A Punch to the Face
In real life, punching only feels great for about one second, Akari realized. In fighting video games, the villains are made of straw, their motives are clear and wrong and it's not like the villain might have doubts about their morality. She liked to turn beating them up into art, turning her punches and kicks into dance and poetry, and she only stopped when it got to be two a.m. and her tennis elbow started acting up.
And punching this kid Kaito had felt just like that as her fist connected with his upper lip: a split second of rage and justification, that this was totally going to make up what he'd done to her brother.
But Kaito took it, reeling, only raising his hand to absently wipe at the spot where his lip was bleeding now. Akari had already blocked the counter-blow that never came, and she felt her muscles twitch from the lack of action. No words, no counterattack… and suddenly it was doubt that punched her in the face instead: she had the wrong kid, the wrong diagnosis, or worse yet that she was the one in the wrong and somehow Yuma deserved to have lost his soul.
"Come on! Are you too manly to hit a girl? Come at me, I can take it!" she yelled, trying to fill in the emptiness. It was hysteria. She wanted to keep punching him, to get him on the ground and bloody his nose and his eyes or break his jaw. She wanted to make him fight back, and remind her why it was it was ok to feel like this. That she was justified in punching a teenager five years younger than her.
"No."
She grabbed him by the collar. "Why not?" she yelled into his face.
His eyes were a cloudy blue-gray, and when they failed to meet hers she realized that all the anger in his expression, all the tension in his body and clenching of his jaw, was directed inward. She was the only one who wanted to fight here.
"Because I deserve it."
And punching this kid Kaito had felt just like that as her fist connected with his upper lip: a split second of rage and justification, that this was totally going to make up what he'd done to her brother.
But Kaito took it, reeling, only raising his hand to absently wipe at the spot where his lip was bleeding now. Akari had already blocked the counter-blow that never came, and she felt her muscles twitch from the lack of action. No words, no counterattack… and suddenly it was doubt that punched her in the face instead: she had the wrong kid, the wrong diagnosis, or worse yet that she was the one in the wrong and somehow Yuma deserved to have lost his soul.
"Come on! Are you too manly to hit a girl? Come at me, I can take it!" she yelled, trying to fill in the emptiness. It was hysteria. She wanted to keep punching him, to get him on the ground and bloody his nose and his eyes or break his jaw. She wanted to make him fight back, and remind her why it was it was ok to feel like this. That she was justified in punching a teenager five years younger than her.
"No."
She grabbed him by the collar. "Why not?" she yelled into his face.
His eyes were a cloudy blue-gray, and when they failed to meet hers she realized that all the anger in his expression, all the tension in his body and clenching of his jaw, was directed inward. She was the only one who wanted to fight here.
"Because I deserve it."