Fan Fiction ❯ The White Rice Paper ❯ WRP chapter two ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two

I'm really not quite sure who was more surprised; I at finding him leaning over me from his sitting position on the floor as I slept, or him at finding himself with my knife at his jugular. I supposed that it was a good thing that I had decided to look at my attacker before I drove the blade home. Otherwise he would be dead.

He tried not to swallow as I gazed at him; his expression was as blank as my own. Had it really come down to it I'm sure he could have disarmed me if he had really tried. I think he sensed my agitation and chose to wait for me to withdraw the blade.

I didn't.

I was cross and if he was foolish enough to try to wake me without calling to me first then the knife at his neck was his own fault. He probably guessed what I was thinking and decided that now was as good a time as any to talk with me because chances of me becoming any more reasonable in the next few minutes weren't very good.

He took a deep breath and with the expansion of his chest his neck came in contact with the sharp tip of my blade. It made a small prick where it connected with his skin.

As he spoke to me I watched with zanshin as the crimson droplet made its way down his neck and into the collar of his gi. He acted as if it was perfectly normal to hold a conversation with a tonto a hair's breath away from his juglar.

"The body was found about twenty minutes ago."

His gi was pushed forward by his position; the stiff cloth was open so I could see his bare skin underneath.

"No one suspected anything other than a robbery by a very smart prostitute, or perhaps a very desperate servant."

As I watched out of the corner of my eyes I could see the red trail that the blood made over his bronzed skin.

"No one saw you nor heard your voice."

I stared at that red line on his muscled chest, and watched as it dried to a brown crust that would flake on his skin.

"Despite that you should still stay out of sight for the next few days."

I couldn't keep my mind on what it was he was saying to me. There was something about the mission I had just finished; he could have spoken for hours for all I could tell. I tried to focus but my mind just kept returning to the red-brown path his blood had made as it flowed over his skin.

"You may rest for the remainder of the day. As evening falls enter the dojo and I will give you your next task." I noticed the tone of his voice. He was finished talking with me. I removed the tonto from his throat.

He didn't even wait for my nod, just got up and walked away. As I watched him depart I absently wondered if perhaps it wasn't white rice paper that cleared one's mind, but crimson on golden skin.

I slept for a few more hours after he left, dreaming of the blood flowing over his skin. Only the skin was paler now than it had been when I had seen it. The muscles were not as well defined, and there was more blood than before. Not just one droplet but many others, making intersecting lines on this new pale skin. It ran down the flesh of his body, only when I looked, it wasn't his body any more. It was someone else's. Someone familiar. It was a body I knew.

The droplets ran down faster and faster, the blood flowing quickly over the skin and marking it red, staining it. The skin. The pale skin.

The crimson drops flowed down the flat stomach and onto pale white thighs and down legs equally as light in color. The path of the blood only obstructed by a scar on the left thigh that diverted it passage.

I knew that scar.

I knew those legs.

Blood flowed faster and faster, until all of the skin was red and the white of the thighs couldn't be seen underneath it, I realized whose body it was covered by the flowing blood.

It was my own.

In my dream, I screamed.