The Subway
Yuki filed onto the subway among the other passengers, the crowd thinned at the doors like a funnel. He shuffled through the mass of moving bodies, found a seat and sat down. He sat his package on his lap, held up his wrist and checked the time. It was nearly lunch on this warm Sunday, and he was glad he would be home just in time for Tohru's home cooked meal. He could hear the quiet beat of the music coming from the earphones of the person next to him. He noticed his feet were strangely cold.
He felt remote and removed from the other occupants of the car, untouchable and unapproachable. A sliver of a memory slipped through his mind, harsh words spoken from a young voice that's owner had always seemed immortal to him. "You're mine, you're my favorite. Don't you feel special?" To anyone else they might have seemed kind and warm, but to him they were devastating and left him with feelings of isolation and dread.
Alone, sitting on the subway, he felt a sudden sheen of cold sweat erupt around his neck, his jaw, across his brow. His chest gave a slight clench. Next to him the earphones continued their otherworldly, static tune of techno. The tappita-tappita-tap-tap-tap beat in synch with his heart. He took several slow breaths to calm himself.
It wasn't the same. He wasn't isolated now. But even as he tried to reassure himself that small voice in the back of his mind snickered, "You sit here amidst the warm bodies of a crowd, and yet you can never become like them, can never truly be with them." He shook his head against those negative thoughts that he had never noted on his own. The words had risen within him like Akito was standing behind him, with his venom precise as a snake's.
The train slowed to a stop. The people who were getting off secured their items as he did, prepared to slip out into the city. He tried to shake of his dark mood before starting the walk home, before he entered Shigure's house and sat down to eat lunch with all of them, especially Tohru. As he stepped of the train he muttered to himself, "Kyo thinks he's the most cursed of us all—however I might trade him lives without regret." But he would never admit this to anyone else. Least of all the cat.