The years have not made Hitoshi any taller.[break]

Really, he hasn’t changed much at all. Outwardly, he finished growing shortly before he first made his entrance into Yumi’s life. Other than a few scruffy tufts of facial hair, nothing about him will change until old age sets in and saps him of all his strength. Hitoshi doesn’t think about tomorrow, much less a future that far away.[break][break]

When today is always so captivating, here in Hasegawa Yumi’s world, what’s the point in thinking about tomorrow? Hitoshi trusts that she will never lead him astray.[break][break]

She leads him down streets of neon gloom. By bars with brazen ‘BEER’ signs written in beautiful colors. Guitar playing street musicians strum and take in the awe-inspiring beauty of the Hasegawa queen. Their pitiful attempts at aping the music of greater men fail to capture her glory.[break]

And she leads him down an alleyway with boarded up storefronts. The dog feels the wind kiss the back of his neck. It makes the hair there stand up. He does not growl, but he steps closer to the woman he has resolved to protect. Clings to her like a shadow. His instincts tell him there will soon be trouble.[break]

It takes the form of a group of young men. They’re scum, like him. Smoking. Looking at her with interest. Looking her up and down. They make no attempt to hide the indecency of their gaze.[break]

“Why if it ain’t the princess.” One of the men says.[break]

“You shore you should be out so late, luv?”[break]

“And who’s the creep? Yo, Jimbo, get better clothes.” Hitoshi scoffs. Suits don’t fit him any better now than they did back then. They just never seem to look right, but it fits the image the family wants to project.[break]

He doesn’t speak. Speaking is Yumi’s game. If they touch her, though…[break]

For their sake, they better not be attached to the hand.

"Hey," Hitoshi has never spoken in this cadence in her presence. Always, his voice is animated. Lively. Jovial. No matter the subject, even when he's angry, he still manages to have a voice that's full of life. The voice he uses to address the man who just spoke his last coherent words is cold. Like the heart of a dead star.[break]
"did you just laugh at me?"[break]
The hand on her shoulder is connected to nothing at all. It happens so quick that some of his friends are still snickering. All of the mirth they expected dies as the first one brave enough to touch her realizes what has happened. He stares at the spurting red stump where his right hand used to be. He doesn't have time to scream.[break]
"I don't let anybody laugh at me." He is advancing towards this man with inhuman speed and precision, past Yumi. The look in his eyes, cold. It is never personal with him. No matter what she has him do, he never shows negative emotion. He kills without hatred, for a sword has no emotion.[break]
He's not a sword. Not now. He's a dog. A dog that is seeing red.

There is no cruelty when Hitoshi kills most people. It is precise work, a craft honed to perfection at a young age. Methodical weight pressed on one of a few key points to reach a desired result. That’s all killing is to him, robbed of any sentiment or deeper meaning.[break]
This is nothing like that. His blade pierces the man’s stomach. He twists it within the gut, a motion that provides no tactical advantage or furtherance of organ failure whatsoever. All it serves to do is fire pain signals into the brain, as if the mind does not already comprehend the terrible sense of wrongness as foreign pig iron is forced through a place meant for good food.[break]
He tears the blade up. He does so in a motion that misses every single vital organ save the lungs. Puncturing the lungs still gives him time. Hitoshi rips his blade free of the man. A torrent of blood showers them.[break]
And from there, he dances as the body falls behind him. That man will live for long enough to know agony as few will. There is no recovering from what Hitoshi has done to him. His life is irrevocably over and for his crimes, he has been graced with time to be intimate friends with pain. To soak in his impending end. Not long enough to come to peace, but long enough for the flavor of fear and existential dread to seep into his meat.[break]
His blade’s edge is a red streak. There is no flaw in the way his blade flows. One attack leads to another. A seamless transition with no wasted effort. In another age, this man would be a great warrior. He would rule the battlefields of the old tumultuous warring regions period. But that is not the age into which he was granted life. He is no great warrior. Nothing but a dog whose bite tastes of cold steel.[break]
All of this for her, and because these men dared laugh at them.

It's her voice that saves him in the end. It pulls him back from beasthood. Her beaming smile and the affirmation she gives him returns some small measure of humanity to Hitoshi. When he kills the remaining boy, it is with precision. There is a marked difference between this kill and those that came before. A single strike through the heart while he begs for mercy. Death comes in moments. The deed is done. The fight won. They didn't even have time to go for the pokeballs hanging from their waists like gunbelts.[break]
"You're..." He sounds different, but not in that low-growling way from before. Sheepish. That's the word. Hitoshi sounds sheepish as he takes one of their sleeves and wipes the blood off his sword.[break]
"...you're not mad at me, Yumi?" He asks while sounding like a dog who's having his belly rubbed. He doesn't even catch himself this time when he calls her that.

He remembers being a boy, in the far off days when he was allowed to just be a child. The way the boys who knew what his mother did would laugh. At him. At her. How they mocked the only person in the world he truly loved. He remembers doing then as he does now. Attacking them. Not daring to allow anyone to mock someone that would love something like him.[break]
And he remembers the scorn on his mother’s face. This is his love language. This blood, the breaking of flesh, the ending of life. That’s the only way he knows how to express himself. His love earned him his mother’s hatred. It earned him a one-way ticket to the streets.[break]
It put him on a path here.[break]
To her.[break]
To someone that would see this part of himself and thank him for what he does. His sword is forgotten. The hum of the neon is forgotten. The dead truth that he attacked these greengate boys first is forgotten. Everything except those two little words, more precious than gold.[break]
And so, he gives her two words in return, from the bottom of his heart.[break]
“Any time.”[break]