~Chapter 1: The Hunter~
My name is Mizu, I'm a human-wolf hybrid, I'm 14, I have short light brown hair and blue eyes. I wear black hoodie with a long brown coat, with gray pants and black boots. But that's not what matters right now, what matters is hiding in this tree. Yes, I live in a tree, kind of sad but It's the only place I can hide from the hunters. They are really mean and will do anything to kill a wolf-like me, or since there are different hunters for each kind of "evil" creature, and will do anything to kill them too. That's why I always stay hidden, and I'm always so board but there's an orphanage right by me and sometimes I come down from my tree to see them, It's fun playing with the kids.
"Mizu!"
"Hey Fumiko be quiet I'm coming down",
Fumiko chuckles "sorry".
Mizu climbs down from the tree and go over to Fumiko, "Hey, what are you doing out here so early?".
Fumiko gives me an excited smile, "we're getting a new kid today, and guess what?",
Mizu laughs, "what?",
"I heard he's your age"
"Oh, that's cool-",
Before Mizu could finish he heard the backdoor of the orphanage open, Fumiko gives Mizu a nervous look and then Mizu whispers "it's ok I'll go hide you stay here", He gives me a quick nod. After that, Mizu quickly ran behind a nearby tree. He hears the crunching of leaves nearing closer to where he left Fumiko and then a lady says.
"Fumiko, what are you doing out here all by yourself it's dangerous"
"Uh", Mizu could hear the nervousness in his voice, "I wanted to find something for the new kid"
"That's sweet of you but you know how dangerous it is out here, something could have snatched you up"
Mizu hears Fumiko nervously chuckle, "Sorry Miss Misa I'll be more careful out here"
"It's ok, now let's get inside, the new kid is almost here"
"Ok!"
Mizu hears the crunching of leaves slowly fade away and then the door opens and shuts. Mizu sighs, "that was a close one". He quickly climbs back up into his tree and lays down on his hammock. He sighs then thought to himself, "If that lady would have caught me, she would probably turn me in and I don't know what would happen to me then". All of the sudden he hears rustling in his tree, he quickly sits up and looks around. As soon as he saw Eichi a huge relief came over me.
"What are you doing up here?", Eichi sits down on a branch next to Mizu and sighs.
"It's too loud inside"
"Is it cause the new kid is there now?"
"Yeah, everyone is just asking him dumb questions about why he's there, which I didn't hear any of it, I just wanted to get out". Mizu sighs and then smiles at him
"I understand just wanting to get away" Eichi nods slowly and then looks at the ground below us, his eyes widen as he points towards something and he says quietly
"Look, Fumiko brought the new kid outside"
"What?", Mizu looks in the direction Eichi is pointing and sure enough Fumiko is leading the new kid over to the bottom of his tree. But before they get to the bottom Mizu takes a good look at the new kid, he has shiny black hair and is wearing jeans and a black hoodie. But what really caught his attention was his eyes, they looked like shiny rubies in the morning light and for some reason he seemed really familiar, Mizu felt his face turn a little red and his tail started to wag. But then Eichi snapped him back into reality.
"Uh, Mizu? Fumiko is calling you"
Mizu hears Fumiko yelling "Mizu!, Mizu!, come down I brought the new kid", He sighs face-palming himself, "what is he doing, he's gonna get me caught". Mizu feels Eichi tap his shoulder.
"I can go down and try and bring them inside"
"Really? thank you Eichi", Eichi nods his head and slowly starts to climb down,
Once he gets to the ground a look of disappointment comes across Fumiko's face. Fumiko crossed his arms, "Hey! where's Mizu?", Fumiko asked puzzled. With shakiness in Eichi's voice, he said,
"Um, w-what do you mean Fumiko?, I-I'm Mizu", Fumiko laughed, "what are you talking about? You're not Mizu".
Eichi walked over to the new kid "Um I'm sorry about him, he likes to prank people", Fumiko stared at Eichi in disbelief. Eichi looked at the new kid and says."So why don't we all go inside...um, what's your name?", the new kid smiled.
"My name is Haruko", "Ok, Haruko, why don't you go ahead and Fumiko and I will meet you inside", Haruko nods his head and starts to head towards the door while Eichi turns around facing Fumiko, and sighs.
"Why'd you do that?", Fumiko gives Eichi a weird look."What do you mean?",
"I mean you could have got Mizu caught", Fumiko looks up into the tree and sees Mizu looking down at them.
"Well he didn't get caught", Fumiko looks back at Eichi, "so I don't see the problem".
Eichi looks at the ground and quietly says, "Yeah you never do", Fumiko pretended he didn't hear it. But he did, he couldn't help but feel a little hurt. But he knew what Eichi meant, he knew he was oblivious to most things, but he tried to notice them, Especially when it came to Eichi. Fumiko quickly grabs Eichi's hand and joyfully says "I'll make it up to you, ok?", Eichi nods his head and Fumiko pulls away a flustered Eichi inside the orphanage.
Mizu chuckles "I guess they're both oblivious". Then Mizu stands up and hops over to the branch that has his hammock hanging from it, and lays down on it. Mizu looks up at the sky and thinks to himself 'I guess I could take a quick nap', Mizu rolls over to his side and before drifting off into a deep sleep thinks 'that new kid looked oddly familiar', Mizu shakes his head 'no I'm sure it's nothing.
Eichi and Fumiko were sitting on the couch drawing together when they heard a knock on the door, they look behind them where the door was and watched as Miss Misa walked over to the door and opened it. Both Eichi and Fumiko's eyes widened as they saw a hunter standing there,
Miss Misa asks "Sir, what are you doing here?".
The hunter says "we have heard reports of a human-like wolf being seen around this area", Miss Misa let out a small gasp then says
"Are you here to look around?", the hunter nods his head "yes", Miss Misa quickly moves out of the way, "well then come on right in".
Eichi and Fumiko look at each other with a concerned look, Eichi whispers "do you think Mizu will be ok?", Fumiko looks at the hunter then back at Eichi, "to be honest I'm not sure". While Eichi and Fumiko were trying to figure out a plan Haruko was in one of the rooms sitting on his bed, he sighs as he looks down at a picture of him and Mizu.
Haruko looks at the picture very closely, "I'm pretty sure it's him, but... it didn't seem like he remembered me". Fumiko and Eichi barge in the room and Haruko quickly shoves the picture back into his bag, "what was that?", Fumiko asks, Haruko's expression softens "nothing important". Fumiko brushes it off but Eichi feels as if Haruko is hiding something from them.
Fumiko quickly tells Haruko that he needs to distract the hunter cause they need to do something important that the hunter can't see, Haruko didn't question it because he already knew that Mizu was hiding in the tree, and Haruko wanted to protect him so he agreed to distract the hunter. Fumiko and Haruko went out of the room to discuss further details about the plan while Eichi stayed back to snoop around.
He headed to Haruko's backpack and opened it, he reached in and grabbed the picture, he looked at it and his eyes widened. He didn't know that Haruko knew Mizu so this was a surprise, but it didn't make sense cause why didn't he say anything if he already knew.
All the sudden the door opens and it's Haruko, he sees Eichi with the picture and quickly goes over to him and takes it,
"Why the hell are you getting into my stuff", Eichi didn't care to answer the question,
All he said was, "you know Mizu?", Haruko sighed "yeah", now Eichi knew for sure, but he had a lot more questions,
"Why didn't you tell us?", Haruko sat down in front of Eichi, "We made eye contact outside and... he would have come down to see me, so I don't think he remembers me".
Eichi thinks for a minute and then says "but you guys don't look that little in the picture, so it couldn't have been that long ago, right?",
Haruko nods his head, "it was only a couple of years ago, I've been looking for him ever since then", Eichi was about to ask another question when the door burst open.
"What are you two doing just sitting around we need to get going", Fumiko says with his arms crossed. "s-sorry Fumiko, were coming", Fumiko nods his head "good", then turns around and goes out the door. Haruko looked at Eichi for a second, and he looked sad, "what's wrong?", asked Haruko, Eichi looked down,
"If you promise not to tell Fumiko, then I'll tell you", Haruko thought it was weird at first but then he agreed, "yeah I won't tell him". Eichi takes a deep breath,
"I'm leaving with Mizu", a look of confusion came across Haruko's face, "why?",
"I'm a witch",
"What? you are? does anyone else know?",
Eichi shakes his head, "only Mizu knows". Fumiko bursts through the door with an annoyed look on his face,
"That's it!", he storms over and grabs Eichi's hand, "let's go", Fumiko says while pulling away Eichi, Haruko just follows them. Fumiko leads them outside where Mizu already is down from his tree and has his bag.
"We only have about five minutes until the hunter comes outside because Miss Misa offered him some of her 'special' tea.", "Mizu shakes his head, "so Eichi where's your stuff?", "oh no I forgot it upstairs", but then Haruko hands Eichi his bag, "I saw it on the ground upstairs so I grabbed it for you", Eichi gives Haruko a weak smile, "thank you".
Then Eichi turns to Fumiko, a goodbye he was not looking forward to, "you're leaving?", Fumiko says with disbelief on his face,
Eichi looks at the ground and nods his head while trying to hold in his tears. Haruko looks at his watch, "three minutes", Eichi looks up and sniffles, "I'm sorry Fumi", Mizu places his hand on Eichi shoulder, "we need to go", They both turn around and start to walk away but something comes over Eichi and he quickly turns around and runs back to Fumiko and hugs him tight,
Fumiko hugs back just as tight, tears streaming down both their faces. Without saying a word Eichi lets go, gives him a kiss on the cheek, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded-up letter, and hands it to him. Eichi gives him a sweet smile and turns and walks back towards Mizu, knowing that if he turns back again he for sure won't leave.
Fumiko wipes off his tears while wondering what's written on the letter, Haruko knowing they both need time to themselves he says, "go read it". Fumiko nods his head, then goes into the garden, where it's quiet to read it, he sits down on the wooden bench and carefully opens the letter, it says...
'𝓕𝓾𝓶𝓲, 𝓫𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮 𝔂𝓸𝓾'𝓻𝓮 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼, 𝓘'𝓵𝓵 𝓫𝓮 𝓰𝓸𝓷𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘'𝓶 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓼𝓸𝓻𝓻𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓼𝓸 𝓼𝓾𝓭𝓭𝓮𝓷𝓵𝔂, 𝓫𝓾𝓽 𝓘 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓫𝓮 𝓱𝓸𝓷𝓮𝓼𝓽. 𝓘'𝓶 𝓪 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓬𝓱, 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓴𝓷𝓮𝔀 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓷'𝓽 𝓼𝓪𝓯𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝔂𝓶𝓸𝓻𝓮, 𝓘'𝓶 𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓼𝓾𝓻𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓬𝓪𝓷 𝓼𝓮𝓮 𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱 𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓪𝓰𝓪𝓲𝓷, 𝓫𝓾𝓽 𝓳𝓾𝓼𝓽 𝓴𝓷𝓸𝔀 𝓘 𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓮 𝔂𝓸𝓾'.
The letter was short and sweet, and when Fumiko read the last part a couple of tears fell on the letter, "I love you too Eichi", he whispered almost as if Eichi was right there with him. But Fumiko wasn't the only one dealing with the sudden goodbye, Haruko was still trying to figure out why Mizu didn't remember him. He knew Mizu couldn't have forgotten him, because it had only been a couple of years since they had last seen each other and he knew Mizu loved him. After all, that happened, after all, they went though together he didn't understand.
