InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Loyal Servant ❯ TLS ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

“The Loyal Servant” by Abraxas (2005-11-10)

Chapter One

He did not know the name of the village and to be honest it did not matter. There had been many before, there would be many after. Even the locale was like any other, except for the mountainside view. That stuck out in his mind. Deep within his memory there were fragments of a past life that refused to die and tried to suggest, through subtle, subconscious ways, that a curious familiarity clung about the scene. And along with that hypnotic lure the face – that face – emerged into view and he wondered if there would be a connection and if he might, just might, meet the face again.

“No,” he sighed into his hands.

He prayed that day never to come because he knew it would be the end, the world could not survive another encounter with the face. She was so beautiful, kind and gentle. He knew what would be required of him. He knew, too, he did not have the heart to do it.

So be it. He did not want a woman – a nurturer – it was bound to take too long to do the work and that was time he did not have. He did want a man – a protector – among other things it would be pleasing to surpass that challenge.

Under the cover of sunset, for it was a sweltering, summer evening, he reached the side of the river undetected. He looked back into a void amid the forest’s gloom along the mountain’s face that resembled a cavern. Although it was late, it was early for the bats to be awake and alert – yet the sounds of their high-pitched, ear-splitting shrieking could be heard echoing within out of the orifice.

Then in an instant the bat’s cries were silenced as if they had all but one neck and it were cut-off.

He turned back, retreating into the stream, into the visage of its silver, glassy cascades. He splashed his face with the fresh, cool water to wipe away the dirt that days of trekking through the wilderness caked onto his features. He brushed his clothes, ripped and torn by years of abuse; he loosened its fabrics, clean in form though in substance beyond salvation.

From across the distance – from out of that space, the shadow, the darkness, that cavern – he felt the pressure of the eyes pressing into flesh like sharp, long fangs.

Those eyes.

Ravenous.

And with that, at that moment, at that instant, he started the work that would be perfect, flawless.

Deep into the river he tread until he could not feel support under foot any longer. There, at the midpoint of the stream, just like a leaf upon the water he let go to be taken away by the current. At first it was a curious sensation, a welcoming, relaxing release. Then the instinct to survive resurfaced – he struggled as he slipped past large rocks and craggy boulders. He fought violently, loudly as he rounded one bend after the next as the flow wound into the valley. He shouted at last as he came within earshot of the children.

The children – they would be integral to the business – once he had seen them from afar: the sun was sinking but it was not fully extinguished and in the twilight he watched them play, chasing and catching fireflies. Now, as they heard his garbled, frantic shouting, they raced toward the reedy banks, getting as close as knee-deep into the river, getting no further as older, abler women held them back and called the men.

A small group of townsfolk rushed into the scene, alerted by his and the children’s ruckus. He saw a woman holding a lamplight, a couple of men with swords and a figure riding a horse clad in the typical samurai dress. A rope was thrown into the water aimed at his direction – he reached it but its length slipped through his fingers. And as he was about to pass the critical point, could it be that he was in true and mortal danger?

Impossible, he could not allow himself to fail and already a backup plan was forming: it was not as ambitious but it was not as certain of failure as the original.

Then – just as the light was seeping out of the day – he caught a glimpse of a man, a tall, sword-clad man, rushing into the river, stripping out of his clothes and diving into the stream.

All the while he was sinking, exhausted and beaten. The ride through the river pummeled his body and numbed his mind. For a while the world was just a series of disconnected impressions. He felt arms, tight, strong arms. He felt movement against the stream. He felt safe as the light of the lamp shone into his eyes larger and brighter by the moment. Until, at length, he did not feel water but dirt and air.

He was brought to the reedy banks, rescued, his clothes torn and soaked, telling the tale of the would-be horror of this near-death.

Of course, he was not recognized to be a villager.

The children were curious, but as soon as the novelty was lifted and the night was fallen they fled for their homes. There was one youngster who took his time leaving – maybe he was more curious than the rest, maybe he did not have family – whatever the cause, the adults seemed to be paying him little mind. The woman with the torchlight was attentive, but when the evening drew to a close she left, too, as her home and her family beckoned. Yet the boy was wandering, looking back at him. The men took note of the incident, talked among themselves about matters here and there and returned to their work, their jobs. All of the men left, but for the one who saved him. Still the boy lurked staring through the bushes, analyzing the events.

Struggling to remain as conscious as possible, the victim reached for the rescuer and grabbed him – his wrist, his arm – with all of his vigor. He tried to look into the man’s eyes. Wide, black eyes. He tried to speak. But with his strength deserting, his hold waning, he fell back spent and exhausted.



Chapter Two

He awoke to a flood of bright, blinding twilight and was met by a strong hand gripping his arm and a warm voice asking: “So, you have a name, don’t you? Huh?”

It was the manner of a young man, he was certain of it. But who was it? Where was it?

“Kohaku,” he replied meekly as he rubbed his eyelids. His early-morning vision was maladjusted and he could not see well-enough within the bedroom – or wherever it was.

The mysterious figure, who remained felt but unseen, introduced himself: “I am Koji. Kohaku, hmmm, it’s nice to be alive, isn’t it? Just what were you up to last night, swimming in the river, huh?”

The young man’s friendly, almost happy tone lulled Kohaku into a smile. But it was not just that off-putting, non-threatening attitude that soothed him. Pleased him. There were possibilities latent beneath that tenderness and care. And he could work with it.

At last his notions of failure proved to be premature. It was perfect, as perfect as he conceived it when first he lay eyes upon the village. No, it would be better, even, than he expected.

To be sure, he was ambitious and failure was possible but he was certain he could do it. It was bound to require a little more time than usual yet it would be worth the effort. Not only for the satisfaction of completing the challenge but for the satisfaction of bringing satisfaction. Of being completely and utterly helpful. The one and only loyal servant, indispensable.

Venturing to complete the task, he would be crossing a wide, mental threshold. Going in he was merely a boy; coming out he would be a man, stronger and bolder. Proven. Initiated. In a way it would be like loosing virginity, albeit a virginity of a different flavor.

“A man, it was a man and he tried to rob me,” Kohaku uttered weak, broken syllables. “Kill me. I fled – I ran into the stream – I – ”

“A man?” Koji emerged into view, shifting the hand away from the boy’s arm to his very own chin as if in thought.

Kohaku saw that his impression was correct: Koji was a young man, twenty years perhaps as opposed to his fifteen years and he was beautiful. Totally hairless, clean-shaven even into the eyebrows. He stared far away with deep, onyx eyes whose simple glance had the power to shatter his soul. He spoke coolly with such a silky voice that its every utterance calmed his nerves.

It calmed him too much, perhaps, and that could be dangerous.

In the years he spent wandering through the wilderness he learned various methods to survive. Some he discovered by watching – he excelled as an observer. Some he knew instinctively – as if he had been born with the experience. Like the face, that face, that he knew so well though he did not know it at all.

“He had long, black hair. And he was dressed in black – at least I think it was black.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t remember. I just don’t remember. He came upon me like a thief in the night. But you saved me?”

Koji nodded. Kohaku smiled again weakly.

In the natural order of things, first were the children. It was their eagerness to be helpful, to be curious that alone made them easy. So easy, in fact, that the methods were refined to be almost mechanical and effortless. And he grew bored. Then were the women. Especially the young, childless women, if he appealed to them, to their emotions of nurturing and love. But lately, as the face of that woman kept creeping into his mind’s eye, he did not feel right with himself going for the women. He knew better, of course, than to be thinking such thoughts nevertheless he did and it bothered him that he did. Last were the men. They were difficult, different – unreachable? – busy with their lives and with their responsibilities. Men did not have the time and patience for the play required –

Unless, if he were to attract a man.

That would be different, that would be the ultimate achievement.

“I must be a mess,” he said, coyly looking at him, at his lips, at his eyes, and just as quickly looking away. “I’m sorry to be such trouble to you, Koji.”

“No, no. You’re not anything of the sort.” There was a profound sincerity attached to the words, as if he really did enjoy the company. And now it was he who held onto Kohaku’s wrist. The boy smiled, acknowledging the touch. “You were a mess but that’s alright. You weren’t smashed into the rocks the way everything floating in the river smashes into them. Are you feeling better?”

Koji’s hand shook as though it wanted to go from Kohaku’s wrist to his face, but, the raven-haired youth squeezed it with his own, free hand and let the touch linger.

To attract a man.

For that reason he took more than excellent care of his appearance. Keeping his locks long, like a boy’s. Keeping his face well-groomed – spotless, hairless – and his skin pallid like a woman’s. Around people his manners, although not overtly feminine, were suggestive enough to catch the eye of the willing, sympathetic men. The method was successful but did not satisfy for it seemed to be attracting only the older, ancient men and he knew that would not be appreciated. Youth, vigor and life, was needed. And so, until that village, he honed the skill in the temples along the way where he was certain to find young men, starved men, eager for any attention and willing to follow him any where for a promise of pleasure.

“I think I feel better.” But why did he let his hand, his fingers remain so close to the man’s hand? “I struggled.” And why did he long to see those eyes, feel those eyes looking at him? “I’m tired but all right.” It was that voice, wasn’t it? he thought. You must be stronger, Kohaku! “What about you? Are you all right, Koji?”

Mistake! Mistake upon mistake. By the gods, it was one thing to be haunted by a face, it was another altogether to be naming that face, knowing that face. Hearing that face.

He took his hand away from Koji’s and brought it over to the nape of his neck where he reached a tiny, pinprick scar invisible to everything but his touch. You must be stronger, Kohaku, he told himself again and again.

“Oh, I’m all right, Kohaku.”

The man sat next to the boy closer and closer along the floor mat. It was not a threatening, hostile gesture; rather, suddenly, Kohaku felt safe and at ease near Koji. It was a sense of trust he thought would be impossible to feel with anyone but –

He sighed, sitting up – trying, anyway –

Despite his youthful looks and appearance, in time he would be a man and in that world of man he would be cut-off forever from the company of women and children. And he would be a man already burdened with a responsibility humanity would not ever tolerate. If he were to continue and become what he wanted to become, he would have to endure the initiation. He would have to learn to compartmentalize the pain and difficulty of the process.

“Here,” Koji got behind him and held him in a semi-embrace.

It was not erotic but it was intimate – enough to get Kohaku’s blood pumping with excitement – and, one way or another, he knew he would be finished with his work sooner rather than later.

“Thank you, thank you for everything.” Snuggling his cheek against the young man’s shoulder, Kohaku whispered: “You’re not like that thug; you’re a very kind and gentle man.”

Koji tightened his hold a little and let go a little. He wanted to speak but held back. And then, after a few, endless moments, he asked: “So, what’s your story, anyway, Kohaku, huh?”

Calmer, but with more energy than before, he related a tale. He was stopped along the eastern road. He was assaulted by a ruffian. Weak and untrained, he fled through the darkening shadows of evening into the stream.

“I didn’t think the current would be that strong. But I saw the village and I thought I might escape.” He patted his chest, scar-less and naked, it was the first time he noticed he was not wearing clothes. Of course, they had been soaked and though in the bedroom he saw – with the aid of silhouettes wafting through windows – that his kimono was tented along a clothesline outside to be dried by the sun and the air. “I’m a mess and a fool.”

Koji held onto the boy tighter and that time he did not fully relax the embrace.

“I don’t think you are a mess. Or a fool.”

Kohaku grasped the young man’s arms and squeezed them playfully.

No! Resist, Kohaku!

“You’re very lucky, Kohaku.”

He did not say anything but in his mind he agreed.

But you are a mess and a fool, Kohaku! Fight it!

“My seal,” he interjected, as if the recollection only then resurfaced. “It’s the key to my identity. If I can find the box with my seal, if I can find it – did you see it?”

“No boxed, no seals. You did have a dagger.” Koji ruffled the boy’s locks. “I’ll tell the men to be watchful. Now, relax, get better. There’ll be time to search for things later. You’re too weak at this moment and it’s time for breakfast.”

Kohaku smiled at the man. He was so playful, so friendly and caring. It was impossible not to be affected. He would be forced to summon all of his inner-strength to complete the task. And he was beginning to see it would not be as easy as he hoped.



Chapter Three

Redressed in his lightly-wet kimono, he and Koji ate by the house’s backdoor which was open wide into views of the river’s reedy banks. Sipping sake and chatting together, he learned that the man was from a wealthy samurai family. From the start of his life, from the very moment of his birth, he had been trained to be a warrior, steadfast and loyal to his sovereign and to his emperor. And though he was young, he was experienced: after many battles throughout the countryside, he had survived while nearly all of his older and abler brothers had died. His parents had died, too, even his sisters were gone: when they were old enough they had been married off to other, allied clans.

And so, for the last few years Koji had been living alone.

Learning the man’s history, on the spot Kohaku invented a story entirely of his own design. That his family hailed from an obscure, mountainside village. That his world, when he was much, much younger, had been overrun by rebellious armies. Most of his family had been killed, what remained had been scattered. At the end, the only relation he was certain survived and lived to the present was a sister who might or might not be married. He had been traveling along the roadway, heading into the neighboring province to be reunited.

And he needed the seal, it was the last and final remnant of his identity.

At length Kohaku sighed – he needed to find someone anyone –

“I don’t like to be alone,” the boy added, coyly looking up at Koji – looking and now, this time, not looking away. “I – I –”

“Yes, huh? What is it, Kohaku?” Koji asked in that velvet, silky voice that like all beautiful sounds hinted of indescribable sadness and longing.

Kohaku turned his eyes toward the stream, toward the distance where only the briefest suggestion of a cave could be discerned through the forestry.

“What’s the matter? Huh? I understand, no one likes to be alone, you know.”

“You’ve saved my life. You’ve been, like no other man, I’ve met.” He shut his eyes, bowed his head and after a pause continued: “All of my life, the men I’ve met didn’t treat me, well, I give the appearance of weakness, don’t it? Femininity. Like I could be taken advantage of. But you’re so nice.” Again the pause and the shimmering of welling tears. “I shouldn’t be saying things like this to a samurai, I could be killed.”

The young man laughed, patting his kimono that though he stripped last night was still more than a bit moist. “Would I take your life so soon after saving it?”

After eternal, endless moments in which his eyes did not leave the distance, he confessed: “You’re very beautiful, Koji.” Koji blushed but Kohaku could not see it. “I didn’t mean any disrespect, I –” but with an embrace from the side he was silenced.

“You are, too, Kohaku.” Koji stroked Kohaku’s locks, letting his hand, his fingers, fall onto and squeeze into the boy’s shoulder. “I pity the men who’ve treated you so badly, that they’ll never see what a good, decent person you are.”

Now Kohaku blushed. He broke away from the far, distant visage and from the eyes, those eyes, that pierced even into his soul. He looked squarely at the samurai Koji.

“May I? Steal just a kiss –” and with a smile he leaned into the young man and kissed his cheek. He whimpered suddenly overwhelmed by a pleasure he did not think possible to feel from any other man. Against the warrior’s ready and hardened shoulder he snuggled unexpectedly exhausted as if from orgasm. “You’re more than beautiful.”

Koji’s eyes, too, welled as he stole a kiss from the youth’s ear through his wild, unfettered hair. And he hugged, tight and close, drawing the boy into the warmth of his body.

“Maybe, I think, maybe I was lucky, too, Kohaku.”


***********

The pre-afternoon hours were spent walking about the village. Koji, adorned with his swords, pleasantly – informally – conducted the tour. Kohaku, secretly-armed with his dagger – paid as much attention as he could to what his guide was saying: his short-term memory served him well enough that day.

It was a small, impoverished town, as most of the towns were, but it was vivid with life and activity. And all along the way, from the river to the outskirts, Kohaku noticed the children. The children, it seemed, everyone ignored. He asked who they were and who took care of them. He was answered thus: that most of the younglings had been orphaned by the wars and that the women tried to look after them. Tried, for with all of the chaos, there was only so much that could be done. A few of the children, too, were so traumatized by being alone that they kept to themselves away from adults, away from other children.

Indeed, there was one, rouge and friendless, who appeared to be following them, watching them – the boy noticed but did not speak of it to the man.

Koji was beautiful and for the first time in a long time Kohaku felt a mighty, heavy guilt. There was a terror and horror. There was a taste of something fundamentally wrong with the business in which he was engaged. Something like a sense of right and wrong – a conscience – something, suppressed and long-denied, like the memory of the face that refused to die and fade way. Could it be that it was evil? But how could it be evil? It was an act of pure devoted love!

Yet, as he kissed those lips, those eyes – within the darkness between the huts where human sight did not penetrate – he trembled for he could not stand the thought. As he held those hands, so soft, so gentle and alive with warmth – across the shadowy gulfs of time when they seemed to be alone inside the world – he shivered for he could not bear the idea.

The things that would be, done, to – to – to that man.

Were Koji just another man, just another face without a voice, without a name, Kohaku would not have been so conflicted. Spending all of that time with him, though, the anticipation of the moment, the inevitability of the moment, became evermore present and unbearably anxious.

It was too late, what could be done? His soul, his life, was it not the price to pay for his loyalty? He volunteered for the job he was duty-bound to complete.

And the eyes – there was no corner of this world into which those eyes could not see!

Kohaku would have to act and act soon.


***********

Kohaku and Koji returned to the house and to the stream by the house. Sitting amid the shadows cast by shrubs and overgrowth, they threw stones into the water while last-night’s children played within the current. Even the lonely, drifty boy joined the pack, catching and releasing the silvery fish that swam too close to the reedy banks.

“Would you be my samurai?” Kohaku asked almost through whisper, as if he wished the man would be unable to hear. “Protect me, Koji?”

“Huh?” Koji smiled looking back.

The boy noticed that through the man’s masculine face there were traces of a very subtle, feminine appearance.

“I mean, if you came along with me, who would know? Who would care?”

Koji smiled and paused. Kohaku turned away from him, from the children and to the distance where memories of the past night and thoughts of the impending doom swirled like a miasma. His heart was heavy and he reminded himself, again and again, to be strong. That he had to be strong. That he could be strong.

And was he not strong? – when the shard was taken out of his neck it was the strength of his will that saved him, it was the power of his love that preserved him.

He was perfect, flawless and he would not fail; he could tear away his heart yet he could not fail.

“It isn’t very far, where I have to go,” Kohaku explained. “If you come with me, I would be safe. And if you come with me, I return with you, to be yours. After you saved me, it would make sense that I would be your loyal servant. Who would ever guess? Who would ever suspect?”

“Your mind is ripe with schemes and plots, huh, like a woman’s mind. Wonder,” Koji teased, playfully tickling Kohaku, who tried and failed to stifle laughter, “sure you’re not a woman?” The young man reached into the kimono between the boy’s legs – Kohaku pressed Koji’s hand against his genitals, intensifying their skin-to-skin contact. He squeezed the youth’s flesh, feeling his tightening sack, stroking his growing erection. He gasped, growing firm and aroused, too, succumbing to the excitement overwhelming to his senses.

They kissed; they hugged falling into each other’s bodies as discretely as they could beneath the cover the foliage afforded.

Quickly, they recomposed themselves as the playing of the children became louder and more feverish.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” the boy confessed within his mind.

While Koji pondered, Kohaku stood. With his eyes he followed the path of the river from the house to the cave and to the eyes. To those eyes that stabbed into him with a force he was not only powerless to resist but unwilling to defy.

He was resigned to the eyes and to the destiny they beckoned – and he was running out of time.

So, while the samurai watched and thought, the would-be servant approached the children. He talked to them, asking them what sort of games they liked to play. And he helped them as they molested the fish unlucky enough to draw near into their hands.

There was a side of Kohaku that pointed to earlier days of happiness, when he was full of the vigor and life of a child, with untainted and pure love and sometimes, every now and then, that side resurfaced.

“And what about you?” he asked of the child, the one who kept distance. “I know. It’s nice to be alone and away from people.” He whispered: “Especially from adults. Adults don’t ever, really, understand, do they?”

The youngling seemed to smile.

Yes, the methods did not fail.



Chapter Four

The evening Kohaku cooked dinner.

“I thought about what you said – and we can do it. All I have to do is talk to the men of the company,” Koji explained, tweezing his chopsticks between his fingers.

Amid the sepia lamplight, the wooden tools resembled the steel blade of Kohaku’s weapon – he blinked as he served the food trying, begging, to get the image out of his mind.

Feeding himself with the earthy implements, the man added: “And, you know, I promised myself I’d marry anyone who cooks like this. You really do have a way with food, don’t you?”

The boy laughed, kissing the young samurai warrior and then drew back. He was tearing seeing his lover alive: young and with the whole, entire world ahead. A world that would be denied to both of them forever.

It never occurred to Kohaku just how utterly unfair the task ultimately proved.

“What is it, Kohaku?” Koji asked with a tone that betrayed true and genuine affection.

“I,” he stammered, wiping away tears that threatened to reveal more, much more than what mere words unfolded. “I can’t remember ever feeling this happy.”

There was the Kohaku he was and the Kohaku he wanted to be. Until that moment, that instant, he did not know a difference between the two. He knew what he was and for as far as he remembered he was content, willing and able, to do his duty. He prided himself in his work and in the satisfaction felt by a job well done. And he had so much to be proud of! Where others, wiser and older than he failed, the boy remained steadfast and happy – no, eager! – to be of loyal service. He outlasted them, his rivals, the strong and the powerful, by his wits and by his love. His love. Love that protected him from what mankind would be shocked and destroyed by: things seen and done, inhuman and demonic.

It was the sort of unconditional, blind, love only a child was capable of.

He believed the situation would be that way, always: it did not change and he did not change. Indeed, why would anything, anywhere be different? He wanted to be what he was and there was no alternative – until now –

Resist, fight, Kohaku – you know you know better!

But – though he could resist, he could not win against the flow of time – change could be inevitable. And the purpose behind the exercise, the secret, hidden agenda known only to him, was it not to initiate himself fully into the world of men? Yes, leaving behind the realm of children, the love would be altered; it would be shifted in subtle yet profound ways.

What he was, what he wanted to be, could the two exist intertwined?

There’s only room for one destiny, Kohaku!

What changed? What was it, what could it be that was different this time?

The face did not upset him, after all, it was just an image, a dream.

The man, Koji, was different. He could feel him, touch him – love him and be loved back. Be loved back! Suddenly, thoughts of initiation and he trembled and shivered out of the fear of it.

The cruelty, to be teased by a fragment of heaven amidst a torrent of hell.

He cried, not because he was happy – no, no – because he realized what he found in Koji’s hands, what he discovered in his voice, what he felt in his eyes, it was something he could not have. He wondered if it were not so because it was something he did not deserve to have. It was a guilt, whose source he could not fathom, that clung onto his already heavy, burdened heat. And at the end he thought, as he felt again the shard-shaped scar, if it would not have been easier to have been conquered by true and final death.

“I love you,” the young man whispered, intoxicated by the bluntness of the words, as the skies succumbed to deeper and darker red hues.

Kohaku smiled, blushed, as he helped the man lay back upon the mat.

“My samurai, I love you isn’t enough. It just isn’t enough. It doesn’t describe how much I love you; it doesn’t express how much my love for you hurts me. You are such a good, kind man –”

And I cannot do this to you, he continued on in his mind.

“Let me do this for you, Koji –”

The youthful stranger untied Koji’s obi and opened his kimono. Already he was met by an erection throbbing and aching to be touched. Kneeling between his lover’s legs, he hovered above the sight of it – the hairless, dark and vulnerable, flesh – and cradled the parts fully within his hands. He massaged the balls, cupping and bouncing them, as the flesh of their sack tightened and roughened. He kissed the cock’s length, up its front, over its soft, puffy tip, down its back. He suckled its head, pulsing and hot within his lips, as he teased its foreskin with tongue.

Koji gasped and begged but the boy kept on going with his slow, methodic pace, tasting and savoring every part of his lover’s most sensitive, most intimate skin. He wanted the flavor of it to be seared into his memory. And he studied, with the patient, keen eyes of a predator, its shape and form, taking note of its colors, its textures and all of the tiny, little details glistening, as they were, with his saliva. He wanted to recall everything, every sense of him, felt that night forever, eternally.

He said, aloud, what a gorgeous thing it was: how warm, how alive.

Again Kohaku eased the young man’s cock into his mouth, onto his lips. He suckled while his fingers curled about its foreskin, his hands stroked its sheath back and forth, up and down. Tightening his grip and increasing his speed, he worked at its reddish, exposed head as if he were devouring it – and Kohaku enjoyed how it caused Koji’s involuntary, exaggerated passions to intensify.

Koji held onto the man’s shoulders as the pleasure coursing through his body surged and heightened, as he shook and shivered. He gasped, tearing and grunting, the carnal urge to climax becoming harder and harder to resist. Suddenly, he bucked and held his body very, tightly still. Suddenly, it seemed, the world, too, was still.

The boy took Koji out of his mouth. He stroked the underside of the cock’s head about its eye-like slit and he watched, satisfied and absorbed, as the slight touch impelled his lover to erupt his seed into the air, onto his own tight and clenched stomach. Wincing, fragments of sounds akin to pain echoed from the man’s lips to Kohaku’s ears as he kissed the shaft, feeling as it was pulsating with every squirt and squirm. And when the ultimate display of masculinity was complete, the flesh spent and soft, he kissed the balls in their sack, it skin now relaxed and loose. He snuggled against the cock, brushing it against his cheeks, feeling its contradiction of silky smoothness and rough hardness. Then, with a lingering, gentle caress, the boy cleaned up Koji and gave him a deep, long kiss that just did not seem to want to end.

Exhausted by the orgasm and the love of Kohaku – a profound, bottomless love – Koji fell into a sleepy, groggy state. The younger, feminine lover encouraged it, whispering sweet words and tucking the older, masculine warrior into the mat. He kissed all over his sweaty, clean-shaven head and bid him goodnight.

It was Kohaku’s wish that Koji remain like that, perfect and flawless, in his mind forever.

“Sleep well,” he struggled to utter the words. “Live, my samurai, live.”

And very silently, he stalked out of the house, into the lengthening, late evening.



Chapter Five

At the reedy banks of the river the homeless and abandoned children gathered as he knew they would. As they said they would. Again the youngsters played at catching: once fish, now fireflies. And just like earlier that day, Kohaku helped them. Delighted them.

What a simple thing to do, what a simple act –

There was that one boy, a very ragged and quiet child, who was not as boisterous as the others. It was he who Kohaku had seen that last night and had watched that last day. When the other younglings retreated into the village – as the day, too, retreated into the night – it was he who remained along with the stranger.

“Why do you look so sad?” the asked orphan, whose name faded out of memory.

The stranger smiled: “I – I’m sad for a lot of reasons, kid. I lost my seal.”

For the first time the boy-child laughed: “People don’t look that sad ‘cause they lost their seals, you know.”

“You’re a wise, young man,” he continued. “But without my seal I’ll never find my sister.”

“Your sister’s lost?” Kohaku nodded in reply to the boy’s question. “My brother’s lost, too. They say he’s gone now, he’ll never come back.”

As the moments passed he learned the truth of what he suspected. The boy did not have a home; in fact he kept to himself, shunning away from the company of children and adults. And the village, for its own part, had more-or-less given up on the child.

“I’ve been alone for a long time,” Kohaku said. He snatched a firefly out of the air and gave it to the boy. “But I’m not alone any more, am I?”

The child let the firefly flash within his palms and crawl about his fingers; he squirmed a little here and there as he felt its legs pry into the gaps between his knuckles.

“Would you help me?” Kohaku asked with a voice that was not a child’s not an adult’s any longer but a new and unheard-of mixture. “Help me get my seal back?”

The youngling nodded and at once followed the stranger into the stream.

“I know the seal was with me when I started my swim,” he said, playfully recalling what happened last night.

“You’re lucky, you know, I’m good at swimming.”

“Really?” He chuckled. “I think I am lucky. And there’s still daylight, too. Here,” he lured, “let’s go in, let’s go in, deeper – and even if we don’t find anything it’ll be fun.”

Kohaku took off his overcoat and lay it atop a rock. The boy, who was wearing very little as it was, took off his kimono and, stark naked, wadded into the river.

The operation was cold in precision but not heartless in emotion. Such as it was, once he had been called a ninja – and he wondered if in his former, forgotten, life he had not been so for he was more than a little adept at the art – yet he was not a machine. There was a soul and a mind there; it was love and it was not wrong. Though to an outsider unfamiliar with the practice the task would have resembled evil.

Always there were methods. Tools, habits like those of predators and he grew to be intimately familiar with them. Adults with jobs would be missed. Children, divorced from society at a time of war and poverty, unwanted and orphaned, who would notice? Who would care?

Men would be too logical to be played. Women might be lured by sentimentality but they could be uncomfortable venturing far from their village. But children, with their intrinsic youth and vitality, lonely children, shown even a sliver of compassion, whose aim, really, was to please and be loved, they were the ideal targets.

It would be like a game.

Thusly, the boy swam wherever Kohaku said he thought he saw the seal’s metal box beneath the stream’s silvery surface. Across the current, back and forth, past its reedy banks. Further up stream. Past boulders lining curving paths. Again, further up stream, closer and closer to the mountainside. The orphan, as if leashed by words alone, followed him without question, obediently. He had so much energy and so much desire to be helpful that he became reckless enough not to fathom the danger of being led so far from the village and the relative safety it afforded.

The youngster proved to be as good a swimmer as he boasted – but Kohaku was better.

From behind, though, the boy could not see that but it did not matter for the playful, gentle prodding kept him busy working against the river as the two, together, swam further and further toward the cavern’s entrance.

And then, when Kohaku felt they were far enough away from mortal eyes –

The child resurfaced by Kohaku. Kohaku stared at the child.

The stranger treaded over the deepest, darkest parts of the water and reached into his kimono. He unsheathed his thin, long dagger and aimed it at the boy’s throat. Right then and there, he sank the weapon into the flesh. With a move as fast as lightning, he flung it through the neck all but severing the head and silencing the cry the youngling uttered, singular and poignant.


***********

Kohaku submerged the body and cleaned it. Then he emerged, going from the river to the dry, arid forest, carrying the sacrifice across his shoulders. He reached the entrance of the cave and paused: it was a hell-like and foreboding passage. But the eyes, those ravenous and hungry eyes, they called and he answered entering into the void, unafraid, proud.

“I took longer than I expected, Naraku. I am sorry,” he apologized, bowing his head and presenting his catch – the food – on the ground, by his feet.

An eerie, blue luminance, whose source was not part of this world, cast the interior of the cavern in a glow alien yet familiar to Kohaku. All around, in the nooks and in the alcoves were scattered the bodies of bats, shriveled like dried fruit, dead and bloodless. At the middle of the chamber was a mass of pulsating flesh, a tangle of flailing tentacles and a human-like head and torso sitting amid the throbbing, aching web work like a spider. It was the visage of Naraku, weak and weary after their latest defeat in battle at the hands of their enemies.

The demon was hungry. Very hungry. And as the boy stood before the face, the eyes, those parts of the figure that retained the proportions of a man smiled.

While others would be horrified, there was not a fragment of terror betrayed by Kohaku. He stood awed. Elated. He preferred Naraku’s mutated form over his human form: it was the most intimate thing in the universe to be with him at that molting-time and it meant everything in the world for Kohaku that his master trusted him so much.

“I thought I might be able to lure a full-grown man for you, but that was not to be.” Again he bowed, knelt. “I failed, Naraku.”

“You are a good boy, Kohaku.” Naraku reached with his tentacles and brought the body closer to his eyes, to his lips. A long, forked tongue emerged out of his mouth, like a tentacle in and of itself, to taste and probe the sacrifice all over. “So young, so clean,” he said at last, drawing his tongue back into his body. “You are a good boy, my Kohaku.”

Kohaku beamed, delighted beyond the power of words to describe, for he understood Naraku approved and he loved to please his master!

“You are a strong and brave boy, my Kohaku. Fearless. One day, I know, you will not fail.”

The demonic head, with its massive tentacles, ambled yet closer to the body.

The boy unsheathed his blade – again – and this time fully removed the head and the limbs, those parts of the food he knew Naraku thought were too bony. He saved those members, though, he knew, too, that his master liked to chew on them while in human guise.

All the while the demon watched, fascinated, by Kohaku who worked at the meat without fear. Without guilt! As if there was, indeed, nothing wrong with what he was doing. Again he smiled and thought to himself how odd it was that of all his minions, even his ‘children’, only this boy, this human boy, would be his most loyal servant.

And such a gorgeous, beautiful servant.

Kohaku was unfazed by Naraku’s dining habit because he loved him and because it was perfectly, absolutely natural.

“You have a way with food,” the spider-like creature said, finishing the meal. “Do you ever long for companionship, Kohaku? Do you ever wonder what it must be like for others of your kind, of your age?”

Facing the visage that was transforming, compacting itself into the body of a man, Kohaku answered: “Whatever I was once, I am not now.” His eyes welled and a tentacle – no, a hand, a finger – wiped it away. “That human world. I do not belong to it. It could never, ever, love me, or care for me, or accept me the way you do, Naraku.”

“Yet,” the demon pressed, sensing the possibilities latent within the tears. “When you were out in that village, did you not taste it? Did you not see what it could have been like?”

“Yes, yes I did,” he confessed as if it were sin, ashamed. “But I saw, I knew, it was a dream. A fantasy. That was all. This, alone, is real.”

Kohaku smiled and leaned against the naked, cold, human body of Naraku, falling as it were into a sleep. He had tasted what could have been and it haunted him, his thoughts, his dreams.

Kohaku knew humankind judged everything Naraku was and did to be evil. But he could not and he would not. Naraku was his whole, entire world. Forever. Naraku was the shadow that wanted and loved him. The darkness that nurtured and comforted him. It defended him always and watched him like a guardian. Because, at the end, for Naraku too Kohaku was the universe.

And it asked little more than to be worshiped.

To a child, alone, weak and alone, he could not resist that love. A love that transcended good and evil, that saw beyond all wrongs and flaws. It was so strong, so powerful, it could not help but to be blind. Blind love, the sort that only a child understood.

Yet –

My samurai, he thought as Koji’s face and his deep, onyx eyes and his soothing, warm voice returned, to prick and sting his heart.

“My only purpose, my only mission, the reason I exist, is to love you, Naraku. You are my world, forever eternally, and I will always be your loyal servant.”


END