Akito Sohma notably could not stand outsiders. So clearly, she hated you. It felt self explanatory, justified. She can’t stand to see your face with the nice hair, perfect skin, perfect smile—and yet, she remains at your side, like a parasitic entity.
There was no particular reason for her to even approach you in the first place. It was just curiosity, a morbid form of it. If anyone interacted with the twelve of whom she shared a precious bond, it was her given right to know of them.
It wasn’t hard to gather a general profile on you. And just from that they could tell that you were a painfully average person. You attended public schooling, no real extracurriculars, and you had now moved onto university. How novel.
To anyone besides a Sohma, they might have been a bit more alarmed by someone sprawled on the ground like this, shuffling through a puddle of personal documents to a total stranger. The servants of the Sohma house had since learned to turn a blind eye to the more… bizarre inclinations of the head of the house.
Akito paused abruptly at a photo scan of your university identification card. They set it down in front of them, tapping the photo with her index finger thoughtfully.
“Ugly.”
And yet that single photo of you was kept so carefully tucked away in their nightstand.
She claimed that your face might have slipped right from their mind if she wasn’t handed a photo by a trusted maid, a photo of you fraternizing with one of her twelve most beloved, more specifically Shigure.
How casual the scene was, the two of you sprawled out on the porch of that old house in the woods. Sitting languidly alongside one another while you fanned him. This couldn't have been the first occurance, from the way you held a book in the opposite hand, clearly more engrossed in its contents rather than Shigure himself.
It felt like a betrayal that burned through the delicate yet sacred bond that they shared. He had no right to make her feel like this, especially with someone outside of the clan who couldn’t understand the depth of the bond that they shared.
Someone like that should receive some sort of divine retribution for impeding on such a connection.
At her behest, the finer details of your life were picked through and presented to her, such as your place of residence and your workplace. Within weeks, she had a good understanding of your daily routine. She thought briefly that it wouldn't hurt to disrupt that.
And so, your first meeting was at a less than ideal spot: a grocery store in your area.
Akito Sohma had rarely strayed from the estate, so this in itself was a new experience, though unwelcome. To deliberately remove themselves from the pristine and carefully tailored nature of her very life for a task like this was… not something they were known to enjoy. But they did not set foot in that place for leisure.
Her careful gaze quickly plucked you out of a crowd of mundane faces. Your face was nothing if not average, she thought, as it was scrunched up as you examined a bag of apples for bruises.
Your first encounter with her was brief, with her wordlessly standing by you while you finally gave pause in an aisle whilst checking over a list. Unbeknownst to you, you stood with your back turned to a god amongst men.
At that moment, Akito knew she must be a bit bent, considering all she could focus on at the time was your vulnerability. The exposed skin of your neck, the carelessness of the way that you presented yourself with. Her hands must have been visibly shaking by the effort it took to keep them at her sides.
The moment came to an end once you plucked a box of baking soda off of the shelf, suddenly noticing her presence.
“Oh, sorry. Was I in your way?”
And you spoke to her. Nothing particularly interesting. Which shouldn't have come as such a surprise, but the gentle lilt of your voice stung her to the core. Just that alone was corrosive, something that ripped through the cardiac muscle.
That was the end of your encounter as you went off to the register, and she was escorted back to the Sohma estate. Even in the midst of varying servants flitting about and dressing her, the damage was done.
Your face was as common as a sparrow, and yet you managed to captivate her. And it infuriated her.
That small seed of interest was enough; it mutated into a feeling of wanting, a thirst that ripped through her at an abnormal rate. It overtook her mind, and even surrounded by easily hundreds of glossy photographs personally procured for her, it wasn’t enough.
Her eyes were stuck to the photos scattered across the floor, photos of someone she hardly knew. But Akito’s poor habit of shredding her nails by her teeth also seemed to flare up whenever the image of you would flit through her mind.
Akito just had to see you again. If only to just lay eyes upon you, it was such a harmless ask, but her intentions were anything but.