green

A lone girl walked the streets of Mitakihara, ruby-red eyes scanning the streets around her as the cool spring air brushed across her face. She hunkered down in her jacket, wondering for a moment if it was worth trying to wrestle her long, green hair into the hood. …Probably not. It wasn’t THAT cold. No colder than it had been the last few months, anyway, the gently-falling snow a cruel underscore for the wild changes in her life lately.

Not something she wanted to think about, at the moment. Not when she’d finally gotten a little peace from a certain senselessly cheery redhead and the sycophants surrounding her…boss. Someone she would have liked to call her friend, even with the circumstances as they were. …Despite all her worries, this city made her feel warm. An old, nostalgic glow filled her soul gem, along with the gentle gnawing of an old, obnoxious friend.

She was trying to quit. Really, she was. And for a while, in spite of everything, she was winning. But the siren call of the cigarette machines made the old, forged Taspo card in her pocket burn. One of the passerby gave her a look as she stepped up to it – she was a little young, wasn’t she?

…No, it was his imagination. A trick of the light. The woman he’d thought was a teenager just then was most assuredly an adult. Not a nice, productive office lady or some college student, though. Just a curvy young woman with tired, sunken eyes and a bustline that was working hard at demolishing an old yellow t-shirt. An escort, most probably. He was entirely sure he’d seen her walking here from the red light district…

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An old, smoky bar. An ageless black man. A bottle of expensive whiskey. That was what she’d resorted to that night, in the end. A thousand and one memories rushed back to the green-haired girl. Maybe this wasn’t where she needed to be – no, she knew this wasn’t where she needed to be, thanks to years of experience in her field and the Chirpee app on her phone. Murderface – Matsuda Chiaki, this time around – wasn’t going to be out. She was babysitting now. Warmaster, now. Part of the Idol Voices Around the World event, or whatever it was. She might have even been safe in bed right then, with Kirishima Ruri’s head between her legs.

…No. That didn’t sound like her. But it made the girl’s blood boil just thinking about it, and the only way she could think of to cool it down was another shot, under the watchful but indifferent eyes of Charles. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t afford to get falling-down drunk. She never could, anymore. She was a Callidus. A professional. Not even when she was here, back in this bar, in this city, thinking about that person, could she just drink like a normal fucking person anymore.

The red-eyed girl reminded herself after another couple of shots that she didn’t have much time to waste here. It wasn’t a vacation, much as she wanted it to be. The air had changed in Mitakihara. It had gotten heavier, or maybe it was a sort of underlying scent; a sugar-and-corpses smell that lingered in her nose now, no matter where in the city she was. Or maybe…

Maybe it was just that, as she knew better than anyone, things here were going to get much, much worse.