Chapter Text
ColoredMoon
Stunning Nagisa
2020
Oil on canvas
The darkness of the alleyway served as no deterrent to Luna Noona, the leader of the idol group MooMoon. She was walking home from a tense group rehearsal, if she could handle six 20-something girls giving her the stink-eye when they thought she wasn’t looking, she could handle anything the world decided to throw at her. Ever since one of their members died from an overdose, the rest had been collectively hostile towards her. Ungrateful bitches, it wasn’t her fault Miki overdosed! A sudden rush of wind to her right sent a chill up her spine, despite her confidence that the universe couldn’t, wouldn’t, hurt her. She hadn’t done anything wrong!
If it weren’t for her, they wouldn’t be where they were today. Those performance drugs were the reason their group could polish a new song and routine in less than 48 hours! Luna was the one who’d introduced them, who’d made them all use them. Their success was all because of her! Without her, they’d have been lost. So what if one of them took too many and died? No one ever said success came without sacrifice.
“They couldn’t survive without me,” she mumbled as she began walking again.
Unbeknownst to her, she was being watched by several pairs of eyes filled with murderous intent, directed right at her. Most of them were on the roof, except for one pair of cold blue eyes that hid in plain site, pressed up against the alley wall. There was a hit out on her for $50,000 USD; five times the usual rate, catching the attention of many assassins. It wasn’t a mystery to any of them who’d sent it out. The drug scandal was known far and wide.
Nagisa steadied his breath, trained reflexes prepared to jump into action at any moment. This wasn’t his first kill, and wouldn’t be his last. He listened to the clicky footsteps grow closer and closer to him, while keeping an eye on the roofline above him. He could sense strong bloodlust coming from there and he knew that it (and their guns) would be focused on him the second after he made the kill. He had to be quick.
“They don’t appreciate me,” Luna huffed, finally reaching Nagisa’s hiding spot.
With a silent whip of air and blade slicing through skin, his knife slit the back of her neck and she dropped. The thud her body made as it hit the ground, he used to cover his retreat. None of the other assassins heard or saw him slither back into the darkness.
Understandable confusion flittered through them. It was so quick, so precise, so clean, none of them had a chance to properly register what happened. Only one of them recognised the technique, the grace, for he had been victim to it himself.
“It was him,” he breathed out.
“Who?” a voice to his left asked.
“The boy who faced my whip and lived. He did something to me. Stunned me without using a stun gun. So he became an assassin...”
“Do you know his name?” another voice asked.
The whip assassin was quiet for a moment, thinking back to that moment. “His mother called him Nagisa, I think.”
“Nagisa, huh?” a voice said, above him?
He looked up and almost screamed, for there was Luna, floating an inch from his head.
She giggled. “Surprised?”
“Uh...” he pointed at her body still lying in the alleyway. “How?”
“Idiot, I’m obviously a ghost.” She rolled her eyes like she couldn’t believe anyone could not believe in ghosts, forgetting that five minutes ago, she didn’t believe herself.
“What do you want?”
“Who said I wanted anything? Can’t a ghost say hello without scrutiny anymore?”
“You’ve been dead five minutes,” the voice to the left pointed out.
Luna ignored them. “Do you know anything else about Nagisa? Where he lives? Where he’s from?”
The whip assassin shook his head.
“You’re useless. I’ll find him myself.”
Without another word, she flew away into the night, leaving behind three confused assassins.