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Fearful
Moon Kitty 2005
Prologue: Kidnapping
April 8th, 2007
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Shimmering emerald hair bobbed atop a young head as a little girl no more than seven walked along the stone path, pushing her glasses up as the sweat made them slide down the bridge of her nose.
The scent of incense and flowers filled the air, cherry blossom trees shedding their petals and covering the ground in a lightly scented blanket. Midorikawa Retasu had always loved this particular part of the hill. Though it was a cemetary, it always looked so pretty and sacred, and she had to admit that when she was littler, she felt she had no reason to be there. But now she did.
Kneeling at an ornate-looking marker, she ran her trembling fingers over the name engraved on the stone, placing the bouquet of flowers she clutched at the base. Her beloved father, taken away from her early from a disease that most doctors did not know how to cure. So here she was, stuck all by herself, her mother having died years before during childbirth.
She had no idea what she was supposed to do now. Not only was she an orphan, but now she was being forced to live by herself, support herself, everything. She was also forced to lie to people who might inquire where her parents were. Knowing that Retasu despised orphanages and being a close family friend, the priest who had buried her father agreed not to let anyone know that her father had passed away.
He had told her he would occasionally bring by enough money to get necessities and food. He was just that kind of person. Always giving instead of receiving. Although he knew that lying wasn't a very religious thing to do, but in her time of need and confusion, he knew that they would both be forgiven.
He couldn't imagine how hard it would be for the poor little girl who was not only orphaned, but now was being forced to fend for herself in a world that wasn't too friendly towards youngsters.
Retasu sighed and wiped a tear from her cheek. She could do it. Though she was young, she knew that she could live without her father and mother. She was a strong person. She would make it through. With the priest's help and her inner will, she knew she could support herself.
Glancing once more at her father's headstone, she stood, brushed the dirt off of the hem of her dress, and began the long, lonely walk back to her house. Yes, it was her house now. The house that she had been born in and the house that she would grow up in.
After exiting the cemetary, she walked silently along the crowded streets of the market square. Women were bustling around with their children who looked no more older than herself. And yet she could feel tears gathering in her eyes. This was the life she was going to be forced to live. No parents to support her.
Why did her father have to die? Why did he leave her when she was so young and vunerable? Now, because her father left, she would not be able to live the normal life of a child. She would be forced to mature beyond her years before she even reached adolescence.
The priest had told her constantly during the small funeral that it was not her father's fault, nor hers. But she still felt bitter toward the death and seeming abandonment of her father. He had also told her that she would understand when she was older, but something told her that she never would.
She opened the squeaky door to their house and closed it behind her, shuffling her small feet on the rug and slipping her shoes off, looking around sadly at the empty, unlively house. This was what she was being forced to look forward to every day?
No sand castles, no swings, no snuck ice cream after school lessons, no hopscotch with classmates. She was only seven... but turning into an adult so quickly.
Heading into the kitchen, she opened the cabinets that she could reach and saw nothing but dust. No food down here, she thought, waddling over to fetch a chair from the kitchen table, dragging it over to the counter so she could see what was in the upper cabinets. All that was left was a loaf of bread and some crackers.
The priest had told her that he would be by the following day to give her some money to go to the market, and had warned her not to spend it on foolish things. So there went her candy, her sweets, her toys... and as she thought of toys, she thought of birthdays, Christmas, holidays that were supposed to spend with her family... but now she was facing them alone.
Scuffling the chair back into its place at the table, she nibbled quietly at a cracker, the only sound besides her chewing in the room was the clicking of the large clock that sat on the wall adjacent from the dining room table. With each tick, with each tock, something stabbed deeper into her heart, and as she swallowed the stale food, she began to cry.
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3 Years Later
10-year-old Retasu Midorikawa smiled at the priest, clutching the money he handed her thankfully in her small, fragile palm. She nodded as he shook her hand and kissed her forehead, scuffling away from the doorway without a single word. The priest had been concentrating on not speaking for a whole 40 days, and only used sign language when he needed to say something.
Poor Retasu was as thin as ever, and still suffering. Though taking a part-time job at the local market did help with food and the upkeep of the house, and learning how to sew from her boss helped with the upkeep of her clothes, she still felt as if something amazing was about to happen to her. She didn't know what, and she didn't know when, but she hoped it was soon.
She couldn't live like this much longer.
But most of all, she was fearful for herself. Lately, the neighboring village and her own had been in some sort of squabble. She wasn't sure wholly what it was about, but she knew inside that she had no desire to find out. More than once the people next door had threatened to pillage and burn down the village if Retasu's did not comply to their demands. She was only ten, so she didn't keep up with it much. She was much too busy. But she wasn't surprised when she heard the neighing of horses outside her house and the smell of burned houses and ash filling the air.
She had first awoken to the smell, but simply thought it was nothing, cuddling further in her bed and covering herself with the thin blanket. But then she was awoken later as a loud scream sounded from outside, frighteningly close to her own house. She threw the blankets off her bed, immediately coughing as smoke filled the house.
She couldn't see anything in front of her and she began to panic. What if they were burning her house down? What if they were going to kill her, rape her, leave her trapped in this burning house?
Before she could worry about anything like that, the thick nature of the smoke and the beat of the club against her small skull made her fall unconscious, oblivious to the men that carried her from the house and rode away, leaving the house burning in the background.
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She forced her eyes open with a considerable amount of effort, blinking fiercely as the dim light even hurt her emerald eyes, her vision swimming. Her head throbbed, her mouth felt dry, and her wrists were tied behind her back, her skin feeling raw and bruised. She was lying on her side, and as she tried to open her eyes to get a look at her surroundings, she sighed.
Might as well open them a little at a time, she thought, but every time she caught light her head pounded even harder. Where am I? Suddenly she felt scared. Every bit of maturity that she had acquired over the past three years flew out the window as her child-like instincts kicked into gear.
She struggled against her bonds, wincing as they cut deeper into the soft skin of her wrist. Stopping movement as something moved toward her, she inched her eyes open little by little, ignoring the pain in her head, trying to decide if that thing was there to kill her.
Noting the way a cold wet rag swept across her face, she guessed not.
"Such a small, pretty one," a matronly woman's voice said softly. The rag swept across Retasu's cheek, and she squeezed her eyes shut voluntarily. "Much too young to be sold into slavery, I'd say."
"SLAVERY?!" Retasu cried, lurching herself into a sitting position, but promptly lying back on her side as her head felt like it had been beat against a wall a million times.
"Oh, you poor dear," the woman frowned, slipping a small pillow made from hay and cotton under her head. "I guess you don't know. You've been unconscious for about 3 days. The men who took you from your village? They sold you, to Princess Ichigo. That's where you are right now. Her castle."
"Princess? Ichigo? Who is she?" she managed to get out, wincing as the woman pulled out a knife and cut the ropes from her wrists. Inwardly, she wondered why she didn't do that sooner. She wanted to ask, but her throat was so raw. Luckily, the woman noticed the constant licking of her lips and stood to get her a glass of water.
"She's the person who owns us. We serve her. She's a dreadful thing, honestly. Always hitting and screeching and bossing us around. Though we are here to be bossed around, we aren't here to be used as her vent for anger."
Retasu sipped the cold water, sat up with the woman's help, and leaned against the wall, staring at her surroundings. Now not only had her parents died, she had been kidnapped, knocked unconscious, and sold into slavery to supposedly living evil, if the woman had described the princess correctly.
So much for the wonderful thing that's supposed to happen to me, she thought bitterly.
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Authoress Notes
Wow, what a really long prologue. I've never written a prologue that long. Hopefully my chapters are as long or even longer. But please let me know if you liked it! I really hope you did. No one seems to write RetasuRyou AU stories, so I'm kinda going out on a limb here. People did seem to like 'Swim', though. So hopefully you'll like this, too. Let me know! Till next chapter! (: