Tags: discussion of bad character deaths, misfortune, Chise's life, supernatural everything. Slow burn still

Chapter Two - The Color Red (Fool II)

The teachers don't seem to mind her mysterious everything. The college had faked her name for her teacher, so Elias wasn't completely obvious. They were more interested in the brilliance of her red hair, the brightness of her green eyes. In England, it had been uncommon but here it was exotic, or something. Again.

She really didn't want to graduate out here, surrounded by people who decided everything out here was different. She was going to have to find Elias sooner than was feasible.

Still, she left the strangely melancholy Mrs. Toriumi with her paperwork and headed back towards that train station.

"I think she could see me, Chise."

Chise frowned. "Could she?"

"It's possible. She kept looking at the floor."

"That doesn't necessarily mean anything Ruth," she murmured as she hurried down the street. She needed to buy so many new supplies, a better bag, a less obvious foreign everything. Definitely something to hide her arm. She didn't think any of her supplies had survived the past year. She wouldn't be starting until Monday, thankfully, so tonight she could make a list to go shopping tomorrow.

The campus was still pretty crowded as she left, and she could feel people's eyes looking towards her in interest, likely in judgement. That was how people were. Something they weren't prepared for, something they did not understand was met with hasty judgments and the like.

Maybe they would be positive this time, but she wouldn't hold her breath, if she was frank.

"Still," her familiar said. "I don't like her. She has strange eyes."

"I think you've said that about every person we've spoken to so far."

"And it has yet to be proven untrue."

She almost laughed, but stifled it, in case someone realized she really wasn, for all intents and purposes, talking to herself.

She was going to have to send Alice a lot of letters or she would explode from boredom. Or panic. Or both.

Akihiko-senpai met him for an early dinner. For once it wasn't ramen. He loved his protein and his carbs and his ramen, but the combined efforts of Ken and Mitsuru both had him at least eating a couple more balanced vegetables so his skin didn't turn into a leech or something.

And there was no one else in the group he'd like to have lunch with. Fuuka-san could cook now, and often did with aplomb. Aigis couldn't eat, Mitsuru-senpai would be on the phone the whole time, Junpei and Chidori were insufferable and… well. Koromaru was a dog.

So Akihiko-senpai it was then.

He was already there, tracksuit jacket hanging on the chair and for once not magically on his shoulders. He strode over, greeting his old senior with a small smile.

He thought, a moment, that this would be a great place for everyone to meet. It'd be chaotic and… missing a person, but it'd be fun. Right?

"Hey, senpai," he greeted, sidling into his chair.

"I'm not your senpai anymore," Akihiko grunted but grinned at him anyway, motioning to his bowl. "Check this out."

Ken obediently praised his senpai's food choices before picking up the menu and ordering politely when the waiter came by. As he thought of his friends, the strange girl going on the train and the shadow that had followed her too close, too easily, even though it had looked so heavy. Like it was also walking-

He dismissed the thought. That wasn't a Shadow. Shadows didn't leave humans behind and carry them along. Or at least they didn't walk with people.

"You're thinking awfully hard about your cola," Akihiko informed him dryly.

Ken's cheeks darkened with embarrassment and hedged. "Well, carbonation is an important topic in chemistry." When his mentor simply raised an eyebrow, Ken sighed. "There was a strange girl getting on the train on the way home."

"Define strange." Akihiko-senpai said with a smirk. "Shadows? Weird cosplay? Giggling to herself and muttering about knives? Draws Junpei better than anyone draws anything?"

Ken almost laughed, because there was only one person who could do that, and Chidori was much more mellow now. To a point. "Well now that you mention it…"

"Not another one," Akihiko grumbled, still grinning.

Ken laughed and took a sip of soda. Then he said. "She had red hair and she did have a strange shadow. I thought she was talking to it. It moved in a way, it didn't look like her for a second, but I thought I imagined it."

Akihiko hummed a bit, taking another heaving helping of his meal. God that was terrifying. He knew exactly where it went and what it would do for him, but goodness. "Red hair, you said? You sure it wasn't a long lost sister of Mitsuru's? Or at least a cousin?"

"That sounds more terrifying. I don't think anyone in her family would have green eyes though, would they?" Because he remembered those eyes, greener than grass and bottles and the sky during strange storms. Like someone had bottled the color and poured it into one of her irises. The other… he couldn't tell what that had been. But it had been very cold.

Akihiko rolled his eyes. "Probably not, or they'd try to pretend that kid was Mitsuru and could inherit the company. Massive political scandal and all of that."

They didn't talk for a while, as Ken's food arrived and he was actually kind of hungry. (He always did spear practice in the morning and lunch never quite fixed the low energy from that, not that his teachers noticed.) But eventually, after downing another protein powder infused gulp (Ken shuddered outright), he said.

"So, I grew up in the orphanage for a while."

Ken swallowed and nodded. This was never mentioned lightly, Miki was never mentioned lightly. Shinjiro was never mentioned lightly. Even years later, the guilt burrowed in his gut with the self-loathing, and he often had to stop himself from saying something awful about himself that led to a sweaty public hug. It was just indecent. "Right."

"There was a girl there, about Miki's age, for a little while, before it burned down." Akihiko idly spun the ice around in his glass. "Redhead, quiet, jumped a lot. The other kids tried to bully her a lot. There were bandages on her neck for a bit, hiding some real shitty bruises. Adult hand bruises, Shinji told me. He saw them once while sneaking around. She was terrified of her own shadow. But see, weird stuff happened around her. Later I thought it was Shadows, like she was maybe a Shadow magnet or something. Things would break and she wouldn't touch them, she'd be found with somebody's toy ripped limb from limb and staring at it like it was trying to eat her. Her food would get stolen a lot."

Ken felt strangely cold, the more his mentor talked, like the words were sucking the life out of the tiny restaurant.

:Sometimes we thought people were giving her shit. We put a stop to it, because we thought we were heroes. Then the place caught on fire. We couldn't find Miki, but we heard that girl was nowhere to be found either. Don't really remember her name, but I remember her trying to find all the candles and unplug all the lights. I think she got locked in her room for it when they caught her. She sounded really manic, and ran like she was chasing something."

Akihiko-senpai trailed off. "I thought it was just an accident."

"Do… do you think she set the fire?" Ken asked.

Akihiko shook his head. "No. She couldn't hold matches or lighters. She always dropped them. But she thought something was going to, I bet." he grimaced. "God what the hell was her name? Chisao? Hatomu? Chise? Yeah, it was Chise, can't remember her last name for the life of me. She sounded like that though. Red hair, green eyes. Small as a duckling. Absolute thick bags in her eyes. Could be your girl."

Ken almost rolled his eyes but he caught the meaning in the nick of time. "What happened to her?"

"Got dragged out by some relatives of hers. Really nice people I thought, but she looked at them like they were gonna eat her, bones and all." Akihiko shrugged. "Anyway, sorry, depressing story. Just struck a chord. Anyway, have you heard from Fuuka lately?"

Ken eagerly latched onto this, talking about the sheer hell she was unleashing on the IT world and with Mitsuru's help, destroying all mankind as they knew it.

But his mentor's words lingered in the back of his mind anyway.