Chapter Text
“Nice fight, kid!”
A woman stood there, one hand gripping a motorcycle and the other on her hip. She had this confident girl boss model look with gorgeous straight blonde hair that whipped in the wind, topping it off with full black and some goggles. There was this weird snake centipede hybrid metal thing that floated around her in circles. Must be her shikigami.
She stood over the debris and smoke and blood, standing out like a lighthouse by the sea during midnight, smiling as if she just witnessed the most delightful thing in life. My head was ringing. Everything was too sparkly and shiny, like a flash bang. Was I hallucinating? Am I dead? But I am still bleeding. I can feel warm liquid oozing from my cuts and serious injuries and especially from my head.
Her lips parted and stretched into a confident grin. She suddenly struck a pose and blew me a kiss. The next words she said were the least expected. Inappropriate, even, to a minor like me.
“What kind of girls do you like?”
I nearly gagged and choked in confusion, but the only acknowledgement I could muster was frantic blinking.
“I’m a girl,” was all I managed after a moment of silence. “Oh,” She replied hastily, “I couldn’t really tell whether you were a boy or a girl,”
She frowned a little, in a pouting way, then clapped her hands as if to signify that she was about to do something grand.
“How old are you?” She continued relentlessly, parking her motorcycle in the process with one swift kick at the kick stand.
I looked up at her blankly, then croaked, “Eight,”
She pondered. Her shikigami made infinity loops that were mesmerising.
I broke her trance with the most stupid sentence you could ever use to start a conversation. I could have asked for something practical, like help, or at least a band-aid.
“Is your shikigami a snake or a centipede?”
She stared at me in surprise, mouth falling open. “I’ve never thought of it before,” Then she hopped down effortlessly from the rubble of the fallen wall.
“Name?” She asked. It sounded more like an order than a question. She strolled past me, avoiding my bleeding friends, and started studying the phone on the desk in a corner. She began pushing in a number, rather violently.
“Hey… Mhm, we’ve got a serious explosion or something at an orphanage, the address is…”
I could not really hear the rest of her voice because my reply drowned it out. Should I have waited for her to finish talking? Her order sounded as if I was required to reply immediately.
“Kirako, but you can call me Kira,”
“Full name?” She demanded as she blocked the talking end of the phone with her free hand, her shikigami hovering about as if on the lookout.
“Zenin Kirako,”
She jolted a bit, as if zapped, then turned her head to look at me with interest and amusement.
She rattled on the phone. “The majority are knocked out or with serious injuries. Just a passer-by, so I’m not sure if it’s a fire incident or not… Mhm… Yes… Yes… Two fatalities…”
Then she quickly smacked back the phone and made her way to me. “Reckless… How very reckless. The Zenin sent an eight year old child to deal with a curse that’s likely grade two or maybe even one! Or have you snuck out on your own?”
The woman stood towering over me with an exasperated yet somehow impressed look, with one of her hands limply hung while the other firmly on her hip. Her smile had perfect straight pearly whites but her eyebrows were frowning. How could I put it? It was like a parent finding it hard to be angry at their child who has made a mistake.
I blinked once at her, deadpan as ever.
“Seriously? What are you, a doll?” She lost her patience and grabbed my wrist with an expected strong grip, dragging me up the rubble of a wall I had crashed through along with the curse just now.
My feet gave way under me and she had to carry me up to her motorcycle. After I was laid by a tree, she headed towards the end of her motorcycle, and pulled out a roll of bandage. She handed me a plastic bottle of water and said “drink” in a severely superior way that meant no ‘buts’. Then she kneeled down beside me with one knee on the ground and started wrapping the white cloth around and around. The ringing gets louder.
“This’ll stop the bleeding… Why didn’t you pull down the curtain… Reckless,” She was saying stuff absentmindedly. The ringing in my ears got louder and everything got hazier. I guess I fainted. Or died. I rather the former, though.