InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Good Twin, Evil Twin ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two

All throughout not a feature of Kanna's face was moved to betray a hint of emotion - if, indeed, the demonic creature was capable of such a human act. The deceptively small and weak-looking figure stood at the center of the office wearing an outfit of white - the white shirt, white pants, white shoes, seemed to be protesting its innocence too much - and holding a mirror toward the far, distant corners of the immense chamber. Everything, everywhere around that sad, unresponsive female was cloaked by a darkness and shadow intended to be permanent - the only light within seemed to be evolving from her mirror, from her image and from a pair of glowing, red eyes.

The curt, wry smile beneath those eyes remained obscured by the void but the laugh that evolved from its lips left no doubt it was there And the sound of it, intermingled with what was coming out of Kanna's mirror - a symphony of animalistic grunts and desperate cries - added a touch of ageless malevolence. A flash of lightning and a pang of thunder completed the ghastly image.

The intermittent illumination revealed the presence of two, other figures within the office, farther away from the eyes to the chamber's stately entrance. The male figure was clad in old, ancient garments whose ninja-like blackness melted seamlessly into the environment - only the upper portions of his head were revealed, showing black hair, pale skin and dark eyes that like Kanna's lacked emotion. The female figure was dressed in modern clothes - unlike the other two she grew visibly more and more disgusted by the minute by what she was hearing.

And when the sounds of it proved to be too much, she ambled toward the door - it only inflamed the eyes which laughed louder, deeper than before - she wanted to say something, do something, but at moments like that she knew she was hopelessly and utterly powerless even to think the thoughts.

Out of the office - and out of its miasma - she was `free'. She covered her face with her fan and sighed, wondering in what far and distant corner of the globe her savior was hidden. If he was alive, still.

At that time of night, amid the rainstorm and the traffic, few people walked the streets. Fewer people walked the streets aimlessly. To be fair, though, his nocturnal comings and goings were far from mindless. But to the naked eye, raw and untrained, his wanderings gave that impression. The figure in the red coat, whose head was always cloaked by hood or by cap, developed many artificial ways to blend into the world for he could not hide as naturally as the others of his kind. And that role of vagrant always proved to be the most successful.

Such as it was, he found it easier to work the `business' at night - at night, when people were more accepting and forgiving of strangers - at night to scout intelligence, to watch and observe and, from time to time, to work at the odd jobs his friends with connections secured for him. Living in modern-Tokyo did have its advantages since it was open all of the time. In the past that was not so and life had been very hard. He did not know how he could have survived without those friends.

The red-cloaked figure, whose silver-white hair could be seen through the hood, eased his hand into his jacket to feel the hilt of a weapon carefully hidden along the side of his body. That part of the city was strong with that scent. A domain of vile, putrid miasma it was and ordinarily he would have avoided the place all together but that night was different. It had been different for a while now - but now the feeling of impending doom was becoming evermore overpowering - and now the feeling she was in danger was getting worse and worse by the instant. What he needed were clues to deduce the designs that spider was spinning against her.

What he would have done to be with her again yet he knew if he got too close to her everything would be revealed and it would be their doom. All he could do was watch. And watch from a distance, at sunset, at sunrise, when she went to and from home and school, when she was most vulnerable and did not know it.

The stranger among men stopped - suddenly, unexpectedly - and looked behind. Glossy, electric eyes scanned the scene through the curtains of water falling out of the sky. There were hints of motions, suggestions of designs. He clutched that weapon and stepped slowly, deliberately. If there would be trouble -

“Am I a bad boy, Kuzen?” Zenku asked, rubbing his eyes as his vision - and the rest of the world - came back into focus. “Will you punish your brother - how will you punish your brother?” He was shocked by the immediate disconnect between one scene and the next. Where once there was light, now there was dark; where once the clamor of life surrounded him, now the stillness of death enveloped him. “I'm in trouble, aren't I, Kuzen? Kuzen!”

But there was no reply, only the faint, imagined echo of a reply. And it ebbed - as if that ethereal whisper could be lower - it melted into a deep silence, cold and rigid.

“Kuzen? Kuzen! Kuzen?”

Even out of his lips, the name evaporated like a puff of smoke evolving outward into the universe - it was a waking nightmare and he was helpless, senseless.

What had changed? It seemed to be only a moment ago that he had slumped over the park bench. What transpired that he now lay across the dirt and rubble, over a slab of concrete and rock, the smell of rain and wet-earth stabbing into his skull? He stopped rubbing and started blinking, but the view of the world did not improve - it only plummeted headlong into terminal blackness. And he was struck by how bitterly cold the air became.

Looking right and left frantically like a demented cartoon figure, the impressionable corners of his brain wondered if that were not what it was like to be coffined.

Kuzen! Zenku asked to himself yet a distant, mocking resonance answered.

A surge of adrenaline coursed through his bloodstream - was he back inside that office?

His heart raced and he stood abruptly - suddenly aware of energies he thought he did not possess - and just as quickly as he arose he stumbled backward until a cold, rough wall stopped him and held him at bay. His eyes, adjusting to the dim, eerie light, were instantly drawn into a stare, a duel, with another pair of what he took to be eyes. Two red, round orbs so close he could have reached out and touched them.

Zenku sighed and laughed: it was not a pair of red, inhuman eyes but two red brake lights. It was a car and it was only through the miracle of coincidence that the image of its taillights was conveyed unobstructed from the street to the park wherever within it he stood.

Yes, he was still within the park, within its facilities, only then, at that time, were its features, its shape, its substance, emerging out of obscurity coming into view.

He stood at the end of a short, wide passage that cut through the base of an open-air pavilion. At the end, at the edge cutting between the cavernous interior and the wild exterior, he leaned against the wall and watched the rain. The droplets were bristling the leaves of the trees, bouncing against the blades of the grass and striking the hard, immoveable fixtures of the children's playground. The water's unsteady flow pounded an asymmetric beat as it fell onto an ledge above his head - whose overflow trickled upon his shoes, wet his feet.

He stood, stray sprays misting his face, and it returned with an orgy of sensual zeal.

It made sense - partly because he wanted it to make sense and partly because it did make sense. Simple, logical. Exactly the steps a sane, rational man would have taken given the situation. The rain retuned and intensified and he sought immediate shelter. And he found it, a relatively warm and dry place, there within the passages beneath the park's central pavilion. The open-air edifice and its concrete deck, its concrete seats and tables etched with the patterns of chessboards. There by the restrooms, by the closets. The secret, hidden antechambers into which the general public was not allowed.

It was the place to be; it had always been, as far as he remembered. He recalled how in his youth he often visited it and hid within its forbidden zones. Every now and then even with a girl. He smiled as one, particular girl's memory resurfaced: she had these familiar long, black locks. Right then and there he relived the way he brushed that hair aside as he latched onto her and grinded his hips into hers. The girl, for her own part, was unresponsive as he humped her through their clothes - was she unable to sense it or was she trying to ignore it. Could he be so bad at it that it would have been easier to ignore it rather than to fight it? What ever it was, it was unreal and unnatural how indifferent she was but he was growing harder and hotter and in that state of carnal bliss it did not matter if she liked it or not. The whole memory of it - though fragmented and disjointed - came as fresh as if it was new and he started to get aroused. Reasoning that he was alone, he pressed his palm against the bulge swelling between his legs and rubbed.

But then, was it new because it had been forgotten or was it new because it had been invented?

Still - something about that girl, something about that girl's hair was so, intimately familiar.

No - it was too late to conjecture. As a bolt of lightning flashed he saw that he was not alone within the passage. In the pulse of blinding light - and equally blinding realization - he saw a shape slumped against the wall directly askew of the restroom doors.

He was not alone and fearing he had been caught in the middle of perversion he took his hand away from his pant's front.

“Um, hello?” he asked, slumping toward the figure - that remained motionless as the thunder crashed even as he, admirer of the phenomenon, was jolted by its effect. “Hello? Are you asleep? Um?”

Zuken reached into his jacket's left pocket and noticed - for the first time - that it was stuffed with a moist, silky material of one sort or another. Whatever it was, it was not there before. From his right pocket he produced a lighter and ignited it. At once a soft, blue light illuminated the space and as the cloak of darkness and shadow retreated the figure was revealed to be the girl, the very self-same girl he encountered that afternoon. She looked just as sad with her eyes closed as with them open and by the tranquility of that countenance he could not help but think she was asleep.

And then he reached for her shoulder - and what should have been warm, supple living flesh revealed itself to be cold and stiff. The rest of the body reacted falling away onto the ground like the second-hand of a watch sweeps its face. Mechanical. Dead.

He screamed but the act of a pang of thunder drowned the shriek.

“Kuzen! Punish me not them!”

He returned the lighter back into his jacket and stood, paced, heart racing and pulse pounding.

This was not the way it was supposed to be. But he could not blame Kuzen when it was all, fundamentally his fault. She did the things she did for love, for him, and he would have to be stronger if he wanted to keep her this time Or - to protect him from himself - if she made wrong moves, stupid mistakes, her hand could be revealed and he would be alone again. And he could not be alone again. Maybe he could live without fantasies of forbidden contact. Maybe he could lock himself in his apartment until the crack of doom. But he could not live without Kuzen. His Kuzen.

“I am so weak,” he mumbled as he shook his head in his hands.

He put his hands back into his jacket's pockets and was stunned, again, at the feeling of what was stuffing one of the two enclosures. It was a cloth, wet and soft, but what was it? He did not pull it out, whatever it was, not then and there. In that place.

He took his hands away and noticed the one that touched the material was now wet, really wet, and it had not been so before. He examined his fingers through the faint lights of the nighttime city obscured by the rainstorm. He could see their shapes and contours glimmer. He could see they shimmered with the flat, even moisture of something - something - that was not rain for it was too dark, too dense to be water.

“Oh my god, Kuzen, is this how you punish your brother?”

Zenku dared not touch anything - not in that condition. For a moment he feared if his hand had been smeared when he was palming his genitals. He reached out into the rain through the passage's opening and let the downpour cleanse his fingers. The way the building had been constructed the rainwater flowed away into the earth surrounding it - still, that part of the pavilion was below ground level and it could have flooded. Behind him, by the body, by the doors, was a pair of storm drains. He could hear water flowing and echoing as runoff collected within them but at that time they were not flooding. Not yet.

Letting another moment pass, he looked at the girl whose body lay along the floor against the wall. Was it a side effect of the way she slipped or was it like that all along? But by whatever method, her skirt - once green and now god only knew what its color was - was up tucked against her stomach. Its displacement revealed that between her legs she was exposed, naked.

Against every fiber of his being he approached

“What did you do, Kuzen?” The body did not have any obvious traumas - at least as far as could be seen. He reached into the void of hair and flesh framed by the long, white socks and the rest of the high-school uniform. He felt the short, sharp stubble of freshly-sprouted pubic hair prick and sting his palm. He felt, too, a strange sensation of wetness. A thick, familiar wetness.

He cried thinking that for a moment of guilty pleasure - no - for the fantasy of a moment of guilty pleasure, the girl was forced to pay with her life. Kuzen could be so jealous. What female could be safe around him? Indeed, it was not supposed to be this way, and more and more he felt as if he had been betrayed by those blood-red eyes as though he made a deal with the devil.

He stood and sighed, bowing his head and bringing the hood of his jacket up over his brow. He stepped into the blackness of the night, rain hitting his head and shoulders hard as if they were pellets. He trekked through the park trying desperately not to look as if he were a stranger. He stopped under lampposts and by crosswalks to look at his watch not that he wanted to know what time it was but that he wanted to make it seem as if he were engaged in business of one sort or another and was in a hurry to get from one shop to the next. It was a simple, little gesture that carried enormous yet subtle connotations - and if it worked any stray, wayward witnesses would not pinpoint him as that stranger responsible for yet another death.

Along the way he passed by those cars in between which he stood when he girl brushed his jacket. He put his hands back into its pockets and regretted it, quickly pulling them out and letting the waters wash the evidence away.

“Kuzen is not dead but gives death,” he uttered a sort of makeshift mantra while passing the wet, deformed flyer. The flyer the girl posted. He figured there would be another flyer, maybe the same in every respect, but now with two girls faces' highlighted.

“Maybe, if I think hard enough, maybe I can find a way to save you, Kuzen, like you're trying to save me. To save you from yourself. I can be strong, too, you know. I must be strong. Or I will be alone again. Alone in this world.”

In his mind, he saw the beauty of that girl transforming into something utterly hideous and vile. The warm, supple feel of her body becoming just the cold and rigid shapes of things that once had been alive and now were - or were they always from the start - something base and coarse that billions of years of biology metamorphosized into human form. A bulk of rubbery-like organs and tissues - was that mass of innards wrapped with skin all that was mankind? Truly, it was in imperfect world, badly designed, poorly organized, and without Kuzen he did not want to remain in it.