Prologue:
I want nothing more…a single fragrance…a single dream…to float through to my mouth and nostrils…to fill my soul and engage my mind with a sensation so pure that it fills my heart. I can almost taste it…an aroma so potent and romantic it encourages my heart to beat faster. I can hear the song this cent doth sing…it’s a sweet song, soft like a lullaby and porcelain like unto an infant’s skin…so pure and innocent like the nakedness of a child first-born…and now…fading quicker it’s escaping my grasp…I desire it more so than a dream fleeting upon scarlet wings, red with blood wounded by the heart’s lustfulness…I scream, my own wings torn as I cannot follow my scarlet dream…I cannot engage in my sensation and passion so fierce it roars like a beast untamed. I can no longer see the beauty falling like autumn leaves that brush the skin like silky feathers and cuts deep like shards of glass…I fade…quicker…my dream lost in the vacancy of an ocean too deep to search too wide to roam…so far away…I slip…fading…dying…vanishing…and dream…for I may vanish into the thin air like a flower that dies by winter…but I will bloom once more in spring…
Soft…gentle…tender words drip from that tongue…they slip from those lips, satin and red and thin like a trickle of blood. Pooling hatred and love so confusing…ripples through those night-sky eyes…sparkling with the hatred of dying stars and filled with the black hell-like emptiness of something dead and feral…I desire…I wish…that I could reach out…and touch those lips…just to say…that I could…that I had the strength to…that I had the courage to want…that I had the will to dare…tell me…lips so cruel…love me…if you could…just for a moment…kiss my own.
“Akutagawa?” Yelena looked at her subordinate, her face uncertain. “he’s one of the Ao-oni people?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The Chief Petty Officer let out an uneasy sigh. “He’s cold, ma’am…but the only survivor. We took pity on him and he didn’t seem bothered by it…he’s a Commonwealth Flying Officer…it’s strange…he lost everything…”
“What’s he doing on our soil, though?” Yelena asked, her brows pinched. “He’s not supposed to be here…”
“I don’t know.” The man let out another sigh, this time it sounded tired. “He’s not a normal kind of a guy though…I think, that he’s only in his twenties…and he’s so military…ma’am?”
“If he’s one of the Ao-oni then he will be the most military of people that you meet.” She let out a tired sigh. “Yes…he’ll be impossible.”
“I know. What should we do, ma’am?”
“Please, Chief Petty Officer Kinashita.” Yelena frowned as she stared down through the window at the strange man sitting on the check-up table. “Take care of this Akutagawa for me.”
“Yes, Group Captain Nasenko.” Kinashita saluted and then turned to walk down the hallway.
Yelena watched him disappear and then peered through the window again to stare at the young man whom returned her gaze with a death-like one of his own. She frowned.
“What in the universe could you want, Akutagawa?” She murmured and then was stunned when he mouthed back one word:
“Revenge.”