Author's Note: Years ago, I wrote the most immature, cringiest, most embarrassing fanfiction I can remember. I forgot exactly where it is, though. Anyway, I'm still inspired by some concepts in that long lost story. I changed the plot entirely, altered all copyrighted characters to make them original, altered even the original characters I added, put in some more characters, and even removed characters I thought made no sense for my now original creation.
What I'm trying to say is that this story has been changing over a long period of time, literal years. My greatest fear is that it will turn out stupid and horrible. But, I'm going to bite all the bullets and put this out. Please note that many of these characters are from cultures and locations I'm not familiar with, and they will often speak languages I don't speak. If I make any errors concerning what typical people from these cultures would normally do or say, or even concerning what these locations are like, then I humbly apologize. This story will contain bloody and upsetting violence (non-sexual, of course). All graphically described sexual situations will involve characters that are at least 18 years old.
*****
After locking the door and putting her keys on a shelf, the young woman flicked a light on to keep some of the night out. Then, she carefully slipped one stocking clad foot out of a blue high heel, put that foot into a house slipper on the raised wooden floor without allowing a single toe to touch the genkan, and did the same with the other foot.
It was an apartment, a nice one with a surprising amount of space. Father wouldn't approve of her living in a place that didn't have enough room for all her clothes. And he was so relieved too, to know that his precious little Sachi-chan was doing so well at the university, and it seemed that she was popular with the boys. It wouldn't take long for her to find a good husband.
The surgical treatments and expensive creams certainly worked well.
Only in some areas, bits of skin that could be concealed with foundation, could Ueno Sachiko still see anything that resembled scars.
And even if she didn't find a husband soon, she'd soon have a career in fashion design. Sachiko believed it was almost a guarantee.
"Ueno-san?"
Her heart jumped so fiercely that her upper body bent forward a little. Her heavily decorated fingernails clacked against a wall. One of the three dimensional roses glued to those nails was pressed against a sketch she had pinned up.
Soft, playful, feminine, where did that voice come from?
"Ueno-san? Feeling energetic?"
Lie!!
Sachiko's slippers tapped around the wooden floor of her apartment as she suspiciously examined every thing she could, the living area, the kitchen, the bedroom, the closet, and the balcony. Nobody was inside but her. She then checked on the television, the computer, and her cell phone for any signs of making a noise. Then she checked under her bed and looked through the peephole in her door.
A voice from her imagination. That's all that was.
Oh, there was a tube of lipstick on the floor.
Her bleached and dyed blonde hair slid over her shoulders as she bent down to pick up the lipstick. She scanned her own brain and remembered that earlier in the morning she'd put something in her purse, which meant that this particular lipstick had probably slipped out. That would explain why she couldn't find the tube while on the campus.
Sachiko put the lipstick on a dresser in the bedroom.
Breath ...
On her nape ... in her hair.
Hot and brief ...
"Ueno-san?"
Her body, her head, they were shoved, forced down with such an unimaginable strength and speed that her brain couldn't properly follow reality.
The floor, the hard floor, it hurt. Her body and head hurt. She was finally able to scream.
Flesh on her arm, flesh on her cheek.
And she saw ...
Long, beautiful black hair.
And then a flash of fingers.
Pain. Intense pain. Indescribable pain.
And she saw nothing.
Her eyes! Her eyes!
Of course, she tried to fight back. She even lost one of her opulent fingernails.
Yet, in the middle of her useless struggle, among her own screaming, she managed to hear her assailant laugh and say, "The whore thinks she's cute, ne?"
***
At least seven years or so later.
***
The wheels of the sleek, Italian car ground against the road with a pleasing speed. Then, after a time, they reached a parking lot and slowed down. Then they stopped. The vehicle's bright, red paint shone in the springtime sunlight. There wasn't a crowd of people in the parking lot, but there were a few, and they all stopped what they were doing to look at the expensive looking thing that so casually rode in.
The driver's long fingers were curled over the red and black steering wheel. His trendy little man bun slid against the driver's seat as he turned his head to look at the passenger, his father. He spoke in Romanian even though he wasn't in Romania anymore.
Mihai Dalca knew he'd never forget where he came from, but he was legally an American now, and he wanted his non-American father to stay with him for a while. It was better for the Old Man's mental health, really.
The Old Man ...
"I'll wait for you here, Dad. It shouldn't take long." With great affection, he reached over to the passenger and patted his thick shoulder. Then he picked at some random bit of lint that had been on his long sleeved, gray cotton shirt. He would have stopped there, but the band keeping his father's curly black hair up snapped at that moment. "Oh, that's annoying. Wait."
The older man sighed as his eyes rolled up to the ceiling of the car's interior. Those eyes were green with hints of gray, and they were a bit unpleasant to see on this late morning. That made sense, though. He was in a rough mood. He was tired, and he was about to take a driving test. It didn't matter what country he was in. This man hated driving cars. He preferred having someone else drive him around.
Within a few short moments, the younger man had his father's hair back into a man bun. It was the new, hip thing, or at least they thought it was. Whether or not the hairstyle could look good on an older man was up to interpretation. Mihai didn't think that a man with wrinkles and gray hair could look decent with a twenty-first century topknot, but his father looked perfectly fine in his eyes.
None of the men could bear to have short hair for very long before deciding that they wanted to grow it back out.
With his thick and commanding accent growing harsher with each syllable, Mihai's father put his fingers behind the interior handle of the passenger-side door and carved his words into the space between him and his son. "I want a steamed cheeseburger when this is done."
"That's fine. I'll buy one for you." Mihai's smile was excited and clean as he watched his father exit the vehicle and walk on to the local DMV. The man's loafers looked a bit out of place. Most Americans wore comfy sneakers on occasions like this. When his father first saw Mihai walking about town in a pair of sneakers, he muffled a laugh with his fist. Later on, when he saw Mihai with a baseball cap and sweatpants, he nearly lost his composure.
But Mihai had laughed with him.
He needed to keep himself busy. So, he pulled a faded paperback book from under his seat and started reading. It was an old novel, nothing particularly breathtaking, but that didn't matter. Every few moments, he would look up to see if anything was happening in the parking lot, or rather, anything that needed to be paid attention to. But, he felt very peaceful. He was in a relaxing, quiet town. There was no need to intensify his senses.
