#zeno01

“ ...ah. “

I stop at the sight of a stranger for a second. The hide was a good one though, a hole in a rock formation. To call it a cave would be a large exaggeration. It was small enough. Smoke wouldn’t come an issue if you made fire and it’d shelter you from rain for a while at least. 

I take slightly meek tone, just in case.

     Arima was not used to navigating cities on his own. Even in his home city of Tokyo, which he had never left once since the day he was born, he never roamed freely for long. There were always locations he was assigned to be at, and people he was assigned to be with. Now that he was given much more freedom (ironic, because he was trapped within a bird cage of a city), he still adhered to that sort of strict schedule, walking back and forth on the same route between work and home every day at the same time. He only deviated when others interrupted him, never of his own volition. 

   There was no need too anyway, the city was full of distractions. The city seemed to actively want to test him too, because on his first day back after the centipede operation, he found his route blocked by construction. Arima glanced down at the detour map for a second, then having memorized it, decided to take a much more efficient route through the back alleys. This way he could make the same amount of time and not have the rest of his schedule thrown off. 

   Arima looked imposing naturally. It might have been different when he was a thin youth with his hair its naturally color, but now his white hair, and the massive shadow he cast made him easy to pick out. Despite that his footsteps were quiet. His expression was calm. Nothing about him besides his height could explain why he gave off such an impression. 

    Then his head snapped back suddenly.