Ink Burns

This was how he put it to himself:

Anezaki Mamori understood the need to fight for what you wanted and cared about.

She was cheerful and outgoing, and probably even sweet, but he doubted she’d be able to carry off refinement or elegance without bursting into giggles half way there.

She never fought fire with fire; she fought fire with a goddamn mop.

She cared for the weak and defenseless, and also for the strong and independent, and even for the downright fucking dangerous. She cared for people like it was her favorite hobby, and it drove him batshit insane and it made him laugh.

She never touched alcohol, not because she took any special effort to avoid it, but simply as though drinking herself drunk never occurred to her as a useful thing to do.

She growled at him and about him, glaring nose-to-nose, but she never once thought she was a failure because of him.

He’d seen older men, men with rings on their left hands, look at her, and he’d seen her dismiss them, cheerful and oblivious and impervious as a boulder rolling over a branch.

In short, Anezaki Mamori was as different from his mother as it was possible to be and still have two X chromosomes, and that was why he was still standing here, watching her look away and turn red, and touching his cheek where he could still feel the light brush of her lips.

“Crazy fucking woman,” he muttered at last, and she spun around, fire in her eyes, mouth open to tear a strip off him, and then she stopped.

He thought it was because he’d taken her hand.

End