Archive of Our Own

 Ever since you were a child, you would sit in the same general area in a train to get to your school. Commuting was always a constant thing for you, because your home in particular wasn’t so close to the main city of Inazuma in comparison to most. Oftentimes than not, commuting became a period of restfulness, a period of peace, and this seemed to be a sentiment you shared with the child around the same age as you who usually always sat across from you.

 When the both of you first meet, you are going to preschool for the first time ever. You donned a yellow cute hat and a uniform, and you realized he was wearing something similar. You remember thinking he was very pretty for a boy, almost mistaking him for a girl when you first laid eyes on him, due to his fair features, and due to how large his icy violet eyes were. 

 He sat across from you, a wide smile on his face and he grins at you, waving at you politely when you both meet eyes. You don’t wave back, feeling apprehensive at such a young age to be so social. Your mother notices your behavior and laughs lightly, patting your head as she speaks to the long haired woman who sits next to the dark haired boy. You assumed such a lady of her beauty was his mother, their similarities showing in the paleness of their skin, the color of their hair and matching eye colors.

 His mother, who you overhear, to be named ‘Ei’, has a gentle composure, and a soft, dainty charisma. When her violet irises peer into your own, you stop breathing.

 There was something about Ei that was so electrifying, a sense of strangeness, a weird feeling of disassociation that seems to only be within her mind, only to be seen through the  window of her eyes. You can tell from the look in her eyes when she gazes at you. However, when she smiles, the air of ‘strangeness’ around her shatters, and suddenly, she just looks beautiful, and kind. 

 You gaze at her in wonder, gaping at her as your mother giggles to your side and nudges you, calling you ‘rude’ for having stared at her so long without saying anything. Despite this, your eyes are fixated on Ei.

 Ei was gorgeous, in a sad, tragic way.

 When you look at her, then at her son, looking at you so curiously, you feel your heart wrench, and then you start to cry, though you don’t know why. 

 Mother is embarrassed. She pats your head, and apologizes as though you had done something wrong before scolding you.

 When the little boy looks up at Ei, he notices her features have changed. Ei gazes at you with a solemn look.

 He wonders what she’s thinking about, and tugs on her sleeve. Startled, Ei flitters her solemn gaze over to her son, and then gives him an apologetic smile, though he doesn’t understand that quite yet. He embraces her, and tells her he loves her.

 And for months, Kunikuzushi doesn’t understand the reason behind her secretive smiles. When behind closed doors, she pretends she doesn’t feel pain, even when the little boy sees his father hit her. She hides purple and red marks from him under long sleeved shirts and turtlenecks. 

 Time passes, and the both of you gradually get older, old enough to ride the trains by yourselves. You never speak to him, you always just admire him from your seat, or where you stand when the train is too busy. He always smiles at you so sweetly, and it reminds you much like a field of sunflowers during summer, his bright expressions when he gazes at you. After a few months of him tossing smiles at you, you finally wave back for the first time ever, and he seems elated when you do, his face turns into a lovely peach color.

 During your saddest days, during the coldest winters, he always sat across from you, and you could always rely on him to smile at you, and secretly, you find yourself wishing that he always stays like that. That he always stays bright, always stays beautiful, always stays smiling, and you promise yourself that you would do your absolute best to keep it that way.

 In a life where seasons come and go, you think as you gaze at him after a particularly sad morning on your way to your elementary school, that he was eternal. The one, unchanging aspect of your life, the boy who always smiled at you on the train.

 And then, one day, the smile vanishes. You realize, when you wake up on a bright, sunny day when the cherry blossoms begin to bloom, that he isn’t smiling. His face is blank, his skin pale, his eyes a deep indigo color now that he has aged. His lips are pulled taut into a straight line, the corners of his lips tilting downwards, almost uncharacteristically in comparison to all those thousands of days you had seen him before. He stares at his black bag on his lap, his eyes wide with deep eye bags that crease underneath his eyes. He looked like he had been crying all night.

 You want to ask him what’s wrong, but there is a distance between the both of you, from where you sit, and where he sits, from where the sun shines down your face and from where the sun casts a shadow over him, a distance that makes it so hard to even say a word between the both of you. You open your mouth anyway, to say something, or to at least try, because you had made a promise to yourself. You swore you would help him keep smiling, you promised he would stay eternal.

 But everything was fading so quickly before your eyes. All in a night, his smile had vanished completely, the life in his eyes dull. He doesn’t even turn his gaze upwards to meet yours, like usual.

 When it’s your stop, you hesitantly get up from your seat and pull your bag over your back, clenching your teeth as you stand, averting your eyes away from his pitiful, slouched form. You should stay and say something. No, no, you should ditch school altogether and ask him what’s wrong. School would happen every day after this, and his smile, for the first time in forever, was gone.

 You had to do something.

 You had to do something.

 You had to do something.

 You realize too late that the crowd has ushered you out of the train, and onto the train station platforms a little too late while you were swimming in the clouds of your thoughts. When your shoulders tense at the realization, you immediately turn around and look through the window, and your heart is torn asunder when you see that he is looking back at you.

 Dark indigo irises peering into your own through the window, both pairs of eyes wide as they gaze into one another’s, and then the crowd of people push against each other. The train doors shut, and it departs for its next journey.

 Your promise shatters.

You don’t see him for days after that. When your friends ask you what’s wrong at school, due to your constant aloofness, you tell them it’s nothing. You don’t know what to say.

 The first time you see him in a week, the day is already ending. The train is full of people, and even then, you see him through the crowd of people, stark in black, his hair neatly combed with his bangs framing his face to perfection. He doesn’t notice you however, and you think it’s probably because of how unusual it was to see each other on the way back from your school.

 You had stayed in school a little later than usual that day because you were on gardening duty, and you had stupidly forgotten to deliver papers to your teacher, though you figure your idiocy was perhaps a blessing in disguise. Now you got to see the boy once again, or at least a glimpse of him through a crowd of several people.

 His clothes bother you, and you realize exactly why. He had been wearing a black tuxedo, he had not been coming back from school. He had been coming back from a funeral, or so you realize when you notice he’s holding a bouquet of red spider lilies . When he adjusts the cuffs on his wrists, you see a strange purplish bruise on his inner wrist. His eyes are emptier than you had last seen them, and when they suddenly turn to meet yours, you are frozen in place.

 You want to vomit when his eyes widen at you, finally seeing you for the first time.

 Unconsciously, he plays with his sleeves, and your breath hitches when more purplish, blue skin is revealed. You cover your mouth as a thought falls into your mind.

 The boy looks horrified when he momentarily looks down to see how he had revealed his bruise marks, and immediately pulls his sleeves downwards, swiveling his head entirely away from you as though he were ashamed.

 When you get off the train, you feel sick.  

 Those were not average bruise marks, they were shaped much like the pads of a large hand’s fingers.

 For the rest of your elementary school life, you don’t see him again, and gradually, like an old memory, the thought of him erodes from your brain as you surround yourself with more friends.

 Your life was fairly happy for the most part, you were a good student with amazing grades that you worked hard for, day in, and day out. You had set goals for yourself, thinking that you wanted to get into Inazuma’s most prestigious high school with your grades, and then from there, you would see where you went. Your family showered you with love and fed you well, and your mother ran a cute little wagashi shop in your town, and your father was learning to make wagashi along with her.

 Gradually, your icy exterior had broken in, and you became more of an extroverted person. You enjoyed your large circle of friends, and loved the handful that you hung out with on a daily basis. You were on your way to an amazing future, bustling through and plowing past any barrier that would come to you, however you find yourself envious of people around you, your peers talking about first kisses, experiences with love and such.

 You hadn’t found such a thing yet, though you were gradually becoming eager. You thought that perhaps, if you found someone special early, they would stay with you for the rest of your life, and it would be easy sailing.

 That’s what you dream of anyway, perhaps someone perfect would just fall into your lap one day. Of course, that was your naivety talking.

...

 There’s been a police incident at [...] district. A grisly murder happened at [...] o’clock, in which a single father has been found stabbed to death, with his son severely injured. The suspects are [...], stay tuned to find out more about this incident…

...

 Your first day of junior high school, you meet him again. On the same train, in the same passenger car as usual. You don’t recognize him at first, but you realize when his eyes meet yours, that it was, indeed, the boy that had disappeared from your life so suddenly two years ago. You toss him a small smile, a feeling in your chest blooming at the sight of him once more, noticing that his jawline had sharpened over the years, his eyes still large sitting on his face while a firm scowl permanently remained on his lips. He is wearing a different uniform than yours, his being a dark navy color while you wore a plaid skirt, and a cream colored vest, layered over a grey colored jacket.

 You supposed that neither of you would ever attend the same school, and you feel a little sad at that fact, but nevertheless, you are happy to see him.

 His eyes widen with realization for a moment, and his lips fall open upon gazing at you. You tilt your head, waiting for him to say something.

 He doesn’t. Instead, he narrows his eyes at you coldly, his expression turning impassive as he looks at you with a silent resentment.

 You flinch, your hands writhing into fists as your features express confusion. You had expected him to be at least a little happy, seeing you again, although clearly, he didn’t share the same sentiment as yourself. You clench your teeth and turn your gaze away, letting him burn holes at the side of your face as you puff a cheek, feeling a little upset. You cross your legs and hold onto your brown bag. You had missed seeing him. Couldn’t he have been at least a little impressed, now that you had the ability to even smile at him?

  Oh well.

 Months pass like this, with both of you being by each other constantly, never talking to one another, until one day, you realize his tie is crooked. You don’t gather the courage, you just simply speak as though you were stating a fact. “Your tie is crooked,” you pointedly stare at him, brushing back strands of hair and tucking them behind your ear, feeling slightly annoyed by how your long hair constantly kept falling into your line of sight lately.

 He blinks at you, his shoulders scrunching together for a moment as he narrows an eye at you, furrowing his eyebrows together, “Huh?” He replies, and you admire his voice, no matter how brief it was. It’s a little higher than you had thought it’d be.

 Regardless, you brush off your thoughts and speak again, “Your tie,” you point at his chest area, your eyes never leaving his own, “it’s a little crooked.”  

 Abruptly, he clicks his tongue, as though annoyed by you. He scowls at you and leans towards you a little, his dark bangs swaying slightly from his sudden motions as you flinch away in response, unsure of what he was trying to do. “Mind your own business,” he hisses, an icy fury burning in his eyes as he moves away from you once again.

 You let out an miffed huff, crossing your arms as you narrow your eyes at him. Wow, you think to yourself as he glares at you from his seat. What a shitty guy, you turn your head away from him, looking to turn your phone on for some entertainment to blow off the steam that had collected within you from his infuriated, uncalled for response. 

 When you turn your gaze back up at him, his tie is fixed, a hand on his cheek as he turns himself away from you.

 You snicker.

 What a guy.

  No really, you think as one day, you come across his form, half his face covered with a large gauze, and his fingers wrapped with bandages, on the way home from school. You grip onto the straphanger hanging from the metal bar just above you, keeping yourself still as you toss him a look of disbelief, your eyebrows furrowing upwards as you keep a firm stare at him.

  What a guy.

 He notices your look from his resting position, his head nodding off to the side of the glass partition between the door and the seat. His indigo irises burn into your own, a sour expression on his features as he glares at you, crossing his arms as he sluggishly relaxes into his seat, his shoes almost touching yours as a result.

 You back away, feeling disgusted from his strange behavior as you continue to toss him a dirty look. Has he become a troublemaker over the years? Maybe he was going through his yankee phase. You covered your mouth, preventing a giggle from escaping as you thought about how perhaps one day, you would see him with bleached hair and a buzzcut.

 As if he could hear your thoughts, he lifts shoe and steps onto your foot closest to him. Immediately, you back away once more, furrowing your eyebrows at him in annoyance. He returns your expression with a lopsided smirk that only serves to infuriate you.

 You huff.

 One day, when you’re hanging out with your friends on the way to a café, you bump into him at the most unexpected place. You happily leap down a short flight of stairs, daring your friends to do the same which they refuse to do, with Kokomi only managing to skip down a few stairs before stumbling. Kujou Sara frowns at your behavior as she descends the stairs, scolding you and telling you that you were being a nuisance to people around you. 

 You apologize with a fake formal bow and laugh at her irritated expression before pressing onwards, being careful to hold the strap of your guitar bag around your body as you walk with them. The café wasn’t too far now, and your stomach had been growling in anticipation for the newest strawberry parfait.

 When you come across an alleyway, flooded with shouts, you halt for a moment, swiveling your head to gaze down into it. Kokomi tilts her head as she hops next to you, hiding behind your back as leans onto you for support, her curious eyes landing at a few figures at the end of the alleyway. 

 Sara tells the both of you to shrug it off and move on, saying there was nothing to see here.

 You beg to differ. 

 You see a familiar slouched figure, getting kicked around by a bunch of high school kids. The same boy from the train growled at the figures when they stopped kicking at him, his eyes flooded with rage as an animalistic expression overcame his usually cold features.

 An image of a little boy, smiling next to his mother flies by your mind, and you remember vaguely, an old promise you couldn’t keep.

 You snap. 

 “Hey,” you shout, your tone deepening as you begin to turn your body to face the crowd of people at the end of the alleyway, “what are you guys doing to him.” You ignore Sara’s frustrated sigh and Kokomi’s plea to stay back. You unwind the strap of the guitar bag around your chest, carrying it over your shoulder now as you glare at the three men standing before the familiar face on the floor. They all turn to look at you, notably, the boy with dark hair from the train looks at you with surprise before glaring at you.

 “Oh?” One of the men begins, seemingly amused by you as you step forward. He matches your energy, pacing towards you with his hands in his pockets as you glower at him, “Pretty little lady, did you want to have some fun?”

 “Wait…” The boy on the floor clamors as the trio of men leave him, moving to circle you instead. You let them crowd around you, your eyes remaining only on the indigo irises that glare at you with a mixture of concern and fury. 

 You are scared, you realize that especially with all these taller people around you, circling you like sharks. 

 “Back the fuck up,” Sara’s voice hollers from behind you as she enters the alleyway, holding her arm out to the side to emphasize the strength of her words as she narrows her eyes at them. 

 “And this pretty little lady brought some friends with her,” the same man with a horrible hair dye job speaks once more, whistling as he turns to face Sara, “looks like we’re going to have a lot of fun tonight, boys!”

 The men around you cheer, and your rage explodes. The beat up figure on the floor stares at you with wide eyes as you grab onto your guitar strap and swing at the person in front of you.

 You gasp upon hearing the sound of your guitar slamming against something, “You!” You say in shock as anger echoes throughout your veins, spreading within your system like wildfire, “You broke my guitar!”  

 The man you hit looks at you in confusion, “Huh!? Are you insane, you bitch! You hit me--!” His clamors are cut off by another angry hit at him, your face red, flaming with embarrassment and fury as you realize he was right. 

 “Stop breaking my guitar!” You shriek as you take the head of your guitar through its case and swing at him, successfully throwing him to the side. Sara is quick to back you up, knocking out the two men behind you with her infamous martial arts training, gathering them up quickly into a pile. 

 “She’s insane,” the man you hit exclaims, looking over to his buddies for support and shrieking in fear when he realizes that Kujou Sara is standing above their collapsed bodies with a look that could only be described as demonic. He evades your next weak attempt to hit him before slamming your body towards the wall, causing your head to crash against the cold bricks of the building. You groan in pain as your body slides down to the ground, your vision slightly hazy when you open your eyes and look at the man attempting to disappear down the entrance of the alleyway before Sara quickly knocks him out.

 Kokomi arrives with reinforcements, the police gather behind her, rushing in to inspect the delinquents as you sit next to the beat up boy.

 “Are you okay?” You mutter as you watch Sara get interrogated by the police, smiling as you see her annoyed gaze meet yours for a brief second, thinking that she would perhaps reprimand you later for this inconvenience.

 The boy next to you doesn’t say anything for a moment, and you wonder if he had collapsed from the beating. Slowly, you turn your head to face him, your breath halting when you see that his face is so close to yours, and you realize that he’s inspecting you. “Are you okay?” You say once more, your voice painstakingly soft when you ask him.

 His eyes are icy when they meet yours, a scowl firm on his face as his growls at you, “I thought I told you to mind your own fucking business,” he seethes, his eyes narrowing down at your features as he wipes dried blood from his nose, “what were you thinking, coming in here?”

 You pause, deep in thought for a moment as you hum, before replying, “I wasn’t.”

 “What?” He snaps back at you, as he rolls his wrists, making sure he was all good to move around as he waits for you to continue.

 “I wasn’t thinking,” you admit with a sigh, “I just thought I had to protect you somehow,” your words gradually trail off, “because I couldn’t back then.”

 His movements next to you stop abruptly, and you feel an odd tension build in the air between the both of you. The harshness of his tone as he speaks shocks you for a moment, “You could’ve just ignored me, just like you did back then.”

 Something inside you shatters at his words, and your eyes fly open to look up at him. You clench your teeth as you look at him in disbelief. In his eyes, burn a look of challenge, as though he were daring you to say something, and just as you open your mouth to respond, a policeman comes by the two of you to ask if you are okay.

 As you get up to leave to follow Kokomi and Sara, you glare at him, furrowing your brows as you speak with a tone flooded with bitterness, “I only wanted to help you, jerk.”

 There’s a flicker of emotion that passes through his eyes that you don’t care enough to recognize. You pick up your guitar case and trudge forwards. When you leave the alleyway, you do so in silence, and when Kokomi and Sara inquire who he was, you tell them you don’t know him.

 The following weeks after that, you sit elsewhere, in a different passenger cart. You purposely distance yourself from where you had regularly sat, wanting to completely forget about the boy. It was better that way, you thought to yourself, forgetting about his sunny smile, forgetting about the bruises on his wrist, forgetting that look of resentment he gives you in the alleyway.

  All he would be now, was a ghost of your past. Like a childhood memory in the back of your mind, or an imaginary friend.

 You hope to keep it that way, even after two months pass and you see him again in your passenger cart. You ignore him, though you feel his stare burning at you, and as the train goes on, flooding with people, you find yourself with your back against the glass partition separating the train door and seating your hands firm on your bag as the boy presses a forearm at the side of your head, leaning against it for support.

 You turn your head away with a soft sigh, looking out at the window and watching the cityscape pass as you keep your teeth clenched. You feel his breath on your cheek with how close he is to you, and he grunts when more people squish into the cart. You stiffen and visibly show discomfort when his body presses against yours for a moment, and you avert your eyes to the ground below you, steeling yourself and brushing off the embarrassment that swelled in your stomach. 

 The pale skinned male in front of you sighs as he repositions himself,  his indigo irises scanning your expression, as you lift a hand to tuck loose strands of hair behind your ear. He hums in interest, noticing your habit has been to do that for a long time now. He understands you’re still ignoring him, and feels a clenching feeling in his stomach as he utters quietly, “Sorry.”

 The apology that leaves his mouth catches you off guard, and you momentarily make eye contact with him before turning your eyes away hurriedly once more. You bite the inside of your cheek before reluctantly replying, thinking with a sigh how much of an idiot you were for even saying this, “I’ll forgive it.”

 You don’t notice the corner of his lips turn upwards into a small smile.

 The next day, you find him sitting across from you. You raise an eyebrow at him, staring at him in boredom despite the amusement that flickered within your eyes at his actions. In response, he pretends not to notice you, though when he leaves, you think that he forgets something, because he leaves an item wrapped in a white parchment on his seat.

 You open it, and are surprised to see an ornate butterfly pin. You tuck your hair back, and realize with a small gasp that perhaps he had noticed your tendency to push your hair back. You wonder if it’s for you, and you briefly wonder if this was a present for his mother.

 Perhaps this was his way of apologizing to you as well, for the events during the earlier months.

 Still, you find yourself giddy. You decide, selfishly, that it’s for you, and during the next day, you wear it in your hair. As you feel heat rise to your face, you pretend not to notice the dark blue haired boy’s stare on your face. You meet his gaze momentarily, and immediately flush at his pleased expression, your heart beating quickly when you notice the wide smile on his face, his eyes narrowing at the sight of red in your hair. He remains seated, his arms crossed as you turn your face away from him. You like him, you come into terms with yourself within the moment.

 You think it would be nice to keep him smiling like this. Perhaps you could make up to your broken promise from earlier now.

 You think about the days you see his empty expressions and ignore the guilt that swells in your stomach when you remember the look in his eyes when you meet his own through the window as you get off the train, not bothering to say a single word to him as the train departs.

 That guilt would go away. You would make sure of it.

 He feels something strange creep up on him as his heart beats. His face slightly flushes at the giddy expression on your face, and he thinks that for the first time in forever, he could be happy again.

 So over the next few months, Kunikuzushi studies hard. He cleans up, and smiles at you every day after that day, and he recognizes that you return the smile happily this time. He notices by the time high school hits, you look happier every day, and the feeling within his chest blossoms. He thinks he might love you.

 But it seemed, something was always at the corner, prepared to take his happiness away.

 One day, during your second year in high school, you board the train with a man who looks as though he was up to no good. Kunikuzushi wonders who he is, and his smile falls from his face when you hold his hand. 

 Everything in his mind scatters all at once when you laugh at something he says, and something within him tears as you gaze up at the man lovingly. Kunikuzushi stares at the man, thinking that there was something clearly off about him. 

 The man who wore the same uniform as you smiled with a sense of malice that was so nearly invisible to the eye, but Kunikuzushi could see it. The man, now kissing your cheek, was not normal. To Kunikuzushi, he looked like a monster, something that sought to devour anything it could get its hands on.

 He looks a lot like his father.

 Kunikuzushi chokes and almost vomits when he sees you place a kiss on his lips. 

 Nothing about this was right.

 What did you see in him? What were you looking for from him? In fact, could you even see him in the first place? Who he really was, under layers of sheep’s wool, the disgusting, filthy and ravenous wolf that he was. Were you stupid?

 Weeks pass, and you don’t even look at him anymore, though you still wear the red butterfly pin. When you smile, it’s at your phone. When you blush, it’s at your phone. When you giggle, it’s at your phone. And then, Kunikuzushi realizes something. You were never his in the first place.

 And something within Kunikuzushi breaks.

 Everyday after that, the feeling that crept up on him, all those months ago when he first gave you that pin, builds up, worse and worse, until he finds himself outside your apartment. He watches from outside as you and your boyfriend laugh and kiss, as if there wasn’t a single thing wrong in the world. He thinks he’s going crazy. He thinks he’s going insane. 

  How could he protect you from such a dangerous wolf like that, when you were letting him do all these things to you?

 You realize you’ve made a horrible mistake, falling into the pit of false love from peer pressure when one day, your boyfriend hits you.

 You enter the train, looking down at your phone constantly as you text away to Sara and Kokomi about how your boyfriend had started treating you. Immediately, your two closest friends agree that you have to break up with him.

 So you do.

 And when you do, something even worse happens.

 And when you enter the train the next day, your eyes are blank, your smile gone from your face as you attempt to maintain your ‘status quo’ of being a regular human being. You feel the boy who constantly seats himself in front of you staring at you, though you don’t care.

 People at school ask if you're okay, and teachers ask why your grades have dropped. They remind you that you couldn’t go into the university you wanted to go to if you kept these low grades up. You don’t care.

 Kokomi and Sara are always asking you to spend some time with them, though to you, the world is all colored in monochromatic colors now, including your friends. You tell them maybe another day each time they ask, and when they ask you what’s wrong, and that you should talk to them, you shut them out.

 Going near a male scares you. Every time one of your male friends tries to touch you, you freeze up where you stand, and stop speaking mid sentence if you were speaking in the first place. You can’t do it.

 You couldn’t do it.

 The dark haired boy in front of you stares at you in terror at the train at your crestfallen nature, every time the both of you meet at the train for countless days straight.

 You don’t care.

  You don’t. Care.

 One day, Kunikuzushi stops sitting across from you, and starts sitting next to you. You don’t bother asking why, but his presence is somewhat comforting, despite him being a male himself. When you block your ex boyfriend’s number after he sends you another text, begging to be with him, you let out an exhausted sigh and lean your head onto one of Kunikuzushi’s shoulders. 

 At first, he stiffens at the contact. Then, he relaxes as he crosses his arms, pressing his cheek against your soft hair and embracing this moment of intimacy between the both of you. Within him, he feels a rise of emotions amplify.

 He listens to your breathing, and he thinks that you should stay like this, with him, forever. If he could provide you comfort, and if he could help put that smile back on your face, then he would stop at nothing.

 You were his happiness after all.

 Kunikuzushi smiles.

 When you enter the train on the way home one day, you realize you’re fucked. Your ex boyfriend is standing a few meters away from you, and you force yourself to turn around, hiding any signs of your person away from him, even attempting to pull your hair completely to the side to attempt to mask your presence. It doesn’t work, unfortunately.

 Kunikuzushi watches the scene before him with wide eyes from his seat.

 He nears you, and you clench your teeth. “Stop avoiding me,” you hear him whisper from beside you, “c’mon, we were perfect together, until you decided to start being a bitch,” he hisses, and you feel anxiety and panic creep up on you. It’s raining outside, and you pray that your ex gets off a stop before it’s time for you to go.

 When he doesn’t, every second starts to feel like excruciating hours. Throughout the thirty minute train ride, he keeps harassing you, prodding at you, touching you and playing with your hair, twirling it in his fingers as he tells you that you’ve made a big mistake, and now you were going to suffer for it.

 You threaten to call the cops, though he doesn’t seem to care. 

 “The more the merrier,” he whispers, “go ahead. Do it. People can find out how much of a stupid whore you are when I beat some sense into you.”

 You want to crawl out of your skin. You wish you could die, you wish something horrible happened altogether that would lead to you passing away. His words cause flashbacks of him hurting you to flash within your mind, and you steel yourself, willing those memories away when you shut your eyes tight.

 Kunikuzushi is standing behind your ex boyfriend, listening carefully despite all the noise around him to what the rotten man is saying, and he finds that something within him reawakens at his words. The familiar rush of blood that goes straight into his hands, like the days from several years ago, when he walks into a room and sees his father hurting his mother. His indigo irises are wide, a dread flooding within them. Like several years ago, when he walks into a room one day, only to find his mother hanging from the ceiling. Like several years ago, when he --

 Suddenly, you bolt out when the train doors open, and the male behind you follows you quickly. Kunikuzushi is quick to react, rushing out, uncaring for the bodies he pushes against as he runs to meet you where you are.

 You push and shove to get out of the train station, tears threatening to fall from your eyes when you hear a familiar pair of feet pattering behind you. The rain pours heavily down onto you, soaking through your clothes quickly as it torrents from the dark skies above. Less and less people appear in the rainy streets as you turn corners, only speeding up when you see a familiar set of stairs that lead up a hill by your home. If you could beat him to your home, you would be okay. You could call the cops, explain to them everything that was happening, and you would be safe.

 You use those hopeful thoughts as your drive when you burst up the pair of stairs, ignoring the cherry blossoms that obscure your view as they fall from the weight of the torrents of rain, skipping past what stairs you could, until he catches up to you and grabs your back by your hair. You let out a harsh yelp, only for your mouth to get covered as you fall backwards. Your ex laughs at your demise, his appearance only lit up by the street lamp behind him as he glowers at you with a malicious expression.

 He looked like a demon. Like a monster.  

 You bite down into his hand and attempt to escape his grasp as you hear a distant yell from the bottom of the staircase. Your ex hisses at your attempt before slamming your head against the concrete, and for a moment, the edges of your vision turns black. The hand that is wound tightly on your mouth loosens as your ears ring, and suddenly, you find that you’re able to breathe and gasp properly once again. 

 The man from the train is pushing your ex away from you, and you hear them shout at each other.

 “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?” Kunikuzushi explodes with anger as he spits caustically at the man a few feet away from him, his eyes bright as he glares at your perpetrator. 

 “Who are you?” The man replies, looking disgusted as he gauges Kunikuzushi’s stature, eying the both of you carefully before finally scoffing, as though he had realized something. “Are you her new boyfriend?” He laughs mockingly, his expression of pure bliss as he glowers at Kunikuzushi, “A twig like you? Babe,” he calls out to you from the floor, laughing as he notices Kunikuzushi’s expression further plummet into one of rage at his word of false endearment, “you really downgraded!”

 You don’t understand what he’s talking about. You seat yourself into an upright position when you’re ready, a scowl on your face as you gaze at your ex from behind Kunikuzushi with scornful eyes. You were angry and scared, all at once, and you weren’t sure what to think at the moment. You were confused as to how Kunikuzushi had found you, though you were grateful for his presence.

 “Back away now,” Kunikuzushi’s voice is stern, his eyes icy when he looks at the taller figure ahead of him, “and nobody will get hurt.”

 “Get hurt?” The man laughs sardonically before swinging at Kunikuzushi. The hit lands directly on Kunikuzushi, and the man continues to laugh before halting altogether when Kunikuzushi doesn’t budge an inch. Kunikuzushi turns his face while the man’s fist is still connected to his cheek, and the man’s breath hitches.

 Kunikuzushi smiles at him, his eyes gleaming with danger as his lip bleeds, having been cut by his own teeth from the impact of the punch on his face. This was perfect, Kunikuzushi thinks as he feels a familiar insanity rise within him. He just needed this extra push before committing.

 Now he had no reason to feel guilty.

 In one swift motion, Kunikuzushi moves to your ex’s right side, where he remains the most vulnerable, and with a harsh push, the man is flung down the steep staircase. 

 You let out an audible gasp as you watch his body get flung to the floor, watching as the base of his skull hits the sakura covered floor first upon impact.

 Beats of silence pass, and all of you are motionless. You stare at the limp body at the end of the staircase, your eyes wide as you realize you don’t see his chest heaving breaths. You rush down the stairs, passing by the dark haired male as you do so, and when you find yourself standing beside the body, you examine it. You kneel on the sakura covered floor, feeling the puddle of wetness from the rain below you engulf your knees as you lean over to take his pulse.

 Kunikuzushi is behind you before you know it.

 “He’s…” You begin, unsure of what to say or what to do. A part of you was happy, but ultimately, you didn’t want this to happen. This was too extreme, far too unnecessary despite all the horrible things your ex had done to you.

 You turn to look at Kunikuzushi, “We should call the cops…” Your voice trails off as you notice the broken expression on his face, his hand covering his mouth, though you can tell from how the muscles of his cheeks are raised that he’s smiling. Your eyes blow wider. What was happening?

 “He’s dead,” Kunikuzushi whispers, a wave of silence overcoming the both of you, until he starts chuckling ominously, “oh well,” he replies, his hand turning lax. You don’t understand his odd dismissiveness at the sight of taking someone’s life, and you briefly wonder if he’s done this before. When you see his complete expression, you don’t know what to think. 

 Behind his eyes was the fear of a child, having done something terrible, though the smile on his face told you that he was entirely pleased with the outcome. There’s a darkness that swirls within his eyes that you begin to understand when he continues to speak, “It’s okay. He was just like my father, anyway. Rotten to the core,” he hisses, his tone inflicting fear within you, “monsters with the wish to eat away at other people’s happiness’. Scumbags like that don’t deserve to live.”

 Then, everything pieces together. The tethered memories from years ago become puzzle pieces that fall into place, those memories of his mother, Ei, smiling strangely, and your heart breaking at the sight of it immediately. The memories of his smile disappearing, and then the bruises on his arms that are clear to you when he reveals them accidentally. The funeral he attends that same day, with that red bouquet of spider lilies.

 His silent cry of help when he looks at you through the window of the train as it departs.

 And the silent cry of help now, when he looks at you with a manic smile on his face.

 You reminisce on the guilt you had felt these years, the guilt that had eaten away at you despite your constant attempts to ignore it. The same guilt from when you had seen his smile first vanished, and only intensifying when you remember the bruise marks on his arms and wrists.

  You should’ve said something back then. You should’ve done something. If you had gotten up and asked him how things were going, how much different would things be today?

 You wish to rid yourself of this guilt. You could make up to that promise of keeping his smile forever, today, right now, if you so wished.

 You look at the warm corpse of your ex to your side and think about all the horrible things he had done to you, then you think about the man behind you. You think about how Kunikuzushi comforts you on the train during days that are too hard, all without asking you anything. You think about the pin he gives you, and the sunny childhood of smiles he had blessed you with. All he did was help you.

 Your hand presses on the red butterfly pin that Kunikuzushi had given you, and you come to a conclusion as you turn your head back up to face Kunikuzushi.

 You would make up for your broken promise now.

 So that he could smile like he did, years ago. You would provide him the same happiness he had given to you during your times of need.

 You speak through dry lips, and his indigo eyes widen at your words.

 “I have a shovel in my basement.”

…

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