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Eito Aotsuki HATES humans.
This is an immutable fact of his life since the day he was born. To a family of borrowers that live in a library nook. It was where he was born, raised and where he learned everything about being a borrower.
Borrowers are small. Often they compete with mice and bugs and other pests for resources. Dirty things, they are. Eito is accustomed to slaying them. Borrowers are social creatures. Being so small, they have to exist together for protection. Extra eyes around an area and early warning signals are vital to survival. Borrowers need to carve their homes out in drywall and wood from the ground up, using nothing but hooks and string to make a place much too big for them livable. Everyday objects are turned into furniture and clothes are stitched from scrapped together thread.
Most of all, Eito finds that borrowers are cowards. Completely subservient to the system. They are small, therefore they are lesser, and there is nothing they can do to change their living situation. Forever would they exist in the shadow of humanity. Ugly, reeking, nasty, repulsive humanity. Eito loathes them, everything about them makes him sick.
Growing up in the library gave Eito access to many books. And those books taught him many things. Out of curiosity, he’d begun skimming them as a child, and he learned about war, hate, violence, betrayal, murder and the myriad of other things human beings were capable of. Mixed with the teachings of borrower history and their own taboos, that being spotted meant death, and that human beings were dangerous just as much to borrowers as they were to each other, only affirmed Eito’s idea of humans in his head.
Monsters.
Giant, hulking, eerie monsters and oozed and squelched across everything they touched. The ground shakes when they get too close, breaking the small foundations of the walls around his home. They laid traps for pests that could cut a rodent in half, leaving little doubt as to what would happen if a borrower were caught in such a device. Their ear-splitting voices were loud and shook Eito to his very core. The smell of them had him recoiling to the point where he’d have to sit in running ventilation to get the smell to stop clinging to him.
Human beings are everything wrong with this world. Good for nothing, other than killing and consuming with their festering rot corrupting everything they touch. Borrowers tend to describe human beans as larger borrowers, the few Eito has attempted to confide in, at least. Eito doesn’t see it. For as far as he can tell, the masses of flesh and bone and pus and death looked nothing like any borrower he’s seen. Sound or smell nothing like the woodchips and old cloth he smelled around his home when free of the lingering stench of giants. Perhaps he was special. Perhaps he could see human beings for what they really are. The plague on existence that only serves to subjugate and kill anything they see as lesser than them, borrowers included.
Borrowers are cowards in the face of them. Eito had been a coward, once. When he was very young, he shivered in terror at the thought that one of those beasts was coming to kill them. A thousand, bulging eyes and melting flesh and rot coming to drown him in the sea of blood that flowed from the pustules coating its body. He’d hid under one of the shelves and prayed for mercy. There were always so many of them. Eito lived in fear every day.
His parents were never concerned. The Aotsuki’s really only cared about their own survival, and less about each other. When Eito’s unnaturally high fear of humans even for other borrowers his age began to become noticeable, they only wrote it off. Being afraid of humans was natural for borrowers. Wise, even. If Eito lived in fear of them, he would avoid them, and he would not end up dead in the grasp of one.
The idea of being held by one of those things makes Eito want to throw up. Flesh and bone digging into his skin while a towering titan of a creature designed to kill holds his own life in his hands? Eito would rather die before it even tried to get close. The constant fear of being caught and killed twisted his stomach into knots with the stress. Every time the ground shook, his terror would grow a little more. Every time he smelled one, he retreated to the vents regardless how dangerous the humming fan was. Eito used to be a coward.
He isn’t, anymore.
A human had spotted him, once. Just once. He had been running for the ventilation system when it cornered him. It had come too close, and out of instinct, Eito had swiped at it sidelong with the grappling hook he used to get around the library. The fleshy hand ruptured and spewed and the horrible thing shrieked in pain, and Eito realized belatedly that he could see its horrifying visage become afraid as the hook stayed lodged in its gangrenous limb. Eito had pulled the hook free by force and it shrieked like it was dying. His hook still covered in the thing’s crimson blood, Eito had fled home to avoid the rest of those horrid monsters coming after him now that they’d been alerted.
But he stared at his hook the entire way, watching the fluids drip from the blade of it. The giants could be hurt. Perhaps, one day, they could be killed. And then, Eito wouldn’t have to live in fear anymore. His grip on the hook tightened as an idea took root in his mind. He would not be another coward. He wouldn’t bow to the order of the world where big things killed and consumed that which was smaller. His cackling grew louder. He hates humanity. Hates it with every fiber of his being. The blood from the hook running down the hands gripping it, Eito cackles as loud as he can manage in the forest of grass and dandelions outside the library.
He would bow to humanity not a day longer.
Eito left his home in the library behind that day, discarding the social norms of borrowers and their need for community. If he suggested slaying the giants to any of them, they would only run and cower. But Eito would find a way. He may be small, but he would rise above even the tallest of titans and cement his place in the world above those horrible monsters. One way or another, he would destroy the vile species that only existed to kill. If the things wanted death so badly, then he would be the borrower to kill them himself.
As he moved from home to home, he found more and more ways to creatively kill the beasts inside. He’d make a show of a pest being in their house using his hook to fake the presence of rats, and then slip the poison into their sugars and salts while they were sleeping. He’d find the vents and seal the doors overnight, and let them slowly suffocate in their beds from the carbon monoxide of running engines. He’d take matchsticks from unattended draws and start fires under the floorboards, burning their obnoxious structures down from the inside. There was an advantage to his small size, and years of stealth training at an early age.
Eito learned how to slit the throats of snoring giants and let them bleed out in their beds. He made his own traps with just a few ropes and something sharp to ensure death would quickly silence the beasts he hunted. His burning hatred fueled each kill, each successful raid bringing him closer to his goal. Among borrowers, he became a giant slayer. From the day he started, that little grappling hook remained forever stained with the red of giant’s blood he’d spilled in his quest to liberate the world from its hideous overlords. And the humans began whispering about his actions in their newspapers and their broadcasts in their wretched voices.
Eito couldn’t help but admire his work. The humans called him the “White Death of Tokyo.” They talked of no evidence. No fingerprints. No signs of struggle. No forced entry or broken lockpicks. He was a ghost who haunted the human world. An angel of death that visited with an imagined plague of rats and left no survivors. They were scared of him. Eito took pride in that. That someone of his stature could force fear into the hearts of those beasts. Let them think the ghost of their sins is coming to collect. That may as well be what he is, in the end.
He continued his slaughter, slaying giants in the dark of night. He thought he would never be caught. After all, those thick skulled beasts were so densely unaware of the worlds at their feet that were so thoughtlessly destroyed, they’d never think someone of his stature would be capable of these feats. He thought he was practically unstoppable until the day everything changed. The day that Eito was the one caught unawares was a strange one.
He had made his way into another home by burrowing under it, creating an imitation mousehole for quick entry and exit. It was a study in plainness. He’d seen dozens of houses like it before, so he knew the layout would be mostly the same. He knew where all the entrances and exits would be, all the windows and how to operate the standard locks. It would be an easy job. Maybe only a week or two of living in this place before he did away with the giants inside and moved onto the next nest.
At least, that was his plan. Unfortunately, Eito did not account for actually being caught. While scratching imitation claw marks to imitate a rat infestation into one of the table legs, a jar had come slamming down on top of him from out of nowhere. So used to the musty smell of human rot in their living space, Eito had not smelled the beast approaching. Perhaps he had gotten cocky. Regardless, he’d been trapped by one of the oldest tricks in the book due to his negligence, so he turns around and flashes the most hateful glare he can muster toward the beast that trapped him.
It’s hunched over, dripping face and thousand eyes staring at him while it holds the jar’s top to the ground with one hand. Eito can see the back of the other twisting limb, and takes note of the large, scarred over gash that doesn’t mesh with the clump of flesh surrounding it. Ah, this one was the beast from the library he’d stabbed with his hook. The one that taught him that humans could hurt and bleed and die just like anything else in this world. They were not eldritch Gods, but sniveling beasts that could be slain with the right blade.
The grotesque thing stares at him for a moment. Eito knows that the jar is going to run out of air eventually, so the thing must be waiting for him to asphyxiate. All humans do is cause and spread death, after all. Eito isn’t surprised. A stupid way to die, but at least he’d made his mark as a threat to these beasts and their horrible tyranny. Perhaps one day his tale will inspire other borrowers to stand against the oppressors they’re forced to hide from and feed off the scraps of.
The jar tilts sideways. A sudden rush of fresh air has Eito gasping in shock before the rim knocks him sideways into the wall of the jar. The beast scoops him up using the glass container and Eito pitifully slides down the side of it before landing in the bottom now that it was the right way up. The monster lifts it, and him off the ground to look at Eito closer. Its slathering maw drools all over the ground as many bulging eyes take in Eito’s miniscule form.
Eito points his hook at the beast threateningly. As long as he can fight, he refuses to lie down and die at the mercy of the beast. Stained red with the blood of a hundred giants, Eito will fight like hell to see his mission through.
“It’s you….” the beast rumbles. It’s voice shakes the world around Eito now that it’s so close. It feels like his eardrums are going to shatter under the force of it. He can’t help the instinctual cringe that comes with even hearing the sound of that grating voice. “You’re the little person with the hook from the library. I knew you were real!”
Eito grimaces at the sound of the beast continuing to yap. His teeth pull back into a snarl as he grips the hook with both hands, projecting as much murderous intent up at the thing as he can manage.
“Oh man, Karua is going to lose her mind when I show her this,” The beast continues to ramble, like Eito is something instead of a living being. A trophy. It makes him even sicker than he was already, with the odious scent of the beast clinging to him like a toxic gas. “She won’t be able to say I was lying about where I got the scar now that I have proof! Hah!”
A cluster of eyes go from darting in a million random directions to focusing on Eito all at once. The horrible mountain of flesh continues to examine him with both hands around the jar, watching Eito’s stance curiously. Eito deepens his glare as much as he can at the monster before him.
“Wow, you’re an angry little guy, aren’t you?” The beast hisses through its oversized maw, sharp teeth clacking together unsettlingly. Everything about looking at it is wrong and disgusting. Where did the borrowers get it in their heads that humans look anything like them? “Guess I should put you somewhere safer than some jar. I don’t want you breaking out before Karua gets here so I can show you to her.”
Glad to know he can be entertaining. Eito scoffs through his nose with discontent. They’ll make a spectacle of him before killing him, is that it? The giant beast begins walking, and the force of it nearly knocks Eito over because of course this hideous ogre wouldn’t think twice about his prisoner’s comfort. He has to lie down on his back and spread his limbs out in all directions to keep the shaking from making him throw up, or stabbing himself with his own weapon.
“Hmm, I should give you a name. How about Snowy?” The beast murmurs.
“I have a name you moronic nincompoop!” Eito snaps back at him. “Call me something else and I’ll start by tearing your throat out when I kill you!”
“Woah, you can talk??”
“Of course I can talk, do I look like a mindless animal to you!?” Eito snaps back angrily, half tempted to roll the jar off the table to shatter it and use the glass shards to start poking out each other beast's ugly red and blue eyes. He would get out of this predicament, and he’d make the monster’s death slow and painful.
“Wow… talking to tiny people… and I thought I was crazy before.” The beast mutters. “The only reason I believed it happened is because of the scar.”
It examines the scratch in question on its limb before turning back to Eito. It’s toothy maw becomes wide and drooly again. “I’m Takumi Sumino. What’s your name?”
Eito sneers at him. “Eito Aotsuki. Remember it when you get to hell.”
He brandishes the hook at Takumi again.
“Please, with that little thing?” The thing calling itself Takumi has the audacity to look amused. “Look. I know that hook can cause a mean scratch, but it’s not like you can kill me with it.”
Eito’s gaze narrows further. “Tell that to the beasts it’s slain. It is coated in the blood of giants just like you that weren’t so lucky. And mark my words, when I free myself from your glass prison, I will make sure you join them in the same fate.”
“Dude, you’ve got to be kidding me, no way in hell is a little guy like you going to kill me with a blade that-” Takumi is interrupted by the sound of something ringing. If Eito remembers correctly, it’s something those human beasts called a “phone.”
Takumi picks up the device with a mangled limb and clawed hands and begins to fiddle with it. “Karua, you’re never going to believe what I just-!”
“Takumi!” Another monster’s voice echoes from the little box, shrill and probably female. “The White Death, it struck again! Th-there were stab wounds in the victims necks. A small blade, not even a few millimeters long, they bled out it was… it was my mom and dad that they got, in the hospital. There were six other victims killed the same way. I-”
The beast goes pale, as the one sounding from inside the little brick speaks. The more the other monster says, the more the monster that captured Eito slowly turns to stare at its prisoner and the hook in his hands. Eito smiles, a devilish and vindictive grin, as he runs a gloved hand along the blade of the hook, still red with blood.
And there it is. The fear Eito wanted to see in the monster’s eyes.
“Karua I…. I’m sorry, I-I’ll… be over as soon as I can, I promise.” Takumi puts the phone down and onto the table. He stares at Eito, the flesh and sinew growing more pale as many eyes widen in shock and fear.
“You… you’re the White Death of Tokyo.” Takumi mutters in shock and disbelief. “You’re that crazed serial killer who murdered all those people, and was never caught in the act once.”
“My size isn’t something for you to insult now, is it?” Eito smirks, wide and sadistic. “Now then Ugly Takumi, how do you suppose I should kill you when I get out of here? Because I’m certainly not letting you live now that you’ve seen what I really am. I should really make it hurt as punishment for trapping me like a rat-”
The monster moves quicker than Eito can catch. It snatches up his jar and shoves it under its dirty and disgusting bed, where some kind of hamster cage seems to have been kept in storage for God knows how long. Takumi clumsily dumps him in the rodent cage and shuts the door to lock, before taking a padlock out of his dresser and snapping it over the door for good measure.
Eito is, of course, furious. “How DARE you! Don’t you know who I am!? I’m the giant slayer! The titan killer! The White Death! When I get out of this insult of a cage you will pay for this you REVOLTING, STOMACH CHURNING, VILE ODIOUS-”
Takumi shoves the cage under the bed and leaves Eito in darkness and dust.
“Holy hell. What am I supposed to do about this, call the police? No, hell no, they’re not going to believe me about this. And it’s not like they’ve got jail cells for murderous tiny mouse people….”
“LET ME OUT OF HERE YOU HIDEOUS MONSTER!” Eito shouts, pulling on the bars of the old hamster cage with all the fury he can manage.
“You killed Karua’s parents, didn’t you!?” The monster hisses back with an angry roar. “Like hell I’m letting some murderer run free!”
“YOU’LL ALL PAY FOR THIS! ALL OF YOU HUMAN BEASTS! I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU ABOMINATIONS!”
Takumi shoves something big in front of his bed to muffle Eito shouting at him from the cage. Eito can hear it breathing long, heavy breaths.
“I need to go see Karua…” the human mutters, before it stomps away and leaves Eito alone in the hamster cage.
Eito sits down and snarls. He can barely see a thing in front of him, now that it was dark. It would make breaking out harder than it would have been in just the jar. But, he wanted a bit of credit for his hard work, can you blame him? But he would get out of here, eventually. And when he did…
Eito would have that Ugly Takumi’s head.