Prologue. Omen

Fumiko ran at breakneck speed. She rushed between one alley and another. Her legs were heavy, they were on the verge of betraying her, as well, and giving way. Her heart was beating so fast it was causing her a sharp pain in the chest. Her throat was so dry from her continuous, strained breathing that she could not even manage to scream. She turned another corner, her shoe crashed on a small puddle, shattering the reflection of the dim light of the street lamp in the pool of water. The road was wet with mist, with each stride she sensed that the smooth, low-heeled moccasins would knock her off her feet. She looked over her shoulder.

He was still there, behind her. He was chasing her with a sharp knife in his hand as he continued to swear and rant nonsensical sentences.

Fumiko felt her face, distraught with terror, freeze as the cold wind hit her cheeks, wet with copious tears. She did not know where to go, it was late at night and there was no one around. She wondered if it was worth trying to knock on some doors and hope they would open her. However, he was too close; Fumiko could almost hear the sound of the blade cutting through the heavy air.

"Why?" she wondered. There had been ups and downs lately, but she could never have imagined something like that.

She slipped.

She felt the floor missing beneath her feet.

She fell to the ground and, in an instant, he was over her The cold metal ripped through her skin and flesh. It was an excruciating, icy pain. She screamed in despair. The man continued unstoppable in his murderous madness, inflicting blows relentlessly.

Fumiko couldn't feel anything anymore because of the wounds and blood loss. The last thing she saw, raising her eyes to the sky in a slow, pained movement, before closing them forever, was the pale light of the full moon.

Aki sighed as he finished reading the news and he closed the newspaper he had bought earlier. Finally, he could see again what the poor paper had been covering just before. Angel, on the other side of the table, was slowly sipping hot chocolate and nibbling on a sweet. The yellow cream spilled slightly; some of it fell on the table and some ended up near his nose. Angel looked at the mess he had made on the table glass, he contemplated it for a few moments and then looked up at Aki. He began staring at him, perhaps trying to understand what was troubling him.

"What was written on there?"

"Another couple. He killed her and then committed suicide," Aki said in a pained tone. The article hadn't left out a single detail: the girl's age, twenty-one like him, the twenty or so stab wounds and, finally, how the boy had slit his throat from side to side. He shuddered. As a devil hunter they were used to see a lot of those things, but never murderers between people, especially not this gory.

"I don't understand why he killed her, if he wanted to kill himself he could have just done it" Angel pressed on with his warhorse, biting into the cream puff again. This time he seemed more convinced than usual. Aki brought a hand to his forehead and massaged the bridge of his wrinkled nose with his thumb and forefinger.

In the past months, news of this kind had started to spread like wildfire. If at first Aki thought that giving more space to crime and sensationalist news was a journalistic choice to sell more pieces, at that moment he couldn't deny that the number of these cases seemed to have really increased: double suicides, brutal conflicts ending in a double murder and, like this time, a murder followed by a suicide. And every time it came to the latter, Angel would come up with his ready-made phrase to make things worse, because he just didn't seem to understand.

"It's not that simple, you can't reduce the whole issue to 'he could have just killed himself'" he rejected his taunt with disdain.

"Huh? But what did she have to do with it..."

"They are disturbed people, it's useless to try to understand them" Aki could feel his chest tighten in a grip of pain when he said those words. It was true, yet he could not completely detach himself from the story. Thinking of the girl's life cut short prematurely saddened him beyond measure; she had so much to live for. Thinking about the murderer who had done the deed really pissed him off, instead... he couldn't even force himself to understand why he had done it, as Angel tried to do. It irritated him, he couldn't understand how it was possible that someone, a person, would go so far as to snatch someone else's life. It was such a barbaric thing to do.

Aki exterminated devils but they were not human, they could suffer - he repeated to himself - they had no rights and it was simple self-defense against their abuse and impiety. Nevertheless, it was beyond his honor code to kill other people, even his enemies. Not even when they threatened him with swords or guns, he would never do that, he knew all too well the suffering that such actions could inflict.

Angel sighed in defeat: "I can expect this kind of things from devils, not humans."

"Wickedness belongs to humans as well."

"But it is not part of your nature..."

"Exactly, it makes it even worse. That's why I'm telling you to not try to understand these people."

Aki folded the newspaper and placed it on the table, pushing it slightly towards the edge, away from him, suggesting in this way that, whether Angel wanted it or not, the conversation ended there for him. He would not linger any further in discussing ethics or morals, it had already worked him up the other times. Moreover, when it came to this kind of matter, the discourse particularly disturbed him. He was not made for such things, the only thing he wanted to worry about was to work and to continue to do so to get closer and closer to his goal.

He looked at Angel: he had finished his pastry and was playing with the spoon inside the cup of hot chocolate, which had been finished a while ago. The clanking noise irritated him. Usually, he didn't even pay attention to it when at home Denji was scratching with his chopsticks at the bottom of the plate, to retrieve the last grain of rice, and it was the only noise in the room because Power, surprisingly, had shut the fuck up. In those cases, he could almost claim that there was silence. He even found that noise somehow reassuring: it reminded him that he was not completely alone. However at that moment, it was only a sad and jarring undertone to his thoughts.

"Can you stop with the spoon?" he said in annoyance. Angel replied by looking at him boredly and he let the cutlery rest in the cup.

The clump of cream was still on the side of his nose and the fact that it was so out of place, and that Angel was completely ignoring it, contributed to Aki's agitated mood. He took a piece of rough paper from the napkin holder, leaned over and wiped it himself. Angel squinted his eyes.

"W-what are you doing, human?! Do you want to die?" he stumbled in surprise.

"We have a meeting with Miss Makima at 4pm, she informed me earlier - Aki checked his watch, they still had time but he didn't like being late and making others wait - We'd better head for the Public Security Offices."

Author's Notes:

Hi! Thank you for reading this far, I'm new on ff net thus I hope I didn't mess up anything with the formatting! This is a crossposting, indeed, on ao3 I am already at chapter 6, thus I'm planning to post the remaining five to get on par daily or every two days. If you want to check it out here the link: /works/48604954/chapters/122601847

Also, this is a translation, my first language is not English, I'm sorry if there is weird wording I hope that's not the case!

Comments and opinions are welcome, thank you! See you soon :3