Oh god am I really doing this
This is probably a really terrible idea and I will be ashamed and feel guilty about this in a few days. But whatever, I'm doing it anyhow and I don't even know if I'll update more than once in a month, so buckle up. Hopefully this one actually gets to some porn.
Same rules apply as last time: voting, routes, etc. If you don't understand that this will be NSFW, then I bless your innocent little soul.
----------------------------------
I remember that day ten years ago more intensely than I experience the present.
There was the heat, contrasted by a spattering of rain on my face. There was the brightness all around, like the sun come to Earth, contrasted by the stars scattered in the sky. There was the emptiness of the field, with no other soul to be seen in that cast stretch of desolation...
...contrasted by the figure of one man, his body limp, his clothes burned, making his way towards me.
Tears were in his eyes as he touched my face and I blinked in shock; this simple show of life made him hold me close, and he wrapped his dark coat around me. Then, like I weighed nothing at all, he picked me up; I could hear his heartbeat deep in his chest, slow and reverberating, his light tears slipping down his chin to wet my dried hair. Of course I never knew who he was, but as I curled myself up and tried to shut out the cruel world around me, I knew he was a good person.
"What's your name? Please, tell me your name." I remember him asking me this as he stepped out from the ruins, making sure that his pace was gentle, not rough and erratic.
I took in a breath - the smoke had made it hurt to even speak, but I told him. "Shirou... my name is Shirou."
He stopped, and then for some reason, he looked me in the eye, staring down into his coat where I was.
"Shirou?" He repeated the name, almost as though it was familiar to him.
"The hell kind of name is that for a girl?"
I cocked my head and looked back into his eyes, wondering what he thought of me. I was wearing a small dress, and had a little hair clip still attached to my reddish locks.
Before I could say anything - since it took me an age to build up to even a sentence - he interrupted, and started speaking again, as if having a conversation with himself and not me.
"You know what, that's fine. But, Shirou... that's a boy's name. Maybe... Kaede? No, that's too typical. She-Ro? No no no, too... American. I think I'll just call you... Shirouko. I've been walking in a burning park for an hour, so please... don't criticize my lack of creativity."
No, I could never criticize a man so generous. He was my saviour, the only one who could look out for me then. The only thing that I could criticize was that his coat smelled very strongly of tobacco and it made me cough. The man gasped when he heard that, dropping his train of thought, and he bundled me up tighter and brought me out of there. I don't think he understood what the actual problem was, but he was only doing what he thought was best. Someday, I hope I can be like that to someone. Wait...
-x-x-x-
"Ah, Shirouko..." My old man smiled at me, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. An empty glass of sake - no, two... three, actually - was at his foot, and he was wearing his usual, ragged robe, worn down and stained. He always liked it, though, and no one disrespected him for it, not at all. Especially not me.
He let out a puff of smoke into the clear night sky, and turned to me, still with a broad, wrinkled smile on his face. I think he was only in his mid-thirties at the time, but you know what they say about cigarettes and your skin.
"Shirouko, my girl... I had a dream, once. I think I was a child at the time, and I... I wanted to be some kind of hero." His lips creased into a frown when he said that, and he stared out into the distance, watching the sky from our home's patio. He liked to stay here some nights, but this was the first time he'd invited me to join him. I don't know what he thought about, or looked at, but maybe this was what was always on his mind. There were some mysteries to him that even I never fully learned.
"A hero?" I asked him, so curious at the time. All I really knew of "heroes" came from what I read online in illegally scanlated American comics.
He laughed a little, and took another puff of his smoke, being courteous enough to blow it downwind, away from my face. "Yes... I always wanted to be a hero, and I wanted to help everyone. I was a child back then, in mind, if not in body... I never grew up until it was too late, Shirouko. I never saved any of them... all I have, now, is you."
A hero... my father was a hero. I smiled. "Then... I can be a hero in your place! I promise, I can be the very best; I'll be a good hero, for everyone!"
Again, he laughed, and he squashed his burned-down cigarette into his ashtray, replacing it with one more glass of sake off the wooden patio; he gulped it all down.
"I'm... glad," he told me, and I couldn't tell if it was happily or mournfully. "In the end, I never could... FUCK!"
I gave him a strange look, and he clutched his chest, looking at me with strange contentedness in his eyes. He smiled, one last time, and a tear rolled ever so slowly down his cheek.
Nudging against him, I found that he didn't move, or didn't speak. He was sitting there with his arm wrapped about my shoulders, his head against mine; the life has passed from his eyes, and I knew that his time had come. There was nothing, in the end, that I could do.
For the rest of that night, tears kept streaming down from my eyes, never ending... I cried, and I cried, and I cried, until I had no more tears left, and they'd left an uncomfortable stain down the front of my shirt. I resolved myself to one thing, then, realizing what he meant in his dying words, what he told me. That was what was most important of all. I would live up to my old man's legacy, and do what he, in all his life, could not. I spoke those words to myself, understanding them with the utmost clarity.
"Yes... I promise to you, father..."
I clenched a fist, reliving that day in the fire.
I looked up to the night sky, just as he did, and saw the meaning he'd been looking for all his life.
"I promise... I'll be a hero, and fuck everyone!"
---------------------------------------------------
And so was born the story of Shirouko, porn protagonist.
Man, I watched too much B Gata H Kei.
Chapters index of doom:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
...