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May All Be Pain or Love	By : Skwishee Category: > Kyo/Kaoru Views: 5674 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Dir en grey. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
He explains to the sun the nature of his unease, and the sun reflects a sympathetic response in the colors of the sky; deep purples and reds...bruises. Seeing everything it can't help but relate. The clouds pass, more hurried than usual, then time recedes all together in a way so peculiar it seems neither real nor possible. When Kyo sang the world would move so fast it was as if it stood still. The wind flooded the corridors inside the house, running toward the timbre as if it were late to catch it and let it ride. How it entered is unknown. One particular lock of damp, stray hair was flicking violently out of the corner of my eye, caught in the impossible gale. From this alone I would have known, even if I hadn't heard the evidence beforehand. Kyo was singing. Not loudly, probably not on purpose, but that didn't make it any less impressive.

He sat on the engawa outside his room, shoji thrown open on both sides to face his own, private, courtyard. Without the under-robes his kimono was unusually thin, his bare legs breached the sides of the fabric. I might have sent my thanks to the god that made him but prayer required a certain coherence that I was, at that moment, without. At his side, a glass lantern sat, candleless, insides made dynamic by dozens of tiny insects, each pulsing with pyretic light. He'd been catching fireflies again.

A compulsive nature made him unable to let go of his song till he was satisfied that it was finished, but he knew I was there. Without stopping he turned and smirked, showing me the creature in his left hand. It was still, but undamaged. It's tiny wings fluttered against his skin.

"Isn't it a little early for fireflies?" I asked. After all, the sun had only just began to fall within the hour. There was still light outside.

He smiled at me, and shrugged in a way that was meant to say, 'Obviously not', because there it was, and behind him too was a courtyard wide awake with tiny flickers. He ran his free hand through my newly shorn hair, expressing his approval with his eyes.

"I think you should take me to bed." he purred. "I'll even save you from emasculation and let you be on top this time."

"And here I thought you'd be sulking." I laughed, marveling at the subtle way his eyes darkened when he was seeking my sin. And I would have immediately conceeded had I not been thinking of Közi yet again.

"I think pleasure would be a far better use of my time." Raising up on his toes, he bit my lip. "Anyway, I'm not worried about the letter." he informed me, and I knew that was partially true. Not worried, but it concerned him, if even in the slightest.

"Neither am I." I half-lied, determined to ignore the bold invitations to his bed. Not that I would rather be elsewhere, but presently I wasn't in the best sort of state for it. I just couldn't, in good conscience, spend my night inside him while I was thinking of someone else. The thoughts weren't wanting, and I didn't miss him, I wouldn't have even cared had I not kept recalling his screams and the way his flesh tore--no--shredded underneath those heavy claws. "I was refering to Junji and the fox. Circumstances being what they are I thought..."

The speed at which his expression changed was unsettling. He gave me no time to finish, interrupting me with the same abrupt finesse as per usual. "I don't want to talk about Közi." A pity, because I did. I hadn't yet realized how obsessed I had grown with talking of them both, marveling over them both and trying to desolve their natural mystery in general.

"Junji then." I pressed, and watched him slink away like a lord again; some proud official too important to express his personal thoughts. He was incredibly conscious of his posture as he stood facing the courtyard again.

"Because I've known that fox for so long, because even for all his curious nuance I'd somehow grown fond of him, I thought I should feel something, that I should want to save him too, and I cared just for your sake... but," This he punctuated with an abrupt hesitation. "The moment I thought that he gave you over, that he could, even knowing what you meant, take you away from me--" He growled. "I wanted him to stay. I wanted Junji to rip him apart. I hope he's killing that fox." he turned to me. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"I never thought you were capable of sounding so cruel." I admitted, saddened.

"Don't say that." He plead, regaining some of that innocent calmness he'd let go of. "Please. Understand that I'm just...well, you were there, Kaoru. Tell me how you would feel if it were me he gave to him. Would you be happy to see him suffer for it or would you still feel it unjust?"

Often times he caught me being hypocritical, and, just as any person who is forcibly shown their faults, I hated it. "I never said I couldn't understand." I defended myself. "But for the moment, in this situation, I feel both. It's a relief and it's unjust." I've knowingly chosen the wrong words. He sighed and turned his face away from mine. I hate losing. "But it's because I know it's not that simple. Because everything has been too elaborate to be just this in the end."

"Why?!" his voice was raising. "Why can't it be just this? It is simple, but you won't accept it." he stared at the floor beneath him. "So every answer you hear you overcomplicate and then you're off searching for another and soon you've multiplied one problem into many instead of leaving well enough alone. And don't try and tell me that it's for my own good, or yours, don't dare tell me anything. I don't care what it's for. I don't want you to be a part of it. And then you saved him. Why!? Why did you save him? It could have been over and we could have been..."

"Oh god, I've killed it." Kyo's hand was curled around the small insect and his face was a wash of sadness. "I didn't realize I was holding it so tight...I jus..."

I laid my hand on his waist and pulled him into me, and it wasn't because I wanted to comfort him or be close to him so much as I just wanted to touch him. It was an unknowing bid for me to take control.

"You were right. Talking is a bad idea." I pulled the dead firefly from his hand. Just from being in his fist it was shredded, barely recognizable except for it's wings. I felt horribly sad when I looked at it so I saved myself the trouble and tossed it outside. "Wouldn't want anymore casualties."

Without saying a word Kyo nodded, moving the captured fireflies to his bedside and he laid by the lantern, head upturned to focus on the dull, pulsing glow inside it. Both of us were discovering how useless words were when one was unsure how to use them.

"Do you really think I'm so cruel?" he asked, a whisper of words close enough to glass of the lantern that it fogged the side.

He wanted me to say 'no', that he wasn't, that he was perfect and that I loved him. And every moment I kept from saying it he wilted more against the tatami.

"I think sometimes you can be." I replied, without thinking that these were the sort of words that had the potency to hurt him.

Whether they did or not was left up to interpretation when he shuddered, his hard nails scraping the glass--a brief, but biting noise.

"You're really going to think so if I see him again."

"I thought as much."

So I was only right in keeping Histugi's presence in the house confined to myself and Dai. Though, by now, Shinya would have known at least. I could only pray that he wouldn't feel it necessary to inform Kyo himself.

Kyo looked like a painting when he turned over; stomach flat against the floor, kimono in varied degree of disarray, hair caught over his shoulder, in his face, eyes alive with reflections from the firefly light, lips apart and swollen from obsessively biting at them --something he frequently did when he was anxious. The exhaustion, though, was still aparant in his eyes. With a heavy sigh he brought his forehead to rest against the lantern.

"Take me to bed, Kaoru." he said again, this time it was a command. How often, in these last few years, I'd wanted to hear those words, spoken in just that way. But, here, in this moment, they rang hollow and even though every fiber of my body was warring against it, my mind conceeded that it was just the wrong sort of circumstance for such a selfish and casual thing. My cock wept when it endured the significance of that thought.

"If you'll go to sleep." I grumbled. Restraining myself from submitting to his needs hurt more than suffering through my own. His voice dropped again to a tone of emotionlessness.

"I'm still too anxious." he said, but he meant 'afraid'. Afraid I would disappear, that something more would happen while he was unaware.

"Sleep anyway." I pushed, deciding to lay beside him on the futon.

"Wouldn't you rather make love to me?" he tried to smile, but failed and abandoned the attempt halfway through. Despite not making it very far the action had its intended effect after all. I melted, not literally, but I shivered a great deal, a cold, moving feeling down my spine. I realized I was biting my tongue so that it refrained from thrusting itself head long into his mouth. But it tried. Defiant and resolute that it must end the night in his mouth.

"You have no idea." I said, a little more emphatically than I would have liked. Instead of letting me finish the thought by punctuating that I simply could not, he pushed me down against the bedding, slid his hands inside the gap in my kimono and scratched his hunger down my chest. Moaning was as much a response as I could manage from beneath the burn.

In his own hands, Kyo's long hair appeared almost milky, mutinously falling through his fingers as he swept it over his left shoulder and bent to run his tongue over the abrasions. Every time it crept back into the safety of his mouth it left behind an unbroken string of saliva that begged he return again to collect it. For minutes he worked on soothing the eventual scars, listening happily to my soft panting until I gently grabbed him by his elbows and forced him upright and away.

"I can't. Kyo --" I breathed. "Not with those images in my head. Not tonight."

"Really?" he licked the little bit of blood and spit off his lips. "They're what made me so hard." he said bluntly, scraping my skin again. This time my arms, but it was almost angrily now. "He never looked more beautiful, split by shadow, blood running down those dark thighs, he deserves the pain. He needs it. Junji was right, it becomes him. It brings him to life."

I shot up and grabbed his wrist, saying nothing. What could I say? He was sitting on my lap, face inches away from mine, eyes boring into mine. I was chastizing him without saying a word. At first he didn't waver, ever noncompliant, determined to play prideful and righteous. But slowly he softened, and then pressed his head against my mine. "I'm so sorry."

He wouldn't look at me. "I know how that sounded, but it wasn't what I meant to say. I don't know why I thought of it."

I made him lay down with me, combing my fingers through his hair, watching him tiredly stroke over the scratches on my chest, occasionally stopping to lick at them again to stop the minimal bleeding. He tangled his fingers through my hair, ran them down my face, scratched lightly across my stomach, completely unable to stop fidgeting. It took nearly an hour, but he finally fell asleep against me, left hand resting on my neck. Before I drifted off myself I found myself hoping that I would never see Közi again, or if I did, that he would come to me before he made the mistake of making his death march to Kyo.

o O o

Hitsugi was the first thing on my mind when I awoke.

It was still dark then, the world lingering in that awkwardly heavy mist that was indescribably mired between the last of night and the early morning. Neither of us had thought to shut the shoji, so the humid air had filtered in all around us. Outside, it was a dark grey sky, paler clouds thrown onto it like spattered paint. The wooden tourou that lined the walkways had their lights doused hours ago, leaving the middle courtyard in a state of a sort of bizarre obscurity, desaturated, but still faintly blue, greys and blacks, with no other lightsource besides the small feeble attempts of a waning moon. Nothing of the sky was reflected in the water, not even shadows of creeping branches.

I had almost forgotten that the smallish youkai had ever been to the house, but now that it came to mind it was all I could think about. Kyo hadn't moved an inch since he'd fallen asleep, still pressed back against me, hair obscuring the pillow we both shared. His clawed fingers looked so delicate against the fabric, curled and relaxed. I took my time getting up, making sure he wasn't shifted enough to wake him up and piled the covers against his back so he wouldn't roll and discover the emptiness behind him.

As I crept through the halls toward the old tea room, I half expected Histugi to have gone, migrated or at least have been fast asleep but he was still sitting quietly by the window in much the same position I had left him in all those hours ago. A small andon lantern was burning out near his feet, keeping the room dim and spectral.

"I'm sorry. Did I wake you?" He looked oddly wicked, but I was sure it was just the lighting.

The question perplexed me since he hadn't been making any noise at all, and Kyo's room was at the other end of the house. "I wonder how that would have worked." I mused aloud, my mouth busying itself with containing a wide yawn. "With you being in here and all..."

"Anything is possible." he shrugged. "Perhaps I meant: did the thought of me wake you or: Did my presence here make you uneasy? Yes, that's what I meant to say, I think. But it didn't come out quite right."

"Anything is possible." I echoed. "I'd meant to see you again before I went to bed but Kyo is an effective distraction when he wants to be."

"Does he know I'm here?"

"No." I said, sitting down by the table. "I thought it might be better if he didn't." I answered honestly, and it wasn't for Hitsugi's protection that I worried. "Do you know eachother?"

"I don't know how to answer that." he said. "I know of him, and we've spoken once before, but it ended there."

"Not like Közi then?" I gave him a chance, a way to hurt me if he could, if that was ever his intention, because it would have been better to get it over with.

He knows what I meant, he recalls the story, but there's not a trace of malice in his face.

"No. Nothing like that. In fact," he began. "It was because of Közi that he asked me to leave the one time I came, and because of you. I haven't come near since. He makes me nervous."

"Because of me?" I prodded him, but it was still casual, still safe ground for us both.

"Because you're the master of the house." He explained.

"Am I?" Just what had Kyo been telling him?

"He seemed to think so. I hope I haven't caused any trouble by being here. He did tell me you prefered to remain uninvolved with persons such as...well, myself."

"What did he mean by that, I wonder?"

"Youkai." he replied. "Best I can figure."

"Is that all he told you about me?" I asked.

"I know that you are his lover." he said shyly. "And that you know Közi by proxy. I know that you can see youkai, interact and live among them, but apart from that..." he smiled softly. "You've changed your hair." he commented suddenly and I was thrown into a small hesitating silence.

"I...yes. Just before when I was..." I fumbled over my words because they weren't the same ones I was thinking of. "Are you really going to wait for that fox?"

"I know you said he won't come back tonight, but...I can't just leave. Anyway, it's too dangerous now." My heart dropped a little toward my stomach when he sighed. It was that face of his. "I don't know what to do."

And I didn't know what to say. Neither did he. He just stared through the slats at the front entrance. Beside him a laquer tray with empty bowls was abandoned. He seemed to notice that I was looking at it.

"One of your retainers brought me some food. I hope that wasn't wrong of him. He probably shouldn't have. I told him, but he made me eat it anyway." With the constant state of anxiety Hitsugi was under I wondered how he was able to withstand Közi's constant harrassment.

"Probably Dai." I said more to myself than to him. "It's fine. I'll have someone clean up in the morning."

"And the old woman visited me as well."

I had suddenly lost my next train of thought, completely perplexed by what he was saying. Like a child he wiggled his toes against the tatami.

"She's really not as old as Közi thinks, but she does smell a little strange. And she smiles alot."

"That was my grandmother." I realized, a little sorry he had to withstand her scrutiny and I wondered, a little sadly, if she had been as agressive with the poor creature as she was customarily with Közi. "Did anyone else come in here while I was gone?"

He yanked a broken straw from the mat and resumed his nervous stare out into the hallway. "No. Just the two."

"What is it you keep looking for out there?"

"I just don't like the rain."

Even though I couldn't see beyond the entrance (only because it was so very dark) I knew it wasn't raining. It was a little misty but only because it was morning. "It's not raining." I told him.

"No, not yet." he said, resting his chin on the tops of his knees. "That doesn't mean it's not coming."

"Well, it is almost April." I commented. "It's got to come sometime."
"It's not that." he drawled. "Wasn't it raining when you first saw him too?"

Junji? I wondered, but I didn't have to ask. I knew already.

"I..."

"It's alright." he assured me. "No one told me anything. I just noticed your wrists, that's all. Your veins are very dark. I wonder what you did to get that shadow." he said absently, returning his gaze to the front of the residence. There's not time to decide if I should tell the truth or lie or answer at all before he dismisses the question entirely.

"I'm sorry, that was rude." he apologizes. "You would have your reasons."

Hitsugi's small hands stroked the lattice work, fingers running deftly over each deep curve. "Maybe for Kyo?" he lifted his brows, a face of fond curiosity emerges and then fades back to where it came from. "Or maybe an accident, or something selfish? Or both, like me? " I watched him mumble out self-accusations and was overcome with a sense of empathy I rarely feel from non-mortals.

"Why are you even awake?" he asked me. "Shouldn't you be with Kyo? He's probably much better company for you."

"Probably, but I couldn't sleep if I tried just now."

"He'll be mad if he wakes up and sees you gone."

"He'll live." I said sternly, settling back against my elbows.

"I should tell you a story then." he offered. "Since it's that time of night it's appropriate, right?"

"Will it put me to sleep?" I wondered.

"I hope not." He smirked. "It's a little strange. I've never told it to anyone. Will it be alright?"

"I have all night." I told him and he stared back toward the gallery again, but he looked far less edgy this time.

"When I was very young I belonged to a little human girl. My mother died giving birth so, you see, she was the only real equivelant I had. Most of the litter had been stillborn, and the rest were so sick they only survived a few days after. So when she--"

"Your mother's...'litter'?" I interrupted wearily. All I could see of his face from that vantage was the round shape of it.

"I was a cat, Niikura-san." he clarified. "A small, brown and white kitten with short legs and no tail."

"We lived with her grandfather in a small, three room shack near a murky pond they called kurokoge." He paused, as if to think, then looked at me curiously. "Have you ever been there?"

"I don't think so." I answered.

"Oh...well..." he started sadly, all the while ringing his hands together, twisting his fingers. He was very compulsive. "It's just as well. It's the sort of place they write ghost stories about. The old, bent willows and the stillness and broken stone sanctums, that sort of thing. And you know, people naturally expect places like that to be haunted."

"Was it?"

"Haunted?" he asked and I nod.

"No." he said a little loudly. "Well, not by ghosts anyway. For all points and purposes, it was just unfortunately ominous. As far as the stories went, they varied depending on who told them. The villagers, of course, were convinced that it had something to do with a great, tragic death. One of those maladies that gets burnt into the landscape by that sort of melodramatic sorrow that you people are so fond of attaching to us youkai." He stared at me. "As it happens most of us lose that sort of emotion entirely, no matter how much we suffered in life."

"Then why the stories of vengeful ghosts, impossibly tragic deaths and insensate love stories?"

He gave a meek, crooked smile and a childish chuckle. "Yurei aren't vengeful. They're not really anything."

I must have looked confused.

"Marionettes. That's what I meant. Humans that become yurei aren't afflicted by some sentimental tragedy, they're just souls in the care of Kasha. All they are, are just...mirrors, mirages. Nothing without the puppeteer. You'll learn that Kasha are the only things in this world worth fearing, and even then they're only ferrymen and relatively harmless unless you happen to be the negotiating type...or if one happens to break their natural position like Junji. Anyway...we've gone off topic." he realized suddenly. "What was I telling you about?"

"Kurokoge." I answered and he seemed pleased that I had been listening. I wanted to ask him to tell me more about Junji, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

" Oh...well, so the actual legends amongst the youkai--which are much more accurate that yours I'll add-- say that during the end of the tenth century the forest kami had conspired with the monks living here in Heian Kyo to capture and contain one of those broken spirits I was telling you about. They did this by building a shrine to imprison it and four small torii gates to go around it on all sides. Because of the immense power inside of the shrine, it pushed against the land and sank the ground, and the rains from the monsoons eventually filled it. It was three meters at the deepest and both the top of the shrine and the torii sat only a few centimeters under the surface of the water. It was called 'kurokoge' because the fish that lived inside were colored as though they were burnt, as well as all the living algae that grew along the banks."

"Of course, when I came to it, the shrine was horribly old and brittle. My little girl liked to stand on the tops of the torii and collect the pieces that chipped off of it. She would keep me tucked inside her obi while she played and then when she was done she would hide them all in a little box in her room. One day the shrine became so fragile that the top of it cracked and flooded..." he rang his hands on the bottom of his sleeves. "And she saw that something was inside."

"So..." I comment, leaning back on my side. "What was in the shrine?"

"A body."

I sat up, suddenly curious. "Human?"

"Certainly not." he said with strong conviction. "It was bone white...twisted, like the trunk of an old gnarled tree. Eyes sunken and hollow black, as if that part of it's face didn't exist at all." His brow furrowed. "She was so scared that, in her hurry to get back to the house, she slipped on the top of the torii and..."

"She died." I said, getting a little ahead of myself.

I would have missed his nod had I not had my full attention on his face, it was just that slight. "Her head split open on the gate, and I clawed straight through the side of her kimono trying to get out of it. There was so much blood...I think that's what woke it up." His face was alive with grim recollections. "It began to rain. Then the water turned black, as if someone had dipped a calligraphy brush into a cup of sake. And it came from out of the darkness."

"What did?"

Amber eyes fell on mine and it unnerved me because the reflection in them seemed to mimic his own story. "What else? A reaper, a kasha." he whispered and his head fell back against the wall and I was left without his eyes and the imagery inside of them. I could see the movement of his adams apple as he swallowed thickly. "It was something from a nightmare, jerking, stumbling over it's own long limbs as if it had never used them. A seizing mass of white with an acidic blackness pouring from the slit that I could only have imagined must have been it's mouth, painting the water. It ate away the algae on the banks and the fish...and the wood of the torii; and the thing and my little girl and I were all swallowed up by the water."

"Somehow I managed to get out again. I crawled up a section of blackened moss solid enough to catch with my claws. Then I cried until the old man came. Her grandfather dredged the pond and found no trace of her body. Three days later it was found sitting on the torii, propped up by a log. Because he was a poor man, he couldn't afford to properly cremate her and so he buried her near the pond. It rained every day after. A week later she was found on the torii again, this time she rot...right in front of his eyes. Every time he buried her she would return to the top of the gate, staring dejectedly toward the house.The old man changed dramatically in those weeks. He abused me as often as he could..."

"Why would he...?" I began but was interupted.

"Because I was a cat; because when we convert to the other world we can reanimate the dead. When we become youkai. He thought it was because of me." he sighed. "To keep a safe distance between us I began to sleep in a wide crack between two cupboards and ate only when something living managed to crawl underneath them because he had stopped filling my bowl since the second time he saw her. Then, one night, the last time she appeared, he gathered up all of her things, all her dolls and clothes and books that she'd left behind. Then he pulled me out of my hiding place so violently that my leg bent and broke against the wood and he threw me in the cart with all the other things she had owned. He pulled the whole lot of it down to kurokoge and, with her corpse as a witness, he threw all her belongings in the water. When it was only he and I left he held me in his hands so tight my ribs bowed underneath his fingers, and he climbed into the water and sank us both."

"It was Junji, wasn't it?" I asked, my nose and mouth buried in my hands as if I were trying to stop my own breath from escaping. Just hearing the description of it had sent shivers up my spine as I remembered the feeling the kasha had instilled in me earlier that day. "The kasha"

Hitsugi's great nervousness was even apparant in the way he nodded.

"And the little girl...he'd set her on the gates to taunt him, hadn't he?" As if she were just a doll to be played with.
The nekomata nodded again.
I could feel my heart still. "And you survived again because you swallowed the darkness before you died..."
"Just like you." he whispered and when he didn't speak again I asked him,

"So what about Közi? Does he have a story as well?"

He smiled softly. "He rescued me. Or rather...he stole me, but it's very near the same thing. He took me off the ground one day while I was sleeping. And I was his then, I belonged to him, for nine years after that and I was never hungry, never slept on the floor, and when winter came I slept in his arms and was never cold."

"You love him." I realized.
"As much as you love Kyo." he said.

"But surely there is more than that." I said.

"It was an accident that I had swallowed Junji's shadow, and by that same accident it had given me a voice; a language and comprehension on a human level. To actually speak...to another living thing. Most people take that for granted, don't they?" he smiled softly. "When I told him my story he decided to call me 'Hitsugi'. Not the most sympathetic name he could think of." he nodded to himself and waited for me to agree by the same means before continuing. "The problem was it had also given me emotion far beyond my understanding...or ability to identify. Where before I had loved my little girl, I couldn't have told you how. She took care of me. But then...it was different. I had fallen in love with him. And it was horrific. Because of what I was...how my body was. Nine years I spent in that body, not just an animal, but an infant one, permanantly injured and unable to age. I could still fit in the palm of his hand."

What he said had hit home harder than anything before it. Would I be the same? Unable to die...unable to age; yet if it was so it could end up being the greatest advantage over the matter with evading the bakufu.

"The hate I had for own body made me desperate enough to seek out the kasha again. Stupidly I thought: if he could give life to the dead, give intelligence and voice to a mute...then by that same power he could give me the body that I wanted and I could lay with Közi as an equal and not as an animal."

"But where did you find him? How did you know where to look?"

"I didn't have to. This..." he held out his right wrist, letting me see the inky veins that lay under what looked like paper-thin skin. "...was all I needed. I was drawn to him, to a dark place off the road toward Senyuuji. He looked nothing like how I remembered; just the whiteness of his skin was the same. Everything else, every hard shape had become something beautiful, but there was something terrible about it. You know, you've seen him." he shivered.

Yes, I knew, because I had thought the same thing. How incredibly...horribly...beautiful he was and how even his image had kept my breath stagnate in my lungs.

"I didn't ask him anything. I was too afraid," his tongue darted out to wet his lips. "But he knew everything I wanted without my saying a word. I can't...remember how it felt, how it happened, or how long it took. But once I could stand on my new legs I made my way back home, giving not a second thought to his repayment."

"He didn't tell you what he wanted?"
Hitsugi shook his head. "Just that it would be of equal value and that he would take it when he was ready."
"But he took something, didn't he?"

"Yes, but..."
"What did Közi do when he saw you?" I interrupted him, startling myself with how obviously I was interested in his story.

A thick quietness seeped like blood spreading across the tatami to cover the spanse between us and he withdrew into himself again.

"...He..." he stops, clearly wondering what to say and how to say it. "He worshipped me."

"Wasn't he even the least bit curious how you came by that body?"

"No." was as simple a reply as they come, delivered to me as he wrung one hands fingers with the other. "Why should he have been? As a cat, my convergence into yokai was inevitable anyway. He just assumed it happened on its own. Everything fell into place then. He loved me all the same."

"Do we know the same Közi?" I wondered.

It was meek, but he still smiled. "Just as we know the same Kyo." he argued gracefully and I had to concede because I'd never thought of it myself. "I'm afraid of him." He admitted. "He's as abrasive and heartless as Közi is selfish and vain."

So he must be selfless then? Beautiful and gracious, but I couldn't even force myself to believe it, not by what I've seen.

"That's how you would describe him I would think." He rubbed at his eyes tiredly and his ears backed like a kitten. "But I'm far more selfish than him. But you can't understand that, can you? You don't look like you do."

"I'm sorry." I sighed. "But no."

"After fourteen years I didn't even think about Junji anymore, all thoughts of that night were completely erased from my mind." he explained. "And then one day Junji came for me. To take me. Is that not perfectly equal?"

"And yet here you are." I debated.

"I'm not much." he whispered. "Not that important, not that special. I wish he had taken me."

"If he didn't take you what did he take?"

"Everything. You see...when Közi realized what I had done, and that I done it so he could love me like we both wanted, he was so angry, violent. He screamed and broke all of his favorite things...the shiny, valuable, stolen things a kitsune accumulates in a lifetime. But then, after he was through, he turned to Junji and told him if he let me go...that he would take my place."

"That's not possible, is it?" I protested. "I mean...Közi told me that Junji had taken his tail, that he controlled him in this way. He showed me the scar..."

"I have his tail." Hitsugi claimed. "He cut it off himself and gave it to me before he left...to keep me warm." The nekomata's voice cracked terribly, then he began to laugh, but it was completely devoid of any humor. "Of course, a kitsune can't be kept caged easily. They're far too clever not to find some means of escaping any prison. So he did and ran to this house, because..."

"The kasha cannot enter here." I remembered.

Hitsugi nodded yet again. "And he...with Kyo...because he needed someone. Kitsune translate pleasure into power, and without it he wouldn't have had the energy to run. He was too afraid to come to me...and there was just...too much hurt between us. No doubt the consequences when he and Junji collide again are severe, but...it's his way of coping, I guess. Even if he likes the sympathy, he's not the type to dwell on his own unfortunate circumstances. And knowing him he reasons that at least any attention at all is worth having, even if it's from the most malevolent of sources."

"Has he come to you since?"

"Only once. Maybe a few weeks ago." he said. "And that was only to tell me that Junji had offered him a way out. He wanted someone, a human, but...human's are out of his reach unless they die or make a contract with him for something beyond their means. That was Közi's part of the bargain. Somehow he had to get the human to make their own contract with Junji. If he did he could have his freedom...if he didn't Junji promised to come back for me and Közi and I both would be kept. He told me to run away, leave Kyoto."

"You didn't." I observed.

"How could I? If he failed to fulfill his end of the bargain Junji would no longer tolerate his urges to run. The shadow is inside him as well...Junji would make sure his body obeyed him, even if his mind did not. And no matter where I ran to he would find me. The whole thing had been my fault anyway, how could I run and let him suffer any more for me?"

"But how would he get the human to comply? I mean...if he can't coerce it himself." I coaxed, obsessed with keeping him vocal.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" he asked me. "If Junji were to give him his shadow, not only could the man transcend mortality, but he'd owe him for it. All he needed to do was put the human in a position where the shadow could be administered and then for him to agree to the payment. There doesn't have to be a verbal proposition, he would simply have to acknowledge the debt."

I sputtered out an uneven sigh, realizing the simpleness of it all and hating myself for having missed it. He was right, Kyo was right. I'd done everything he wanted me to. I'd complicated everything through curiosity. All of Közi's protesting in the tavern had been fake, every plead for me not to goad Junji was only enacted to throw me off, because it was what he wanted to happen. I didn't want to believe any of it but it made more sense than any other explanation I'd been given so far.

"Why not just tell him? Explain the terms of the deal and h..."
"Impossible." he interrupted. "I mean...that is...why would a mortal be willing to make his own deal to save us?" he sighed heavily.
"Anyway, Közi will always lie...he's far more content to make people believe what they want and have them hate him, than to tell the truth and be absolved by their pity. At least he still retains his pride, which is something the kasha will never take from him."

"Did he tell you who this human was?"

Suddenly he face contorted into sadness. "Just his name. It doesn't matter anyway...he'll never get him to agree. I have no hope for it at all, which is partly why I'm here. As long as I remain inside this house he cannot take me...and our time is almost up."

"I already have agreed." I realized and said so out loud...unknowingly.
He said nothing, concentrating on keeping his eyes locked on mine.
"I lied to you...before." I confessed, because there was nothing else left for me to say. "I know where the fox is."
"I don't understand."
"I've left him with Junji. I've already made the bargain." And god...all I could recall was that look he'd given me as Kyo had pulled me away from the table, realizing now that it wasn't fear in his eyes, but a bittersweet relief that soon everything would come to an end and he had knowingly helped condemn an innocent man.

"But..that doesn't make any sense."

I didn't respond. I couldn't. I was much too taken with reliving the memory of the day in my head, trying to invalidate every concerned glance or waver in his voice. He was a good liar.

"You don't have to lie to me to make me feel better, Niikura-san. Besides I'm not stupid." I lifted my head to stare at him. "The only reason Közi agreed to the terms of the contract was because the man Junji wanted... was a butcher. Legendary even amongst the youkai. And why would a man so cruel sit here and speak to me as if I were worthy of kindness? Why would he offer me sanctuary and why would he give himself up to stop the abuse of someone he didn't even know, and probably hated...knowing Közi."

"Curiosity maybe...to get information."

"No." he replied sternly. "The name he gave me wasn't yours, so please...please just stop here."

"What name did he give?"
"Shiraishi Saiga."

I froze, my only response a long, shuddering breath. It was a name I hadn't heard in years. A name I had never wanted to hear again.

"You know it?"

I gave a short, unenergetic nod. "He was known in the districts as Akemaou. But he wasn't a butcher, he was an assassin, just a mercenary ronin. No one has even heard of him in years."

"It was why Junji wanted him so badly. Supposedly he killed whatever mark he was sent after...women...innocents, whatever the money paid for." he looked at me carefully as if he were waiting for me to make some uncategorical expression and when I didn't he sighed. "But you're not him."

"No." I replied. "I'm not."

My second lie of the night tasted even more bitter than the first.

Good work was scarce for a fifteen year old in Kyoto. I could have made a decent living painting kimono like my father, I certaintly had the aptitude for it, and I would have made a fair merchant or fisherman, but I had made a promise to Kyo. I would let him hold Kyoto in the palm of his hand, make him lord over Higashiyama-ku, over Kiyomizu and all of Gion. And because I was a man of my word a valueless existence shucking oysters in the humid summer air was impossible, and any less than 10 pieces of gold in my pocket at the end of the week would have made a liar of me.

At first I'd done odd jobs for the local Magistrates office, carrying and retrieving messages, parcels and people until my knees were so worn out from constant use they ached all day and all night. When I wasn't an active courier I was a member of their collection party, sent around the city to solicit taxes from local establishments. There were twelve in the party, including myself, and each of us had been assigned one or two specific types of businesses to collect from in order to keep everything running smoothly. My assignment was most usually Ochaya and Okiya, which were both required to pay a percentage of their monthly income to the local bakufu. It was an easy job and I was the only member of the collection party that never made advances toward the women in the hanamachi, which made me incredibly popular by default.

Dai was a runner for the brothels at this same time, and whenever he was ill (which was quite often in those days) I did both his job and my own to keep up our income. Once I turned seventeen the magistrates had agreed that I should be allowed in their private militia. It's purpose in no way matched it's reality. Keeping law in the city seemed to be often overwhelmed by commissions from the officers to extort some of the nobles for higher taxation and bribes. It kept food on the table but the roof over our heads did very little to keep the it dry through the seasons. Since I was already working from dawn till midnight doing several jobs at once and barely keeping up with even a middle-class lifestyle, I decided changes had to be made.

Mercenaries were a rare and valuable commodity. I'm not talking about ronin who could be hired to assault your debtor if he wasn't paying his dues, those seemed to be pouring in from every province near the city, and ronin themselves could double as fair assassins if the job was right. And I can't admit to having passed up any of those simple jobs myself, but the ones that seduced me were the ones commissioned by nobles and crooked magistrates, often lacking any moral code but paying exhorbant amounts of money for the trouble of shelving morality for the night. I was almost eighteen by the time I'd finally given into temptation and accepted the first of these offers, from a rich woman in Kita-cho. She wanted her adulterer husband murdered as well as his mistress and had thrown what must have been over seven hundred pieces of gold at my feet, mine to keep if I lifted my sword that night. I was ashamed to say I followed a golden trail out of her house...and a bloodstained one back to mine, only able to stomach my actions because with the money I'd been given I could patch the roof the next day and buy proper bedding for my family so they wouldn't get sick from the cold quite so often..

They were all blissfully ignorant...I prayed every night it would stay that way. With every hit I became more worried that I was becoming something horrible, and that somehow the bloody trail that fell from my sword would lead back to the house. Because I couldn't stop it, because I couldn't quit until I could give Kyo everything, I gave myself a new name, a new sword and a new face. I'd tempered all my blades myself, rougher than the quality ones that I could have purchased at the time, but I knew enough about their construction and care to make them sufficiently. All the blades I made were black, unable to show any visible stains in case Kyo got curious enough to check. I'd wait till he was asleep every night before taking one of his masks to hide my face from my marks, a beautiful red painted mai-hannya, with hard eyes and sharp teeth, embellished on all edges by long, grey hair. I wore it, not only to disguise my face from my targets but to keep them from seeing the pain in my expression as I took their life. And Hitsugi was right, I did not discriminate for anything but small children and animals. I had killed Mistresses, lovers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and if they were old enough and the pay was substantial...sons and daughters.

"How do you know Közi hasn't found him already?" I interrogated him, I know. But I was too far gone to hold back.

"Honestly...Niikura-san, I don't know...not anything. And it's been that way for so long that I've given up hope. I'm afraid, you know? Because he's the only thing that can kill me."

"What do you mean?"

"Kaoru...this--" he held up his hands again and it was as if the darkness was swimming underneath his skin. "To you...he is now just what he wants to be. God."
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May All Be Pain or Love