"Stupid classmates… stupid parents… " Said a young Sasaki, spinning a butterfly knife with keen precision. Walked down the grassy hill near the bridge and kneeled down to watch the small fish in the water.

The past few days have taken a toll on her mind. Even alone she couldn't escape the grief the world brought on her. She then heard a croak from a frog and turned her head, gasping when she saw a young brown haired boy sitting under the brigade with a frog in his hands. He wore the boy's uniform of her school, a plain black gakuran that was wrinkled and his hair uncut for several weeks, almost covering his blue eyes.

"You're that gross kid who likes to chase frogs!" Sasaki said loudly, taking the boy's attention. "Get that thing out of your hands. It's full of nasty diseases." she stomped over to the boy and smacked the frog out of his hands, letting it hop away.

"..." The boy looked at Sasaki with an unmoving plain expression. It was like he had no emotion. Even in class when the other students bullied him, he barely reacted which freaked out the bullies enough to leave him be. Sasaki wasn't put off by it though, she kneeled down to look at him face to face "What's your name? I see you a lot in the hallway."

"What is your name…" He repeated.

"Well I'm Sasaki Sasasemarve." She said proudly even though she knew the boy was just repeating her. He looked really out of it, like he didn't want to be here at all. Sasaki pointed at him "I want to know your name. Your name, not mine."

"..." he stayed silent for a brief moment, "My name is...Hyde Tetsuya. That is me."

There was another moment of silence between them. Hyde lowered his head and stared at the ground. "Froggy was talking with me. He said you're scary."

Yeah this kid was definitely in a whole other world. Of course frogs don't speak. Sasaki was curious as to what was going through Hyde's head. Was he faking this persona?

Sasaki spun her butterfly knife which seemed to attract Hyde's interest. She then pointed it at him in between his eyes yet he didn't flinch a muscle. She figured that she should cut his head open and take his brain to study. He didn't look like he would care anyway.

Sasaki lowered the knife, getting away from the sick thought. It was the only way she could survive but hurting Hyde wouldn't benefit her. "Froggy… I didn't know frogs spoke."

"Why are you holding that knife? Froggy said people with knives are bad. Are you going to hurt me?" He asked with his tone still plain as ever.

Sasaki crossed her arms and relaxed her mood a little. "I'm holding this knife so I can do this." She showed him how the knife spun and closed, tossing it up then catching it before flipping it open again. "Pretty cool right? It was a gift from my Dad. Wanna try it out?" Sasaki held out the knife for Hyde.

Hyde reached out to grab it, gently seeing how the tool operated. Just like Sasaki, he would mimic how she spun the knife like a pro. Before he accidentally cut himself she stopped him but was still impressed he caught on so quickly unlike most beginners.

Sasaki took the knife back and patted his head "You're not half bad but I can't let a beginner like you attempt the harder tricks. It's too dangerous."

Hyde nodded slowly in understanding.

Sasaki smiled and proudly puffed her chest. "I'd knew you'd understand Hyde. My classmates spread rumors about you being super weird and eating snot but I knew that wasn't true!" She leaned over him

"We should hang out more often Hyde. Let's come back here tomorrow okay?"

"Okay." Hyde slowly nodded.

They frequently stopped by their secret spot under the bridge to talk about their day and their everyday lives. It was mostly Sasaki doing the talking but occasionally there were moments when Hyde talked about himself and the voices in his head. He knew he was ill and not normal, that was why he was teased in school.

Sasaki reassured him and promised to protect him whenever some other student tried to mess with him. She didn't care about getting in trouble or getting beat up by bullies on Hyde's behalf. It was better than the life she had at home.

A life of crime…

Sasaki dreaded every moment she stepped into her own home and saw suited old men with her parents, talking about their next operation to smuggle in drugs, children, or money for the yakuza. Her parents complied with their every order not because they had a debt or payment to settle, but because they wanted money. They wanted to get rich off working with a criminal organization but Sasaki knew they were merely puppets in a pyramid scheme. She couldn't do anything about it because she was their scapegoat for getting out of trouble.

Though her parents were apart of their money pilfering ways, they were used to cover the organization's trails and they were good at doing so. Sasaki was trained to kill.

Someone tried to run their own pyramid scheme in the organization? Sasaki took care of them.

Someone figured out they were being used and tried to call law enforcement? Sasaki silenced them and the investigators permanently.

If there was another killer that struck a member of the yakuza? Just send Sasaki to deal with it.

Sometimes Sasaki would bring a bodybag to show Hyde and taught him how to effectively chop a body into pieces just so she wouldn't have to take another life. Hyde was her only escape to see life normally as her mind continually fell apart. The way he dismembered a body was so memorizing...

Smooth like butter and precise like a chef, the way he cut was effective and straight. Unlike Sasaki who struggled to do it in a timely manner and often had her cuts jagged with edges.

She dumped the body part in the river and watched them float away on the current. It wasn't healthy for her to involve an ill boy in her problems but it elevated a lot of the stress. If she was ever caught, she could simply… push all the blame onto him…

It was a sick thought, only a sicko would think that way!

But she was a sicko just like the people she overheard in the yakuza. They were vile and scum… she was vile and scum…

She is perhaps the worst person on Earth.

Hyde never questioned why he was helping her, he just did as he was told. Some of the bodies he recognized as his bullies and others were unfamiliar but he knew they were important given how professional they were dressed. The voices in his head had a different opinion. They chastised him about how he was wrong, how Sasaki was evil and merely manipulating him but he ignored their warnings.

They devolved into a point of no return.

One day when the members of the yakuza were slowly being compromised, the higher ups of the organization dropped most of its members leaving them to be arrested in their place and naturally sent Sasaki to handle the problems expecting her to take the fall for most of their murders. But Sasaki knew she and her family would be thrown under the bus eventually. The young girl ran from home after reading many of the reports of yakuza members being caught in the newspaper. She didn't have a destination in mind but instinctively went to the bridge to find Hyde.

Surprised that the boy was there, she showed the newspaper of investigators hot on the yakuza case. She grabbed Hyde's hand "We have to run away now. Forget school, forget home, forget it all. We can throw all of this behind us Hyde. We won't have to kill anymore!"

Hyde looked more deranged than usual. Just like Sasaki his eyes were tired and fed up with the killings, but Hyde had to endure the many voices in his head and hallucinations of a girl in white he didn't even know taunting him relentlessly. This girl with long heavenly white hair and a flowing white dress slowly coerced him to stop evil whatever that meant. He knew associating with Sasaki any longer resulted in more bloodshed.

"End it here and now." The girl in white whispered in his ear.

"I can…" Hyde looked at the butterfly knife he was gifted by Sasaki. The struggle to choose whether to listen to the voices and kill Sasaki, or listen to his heart and let her live was tearing him apart. He tightened his grip around the weapon wanting for everyone and everything to shut up and leave him be. The voices would go away if he did what they wanted.

He raised the knife and delivered a deep cut to Sasaki's face. She reeled back followed by a scream and fell on her butt. Sasaki had faced resistance before during her time as a hitman but often her opponent was severely inexperienced in combat and simply threw random objects at her in an attempt to get away. But Hyde knew what he was doing and he didn't look one bit afraid at all. But she didn't want to hurt her friend, especially not Hyde. They had a special bond… a twisted one but…

"H-hyde…" The cut across her face had nearly touched her eye and the blood dripped into the corners making her vision slightly reddish. She held up one hand "Stop! Please!" This is what being cut felt like? This was excruciating, uncomfortable, just awful. She wanted to cry and kick her feet to stop Hyde at all costs. But nothing prepared her for what Hyde did once he walked closer.

He was swift in execution. Stabbing, cutting, bashing, using everything she taught him about killing here. First he would cut at her legs, nearly severing them when he slashed down to the bone which made Sasaki shiver and cry. No longer could she kick him away. Next was her arms and hands, Sasaki tried to push him off knowing that these limbs suffered the same fate as her legs. The cuts were worse given that Hyde completely severed her right hand from her wrist.

Naturally she screamed as loud as she could. She didn't care what prison she'd be sent to, as long as she didn't die here.

"G-Guhhーー" Blood filled her throat and only afterwards did she realize Hyde dug his knife into her neck. The taste of iron and rust filled her mouth, the only thing she could smell was her own blood which reeked from her past sins.

Her body gave up resisting. Her vision darkened and the pain was starting to numb. She was going to die here…

Of course the world would let her die here and from the boy she liked of all people.

As for Hyde, he stood in a puddle of dark red staring at her unrecognizable body. There was no way Sasaki could possibly survive and he made sure of that. Any normal person would vomit seeing guts spilling out of open wounds and the white bone visible from deep cuts. Her face was ravaged and barely human anymore.

"..."

He looked at the knife's blade which was now completely red. He was not in complete silence. No voices, hallucinations, just him and this dead girl. He felt so powerful cutting her, this feeling he had never felt before. This paired with the silence he longed for in life made him grow a wide grin and laugh. Maybe this girl was just a hallucination of the voices and killing her was what he needed to do.

"I think the screams came from over there!" A distant voice said.

It was probably the police on their way after a bystander overheard the screaming. Hyde didn't make any attempts to run because… well he didn't exactly know why himself.

The next thing he knew he sat in a padded cell wearing a straitjacket to prevent him from hurting himself or anyone else. Outside of the room a purple haired lady and a doctor were looking over the reports given to them by private investigators. Hyde's behavior was very inconsistent and it didn't make any sense for him to kill Sasaki.

"He's too dangerous to be released, Yamiko. He's been involved in several murders related to the yakuza." The doctor in the lab coat said and was handed the clipboard from Yamiko.

"The police are looking for any reason they can use to arrest members of the yakuza. They haven't found much concrete evidence needed for a full court case." Yamiko looked at Hyde from behind the window. "And they often kill themselves or each other to prevent information being leaked. I don't think this child is apart of that. He's displayed weird behavior but nothing that would lead him to killing."

"The yakuza said they had their own 'little demon' as they put it. The police sometimes found the culprits they arrested dead a day later. Are you saying this boy isn't their little hitman?" the doctor in white asked with a finger on his chin.

Yamiko nodded slowly and turned to face the doctor. "I believe he has a form of mental illness which is rare. I wouldn't be surprised if someone took advantage of that."

The doctor was quite interested as well in Hyde's mental state. It was thanks to their intervention that he didn't face the death penalty because of the murders he was accused of. He would start talking again 2 years into the reclusive life he lived and finally told Yamiko about the voices in his head and hallucinations he suffered. He lived with his father before since his mother was dead but after being locked away for 2 years with minimum visits outdoors he had forgotten what his father's face looked like, and at this point he considered Yamiko his caretaker.

He turned out to be such a delightful person after the incident. He had child-like innocence and was always willing to try out new and exciting things in life.

The time he spent with Yamiko were moments he would never forget.

"Yamiko, this place is truly amazing!" Hyde stood in front of a field of tall sunflowers that were almost his height. His smile was just as bright as the yellow petal, he blended right in with the cheerful flowers. The gentle breeze of wind made his slightly longer hair flow in a rhythm and gave him a slightly feminine appearance. It was hard to tell whether he was a girl or not due to the bangs covering his eyes.

Here, a truly beautiful human, Yamiko thought. The trauma from killing Sasaki was long gone from his mind, probably locked away deep in his memories. Yamiko didn't want to bring it up to ruin the smiling bright life ahead of him.

But that future, this timeー

It was all taken away from them, taken away from everyone.

Now standing here in the season of fall; the flowers were all withering and brown. Yamiko lifted the blindfold off of her face so she could truly see what was once there.

The wind breeze wasn't gentle, similar to the time they lived in it was odd and harsh. A cold tear dropped from the corner of Yamiko's eye. "Hyde…. that's why you were given to me…"

If only she could tell him now, if only she stopped him at the entrance of the dormitory to tell him everything that led up to that moment. He was in a rush but the way he ran he didn't look like he was going to return.

Hyde stopped by the bridge where Sasaki seemed to be waiting for him. His jagged breathing filled the silence as they stared at each other.

Sasaki closed her eyes. "I didn't think you had any agency to come here on your own. You were always a do nothing kind of person..."

Hyde gripped his shirt at his heart "I can't keep turning my head from my past. You were so kind to me back then and you knew who I was. That's why I want to be with you." He stepped closer. "This detective stuff I'm apart of isn't me. I'm a different person and I want to fix my mistakes with you."

"..." Sasaki opened her eyes and was greeted by his hand that she hesitated to grasp. She had stabbed him once before in the restaurant intending to hurt him in retaliation for nearly killing her but this life of crime she had been trapped in wasn't for her. She assisted Soap and many other criminals but she turned her back on them after hearing what happened to the agency. "I don't want to be a killer either… that really isn't the person I am."

Hyde couldn't form a complete smile. It reeked of desperation. "Then let's run away together! Like you always wanted."

"I…" Sasaki paused, "...Don't think I can…"