𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐍'𝐒 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍

PART THREE; THE DECISION

This is it.

By dawn, I will be gone.

I can finally escape this damned family.

Retiring to bed as she always did so as not to arouse suspicion, she allowed herself sleep for a few hours before she awoke and began to prep herself for her departure. But just as she was shrugging on her black clothing, she froze, a familiar type of apprehension crawling down her spine.

Slowly, she turned.

And there, in the doorway that led to the garden outside, stood Kokushibo.

(Y/N)'s eyes widened at his presence.

When he had disappeared more than a week ago that night after his decision not to kill her, she assumed she would never see him again.

Clearly, she had been wrong.

As she looked upon him, meeting the middle pair of his six eyes that almost seemed to glow in the darkness of the night, his long hair shifting ever so slightly in the night breeze, (Y/N) slowly straightened and turned to face him. Swallowing thickly, her jaw tightening, she took a step forward, and then another until she was finally only a few feet away from him.

His head tilted down to meet her gaze again considering he towered over her.

"Why have you returned?" (Y/N) finally spoke, her voice like a gunshot that rippled through the silence that had permeated between them. "I assume it's to kill me this time, no?"

    Kokushibo said nothing.

    All he did was continue to stare at her.

    She frowned.

    He doesn't speak much, does he?

    "You've come at the most ironic of times, Kokushibo," (Y/N) then murmured as she turned away from him, not noticing the way his eyes widened ever so slightly upon her remembrance of his name. "You've come to kill me right on the crux of my freedom."

    "Your freedom?" His deep voice resounded around the room, making her shiver.

    "Weren't you curious?"

    "About what?"

    "About why—when I seemed so happy about their deaths—I never killed my parents?" She hummed with a tilt of her head as she gathered her things together, watching as his shadow crept ever closer to her own. "It's rather pathetic to think about, but I needed them. I stayed with them until I had the proper funds that would allow me to safely leave this house and live on my own. And now that I can finally do that, you've appeared."

    "Are you upset... by that?"

    "I'm... not sure," (Y/N) started slowly, facing him once more to find that he was only mere feet away, his piercing yellow eyes boring into hers. "The better question is: why are you here again?"

    Kokushibo didn't answer that.

In fact, he couldn't answer her question.

He had no reason as to being there, yet he had come to see her all the same. Maybe it was what she had said that night a week ago that had made him return, or maybe it was the look in her eyes. Whatever it was, the days after he had met her, he sometimes would revisit their interaction within his mind. He had never met a human like (Y/N) before—one who could look him in the eye without fear.

    It was startling.

    And maybe that was what brought him back.

    "...you don't have any reason as to answer me, I understand," (Y/N) sighed, snapping Kokushibo from his thoughts. "But won't you allow me to know if you've come to kill me or not?"

    "I told you..." he started softly. "I was never tasked to dispose of you."

    (Y/N) stared at him.

    "I see," was all she said.

    Letting out a breath, she walked past Kokushibo with her belongings and out into the garden. However, from the faint footsteps behind her that she had to strain to hear, she could tell he was following her. Removing a section of the bamboo wall that she had been chipping away for the last several years, she then turned back to the demon.

    The garden was empty save for her.

    Kokushibo was gone.

    However, as (Y/N) left without looking back, she didn't notice that up in the tree overhanging the garden was Kokushibo, his hair ruffling in the night air whilst his hand rested against the bark.

    His eyes never left (Y/N)'s form.

つづく | to be continued