Crimson skies filed the eyes of Guisei the more and more he cut through each student that approached. His heart raced like the sunset atop the valleys of Superbia, piercing through the window behind him like the daggers in his hand as they ended their final target before breaking into golden fireflies, contrasting against the scarlet that dripped from his fingertips onto the field of corpses beneath him.
Heavy breaths left him like smoke finally being released from within his lungs that throbbed like a beating heart as lightning shivered down him like static; reiju, he could no longer control ate at his body. He grit his teeth, taking on the familiar pain of letting such a cursed ability run rampant: Materialization. Reiju continued to flow down his arms like loose electricity to be controlled by a switch, yet Guisei's was faulty, just like the legs that allowed him to collapse to the ground with a hard thud.
The ceilings were bathed in the golden light of the sunset, a sight Guisei never took time to care for since in beautiful light like this, shadows hid within it and this time was no different. Shadows surrounded Guisei, both from the light and from the corpses he laid upon. Most would squirm at the icy feeling beneath him, yet Guisei didn't.
His gaze flickered in and out from darkness to bloody light, merely to dip back into the black, defeated. Within the shadows, a young man watched Guisei just as he had in the past through his pink-rimmed glasses that shined when the time came for him to step into the light.
Tebiki Naisho walked towards Guisei's defenseless body. His mind hummed at the sight while his eyes shimmered as they traced the corpses Guisei left behind, as if imprinting how each died into his mind. The hard snap of a broken neck, the calming chime of a blade slicing through the air before it met flesh. Naisho heard the echoes with each body he passed before stumbling upon the blood-soaked Guisei.
Bubblegum Pink.
The first color Guisei saw as he opened his eyes. The light from the sun waned like the moon that had stolen its place in the sky, empty like the expression on the young man's face. He took in the light of his eyes that shone both silver and pink like the lotus petals one would find in the Superbian Colonies, continuing to trace his face's intricate details from his checkerboard glasses to his silver hair, unaware if his attention to detail had gotten better or if the young man was instead too….close.
"Not dead yet, are you?" he asked.
"And let an assassin like you get easy credit for killing me——as if," Guisei chuckled under his breath. He blew on Naisho's face, bringing the young man's head away from his. The boy closed his eyes to the darkness. His body felt like bricks as he tried to move. "Geez…"
"That's bold to think you're even alive. Maybe I'm just the God of Death deciding whether you'll pass on to the afterlife or not." Naisho said, letting the bright pink hue of his eyes burn through the lenses of his glasses.
"In that case, I know I'm alive then if people still are believing in fairy tales like that," Guisei scoffed, resting his eyes from the sight of Naisho. "I'm not dead yet so, what do you want if it isn't me being dead?"
"A bold assumption. Do you think I'm the type that brutishly pursues such things?" Naisho replied.
"You don't sound like the type. That'd make you the scarier type then: The Planner."
The planner. Despite Guisei's tone, Naisho couldn't help but take a liking to the title. A calm smirk rested on his face as he stepped back, bowing before the boy. His eyes flared with the sound of his voice.
"Tebiki Naisho, at your service, Guisei Ketsubo of House Mammon."
A sigh escaped Guisei's lips as he heard the full title leave Naisho's mouth.
"(I never did like that title). What do you want, Naisho?"
"A proposition."
"If it's another one of those mutual protection deals, you're out of luck there."
Naisho raised a brow at Guisei's words, knowing all too well of a similar proposition years in the past, yet he kept his gaze onto the boy, studying him like a book to be read like the ones in the Curse Academy library, but just like the books on advanced abilities he had yet to decipher, Guisei was just as hard to read.
"I'd rather something more solid actually, but out in the open like this is less than ideal for myself."
Guisei rolled his eyes at the fact as if the field of bodies weren't enough of a statement about who'd dare to target them, but Nabi's words trickled into his mind like the bright stars painted across the black night of Superbia.
"We'll need a location."
"Either of your rooms should suffice and since I could find you here despite all the dramatic 'battles to the death' going on in this cursed place, so we'll just find the both of you, understood?"
The boy conceded with a nod, but kept his mind locked on Naisho's words. He let out a tired sigh, closing his eyes once more as the sound of Naisho's shoes slowly echoed away from him, only to stop.
"Also, she's still alive, if you want to speak to her——Ketsubo."
The boy's eyes snapped open, only for Naisho to have disappeared once more into the darkness. Guisei closed his mind, taking in the darkness. Within the dark, he once again wandered the rivers of his memory, trying to think back to the time during the Trial of Birth.
It was like flashes.
The way he'd glance back to see her follow him.
Her brown hair and the smell of white roses.
An empty smell accompanied by an empty gaze.
Her words echoed through his mind, yet the more he searched the more distorted they became over time. The voice of Erena Xestis but also another. Guisei's face burned with the scar across his face the more he continued to dive deeper into his memory until he was greeted with the sight of her.
Erena stood in the empty void, her face away from Guisei. The boy's mind throbbed as he kept walking to her even though she drifted further away from him. He reached out towards her, his fingers cloaked in black ink the further he reached out towards her.
"Wait, I still had to tell you what my dream was!"
Static.
Guisei stumbled into Erena's body merely passing through it like a shadowy ghost of his past. The buzzing noise that surrounded him grew like a slithering tension holding his throat hostage, barely letting a word leave him.
"I thought I told you Guisei….
The boy turned to see Erena's body distort into a shape he'd known all too well. His heartbeat grew more and more as he saw his dead golden eyes that he remembered as a child. Guisei grit his teeth as the words left his lips.
"Give up on your childish dreams..... and die."