b l a c k o p i u m

It’s like watching a leaf made of paper flutter aimlessly through the wind.

That’s--they’re unmistakable. The files said everything, down to the dirt encrusted beneath her fingernails and that’s definitely her. Aimi is hesitant behind the bulwark, hand on waist on gun on nail ticking trigger. Hold on. Get your head in the game. Take two steps back and make the triangle with your thoughts. Analyze the situation. One: why is she alone? Two: is she even alone? And three: what consequences will follow after a direct confrontation?

She thinks back to a dreary day in white-gray asphalt offices, where a speech made by Munakata rang through her headphones like a sermon and she ate it up lip-licking; the entire destruction of Despair will heal the world. But this. . .this is a young woman. In the flesh, it’s different, and hesitation clings to her bones like plastic wrap to an annoyed hand. A person, with ambitions and desires and teeth chomping at the bit and a tilt in the walk that hurts Aimi somewhere in the past. There is a quiet moment of revolution from her common sense before she makes it up in her head.