Belle âme || Bungou Stray Dogs × Child!Reader

II.

Chūya expressed all the tribulations of being a mafia executive with a puff of nicotine. In the moment of doing so, his eyes of lapis lazuli shone in a lustering dance with the moonlight's ethereality. He sighed, allowing the smoke to go out of his system, disappearing into his view of Tsurumi river, and as he was in the process of igniting yet another stick,

"Have you seen my boat?"

He toppled back a few steps in his clumsy, graceless mannerism. Looking ahead, he caught sight of a  little girl in a dress so immaculately white, he had almost mistaken her for something else unbecoming. Around her neck rested a scarf an exquisite shade of yellow.

"What the-- who the hell are you!?"

"I'm (y/n)," she answered, "and I'm looking for a boat."

"Boat?" He asked, flabbergasted. "You? On this river? At this time!?"

"Yes."

For a few times, he blinked, then slowly collected all the scattered figments of his previous disposition.

"I thought children had some sort of curfew?"

The little girl casted him a wearisome glance, then proceeded to sit on the moist ground close to the river. Fidgeting with the flounce of her dress, she meekly replied, "This won't take too long. If you help me in finding, it will be quicker."

"Hasn't your guardian worry to your whereabouts?" He questioned. "Wouldn't they be looking for you at the present moment?"

"It's quite the opposite. I am looking for someone whom left me here after he had promised to come back. And, at the present moment, I am waiting for his fulfillment."

"Oh," he muttered, and after the silence of pondering his next course of action, he offered with reluctance, "do you want me to accompany you to the police?"

She raised her eyebrows in thought, and, turning her head to the man, she asked, "For what reason should I go there? If he promised, then he's bound to fulfill it."

The man stared at her comely (e/c) eyes, with his hand forming into a fist and contracting in frustration upon realizing her promisor's ultimate intention. A child's trust was not to be played with, and so was their patience.

But once a child had realize one's failure in commitment to the promise bestowed upon her, she would slowly let go of the dream of ever becoming happy again. And, inevitably, walls would build around the peripheries of her heart, enclosing the kind of tenderness everyone craved to indulge in. It was an innocent heartbreak far worse than the one associated with lecherous affairs.

"Now, this boat of mine used to have a very special place on my heart." She started. "I see to it as the snake. I let go of it last time, with the thought of wanting to save the special slots in my heart for those who will benefit me in this world."

"A snake," he reiterated, "being a boat?"

"But a little later I figured that wanting to benefit in this world isn't enough reason to let it go." The girl carried on. "I can still keep it without it having to invade the special slot in my heart, and now I feel guilty.

"But then again, who am I to blame? I'm a child, and perhaps the perspective of an adult is completely different compared to mine."

For the second time, she gave him another glance, and soon caught up to his confusion. "Need I say that the boat is made out of paper."

"Ah." He uttered. "So the snake... is riding the paper boat?"

"No, no, you got it wrong!" She exclaimed frantically. "Written on the paper are the memories I've had with the snake, and though our time spent together was compromised to only one page, it's... still someone I wish to cherish."

An emotion so lonely and demure glazed over the glass of her eyes, he almost mistook them for anything but a child's. She smiled serenely - Chūya gaped in awe - and took a moment to inhale the scent of the river; hear the silence of two at dawn. Lastly, she stood up, and gave him the sight of her innocent pulchritude.

"I've known you for only about an hour, mister," she said, "and I have yet to catch your name. It doesn't matter though, because you'll say it on the next time we meet, right?"