AND SO, IN THE SUMMER, THE MONTH OF JUNE, ON THE CALENDARS OF ONLY BIRTHDAYS AND MEETINGS, PERMENATELY MARKED AN ANNIVERSARY DATE OF THE DAY BAJI HAD CREATED THEIR FUTURE. Anari framed the picture she had taken on her phone and printed it out, hanging it on the dark overcasting shadows in the corner of her room.

Hope shone just a little bit brighter, with a sky that watched them, gifting a day of partly cloudy skies, a day for an outing.

But Anari didn't feel like getting out of bed. Instead she laid there, staring at the small fragments of light that peeked through her heavy weighted curtains. Picking up the small aquamarine flip phone that rested on her chipped white night-stand, attached to it was a charm.

It was a small leather white charm, shaped in the correlation of an omamari. Everyone got different charms, but Anari specifically picked out Mikey after his five minutes of nagging. It had taken her some time, due to the fact that she had given it much thought, wanting it to be special.

"How about .. this one?" The charm was of an ink black base with intricate shamrock green linings, in the center, written in gold print kanji with a wreath over it, were the characters of good luck as she smiled at the small item. "If I pick out this charm for you .. and buy it for you, I hope every ounce of luck I place into this, will follow you forever, and it'll help you achieve all of the dreams and all of the goals you ever wished for."

"And I'll be with you every step of the way as long as you have this with you. I'll support your decisions, and be by your side."

Even Mikey wasn't immune to Anari's every-once-in-a-while acts of tender sentimental genuinity. So even he grinned like an idiot, accepting the charm, pulling one from behind his back as well, noticing Anari had been receiving trouble in finding her own trinket, so using the time she used to pick out his, he had done the same.

The little spectacles in the girl's seafoam green-blue eyes taunted around like the freckles of a fresh blue dotted robin's egg as she let out a sound of bewilderment and excitement altogether. "Waa .. It's perfect ..!"

Mikey who squatted down to her semi-height, grinned, resting his chin atop the palm of his hands. "It's a protection charm~ So even if I'm not with you, this thing will definitely protect you until I get there and kick their asses. It'll protect you all the way until I win this bet, and when I do win this bet, I'll make a new promise in placement of this charm on this finger." He grabbed her hand, waving around her ring finger.

It had only taken a moments notice for Anari's ears to tint red. "Don't say misleading things like that!"

"Who said it was misleading? It was probably the exact idea you had in mind." Mikey pat her head, helping her stand up as they headed to the register, Mikey's hand in hers, tugging her along.

The memory was burned, engraved into every crevice of the brunette's mind as she slapped her cheeks.

Anari didn't know why Mikey portrayed her as a butterfly .. but the charm was wrapped and adorned in blue morpho butterflies, almost, just almost matching the color of her eyes as they were outlined in a blazing medallion lining.

This was probably how Emma felt on the daily with Draken.

The two of them were in a platonic love that neither would admit out loud. It had been like that for the longest time. But who was Anari to talk?

The girl pulled out her 2001 model powerbook, web searching an image of the blue butterfly that was printed onto her little charm that she squeezed within the palm of her hand. They weren't anywhere close native to Japan. It was disappointing for such a beautiful species.

She shut her laptop down and envisioned the color in her mind.

A color that suited her well, much contrasting the boring brown that sat on the mop of her head. Maybe it was time to dye it. It had grown well long enough. The color of the sky that everyone looked up to .. where butterflies soared.

But before deciding to go back to sleep, there was a knock on her door, breathing out a sigh. Always Baji or Mikey, spontaneous with their meet up's and hang outs, never letting anyone know in advance if they were excited.

Well, they were in their right minds to be excited after forming a gang after-all.

"What are you guys do--" Anari cut herself off when she swung the door open .. only for there to be no one, no one at all. Only the sound of a car racing down the road in an instant, giving her a crawling sense of deja-vu.

Had the Black Dragons discovered her home and affiliation with Kazutora?

She immediately stepped back inside her home, but looking down at her door-step there was a box. There was a momentary debate on whether or not she should take it in with her.

But she did so anyway, locking her doors and covering all of her windows afterward, even locking them.

The odor that came from the box rotted through her home as she plugged her nose. More importantly, the box was heavy. She swore on all the clouds covering the sun that day that if Pah-chin and Kazutora decided to prank her and send her a block of cheese, she would commit arson on their bikes.

Something told Anari not to open the box, but her brain screamed like pandora's urging curiosity that enabled every nerve in her body, bypassing the adrenaline as she scrunched her nose up at the smell, slowly undoing the ribbon and scrunching her nose up in distaste at the color of the box.

Who in their right mind would choose a tie-dye box? Why not just one solid color and call it a day? More importantly, why a navy blue and maroon dotted box? Abstract art was a questionable thing, a term used for those who simply couldn't paint, or draw and used it as an excuse.

Or at least that was her opinion.

It'd been a while since she had received a boxed present like this.

Lifting up the lid, the smell only grew stronger. Only then did she feel more sure that one of them had played a prank on her.

Completely tossing the lid aside, Anari lifted up the piece of tissue paper layered on top, separating her eyes and the present.

And god did she wish in that very moment that she was blind.

The odor, the stench, the color.

It wasn't a crappy tie-dye box.

The maroon splotches were the shade of oxidized crimson, dried up like days of packaging.

Anari jumped back, letting out a yelp as a fly flew out of the box, scaring the daylight out of her small fragile being. Slowly as Anari crawled back to it, there was a material, almost similar to .. hair. But this hair wasn't dry and hay-like similar to a doll's, but rather it was more like .. grease. Almost as if someone hadn't showered in days-- weeks for that matter.

But the shade of hickory brown made her swallow the lump in her throat, intertwining her fingers with the oily texture, and lifting it out of the box.

Anari wanted to run away from the very thoughts in her mind that plagued every sensation in her furling body that knew the exact twisted truth of what was inside the box. Longevity faded away into the biting dusk, descending to the depths of hell to wallow and suffice in scorching heats, and dissolving in the river of Styx.

The dry taste in her mouth that slowly became acustomed to salt that flew out from her raw eyes.

An unearthly, inhuman sight, of skin pale, colder and whiter than a sheet of snow along a cruel cold mountain, purple veins that were long dead, running through the porcelain skin and lips faded without a trace of color, as if life was desolate from it.

Unparalelled to any type of fear ever faced in her life, Anari let out the gasping sob, screaming for help at the top of her lungs, dropping the very male who smeared blood on her wooden tiles. The very man who taught her family had no meaning behind it, and the same man who filled her head with water to muffle up any sincerity of love or desire for it.

The one who held the lock to the heart she sealed away into her chest, caged in its own repertoire.

"Anari? Anari, what's wrong?" The voice blared through the phone. Shinichiro Sano was a contact she had dialed on instinct as she let out a shriveled sob from her shattered vocal chords.

He hung up the phone in an instant, lifting up the garage door and speeding down the streets without even telling his siblings.

As far as she could remember, Anari was already birthed with the sense of criticism on the world. Past little plastic lies, hesitant smiles and floods of regret behind every little gesture, every little slip of a poker mask, she felt as though she was a dealer with a glance of every contender's hand, yet unable to say them aloud.

She was just someone there, standing while everyone else played the game.

After her mother had fell out of love with her father, and her father who taught both Anari and Hiro to not trust people easily and give your heart out to them or else they'd end up like his miserable state. A man fired from his job, ever too obsessed with his wife and her new lover, neglected his children and everything else in his life ..

All because his wife still held his heart in her wicked hands.

Anari has had love, along with heart-break. All of them were short, quick, but none of them were a love of romanticism.

And for this one, she could feel her heart chip just a little, like the age of wearing down composition of corroding acid rain that spewed out of her eyes as she clung to Shinichiro. Dissolving the colossal walls deluding her very being.

"Hiro .." In the end, Anari did love him just a little bit. It was the very love she tried to give to him in placement of their mother and father, and the same thing he rejected. So she let it cradle and curdle in the bottom of her heavy heart.

She never expected that her brother's supposed happy escape from hell .. would be one in which he was beheaded and tortured to his misery for god knows how long.

And to have his head sent to his younger sister .. was something even more ruthless above all.

"I'll gather connections I have everywhere. I'll have them gather all the information they can, from Osaka to Shinjuku and even to Hokkaido. I'll trace back all of your brother's steps." Shinichiro got on one knee and placed his hands onto her shoulders.

Her eyes were bloodshot, almost a dulled emerald scratched one too many times over.

"Niichiro."

He wiped away her tears. "Yeah?"

"It's okay." Anari wiped away her tears and took a smile. A genuine one proving she was okay. "I .. always knew Hiro was going to die one day. We all do someday right? Some people .. just are earlier than others. Eventually, I'll see him again. So .. its okay."

Shinichiro blinked as he stared at her carefully, once in disbelief, second in anger and third in both. "Why do you keep these things inside of you, Anari?"

As if the girl feigned confusion .. but she wasn't, she tilted her head. "I just cried my heart out .. I'm not sad anymore. Hiro was a dealer and a user .. and he had even gone to Osaka with his friends to expand his trades .. This is how he made me, and this is how I'll stay, otherwise he'd be upset!" Anari laughed.

Anari danced in the own delusion of her imagination, in a ring, and around the rosary that condemned a fate to death's hands.

"Osaka has one of the highest crime-rates in Japan .. He never came home to me, but he mailed me a lot of money once a month .. so I assumed with all of this money, he himself probably had a lot too .. because there'd be no way he'd send his useless little sister so much cash for no reason, unless if it was just pocket-change for him .."

"So I thought he could have at least had at the very least, a happy near-ending, running away with his friends, getting married or something and finding the love of his life after growing up with our parents arguing all the time, being left behind by our aunt and uncle, and taking care of his worthless sister .. I thought he could have at least been selfish for once .. instead of being tortured to his death, that he could've had a painless one."

"I wasn't crying for me .. I was crying on behalf of Hiro. But I'm happy. He's relieved of his pain and burdens now right? So this means .."

"I have to live a long life so I don't join Hiro too soon and make trouble for him!" This was Anari's way to cope, by spiting herself with vindictive venom that trickled into the very veins that led to her beating heart, Anari poisoned herself in order to rid another poison.

All of the sentimental values were burned on a rope tied to a candle, severing their bond between life and death, Anari was carried by Shinichiro as she stared at her home slowly growing smaller and smaller.

"You're back again, kid?" This time, she wasn't accompanied with the usual group of rowdy rough friends, but one singular man, Shinichiro Sano who had some ties with the owner of the tattoo parlor as they shook hands. "You want it bleached again? It grew out a ton." As if second nature, Anari plopped down onto the seat, shaking her hand.

"I want it .. to be pink with morpho blue streams."

Shinichiro barley let out a scoffing chuckle of disbelief. Anari was a butterfly, and she would forever and always be the hope and endurance in lives, shimmering like light blue mirrors, an essence of her past, streaked into her hair endearingly.

It was odd .. after making a statement at the police station, the first place Anari wanted to go to wasn't her favorite spot under the bridge, or to go see anyone .. it was to get her hair done. In the mirror, the girl watched the ends trimmed off, leaving her a final hair of tawny before it'd be transformed, crawling out of a chrysalis, scintillating as could be.