Limited Expression: 4

Yuki scowled transparently down at the magenta-haired creature busily pouring over a series of thick anthologies. Are you quite done, you little maggot? Yuki was not pleased, and he didn't hesitate to take his centuries-old frustration of one distinct lack of corporal body out on Shuichi.

The aforementioned 'maggot' gasped and slapped the tome shut and caught his finger in the weighty pages. "Y-Yuki! Don't sneak up on me like that!" A few other people glanced from their readings to see the lone, skinny boy squawk into empty air.

Yuki narrowed his cat-like eyes and propped his hands on his knife-sharp hips. I got tired of reading over these people's shoulders, all right? People in this modern age... he blew a breath from the side of his lips. Considered for a moment summoning his ethereal cigarettes. They have no taste for quality.

Shuichi stared.

Yuki grimaced. If you're done... He sneered then, showing Shuichi an enticing glimpse of impossibly snow-white teeth. The ghost's disdain was almost tangible.

Shuichi rose to his feet, picking a leather-bound volume at random and a scholcky romance pulp-fiction from the pile. Why did Yuki have this effect on him? Shouldn't he have been used to derision by this time? After all, becoming a J-Pop idol wasn't exactly the most masculine dream that had ever been dreamt. "Y-Yeah, Yuki." That's it, Shu-chan, he reminded himself, Just cave like a sandcastle...

But those eyes. Shuichi glanced up, then quickly down again, and went to go stand in line. He wished his arms wouldn't goosebump like that...

0

Well, no luck.

Shuichi pondered his latest literary failure as the two walked down the street. All his previous energy had dissipated in the library as he searched for any mention of Eiri Yuki, demon incarnate, and the boy dragged his feet across the rough pavement. His shoe-soles scraped along and skipped over the few minute pebbles and sent them skipping.

Yuki, on the other hand, glided serenely along, neither upsetting nor balancing any objects he failed to come in contact with. His face was a perfect, frozen mask of blank annoyance that gave Shuichi a peculiar tense sensation just behind his breastbone.

Did you find what you were looking for, brat?

"Uh-uh," answered Shuichi in the negative and ran his thumb along the free edge of his novel's binding. "I got a good romance, though." He shifted the encyclopaedia in his left elbow and offered up a brief prayer to Heaven that the ghost-demon wouldn't think to ask about it.

This, you see, is Shuichi's idea of subtlety. The boy possessed no talent for intrigue at the least and had only a mild knowledge of such a thing's existence at best. So he just shifts the book again uncomfortably under his elbow and waves the Harlequin under Yuki's nose in a primitive attempt to distract him.

Out of blind, sheer luck, it works.

Shuichi swears to light some incense at his house-shrine every day for the next year, then promptly forgets. Such economy in action.

Yuki curled his lip and pulled back from the offending object with an expression akin to panicked disgust. You don't mean to tell me you read those things. He truly sounded shocked.

Shuichi puffed out his lower lip. "Don't tell me you've never read one!" He paused and looked up at Yuki's expression, still unchanged. "There's good song-material in here!" Shuichi maintained, thumping the cover of the book against a handy retaining wall as if to prove through solid construction came a solid plot.

Yuki averted his eyes. If you chose to rot your mind on that romance-shit, you little ville en[1], that's your business. But keep that filth away from me.

Shuichi blinked, and looked hurt.

...I mean it.

Shuichi bit his lip and looked the other way. This day just took a giant nosedive. He'd read manga about things like this, but this wasn't how it was supposed to be! The ghost was supposed to be friendly, knowledgeable and the two of them were supposed to get into all sorts of playful hijinks! The tense feeling behind his breastbone turned sour abruptly and his stomach flip-flopped.

And on top of it all, Shuichi hadn't been able to find a damn thing.

He looked up to see Yuki utterly absorbed in staring at a bright green payphone. The ghost plucked ineffectually at the green plastic for a moment. Hey, brat. Noted with satisfaction that Shuichi now responded without complaint to 'brat'. What is this?

Shuichi dragged to a stop and let his shoulders collapse like a leaky balloon. He was tired and didn't feel like explaining to Yuki what a telephone was. "It's a phone. You use it to talk to other people far away. On the other side of the world, even."

Yuki blinked his feline eyes and jolted Shuichi to the very core by looking surprised. Impressed even. His expression gentled as it changed, and for a moment Shiuchi thought he maybe, maybe could have spied a speck of human curiosity hidden beneath that frosty layer of derision and sarcasm.

You mean...

"Yeah. Send them messages. Cane we go now?"

But the moment, like a rare flower blooming, lasted all too briefly. Yuki glanced quickly back to Shuichi and wordlessly resumed the trek down the evening street. Shuichi exhaled with annoyance and jogged to catch up. He completely missed the thoughtful expression on the demi-demon's face.

0

Shuichi arrived home too late to catch his favourite soap.

In fact, he arrived home exactly in time to listlessly tear open a pack of Kraft Dinner before falling into a deep sleep. His chest rose and fell like the surging ocean as he slept, one hand curled like a foetus' on the pillow near his cheek. Above him, moonlight streamed through the iridescent form of Eiri Yuki, eyes closed to mere slits as he perched on the window frame.

He couldn't open the encyclopedia, but he could guess enough to venture the subject. Him. Shuichi most likely was researching him. His past. he relaxed against the frame of the bedroom and bit the tip of his tongue gently as he thought.

Nothing.

He can find nothing.

It wasn't as if his journal had survived, had it? In any case, all a boring, overly-technical and needlessly wordy thumper like that thing would have would be nominal information on who he was 'thought' to be.

Big difference.

BIG difference.

Yuki smiled in grim satisfaction and crossed his arms across his chest. It was impossible for anyone to find out. Safe. He was finally safe.

Yuki allowed his eyes to drift closed, content as he was in the cradle of his certainty. A dream filled with memories, and dreams...

0

Yuki crouched down in the naked foilage high above the enemy camp, the smooth wood of his short bow grasped with the strength of fear in his hand, and let his eyes search for the flag of the commander's tent as his training dictated.

Trained to perfection. Trained to be the ideal killer idealized in the flesh. Amber eyes narrowed again as he shifted position to relieve the strain on his throbbing ankles. How long had he waited here in the snow for Commander Matomiya to reveal himself from his tent? Too long.

He shook, Yuki felt, he shook in his winter uniform and light armour, but not from fear. Yuki shook from excitement. Here he was, about to fufill the mission his master Kitazawa-sama had bestowed upon his unworthy self. Absently he scooped a handfull of snow down into his mouth. It would be no good for the steam of his breath to alert sentries of his position. He was a ghost here, unseen, unheard, until it was far, far too late.

Soon they would all know who he was.

Yuki Eiri, famous warrior and assassin. It made his very heart sing to think of all the recognition heaped upon him. Finally, they would all recognize him. Know him. Fear him.

Finally! Yuki's adrenalin surged like a beast throwing itself against the bars of imprisonment as the bare, bald head of Contingent-Commander Matomiya weaved out and among his troops. the fat, petty little man was inspecting, and Yuki hastily began slipping a bolt into a ready position. His teeth glinted in the afternoon sun and he flicked out his tongue to lick his dry, chapped lips. There was nothing they could do now. His. All his.

The bow flexed and whined as he pulled back, taking careful, precise aim.

That fat head would split open like a melon and spill all those military secrets into the snow like so much trash. Yuki would have his master's approval, finally.

He released.

Zip! the arrow sang through the air, nicking the assassin's cheek as it raced past, taking a drop of blood along with the message of death to the commander.

The commander inhaled sickly as the arrow struck home, the force of the impact spinning him around and dropping his heavy body into the beaten snow. Soldiers screamed orders this way and that. Animals panicked. Tents were collapsed, fires started, brawls erupted. The neat, orderly rows of the rebels had collapsed into unmitigated chaos, and al because of one bolt. Yuki grinned again to himself and kissed the smooth wood of his arrow.

"Flawless," he murmured to himself proudly. He half-rose, intending to sneak away into the forest and freedom.

Something stopped him. Something that switched this dream-that-was-a-memory from the realm of sheer recall into sheer randomness. Eyes were upon him. Two eyes. Two great, purple eyes that watered in pain. They saw his guilt. They spoke.

"Y-Yuki?"

The muscles between his shoulders tensed as Yuki froze, halfway into the safety of the trees.

Don't look back, the killer thought to himself, but nonetheless found himself incredibly turning about, swiveling in the snow to face the speaker who had not been there. He blinked his young eyes. Shuichi stood there in the snow, naked, shivering, arms clasping his abdomen as though he might be sick.

The wind howled and gusted against them both, Yuki tall and armoured, Shuichi seemingly fragile and utterly bare.

"Sh-shuichi..." Yuki managed. "You d-don't belong here." Well, no shit. Not eight hundred years ago, at least.

The shivering, shaking boy continued, and made no move to come towards Yuki. All in all, he seemed jus as frightened and confused as Yuki. "H-How could you, Yuki You j-just killed him. Killed him!" the voice raised to a shrieking pitch that matched the wind, ripped through his ears. Yuki winced.

"I know." he said, trying to deflect the comment, taking a step backwards, towards the trees. "My mission. Lord Kitazawa..." He trailed off. Names meant nothing to the boy. Nothing Yuki had lived, killed and died for meant anything to the boy. Yuki felt himself growing angry. How dare Shuichi stand there and judge him? Had he suffered as Yuki had suffered? Had he any concept of the pain he felt?

Shuichi tried again, struggling to speak. This world seemed foreign to him, what with the cacophony of violent, roaring din just over the rise and not to mention the Arctic snow. Yuki cut him off brutally.

"You stupid little brat! How dare you? The sight of you makes me want to puke! I wish," he began viciously, enjoying the preverse power this gave him. "I wish the temple had cracked your worthless, shit-for-brains head straight in two! I would rather not exist than put up with your weak mewlings!" he roared, breathing heavily in his jangling armour. There.

There!

He woke up.

0

Shuichi woke up.

"Oh, God..." He whispered, running one hand over his face. "I had..the...the worst dream..." the singer looked up to the empty window frame and breathed a sigh of relief. It would have been ten times worse to hear that cold voice again, screaming at him.

"...weak mewlings..."

His head thumped back down onto the pillow.