Light and Darkness

Part 1

Ozaki Kouyou was a woman who detested the 'light'. The very idea of a life away from darkness was something she despised from the bottom of her almost non-existent heart. She was a flower that could only bloom in darkness. A flower that would crumple and its petal fall apart if exposed to the light for too long.

Darkness was where she belonged. Darkness was where she felt safe. When grasping for the light, she became vulnerable.

And Ozaki Kouyou was afraid of getting hurt again.

~*~*~*~

He was a strange man. A man like she had never come across before.

The young Kouyou had already met plenty of men in her life. All of them were cruel, power-hungry men that wouldn't shy from the most brutal methods in order to achieve their goals. She had already seen many men stopping at nothing just to gain more power, killing whoever had been in their way. She had already seen more people dying - men, women, and children- than she could possibly count.

Life in the Port Mafia was an unusual lifestyle for a young girl like Kouyou, but she had grown used to it. She had grown used to the sight of piles of bloody corpses getting larger each and every day. The current Mafia Boss was probably the greatest madman she had ever come across, but she grew used to it rather quickly. She didn't know anything else, after all. And considering her ability, she seemed to fit into this kind of lifestyle perfectly well.

Until she met this man.

Their first encounter wasn't exactly what could be called 'Love at first sight'. It was actually very far from it, as the young redhead was about to slit the throat of the raven-haired man with her sword that had been concealed inside her umbrella. What the man had done to deserve this special kind of quick shaving? You would not believe it.

Kouyou had been on her way to the Mafia Headquarters, her long red hair trailing swiftly behind her in the soft wind, umbrella-inclusive-of-sword in her right hand when she crossed the street as this man came towards her from the other side of the street. His gaze sternly fixated on her would already have been a valid reason for her as to why this man was deserving of a shortened head, but what he did was all the more atrocious:

He whistled.

How could he dare do something as lewd as whistle loudly at the sight of her! The man seemed rather surprised by her course of action as Kouyou pierced him with the force of her dark, cherry red eyes, her mind running with at least forty-two different ways of slitting neatly through that white neck of his when his shoulders started to shake visibly. At first, the young girl thought the man was already trying to cut her fun short by dying of an epileptic shock or something, until she noticed how the edges of his lips were slightly curled up in what seemed to be a cheeky smile.

He was laughing? At her?!

Immediately, Kouyou responded accordingly by applying more pressure to his throat, so much until she already drew a bit of blood that was dripping down onto the ground with a soft 'drip'. This, however, didn't seem to be of much interest to the raven-haired man, continuing to chuckle lightly before speaking up.

"I wouldn't have taken you for such a fiery one. Young ladies these days amaze me every time."

Kouyou resented the man. Everything about him. His blatant impertinence, his rude bluntness, his stupid laugh, but most importantly - comparing her to average ladies! There was a small, tiny part deep inside Kouyou that might have found him a bit amusing, but that foolish thought was shoved to the back of her mind, instead focusing on the perfect method to let him bleed to death right then and there.

"The funny kind, I see," she replied, a dangerous smile starting to form on her lips, "Let me tell you something: Your confidence will be the death of you." It wasn't a warning. It was a dark promise.

A promise she would remember later.

However, this didn't seem to dampen the man's mood at all. He continued to smile as if they were chatting about flowers and cats during a tea party, and not on the verge of being brutally murdered. What was up with this strange man?

"Ah, if I really will die so soon, then I ask of you, my Lady, to grant me to say a few last words before I go," he asked so kindly it made Kouyou want to puke. A grim expression rested on her face as he considered his request. She was even considering it, whereas normally she would have made short work of her victims. This man honestly had a strange effect on her.

"Fine," she finally blurted out, though she didn't lighten the pressure on his throat one bit. "But be quick about it. It would be a shame if I were to interrupt your last, pitiful speech of-"

"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life," he said without blinking once.

Kouyou was taken aback. Not had the man dared to interrupt her when she had been talking of interrupting him, no, he actually had the nerve to compliment her right before his moment of death! But... the moment of his death never arrived. His words seemed to have physically stopped the blade from diving further into the skin of his throat, instead, the pressure even grew lighter until Kouyou completely took her sword off his throat.

She did not know why, but his words had a huge impact on her. Mainly because this was the first time she had heard them. She had already been called many things: "A strong ability user", "a dangerous woman", "a future-executive" even. But "beautiful"...? This was something new. A word that wasn't part of the Port Mafia's vocabulary. There was no room for such words. The Port Mafia was all about death and destruction, power and strength.

"What?" She heard herself mumble lowly, a voice too high and weak to be hers. Her reaction seemed to cause the grin on the man's face to widen, before letting out a light chuckle.

"Seems like I escaped death at the last moment, huh?"

His eyes were a dark blue, yet they held a glimmer of light that Kouyou had never seen in any man's eyes before. Those were the eyes of a man who wasn't engaged in a business where corpses piled as high as skyscrapers. Those were the eyes of a man who lived a life far away from the darkness she was engulfed in.

The eyes of a man who believed in the light even if met with darkness.

Kouyou did not know how to respond. She was at a complete loss for words. She could not even understand her own action. How could she dare to spare this man?! In the end, she decided not to think about it further, instead concealing the sword inside her umbrella again.

"You better get out of my sight now before I change my mind," she said, her voice chill, not looking at the man in front of her. Because if she did, she was unsure if she would ever manage to escape the sea of his dark blue eyes that seemed to want to drown her within his pertinent stare.

"I guess you are right," the man admitted, "I don't think I'd like to gain more experience with the new replacement of pepper spray."

The edges of her lips curled up by approximately a millimeter upon hearing his next audacious comment. She turned away from him, continuing forward on her way to the Port Mafia Headquarters, where she belonged to.

"Wait, what's your name?" The man suddenly called out behind her. Kouyou ignored him, instead focusing on bringing as much distance between them both as she could. "Please! I need to know!" He insisted, yelling loudly Kouyou had been sure the entire street must have heard. The small smile on her face didn't seem to want to vanish upon his poor attempts to enquire her name.

Still, she decided to grant his wish. Why, she did not know. But she turned around to face the strange raven-haired man one last time, replying, "Kouyou. Ozaki Kouyou."

The man smiled. "I'm XXXXX."

Without any further reaction to his name, the redhead turned around and continued on her way into the darkness, leaving the sprinkle of light behind her. Or so she thought.

"Until we meet again, Kouyou."