Black Love, Assassinated-Ten, Cross of Grief
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The ground was still moist and soft from the rain last night as the two young students in their Japanese uniform walked alongside the grass plain. The boy rolled his eyes as his companion indulged in a little tune they had learnt the other day, oblivion to the fact that her singing were scarring the morning birds around the; perhaps permanently.
He began to hasten his pace as he felt that they were lagging behind time, but the growing coldness behind his back made him paused in his track and reluctantly turned around.
She, his companion, was standing a few good metres away from him as she hugged her books and looked at him. Those eyes, as he had recognized, were darkly luminous- strangely filled with guilt. He yelled across the distance. "Oi, what's wrong."
The girl merely shook her head, her ponytail swinging stubbornly. Was she shivering?
"What happened?" He demanded as he crossed over the distance to her and tried to drag her along. Then he realized what had happened as he drew nearer to his companion.
Lying on the moist black soil was a puddle of slimy and weirdly contoured object. With careful steps, the Japanese boy walked closer to it and almost laughed when he saw it. He did not. It was, after all, a small life that had been unwillingly been killed- someone or something had hit it and crushed it to death. His companion had kicked a stone that smashed into an unknowing snail, all amidst her tuneless singing. "Tch," he chided, as he walked away from the girl yet again, "It would not have mattered. Those pieces of broken shells would have pierced it to death, anyway."
"NO!" it had been a protest that really made him stop, as if it was an order to make him stay rooted to the ground.
"WHAT?"
Annoyed, he stormed to the girl and tried to drag the latter along but she just refused to budge. She was shivering, all right, from guilt and disgust that she had killed something she had never quite liked before. Yet it was the sight of drops of tears rolling down her flushed cheeks that had scared him the most. She was… crying, and tugging at his sleeves.
"Alright, alright," groaned the boy as he squatted next to the object that had been murdered. Dumping his books into his companion's arms, he rolled up his sleeves with frustration and began to dig a small hole in the loose dark soil. The smell of damp grass wavered into the two's nose as the boy moved on next to dig around the snail, which soil he then lifted with the snail on it. Gently, he laid it into the previous hole he made and began to cover the hole up with fresh, dampened soil. Cleaning his hands as he stood up, he was surprised, and annoyed, to find that his companion was nowhere in sight. "Oi, where are you-"
The girl had appeared right in front of him yet again, her black eyes shining with tears but smiling, with a small sprig of cherry blossom in her hands as she too, squatted next to him in silence and placed the offering on the pile of freshly dug soil. With her small fingers, she managed to tie two twigs together to form a cross, and stuck it into the soil. Thereafter, their heads bowed in silence in harmony.
"Thanks, Kan'" had been what she had said when they continued their journey to school, her small hands still grabbing on to his small sleeves.
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What hurts the most
Is being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was trying to do
-What Hurts the Most by Rascal Flatts
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He had landed on her when they dropped through the hole, and something mystic and unknown made him offer out his hands to help her up. She was all grown up now, not the little girl that he had once been so familiar with. The place, which she had pointed out that it looked like Greece, was the Ark, according to the shriveled up moyashi. Her hands had lingered a little longer on him when she accepted his sleeves for support, as if it was reluctant to leave. Tch, he was thinking too much, he thought, as he crossed his arms over his chest, and observed the area.
"SUPER THICK GLASSES?!?"
That had been the immediate reaction of Allen, Lavi, Krory and Fuyu when the bespeculated man appeared from nowhere much to the confusion of the others present at the scene. With casual, nonchalant steps, the man with tattered clothes walked towards Fuyu with a smile that would have been deemed disturbing yet welcoming.
"Glad to see that you're fine, Lady Exorcist."
"What are you doing here...?" Fuyu's eyes enlarged with alarm, when he pushed up his spectacles on his nose bridge and looked at her with an amused expression. Perhaps it had been the lights that were playing tricks on her, or the angle that the lens had been tilted to, but it made the spectacles revealed what it had always hidden until now- his brown eyes that bored deep into her black ones. Had air been constricted from her throat? It could not have been… He has a beauty mark under his left eye too.
"Stay away from her," barked Kanda as he took a step forward to put himself between the two. The gasp had made him realized it all right. He shrugged the hand that had been placed on his shoulder from the back.
"Hello, don't treat me like a damsel in distress please."
A loud chuckle, a mockery perhaps, came out loud and clear from the throat of the miner as he walked away and approached Allen Walker. The boy had still seemed fazed from all the drama. And what was it with that drape of fur around him?
"How did you survive, lad?" said the man as he placed a hand over the exorcist's white hair. "I had to endure all those things the Earl and brats had said thanks to you, god damn it."
"Junior!" Fuyu had been the only one who had yelled in alarm when the miner had knocked his head on Allen's. She was only one who knew, and had realized too. How could one forget the black curls of hair that you have combed through with one's fingers, or the geography of his cheekbones and jaw when one cupped his face with her warm hands?
The loud low chuckle once again repeated itself as the man tilted his head back to let his spectacles slipped through his head. It had sickened her to the stomach to see him doing that. Lavi extended his innocence instinctively. "What is that pedophile doing now? Oh my god…"
The dull hue of gray began to seep into the man's skin as his hair wavered amidst the wind, the cursed crown of crosses appeared distinctively while the spectacles coursed through his head seamlessly, unlike the tear that had been made in someone else's heart. Brutally torn and disgustingly deceived.
"Stop calling me that, orange-haired lad. I'm not any much older than you lads. You want an exit, don't you…?"
He continued to speak as she watched motionlessly at him, her horror growing as the Noah's lips moved along with whatever he was saying, but her mind could not interpret the words and did not want to. She was sick to the stomach now the more she looked at the man whose skin had been cursed gray. She glanced away; she had to, because it was as if any more sight of him would have slaughtered her to a sick pile like the snail that was still heavily imprinted in her mind. A shiver coursed through her spine as she attempted to calm down. It was then she realized that she had been grabbing onto Kanda's sleeves unconsciously. She removed it immediately.
Perhaps the Noah's eyes lingered over what the female exorcist had done previously, but he did not appear so if he did. He continued what he had been saying as he let the keys slipped through his fingers. The floor began to crumple like a biscuit, yet less drastic than it had been when he first realized that she had been her, and that all these games were coming back to a full circle.
"And how could it be fair when Noahs are said to be immortal?"Allen Walker had been the one who last called out to him. Well, he was after all the second reason that he had decided to play this game. Laughter, painted to ridicule and scorn, filled the light blue sky as he walked towards Rhode's door. His trademark smile endorsed his features yet again as he ended the drama with a spectacular call.
"Boy, we are humans too, you know. If we seemed to be immortal, it's only because you guys are so weak! Moreover, if you don't believe my words, I'm sure Miss Black would be able to tell you how warm humans feel, wouldn't she?"
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That was how love could be.
It smelled like burnt toast. You made the toast. You looked forward to it. You even enjoyed making it, but it burnt. What were you doing? Was it your fault? It doesn't matter anymore. You open the window but only the very top most layer of the smell goes away. The rest remains around you. It's on the wall. You leave the room but it's on your clothes. You change your clothes but it's in your hair. It's on the thin skin on the tops of your hands. And in the morning, it's still there.
-Seven types of ambiguity, Elliot Perlman
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The growing coldness from his back made the young Japanese student stop yet again. What was it again?, he grunted, as he turned around. The duo had waited for Mrs. Black to bring them home for a few hours since school had ended, yet the latter had only just informed them to return home themselves as she was unable to make it- like when the sky was already dusty due to the lack of light as the sun had already began to descend to the horizon, and she expected two kids to return home all by themselves. This had never happened before, damn it, what's wrong with the mother and daughter today?
Perhaps it had been the warming glow of light that bathed her, or perhaps it had been exhaustion that had stolen his ability to judge, but the image of his companion standing right under the lamp post with her small hands in different shapes to make shadows had sent warmth coursing through his body as he looked at her. The little shadows, a wolf, a flower, a bird, had all seemed to be waving at him as he gradually approached the girl. The two stood in silence under the watchful eye of the lamp as the girl ignored the presence of the boy. Like a puppet, a marionette, the shadows all seemed to be in a play staged by the girl herself, and he was the only audience.
"Cho…" Butterfly. It had been the thing that snapped him out of the daze as he gawked at the shadow shaped by his companion. "That's enough, Baka, let's go."
This time, the girl had not protest a single bit, but instead grinned as she caught up with Kanda. Her soft cloth shoes had made no noise when she ran up.
"It's Fuyu, idiot."
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A/N: Okay, I'm really just brushing through the plot 'cause I'm too lazy to retell the whole thing again- redundant anyway. I know there's a lot of KandaFuyu moment, and yeah if it could even be spotted, Mrs. Black was late because her father had visited her, which was mentioned in the previous chapter. It had been quite some time so I decided to bring up this point. Yep(; Sorry with the late update- damn tired after the exams, but hey it has finally ended! : D