Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction ❯ Awakened Soul ❯ Beautiful Pilgrim in the Past ( Chapter 2 )

Disc. Not mine. Warning. Not my language.   « Beautiful Pilgrim in the Past »   In Paradise, a god was waiting. Jiroushin sat before a go ban. He was staring hard at the empty chair in front of him. One moment, his head turned towards the terrace bathed by the bright daylight, looking at the back of a throne.   « Where did se go? » he asked softly, as if addressing the dormant boy.   Nataku couldn’t answer (or chose not to).   Jiroushin nodded for himself. Kanzeon bosatsu was unpredictable. He should have learnt his lesson since the time he was at hir service. But he sighed. And kept waiting…   oOoOoOo   The bodhisattva who can hear all sound didn’t want to listen to the words se had just heard…   « You planned it... » he had said, this marshal whose voice se thought se would never hear again…   Of course, se had! Se shrugged, all alone with hir beautiful self. There was no other way… Ho, yes…Se was so proud of hirself…Quite brilliant, wasn’t it?   Se had so carefully woven the threads of their lives…Se couldn’t understand the marshal’s reluctance. Se was giving them what they had wanted, after all…Reunion…Their souls had been screamingfor it during 5OO years…   « What happened to the others? » he had asked as well!   But thinking of that encounter, se couldn’t keep hirself from hearing again and again the underlying despair in the marshal’s voice. A small shudder crawled under hir divinely pale skin. Foolish. Se had never known what guilt was… So what was the matter with hir?   « Toys, tools? »   Through the marshal’s eyes, maybe. But se knew in hir heart that it wasn’t the truth. On impulse, she decided not to go back to Paradise yet… Her scheme was perfect. Perfect! How did he dare? So perfect se wanted to see it again, admire hir own realization…Se smiled. The « fiery Kenren » was quite a success, wasn’t he?   Se had planed to witness right away the first encounter, after five hundreds years, between hir marshal and hir general. But suddenly, she chose to let them some intimacy. Call it mercy if you want…Se was the god(dess) of Mercy, after all.   And se was the bodhisattva who can hear all sounds and all calls, too...   Yes, a child’s call, it was. Coming from years before…   Kanzeon, or the beautiful pilgrim in the past…Se left. Se had recognized the voice.   The « fiery Kenren »…   Quite a success…   oOoOoOo   The light flooded from the low and cloudy sky. Heavenly music which would have almost deafen mortals (if there had been any near enough to hear) was ringing loudly, coming from nowhere and everywhere. But the area around the isolated house was empty. Nobody was here to witness the bright epiphany…The sudden silence, then, as a deity set foot on the humble ground, held an air of tragedy in it. Or maybe it was just hir imagination. Se was the deus (or dea?) ex machina who had written the drama that had to take place here only a few hours ago. Pain and jealousy turned into fury. Love and care turned into matricide.   Kanzeon knew exactly what was the scene se would behold in the house. Everything had been set to end up there. Se strode over the corpse of the youkai woman without much feeling. Some blood rubbed on hir divine bare foot and se didn’t care. Hir gaze was looking for another person. He was still hunched against the wall, and laying on his side on the floor. He hadn’t budged from this spot since his older brother’s departure. The red-haired child had cried himself to sleep. Silent harsh sobs. Se had heard because se, only, had the power to do so. Se graciously bent on one knee to have a better look.   The red tresses hid his face. With an almost affectionate gesture, Kanzeon pushed them out of the way, to reveal the tear-streaked youthful face. His last tears, since he would swear himself to never cry again, after that. The already sharp features and the hard setting of the jaw reminded hir of the stubborn general se knew long ago. Even if the bloody lines on the cheek would certainly leave scars.   A start shook the body. Red eyes shot open.   A petite hand tried haphazardly to push hir away.   And…   « You, K’so baba! »   That’s a joke.   It can’t be. Not again.   Because there was only one other person to be as bad-mouthed as hir nephew.   « Taishou? Kenren-taishou? » se almost stuttered on the words.   What had he done? That damn marshal! It couldn’t be. His sudden appearance as Cho Gonou had been turned into a youkai had messed up with something, and now, some barrier was down…And…   It never occurred to hir it could have been what se had done… By interfering one more time … By journeying against the flow of Time one time too many to be the privileged spectator of hir own meddling with the fate’s laws…   oOoOoOo   « You, K’so baba! »   There was something really, REALLY fishy, here. First, Kenren couldn’t understand how he could wake up and find the pissy bureaucrat’s AUNT peering down at him. Trying to straighten up a little, he revised his assessment. It was officially WEIRD. He couldn’t recognize the place, couldn’t even remember why he was here… And worst, couldn’t even recognize his own voice…Nor his hands, he realized by looking at the young-looking ones he had raised to his face to push the red curtain of – long? How come, long? - hair blocking his sight…His mind was too fogged to really understand what was the matter.   « What happened to me? » he croaked. His throat hurt.   « You’re dead, » the god(dess) deadpanned. Surprise had made hir forget what tact was. If se ever knew, that is.   « I’m not! » he retorted. Because he felt very alive. « But she is. Who is it? » he added, almost detached, noticing body and blood on the floor, as the bodhisattvashifted slightly and cleared the view. It was gruesome. Gods don’t kill. Though, he was soldier enough not to mind much the sight of a corpse. And blood, he knew.   « Don’t tell me you don’t remember who she is? » Kanzeon bosatsu dubiously asked. Still under shock.   He shook his head. He would if he had already met her. Even dead, he could tell the woman was beautiful even if she was a youkai, but…No. Nothing. Didn’t know at all who she was.   « Strange. The marshal could remember the two lives… » se mused.   « Tenpou? »   Ten-chan? What has he got to do with… all that? The name helped him focus. This time, he felt sick. He is dead too? His throat tightened. He didn’t speak the words. As if voicing something else with assurance could make it true, he said instead:   « This bookworm must be still waiting for me in his damn library, for all I know! »   If he had a clear mind, he would realize the said library wasn’t next door anymore…   oOoOoOo   The « general » tried not to think of this dead woman on the ground. The more Kenren was here, the less he seemed to be able to bear looking at Her. He did his best to ignore her how so obvious presence. He didn’t ask who killed her. Maybe he was afraid he did and couldn’t remember that either. He did his best not to think of Tenkai. Because otherwise he would have to think of the bodhisattva’s words and accept he was dead. But he couldn’t be. And Ten-chan wasn’t either. Couldn’t. Mustn’t. Kenren didn’t dare ask of the god(dess) about Konzen and Goku. Something in the way Kanzeon looked at him made him fear they might have shared the same fate. He did his best not to think of what kind of fate. He tried hard not to think of this body that felt so alien to him. Too young. Too weak. Too pained. Not only of the stingy sensation on his cheek, even if his hand brought back blood as he had rubbed his face. As if it wasn’t his (and it wasn’t his, he had to recall), he could almost feel the fear, the pain, the resignation and the despair still building in the childish chest. He guessed something awful had happened here. As if a corpse wasn’t enough of a clue, of course. So, he made his best not to think at all.   « It’s a dream, » he suddenly stated out of the blue. The explanation was so simple he was about to laugh.   Kanzeon bosatsu was staring hard at the child. The taishou was talking as if…As if he had popped up in this body for no reason at all. Two lives. Two perfectly separated lives because death and reincarnation hadn’t already built a link between two souls destined to merge. It meant somewhere, sometime, there was a general’s body which was still breathing, still living. As if nothing had happened yet. Because even the most stubborn of souls can’t forget the moment of Death. As if the time this soul somehow lost its way, Paradise had been…The paradise Kanzeon wanted so badly to have back.   Se was tempted.   Soon enough, se thought, soon enough hir nephew (or the monk who had been hir nephew, rather) would be able to hear the cries coming from Mont Gogyo. Se had for five centuries. The sadness of it still broke hir heart. It was like some kind of siren song se couldn’t get rid from hir head. Se had no possible way of forgetting it.   So very tempted.   Just right now. Change everything. If one of them knew what was about to come, what befell them…Then…   No need for a prison for a itanchild. No need for a Genjo Sanzo to free him, a Cho Gonou to nurse him or a Sha Gojyo to tease him.   All se had to do was pulling one more string. And it would stop. And there would be laughter in Heaven again.   « What would you say, if I called that premonition? » Se cooed.   This time, the « child » really laughed. He was laughing because he didn’t want to hear. And suddenly, it felt less painful looking at the dead woman than at the expectant face of the god(dess). So he kneeled near the corpse. He noticed the axe caught under the body. He reached for it, slowly pulled it with a sinister sound, with these hands too small for the large handle. He looked at the young face reflected in the bloody blade.   « What do you mean? » he asked, however, without looking at the bodhisattva.   « Listen to me, Kenren taishou. »   You have to destroy this present I made. You have to save your past. I’ll will tell you a story. Listen.   oOoOoOo   They are not mere memories for him, like they are (however dear ones) for the bodhisattva after five centuries…They are not ghosts, but made from flesh and blood, the shiny Konzen, the innocent Goku, the enigmatic Ten-chan…So, each word is like a stab. A few minutes, a few hours ago, he was talking to them, teasing them, touching them…   « There is blood too precious to be shed. I can’t allow. I won’t allow. »   But he is here. He doesn’t know where and he doesn’t really care, so…   « How do I go back? How do I save them if I can’t go back… » His high-pitched voice dies off on his young lips. And suddenly the general feels himself suffocating in this body too little for anger, determination and fear that are really his own, this time. And the panic is raising. And blood is burning in his veins. His thin fingers are still clasping a sharp axe-blade as if it was the weapon he would use to protect his loved ones... The hanyou child doesn’t look like a child at all, that moment. His body shakes of repressed fury.   With a strange gesture which a mother wouldn’t deny, the god(dess) kneeled behind him, dragging a bit rashly the ‘child’ in a awkward embrace against her chest, her pale hand reaching for his chin and tilting it backwards until se could look at his face. And Kanzeon bosatsu granted him the kiss of a bodhisattva. The full mouth kiss of a beautiful pilgrim in the Past.   If this Kenren taishou was able to reach back Paradise before they die…If he could warn them all…   The possibilities were incredible.   The bodhisattva cradled the limp body in hir arms for a long while. Waiting for a child to come back. Or not.   oOo To Be Continued oOo   (next part : « The God with the Child in his Eyes »)