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You float like a feather,
In a beautiful world.
Yugi Tsukasa was perplexed.
The unsettling, pseudo innocence his golden eyes carried were fixed straight from the corner of the hallway he'd chosen to shield his presence from.
Away from knowing souls—both from spiritually gifted humans and supernaturals.
It's not as if it was necessary for him to hide. He was after all, malignantly powerful. If anything the thought of cutting up and gutting anyone unfortunate enough to stumble upon what he was doing sent an uncontrollable rush of frenzy in his head, making his fingers twitch involuntarily and a wide, unhinged grin to split on his face.
Tsukasa's expression then suddenly lulls to a look of empty surprise, before adamantly shaking his head and settling for a Cheshire cat smile to break on his features.
'Can't be having those thoughts right now, Tsukasa. Amane might discover you.’
The very object of his concern was floating leisurely a few good feet away, hovering above a girl with silvery billows and a boy of dirty blonde hair.
That's right, there was entirely no need to conceal himself.
But he had to be careful. Oh so very careful in the surroundings of his territory; the one his precious older twin, The Honorable No. 7 had complete dominion over. Amane wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at sensing him being too close for comfort and would have whipped out that knife of his in an automatic effort to protect and defend.
That delightfully sharp knife.
The glint in Tsukasa’s tawny eyes darkened with incomprehensible glee.
Really, how could he forget?
Amane after all, looked the most beautiful and picturesque he's ever had when he was pushing that very knife down his throat and into the crevices of the bone connecting his neck and body.
The look of abysmal despair and frantic guilt scrunching up and contorting his features was a memory Tsukasa would forever want to be carved out in his head and embedded in his memories.
Indeed, his brother is truly fascinating and something he would make sure he owned even in death.
His stare then wanders and lands on the girl closely beside Amane. The very reason for his uncharacteristic spying had veered in his head as he watched her keenly, noting every emotion that took hold of her features from frustrated, to sad then annoyed, then to that of agitated frustration from what seemed to be a conversation between his brother and the other boy he couldn't care less for.
Yashiro Nene, a girl with a relationship to Amane mirroring that of his affiliation with Sakura.
For the longest time since being reunited with his dearest twin, Tsukasa had been thoroughly confused.
As if he had been presented and stuck with a puzzle with no means of solving in the form of a girl whose luminous, ruby eyes conveyed her feelings better than she would ever have put them into words.
He sure knew what was considered attractive in the opposite sex, that’s for certain. He’d seen them all from the magazines Amane had been keeping and was so frightened and embarrassed he'd found from underneath his beddings all those years ago. Sure, they had different definitions of 'pretty', but Tsukasa was every bit confident in what he fancies. Sakura for one, is a good testimony of that. Tall and slim with a perfectly dainty face and a regal demeanor to boot—she’d reminded him of the princesses in story books he'd always found so interesting and captivating since he was a small child.
That isn’t to say that Nene was an eyesore, however. His wide-eyed peering had shifted to intense study, zeroed in on the girl in his thoughts who seemed to have calmed down since what looked to be a friendly argument from her little group of 'friends', as they'd amusingly call it.
Her lengthy hair in a metallic color was eye-catching and fun to trace as the hue deepened to a shade that reminds him of waves frothing and foaming at the sea—something which would probably have been romantic if she was cursed to turn into a mermaid and not a fish, of all things. The small, rounded shape of her face that ended in a tiny edge of a tip for a chin was pleasant-looking in his opinion. And those irises; filled-in in the color he favored the most were always illuminated and twinkling in the frames of an eye shape which vaguely reminds him of a little deer.
Cute and charming, but that was all there is to it.
Right beside those traits were pure, gullible vulnerability and a one track mind sort of thinking that he admitted, was fun to toy with but couldn’t have kept him entertained in the long run.
Compared to Sakura, who was every bit unperturbed and nearly unreadable that uncovering what's going in that head of hers was a barely tiresome and fun day-to-day activity, it had absolutely made no sense to him.
Even for someone like Amane who seemed to like playing nice with humans and supernaturals, the unexplainable attachment to the girl was a bit of a stretch.
Especially with those oddly shaped ankles.
They simply looked too much like the radishes in the soup their mama used to cook for supper and he sure wouldn’t want his radishes anywhere else other than in a bowl of food.
That was until he’d ventured in the Painted World, however. He'd seen it all unfold in his very eyes through the point of view of the audience. How she'd looked at his twin with emotions so strong and indescribable that he was certain, he just wouldn’t be able to decode even if he'd tried hard enough. Her heart had been out in the open—overflowing and seeping into the colors of the fabricated realm with a feeling he could’ve sworn was familiar to him, albeit vaguely and even sickeningly bitter in his tongue.
As the prettily, yellowed sheen of the false moon bathed the both of them, her naïve yet resolute declarations of going to the moon with Amane had his features set in a blank expression. The only thing that ran in his head, was how he couldn't seem to focus on anything else other than the person whom he'd previously only thought, was nothing more than a dying girl starved of the clichés of school romance and caught in between the affairs of supernaturals.
That very same girl was now right in front of him, situated in between his twin and another who seemed to adore her with fervor, as if her very spot in between them had been fixed and prearranged for her even before the three of them had ever met.
And it simply didn’t seem to sit well with Tsukasa.
It was then when his mood plunged to an inky state, that she'd suddenly smiled with that face glowing and radiating with the immaculate innocence of happiness overtaking and capturing her features.
His eyes had caught a rush of surprise for a split second, before a slow, vast smile that seemed to tremble as his lips curved had formed on his face along with a darkened look of pleasure eerily bouncing off from his irises.
‘Ah, I get it now.’
His questions and befuddlement have been cleared, only having nothing but maddening elation driving and making itself known in his senses.
She was exactly like what Amane used to be.
Young and defenseless; a dreamer filled with thousands and probably even millions of dazzling stars in the field of her eyes that if she put her mind to it, he was sure she could easily reach one by one with that undying determination reflected in her soul.
Something which he didn’t quite like.
A valuable innocence that Tsukasa wanted nothing more but to take.
He had to have her all for himself—keep her nice and away from anyone else's eyes. He'd have her all lovely and dolled-up with the help of Sakura's meticulous hands, dressing Nene in the finest layers of ribbon and lace adorned dresses.
Just so he could preserve her.
A desperation to hold on to that elusive innocence,
To keep it as perfectly tangible in his grasp for as long as it would let him
—in case he accidentally shatters her much like what he had done to Amane back then.
His eyes had been obscured by his choppy bangs as he angled his head slightly low in an effort to stifle with his palm, an uncontrollably giddy laughter verging to maniacal that had escaped his throat.
In that split second he’d lost control, he'd watched Amane's back stiffen and straighten at the sense of fear and inexplicable danger. Tsukasa could only stare on with newly-found, wicked interest, having the delighted grin stretching his lips fixed in place and never fading.
‘Oh, things could wait.’ He watches for a while as his twin cautiously pivots his head from side to side, having all hilarity and good cheer dissolved from his face as he attempts to confirm if the presence he'd felt had been correct.
“Tsk tsk, classic Amane. Finding treasures and never willing to share them with me.” Tsukasa mutters playfully in the wind before disappearing in the dark and retreating for the time being.
He steals one last glance over to his brother's assistant, the stroke of unconcealed apprehension then clouding the glimmer of those beautifully bloody orbs for eyes.
“But remember, dear Amane, I always get what’s mine."
You're so fucking special.
I wish I was special.