𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐋𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒; 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

She Loves You, After All

The next time Maki's gaze lands on you, she sees you in a new light. A light that makes you look a little less bored, a light that takes her back to last year when things were fine, good. She doesn't know if that's good or bad, or worse than the present. She remembers seeing you smile at one of Panda's jokes, the way your cheeks would raise as your lips would curve upwards.

This new light makes you look more at peace with yourself than you actually are. Your eyes don't look as tired and void. Your skin looks clear. Your hair looks soft, like she wants to feel her fingers running through it after a long day. You look like how you used to.

Everyone else sees the reality— a tired, blank, hollow shell. The marks under your eyes that indicate you haven't slept in who knows how long. The hood in your eyes that hide the abyss behind your shell. The slump of your shoulders.

There was a slowness in your speed, Noritoshi could see the blur of your body getting fainter, even with his extremely narrow eyes. Your fist landed on his jaw, knocking him back a few feet before you gifted him with a kick to his chest, sending him flying against the base of a tree.

You're still fast— you reach him before he can even react, your bruised knuckles landing a blow right under his solar plexus. The air leaves his lungs for a moment, earning a breathless, dry cough from him as your fist lands on his cheek again and again. Your fingers are tight in his hair, holding his head still while you hand it to him.

In a second, you leave him with the final blow and kick him away before spinning around to hop over Miwa's blade, your foot lightly jumping off to double jump and summersaulting to the ground, crouching and kicking her ankles.

You catch her sword as it falls from her hands, quickly sticking it to her sleeve and pinning her to the ground.

Your head whips around, you see Todo in the corner of your eye running after Yuji. You watch the giant run off, disappearing into the greenery before a quick bullet swipes past your cheek. It hits the ground, making a little hole in the dirt; you look up, spotting her in a tree and seeing Mai standing on a branch.

She keeps her gun aimed at you, her finger still on the trigger and her eye closed, but she doesn't shoot. She couldn't. She could shoot anything and everything around you, but never yourself. The thought of hurting you hurts her— it gives her a headache.

The two of you keep eye contact for a moment— your eyes doing the talking rather than your mouths. A shadow appears over the both of you, Momo's on her broomstick like a witch. You look up, and you know that's your signal to disappear. You weren't part of the plan, the Tokyo team was supposed to split up when Todo came. It was you who separated everyone, albeit in their designated groups, and you went after the Kyoto team yourself.

Mechamaru was the first one to get out, simply kicking the robot into the greenery and making a Mechamaru-shaped hole. Noritoshi was next, then Miwa, then Mai- though you couldn't bring yourself to do it. You wanted Maki to hate you, but you didn't want Mai to be anymore involved than she already is.

You run off, disappearing a second later without a word as Momo looks at Mai with a puzzled face. She says nothing, opting to hop off the tree and move to the next one.

The next time you run into Maki, you find her in the riverbed, getting choked by a curse of some sort. For once, and only this once, your emotions let loose. Your anger, your sadness, your disgust, loneliness, hatred, guilt. It all comes rushing out in the form of your cursed technique: Infinite Soul.

"Soul Art: Desolate Defiance!"

A portal of cursed energy opens, a strike of shadows and vines racing out to pierce what looked like the curses shoulder with a really bad skeletal condition. The shadows and vines tackled the curse to the ground while your cursed energy lifted you up from the ground.