Russian Roulette;; Flashback Thread

Early morning sun leaked through the poorly shielded window, oh nope that was not an actual shudder on that window, it was poorly woven fabric hanging over the front counter of her father’s shop! The tiny girl clutched the book she had been holding in her sleep recently, rolling over onto her side only to find her way blocked by her father’s well muscled side. Ebony hair obstructed her view as she opened her tiny eyes, small tears pricking at the sides of them; She woke every morning expecting this all to be a nightmare! Each morning she thought she’d be in her room with her parents across the hall, and her father would have her mother in his arms instead of a bottle. A few nights after her mother had been found burned to death? She noticed her father starting to go heavy on the whisky, and now he barely woke up, it was concerning to say the least, but she was a child incapable of doing anything for it. Jiyu went to work doing the only thing she could do, standing up, struggling to brush her lower back length hair till it was free of knots, and placing her white sun dress onto her body. Once she was ready for her day? The little girl yanked the cover off the window of her father’s shop. “Daddy it’s time to start the day, I’m going to go get breakfast.” the drunk groaned, dismissing his daughter with his left hand as his right brought the bottle to his lips and a frown to hers. Clutching her book to her chest, she turned and walked away pain in her odd colored eyes, blinking away the tears because she had to be strong right now, somehow, she couldn’t cry forever.

Now how was she going to eat when she had no money, and her father was out cold?

Kazehime walked in her bare feet, steps wobbly from the pain of newly forming calluses, sores and bruises. As of yet? Her father had not even attempted to get her new shoes, and honestly it was a relief to her, it was a fight they didn’t need yet! Jiyu already knew she’d never wear shoes again, if her mother could not fulfill the promise to buy her new ones, than the child did not want shoes, ever again. Even if her feet bleed and felt like they were falling off, the little girl did not want shoes, it made this all too final and too painful, the thought of completing that final promise with someone other than her gorgeous mother. “Jiyu? Oh my-” this is what she was counting on this morning, it made the little girl sick to her stomach, but she had no other options, nothing else would work at the moment! Large eyes looked up at the shop keeper who had spoke, a woman about thirty years old with short curly slightly silvered hair and kind eyes. Everyone in this village? Seemed to have kind eyes, but it all felt numb by now, she hated the pity, because their looks of sympathy made it more real, yet she could not refuse them. “Good Morning Mrs.Ackerman.” her small voice rose up, and her eyes averted the gaze, a slight red tinge covering her face at the shame of what she was doing. If you realized someone was giving you items out of pity instead of kindness, you should stop them, right? Yet she had to get by somehow until her father came out of his depression, and right now that was by taking pity to provide them both with food, since he didn’t even get up most days! “Is your father not around again today?” the woman’s voice was concerned and Jiyu nodded sadly, solemly to confirm the suspicion of the older female. “Than you haven’t eaten yet, it’s important for a growing girl to eat, come on join us and you can bring some back to your father.” she felt her back pushed slightly and followed the woman in to eat with her family, because she had no other choice. Throughout the whole meal Jiyu remained mostly silent, and they all looked at her sadly, she nearly couldn’t take it, but she did her best to smile for them. “Thank you.” and with that, having finished the waffles, she was free to take her dad’s portion back and do something else.

Hours later she was wandering through the town once more, aimlessly just meandering. Right now? Most of the other kids did not know what to say to her, considering she had lost her mother, they all wanted to say something to help, but there was nothing they could say. “Huh?” as she was walking to join the other children out in the lands surrounding the village to play? The female noticed another child who had not left out to play with the other’s yet, turning to walk over to him, clutching her book to her chest and looking at him with a blank expression, staring before a smile came to her face, one so wide it closed her eyes. “Good Morning, I’m Jiyu, What’s Your Name?”

Being around people freakishly taller than her never really bothered the child, considering her father was possibly one of the tallest men in the village. Even if she was pissed with the way he was throwing everything away now? Existing in the presence of someone who stood higher than she did, right now it was a form of comfort, of course almost everyone was taller than Jiyu because even at this age she was oddly short. Considering the height difference, that glare really was not frightening to the little girl, actually it looked funny to have someone so huge glaring at something so utterly tiny, petty maybe that they were so guarded towards a being that obviously could do no harm. In fact the event was so humorous to her, she had to bite her tongue within her mouth, to prevent laughter from rising in her throat! To distract herself from the joker like glare in his dark shaded eyes, she began to run her differently pigmented eyes over the male before her, taking everything in. He was odd in terms of looking like he belonged in the village, first off most of the men in this village cut their hair short, they were workers who could be put in danger by long hair, and from that example most male children here had short hair. So from the get go? She could assume he had originally come from out of town due to his about shoulder length hair. While it was not overly long, it was lengthy compared to the other male childrens classic hair cuts, their fades and top knots. Next was his clothing, the cap was weird, but interesting, her eyes glued to it for a good few moments, before drifting down to his shirt and shorts, nodding to herself about the details she’d observed and the facts she drew from them. She was ready to continue this interact in any way she was required to, the path was his to decide until he threw it back into her court.

His vocabulary was bigger than hers, and the little girl's words eyes widened at his speech. At the moment? She had no way to know those were bad words, only that he possessed knowledge she did not yet have and she lusted for that information to be hers as well, even if she had to take it from the boy! Even before her mother died she’d always had a book hidden somewhere on her person, knowing things about everything was someone’s best weapon against the world, her mother pounded that into her head! “Your smart, tell me what bitch and fucking mean” suddenly the child was closer than before, her large eyes sparkling up at him as if she had found something extraordinary, her book tight against her flat chest as she stood on her tip toes giving him puppy dog eyes that could cause fatalities. Considering she was a dog without actually knowing it? Jiyu was exceptionally good at begging and making people give in to her, not that she realized the true potential of that yet. In fact, her mother had discouraged it, so this was really one of the first times she was actually trying to, urge, someone to do what she wanted. “Please?” she could look like an angel with her pale skin and pure white dress, yet her black hair cascaded around her to the start of her lower back and ruined the image of an angel. With both her blue and green eye shining she looked up expectantly, his scare tactic clearly having not worked on her whatsoever. If anything? His actions seemed to make her more eager to not leave him alone anytime soon!

“So you have more than one of yourself to introduce? Go ahead, I have time.” she didn’t even question him, her expression was questioning but it wasn’t exactly towards him. If anything? He was interesting, and something she wanted to get to know more about. Anyone who had been in the village long enough knew, once this little puppy like female found something she enjoyed, it was worse than trying to take a bone from a dog. Now that he had made her interested? Jiyu was never going to leave him alone! “Also I really like your hat.” her feet finally scuffled back, because she’d gotten so close it had no longer been easy to look up at him. It was weird, how she seemed so calm and yet seemed unable to stay on one certain subject for too long.

One day she would be exceedingly good at pissing people off, heck she’d get off doing it, but for now Lucius was one of the few people genuinely ticked off by the well meaning little girl. Most people in the village had lived here to learn that if you appeased Jiyu well and truly, told her all she wished to know, the child typically moved onto something else for some time before returning to you. In summary, she was an easy woman to please, and once appeased she’d seem to simply vanish for some time, most times. This boy may not have the luck that other people had, he was truly foreign to her, an enigma, the oddest thing she’d seen in her life so far. Considering she now had a single claw into something that held so much of the unknown, she did not want to remove that claw to leave only a single bloody trail, she wanted to sink the other nine into him and maybe the ten on her feet could find purchase within his flesh as well! Innocently meant of course, it was a metaphor for the fact she wanted to discover more about him, one of the few beings in the village she’d had an express interest in befriending after her mother’s death. Lulu was flat out screwed right now, because while one day Jiyu would be a powerful magic user, she had not even begun to train yet! Jiyu’s parent’s had both been mages at one point in time, never anything significant but they had been magic users in some way. However that world had scarred and frightened her parent’s in the end, left deep wounds that they never wanted her to be required to carry! Thus they had always insisted their little girl was not ready to learn magic. That was one of the reasons Kazehime was so sure her mother was murdered! It was something she knew would take place, her death, Jiyu’s mother knew that when she sent her to the shop that day, she’d never get to see her little girl again; The proof was so clear, held right in her arms tightly against her chest, a book containing everything her mother knew of magic. Why when she had stuck so close to her father in the opinion that the little girl was not ready for magic, would her mother suddenly leave a magic book to her? Kazehime could only predict that her mother came to some sort of conclusion in her final moments before the flames, that the little girl would one day need the magic contained within, for her own safety.

Her senses were much duller than they would be in the future, but her dormant blood was enough to boost them, the metallic scrape, the strich scratch of his finger across the metal, giving him away to her. Jiyu’s face never faltered, showing no sign she’d caught onto to his malicious thoughts in anyway, tuning her senses into him and yet passing it off as a nervous gesture of his. She suspected him of wanting to murder her, and yet she chose the better path, the other option, despite her current history, she chose to believe in someone with a deadly weapon. “People compare me to dog’s lots so it’s not an insult to me.” one day that opinion would change, she would hate the comparison, but for now she had enough fond memories of being called ‘puppy’ or such from her parents, that being called a bitch was not really insultive to her, right now it was just kinda right. “You need anger management then Mint.” and with his resistance to her, Lulu put himself into more suffering, her large eyes staring up at him as if this was normal, just assigning her own idea of a name to him, a nickname. If he was ticked off by someone asking his name, then this boy needed classes on how to control his emotions! Jiyu could do nothing about his issues thought, she could only try to keep the one claw she had in him, lodged where it was.

The second she-devil haunting his soul appeared and he’d probably never get to pick which girl was worse. Astrid's softer voice broke through the air, drawing Jiyu’s gaze, she could recognize the voice easily, being as her memory was a pretty decent one. “His name is, Lulu?” the child cocked her head to the side, looking doubtful, as if she couldn't believe that was actually the name of a boy. Of course it was not her name, but now she had no true way of knowing that, honestly it would explain why he didn’t want to tell her his name! “I was just talking.” the little girl was just interrupting her fun, nothing serious, Jiyu was not possessive about her games yet, this age she didn’t even know she was playing. Lunch. Crap. Her stomach rumbled distinctly. “It’s that close to lunch already? Fuck…… Did I use the word right Lulu?” and now his sister knew that he was teaching other children to curse, Jiyu glancing down slightly, tightening her hands and turning her toes inward, feet shifting, red dusted across her face as she prayed her usage of ‘fuck’ had been correct. Even though she's just cussed? She still, innocence cling to her somewhat, despite what she had been through and hi words , she looked somewhat innocent. Astrid was an angel and Jiyu was an infant so to speak. You weren't winning no matter which one you took. Kazehime sighed, trying to figure out how she'd eat lunch today .

She knew what hate was despite not being aware that she knew its face. The expression on the face of the man who had lit her house up and killed her mother? That was hatred, and it was her only experience with the emotion thus so far in her short life. Even though Mint seemed to dislike her, she couldn’t call his emotions hatred, that was a powerful word in her opinion, one with immense potential to ruin everything. So for now, she’d keep believing the rough sound of a blade being gripped, was a nervous habit instead of his dislike being so thick that he wished to end her meek little life! If you were going to kill someone, you had to hate them first, and this green haired boy had no real reason to despise her, thus if he wanted to kill her, the tiny girl was not certain she could keep believing in people. Ever since the day her mother died? Jiyu had been missing tons from her life, her feet standing so close to his because she lacked physical contact with other humans, at least compared to what her mother had provided! Akane had loved her daughter dearly, always holding the girl's hand or hugging her and Ambrose had once done the same to Jiyu, before his fiance died. After the flames had taken her mother, everything started changing for the young female, and the only way she was able to keep her head up was allowing herself to be a naive idiot. If the little girl had allowed herself to truly grow up the way an event like the loss of one's mother made someone grow up? Jiyu would have been unable to keep going , the child would not be standing here talking to the boy.

Not giving this little canine like human what she craved, it always backfired, Jiyu often got her way because whenever she didn’t get it, everything backfired. Sometimes? The fallout was not even her own fault, while other times like right now, she directly caused the event or her actions were the fallout. “Fucking…. Is that the active term of fuck?” it was a question, but one she did not seemed to actually need him to answer, small smile playing across her lips, green eye observing him as he sat down and seemed to begin ignoring her. Somehow she had to get his attention back, but that was something that coune else approaching and looked in the direction his sister was coming from, focusing in on where she would appear before any any normal human would be able to sense someone.

“Lucius.” she spoke out his name carefully, tilting her head with it, getting used to the feeling of it on her tongue, because he was one she would remember. The other girl was a name she was still striving for, one she knew but on the tip of her tongue it wasn’t easy to accomplish. As she listened to them speak, Jiyu realized now that she would have to hunt once more today, likely by fishing. Even though her mother was gone? The border collie like woman had taught her daughter everything she needed to eventually survive on her own, all Jiyu would need to learn was how to be on her own. However that was not something people should truly want to learn how to do! Instead she would have to learn to rely on people, even after they had hurt her, without allowing tension to emerge because of it.

“Yes…. please.” she seemed shocked that they had invited her. Normally? It was the adults that fed her, because they didn’t want to be seen as unsympathetic by the others around them. However since this invitation came from another child, it felt different from the last one’s. Kazehime looked at the pale haired girl, biting her bottom lip as she managed to nod alongside her verbal agreement. Taking food from others? Only reminded her that the one who should have been taking care of her, was passed out on the floor of his shop, drunk. “It would be very helpful” she gave something akin to curtsy as if swallowing pride. When she did manage to catch something from hunting, it was mostly small and not really any true meal for a growing girl, so the lunch with these two, it would really help out.