The Itako: The Story of Anna Kyouyama
Summery: This is the story of Anna's life. It's about how she went from a happy and constantly smiling child to the cold girl that we all know and love.
Prologue
/How It All Began/
I don't remember much about my family. But I do remember a woman with long, flowing blonde hair and black eyes who used to sing me to sleep or rub my stomach when I was tired. I'm sure that that was my mother.
Then there was my father. A man with black hair and blue eyes that would throw me in the air and catch me and tell me all sorts of stories. But when he caught me playing with ghosts, he began to hit me and my mother. It wasn't long afterwards that he disowned me.
There was a boy with blonde hair and black eyes, my brother Toya. He would play games with me and tried to teach me how to swim. I remember him as very protective and fighting with anyone who said anything cruel about me or anyone else in our family.
I also remember a girl with silver hair and red eyes. She was my oldest sister, Jeanne. She always tried to act responsibly and usually thought before acting even though she was only six-years-old. I remember her as a best friend and a sort of second mother.
Lastly, I remember my other sister, Sara, who was older than me by two years. She had black hair and blue eyes, much like our father. She always had a lot of energy and loved to play games and pranks. She also loved it when someone praised or congratulated her for something that she did because she just relished the attention. I think we argued a lot, but were still pretty close…
What I do remember though, is being with Akuma. He was a man with burgundy-brown hair and cold grey eyes. I met him when I was three. I remember that day perfectly…
I was running, running through a forest away from something or someone. Maybe it was a lot of some things or a lot of some ones. Maybe I wasn't running away from anything. Maybe I was just running away from the voices in my head.
But either way, I was running. It was pelting rain and I was soaked to the bone and cold. I remember feeling like I was frozen solid, and wanting to lay down and sleep. But I think a part of me knew not to do that. That if I were to lay down and go to sleep, I wouldn't wake up again. So, I kept running.
I ran until my lungs began to burn, until my legs refused to carry me any further, only then did I collapse. But I didn't stop moving. I saw a hollow spot at the bottom of a tree and began to crawl towards it. I grabbed hold of large roots to help move me along. The only thing that kept me moving was the sound of the footsteps and shouts that were getting closer and louder.
After crawling into the hole, darkness consumed me…
A few hours later, I woke to the sunlight shining on my face. I sat up and looked around, trying to find out where I was.
I was lying in a small bed. A man with black hair and brown eyes stared down at me curiously. A slow smile made it's way across his face as he watched me.
"Well, it's good to see that you're finally awake. You've been out going a four days now," he smiled broadly at me. "My name is Akuma Taome."
I didn't say anything as I stared at the strange man. There was something about him that I didn't trust, something that didn't quite add up.
Maybe it was because I was so young---small children are known for being able to detect these things---or maybe it was because it was the way my life had turned out over the span of one year, that I didn't trust him.
And over the next two years, I would learn that I was right to feel distrustful of him.