InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Punishment ❯ Chapter 10: Souta's Story ( Chapter 10 )

Chapter 10: Souta's Story

 

 

The metal hoe dug easily into the soft earth, turning the dirt and readying the field for the spring crop. Souta wiped his sleeve across his brow and looked up at the clear sky.

 

`This is going to be a good year,' Souta thought.

 

The spring thaw had come early and allowed the farmers to get an early start at planting. Souta eagerly helped, applying his five hundred years of knowledge over the farmers. The village's output would almost double in one year because of the changes he had implemented.

 

But Kagome had taken no notice.

 

Souta showed the villagers how to make their houses stronger, and how to use materials more effectively. He did more than his share when it came to work. And he always took less than his ration of food, instead giving it away to the invalid's of the village.

 

But still Kagome had taken no notice.

 

Souta dropped the hoe and watched a solitary figure walk toward him. The man approached Souta from the direction of Kagome's hut. Souta frowned and began to work again, with a doubled effort. He knew this man and what he wanted.

 

Miroku as of late had taken to talking with Souta at odd moments. His attempts at discussion were more often than not thwarted by Souta's indifference.

 

“Souta, I have been looking for you. Is it not late to be working in the fields?” Miroku asked.

 

“This field has to get done before spring.” Souta said passively.

 

“But you are the only one working, why not wait until tomorrow when the other farmers can help you?”

 

“Tomorrow we will start on the other side of the village, If I get this done tonight, we wont waste time traveling from this field to that one.”

 

Miroku couldn't argue with this logic, “But surely you could ask someone to help you?”

 

“No, the others have families they have to go home to,” Souta didn't take his eyes off the brown earth.

 

“You still have a family Souta.”

 

“No…I don't…”

 

Miroku was concerned by his dispassionate attitude, “Kagome still loves you Souta, and Sango and I will always be here for you, and Inuyasha…I'm sure he cares for you as well.” Miroku hesitated at the mention of the hanyou, Inuyasha had acted pointedly callous towards Souta ever since they had come out of the well that last time.

 

“This really has to get done, Miroku.” Souta continued his work in the opposite direction from Miroku.

 

“Souta, I…”

 

“Just leave Miroku, I really need to do this for tomorrow.” Miroku walked away reluctantly.

 

During the past few days Souta had been extremely thoughtful. He had thought about his mother a great deal, and was constantly worrying about her. His tormented anxiety about her worried Miroku.

 

For some reason he was extremely silent about Kagome during all this time.

 

Little known to almost all he had been ill for a short time. But it was not the struggles of a peasants life, nor the heavy work, nor the food, nor his ragged clothing and unruly hair that had broken him: what did all that hardship and suffering matter to him?

 

He was even glad of the hard work; physical exhaustion at least brought him a few hours of peaceful sleep. His clothes were warm and appropriate to his way of life. Was he to be ashamed of his ragged clothing and mussed hair? But before whom? Before Kagome? Kagome feared him, and was he to feel ashamed before her?

 

What was it than? He did, in fact, feel ashamed before Kagome, who he tortured because of this by his rough and contemptuous manner. But he was not ashamed of his hair or clothing; his pride was deeply wounded, and it was this wound to his pride that made him fall ill.

 

How happy he would have been if he could have put the blame on himself! Than he could have borne anything, even shame and infamy. But although he judged himself severely, his lively conscious could find no particularly terrible guilt in his past, except a simple blunder that might have happened to anybody.

 

He was ashamed precisely because he, Souta, had perished so blindly and hopelessly, with such dumb stupidity, by some decree of blind fate, and must humble himself and submit to the absurdity of that decree, if he wished to find any degree of peace.

 

An objectless and undirected anxiety in the present and endless sacrifice, by which nothing would be gained in the future was all the world held for him.

 

If only fate had granted him remorse, scalding remorse, harrowing the heart and driving sleep away, such remorse has tortured men into dreaming of death! Oh, he would have welcomed it gladly!

 

Tears and suffering- they, after all, are also life. But he did not feel remorse for his crime. He might at least have raged at his own stupidity, as before he had raged at the monstrous and infinitely stupid actions that had brought him to this state.

 

But now that he was in an objective state, he had reconsidered and reweighed all his former actions, and found it completely impossible to think them as stupid and monstrous as they had seemed to him before, at that fatal time.

 

Another thought added to his suffering, why had he not killed himself? Why, when he stood on the bank of that river, had he chosen to live his life in servitude? Was there really such strength in the will to live, and was it so difficult to overcome it?

 

He tortured himself with these questions, unable to realize that perhaps even while he stood by the river he already felt in his heart that there was something profoundly wrong in his life. He did not understand that that feeling might have been the herald of a coming crisis in his life, of his coming resurrection, of a future new outlook on life.

 

He preferred to see in all this only the dull bondage of his situation, which he could not shake off and which he still was not strong enough to break. He looked at his fellow workers and marveled: how all of them also loved life and cherished it! It seemed to him that it was more loved and prized, more highly valued, in a peasant's life than in the rich mans.

 

What terrible hardships and sufferings some of them had borne. How could one ray of sunlight mean so much to them, or the virgin forest, or a cool spring in some remote and hidden solitude seen once years before, that a man dreams of and longs for like a lovers meeting, with the green grass all round it and a bird singing in the bushes?

 

`This is the beginning of my story,' Souta thought, `the story of the gradual renewal of a man, of his gradual regeneration, of his slow progress from one world to another, of how he learned of an undreamed of reality.'

 

 

 

 

A/N

I know this one is short, but I haven't had a lot of time to work on it.

I thought it would be interesting to show a little bit about Souta, since I have been kind of ignoring him.

Perhaps I give Souta a bit too much intellect, and in this way many of the characters are pointedly out of character.

But I just calls `em as I sees `em.

Later.