SERENITY ENTHRALLED THE VEINS THAT KISSED THE TWILIGHT'S CLOAK ENAMORED ACROSS THE SKY. A blissfully blessed evening filled with the euphoric love to overflow a day in which time slowed for— or rather a person.

A cold front had hit the first day of the new month, August. Warm little smiles were passed amongst friends along with the clinking glasses cheering in celebration of a day of birth. A legendary legacy of a person to be celebrated, his birthday was known upon the closest.

In which the solarian skies watched over the historic members of the Black Dragon, and the luminescent night and twinkling stars shone a stage for the Sano family.

A man in a black turtle neck and beige long cargo pants sat with a green bottle in his hand. A drunken blush from the day's liquor slipping past his usual composure, watching, full of content and life as bustling howled through the estate's kitchen. His little sister .. or rather sisters, bickered while cooking a birthday dinner for him, and his younger brother.

"Alice you got oil everywhere on me!" Emma hissed, when in reality the oil hadn't touched her skin directly, just her shirt. Anari who was fed up with her whining had smacked the girl clean over the head with the spatula. "Just get out of the kitchen then!"

Emma was a great cook. Anari will admit she was inferior to the eldest and youngest Sano daughter, but in a retrospect, whenever Emma liked to cook over the top extra dishes that were out of her skill range, she tended to get agitated and annoyed easily due to her want of perfection on the first try.

"I hope when you have indigestion after dinner." The blonde girl moped with a whining frown. Anari only rolled her eyes at the curse.

Over by the couch where there was a clear view of the kitchen chaos, Shinichiro laughed while taking another chug of yet another bottle of beer. The man wasn't quite as short or skinny as his younger brother, but rather he had a somewhat built physique.

A seldom fighter and a seldom founder of a former now notorious gang, Shinichiro Sano was a man with both a soft heart with those he loved and cared about. But that was all he was known as. A well respected leader who now owned a motor shop that was a haven to delinquents and gang members all alike.

But he was also quite different in other ways. Not quite so much of an open heart, or a pacifist, he was similar to Anari in some ways. Someone who didn't mind violence, but someone who didn't use it unless by all means was forced to. In the end, they were simply as corrupt. Tainted with the inkling of a midnight sky they stared upon, inhaling the moonlight into their lungs.

"You gonna make her your wife, Manjiro?" Shinichiro prided himself in his siblings. Not just Mikey and Emma, but Anari as well. He'd watched and worried over her as he would a family member. She was a spirit like a butterfly.

They were delicate and beautiful, landing and attracted to flowers, intricate designs that broke upon shattered glass similar to woven spider webs spanning out their titanium threads. She yearned and reached for the sky, touching the stars even if they burned through her skin and scorched her hand into oblivion.

But her wings were so fragile, they were so delicate that even a slight stroke or brush of the wings would fracture and disable the beautiful scales that shone like iridescence in the incandescent sun.

But even knowing so, she kept people near, sheltered her heart into a chrysalis and churned it into its own rattling armor, rather sacrificing her wings to others, to give them even a scale, a fraction of hope or light she received from the divining sun.

She was a messenger into the penumbra of night. A forsaken stuck in inadvertence.

Mikey's obsidian eyes, orbs that amalgamated with his dilating pupils as he stared at Anari wiping her eyes, sniffling from cutting onions and Emma teasing her jokingly before grabbing a napkin and dabbing her eyes, subconsciously, he smiled.

He didn't command his body to smile but it did so on instinct.

Wholeheartedly, with every ounce of his inhumane being, he opened his mouth to speak. "She'll make me hers first." He grinned.

Shinichiro stopped for a moment before a toothy grin cracked onto his face as he ran his fingers through his hair, ruffling the younger's hair. "Maybe you'll be better with the ladies than me."

Anari tried not to turn around but she had a sixth sense whenever Mikey stared at her.

So instead she merely continued on, wondering what they were talking about.

"Mikey's birthday is around the corner too .. looks like we're going to be busy." Emma commented aloud. Anari stared at the calendar where a certain date was circled below that day.

Pursing her lips, she was unsure of what to get the boy. For as long as the day was celebrated with his friends and family, just like Shinichiro, he'd be more than happy.

But he deserved more. From her at least.

Or that was what she felt.

"You know, he keeps everything you give. The time he ran over to your house at lightning speed in the rain to go check on you and Kazutora, he came home with a towel and he still sleeps with it."

She only laughed. It was a Mikey thing to do. He wasn't one to openly express love or whenever he did, it was cheesy and skin crawling for the other boys. It wasn't sentimental. But deep inside, he kept every memory to heart, pinning it to every corner of his walls, and added their resolve to his iron will.

"So you know, Alice .. the least you can do is keep everything he gives you too."

It was almost, just almost as if Emma was implying something. "I do. Of course I do. You know .. without him I'd be a stick in the mud miserable introvert." And that much was true. She was always someone who preferred to live a quiet little life and keep to herself to be safe.

"I know what we have right now as childish little kids might just be called a crush, but that itself is already calling for disaster from its name alone." They were little fragments of infatuation that would slowly come together, glued by serotonin and sleepless nights spent wide awake dazing away.

Thinking about what could be that wasn't.

"I keep everything about him in mind. Somewhere tucked away along with Hiro. It's a warm little place there." Anari poured the tofu into the pot, ignoring the searing pain of the hot boiling water splattering onto her skin.

"And you! Keep being relentless. I'm telling you, Draken gets it, he understands." The pinkette pinched the blonde's nose out of the blue as they began their tousling once again.

Shinichiro ate away to his hearts delight, even his grandfather seemed more bright than usual. The asian blush, or so Anari would call it. He had eaten way past his own fill, but if it was food made by Anari and Emma, there would be no hesitation to dine. They would use the entire fridge to their content leaving it empty the next morning, but made enough food for everyone to have beyond seconds.

The girls were proud of themselves.

There was a melody that sung in the air. The now twenty three year old male had heard this song sung twice now today. But hearing it sung softly in a more relaxed and calm tone made his heart rest a bit quieter rather than the rowdy explosive shouts of happy birthday given to him by his first generation Black Dragon comrades.

He sunk into his seat, humming the tune out loud as they sang. "Happy birthday!"

There were two pecks on the side of his cheeks, perhaps and probably the only he'd ever get in his life by females as there was a quick flash of the camera that Mikey held. A polaroid picture slowly slid out and landed on the floor as he flapped it around to set oxidization process.

The candles were blown, an ignition of scorching hues dissipating in a sullen ashen smoke. Hot candle wax that hadn't made Anari flinch as she touched and removed them. The cake was cut with the glint of a devouring pin point blade that sunk into the cushioning sweet.

Shinichiro himself had even licked some of the icing off of his knuckle. A sour-sweet fluffy icing that melted in his mouth, spell binding his taste buds as he praised his two sisters, neither of which were fully his sisters, yet nonetheless by heart.

The lullaby of a birthday was lamented into his head and the moon took its disappearing act beneath the clouds.

"Mikey move over! I know I'll give you credit for helping me!" Anari held the box above his head carefully as the blonde made room for her to sit onto the ground and pass the box to Shinichiro who curiously unwrapped it.

Anari was more of a handsy person, having grown up with not much money and eventually became someone who was self independent.

To have a gift made by both his brother and the hair dying addict, would be a heap of a surprise.

Holding up the gift as the sound of jingling rung out, clicking together softly making the upmost of delicate muses. Notes that bewildered and dazzled as much as they gleamed with lustrous shine painted on with a coat of clear nail polish.

Each hole was punctured carefully to allow a small thready chain to weave through, connecting them as one.

It was a wind chime made of sea-shells.

Each shell cascaded and created a vibrant ombre effect.

"You two did this on your own?"

They nodded both clumsily and sheepishly. It was quite some work and a lot of materials they may or may have not stolen from Mitsuya's home. "I don't know if it'll look too .. childish or girly in your shop though .." Anari mumbled.

Shinichiro was too preoccupied staring and observing every tiny detail, wondering how much time the two had on their hands to prepare such a gift that he was surprised that Anari was insecure about it.

Insecurity was not something she often let seep out of the crevice of a heart lined in gold, stainless and rustless, forever safe from the seeping toxicity, staying forever untainted.

"I'm gonna hang it. I'm gonna hang it so everyone can see it."

When the drunk twenty three year old male had said that, none of them had meant it literally in that very beating second as they wrestled the former Black Dragon leader, prying him away from his motorcycle keys as Emma grabbed them, clutching them to her chest as she rolled on the ground.

Mikey was latched onto the tall male's back like a monkey, while Anari glued onto his legs. "You can't drive me home Niichi! You're drunk you dimwit!" She punched at his legs to no avail. Mikey, the rabid child he was even pulled at the raven black hair.

In the end, they all ended up toppling over.

"I'll drive her home." Mikey puffed out his chest proudly, almost as though boasting that he was responsible. Shinichiro sat on the carpet, his knees propped up with his hands resting on them like bridges. A near empty sixth beer bottle was placed onto the ground with Emma huffing, exhausted.

"If you drive, who knows when I'll ever be home." Anari poked.

"Who knows if I do that on purpose sometimes." Mikey replied bluntly as Anari kicked his back.

Shinichiro grinned. "Come to the shop tomorrow. I'll have Mikey pick ya up and you'll hear the chimes the second you come in." He was careful with placing it back into the box as the two girls breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Okay, okay! Just go to bed Niichiro, you're starting to scare me, any second now you might throw up on me." Anari and the two Sano siblings helped up the eldest to his feet and guided him to his bedroom at the end of the hall.

If Anari had known. If she had the ability to see in the future above everything else. The bleak future that was held in store, tucked away in the foreshadowing corridors of a soon to be heartache, a heartbreak of life, tumbling away, slipping out of her fingers.

If she had known that as she held Shinichiro's hand, tucking him into bed with one arm ..

She would have held that hand tighter. She would have prayed to the moon and back that the night would never have ended.

"Thanks kid." Shinichiro caused a crease in his mattress and a dip in the bed, so much that Anari's added weight had done nothing. A comforter draped over his lanky figure, Anari smiled. "You deserve the best birthdays in the world." She turned off the lamp and pressed a sober peck against his cheek like the younger sister she was.

"Your brother's gotta be punching the air right now .. You're my little sister now too." Shinichiro reached up to pat Anari's head. The grunt escaped his lips as did the words as he tried to turn over on his side with the weight of digesting food and gravity weighing down. "He'd probably look as stupid as you are when you try to fight a punching dummy."

He clutched his chest-- the wrong side at that, and let out a false wince. But Anari palmed him on the cheek, "go to sleep!"

The man chuckled. "I must be so drunk that I need a little kid to tuck me to sleep .. ha! Since its not my birthday anymore, I'll go to bed so you can get going with Manjiro." And he kept his word, slowly his eyes fluttered to sleep like the descent of a butterfly, Anari rid his room of any pigments of light, slowly closing the door behind her trail.