Chapter Text
The war had ended.
At least that’s what Yosano was told. She had been in prison for the past two years ever since…
Since...
Since.
Yosano didn’t have a very good memory of the prison. She only vaguely remembered the mushy food she refused to eat (not just because it was mushy) accompanied by both the guards and sometimes prisoners trying to get her to talk. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to interact with anyone. She shouldn’t even be alive–
Now, they were taking her out, and Yosano was outside the prison for the first time in two years.
Although, she still wasn’t sure who ‘they’ were. She looked up at the night sky, inspecting the twinkling stars.
She lowered her head at the sound of arguing. There was a person in front of her.
“Apparently, this girl hasn’t let out a single peep for the past two years and her legs are so unused we had to put her in a wheelchair! She won’t function in a society like an orphanage. Let’s just take her to the mental institution where she belongs.” A man said.
“The orphanage would give her a chance to interact with kids her age. They already have a bunch of mentally unstable misfits there anyways, what’s the harm in giving them one more?” A female voice came from behind Yosano. Was this the person pushing her wheelchair?
“Ah, whatever. We’ll take the girl to the damn orphanage, then. There’s one outside town.”
Yosano blinked, and suddenly she was in a different place.
The wheelchair was gone, she noticed. Now she was being held by her arm. Her feet were dragging behind her. She tried to move them to walk properly, but they wouldn’t budge. She blinked again, and looked up slightly. It was a man dragging her. But.. not the same man as before. A different one. He wore bright white robes. And.. his hair was strange. Brown. But it looked more like an upside-down brown bowl than brown hair. He had an icy gray glare. It reminded Yosano of another pair of eyes like it. Purple ones. She shivered slightly, choosing to look ahead.
It was… a hallway. The stained glass windows shined the floors and walls with color, almost like they were trying to hide the overwhelming gloominess in the air. Adults with the same white robes as the man dragging her walked by, indifferent to her. There were children there, too. They all wore the same gray-blue uniform. They were all dirty. They all had the same empty-eyed stare that she had.
No. This was wrong. She shouldn’t be near children. She would kill them. She needed to go back to prison. She needed to go to that mental institution the other man had suggested. She needed to die-
The grip on her arm suddenly tightened.
“Stop struggling, girl.” The man’s angry yet cold eyes looked down at her, and suddenly she was back in the 356th Infantry Division of the Japanese military, and the Great War was still waging, and Mori Ougai stared down at her with the same cold glare and forced her to hurt the person she grew to love the most out of all the soldiers in that miserable military base.
That person.
A gunshot.
“There.”
Blood.
"He's dying.”
Screams.
“Fix him.”
The grip on her arm was gone.
She was…
Where was she?
It wasn’t a gray hallway anymore. It looked like she was still in the same building as the hallway, but now.. now it was a room. And.. There were cots. Several cots lined up against the stone gray walls. She was set down on one herself. It was also then that she noticed her clothes had been changed to the gray-blue uniform the rest of the children wore. There were more kids here as well. Was it some type of living quarters?
It didn’t matter. She needed to get away from here. Away from all these people. All these people she could kill.
Yosano tried to get up, to escape from this place (Was it an orphanage? Like the woman had said?) before her ability took away anymore lives, but she found that she yet again couldn’t move her legs. How long had it been since she walked?
The children met her gaze as she looked up. Once again, Yosano was met with the same apathetic stares that reflected hers, but this time they were smiling. This time, they were snickering as they looked at her, looking back at each other and whispering what she could guess were cruel words.
She couldn’t bring herself to feel angry.
A door banged as someone slammed it open, and the callous smirks were instantly wiped away as the children directed their attention towards the two figures barging into the living quarters.
Or, rather, one figure barging in and throwing the second, much smaller one to the ground.
—-
Atsushi had been bad.
He’d been really, really bad today, just like he always was, and he got punished again. But he deserved this punishment, he told himself. He didn't finish cleaning the floor of the kitchen in time and then disobeyed the caretaker by trying to run when she got close to him.
After his punishment, the caretaker dragged him through the color stained halls of the orphanage, yelling (loud loud loud, too loud-) at him as she did so.
He whimpered as she threw him into the sleeping quarters, his side exploding with pain when he hit the floor. Atsushi curled up on the ground, because if he was down that meant a kick and pain- But nothing ever came.
He dared to peek out of his shell, and flinched as he saw the disgusted angry look of the caretaker above him. The boy practically jumped out of his skin when the woman slammed the door shut behind her as she left.
Panic slowly dripped out of his body and his breaths calmed just a little bit as he curled back up.
The bruises all over his skin hurt and Atsushi wanted to cry but he knew he would be bad again if he did.
Children without a family don’t deserve to cry. He had already been told so over and over, had it beaten into his head, but his stupid brain never wanted to listen.
He didn’t deserve to cry, but the tears came out all the same.
As his shoulders shook from the force of his quiet cries, he felt the stares of the other children dig into his back, and he knew they were smirking at him, grateful that it wasn’t them that were being punished. His stupid, whiny sobs persisted and he cursed himself. He needed to get away from the door. A caretaker might hear him crying and then.. then would come a punishment and Atsushi can’t handle another punishment today.
He stumbled as he made his way to his cot, trying to ignore the teasing stares of the other orphans in the room and trying to wipe his bad, traitorous tears away to no avail.
He sniffed, finally looking up at his cot and… And the stranger sitting on top of it. A stranger much older than him.
Atsushi squeaked as she met his gaze, and he quickly flicked his eyes to the ground, balling his uniform in his small hands. Laughter from the other children rang through his ears, and he folded into himself.
The older girl had taken his cot. She must be new to the orphanage, since he had never seen her before, but then again, he made sure to be far away from the older kids, so maybe he just never saw her.
He didn’t have anywhere to sleep.
That was okay, Atsushi quickly told himself. He can sleep on the floor. It was better than the cage.
With his problem solved in his head, he made to scurry to the corner of the room and sleep there when: “Hey.” A raspy voice called from behind him, and he froze. It was so quiet he almost didn’t hear it.
Who.. who said that?
Atsushi nervously, shakily, turned around.
The teenage girl met his eyes yet again. He wanted to flick his eyes towards the floor once more, but something about her look this time made it clear she wanted him to look her in the eye. He gulped in fear, but followed her unspoken order.
“Y-you..” A painful-sounding cough, “You can take.. your cot b-back.” The older girl rasped out. From her stutters, Atsushi would have thought her unsure, but her set jaw and the certainty in her eyes told him it was the opposite.
That didn't make any sense, though. There were no more cots to sleep on. If she gave up that spot she would have to sleep on the floor herself. Besides, she should know Atsushi didn’t deserve his cot anyways. She should know that Atsushi was a monster and that he shouldn’t even be in these sleeping quarters anyway. That he belonged back in that cage of darkness underneath the soil.
Although, if he was right about her being new, then.. maybe she didn’t know yet. Maybe she wasn’t yet aware that darkness and evil flowed through Atsushi’s very blood and that she shouldn’t even think of looking at him with such kind eyes.
That meant that the girl had been fooled by him, that she had been tricked by his ungrateful cries and her kind soul had taken pity on him.
Atsushi couldn’t let himself take advantage of her.
He shook his head desperately and scampered towards the corner of the room, sitting down and curling himself into the very stone as if he could disappear into it.
Maybe the girl would see now how pathetic he was and understand just how bad he is. Hopefully, the girl would realize he deserved to sleep on the cold, stone floor and she would leave him alone.
That would be.. good. Best. Then Atsushi wouldn’t take advantage of anyone else and he could be good. So he closed his eyes and folded his arms atop his knees, hoping he wouldn’t get a cold from the icy stone beneath him.
Then, a loud thud beside him made his very soul flinch.
He cowered, thinking of the door being slammed open and a caretaker marching in to punish him (for what, he doesn’t know yet), but.. the thud came from the opposite direction of the door.
Atsushi whimpered.
It must be one of the children coming to torment him. His mind flashed back to the older kids pinning him down, snipping his light gray hair with stolen kitchen scissors until it became unrecognizable.
He coiled into himself even further, clutching at his hair as if to protect it.
“K-kid.” The same raspy voice spoke, now way closer to him, and Atsushi flinched. So the teenage girl had finally realized just how bad he was and now she was coming to punish him for tricking her. But.. Atsushi didn’t mean to! Atsushi didn’t mean to trick anyone, he didn’t mean to be such a monster!
“M’ s-sorry, I didn’t mean to..I promise I didn’t m-mean to! Please-e.. d-don’t-”
“I-i..I won’t h-hur-t you, kid.” The girl’s husky voice interrupted him. And Atsushi didn’t even register the words because he needed to look her in the eye like she commanded him to before.
Her eyes.. They looked so.. sad. They looked just like his own. Except they were way prettier. They were reddish-purple, which matched her messy dark purple hair.
And it was then that Atsushi’s brain finally processed the words she had spoken.
But Atsushi was sure he had heard her wrong, because they made no sense. Why would she not want to hurt him? Everyone wanted to, and had hurt him. Even the nicest ones ended up seeing him for what he was and hurting him eventually. She should be angry with him. Her face wasn’t supposed to be so.. sad? Atsushi couldn’t place a word for what he saw in her gaze. She was confusing, and her words went against everything he knew.
Why had she even scooted over here? Why did she sit next to him on the cold stone floor? Had.. had the loud thud been her falling from the cot?
“I-if you don’t wa-nt your..” She gasped, as if she had run out of air, and Atsushi went to help her (even if he had no idea how) when she simply continued on. “-Your c-cot back, th-the-n we can bo-th sleep on the fl-oor.”
She smiled at him, and Atsushi had no choice but to be bad and look down, because no one ever smiled at him like that.
He didn’t know how to describe what that smile told him. He couldn’t even begin to understand how it made him feel, though. Confused was certainly one of the feelings he felt, but.. there was another one. One he had never felt before. It was like.. like a burning red fire poker had been pressed to his chest, but.. it wasn’t painful. Just.. hot. But less. Like a gentle fire.
Atsushi had no idea what the feeling could possibly mean, but he knew it was.. good. A good feeling. Like when he had food after weeks of being starved, or when he got to see the Sun again after being in the cage for who knows how long.
A person had never made him feel good before, though.
The girl tilted her head back, leaning against the wall, and closed her eyes. And.. Atsushi didn’t know what to do with that. Maybe.. maybe he should tell her to go away? To go back to his- her cot? But then.. then she might get angry at him. Atsushi didn’t think he would be able to handle it if she glared at him now. If that smile that made him feel.. good contorted into hatred.
So he stayed quiet and closed his eyes too.
And if he leaned against the strange new girl as he slept, seeking that addicting good feeling even in his slumber, that was no one’s business but his.