Chapter Text
The dagger went directly into the man’s throat, and his struggles slowed and weakened over the lapse of the minute Zanka had held it there for good measure.
The glint of fear glazed over the man’s irises, now hollow.
Zanka would think over and over again when he was training at the Academy or ambling on his patrols; would his first kill haunt him? He had been taught where exactly the most fatal points on a human body were, how much pressure would be necessary and what methods were most efficient. He would wave off the thoughts and let them gather at the back of his mind, but they remained. How would it feel? Would he keel over with immense guilt? The instructors, back when he was just fourteen, demonstrated with the thick dummies where you would need to cut your knife to take someone out.
Much like how Kyouka would teach him how to dodge gunfire outside what the Hell Guards offered, Goka would act out a person who wanted to kill him and charge at him, either bare-handed or armed. Zanka would sometimes hesitate—because it’s Goka, he can’t possibly imagine him as a crackhead outside the district—but other times his curiosity would just get the best of him, and he would indulge in Goka’s strange lessons and delve into this teaching method.
Hah, what a nice memory.
Zanka’s eyes hung heavy, staring at the dead corpse at his feet. They trailed slowly up the walls and settled on the clear CCTV camera nestled in the corner, focusing on his silhouette in the dark office. Moonlight spilt across the bloodied table and illuminated his figure; his pale skin contrasted strongly against the tiny droplets of crimson that painted his cheeks. Clothes that are not his own are drenched at the torso portion.
He didn’t even think about doing it. Slitting the man’s throat, that is.
Three minutes have passed, and no guilt has seeped into his bones. His heart hasn’t started racing at the realisation of his actions. The sick, horrifying sin of red that will never wash away from his hands. Instead, his expression was stone cold as his black eyes looked away from the camera, tilting aside.
“…”
They narrow ever so slightly as he treads over the corpse and rummages the deathly silent office room for a blade bigger than the one in his clutch. What a nuisance, his voice echoed in his mind.
“Bingo,” he smiled as the wooden closet past its doors contained a handsome curved single-edged blade with a comfortably long grip. It looks unused, too. Zanka’s weak smile largened and he grabbed the lonely katana out of its cage, bringing it out to the light.
“Yer a gorgeous one, huh.”
The katana didn’t respond.
“You’ll do fine.” The Nijiku held it and craned his head upwards as his ears concentrated on the sounds of people he could hear booming outside the room. He spared one last glance at the body—his first body—and sighed. The guilt hasn’t settled yet.
“…”
This wouldn’t be hard at all.
He should consider giving the katana a nickname, preferably a cool one, given how good he’s been. Years of being a Nijiku before he left, years of being top of his class across every subject comes back to him startlingly quick. Is it the adrenaline or is he completely calm? He can’t tell, but he can count the four dead men spread out on the hallway floor. Blood is all he sees behind, in front and at all sides. Past, present, and future. He has killed people, he’s killing people, and he will kill more people. No one’s getting scotch free from this shit, not a fuckin’ soul.
Zento slices through the guard’s lungs, and Zanka twists; pure agony flashes across their face before he dodges the next person’s weapon and stabs them too. A few of them he recognises, others he doesn’t. Should he even care? No.
“You demon—DIE—”
Yet their sentence cuts short because they don’t even have a head anymore. Around twenty meters ahead in the long, ridiculously long corridor, five guys with guns–handguns, all of Beretta models—aim at him with angry expressions. Now that is a face he fully recognises, even in his killing haze, and it momentarily snaps him out of it.
Guilt has no place in his heart, yet.
Yet never will come.
“—o monster! You crazy Giver!” one of them shrieked, and the rounds of shots were fired. “Ain’t he a Cleaner?!—They don’t kill!”
Dumbasses.
Senseless, fuckin’ dumbasses.
Zanka leaps off the wall with a powerful push from his feet, and he ends up on the opposite side of the narrow hallway, holding Zento tight in his grip behind him as his blood-stained clothes flow at his movements. Yellow and white sparks miss him and time slows down. He becomes nothing but a flash of red and blue, a thin grey following after his blurring figure. Blood sprays from the first man’s jugular at the contact, and two men fall shortly after.
“FUCK—STAND BACK!” One of them yells.
One bullet ricochets off Zento’s blade, and Zanka’s eyebrows furrow in fury. The hallway narrows, and he can hardly breathe; gunfire screams in his ears, and the flashing, sparkling lights are too close for his sensitive eyes—
His mind is in a frantic state as he ditches the gun and crawls towards the exit, gloved hands dragging himself past his colleagues’ bodies. They stare back at him in blank horror, and it does nothing to aid his twisting knot that’s uncomfortably pooling in his gut. He hacks up blood from his lungs, and he’s bleeding out from his stomach. He won’t make it. They shouldn’t have done this at all. He shouldn’t have signed himself for this, it wasn’t—ain’t worth it.
Just as his fingertips graze the metal elevator doors, black boots crush his hands, and he bites on his tongue. A clear shadow looms over him from behind, and the man feels a cool blade press against the side of his exposed neck. The tip of the sword brushes against the raised hair, and the gentle grasp of Death herself has him in her clutches.
“Ya said… Cleaners don’t kill, right?”
The voice is commanding and low; it makes his shaking worse.
The man—no, he’s not even an adult—fully stands on his hand, audibly breaking the knuckles as he cries out loud in pain. The blade splits his dermis cleanly. Warmth gathers at the damaged area.
“I’m not wearin’ a Cleaner’s uniform, am I now? And it’s just like yer little scientist said earlier,” the katana pressed further into his flesh, slowly decapitating him. “I’m just a Giver. Nothin’ but a Nijiku. I’ve been taught how to kill. How to neutralise threats. It’s just what that scientist predicted—” The katana dove into his external jugular veins and sliced through the nerves and blood vessels, his head separating from his shoulders.
“—I’m just a ticking bomb on his way to becoming crazy, hah?”
The headless body doesn’t respond.
He has probably lost his damn mind, but…the guilt hasn’t arrived yet.
Zanka makes his way up through the emergency stairs and mentally maps out the head scientist’s labs from what he could gather from the small office. Feet stomp against the concrete steps one after the other at a steady pace. Zento is comfortable in his hold, but he yearns for her.
“Wait for me, darling…’M coming…” he speaks out loud, almost love-sick. His split brows curl, and his eyelids fall halfway, a possessive smile etched on his bloody face.
He hasn’t seen her for a long, long while now.
There’s only so much sanity stored left in a Giver before you separate them from their vital instrument.
And Zanka hasn’t seen Lovely Assistaff in a hot minute.