Mika and Yuu sat by Akane's side for a while. They had no clue of how much time passed, but eventually she started moving and her eyes suddenly opened. Mika and Yuu didn't notice this though. They had started to look around and see if someone else had survived.
Akane heard them moving around and sat up. "Mika-chan, Yuu-chan?" she said this when she saw them.
Both Mika and Yuu heard her and turned their heads to face her. Smiles broke out on their faces as they saw that she was alive.
"Akane-chan," Mika said before he rushed up to her and started checking her, to see if she was hurt in any way. Yuu came as well and stood beside Mika.
"Where is everyone else?" Akane asked.
Mika's blue eyes grew dark as he thought about how to answer her question. He and Yuu had found a few, but they were all dead for sure. The saddening news was not something he wanted to share with Akane, but he had no other choice.
"They're dead… Akane-chan," he said.
Akane did her best to fight the tears welling up in her eyes. She almost succeeded. Only one tear ran down from each eye. Mika noticed it and wiped her tears away with his hand, smiling at Akane.
"Don't worry," he said. "Yuu-chan and I are still here," he assured her. "Let's go find a safe place to stay."
His words managed to cheer Akane up, and she smiled as well as she stood up and she, Yuu and Mika started walking away to find a safe place where they could stay.
After walking for a long while they had found a small, abandoned house and moved in there. It was located in a neighborhood full of kind people who gladly helped them gather furniture and paint the walls as the house they had moved into, soon started to look like a real home.
Mika, Yuu and Akane all stayed there for four years. They all lived a life without many worries. The neighbors gave them food or money to buy it. Aside from that, both Yuu and Mika were earning money on running errands for others.
Every day was bright and full of sunshine and happiness, despite the fact that almost their entire family was gone it didn't prevent them from enjoying their lives to the fullest.
The highlight of this time was nothing other than curry. To be more specific, it was the curry that Akane made that was the highlight of their easy lives back then. It was both Yuu's and Mika's favorite food.
It was now October, nearly four years after they had escaped from the Hyakuya sect. To give a more specific date it was October 16th, Yuu's 12th birthday. Of the little household, only one person had forgotten this little detail, and the person who had forgotten was Hyakuya Yuuichirou himself. However, this was only to the relief of Mika and Akane, since they were planning to make curry for the night for the sake of making Yuu happy.
Therefore they had asked Yuu to go run both his and Mika's errands for the day while Mika went out with Akane to buy the ingredients for curry.
Now it was actually a rare occurrence that they had curry. The ingredients were rather expensive and they were lucky when they could afford it.
"Don't you think Yuu-chan will be happy?" Akane asked as she and Mika turned down an alley. This was a shortcut to the nearest supermarket. They knew the owner well by now and they could sometimes, when he was in a good mood, get things a little cheaper than usual.
"Yuu-chan loves curry more than anything," Mika answered with a smile. "I'm sure he'll be so excited when he finds out you are making curry, Akane-chan."
Akane smiled too as they continued down the alley and reached the other end. This was where they stopped. They could see the supermarket a little further down the road, but now it was in ruins, at least the front appeared to be. People were running in panic from the creature standing in front of the supermarket. It turned to run after the running people and thereby it also approached Mika and Akane.
"What is that?" Akane asked.
"It'll be okay, Akane-chan," Mika answered before he took a few steps forward. He bent down and picked up a small, but relatively sharp stone that was lying on the ground. He looked at it while wondering if he could use it or not. After a while, he determined that he could.
"Stay back Akane-chan," he said. "It'll be okay…" He was a little nervous as he approached the creature further, but he shook it off. Then he started running before he jumped up and threw the stone at the creature. It hit, but not with the sharp end and all Mika managed to do was draw the creature's attention towards himself.
"Mika-chan!" Akane yelled as the creature's head turned towards Mika.
Mika took two steps back and then tripped over his own legs. Why hadn't he used his head this time? He usually thought things through before acting, what in the world was going on here?
The creature bent down. Mika knew it, he would soon be killed if a miracle didn't happen. But it had only been one time a miracle had saved him. Surely it wouldn't happen again.
But Mika was wrong. He saw a flash of light, and then suddenly Akane stood beside him, but she had changed. She looked strong, and somehow dependable. Yet Mika was still nervous, scared to lose her.
"Akane-chan?" he asked.
"Stay back, I'll protect you, Mika-chan," Akane said before she jumped off and landed a punch on the creature. However, this was as far as she got before the creature killed her.
Mika could only sit and watch as it happened. He saw as Akane was killed. He watched the blood splatter everywhere. Each drop that fell looked like a paddle from a rose. He had never thought blood could look like that. He watched as Akane's body landed on the ground beside him. Her eyes were wide open and an expression of horror was on her face. Her mouth was slightly opened as in surprise and she wasn't breathing.
This was when someone else had entered the scene and killed the creature before it could kill another person. Now it was the creature's blood splattering everywhere.
The man looked down at Akane's dead body as he approached Mika.
"What a shame, she was so young and had to die just like that," he said. Mika didn't know what it was, but something inside of him told him that this man was no good. But he couldn't move away. The man had saved his life after all. He had to thank him.
Therefore Mika stood up and thanked the man politely.
"It was no trouble," the man said.
Mika then asked what the creature was called and the man explained that this was a fourth horseman of John. They didn't speak for much longer. Mika just wanted to go home now. He was feeling bad. He was feeling sick too. He didn't know what to do with himself at the moment. All he knew was that he didn't want to be with the man anymore.
Yuu was home when Mika returned with stains of blood on his clothes. Yuu was outright shocked when he saw Mika enter the house.
"Mika! What happened? Where's Akane?" he asked those two questions as the first thing upon seeing Mika.
"Something happened and I don't know where Akane is… I think we got separated." Mika did his very best to hide the tears that were welling up in his eyes. "Just leave me alone for now… Yuu-chan," he said.
Yuu nodded. He was able to sense that this was the best thing for now.
In the end, Yuu never found out what had happened to Akane. He attempted to search for her once, but Mika stopped him. He never found out that it was his birthday either. Nobody had told him and Mika was too upset about the day's events to remind him.
Now the only thing that really bothered Yuu was the question if he would ever taste Akane's curry again.