#castificus

        Nezumi spends four years running (though he doesn’t think he’d use those exact words in his own defense, there is no more apt description), and everything comes to a head on a pleasantly warm evening in the new city he’s pretending to call home.

        Time comes to a complete standstill. The world isn’t spinning. His blood has run ice cold. 

        Dramatics aside, it feels like he can’t breathe. He’s spent so much time putting so much distance between himself and No.6, and yet of all the gin joints, here is Shion. Standing right there, not even twenty feet away. This is it. This is the sad, ill-fitting story of how he dies. Right here in the middle of the street with people bumping into him, with a heart that just doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop pounding, and half a mind to run back the way he come.

        But he can’t do that, can he? All he can do is stare like the wide-eyed animal he is, terrified of moving. Perhaps if he stays still long enough, Shion will forget he’s even there.

        (Paradoxical that he was scared of Shion back then, has spent years shaking that fear, and has only succeeded in making it worse.)