As You Wish: Monou Fuuma Shrine

Finding Peace

The tall young man practically threw himself down the stairs to the subway station. He reached the train’s closing doors in a few long strides, and darted in just before they closed definitely.

Letting out a small breath, he sank into the nearest empty seat. He raised his eyes then, and looked at those he was sharing the train with. Businessmen speaking on their cellphones, reading the newspapers. A tired looking woman carrying grocery bags. A group of boys perhaps a year or two younger than he himself was. Two young women, who giggled when they noticed him watching them and inmediately began to whisper while stealing glances his direction.

He grinned at them; a wicked, charming grin that made them giggle even more while their faces flamed.

He sat back, pushing the girls and everyone to the edge of his awareness. It was a trick he’d learned in the past few months, pushing people back so that their desires and unfulfilled wishes weren’t the overpowering, maddening ringing in his mind that they had been at first. Now, he could isolate himself from them, retreat to a closed little bubble that held off the worst. Now, they were a constant humming, always at the edge of his awareness, similar perhaps to watching tv with the volume on mute.

Most of the time it didn’t really matter. But it got tiring too, sometimes. He did it now without even thinking, but he knew that the moment he allowed the walls he built and maintened unconsciously to crack or come down, it would all come crashing in, the noise, the despair, the horrible /need/ that was never fullfilled. Enough to drive a person insane. Enough, perhaps, to drive a person to kill their own sister.

He wanted rest. Real rest. He wanted peace.

He knew of only one place to get that. Only one person that, despite having his own, unfullfilled wish, inspired in him a sense of peace.

With a small sigh, Monou Fuuma closed his eyes. He allowed his consciousness to drift out, to grab onto a familar pure thread of light amidst the din of wishes and awareness.

He knew, objectively, that he was still sitting in the subway train, still surrounded by anonymous people he didn’t care to know, by desires he’d never bother to try to fulfill or understand. But here, it didn’t matter what he /knew/.

When he opened his eyes, his hand rested on a thin, delicate shoulder. A long cascade of light, blonde hair caressed that hand. When Kuzuki Kakyou turned his sad, beautiful gaze on him, Fuuma could allow himself to forget the rest of humanity.

For a little while, at least.