InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Good Twin, Evil Twin ❯ Chapter Nine ( Chapter 9 )

Chapter Nine

Zenku entered the office and leaned back against the door. He sighed: for a moment his nervousness lifted, his heartbeat settled, for an instant he felt at peace. Until he inhaled the air and coughed. There was just something foul about the air inside that building, something that was and would be always unclean. Along the floor by his feet were empty canisters of air fresheners; he bought them when he first moved into the office thinking the smell could be masked but that odor was too potent and that room was too tiny and poorly ventilated that the mix of the fumes only irritated his senses and he could not work - whatever his work was supposed to be.

And that, perhaps, was the strangest part of the whole business: he did not know exactly what his job was.

He dusted his coat and removed it, turning around to place it upon the hook of the door - a hook that had been poking too dangerously close against his skull. But, just as he was about to place the jacket onto the hook he noticed a bright, pin-prick of light. It was a peephole. He looked it stunned and yet not surprised. Had it been installed during his absence? Had it been there before and he had not realized it until now?

It was a part of the nature of the building to be always changing. From the outside it seemed rather constant if not unbearably normal - except for its height - but from the inside things were different. The fixtures, the facilities, from the layout of the floors to the position of the furniture, things changed day after day. Moment by moment the building evolved, dismantling and re-organizing itself into complex yet efficient designs.

Accepting that it was there and that it was more or less a permanent feature he looked through the peephole - but it had been installed backward and only a person out in the hallway could use it.

Just then, as he was looking through it - trying to look through it - the form of a large, burly figure obstructed the field of view. It leaned into the other side of the peephole as if to see through it. The figure, whose face was distorted and familiar, knocked.

Zenku was shocked by the fury of the knocking - he staggered aback as if stung, his body shaking, his heart racing.

The figure along the other side of the door did not bother for a reply - it must have seen Zenku's reaction and as soon as the way was clear opened the door and entered the room.

“Mr. Hitomi,” he said through a voice that was broken with the stammering of sudden fear and terror. Mr. Hitomi, he believed - because there was no reason to disbelieve - was his superior.

He recalled that day when he awoke and saw that huge, Manhattan-like building in Tokyo's skyline. He could have sworn that it was not there that night and it proved to be impossible explaining its unexpected appearing. But he was struck by its beauty: it looked too much like a famous, old American skyscraper to be real. And, anyway, he needed a closer look. He left the apartment without breakfasting and walked about the streets gazing up at the building. Most of the people were oblivious to it but every so often there were others, others like him, looking into the sky. Were they seeing it? Or were they wondering what it was that he - no doubt looking like a crazed lunatic crossing the streets erratically - was staring at?

When he reached the sidewalk about the tower the effect the building exerted upon the citizens was magnified. Most of the people could not see the tower the way he could see the tower. The rest were the few who did notice it but they were completely and utterly afraid. They saw, they stared and when they became too afraid they fled. As though they knew what lurked within. It was an odd mixture, too, of the population: from street thugs to well-dressed professionals.

That was when he first smelled the miasma. It sickened him and he grew weak. About to swoon, he clung onto the walls, he staggered along the edifice toward the doors of a lobby that opened. That was when he first heard the voice of Mr. Hitomi and it sounded as annoyed then as it did now.

It should be said that Zenku heard the man but did not see the man.

He was asked for his name and he gave it meekly through the shattered voice of a man who could not stand erect. He was asked what he was doing coming there and when he himself could not give a coherent answer - his speech degenerated into a jumble of disorganized words - a hand grabbed his arm and dragged into an elevator. The rest was a blur until Mr. Hitomi brought him into that office and said he would be working there and that soon he would be meeting the boss, Mr. Onigumo.

And that was when he first saw Mr. Hitomi.

“Where were you yesterday, Zenku?” he asked, his voice teeming with pent-up rage. His tone was not loud or angry but its accusatory cadence could not be mistaken.

“I, I don't know, sir, I - I - was home -”

“You remember what Mr. Onigumo said, don't you? Don't you? You are to report here each and every morning from eight to four. That is your job, Zenku, this is not a place to be fucking up.”

Mr. Hitomi was a strict man. He wore a black uniform - like the rest of the guards of the building - but unlike them he was armed with a pair of swords. It was strange but he did not question it. Many things about the universe were strange yet they were.

Actually, it was Mr. Hitomi's ears that were weirder. Most of the time the man wore his black hair long, very long, and it was hard to catch more than a few superficial glances of them. But there was that day when he brought him up to see Mr. Onigumo.

Up to that office. In that darkness. Through that shadow he noticed Mr. Onigumo's glowing red eyes. They looked monstrously inhuman and demonic and as he stared into them the boss's face began to lose its human appearance. His features were melting revealing the sight of things utterly and indescribably grotesque. Things that resembled an insect's head and body. And there was an unearthly `breathing' noise - a ghastly `hissing' sound - that was coming from behind him. The full-length windows with their drawn up curtains were hinting at the source of it through their reflections - and though his mind erased the sight of what he saw the memory of it, just its bare and fragmented impression, was enough to freeze the life out of his body.

He remembered he tried to turn around and leave. He recalled he struggled - with Mr. Hitomi and with another man dressed in black - but he was pinned onto the boss's desk. He punched and kicked and someway, somehow struck Mr. Hitomi and he stumbled back. And the way he flailed his arms about to break his fall brushed his hair aside and exposed his ears.

Zenku could not forget it - his ears were longer than a human's and pointed.

“Mr. Onigumo is not a man to be fucked with. Need I remind you,” he stressed with a strong, forceful stab of his finger onto Zenku's shoulder, “you made a deal with the boss. He's kept his end of the bargain.”

“Kuzen,” Zenku gulped and bit his lip, bowed his head.

“Yes, Zenku, don't you think you should be keeping yours?”

He was reminded of the events that transpired just before he met Mr. Onigumo. It was the waiting room and there were so many people there, sitting upon the wooden chairs even upon the marble floors. He learned they had been pulled right off of the street - like he had been taken - but he did not learn more than that because the secretary, whose eyes also showed to be red, kept them from speaking to each other.

They grew to be quiet - and nervous - for all sorts of sounds, struggles and screams, could be heard coming through the big, double-doors of the office. A few people tried to leave but a pair of twins armed with swords kept the waiting room doors shut and would not let anyone pass in or out. When it was his turn to meet the boss he entered the office with a heavy heart - he realized only too late people entered the chamber but did not leave it.

Mr. Hitomi and that other, silent man directed him to the desk and he sat. That voice, soft yet deliberate, started to speak and lulled him into a relaxed state. The miasma thickened but his body did not react against it anymore as it started to work like an intoxicant. The voice - of the figure whose face he could not see yet - coaxed a story out of him about his twin sister and how he missed having her.

Mr. Onigumo proposed a deal - he did not believe it, he could not believe it. He tried to leave but the deal persisted and he would not believe it. It was impossible - everyone from his parents to that priest told him it was impossible. The boss promised to bring her back. She would be returned and they would be together as long as he kept his end of the bargain, as long as he did the job.

“I'll be a good boy,” he stammered. “I'll do my job. Just don't take her from me. I can't live without her.”

Mr. Hitomi nodded. He dropped a pile of newspapers onto the desk. He turned but before he left he shut the door. He grabbed the hook that was upon it and with a violent twist jerked it off and let it fall upon the jacket Zenku himself let fall upon the floor by the canisters.

He opened the door and paused to look back at Zenku: “Boy, you don't know how lucky you are. You don't want to know what Mr. Onigumo does to those who fail him.”

He gulped and with that the door shut and he was alone.

Standing by the desk, he looked at his jacket - at his bottles of air fresheners - and up and down he looked at the wall. Illuminated by the light of the monitors - the monitors were the only source of light within that confined and window-less office - the wall was a makeshift shrine he built and maintained for his sister. Taped onto it were pictures of Kuzen. All sorts of pictures of Kuzen. There were none of her as a baby, or as a girl, or as a teen - there never were and never would be - but there were many of her as an adult.

She looked so beautiful and as he stared at her he began to fantasize about her. He brought himself face to face with the largest of the photographs - except it was not a photograph it was printed upon the wrong kind of paper, it was too thick, too flimsy, but that did not matter for he did not see it he saw her. He kissed her image, its black and white colors tasting bland and metallic. But he was not turned off by the flavor because he did not feel the problem. He imagined it to be the flesh of her cheek and it was the flesh of her cheek. He wanted to hold against her and to grind into her. For a moment he imagined that through the picture, through the wall upon which the picture was taped, there grew the warmth of flesh - her flesh - and it was indistinguishable from having Kuzen alive right then and there.

His bulge, growing heavy and uncomfortable, throbbed between his legs and he grinded against the wall.

She was his twin sister. She was another he. And if it was not wrong to masturbate himself, why would it be wrong to yearn for her body?

“We were like this, closer, longer than any two people could be. What can be more intimate than that? If this isn't right, nothing's right in this world.”

A shuffle of feet came from behind the door and the pinprick of light returned, stabbing into the side of his face.

But, after all, it was not Kuzen, it was a wall -

Zenku sat at the desk and skimmed through the stack of documents Mr. Hitomi left. They were newspapers: a few were professional papers the rest were student papers coming out of local high schools and colleges. Part of his job, he reasoned, was to search through newspapers. But for what he did not know and, then, he just searched for the things that he liked. The things that excited him. Most of the time the only things that attracted that attention were the pictures of the girls.

They were all young and gorgeous. And he loved them. The beautiful ones, with their long, black hair, with their uniforms! What was it about those white shirts and those green skirts that just begged for his hand to reach into them? What were they hiding down there, between their legs, that his fingers were dying to discover?

He looked at the photographs of the girls without reading, fantasizing about the idea of just talking to one of those teenagers. Maybe feeling about their secret, intimate parts. Maybe molesting their breasts, ravaging their vaginas while they sat atop his lap and grinded their skirts into his crotch.

That fantasy was always enough to arouse him into climax and that morning it seemed to be without exception.

“If you shaved off Kuzen's hair you would find a tattoo of that identical hair beneath.”

If she were there she would have been very cross about him getting dirty thoughts looking at those pictures. Kissing those pictures. Bringing the faces of those pictures against the tent of his crotch. More than a few of those images disintegrate within his fingers as he grinded into them and he laughed for some, odd reason at the thought of it. But there was one that caught his eye - he could not bring himself to deflower it - he stared at it, studied it. It was a photograph of Kagome Higurashi, a high school girl; the caption told about her winning a culture festival but the camera angle gave such a view of her cleavage that it sent his hand down between his legs.

“Kuzen!” he whimpered as if agonized. Without waiting any longer he tore the image out of the newspaper and taped it over the image upon the wall that he wet with his saliva. It was bigger than the photograph beneath and showed so much. “Kuzen, you want my load, don't you? Kuzen? Let me give you my load!”

Frantically, like an animal, he humped into the wall that was already somewhat dented from all of the times before he humped into it. He grinded, thrashing his hips and smashing his body into the wall to the point where if he were not as aroused as he was it would have been painful. In that wild and furious state of mind he kept thinking about her massaging his sac and stroking about his shaft making him grow and brining him closer and closer into orgasm. He pictured it happening like in all of that pornography he loved to watch.

“Kuzen!” His face came to rest against the picture, eyes and mouth wide open. His body was suddenly very still and exhausted. He held his breath and shuddered, feeling himself squirt into his underwear. He jerked almost flopping about the wall as the orgasm continued, shot after shot. “Kuzen,” he cooed as he fell onto his knees and revealed the wet and warped image of the face of Kagome Higurashi.

Sitting aback against the chair, he swiveled from the wall of the Kuzen shrine - that was dented and moist - to the banks of the monitors above the desktop.

Exhausted but alert, he stared into the monitors. It must have been the one and only thing he loved more than staring at girls: staring at girls in motion. Dynamic erotic motion. He watched them in their locker rooms and their gym classes, he watched them walking about the streets around the schools their movements were so chaotic, so varied, it was like watching raindrops fall. It was never, ever, quite exactly the same from one moment to the next.

Gradually, it produced a tent along the wettest parts of his pants.

“I can't control me, Kuzen, and you can't you either.”

With Inukotsu's body laying on the sidewalk in front of Naraku's lair, people were too busy looking and staring at it than at him. He was ignored and unnoticed and that was the way he liked it. Of course he could not go through Tokyo with a wound along his arm - walking around the modern city like that was not normal and was liable to attract attention. But he unzipped his coat's hood and wrapped it tight about his arm's gash. And it stopped the bleeding. It did not stop the pain but that did not matter; unlike Inukotsu's injury the rift into his flesh would heal by itself.

He trekked through the street while bystanders along the sidewalks paused and cars within the avenue stopped. With their cameras and camera phones they recorded the grizzly scene of which he himself saw only faint, passing glimpses of. What he noticed more than that was the lack of guards: no effort was made to secure the scene, to confiscate the body. To keep the eyes of people away. But, then, the spider was a quietly-arrogant demon. And whatever weak transient human beings were up to did not concern him.

Yet: who was going to explain a woman - a woman armed with a sword - falling out of the tower's hundred-floor?

“Keh,” he yelped.

That Naraku found his lair was a momentary headache suffered silently and alone away from the public. That he breached Naraku's anonymity was different: now the demon would be burdened with the media and the police. That would busy him a bit and it seemed to be fitting.

Inuyasha caught sight of Inukotsu's sword. He, by reflex more than by instinct, clutched his weapon through his jacket. Since Imperial Japan had banned the use of swords he and his kind had found all sorts of ways to hide them in plain sight.

Past the body and the throng, into the shadows cast by the buildings of Tokyo, he stopped and stared up the length of Naraku's tower trying to gaze at its peak. But the space that would have been Naraku's office was far too remote to be seen. And even if it were not, the clouds that amassed about it would have blocked the view.

The whole sight of it would have been beautiful if it were not for the horror that lay within.

With his hood wrapped about his arm he was forced to keep his hands on his cap. That thin, form-fitting layer of canvas was what let him blend into the world. Without it there would be no place in which to hide. Anyway, he needed to get out of the area and fast. Kohaku was still a factor and that promise loomed overhead. Maybe if Sango were alive and saw what had become of her brother maybe she might have relented but he gave his word and a promise made must be kept.

He walked about the city looking more distracted than usual. Not having a home to retreat into, having Kagome to guard against, he would be forced to act. But he was exhausted and injured and would be useless. At times like that there were friends he counted on until he resettled but he did not like the idea of imposing upon friends.

The thought always occurred to him that Kagome would be safe if he came up to her and stayed at the temple. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized she would not be safe, ever, as long as he lived. Wanting to be with her was selfishness. Protecting her was not. As long as they maintained that distance she was anonymous and that advantage would be what saves her.

He did not see it. Lost in thought, he was oblivious of it. The district became familiar - but superficially. The sights and sounds of the present stirred memories of the past - but faintly. It was the teenagers who walked about the streets in their uniforms that peaked his attention. The boys with their black suits; the girls with their green and white sailors. Until that moment, that instant, he did not notice the mistake: that he was nearing Kagome's high school.

Inuyasha stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. People behind him brushed past him as they continued onward. Most of them were girls. Black-haired girls. He could not stay. He could not risk failing her twice that day.

While no one watched he crossed the street and fled into a park. Except for a few parents and children here and there the place was empty. And there - to rest and to think - he sat.

To be sure, it was not the park where that last, murdered victim was found. It was small, tiny and did not have a pavilion. It was cut into two parts, each astride a rarely used street.

The upper portion was composed of green lawns, concrete paths and wooden-iron benches. At the center stood the building that housed the bathrooms. Along the front perimeter were bus stops; along the back perimeter were alleys and driveways where men busied themselves with their work.

The lower portion - where he found himself to be - was larger with more grass and sand than concrete. It was where the children played: there were the swings and the slides and the see-saws. There were animal sculptures, too, an elephant and a giraffe: they were hollow to let kids inside and they were pockmarked to let them climb.

Inuyasha laughed thinking about what it would be like to take kids into that park. He would be too big to enjoy the games along with them but the idea would not be to join them, it would be to watch them and see them happy, smiling. Carefree. And maybe, just maybe, hold onto Kagome's hand as they watch their children. He would not leave his children and their mother; he would be there to protect them.

Would it be too late?

He relaxed and planned - and a ball rolled by his feet. A pair of kids, too young for school, ran after it. Their swift motion knocked a breeze about that ruffled through his hair. He recalled his hat and pressed it back onto his skull. He watched the boys struggle with the ball that seemed to be too big for their hands. He sighed: he accepted that it was too late for him but it was not too late for his children. It would be different form them: they would be only a quarter-demon and normal in almost every way in every one's eyes. They would not have to be a part of the trap of the demon-world. In fact, it might be possible to escape Japan altogether.

He wondered what it would be like to live in America or in Australia, places free of Naraku's grasp, expansive and isolated enough that a man could be private.

And then a voice shattered his soul. He stood upright - his ears within his cap standing erect and alert. He stared off into the distance, where kids ducked about the animal sculptures and swung and slid and see-sawed. He kept his eyes away even as the voice kept nearing and nearing.

What if she sees and knows?

He produced a cell phone, thinking - hoping - if she saw that in his hands she would not imagine it to be him. He studied it, unfolded it - its LCD display glowed an indigo hue - there were messages yet to be heard. He cradled it within his palms looking as if he would be making a call.

Off of its shiny, mirror-like surface, he caught a glimpse of Kagome. She looked alive surrounded by girlfriends. Nervous - at the point where his hands were shaking - he placed the cell phone back into his pocket and stood. He walked through the park, across the sandlot where the children played. The two boys passed him as they tossed the ball back and forth to each other. One of them tripped and he paused to raise him by the shoulder. He did not know if the mother was nearby and did not ask - he kept walking, patting his coat as he fled. He did not notice that the kid saw into his jacket onto the hilt of the Tetsaiga.

The boy smiled and whispered into his friend's ear something akin to `samurai' but the other boy was not interested - the ball was more fun to play with than the samurai.

Inuyasha found a building whose cellar doors were ajar. Looking from side to side, ensuring there was no body around, he slipped into the basement. He ran onto the nearest stairs. It led to the lobby of a small yet normal office building. At the ground floor the lone, old elevator brought him to the top floor. There, along the back wall, a ladder accessed the roof. Even injured he did not hesitate - he had been climbing ladders all day long, doing it again would be harmless. And without noticing it he was atop the roof, walking toward its edge and staring down at the park.

In the space of time through which he lurked about the building little changed. Kagome was still within the park surrounded by girlfriends. And near the back of the park, sitting on a bench and reading a book, was Hojo. Every so often he turned his eyes from the book to her.

There was the day she went into the well - she said that she was going for supplies, that she would be back by the hour - and as day ebbed into night she did not return. And when his impatience got the better of him, he jumped into the well and discovered the horror of horror that he could not travel through time.

And ever since, for five hundred years, he wondered why. Did the well stop for her too? Or did she stumble into another era, more remote and distant than the feudal time? Or did she get so mad at him that she opted to go and never to return?

His friends also wondered if his bad temper finally drove her away - they did not say it, they thought it - and it haunted him, for half a millennium, he could not answer the question.

But by that time his relationship with Kagome was different He was not the half-demon he used to be. She taught him by her pure and kind sincerity that there could be happiness in the world for him if he wanted it. Just as he wished could be loved if he let her.

With her gone he could have become bitter; but when he saw the sadness of his friends he did not want to add to that pain. He grew to be calm, clear-headed and dependable. He smartened up, learned to listen and to appreciate the subtly of life. There were many times he could have mated, many females and males thought him attractive. But as if to prove his penitence and his loyalty he denied himself the pleasures of this world because if he could not enjoy it with her, he would not enjoy it all.

The evolution of Inuyasha Taisho - for he learned to accept his father - was a long, sad torment.

Until today he did not believe it was anything he did that effected the change with Kagome - and he could have been right in so far as it was not anything he did in the past that imperiled the relationship.

He stared at Kagome across the distance. What it would be like to hold that girl. The way he held her five centuries ago by the side of the well. He recalled it often, it was the first time, ever, he did that with a girl. There were painfully few such moments. He held her like a man holds a woman. Feelings, warm and inviting, surged through their bodies. Her heart pounded and he heard it; he grew hardened and she felt it as he drew her close against his body. He ached with such passion that he feared she would be hurt; she was like a flower within his palm pressed tight against his flesh its petals breaking off. He often wondered if with just a little more effort what that tenderness might have evolved into. But at that time he thought to have her would be to doom her and he scarified himself and threw her into the well, back into her era where he imagined the tentacles of Naraku did not reach.

It terrified him to realize all the while he could have sent her into her very own destruction.

Until today he did not understand it and when the possibility occurred to him his heart sunk like a stone: maybe now he knew why she did not return.

Naraku was not defeated, the jewel was as incomplete then as it was now, yet everything ended in the middle of the action. Could the cause have been so simple as Kagome's death? But he could go through the well, even if she were killed, there was no reason why he could not go through the well. It could not have been so easy!

Maybe, whatever power caused the well to work at all judged its intervention was unnecessary and ended its porting through time. If that wee true there would be hope: for the death of the well did not mean the death of Kagome. And why would the time-travel not be needed - unless - maybe, the time-travel became unnecessary because the only way to defeat Naraku and gain the shard was not found in the feudal Japan but in the present time.

Kikyo wanted Naraku to become a full-demon because only then, she felt, could he be destroyed by her methods.

Was that the key: to let Naraku become powerful?

And he was powerful. He ruled at the top of a tower that soared so high into the sky he fancied himself to be a god. Yet he was so grotesque and mutated he hid himself away. He could not escape that office! At his most powerful it was as if he were at his most vulnerable.

“Keh!” What, then, did he rule?

Onigumo made a deal with the devil. He wished to rule the world and it was granted. He ruled but only from his cell and he cannot, ever, venture out into the sun and enjoy it. He was a spider trapped by its own web.

Kagome approached Hojo. The boy reacted awkwardly to the girl. But they chatted about her illnesses, homework and tests. Soon a bell rang - lunchtime was over - and the students hurried back into the high school.

A desolate feel clung to the atmosphere as Inuyasha found himself alone. The park, the whole, entire area, was deserted and quiet. The skies were gray, cloudy. The sun, in its autumnal habit, was past its peak and sinking, falling.

From his pocket to his hand he secured the cell phone. He dialed the number of an old, trusted rival. Although neither Inuyasha nor Koga could be near Kagome, for Naraku knew their scents, the wolf would have to be told. And he needed that lupine help to enact a plan of his own. And he would have to call Shippo, too, to make the final arrangement.

“Captain Takeshi and his detectives will be getting what's coming to them.”

The spider was not the only demon who knew how to plot and scheme; the trick would be to get the police to see things his way.

He did not trust the police to keep Kagome safe - he did not give that job to any body - be she would be safer if the killer were out of the way. He would tell them what they needed to know about the true nature of the murders and the killer. But that would not be easy. And he had to be careful who he chose to tell the truth to. It would have to be someone who could be trusted.