He knows he's committed something that they will kill him for. Something for which they will never forgive him. His nails are bitten down so much that they are bleeding. He's walking along now, streets from where he lives, but although the thought of where he is going is a slight comfort to him, the horrible dread of what will happen later haunts him with an ugly drone.
Where he walks is equally ugly. Abysmally ugly. It's a neighbourhood that was once a nice place to live, but over time has decayed because of the vermin living in it. He knows this because he has seen it decaying all his life. The street he's walking down now, for one, used to be unparalleled in cleanliness and beauty; with trees lining the sides of the road. Some of them are still there, but the ones that haven't been burnt down by kids or stolen for timber are rotted and dead like the rest of the place. He kicks a cola can which has been used as a cheap bong by some crackhead kid who couldn't afford anything better to use; a tale told by the faint, almost flowery odour and burn marks around needle points in the centre, which he knows act as vents. It spirals through the air for a second or two and lands in a pile of dog turds about twenty feet from where he's strolling with a soft thock. He snorts in disgust and turns to go the other way.
His disgust very quickly turns to misery and he stops for a second, unable to see. He realises then, when his throat becomes sore and his face sticky, that he is crying. He hasn't cried yet until now, not after what happened and it disgusts him that he can't understand why. It is natural of course, but he has been sharpened to the point where any signs of emotion aside from the mandatory anger and aggression are barely legible in his brain, so when they come (as they sometimes do) he does not understand them and they kill him inside. He sobs as if there is nothing else that matters, which, in the grand scheme of things for him, currently, is more than reasonable.
He looks at the small, crescent scars on the back of his hand. In the pink-grey light from the ongoing sunset they glint like silvery, waxing moons. He whispers a name-
(Megumi)
-and slaps himself hard in the face to get a grip on himself. It is painful, yes, but it reminds him of how he has to stay focussed. He cannot see the mark he has made on his face because of it, but if he could, he would see an angry red weal. A woman jumps at the noise and looks at him, startled for a moment before continuing on her way, albeit somewhat uneasily. He does not know her and he does not care. All he cares about is getting to where he needs to be, although he doubts he will reach his destination at all- in time, or when the unavoidable future events are played out pre-emptively when he is taken.
Some kids approach him and he hesitates for a moment, hostile, but they do not work with his enemies. They want his wallet, they say, or they'll beat the shit out of him. They look like they're rookies in the business, even though they appear older than he is. One of them has stubble and a tattoo on his arm of arcane symbols- the other wears a skullcap and has a greasy face dotted with blackheads. He smells terrible, like sweat and old vinegar. These two do not scare him however and fuck, he's going to let them know it. He may be worn right now, but he's no pushover and the adrenaline in his veins is urging him to react with impatience and ruthlessness.
The bigger one with the skullcap is the one he hits. He lashes out at his face with a punch that is as hard at it is fast. It lands against the guy's nose with a sickening crunch. It breaks easily, with a generous spray of blood and a squeal of splintering cartilage. The guy also squeals and falls to his knees, nursing his busted nose. He surveys the damage he has caused for a second, to check to see how badly he has hurt him. Blood is pooling on the floor in floods from the wound. Drool, useless threats and curses run from his mouth in web-like strands. He ignores them and turns his eyes to the other guy, who is looking a cross between furious and frightened. He beckons to him, to challenge him to come forward. This is not because he wants to hurt the guy- the contrary, in fact- it is a warning. He has a blackbelt in karate, immutably vicious training he has received during his time with the Souma-Kai and a few tricks he has picked up during the short bursts he has spent in juvenile detention centres. Failing that, there's a loaded snub-nosed revolver in his boot and a switchblade in his back pocket. He knows he looks like a kid, but if the two of them were to know who he actually was (well, before recently, anyway) they would either run screaming, or beg to live. Reita Suzuki is, for lack of better descriptions, a crazy motherfucker.
However, the stupid kid does not back down and he takes out an army knife from inside his coat. The edge is serrated slightly and it glimmers like the crescent scars on his hand. He swings it forward with an agonised cry and Reita ducks casually to avoid it. He mainly misses it, but it does graze his arm slightly with a nasty sting. His breath releases in a sigh-
(Fool)
-and he knees the kid in the balls.
The kid doesn't scream like the other kid did; rather, he makes a sound that sounds almost primal. A long moaning sound; with breaths coming in chokes at the end. He falls to his knees with the pain and collapses, his eyes shut with the agony. He looks at his attacker and feels nothing at all for him. He doubts that the kid will be able to get up after that, so he turns to walk across the road away from the bloody mess, but then, with a grunt, the guy with the broken nose gets up. He staggers to his feet, his balance somewhat off- with no real surprise. The wound is ugly and gaping. He reminds Reita of a star nosed mole, which would have made him laugh had he had the patience. The guy's face is red with blood like war paint and his teeth are bared in an ugly snarl. He screams something at Reita that he cannot understand and runs clumsily toward him.
Reita exhales again, knowing what he has to do. He does not want to, but he has no time to be messing around. His motion is lightning fast, as it always is when he has to defend himself, or the times where he has had to defend his colleagues. Pocket, flick, stab.
The guy lets out a surprised grunt as he is stopped by his blade. Reita does it almost with reverence; holding the guy like he would a lover, with one of his arms around his waist. The other of course, is grasped tightly around the ivory handle of his switchblade. The smells of sweat, blood and rancid vinegar are all around him and he swallows a cough. He pushes the guy back not quite as respectfully and he lands in a heap; his lifeless eyes reflecting the darkening sky. His comrade sees them from his home on this floor and screams; his bloody mouth open, like a yawning maw. He feels guilty, but not enough to give up any more time for either of them and he runs until his veins are pumping acid.
To his surprise, he reaches his home with no other trouble. He has not cleaned the blood from his knife before he placed it back into his pocket and the back of his thighs feel sticky. He is reminded with understandable distaste of menstruation. He's very skinny and very pale right now; old far beyond his years in physical and mental abuse, self inflicted or otherwise. His mind is currently mush, or feels that way; from fear, exhaustion and his Old Friend, Mr Cravings, who he loves and loathes at the same time, nagging him. He hurts him and tells him to steal, to cheat and to lie, but he always stands by him during the Rush. The Rush is their true love. Reita Suzuki's true love. A love he wants to feel is more real than anything else he knows and has ever known, because, selfishly, it makes things that little bit easier for him-
(Megumi Megumi oh God)
He has planned conversely, however, to destroy his relationship with his Old Friend for a long time due to the self-loathing that Mr Cravings always brings upon him; but his will is long gone and his time right now is, rather likely, to be very, very short. He will be killed long before his seventeenth birthday, but he does not care. He fears the pain, is all.
The skinny, pale boy who is Reita Suzuki shivers in the cold wind, alone with his memories. There are circles under his eyes as purplish-red as the marks around his nose, which he hates but cannot hide. His back is scabbed over and bleeding from the week before; with the marks of love and fraternity that they have scraped upon him with ink and needles. He almost laughs about how much things have changed between them. There is no humour in it, really, but the disbelief and disgust he has for them and himself somehow manages to form a resembling cough that bursts from his throat like the blood from the punk's nose.
He takes a deep breath and knocks on the door of the stately town house belonging to his family; the only pleasing contradiction in this squalid neighbourhood where he used to belong. His father, after all, is in this with him. He hopes that he has gotten to him in time to tell him the good news. That he will take the blame for it all and suffer the inevitable repercussions that the Souma-Kai will deliver upon him. It may have been his father's idea, but he was the one who committed the act. He loves his father; as much as he does the Rush and has hates him as much as he does his shitty lifestyle and constant fear, but the good feeling outweighs the bad due to his stately conscience; though he snorts at the idea. He does not want him to have to suffer the same fate.
Nobody answers the door; but they do not have to, as his knocking causes it to open with a smooth squeaking sound. This makes his nightmares a reality, because he knows that he is too late. This fact, however, does not bother him; in that he knows that when he walks in there, or tries to run, that he will be taken or killed. No, it is more the gut wrenching horror of knowing that he will have to go inside and see what they have done to his family. He understands this because he has not only premature wisdom, but an exceptionally gifted mind behind the mush that is his current brain. He can sense it. It is not exactly a smell; more of a feeling that hangs in the air like an unwholesome miasma. The house is soundless aside from the clunks of his heavy-duty Doc Martens. He is reminded of Simon and Garfunkel's song, The Sound of Silence.
As he expects, they are in the living room, as they usually are. But the scene is wrong. Very wrong. He does not breathe or move; he is frozen. As lifeless as the scene before his eyes. He cannot scream- not yet. Only see... and see and see.
There is no blood at all. If one were to simply glance in the room briefly, they would just think that the three of them were simply sitting normally. He observes the room in helpless horror; his features alive with a horrible grin, his hand mindlessly coming up to his mouth. He is not glancing briefly; he is seeing. Absorbing. It is worming its way into the mush and settling there like a dreadful, chilled fluid.
They are together, his mother, father and sister- and they are unmistakably dead. Their eyes are glassy and lifeless, like Skullcap's after he stabbed him. It is a new kind of death, a disgusting death that he has never seen before. It is not like Megumi's- spontaneous and bloody. It is planned, careful and chosen specifically. To torment him. They know this and they are here, but before they close in for him, Reita finds his voice.
He howls like he will in every dream, every nightmare that he will have for the rest of his life. It is an eerie sound; a frightening sound, like a wounded, heartbroken animal. He does not want them to have the pleasure of hearing him scream, but the sound comes out beyond his will and he screams and screams until Boss Kiriyama comes behind him and strikes him, hard, on the back of the head. It could only be Kiriyama, because he likes doing things personally and Reita knows that he is the one whom the Boss has a bone to pick. A fucking big one.
As Reita Suzuki's head explodes with pain and his vision goes black, a clump of ash falls from the end of his father's burning cigar and settles on the green carpet in a greyish pile.
A/N: I apologise immensely for taking thousands of years to update- but I've had tons of work XP Thank you all for being patient and not yelling at me for taking ages XD