Little Red Riding HoodYui/Haruka (AKB48)
Part IThe first time Haruka met Yui, she ran away screaming.
She had run away, someplace away from her village, away from the screams and looks of fear and unabashed lust that gleamed in the looks of those who scoured her. Haruka hated it, she hated the villagers who saw her as a monster, she hated her parents for having left her here as they journeyed onward to the bigger cities, and she especially hated herself for having been born abnormally.
She hated anything and everything.
***
Haruka ran away into the woods one day.
She had left the cooled gruel untouched on the table, ignoring the indignant yells of her weekly caretaker as she sprinted out the door.
It’s not like the old lady cared anyhow – a week later Haruka would’ve been the troubles of another villager instead.
Nobody really cared, unless she ended up on their doorstop, sour look and all.
***
The running came to a fault as she tripped over a root, stumbling into an open meadow of green grass, colorful flowers, and blue skies.
And there she lied, in the middle of the fields with her back flattened against the hard ground and her eyes trained to the bright sky. She was angry and sad; she wanted to cry and scream and run and fight and, and, and-
“If you stay here for too long, you’ll get eaten.”
An unfamiliar voice called to her, empty – an all too familiar sound.
Haruka sat up and turned to the owner of the voice.
Scruffy look, sharp-toothed smile, skin covered with the hide of a wolf.
A sudden fear enveloped her, swallowing her from deep within as her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. Her eyes glazed with a tainted blackness as she screamed and ran, heart thudding painfully against her skinny chest. She was going to die if she stayed, she was going to die.
And so Haruka ran.
***
In the village, the rumors of a wolf ravaging livestock and the poor wanderers deep in the woods had ran aflame with hysteria. Stories appeared and were believed, truthful or not. Animals had been mauled and eaten raw, a corpse – human – torn apart with its entrails hanging from tree to tree to dry, those were the stories that Haruka heard every day.
“That damn wolf,” a man with a shredded lamb on his back had murmured she passed him by in the market place. She turned around briefly, wincing at the gruesome image of the lamb’s crooked head hanging upon twisted strands of muscles, something resembling a neck. Her stomach turned as she recalled the crooked smile of the wolf-girl from before, shuddering at the sharp canines that imbedded itself deep within her mind.
But then she arrived at the place of her new weekly caretaker and she can’t help but wonder who exactly the beast was.
***
Haruka’s in the woods again, but this time, she’s ready to end it all.
There’s a red hood tied upon her head and she has nothing in her hands or pockets as she walks alone. It’s scarier when it’s dark, frightening really as the shadows creep towards her. As if a tantalizing treat, the shadows approach closer and closer. Haruka shivers at the sudden creep of cold that invades deep into her bones as the greedy shades get closer, but she dodges them as they start wrapping around her ankles, careful to stay in the beam of moonlight until she’s sure she can meet the wolf.
And so she’s in the middle of the field again, a hand on the knot of her hood and the other over her pounding heart.
“I had a feeling you would come back.”
Haruka stares, her too-loud heart beating painfully against her ribs.
The wolf smiles at her, teeth and all.
“Aren’t I frightening?”
Haruka stays silent, her gaze steady but defeated.
The wolf hesitates before approaching closer, forehead creasing as her eyebrows furrowed closer together. Haruka stiffens and the wolf stops moving, but her gaze is still heavy.
“Why are you here? Go home,” the wolf says, almost annoyed. Haruka watches as the girl with the wolf hide turns around and starts to leave.
“Wait!”
It’s a desperate call and Haruka’s aware of it, but she doesn’t really care at this point.
“I have a favor to ask you.”
The wolf turns around almost immediately, a bemused expression on her slack face. “Don’t you know? I’m the Big Bad Wolf who will eat you puny humans,” and the wolf is back to walking closer to Haruka, a growing snarl on her face.
Haruka swallows the oncoming fear and looks the wolf in the eye. She’s aware she’s shaking, but it doesn’t matter now, it doesn’t matter at all.
“I have a favor,” she repeats herself, still looking the wolf in the eyes, “And I want you to do it for me.”
There’s a slight hesitation in the wolf’s faltering footsteps. Haruka takes it as permission.
“I want you to kill me.”
There’s a heavy silence, a stony quiet that weighs heavily on Haruka’s shoulders. She’s shaking with fear, or was it expectation, but it doesn’t matter because in a matter of seconds she would be dead. She would be dead and gone from the village and all of its villagers. She would disappear from people’s minds, and disappear from their lives, much like how she disappeared from her parent’s memories. This was what she wanted, what she yearned for with all her heart.
And the wolf was going to grant it.
The wolf, only a couple of centimeters away from her, would grant this selfish wish.
So, Haruka closed her eyes, a smile on her face as she took her last breath-
Instead of the sounds of flesh ripping or animalistic growls, she hears bitter laughter that hurts more than she ever knew.
“I’m the Big Bad Wolf, you know,” the wolf says to her, still affected by the chuckles that wrack her shoulders. “And Big Bad Wolves don’t fulfill the wishes of selfish girls like you.” And suddenly, all the laughter of gone from her face. Instead, it’s replaced by a stony coldness that hurts more than the laughter from before. “Go home; I can’t, and won’t, do anything for you.”
Haruka stares at the slender back of the wolf once more, feeling empty. Anguish fills her, mixed with burning rage, and she’s screaming again, but not from fear this time. She feels her fists tightening; fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms as her feet sporadically hit the ground as she ran towards the wolf.
It’s her that throws the first punch, hitting the wolf square in the shoulder as she screams “Why won’t you kill me?”
She throws another punch, a kick, a third punch. She gets nothing in retaliation and that only manages to fuel her anger until she’s sure something inside of her broke from all the rage. There’s a sudden shattering and sap of strength, and she’s on her knees before she knows it, head cradled in the bleeding palms of her hands as she sobbed.
The wolf stares at her, bruised and beaten, but still standing tall as she unflinching puts her gaze on the crying girl in front of her.
Slowly, the wolf kneels before the girl, a tentative arm coiling around the shaking form of the broken-hearted girl who’s tears and blood mixed together to shower the ground in sadness.
***
Haruka’s not quite sure what’s more broken by the time her tears dry and the last of her sobs die away.
The wolf’s arm is still around her waist, unfamiliar yet comforting, and she’s almost certain she can feel the strength course through the killer’s arms. But the wolf doesn’t crush her waist; the wolf doesn’t do anything except offer her coarse hide as warmth for the broken girl.
And that’s when Haruka realizes that the wolf isn’t actually a wolf.
The wolf was a girl, a girl with a crooked wolfish smile and sharp canines, hiding under the hide of a wolf.
It’s when the wolf-girl starts moving that Haruka grips the hide with a strong fist, unwilling to lose the only comfort she had felt in years. “Wolf-“
“Yui.”
And Haruka can only nod before she feels herself drifting off, exhausted as she mumbles the name of the wolf over and over again.
“Yui, Yui, Yui, Yui, Yui.”
Yui. A/N: Hello, it's me again ~ I'll update Fishbowl as soon as I can, but I have a two-shot YuiParu instead orz; I hope that's fine. It's a different writing style, however, this is normally the one I use but it turned out awkward this time. Perhaps its because its 1 AM right now but, ah well ~ I think it turned out decently for something done on the fly! Anyhow, if there's any questions on the hide and the whole wolf thing, I'll explain it as clearly as I can here!
Yui is a wolfish girl who uses a wolf-hide as her disguise. That's really all there is to it. Does that even make sense??? Is she the one doing all those killings? Who knows, but Yui is a good person! You'll just have to wait for part II ~
Topic: Little Red Riding Hood [Yui/Haruka (YuiParu)] Part III - COMPLETE (Read 11250 times)