THE MARK OF THE SUN'S SHADOW CASTED BEFORE THEM BETOLD ALL THAT IT WAS NOON. The pair of elementary schoolers from Fourth Middle School stood in front of one another. It was yet another day in which kids were spared from sacrificing their lunch money from what they assumed was Draken's good mood.
When in reality, a rather short bleached blonde who hadn't yet hit her growth spurt held out a blue ribbon tied box in front of the boy.
They stood on the third floor of the school, in front of the shut down bathrooms that had gone out of use when last year some of the seventh years had played a prank with a coke bottle and mentos throughout all the toilets, nearly flooding the entire floor, causing the walls to mold and forcing the school to shut down school for some time.
"What the hell is this!?" He yapped.
Anari puffed out her cheeks, picking the ear wax from her ears lazily. "Oi! I know you can hear me dammit! Did you switch your lunch with mine or somethin'?!"
Today, Draken's lunch was not the usual four stacked bento boxes it was-- but rather two. His lunch was cut in half. There were instances Draken would understand if she was short on money and food at home-- but considering her brother was halfway across the country with his own buddies-- meaning she was home alone, it'd mean she had plenty of both food and money scavenging around at home.
The more Draken looked down on the girl, the more she seemed to ignore him, until he bent over.
"You need to stop growing!" Anari pointed her finger at him accusingly.
Draken twitched in annoyance. "You see this damn dragon tattoo? Don't forget I can send you flying out that window!" He held up his fist, but Anari stuck out a colorful finger at him-- one Draken had taught her just a while back. And one he regret teaching.
"Hey! You don't use that finger at me!"
"But you told me to use it to people who pissed me off." Anari replied mischievously.
He tousled the hair at the top of his head whilst gritting his teeth.
Nine year old Draken was an easily temperamental child, which matched his cousin. Little to no one knew that the two were related, which was for the better good, incase Anari was caught up in Draken's business with other middle school delinquents.
Although Anari at first glance seemed the most rational of the two, it was just a farce. She easily threw tantrums and when she did so, she didn't like being interrupted, for the tantrum could go one to two ways. The first instance would be a bubbling rage of silence waiting to be popped, and the second would be screaming right off the bat.
At school however, she had a clean record as a teacher's pet who would even stay afterschool to help grade papers. Secretly, if people paid her, she would bump their grade up a bit.
It was her part-time job as a nine year old.
Snitches were dealt with by her patrons.
"Draken, you're growing too tall! I used to be at your shoulders and now I'm at your arm pits and they stink! I've been feeding you too much growth food!" Anari puffed out her chest, folding her arms at the ticked male.
"And you think the option is to feed me all this teeth rotting shit?" He replied, opening the bento boxes that were filled with dollar store chocolates and sprinkles. They were definitely one of Anari's failed attempts at box brownies.
"Well I heard that eating lots of sugar will make u gain weight! And if you're too heavy, you can't grow! Genius right?" This was not one of Anari's brightest moments. Draken swung the bento box, hitting her on the forehead hard-- but not too hard to knock the feathery child down onto her arse.
"Tch. I'll grab some food with Mikey after school."
Anari tilted her head curiously. "So he really is your friend. He's weird."
"You wouldn't understand." Draken turned around and began walking. His cousin tailed along behind. "Why? Because I'm not a delinquent and I'm a goodie two shoes?" Anari shrugged simply, adjusting the jacket tied around her waist, preventing her skirt from flying up.
Anari was met with the unsatisfactory silence of an unreplied question. "Then show me what's so great about him. I've seen you beat up kids all the time, Mitsuya too."
"I can't show you! His name is just known! If you'd been there and seen him knock out the snot out of Sameyama then you'd realize how awesome he is!"
The blonde female grinned. "What? Do you have a crush on him or something?"
Draken slapped her wrist. "I'm not into guys!"
Anari found amusement in getting reactions out of her cousin. It was fun getting payback with him using her as a mini punching bag all the time.
Anari and her older brother had a rather interesting relationship. It was like they had skipped a few steps of siblinghood because of their unusually large age gap. She had known ever since she was a child that her brother was far, far away from getting a one-way ticket to heaven.
But in their defense, they weren't strongly religious people. Although their aunt and uncle were.
It happened ever since she was just a tiny toddler hiding and peeking through the tiny door crack at the people who came into their home late at night.
It was amusing their parents named him Hiro. Although it was a homophone of the word 'hero', the characters in his name meant tolerant. And that much, Anari could agree with. Her brother who had lived double her lifetime had endured abandonment from their parents, aunt and uncle, while still caring for his younger sister, paying the bills and taxes single handedly alone with the occasional midnights of Anari sitting on a wooden chair at the kitchen table with a dim flickering light bulb above their heads holding a calculator in her hand, typing in the numbers her elder brother called out loud.
Although it was safe to say the two of them didn't strongly love each other. Perhaps a trace of the emotion was there-- but it was a wisp that would disappear into the dust the moment it was touched.
Perhaps that was for Anari's own good to not grow an attachment to her brother.
When she was seven, or six, she was desperate to show her capacity of loving to her brother, only to have it rejected over, and over, and over. Somewhere across the blurring line, Anari had stopped feeling hurt about it and accepted it, and instead she made her own reasoning in stead of her brother.
So the love she held for their parents died along with them, and the love she held for the short period they had their aunt and uncle-- had also disappeared along with them.
And the love and faith Anari held in Hiro, was vaporized and overloaded with a toxin of numbness that helped her carry on life, blocking out the systematic pain that branched out through her nervous system, it made her strong in a way, but uncapable of feeling human emotion.
She hadn't even realized the bloody trail she left behind with the staggered drags of her bloodied feet.
A descent into a pit with the moon as the witness.
"Aren't these the flowers that grow on that abandoned rugby field somewhere on third street?" Anari held them upside down, shaking them, and then glancing at them close up, every detail of pollen and every crease of the petal in the wilting and dying bouquet that singularly held a lollipop in the center of it.
"My sister picked them with me." The boy with his hands shoved in his pocket as per usual replied.
"You have a sister?" The two cousins chorused. Mikey laughed, "you two totally sounded the exact same just now!"
Anari's opinion didn't change of him being weird. "So .. these are for me?"
Mikey nodded, taking the lollipop out of his mouth showing that the flavor this time wasn't grape, but rather it was cherry. An Anari approved flavor as she nodded her head.
"Wanted to make a decent second impression if Kenchin is gonna be my new buddy." Mikey swung his arm around the taller male's shoulders. Anari initially didn't take Mikey as someone who needed validation to become friend's with someone. But she excused it, running inside to grab a vase.
He seemed a little proud of himself for picking the flowers-- probably because he wasn't used to doing this for people, and probably thought that it was an honor to have flowers picked by him. Arrogant as could be.
But with the comment about Mikey's sister helping him, she found no reason to tell him that the flowers probably wouldn't last more than a day since they were picked so poorly.
By the time Anari was done with setting the vase onto the wooden nightstand in her room right by the window, she returned back to the front door blinking. "What are you two still doing here?"
Draken seemed confused as he looked up from his dust war with Mikey that was taking place on the floor. "Didn't you tell me earlier to show you what's so great about Mikey?" Mikey, hearing his name placed within the sentence had cocked his head over facing Draken and then his eyes flew onto Anari.
"Do you need me to put stickers on your hands and tell you guys that you have my blessing?" She had read once in a book that when people start dating they ask for blessing from their lover's parents or relatives. She wasn't sure why it worked like that, but apparently it was a tradition done by many people alike.
"What's there to show?" Mikey genuinely had questioned.
It was almost as if Mikey was completely unaware or at least pretended to be-- that Anari wasn't the type of person he assumed she was.
She could care absolutely less about Draken and his companions.
More specifically, she could care less about him.
"You guys can go. I'm going to--" Before Anari could make up an excuse for herself, she was cut off in an instant.
"Come with us, Rin." The foreign name caused her to take one step back into her home as Mikey had taken one leap forward. He was like a frog. Literally.
Anari looked back to her cousin for help-- but he only grinned with twinkles in his eyes. "I'll show you why I'm so great."
Hesitant, but yet also drawn by her own sense of curiosity that drew its marks across a canvas that aligned her framed and destined marking, Anari took the hand that was offered, as Mikey yanked it, pulling her behind him as he closed her door shut, not bothering to lock it.
"Where are we going?!" Anari shouted as the pair of boys dragged her along while sprinting like cheetahs down the sidewalk, nearly causing her to levitate when they took a sharp turn and her grip on Draken's arm was almost loosened for a split second. "To meet Baji!"
Neither Draken nor Anari knew who Baji was, but Mikey seemed excited enough to make Draken excited.
Instead, Anari's mind was occupied on the nickname Mikey had given her, just like he had given one to Draken. Maybe it was purely coincidental because re-arranging the order of the letters in her name would spell out Rin, or because the definitive meaning behind the name Rin was dignified and cold.
Anari didn't see herself as someone cold. She liked being happy, even though it wasn't often she was. Her yearn of happiness was an addiction equivalent to her brother's smoking addiction. Something in the future that would lead the end of her disintegrating path to death's door.