"Mom, can we go get something sweet after this? I want to say sorry to Shiro about something..."
They had just pulled up to the bank, the clouds seeming ready to start opening up and drop torrents of rain on them.
"Well, ice cream would be a bad idea. How about something packaged from the convenience store nearby home? This will be the last stop I need to make before we can head back home."
Shino and Shiro's Mom was used to having a strange schedule. She rarely had the same weekend twice in a row, and this time she had only one day off at a time. Since there were plenty of things to do, she asked Shino to come along for some of the shopping to lessen the amount of trips for carrying groceries and other things they would end up grabbing. Apparently new pillows were needed. The current stop was at the bank.
As they walked in, one other person was just finishing with their business, smiling at Shino on her way out. Shino had started wearing hair clips to pull the longer side sections of her bangs out of her face, something given to her by Kazuto as a gift. She played with them whenever her mind became distracted. It was one of the few gifts from him that could be worn on any occasion.
She was in a good mood, and wanted to make it better instead of continue to feel depressed over ignoring Shiro and hurting him the night before. She didn't regret it, but it was depressing that she felt pushed that far.
Shino's mind was filled with the event of the night before, whether Kazuto might already be making it up to Shiro for dropping him on the lawn in front of the house. While Kazuto was kind of like that, she had the feeling that he was still being stubborn over it and Shiro might be bored, looking for something to do. To have something sweet when Shino would come home to see him just seemed like something that might cheer him up.
Shouting could be heard from outside the building, and drew Shino out of her thoughts of fixing the mood with Shiro. She shrank up against her mother when the anrgy shouts grew closer.
When a middle aged looking man with a crazed expression on his face burst in through the door, drenched in water, Shino was terrified of him. He stomped over to the counter, pushing Shino's Mom and her out of the way before pointing a gun at the first receptionist before starting his demands. He was the one who the warnings were about. Guns were illegal to own in Japan except for law enforcement, so when she saw the handle of the gun, she unfortunately recognized that it wasn't the type of gun the police wore. It had a star shape near the butt of the handle. He had an illegal gun on top of being a terrifying robber.
She froze in her terror, gripping hard to her mother, hoping her mother could protect her. Shino might be able to fight if she had her kendo bamboo sword or her bow and arrows, but even then a gun was too dangerous to fight against.
"Start filling the bag. Now!"
He shouted at the receptionists to start filling the bag with money, but when they told him they couldn't, one of the people on the other side of the counter apparently started reaching for the alarm.
"Don't you-"
His finger was faster than his words. The deafening crack of the bullet exploding from the chamber and then piercing through a person sent terrible chills through Shino.
One of the receptionists was told to use the key in their hand, and with the distraction, Shino's mother started trying to use it to get them to escape. He wasn't having it. As soon as he heard someone moving closer, he turned his gun on Shino's mother.
"Don't you dare move, bitch!"
She stared at showed her hands in fear of his gun. Shino saw how bad the expression was in his eyes in that moment and knew that it was too dangerous to let him hold onto the gun for even a second longer. She gathered up her courage to protect her mother and leaped at him, using the only weapon she could think of using at the moment, her teeth to chomp into his hand, hard enough she felt blood run into her mouth. He dropped the gun and shouted in pain, grabbing Shino with his other hand and ripping her from his hand before throwing her at the floor. She grabbed the gun as soon she reach stopped staggering from the pain of the impact and scurried to the wall as far away from him as possible.
He stared at her with a furious expression on his face. Shino's attention was shifting from focusing on the gun she picked up and held in her hand, heavy, almost completely black with a carved star near the butt of the handle, to the crazed mad expression of the robber, to her mother who was in a confused crazed state that she didn't know what to do. When he started stomping over to Shino to reclaim his gun, she shakingly pointed the gun at him to warn him off. He paused for part of a second, but he smiled as if thinking she were unable to pull the trigger as an innocent child. When he continued to approach her, she imagined the feeling of a bow, and instead of pulling the trigger, she closed her eyes and imagined she was letting loose an arrow at a target. When she opened her eyes, he had staggered and had a wound mark in his shoulder. He was even more angry and stomped even closer to her. This time she didn't have the chance to close her eyes of what she was doing. She didn't have the steadiness she had while holding the bow. The aim of the barrel and the shaking of her hands pulled the trigger at a time the bullet seemed to slow down before passing through the space between his eyes.
It was her second dead centre shot of her life, but the sight of that crazed expression going blank, the dripping blood from the wounds, and then the gun on her lap and the blood flowing under her legs only made her shiver and tremble in the fear of what she did. She...killed a person. Even if she was still only a child, she had already taken a life. Something no child should have to experience.
Tears welled up and fell from her eyes from the fear which finally overflowed. Shino wasn't terrified of the man anymore. Not the gun either. She was afraid of herself. That she could pull the trigger and end a man's life.
Her mother stared on in horror at what just happened.
For a moment, Shino remembered the idea of bringing something sweet to Shiro, that she could really go for something sweet too, to get the taste of blood from her mouth.
