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Miwaku no Zakuro	By : Tcharlatan Category: > Kyo/Kaoru Views: 2861 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of pure fiction. I do not personally know any of the members of Dir en grey, X Japan, or KISAKI, and do not profit from this work.

Chapter List
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The performance in this chapter is set to Dir en grey's Deity, which I do not own or profit from using.

Hands pressed flat together and held tight against his forehead, legs crossed underneath himself, head bowed, Kyo prayed fervently to every god of every mythos he could think of. He prayed for grace. He prayed for strength. He prayed for poise. He prayed to anyone who might be listening, pleading from the depths of his soul for someone to turn a kind eye to him just this once, reach down a hand, and help him to not screw up this performance.
It was the evening of December 20^th, and after a month of practicing his routine over and over, day in and day out, until it took over his every waking moment and more than a few of his dreams, it was finally time for the real thing. He was going to debut as Kaoru’s pet. He was going to be on stage – alone – his body, his voice, his every movement criticized as a representation of his master's affluence. In front of over two hundred people. The majority of whom were key players in mafia families throughout the country. And to this day, the only people to ever see the performance had been himself and Toshiya.
The anxiety was starting to make his stomach ache. He finished off his prayer, bobbing his head once in finality before standing. Technicians and stagehands were flitting about still; their movements hurried yet purposeful, every one of them silent as the grave to keep from being heard over the courtesans already on stage. It was dark backstage, but he could just make out Toshiya’s form a few meters away, peeking out from the end of the curtain to watch the show. His blue-haired tutor had been on a more masculine kick for the past week, so tonight he was in a black suit with a tailed jacket that complemented his long form nicely. Kyo’s bare feet made almost no sound as the crossed the polished wooden floors of the backstage area to peer out as well.
The loveliest dozen men and women of Toshiya’s flock were all primped up in their finest, singing and dancing and telling stories together for the past half hour or so. They were only using the front-most portion of the stage, the back section still curtained as the scene was set for Kyo’s show, but they made full use of the space they had. He couldn’t help but envy them a little. They were all so perfectly confident in themselves, and why wouldn’t they be? Every last one of them was a living, breathing Adonis or Aphrodite, statuesque and graceful, near-flawless in both their appearances and their performances. Kyo was terrified to follow such an act.
“Totchi, they… they’re beautiful…” he whispered, awed.
Toshiya smirked, perfectly smug. “Of course they are. Only the best of the best get to perform on Kaoru’s stage. And you’re going to be his crown jewel tonight, for his biggest party of the year! It’s quite an honor, you know.”
Kyo swallowed, watching the courtesans swirl about. “It’s… it’s not that big of a deal, is it? I mean… it’s only one song; it takes like five minutes… they’ve been out there much longer, doing all kinds of different performances. I’ll just be an afterthought.”
Toshiya broke his gaze on the dancers to raise an eyebrow at Kyo. “Are you serious? Haven’t you seen the Nutcracker ballet?”
Kyo blinked. “Well… yeah, I guess, on television…”
“A whole cast of ballet dancers; the finest of their trade if you’ve been watching the televised troupes. From the Christmas party and the fight between the Nutcracker’s soldiers and the Mouse King’s mice in the first act, to the Chinese tiger attendants and Moorish couples and spring flowers in the second, nothing short of beautiful. But you know who always, always gets the biggest round of applause at the end?”
Kyo swallowed, fearing he knew the answer, but tried for something a little less harrowing. “Clara and the Nutcracker prince?”
“Nope. They get more total cheering, but that’s just because they step forward for it more often. ‘s the Peacock, every fucking time. The only dancer in the show who does an entire dance alone, and that sticks with people – it’s striking instead of overwhelming like the group dances can be. Tonight, you’re our peacock.”
“…oh…” Kyo made an odd little gurgling sound from the back of his throat, backing away slowly from the end of the curtain. “Can… can you excuse me, I… I think I’m going to go throw up…”
Toshiya grinned as the courtesans began to file off the stage, the front curtain pulling closed even as the central one opened up. “No can do, little brother, it’s time. Don’t worry so much, we’ve practiced this a million times. You’ll be brilliant!”
Kyo swallowed nervously as the lights on the stage went a deep, rich blue and the front curtains began to slide open once again. “Wait, no, what if I throw up on the stage? What if I forget my lines? What if I trip and bite my tongue off and bleed out?!”
“Go, do me proud! I’ll be right here waiting for you when you finish.”
Kyo swore to himself and took a deep, stabilizing breath, closing his eyes for just a moment to get himself into the proper mindset. Luckily, for this part, it was okay if he looked a little afraid. As fog machines kicked on from either side of the stage, washing the entire floor with a thick, rolling mist, he began his walk out.
The azure lights caught on the pristine white silk of his heavy kimono and haori, dancing across the delicate silver spiderwebs embroidered over them and illuminating him brightly against the dark, sullen backdrop of a winter forest. Everything about him – from the fresh pale blonde of his hair, obscuring half of his face, to the slight quiver of his lower lip as his mouth parted in wonder, to the straining wideness of his ice-blue eyes – simply screamed innocence. Prayer bells rang once and a deep, low sound like a howling wind over the mouths of a thousand jars, or a trapped demon’s anguished moan, began to thrum overhead. His head came up at the sound, alert. A second beat pulsed slowly underneath the hum and he began to move with it almost unconsciously, each careful step starting to match the rhythm. Faint, eerie rattles and barely-there whispers flowed along underneath the moaning, hardly audible and all the more haunting for it, and he looked around himself again and again in obvious misgiving.
He began to pace back and forth, side to side, restlessly on the stage as if he were lost in the forest, the lights growing darker and darker as he passed deeper and deeper into the woods. Soft, indistinguishable voices, lilting as if singing or chanting, began to echo around him. Prayer bells chimed again, a sitar strummed a handful of faint chords, and he cast about himself with increasing anxiety. The voices got a little louder, some singing, some muffled but screaming, teasing just at the edge of the senses, and he came to a stop on the far left edge of the stage. He hunched over there, swaying back and forth to the beat of the steady thrumming, clutching the sides of his head as if to drive away madness.
The lights went low on the rest of the stage, leaving only him illuminated in a weak blue spotlight. It remained that way for a moment, the voices getting louder still, before a second, crimson spotlight came alive over the other side of the stage. Kyo’s head snapped around, startled, to look at the wicked-looking half-mask of a devil resting on a tall stone that had been illuminated. He stared at it as if entranced, and the music narrowed down to only the haunting moan as he slowly crossed the stage towards it. His hands reached out, shaking, as if possessed by some unseen force.
The split second his fingers closed around the mask, thunder crashed overhead, and he snapped back into a torturous arch, head thrown back in a piercing, drawn out scream of pure anguish that sent shivers down the spine of his audience, causing more than a couple to gasp. Drums began to beat powerfully, a pair of electric guitars and bass stalking ominously in a rhythmic pulse alongside them, and the lights overhead started to flash slowly between blue and red. Kyo was thrown into a frenzied motion, his body flinging itself back and forth across the stage in time to the new music, the hand with the mask leading the way as if dragging him. He fought its pull, his face awash with fear and confusion, but he couldn’t resist the cursed thing’s will. Even in the throes of apparent chaos, his movements held an inherent grace, following the every fluctuation of the music as if his very body was powered by the beat of it, turning the struggle for life and soul into a wild dance.
The music changed again, the guitars now sounding a persistent repetition of chords no less ominous than the rolling beat had been, and the lights started to flash much more quickly. Demonic hands came out from behind the trees, grabbing at his clothes, ripping his haori off of him in pieces as if claws were tearing through the cloth. He clutched his kimono to himself with his free hand desperately as the hands began catching at the ties of his obi. He pushed at them, shaking his head with a look of pure terror and madness, spinning and stumbling and spinning and stumbling as the belt was unwound, disappearing into the horrible darkness between the trees. He spun his way frantically back to the center of the stage, falling to his knees as the last of his obi was pulled free.
As he hit the floor, Kyo brought the mask up to stare into its empty eyes, bending back, back, back. The music shifted again, dropping to a less intense, more mysterious sort of tune, and the lights turned to steady, deep violet. The drums were deep, but slower, and a single guitar thrummed on alone as the back of his head touched the floor behind him, his spine in an impossible bend, and he turned the mask slowly, bringing it down to fix it over the top half of his face. A preternatural calm seemed to take over him. His shoulders rolled once, shrugging off the unbound kimono, and he rose with a deadly grace to his feet. He wore now only the mask, and what had been hidden under his white clothing; a heavy black hakama and an intricate webbing of ropes around his otherwise bare torso, their ends disappearing tellingly below the waistband of the garment.
The second guitar chimed back in, lilting and dangerously mischievous, and the demon tested out its new body. Long arms reached up over his head with a sensual roll, full lips pulled into a wicked grin, and his hips twisted his torso decadently with the rhythm of the music. He made a great show of enjoying his form, luxuriating in and subsequently showing off the graceful lines of his musculature, before flinging his arms out to the side and throwing his head back as the music picked back up once more. Amplified by a discrete microphone mounted on the bottom edge of the mask, his voice echoed out through the ballroom – uncommonly strong, surprisingly deep and smooth as sin – as he began to sing in Russian as if it were a mythical, abyssal language.
“Vertigo – Eve, Adam, excruciation – sacrifice apostle – God pain, be born. Vertigo – Eve, Adam, excruciation – sacrifice apostle – God pain, be born!” His head came forward, eyes bright behind the mask with a look of the most wicked delight. As if noticing the audience for the first time, he reached out a beckoning hand and began advancing toward the front of the stage, swaying his hips enticingly with the beat of the music, his voice coming now in a deep growl. “Blood – blood – taste… Blood – blood – taste… Blood – blood – taste… Blood – blood – taste… Blood – blood – taste… Blood – blood – taste… Blood – blood – taste… Blood – blood – TASTE!” He reached the forward edge of the stage and leaned forward, leering as the final word rumbled out of him. “Naught…”
The music and the lights cut out, and Kyo took a single step back to avoid being trapped by the curtain as it swung closed in front of him, panting as he was finally removed from the public eye once more. He wasn’t entirely sure if the sound he heard was applause or his own blood rushing in his ears. The latter seemed more likely as he flipped the switch on his mask’s microphone and staggered off the stage, heart pounding in his chest, feeling more than a little lightheaded.
‘Done… finally, done… I did it…’
He grunted when a heavy body crashed into him from the side, long arms flinging themselves around him and lifting him to spin him in a wild circle.
“Little brother, you were amazing! You did it just perfectly! Oh I just knew you’d do well, I knew it, you were beautiful!” Toshiya hissed excitedly in his ear. “Come on now, come on! Let’s get you into your jacket so you can take your bows and join the rest of the party! Oh, I’m just so proud of you!”
Kyo let the older man wrap him in a simple black happi jacket with Kaoru’s spider emblem emblazoned across the back in dark purple stitching. Someone pressed an open water bottle into his hands and he drank from it greedily as Toshiya tied his belt for him. He was shaking a bit, both from exertion and from nerves. Now that the dance was over, he had to go do the hard part; socializing with a room full of powerful mafia constituents. If the ice he was to skate around them was even half as thin as that around Kaoru, he was reasonably certain he’d be dead before the night was through, and in spite of Toshiya’s best efforts, he felt completely unprepared for the ordeal. Social skills had never been his strong point. The courtesans took their turns bowing to the audience, one by one, before descending the stage stairs to mingle with the partygoers.
“You’re so tense! Relax, you’ll be fine. Just flirt a little, flatter people and bullshit with them, maybe dance with a few of them if Kao gives you permission. You can have all the drinks you want, but try to avoid the desserts and snacks that are floating around, they’re for the guests.”
"I’m just going to stay with Master Kaoru and let Him do the talking…" Kyo blinked, the mention of food catching his drifting attention. “Wait, ‘dessert’? Does that mean everybody already ate?”
“Yeah, I told you before, remember? Dinner and a show, then the orchestra sets up on stage for socialization and drinks.”
“But then… when do we…?” Kyo’s nerves had kept him from eating much at breakfast, but now that the performance was finally over, he found that he was starving.
Toshiya’s smile was sympathetic. “On our own time, so probably tomorrow. We’re ornaments tonight, kitten; we’ll only eat when the sight of us eating is what entertains whoever we end up with, and even then it’s usually only things like chocolate-covered strawberries or fancy little mousses. Things we can play with a little for them.”
Kyo cringed unhappily, but he couldn’t help but notice the inclusive wording of the older man’s explanation. “Even you?”
“Even me. I act as a courtesan as well when the occasion demands it, even if I don’t take anyone to bed afterwards any more. All of us have to spend the evening flirting, pouring sake, telling stories… making sure Kaoru’s guests stay fat and happy.”
“But… He doesn’t even like some of these people… half of the profiles you had me study were enemies of the family!”
Toshiya’s smile twisted into a smirk. “Those are the ones we show off for the most. We show them that we are skilled, that we’re beautiful, that we’re Kaoru’s, and most of all, we show them that we are not afraid of them. We have them here in our home, spoil them with our riches, even let them stay the night if they want, as if they’re nothing. That casual disregard is enough to make most of them think twice about messing with us.”
Kyo frowned worriedly. “…‘most of them’? What about the others?”
“It flushes them out. Gets them bold enough to make their moves, so we can slap their punk asses back down.” Toshiya grinned. “Kaoru’s bravado is well deserved. Stay on your guard, though. You flirt, you charm, you play the game with them, but don’t promise anything, and don’t accept any favors that can be turned into debts later. Everyone knows who you belong to, and a lot of them will respect it, but some will try to use you to get to Kaoru.”
Kyo wanted very much to ask more questions. He didn’t really understand the politics of the room he was about to walk into, even if he had reasonable knowledge of most of the key players, and Toshiya's parting comment was damn unnerving. But the last of the courtesans had taken their bows and moved out into the ballroom, and Toshiya was shoving him back onto the stage, so he had no choice but to let the matter drop. He moved to center stage and bowed deeply, shivering a little at the zealous applause he received, then stood and removed his mask, bowing once more before descending the stairs to mingle with the audience.
‘I feel like I’m wading into the ocean…’
‘When the water is full of sharks.’
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Miwaku no Zakuro