floor burns | hxh

iv. SAD

悲しい

Summary: young little girls aren't supposed know so much of the wicked, and yet she was never a young little girl to begin with.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Yoshihiro Togashi except for my oc, Sakiko.

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At an early age, Sakiko is taught that life is precious. That the animals who run through the trees or deserts or snow filled tundras have something to contribute in life. World round grass and rich brown dirt are important, because they make trees grow. Animals need those too, you know.

(Miss Abaki never says anything about humans.)

The little girl doesn't know how long it's been since the time she ran away from the closed room, but she does know that from the sweltering heat of summer is long gone. Now fairy lights and happy bell music enveloped the streets. It is lively in these streets, and people seem to have fun all the time.

But it's really cold. A white, powdery substance that instantly burns and withers at the slightest touch—called snow—surrounds everything. It's beautiful and majestic in every way, though she's seen what it can do. It's toxic, it's secretly evil. Maybe not inheritly so, but the countless of people who sleep and never wake up can contest to that. It's like a drug, or a poison of sorts.

Lune and Sakiko huddle next to each other on two flat cardboard boxes with their blankets wrapped around them. It's snowing. Always is, in December. But she is struggling financially. That's an always-is, too. But now there are consequences. Sakiko's body shakes. She can feel Lune's shaking, too, from where he's pressed into her side. He doesn't deserve this. Though her tears do nothing but sting her cheeks, her face numb from the freezing cold.

Many people begin to realize that she's a helpless girl that no one will save, but there's no pity. There is no compassion, because as long as their loved ones are okay, nothing else matters. Humans are selfish like that.

She begins to pray when night rolls around because she knows what happens to children who play outside a bit too late. There's no moon that glimmers over the town tonight, and it's much more bleaker than she remembers. The street lights are the only things that brighten the surroundings, with reminiscent yellows and an orange dim, and the stacks of white snow cover every inch of the street in all its glory. If there's a god, there must be a devil. And she's not too sure which one she's praying to.

She sees a man pass by the alleyway, and she holds her breath and hopes she is invisible from reality and nobody can see or hurt her. Sadly she doesn't disappear, and the man slowly cranes his head to her and he smiles.

She has never seen a man grin like that. The expression smeared in his eyes now is sinister than any faux smile could ever be. Looking at it isn't like looking at the sun but like being burned by the fires of hell and, inevitably, she has to look away. The way he looked right then made her want to gag because It wasn't happiness in his eyes. It was lust.

It's a revolting and loathsome feeling she holds as she watches him glance across her small frame, and up to her face. A scary thought comes to her head, one of muffled screams and cries and it ends with her on the ground sticky and lifeless but barely breathing, and him leaving triumphantly.

She doesn't like the aimed foot that steps in her direction, and she tenses. He slowly walks over to her and his hands are no longer in his pocket. He's holding a knife. Her heart is throbbing and beating heavily in chest and she stands up, alerted by the way he smirks lecherously. What unsettles her even more is that he never speaks, as if he knows how this will end already, and her pale lips tremble. He leans in too close and the proximity allows her to smells his foul breath, and the sinking feeling becomes stronger. He's not intoxicated, he's completely and utterly sober.