6 - By the kerbside

Mugen didn't know what on Earth it was he was doing there. Again. For the last few weeks he'd circled the place, like a vulture, and not once had he known exactly what had brought him there in the first place. It was as if something instinctive drew him to the plain house, to the lame grassy entrance.

Every time he made sure no one saw him. Sometimes he found himself in that neighbourhood at unlikely hours of the night, sometimes during peaceful siesta midnoon.

Fuu'd never seen him, he'd seen her exiting the place only once, and she'd borne ugly dark bags under her eyes.

Today, today however, he saw her again, sitting miserably on the kerbside, her face buried in her arms resting on her knees. His lower lip twitched downwards, as it always did when he saw something he didn't like. The sun was shining happily on the sky, it was no later than three in the afternoon, and Fuu looking so gloomy there was just unmatching.

Unthinkingly, he approached her, and before he had time to feel shocked at himself she'd heard him and looked his way.

She had an alert expression on her face, but upon seeing him her brow relaxed and her eyes softened only slightly.

"You!" she said slowly, and he sat unceremoniously by her side. She recalled him to be just as shaggy and unkempt. His stare retained the same wilderness about it that made it so peculiar of his. Then she wondered how on lovely planet Earth it was that she remembered so much about him.

"Glad t'see ya too, girlie. So, what's up?"

Odd to have him ask that, she thought, since he'd practically appeared from nowhere. She hadn't honestly ever expected to see him again. One cloud floated past the sun, blocking it for some minutes, and she shivered barely.

"Mum passed away last night," she said simply, entwining her fingers.

Mugen had never been certain of how he'd felt that couple of days he'd spent with the girl, her mother and the fishfaced doctor, but he felt there was something wrong about taking that piece of news just lying down. In the end Jin's claims of the woman getting any better had just been full of hot air.

However, he stayed silent.

"She was sleeping," Fuu said smally, and then fell silent for a while.

"Shino'd agreed to let us stay till mum got better, but it's been two months since we last paid her any rent," she went on, "So I don't know what I'll be doing now… I can't stay with her, abusing her hospitality forever… "

Mugen was saved from having to think something to say by Shino's going out of the house.

"Oh, you're back," she said with mild surprise when she recognized Mugen, who wasn't looking less a criminal than when she had met him the first time.

"Sorta," he muttered, scratching the back of his head.

"Wouldn't have thought we'd see you again," she commented with this tiny upcurving of her lips he couldn't decipher (neither could Fuu, who was sitting on the kerbside looking faded, like a pricked baloon). Indeed, he'd just left without saying goodbye or anything, he didn't know how to say goodbye anyway… He'd not wanted to become too involved, like he'd thousandfold repeated to himself, but maybe he'd been slightly late…

.

.

Shino was determined not to let her friend's daughter leave just like that, but Fuu dug her heels in over her decision. She wasn't going to be a nuisance to her any longer, and that was her final word, however painful to both of them.

Mugen sat on the kerbside, keeping as deliberately silent as he could, as if a sea of ice separated him from Jin, who had dropped by on Shino to find the strange conjunction of vagrant and touchy farewell. It did the trick, because the man didn't even attempt any conversation.

Suddenly the atmosphere changed and everything became oddly still. Both women had stopped talking, and Shino went back into the house, and Jin followed her wordlessly (and Mugen knew something had gone on between them those weeks he'd disappeared from their lives).

Fuu's face was still a bit turbulent from the strong emotions, but let through that she was sticking to her guns, that she'd be leaving as soon as possible.

"She wouldn't have me leaving, but I'm gonna pack my stuff when they come out," she explained to Mugen, who didn't really care much about the girl's issues, and was just sitting on the fence with no emotion whatsoever, maybe just some curiosity to see how Fuu would fare on her own. But that was it. He shrunk his shoulders.

"Just don't try a-stealin' for a livin' 'cause you won't get too far, y'know," he commented, resting his chin on the palm of his hand, looking at her through half-bored, half-sleepy lids.

She crooked up a smile.

.

.

She took one last longing look at Shino's house, the woman stood on the threshold in Jin's arms, tears welling up in her eyes. Her jam-packed knapsack felt edgy against her back, and, added to the lump in her throat, made her feel like a terrible person. As if she'd voted with her feet rather than try to talk it over. But she'd done her best, and there was no turning back, she couldn't leech off Shino for the rest of her life. It would have been different perhaps if the older woman had allowed her to help with the expenditures of the house, but Shino wouldn't take a coin of Fuu's meagre income. And that couldn't do.

.

Deep in her musings, in her bitterness for leaving and the pain still underlying her mother's passing away, she eventually came to realize she'd gotten helplessly lost. She cursed herself, and tried to focus in being strong and letting those feelings pass through her, but she couldn't do it, and the grey buildings around her stood menacing, as impassive judges made of concrete. Their walls were heavy with graffity, streaked with coffee colored marks left by long-running leaks from rusty pipelines.

Fuu turned round to retrace her steps, but there was then this sudden change in the air, in the atmosphere, she didn't hear any breathing but she could bet her clothes that there was someone breathing somewhere there. Cursing her luck again, and wishing that Mugen hadn't disappeared once more earlier that day, she calmly kept going back from where she'd come, in hopes of finding a main street, or at least a crowd to mingle with.

She had no such luck, of course.

She wasn't feeling like going up in arms against them, but when the three delinquents propped her against one of those smelly tarmac-ish walls, one holding a knife to ther throat, she just had to scream. But it was a reflex, a high pitched reflex she couldn't help. Methodically they searched her pockets, ignoring her whimpering, and would've gotten further undoubtedly if something hadn't taken place that would change the events dramatically.

Fuu didn't hear anything because her hearing had probably gone numb, but the three thugs evidently responded to somebody's call, because their head spun and they soon forgot her, and she crumbled to the ground like discarded origami.

She watched on, oblivious to the fact that *that* was her chance to run away unharmed. But hey, wait a moment, she knew who that guy was! The guy standing on the middle of the street, she meant, that looked her way as if to say, 'Oh, please, can't leave you alone half a sec,' and merrily proceeded to give the three souls the beating of their lives with the hilt of what looked like a… sword. The haft had a trident-like decoration that made it look quite distinctive. She distantly noticed that Mugen seemed to greatly enjoy taking the law into his own two hands.

Soon the three lay on the cracked pavement, and her threefold saviour walked up to her, casually, with a ghost smirk tugging at his handsome lips.

"Heya girlie, ya got some food on ya?" he asked, and Fuu immediately pouted, without even thinking about doing it.

She stood up and steadied herself against the wall, because though she'd not noticed it before, she'd been quivering all the while, in fear and weariness and anxiety.

For some moments she stayed there, looking at him without saying a word, her thoughts entangled inside her head as if they were a nest of snakes, she biting her lower lip in a way Mugen found odd.

And then she took a step forward and hugged him, and broke down, and started telling him all those incoherent thoughts her mind had been conjuring.

He just remained still and perplexed, totally taken aback.

Those things were beyond the power of his understanding, to put it some way.

It was that moment when Mugen realized he'd sealed his fate.

A/N: Ahhh, Mugen making clever observations :P And what's going to happen to them now that they're on their own... but together?

Whatever happens next, it'll prolly have to do with food, I can tell you.

(thanks for the review! Yes, you! You know who I'm talking to! =D)