

"I'm leaving," she said simply, her eyes flickering towards the road in search of a certain yellow ride. "I can't…I can't stand to be here any longer." She waited for him to respond, chancing a glance at his face.

He said nothing for a moment before going for the box again. "Let me…"

"No," she snapped, snatching the box out of his reach and scowling up at the towering man. "I can do this on my own. I don't need your help."

He just stood there and slipped his hands into the pockets of his trousers. She waited. And waited. And waited, hoping that like the countless novels she had read, he would take hold of her and shake some sense into her, telling her that he wouldn't let her leave because he…

Because what? Because he loved her?

Life wasn't like the books she so much adored. Nothing like them at all. Should she have been disappointed that her story didn't turn out how she had hoped for it to? Should she have been so heartbroken that when the taxi rolled up to where they stood, Shizuo neither held the door open for her as she clambered in to the back seat nor attempted to change her mind about leaving altogether? That's not how life worked. And as the car peeled away, the blonde too realized this.

He had lost the one companion who fearlessly stood by his side without the utterance of a single "goodbye." He had let her leave without fully understanding the strength of her presence. He felt it when he struggled to tie off the ends to his wound dressings. He felt it when he fumbled with the lighter during a fit of fury, incapable of lighting a cigarette to soothe his frustrations. But he especially felt it when the bar closed down at night and there was only himself on the quiet walk home, and further, no one to share the tub of ice cream with over an old movie he didn't care to watch yet again.

As the years slipped by, his only wish was to forget. So, as disappointed as he was to lose his job at the bar through the flea's handiwork, he was at the same time relieved to never again have to look up between drying glasses to find the corner booth occupied by someone not pushing their glasses up to the bridge of their nose, flipping through pages of a worn out book. And when it came to fights, he found a simpler method to caring for the injuries: duct tape or super glue. Yet there was one unavoidable memory of her, lingering there as he sunk into the couch and flipped on the television. The absence a turning page; the little gasps she'd make at the turn of events within her literature; simply, he missed her. He missed her just being there and there was no denying that.

So instead of pushing away the memory of her, he turned to slowly embrace it. He would sit in that booth at the bar as if patiently waiting for her to appear. He would rent out films he remembered she fawned over, watching them in nothing but a tee shirt and his boxers, a tub of vanilla ice cream half-eaten before he fell asleep to the movie. And with his final attempt to recreate her, he found himself in a quiet little bookstore, wandering aimlessly through the tight aisles for something to catch his eye.

What he didn't expect to capture his attention was a glimpse of cleavage from a woman bent over, searching through a lower shelf in the next aisle over. He didn't mean to stare but was rather dumbfounded that his luck would bestow him with that sight when he removed a novel he recalled Shiori reading once before. But his luck was short lived when the woman snapped upright, obviously pleased with the book she had drawn. Dammit. She blinked owlishly, having caught Shizuo staring. And then she said something that completely caught him off guard.

"Shizuo?"

TO BE CONTINUED...