Loveless

Though it was still in the beginning of summer, the weather contrasted immensely from the season. The days were mild with the warmth of spring accompanied by the pleasant winds of autumn, but the nights were unforgiving with bitter cool breeze reminiscent to the season of winter.

Though everyone's instincts alerted them to remain indoors during the night, an interference beyond an individual would not allow this instinct to be carried out. A small child was thrown out of the house as the sliding doors flew with him.

"I thought I told your scrawny ass to move those fruit barrels from the shed. Until you do, you're not setting one foot in this house!" A drunkard yelled, as he struggled to stand up straight.

"When you're told to do something, you're supposed to do it!" Blood began to drip from the boy's veiled right eye as the drunkard loudly drank from the oversized bottle in his left hand. The child's exposed left eye glared maliciously at the drunkard, his unusual eye that wordlessly incited death, angering the drunkard.

"Who the hell are you looking at with that eye?" The drunkard threw his bottle just above the boy's exposed eye. With his sight stained scarlet, he couild no longer incite the glare that the drunkard, as well as the rest of his family despised.

"Why do you bother with that runt, Dad?" A young woman spoke.
"Make sure you finish your other chores when you're done moving the fruit!" An elderly woman sounded.

"And sharpening my swords, too. You better not forget!" An older adolescent added on. Though the child despised the "family", that brought him in, he was without the power to retaliate against such abuse.

"(My brother sure left us a troublesome bastard he with some other woman...)"

"(We can work this out, Dad. Just think of him as a slave who can wait on us hand and foot.)"

"(He brought it on himself. Always glaring at us with those weird eyes. He's practically begging to be punished.)"

"(A mistake. That's all that little bastard is and will ever be!)"

The boy was fully award of these spiteful remarks as he struggled to transfer the large barrels of exotic fruit from the storehouse. It was well past midnight when all 126 barrels were moved, seeking shelter inside at this point was no longer possible for the young boy. At a nearby well, the boy took a rag and moistened it with warm water, bearing the sharp pain of having his wound pressed against the worn cloth.

"Why am I alive? What did I do to be treated this way?" The boy wondered as the pain faded away. Moments later, several voices drowning in pain sounded from the street adjacent to the boy's home.

Mildly curious, the child rushed to the origin of the voices, only to hear even louder and more distinguished cries of agony. Before the child, there was a fairly wounded woman facing off against a few men armed with oriental swords. The numbers quickly plummeted as the women clove through them with a unique sword of her own, despite her injuries.

After splitting her last adversary in two, the boy remained stunned as his mind instructed athat he get way as swiftly as possible, yet his body proved reluctant to obey. By loudly backing into a wall, the slightly exhausted woman looked over her shoulder and noticed a child staring in numbed shock, covering his wounded left eye.

"You saw me kill those men...didn't you?" The child was unable to speak as he slumped to the ground, the wounded woman closing in on him.

"So then, you must be slain as well..." The woman declared as she raised her large katana above her, its edge glimmering faintly with the moon's waning crescent. Before the woman began to execute the child, she paused and took notice of the boy's expression.

"Are you so afraid that you cannot express your fear of death? Or are you truly not afraid of losing your life?" The boy just sat there without the displacement of sadness or fear, he appeared to be patiently waiting for the woman to receive the woman's cold, bloodied steel.

"If dying means being free from this pain, then I would gladly accept it." To the woman, she felt that the boy was demanding that he execute him.

"Hey..." The boy saw the woman return her sword to its sheath.
"Bring me some first-aid, and some food. Do that, and I won't take your life." After hearing such words from the murderous woman, he immediately obeyed.

The woman noticed that amoung the first-aid supplies, the bandages were much thinner and tighter to stop any bleeding indefinitely. The child helped the fatigued woman into the storehouse where the rest of the empty barrels were kept.

"Ah, this is much better. Now I can move a little easier."
"Um, ma'am? Excuse me, but..." When the woman turned to the boy, her gaze frightened him as he hid behind a barrel.

"I've got a name! Suzuka Tsukikage, that is what you may call me." The woman strongly declared as she began eating the steamed buns that the child prepared..

"Miss...Tsukikage? Since you were killing those law enforcers, doesn't that mean you're a bad person?"

"The Zigguraut Family and their corporation are the ones who are bad. They used me to kill all those who opposed them and rewarded my services by trying to have me assassinated!"

"Oh, so that means you're a good person." The woman chortled quietly at the blissful ignorance of the young boy. But he was still a child, so Suzuka gave the boy a straight answer.

"No, kid. I'm actually a very evil person." Upon hearing this, the child swiftly retreated behind another barrel.

"Hey now, I said I wouldn't take your life. Besides, I kinda like this place, and with that last round of slaughtering the other law enforcers won't want to stay around here for much longer. I'll be hiding in here for a little while..." After finishing her last steamed bun, the woman reclined against one of the standing barrels, resting.

"(I was right, she really is an evil woman. But even so...)" The child lift the hair covering his right eye to gain a better look of the older woman reclining before him.

"(She's a incredibly strong...and beautiful woman.)"