彼は招待
What makes them so disgustingly weak?
It was something he thought about, every once in a while. He had asked Shin the same thing, in moments of boredom when he tired of prodding and poking at the wall between them – but the bastard always ignored him. Shin always, always ignored him, even when he screamed and railed against the iron-hard mental barriers the Mask had built and perfected over the years that kept him from escaping and taking control of their body.
Sometimes, he wondered if Shin had developed the singular skill of completely blocking him out to the point that he didn't even exist to Shin except for when the fucking asshole needed him, or if it was just the Mask doing all the work.
Either way, it infuriated him.
Just like these pathetic humans infuriated him with their damn weakness that they didn't even bother trying to hide. Take away all their gadgets, all their toys of destruction, and what where they left with? Nothing.
They disgusted him.
As he aimlessly wandered around Susukino, the infamous red-light district, he tilted his head back and watched his warm breath cloud in the wintry air above him. The sharp luminescence of the stars set against the midnight curtain of the evening was muted by the harsh glare of the bright city lights. The clean scent of the winter wind he drew deep into his lungs was toxic with the scent of more than a million humans bodies shoving and pushing and smoking against each other, the heady smell of food flipped in pans and sizzling in pots, the stink of virulent gases that tainted the world.
He dulled his hearing just enough so that being surrounded by so many voices, so much noise, wouldn't give him a sharp headache he would be unable to get rid of. Humans and the machines they created to depend on for the smallest, most mundane things to get them through everyday life were so noisy.
He could understand – hell, even sympathize – with Kaede for so rarely coming down to the city. It was a fucking mess here. Enough that he had to forcibly shove down a prickle of something heavy and morose in his chest when he thought of Mt Kurama, of home, and the trees that surrounded it, the quiet and peace.
For a moment, he considered just leaving it all behind. Saying, Fuck it, to everything, and going where he wanted to, the one place where the itchy need for chaos and distress and fun devastation was settled by a calm so hard sought.
Then he remembered why he's still here, lingering in this cold city; curiosity.
Startling white hair, drifting light brown eyes, and the curiosity to see.
The night was cold, the stinging winter wind blowing ruthlessly against those humans who wrapped themselves up to ward off the cold as best they could. Some men, disgruntled as they hurried to izakayas or silently leered at the girls trotting up and down in their ridiculously high heels, only gave him passing glances before they moved on.
There were foreigner students stumbling to drunken stops at the edge of crosswalks, scantily clad girls in outfits highly inappropriate for the chilly weather even he could feel through his perpetual natural heat, men in boring, dark salaryman suits or boys in flashy jackets with matching extravagant sneakers. They were all in the red-light district for one of two reasons; alcohol, and sex. Sometimes both.
Most often both, really.
He found his attention idly fixing on a rotund man hungrily pawing at a remarkably thin and willowy young woman. The girl was shaking her head while plastering an apologetic smile on her face, lips painted dark red and eyes covered with mascara and thick cat eyeliner. She held her hand up to block him from slathering her with his wet, sloppy kisses, backing away from him.
He cocked his head to the side as he watched the exchange. So young, and already she was fending off the advances of perverted middle-aged men who preferred to lay against the bosoms of young waifs than the women they married. This girl couldn't be that much older than Pai.
He scowled as his stomach churned uncomfortably, chest heavy as lead when he recalled the stunning honey brown eyes, the shock of white hair, a shy smile that rarely showed itself. It – irked him, this odd, empty feeling in his chest, as if that beating thing that kept him alive had a mind of its own, sad and guilty about something.
What was there to be guilty about? He had done nothing to warrant such placid bullshit. Guilt wasn't something he cared for; that was all Shin's domain. Shin was a master at guilt, and doing nothing to alleviate it.
His eyes drifted back to the girl, still trying to politely get the drunken man to leave her alone. Polite this girl's smile was, but it was so clearly, obviously fake that it made him sneer.
Polite, she was, that other girl with hair white as snow tinged in silver and eyes that disappeared from this world every so often. She rarely looked like she was faking it, somehow.
×
Her hands are shaking in his. He can feel the minute tremors wracking the thin-boned frame of her hand from her wrist and down to her fingers. He can tell from the way her fingers twitch and curl slightly every few seconds that she wants to clench her hands into fists, to try and hide the shaking he has already seen. He keeps his grip on her hands loose, giving her the freedom to pull away if she really wants to.
Still, he has to remind himself not to press his hands around over hers, to stop the shaking the speaks of an illness that even Kanou hasn't been able to identify. It won't help – nothing seems to stop the shaking forcibly once it starts – and he doesn't want to startle her, either. Instead, he moves his thumb in tiny circles under the knuckle of her finger in a way he hopes calms her, frowning as he looks at the bright pink scars marring her upturned palm.
He knows that Pai is always pushing herself, always bustling around the house doing chores, sometimes random little things no one thinks to do, but she does. He's seen her get hurt on more than one occasion – and not say a word about it, whether it's cutting herself with a sharp knife in the kitchen, or bruising herself when she bumps into a table or chair in her way, or something of the like. He knows that with the way she's always pushing herself to do something, like she's afraid of just sitting still in a moment, it wouldn't be a surprise if she has the hands of a worker rather than a dainty princess like a lot of people do nowadays, human and Hengen alike.
But the faint calluses he gingerly runs his thumbs over are not those of someone doing house work; these are those of someone who handles weapons on a regular basis, but faded and softened with time. He would know what those type of calluses feel like. His own are like that.
He wonders why Pai's are like this, but he knows she probably won't have an answer for him if he asked.
He looks at her. She blinks up at him after a moment, as if she's rousing herself from a long sleep and only just woken up. She's done that thing he's noticed she does a lot; she looks like she's coming back from going somewhere far away, like her mind temporarily stepped out of her body and it has only just returned. He knows people tend to zone out in moments of boredom or when they're thinking deeply about something, but there is something about how frequently Pai does it that has him – worried, in a way he can't quite put to words.
There is a slight haziness in her eyes that he waits for her to clear before he speaks. "How long has it been since the last time?"
She blinks at him again and swallows, her pulse beneath her pale skin so clearly visible beneath the harsh white glare of the early moon. He has to restrain a sudden urge to touch that spot on her neck, to stroke it and feel if her pulse is beating as hard as it looks; to see if he's the cause for it.
He keeps his hands where they are. Pai is a calm person for the most part, but she still gets so easily startled when she's caught off-guard.
He can see, in her eyes, that she doesn't want to answer him – or at least, she doesn't want to say the truth, because it's likely something she knows is bad, and he knows it isn't because she's a liar that she wants to hide the truth.
From what he's seen of her in the last year they have lived together in the same house, he knows she has a hard time letting others know of when something is wrong with her because she doesn't want to be a burden on anyone. He isn't sure how to tell her that she isn't a burden, that she doesn't need to be ashamed of her perceived weakness. He doesn't know how to say that without coming across as overbearing and judgemental, exactly what he thinks she's looking to avoid.
So Shin does what he does best; he says nothing of what he wants to, to her.
Her voice is like a gentle caress against his skin, the softest whisper, when she quietly answers, "Four days."
×
He didn't know why his thoughts kept returning to that girl. That weak, weak girl who barely survived an Oni's hunt.
She was not even markedly striking, but for those pretty eyes. She wasn't ugly, far from it, but she wasn't a breath-taking, show-stopping beauty either. Her eyes were remarkable, true. Her hair caught attention whether she liked it or not, falling almost to her waist in gentle curls. She was slim, but not very tall with long legs, nor did she have any other physical traits that were particularly desirable to him. He shouldn't have been thinking about her at all.
And yet.
Thinking that she shouldn't be in his thoughts did nothing to ease the hollowness he felt when he remembered looking into that girl's startling eyes, staring through Shin's eyes into the drifting madness that called to his own.
It didn't appear often, that odd wrongness in her gaze. It only seemed to come whenever her mind drifted off to wherever she disappeared to when she zoned out of whatever she was doing. He hadn't seen it often, but enough to recognize it. One second it would be there, and the next, gone as fast as it came.
It disturbed him, that madness he saw in the far-off, dreamlike quality to her when her mind has drifted off. It set his skin crawling, disquieted every time he saw it. There was something so wrong about the way she looked in those quiet moments, so fractured and torn. There was something wrong about that girl, but for the life of him he couldn't put his finger on it, couldn't quite figure it out.
Shin was useless with it, too. He hadn't even noticed that anything was wrong, yet.
His brows furrowed low in a glower as he watched the young woman ahead continue to try and fail at fending off the drunken man. The way she was dressed would suggest she was here selling her body. He couldn't help but wonder if Pai would do the same thing, if she was thrown into the same circumstances of this girl.
He had a feeling that she would. She had the soul of a survivor, that he could tell, and she would fight to continue living. He'd seen as much when Shin found her fighting for her life against the Onihitokuchi, with nothing but a gun manufactured by humans, something that only temporarily injured the Oni. That was saying nothing of the fact that her already weak human body was poisoned by the Oni's tail.
She was lucky to be alive, now. She had been doing whatever she could to live. Even though the thought of Pai doing the same as this girl had him inwardly snarling, he couldn't deny that this girl was doing the same thing. Using what she could and had to survive.
It irritated him just thinking of Pai being in this position, even as he told himself he didn't give a shit what happened to her.
He leaned back against a light pole with his hands tucked back into the pockets of his knee-length coat, watching with a faintly amused smirk playing about his lips. The older woman standing next to the girl and trying to help her was now yelling at the men, telling him to back off in a rough, gravelly voice that spoke to decades worth of nicotine-intoxicated lungs.
In response, the man shouted in a thick Tsugaru accent, "Shut up, ye dirty whore! I ain't talkin' to ye, am I?"
His words were so loud and offensive enough that three young men in suits varying from charcoal grey to griever's black wandered over to see what the problem was. He tilted his head to the side when he noticed them, wondering what they would do.
One of the tree shoved the drunk away from the young girl by walking right into him – not actively assaulting him, just forcefully moving him away without really touching him with his hands. The man stumbled over a bump in the sidewalk behind him and fell back on his fat bottom, red in the face with as much embarrassment as alcohol. The man who pushed him said something harshly, and the drunk, on the ground, sneered at him like he was sitting on a throne of gold.
One of the other men led the older woman and young girl away while the other two stopped the drunk man from following when he struggled to standing, getting in his way when he made to move past them. They shook their heads at him and murmured a few words. The drunk glanced around nervously at the thin trickling of a small crowd that had begun to notice the commotion, slowing doing in their daily lives to watch this bit of scandalous entertainment.
He frowned when the drunk finally backed down, glowering irritably at the young men before stalking away with his head huddled in the upturned tops of his grey coat, cheeks stinging pink. The drunk clearly thought they wanted the girl as well, for themselves.
He thought they did. After all, that was what many men were here for in the first place. But apparently, as he watched, that wasn't the case.
How boring.
The two joined their friend once the drunk disappeared into the crowd. The man on the left, with military-short hair, gave the young girl and older woman a curious once-over with a look common in the eye of many in this part of the city. Then he shook his head, seeming to come to a decision.
His frown deepened with confusion as he continued watching the small group of humans.
"Sorry about that," the one in the middle, with his hair cut fashionably short and rectangular glasses perched on his nose that reminded him of Haru. "Some people just can't take no for an answer, huh?"
The woman nudgeed the girl while still smiling at the men. The young girl who was the unfortunate subject of the drunk's unwanted affections bowed to the three in front of her. "Thank you very much for what you did. I am so sorry to have troubled you."
The man to the right, hair longer at the front and swept to the side, shrugged off her gratitude. "Hey, it's no problem. We'd be just as bad as him if we ignored it."
The girl nodded shyly. Her older companion nudged her again, with a big-eyed, obvious look, and the girl hesitated before a moment before she started to speak, but the man with military-cut hair smiled and shook his head. "And no, don't think you have to repay us or anything silly like that." He lightly checked the shoulder of the glasses-wearing man in the middle. "We're not scumbags."
"Oh, but we really must do something to repay your kindness. There must be something Airi-chan and I can do for you." The older woman insisted, batting her exceedingly long and fake eyelashes at him and stepping forward suggestively, shoulders pushed back and cleavage bared.
All three men shook their heads. "No, no, please don't feel that way. We were just helping, and we need to be on our way."
He narrowed his eyes as he watched the group break up, the two women going up the street while the men headed for the station in the opposite direction, before scoffing and turning away.
Boring idiots.He expected more out of the confrontation, and he was disappointed that nothing really happened. He pushed himself off from the pole, striding down the street with his long legs. Even when you think there's some fun to be had, they still disappoint, he thought coldly.
He moved through the overcrowded street, weaving his body fluidly to avoid touching the rank filth of the sweat that Sapporo's winter had coated the people around him with, in their heavy down jackets.
They saved a young girl from someone who could have scarred her for life, and you're disappointed? Came the faint, echoing voice of the man whose mind he himself had been whispering and talking and shouting and screaming at for twenty-seven years.
Humans are weak, he answered glibly. The only thing they can do is protect themselves. They should stick with it.
They protected her.
And what a pitiful job of it they've done.
He turned his gaze to the drunk who the tree men had chased away. He was standing beside the doorway to a bar, glaring at the young girl who was walking away from the scene of their confrontation with the older woman's arm around her shoulder as they huddled their heads together and talked about some mundane thing or another.
The drunk was blatantly ignoring the beautiful middle-aged woman wearing the uniform of the receptionist at the hostess bar who was talking to him, trying to entice him to enter and spend some hefty yen on one of the pretty girls they had ready on hand.
They saved her? He repeated mockingly. All they did is make him angry. If he had his way with her, all he'd have done was fuck her, maybe knock her around some if there's anything to that wife-beater look of his. Now, she'll be lucky to get away with her life. Human men don't like being humiliated, weakened. He'll blame his shame on her, and if he does end up claiming her life, he'll get away with it. Humans don't even care enough about the lowest of their own kind to protect them from those who break their flimsy laws. They're so divided amongst themselves they can't even uphold those laws.
You don't know that.
Don't I? He bit back a snide smirk from showing on his face. Humans are all the same. There are seven billion of them in this world, and the only difference between them is their faces.
The same can be said of us.
This time he did smile, more at foolhardy naivete of the man he was born inexplicably tied to than anything else. He glanced up at the dark sky when a single snowflake landed on the tip of his nose. Clouds darker than the sky clustered close together, grey and heavy with snow waiting to fall on the heads of everyone caught outside.
A storm was coming.
He curled his fists in his pockets and turned down the street, making his way back to the luxury hotel he rented a room out on money he took out of one of the many banks owned by the Tengu. All he had had to do was manipulate the clerk with some handy enthrallment, and she thought he was the owner of the whole damn bank, come to see how everything was going.
You think so? He answered. No. Humans are all the same, predictable in their every move. We, and even Oni, are not. We take what we want, when we want it, regardless of whatever the hell anyone else thinks. That is what we should be, if not for those fucking Masks.
He felt a spike of irritation lance through him, and grinned, knowing it was not his own.
Those Masks are the only reason the Kigen let us continue as we are. They made those Masks to let us live in this world.
He paused at the mention of those old gods, infinitely more powerful than the Kamigami. They were the ones who ensured that the balance of the world was kept regardless of whether or not the Kamigami were able to do it – supposedly. The Kigen didn't like hanging around in the human world and left that job mostly to the Kamigami, but when the Lesser Gods were unable to do it, the Kigen stepped in. They were the oldest, the most powerful, and the origin of everything.
Ayakashi and Oni played around at being powerful, and they were, with humans at the bottom of the food chain. But, the Kigen were right there at the top of it.
And when is the last time anyone saw a Kigen, felt them, even, in this world? He thought. A thousand years ago? Two? Three hundred thousand?
Are you trying to say you don't believe they exist? Shin asked incredulously.
I'm not that stupid, he bit back, even as he wondered why, exactly, that was so. But they don't care. We almost destroyed the world once. Was it them, or their pets who got involved then?
You're right, Shin said.
He stuttered to a stop, immediately suspicious. Shin never agreed with him, even when he was right, if only for the principle of being as much of a little shit as he could by disagreeing whenever possible.
And what of the Kamigami? Shin continued speculatively.
He frowned. What about them.
They are tasked with maintaining the balance of the world, or they risk being punished themselves by the Kigen. You heard the rumours that were floating around after the Wars.
He had, though he didn't say as much to Shin. Hearsay from all corners of the supernatural world, whispering about the mysterious and frequent disappearances of Amaterasu, the ruler of the Kamigami, rumours that she was taking the brunt of discipline from the Kigen for not having stepped in to stop the Territory Wars early enough to prevent them from spreading damage and chaos to the human world.
So what?
You've tipped the balance. There is a reason Ayakashi like you need to be controlled, and you know that.
The only reason we need to be 'controlled' is because everyone is afraid of what we can do when we come into our own. That is why the chance is taken from us.
It doesn't matter. They're going to come hunting for us because of what you did to those Nue.
He laughed. Let them.
Even you can't fight as many Kamigami as they are going to send. They know you're out, they know you killed the Nue. They'll come ready for us.
What, do you want me to apologize? He snarled. Can you honestly say you're sorry I killed them? After what they did to Seiran just because he was a mile too far in their territory? When Shin said nothing, he drove on. If the Kamigami come after me, let them. I'll deal with them. If it wasn't for their fucking Treaty, the Nue wouldn't have gotten away with killing him.
How many of our kind would have died if that Treaty didn't exist? How many of us would die ,and keep dying, to keep territories that we were gaining and losing in a war that wasn't ending?
You don't know that. He bit back stubbornly, even though he knew Shin's words ring with an element of truth in them.
He longed for chaos and death with such intensity that it, sometimes, frightened him, but he didn't want his kind killing and being killed for such a stupid thing as land. There were better things worth fighting for.
He had to keep a low growl from escaping past him when he caught the echo of Shin's snide, irritating laugh. Shin – he was normally quiet, his snark kept to himself, but ever since the Amanojaku stole the Mask, he had noticed that Shin was...changing.
Not quite like himself; at least, not quite like the Shin he knew.
He didn't know if Shin had noticed the same of himself. It took him a week to realize it, and another to figure out why. The mind of a normal Hengen was split in two thanks to the effects of the Mask – the True Ayakashi that was hidden, and the Hengen that everybody saw.
He knew that was what was supposed to be the case. He knew that was what was normal. He knew because that was what they had been for years, for all their lives.
He didn't know when their silent, almost mostly unconscious visitor joined them.
He didn't say anything when he noticed it. In the beginning, it was more from the shock of the realization than anything else – later, it was to wait and see if it would come out more to the light, make itself known. He wanted to see if Shin would notice it as well, would realize how his continuously darkening moods seemed to hold tendrils of influence from the thing that shared a space in their mind that shouldn't be there at all.
He knew he should be a tad bit more concerned about the fact that there was a third entity sharing their increasingly difficult to spare space in Shin's mind, but he felt no animosity from it. It shouldn't have been here, and he had no idea how or why it was, but it hadn't done anything adverse as of yet. Indeed, most of the times it felt like that entity was sleeping.
Sometimes awareness would flicker at the edges of his mind, curiosity about something seen or heard, before fading away again. It felt almost like a sleepy child, curious about the outside world but entirely unbothered with actually venturing out to discover it.
It hadn't spoken to them, and since Shin hadn't realized it was there at all, he hadn't tried to reach out to it either, yet. Dangerous as it may be, he had decided to wait until something more happensed before taking any action against whatever – whoever – it was in their mind.
Even you, Kaosu no Ayakashi, do not want to see the Ayakashi wiped out of existence. A licking tendril of it, the third one in their mind, too faint for him to grasp a clear shape of it, lying too far beneath dark waters for him to tell what it is. That would leave the humans to themselves. What fun would that be?
He scowled. Who's talking right now?
He felt Shin stutter to a confused halt in their mind. What?
Shit. He could feel it retreating instantly, as if it realized that he could tell it was there, even if Shin somehow still couldn't , the oblivious idiot. He was hoping to catch it off guard, draw it out and figure out what in the hell it was.
All he had succeeded in doing was scaring it back into the little corner of their mind that it had been hiding in for who knows how long.
He released a frustrated sigh through his teeth. Nothing.
What do you mean 'nothing'? What are you talking about?
Never mind.
Tell me.
Fuck off.
Can't exactly do that now, can I?
Then fucking shut up.
Now you know how I feel with you in my head.
Boo-hoo for you, asshole. He snapped. It must be so hard, being able to control this body that's ours, not just yours.
That shut Shin up. For a foolish moment, he wondered if he was imagining it when he felt a twinge of remorse go through him, before it was ruthlessly shoved away.
What did you mean? Shin pressed, as if he didn't just realize the utter hypocrisy of his complaint.
He decided to humour him, if only momently. Didn't you hear yourself right now? He asked bluntly.
I...what? What did I sound like?
He bared his teeth in a savage smile at Shin. You sounded just like me.
He ignored Shin's startled confusion, his floundering of how to feel about that (because never, Shin had never allowed himself to be as cruel and cold as he was, even if they were the same coin), as he weaved through the crowd and ducked beneath the long canopy roof that protected the thick red carpet leading into Sapporo Sun Plaza, a luxury hotel he booked a room in with the money he took from the bank.
He shook his hair out from the wet snowflakes clinging to the long strands, pushing a few stray hairs out from falling over his eyes as he quietly – hopefully without Shin's notice, wouldn't it be nice to know something Shin didn't ? – felt out the space of their mind, the intangible shape of it that had housed them for all their lives, all his life for all the time he had been imprisoned there by the Mask. He looked around silently, peering into every dim room and dancing out of Shin's inquisitive reach, searching around for that third presence that so expertly hid itself from them.
He didn't find it. He sensed it, but only the faint afterimages of where it had been, where it had hidden and rested before it flitted away. He smoothed away his scowling irritation before Shin could catch wind of it as he looked up, and caught the receptionist looking away quickly from him, a red blush painting her cheeks.
Admitting defeat, he flashed a pirate smile at the woman when he approached the desk, and saw the blush grow even as she tried to keep her painted lips from twitching into a kilowatt-bright smile back at him. Trying to maintain a professional countenance, probably, even as he knew the salacious thoughts going through her mind from the way she peeked at him.
He wondered if the white-haired girl would ever wear lipstick bright as blood, one day, or look at him with such coy shyness.
He could feel it, the way it annoyed Shin, how his thoughts returned to Pai. He would do it more just to get on Shin's nerves, if he weren't questioning himself on why he thought about her when she didn't matter.
"Good evening," he said in a sickening polite voice as he kept the smirk on his face. Her tag said her name was Kimura Chizuku. He idly considered if he should toy with this human, have some fun before the night was out. "Kimura-san."
The woman smiled at him. "Good evening, sir. How may I help you?"
Stop acting like a man-whore.
What's it to you? You're not in control anymore.
It's my body.
Mine too.
Shin's displeasure at the reminder was like a writhing snake in the pit of his stomach. He ignored it, tapping along the sides of his coat for show as he said, "I seem to have lost my key card..."
Kimura nodded knowingly, understanding dawning instantly. "I can give you a spare key card, but if the lost one is not found by the time you leave, it will incur extra charges for replacement."
He grinned. "Money isn't a problem."
It's not yours.
Now it is.
"Of course. Would you mind waiting for a moment?" she asked.
"Not at all."
Kimura smiled again as she bobbed her head in a grateful nod.
Shin remained silently – thankfully – as he turned and leaned back on the tall desk that hid the computer Kimura used to do her work, and perhaps other things outside of work, and looked back at the lobby.
It was a well-lit, with a towering ceiling that held a glittering chandelier hanging over the heads of humans meandering through the lobby. Most were businessmen and women, in expensive suits and bedecked in tasteful jewellery, laughing at some little comment or other their companion's made. A few foreigners were scattered about, generally sticking to themselves.
His eyes flicked up to the chandelier, debating on whether or not it was worth the amusement to shake it up just enough that the sharp-edged crystals of the chandelier would break and slice down atop the head of the pudgy man sitting in one of the lobby's many couches. Two young women scantily clad in clothes that left fairly little to the imagination were on both his arms while a younger man, slim and dressed in a sharp suit, stood discreetly talking into a slim phone close by. Probably a personal secretary. They all had one of those nowadays, unable to do things by themselves.
Human technological advances grew by leaps and bounds every century, all to pander to their laziness. It would be so easy to end that man's life, to watch as –
Why? Shin asked, sounding – tired, all of a sudden. Why does the thought of killing that man amuse you? Why would you want that?
Oh, Shin, he thought mockingly, smiling in a way he knew has goosebumps crawling over Shin. All these years, and you still don't know? Still haven't figured it out yet?
He turned around when Kimura called for his attention. He took the key card that looked indistinguishable from the one he claimed to have lost, looking at the woman thoughtfully before dismissing her easily and twisting around on the heel of his boots and leaving for his room.
I do it because it's fun.