ARBITARY | Sano Manjirou

fourteen

It couldn't have been.

It was made long long before she'd even lost him. "Draken told you everything .. I think he did."

"So?" Mikey had replied almost instantaneously. "Do you think so too?"

Age was a number that people liked to use to define maturity .. but Anari would like to agree to disagree. Setting, uprising, childhoods were degrees that should be the real scaling for an upright maturation. Things that would follow a person until their last breath and beating rhythm of their heart.

Somewhere along the line, Draken too, had matured. Accepting abandonment and finding light in it. Made money in ways society frowned upon, and learned about others traumas and realized, his life was a luxury. He valued life, treasured it, and even more so, treasured the people within it, placing them upon the top of his pedestal.

Like Kazutora.

Like Anari.

"Do you think I'm using everyone .. everything to distract myself?" Maybe this was the true form of hope and Shinichiro was wrong. There was no innocence. Hope, being stuck in Pandora's box for all too long, soon became tainted and shattered by the very sin of the people who abandoned her and left her behind with their selfish greedy sinful deeds.

Hope slowly became infected as well, and she infected those around her with the toxicity of an artificial light.

Even Mikey had begun to notice, along with Draken .. that Anari was reverting back to her old self. Not depressed, but rather repressed. She became a burn out, of what but only herself.

The same girl who didn't believe in anything, and found Draken's contagious little eleven year old smile to be a bore.

But this time it was a little different.

Sometimes even hope needed an insurrection of reasoning.

The functioning pieces in Anari's limbs began to rust. "I'd like this all to be real." She continued on. Her eyes still faced the sky while Mikey's faced hers. She could feel the infatuation. The pupils that laid wake, swimming in the thick black tar of obsidian oblivion.

"So what if you're running away?" Anari sat up.

So Draken told him that too.

Her hair that had caught blades of grass and curls of clovers aligned itself. The lackluster dead pink, and blue streaks that slowly got longer and faded. "Well if I left you behind, we can't finish the bet. You still need to buy me that piece of land where our nice house is going to sit with the perfect view~"

"So its settled." Mikey had a lopsided grin smile of relief on his face. Anari turned to him for the first time since they began with a questionable look of curiosity.

"You're a member of Toman-- one of my founding members. Toman belongs to me .. which means you also belong to me, Rin!" Anari as well as the other members had heard this line from Mikey over and over now, it no longer surprised them of his rightful arrogance almost similar to that of an esteemed king.

"Which means ..?" She trailed off only for him to light up.

Like a cauldron stirring alive, a cherry blossom from afar flew by, landing in the small stream in which sat at the bottom of the semi steep hill they laid upon. A wrinkling surge of a ripple broke the surface tension of the water.

"Runaway with me and stick by me forever. ♡"

The seafoam blue green eyes blinked in disbelief. It was the only time emotion was drawn out of her like the strokes of a paint brush he held in his hand, painting a portrait of first love's human form.