◣ ranpo-san ◥ :

   Body remains motionless before her, feeling the desperation in her grip as it grasps at his clothes. Though he can’t see her expression, he already knows the look in her eyes —– if only because he’s seen it before, MADE it before. She’s still a child and there are things she can’t control or understand, and yet, she’s been living in the world of the adults.

   She should be with her family, going to school as a normal child, not being made to kill.  ( not being on the streets, not trying to fend for themself – no, shake it off, don’t think about it, DON’T THINK. )

    ❛ a part of me doesn’t, no. ❜  He admits, slowly and carefully moving his hands to hold hers.  ❛ i know how you feel. we’re a lot alike… I lost my family too – when i was exactly your age. ❜  AND THEN THERE WAS ONE, he was all alone in a world where no one understood him; where he saw nothing but monsters who were far too different.

   ❛ because of that, i found a new family. and i don’t want to lose my family again. ❜

    ❛ but the part of me that says that to you believes it’ll be alright, because no matter what happens, things have worked out. yukichi won’t let him do anything stupid so long as he’s here, alright? this agency is a family to him too, just as it is for me. dazai can try whatever he wants, but he won’t succeed, even more-so when he has someone like you worrying. ❜

◣ ✿ ◥ It would be wrong to assume she was the only one struggling. While she didn’t know much about most of the agency members, she knew they were all there for a reason: people more often than not became police or detectives due to tragedies in their lives that they hoped to resolve somehow. Even Kouyou spoke from experience when she said that leaving the dark wasn’t so easy.

Kyouka wanted to be comforted by Ranpo’s words. In more ways than one, Fukuzawa was to him what Atsushi was to her, and like she said (quite often nowadays), she could do anything as long as she was with Atsushi. She’d come too far to give up now, so she had to have faith in that.

What could she say? The same childish fear tugged at her, everything the mafia told her still stayed ingrained in her mind, and she didn’t know what to do about any of it. She didn’t want to lose any members of her new makeshift family. But she didn’t know how to protect them.

Demons killed and destroyed everything around them.

“I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed into his chest, voice cracking as she moved her hands to wrap around the man’s in a white-knuckled death-grip. “I’m scared. I don’t want to lose anyone. But what can I do?”

Life had no simple answers, no matter how much she tried to find one in all of this. Every choice had consequences. She was too young to deal with so much, and she didn’t know what to do about it.