Chapter Text
Time goes on. It never matters what catastrophe could befall the world. The Earth could die, the Gods could smite the living, and even then, he was sure that some clock out there would keep ticking.
Time was him. That was the creature he was. He had nothing in his possession but days, hours, minutes, seconds. If the humans and animals met their end and the planet wilted, he was sure he would still be here, kneeling in front of the same altar, offering prayers that never reach the heavens.
He was praying for a body that had long turned into dust.
A creature like him still sleeps sometimes, still dreams, but his mind fails to produce any new imagery. When he closes his eyes, he’s always holding the same hand, looking at the same face, staring at him and feeling his lungs expand with relief. He realizes his death had been a figment of his imagination, that the lifeless body he saw was a delusion. His beloved is in front of him, he’s talking, he’s laughing, he’s waiting for a response–
Yoshiki wakes up.
He goes about his night. The monotonous day-to-day tasks give his life superficial structure. He could clean the windows on a given night—mop the floors. He could sit at the riverbank sketching on worn paper, and at the end of it, he could take a stroll. He would wander near the villages still populated and find offerings left at their borders.
Money, food, clothes, animal blood. They try their hardest to keep him from needing to cross over. He finds humor in it, because he hasn't been able to distinguish the taste of human blood for ages.
He collects what he needs and heads back. Buildings sit abandoned on either side of his vision through his walk. Voices still ring in his ears, whispers from neighbors who felt creeped out by his unblinking stare, appeared repulsed by his ill complexion and the cold veins under. They mumbled about a curse, being cursed, bringing a curse, bringing bad luck.
He didn't prefer the deafening silence any more than those hallucinations. When the wind imitates the voices of the long dead, he can relive mundane moments. His little sister crying to him, shaken by the cruel words the children of the village spout at her. His mother yelling, demanding his father act for their sake. Back then, he would listen as the arguments his parents exchanged steered in different directions, leaving the issue of origin so that they could vent about the frustrations they already held for one another.
When Yoshiki decided to take residence on his own, let his family breathe in normalcy and put their persecution to a rest, it had been a sound decision. A house on the outskirts sat abandoned with no claim of ownership, and so he cleared it out and settled down with what little belongings he owned. He could find his essentials at his door every day, and it would be the only contact he had with the village. Otherwise, his ties were cut. It was a sound decision.
But it didn't take long for someone to show up at his door. His beloved greeted him like it was just another day and asked if he could keep him company.
Hikaru had been everything to him.
He shuts the door to his house. The food is thrown in the backyard for any of the wandering cats to pick on. Vines have outgrown the fences, but he hasn’t had the will to work through them in a few years. Perhaps next year. His self-imposed rules dictate that he meet every new decade with a spotless home, and he still has five years before the deadline. He still has some faith about meeting it.
As he quenches his thirst, he tries to remember what blood used to taste like when it was warm. Did it have a different texture? Was the musk stronger or weaker? The color…didn’t it used to be red?
He needs little blood to live. Hikaru used to give it to him. Embarrassed, Yoshiki would latch onto his wrist, evoking a small cut with intention, drinking drop by drop, extending the moment for however long he could. When he would wipe his mouth and apologize, pretending to have gotten his fill, Hikaru would stroke his hair, smile warmly, and ask where he wanted to go that night.
His beloved had been crafty. He slipped under the village folk’s noses far more easily than he should have. They didn’t notice him disappearing at night, notice the bite marks of a bat. They didn't catch sight of them as they wandered around, splashed in the water, and caught the wonders of the forest.
No one knew, so Hikaru was safe. His beloved could take his hand, twirl it in a spin, and choreograph their steps in dance, then gracefully let go to return to his regular life. Hikaru had normalcy, and every three days, he got to have Hikaru, so he suppressed his selfishness. He was going to live and watch his beloved age, and he wasn’t going to let it bother him.
The old clock rings. It is soon to be dawn. He takes a basket carrying soap and a change of clothes. The river dividing the land has a delicate stream. The water is cold. The moon didn’t care to show itself that night, so his body submerges in ink. If he still had a reflection, it wouldn't show up that night. As he sits cleaning his hair, closing his eyes, and trying to replicate a delicate touch, a memory plays behind his eyelids.
Being in love with Hikaru used to be the most painful thing he experienced. With his humanity intact, he spent his days simmering in shame, loathing the heart that threatened to stop from the smallest gesture of kindness, the tamest peek of something hidden under fabric. One day, he ended up saying too much. He was under the influence. He couldn’t remember the exact words. What he had been sure of was that Hikaru’s face had changed. The emotion that characterized the look in his eyes—it was fear.
The world didn’t end the next morning like he expected it to. They tended to their duties, exchanged the usual chatter, and climbed the mountain slope as Hikaru dragged him to see the stars. The other had chosen to discard the words he spoke, to keep both their lives moving in that same state of normal. He didn’t resent his friend for that decision. Hikaru was wise. He was much better at preserving his precious things than Yoshiki ever was, so Yoshiki forgave the decision. He agreed with the intent and believed that the result served them both equally.
What he now doesn’t agree with was the other decision Hikaru made for them.
Yoshiki brings his head underwater. The soap leaves his body in thin white ribbons, floating up to the surface. He lets his face sink between his knees, his hand reaching his calves. Holding his stomach, he opened his throat and let water fill his lungs.
They were always warned about the forest, but Hikaru had an obsession with it. It had critters and crawled with bugs he had seen nowhere else, so Yoshiki couldn’t resist its pull either. One night as they ventured, it started raining. They trekked the abandoned paths and lost their sense of direction in the darkness. Thinking they were heading home, they stumbled on into the heart of the forest.
A lonely house sat in the middle of a clearing. The candlelight encouraged them to knock for help. The silhouette of a woman greeted them, tall and graceful. She pointed them in the direction they could walk to find home, but urged them to wait out the rain first. Lovestruck, Hikaru accepted her offer.
Entities that feed on blood roam the world just as freely as gods or spirits. The cursed, the malevolent, they were told as children that they smell fear. Once within their grounds, the weak of heart practically serve themselves up on a silver platter. He was the weak one, and his death could break his companion’s spirit—so that night, he was the one whisked from sleep. An arm wrapped around him, pulling him from a daze; its grip was stiff like steel.
He distinctly remembers the visceral sound of his flesh being pierced into. The tremor shaking the core of his being and the peaceful, shallow breaths of Hikaru's sleeping form next to him.
It didn’t matter how much he struggled, scratched, or tore into the woman’s arm as she held him in place. His attempt to bite the hand suppressing his voice was punished by claws sinking into his cheek. He could feel the nails against his teeth, pushing into his gums. The most unbearable part was his inability to scream with all his might and beg for it to stop.
The panic kept him gasping for air he couldn’t reach. It kept him insistently pulling away from the woman with every bit of strength he had. He learned the hard way that he shouldn’t try turning his neck with needle-like teeth pinning it in place. It worsened his injury. The blood rushed out faster. The pain was more than he could bear.
While his mind rushed to find a way to reduce it, he slowly realized that it was going to be the least painful if he stood still. He could do nothing, simply let it happen, and not suffer more than he has to. Warmth tickled down his back and his mouth tasted metal, but it would hurt less if he didn't struggle. When his hands started shaking and he blinked again and again to squeeze the tears out of his eyes, he also realized that he was giving up on surviving.
A few minutes, and his teeth chattered from the cold. His eyes were drying up, but his vision grew narrow. He felt nauseous. He couldn’t hear anything past the rapid, deteriorating, thumping of his heart. The world spun and he wanted to throw up. His fingers were rigid. He was so cold. It was freezing. His chest trembled along the rhythm of his soundless sobs.
Had he thought to do this from the beginning, perhaps the night could have played out differently, and everything that followed it. The closest object he could reach, he threw it at his friend. Yoshiki was hazy on the details afterward. His body hit the ground. There was clattering, thuds, distant yells, and a bloodcurdling scream that made colors swirl in his vision.
After everything came to a deafening silence, someone grabbed his shoulders. They were shaking him, yelling, demanding an answer. The shallow, labored gasps he could manage were not enough to satisfy this figure. Yoshiki tried to form a word. The only hope he had left was for his beloved, and it was that name that escaped his lips with his last remnants of strength.
The figure loosened its hold.
It let go, walked away. Yoshiki saw an axe rising up in the air, then the distant cracking of bones echoed in the room.
A moment later, someone opened his mouth. Something dripped down and slipped past his tongue.
“You’ll be okay, I promise. You’ll make it through! You’ll make it back with me.”
He choked on cold blood. The liquid burned his throat. He coughed and spit, but fingers pressed past his lips and forced him to swallow. Held above his head, dripping with crimson, was the woman’s dismembered hand.
“Put your trust in me this once! I’ve done wrong by you so many times, but just this once!”
He could hear the sound of his heart the whole time. Finally, it couldn’t bear the load. It gave a weak thump, a moment, followed by another beat, two moments, then another, three moments, and… nothing.
“I promise I'll take responsibility. You just have to stay! You don't have to do anything else!”
He could still see. Hikaru was staring down at him. For the first time in years, he saw wet, puffy eyes and tears running down flushed cheeks. The tremor in his beloved’s voice could have made his heart bleed along with every other wound he had.
“You don't...get to leave me.”
“You don't get to leave me like this!”
He opens his eyes. Above the water, the sky looks purple. He lifts his head, witnessing the first light of yet another day. He opens his mouth and coughs out the water that kept him from breathing. It hadn't mattered, because he only breathed out of habit.
Hikaru made a second decision for them that day. Yoshiki didn’t get a choice in the matter. It was so incredibly selfish, but he couldn’t throw blame at him at the time. Following that decision, Yoshiki was thrown into depravity, his family suffered, their community fell into chaos, and nothing he knew was ever normal again.
But he would keep thinking back to that crying face, and his lungs would tighten. He buried down that resentment.
Yoshiki retreats from the water, taking a towel and wiping his face. He coughs, his lungs still expelling liquid. He wonders if he could cut himself open, tear out the exhausted organ and let it grow anew.
He doesn’t have the proper tools.
He slips into a sleeve, then the next. He ties the robes, and the fabric covers his body. It fails to warm any part of him because his flesh doesn't radiate heat. Heat is a living creature’s luxury. Yoshiki can recall that after he turned, there was a time he sought after it, and there had been only one source he could use.
His turning made Hikaru change, too, didn't it? He saw it first when the other let his touch linger, when his words started sounding affectionate like they used to when they were children, when the look on his beloved's face grew softer. Finally when one day, and all without warning, Hikaru held his face and kissed him for the first time.
They're the memories that tear him apart the most. Back when it meant something to experience a body’s warmth, back when a living creature's touch on his body was tender. His beloved held him with the passion of a lover, but ‘love’ was not a word that the other uttered. Yoshiki never let it climb its way out of his throat either. In his mind, he called it lust, guilt, or any emotion that could have kept Hikaru lingering around. The other affirmed it by never correcting him.
The sun is peeking from behind a distant mountain. His eyes weren’t made to look at it, but he sits on the riverbed staring regardless. The purple had turned into red. The light showing through the clouds was soft. Every bit of his exposed skin burned. Protecting his face, he brought his head back between his knees and curled in.
Why is his heart full of resentment now? Why does the grudge keep growing? Why has he never stopped feeling pain thinking about him?
He was watching the dawn that day, too. Two silent days had passed, and a third was coming to an unexpected end. Hikaru hadn’t shown up that night. The other was never the most punctual. Sleep overtook him sometimes. During harvest time, he often came over only to get his shut-eye on his bed. He was also cautious and sometimes decided to stay back if village folks were poking around. Conversely, he sometimes also found his friend at his residence for consecutive nights. Usually, it was to make up for absence.
Three days of absence were not an extraordinary event, but four were rarer. Another dawn rose and left his insides twisting with anxiety.
Yoshiki wrapped himself in a cloak and crossed over for the first time in years.
The house was empty. A lot of houses were. Following behind villagers heading to the outskirts, he held his breath. Only one thing lay in that direction: the goddess’s shrine.
Folks wore white, and in their hands they held gifts. He could hear chanting. A priest stood in front of a bed of flowers. Yoshiki stopped amongst the crowd. He struggled to comprehend the scene.
“Poor thing, and he was still so young.”
He shoves the bodies blocking his way. Amongst the yelling, the men hammering the coffin shut freeze. The horror on their faces doesn’t subside as he digs his fingers under the cover. The wood splinters drive in between his nails as he tears it off. It shatters onto the ground, and the figure lying in the coffin sleeps amongst chrysanthemums and sunflowers, already drained of color.
“What are ya doing in there? How were ya supposed to breathe?! Would you go that far for a joke?!” Someone pulls his arm, cursing at him for his disrespect of the sacred. A flick of his hand pushed them off. Any unfamiliar touch was similarly thrown off the altar.
“Don’t pretend ya can't hear me! You made me come all the way here!” He shakes the coffin. Its contents rattle. He takes hold of the figure's shoulders, and they feel rigid.
“If ya were busy, you should have told me! I wouldn’ have…” The figure’s eyes aren't closed all the way. They're a lighter color than they should be. They're dull. They’re unmoving.
“I wouldn't…have made a commotion…”
It becomes hard to swallow the lump in his throat. The first tear hadn't rolled past his cheek before the second and third were slipping down. The rest cover his face, and they aren't hot like they should be. They are as cold as the skin he could touch.
“No.” He bites his own wrist, making the arteries burst. Blood stains white robes. He directs it above the figure’s head. Red splatters onto its cheek, its nose, but not its discolored lips.
“No.” He holds its jaw, squeezes it. It's taught and refuses to open. “This isn’t fair. You don't get to do this!” He pushes his wrist against the cold lips. Blood slips past a small crack, but the reaction is none.
“What the hell was any of this for? You forced me to live only to go out like this?! What was the point?!”
He pushes, holds its throat, and demands it to swallow. The air gets crowded with cries of horror. They yell and call. Yoshiki is sure his mother and sister are amongst them.
“You forced me to stay, why couldn't I do it too?! Why couldn’t I be selfish just this once?!”
He thinks back to a conversation he had with Hikaru. His beloved was staring at the bite mark on his wrist. He was absent-minded, lying in bed next to him.
“If I became like ya, would it make up for what I did?"
Yoshiki had smiled. He had truthfully and earnestly shaken his head.
“Make up for what ya did by growing old. That's all I wanna see.”
It hurt. His throat is raw. He can't stop screaming. He hates it. He hates himself. He couldn't make a single good decision for them.
“What was the point?! What was the point?!?” The dead body opens its lips neither to answer nor to drink his blood. He shakes it, and it lies stiffly like a porcelain doll. Every spot he touches leaves a purple mark.
“Now’s the time, so why won't you take responsibility?! Did you do nothing but lie your entire life?! Did you ever stop and think about the pain you bring me?! Did you even care about anything I wanted?!?”
“Yoshiki, please!!” His mother takes hold of him and pulls back. He pulls the body with him.
“Take responsibility! Drink it and take responsibility!!”
His father takes the body and drags it from his hold. He grasps at its clothes. Every bit of skin the robe slipped off of is blue or green.
“Take responsibility and live!!”
“You just had to grow old!! You could’ve gotten married, you could’ve stopped visiting!!”
His sister is holding him, sobbing, begging him to stop.
“I WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE WITH ANYTHING! YOU JUST HAD TO LIVE!!”
Yoshiki wakes up.
It's the evening, and there’s knocking on his door.