Ink Stained

70: it's been too long*

Kill – yes. Torture – no.

She doesn't know why there is a difference. She does not know why killing is easier than torture. When she kills she can do it remotely. From a safe, far distance. She does not need to see the eyes, hear the voice, feel the blood. When she kills she can do it without associating a face to a name, a past to a face, a story to a past.

But torture is different. Torture is about finding that story, that face, that past, that name.

It doesn't make sense to her why that tiny fact makes all the difference.

She steps forward. Her feet patter on the slippery white floor as she takes another. Another. Another. In ten short strides she comes to stand before the man, the Ayakashi, the Tanuki, brought in from his containment cell for torture. He does not look up at her. She decides that he is unconscious.

There is nothing to be had from this. Torture is not an effective interrogation method. Waterboarding, electrocution, blood-letting, beating. Anyone will say anything to make the pain stop, be it lie or truth, and it is hard to determine which of either is right without having to waste resources trying to ascertain the truth. But Yamato said that she should –

"Remember," a smooth voice speaks in her ear, riding the crackling wavelengths of the subtle earpiece she wears hidden as pearl earrings. She does not know who is on the other end of the line, only that it is a man. The fact of who speaks to her through the comm device makes no difference. All the Agents are the same, monotonous in their rigid loyalty to So Fu. "You are to act like you want answers out of it. Trick it into thinking it is being interrogated."

It. It.

It is a man. It is an Ayakashi. It bled for So Fu's hatred of the Ayakashi world. Labelling him as 'it' is a pathetic try at dehumanizing him so that they feel nothing when they break him to pieces.

Is that why they dressed you like this? Kuniumi asks. To make him think you belong to some official organization?

Kuniumi refers to the dark maroon pencil skirt she wears, the white blouse under a neat, smart navy-blue little jacket, the black heels that make her look taller, older, more mature than the seventeen-year-old girl she is. To conceal her white hair is a black wig with long ringlets that are too shiny to be natural.

She feels like she's a little kid play-dressing in her mother's clothes. Except her mother – she's dead.

On her nose is perched a pair of slim, black-and-white glasses. The lenses are cameras so that those who assigned her this mission can monitor her through her own eyes, see what she sees.

But they will never see the blood that coats her hands, that makes it hard to walk on the pretty wooden floor of the brand-new apartment she was given as part of her promotion to Level 1 Agent. She is the only one who can see the blood. That is how she knows that her mind isn't whole, isn't unbroken, isn't enough to pass for sane.

Sometimes the blood weeps, dripping to her feet. Sometimes she slips on the blood she steps on. Sometimes she wants to fall and knock her head on something hard enough to kill her, but she never does. Her reflexes have been honed to perfection. Even without coercion So Fu keeps her alive to do their bidding.