Mirror Image
Prologue
Lee's Point of View
Rummaging through shelves and shelves of books, still, there wasn't one that could explain this. How could this happen? Yes. It could, but it was very rare. How did the Kon family inherit this? I cannot believe this. I have taken position of an elder now after my grandfather had passed on. So I can't ask him anymore. He would've already had an answer. I've been searching through his enormous library for a day or two now. Outside rain has been pouring and never ceased to clear. The children were being kept inside.
"Lee!" My wife, Mariah snapped me out of my thoughts. "Still searching?"
"Yeah… This baby… He and Rei… It doesn't add up." I replied as she leaned against the last bookshelf.
"I put Wunting to sleep already."
"Bout Rei's child?" Wunting is our new born baby girl.
"Kun is sleeping beside her. Need help looking?" She asked.
"Well yeah… I'm down to the last shelf...," I said sitting down on the old rug. "So tiring."
"Take a rest. I'll search from here." I lay down on the rug while she searched. Taking a brief rest I shifted places because of something was pressing against my back. What I thought were only minutes after I fell asleep, Mariah woke me up telling me she also found nothing.
"My back is aching me." I complained. Mariah felt the floor to see what was nudging me.
"Flip up the rug. It feels like a latch." She said and I helped lift it up. She was right. We got a flashlight and pulled open the door. It was relatively clean down there. A desk with a lamp light. I opened the desk drawers and found pictures of Rei, his family, his teammates and us.
"Hey Lee look at this." Mariah waved me over there just to find the book I was looking for.
"Where did you find it?" How did she manage to find it that quickly?
"When we came down here, it smelled sort of like Rei. And knowing him if he doesn't want to be found out or something he would go and hide. This book I found it covered by other books at the bottom of the shelf."
We both heard a cry.
"I'll check up on them, you read it." She went upstairs to the room where the babies where crying.
I went back to my grandfather's library, sat in a comfy chair near the open windows. I look outside. Cloudy skies after a huge rainstorm disappearing slowly as I open this book to reveal the mystery of Rei's and Kai's child. I read the book until the middle. A small thin bookmark of a ferocious white tiger was pawing the page. I removed the marker and read the chapter title. "Neko-jin, male pregnancies." No wonder this book has been kept. He knew himself and was ashamed to tell us.
Special cases. Neko-jins, dated back to the age of magic. Raids of mischievous groups captured a bunch of Neko-jins like us in the middle of an unforgettable night. Night of the disappearance. The skies where cloudy and strong winds blew. The next, morning about 10-20 Neko-jins males were gone. Day after day, elders awaited for their return.
One evening, a wounded, bleeding Neko-jin came back limping towards the city carrying a bundle in his arms. The elders identified and took him in. They healed him. Mong Kon was his name. He asked where the bundle he carried was.
"The child is being nursed by healers." One of the elders said and asked " Where did that child come from?"
"Me," He answered depressingly. Everyone was in shock, but continued to listen. "The day we were captured they, the cloaked ghouls shoved some silvery disgusting liquid down our throats. A few days later, us, neko-jins had severe abdominal pains in our bodies. They told us what they did. They were testing out some experiment. They used us as some science thing." He cried disgusted with himself. " After," he turned away from the elders. "The neko-jins who were ejected from this city, from dishonouring the codes, appeared again. They took their revenge on us, they… they raped us. Fighting them off was even worse. Doubling over with pain, we were whipped and tortured until we had no strength. Therefore the child is there. I heard them saying to release us after a year or two. I slipped away a night before."
The room fell silent until a guard said, "You know where they are right?"
"Yes I do." Mong replied staring at the ground.
"We'll slip into their land and free the neko-jins that are captured then!" The guard finished and some agreed with him. Before long, an army of swift neko-jins went towards the betrayers and the captured neko-jins. With a decoy that raised the attention of lots of ghouls, that night the experimented neko-jins were freed and had gone back to their native city. Since then, generations have not been the same. It was to the victim's choice whether to keep the child or kill it. The ghouls and betrayers were banished to hell and never disturbed the city ever again. To this day there are very rare, neko-jins with this sad history within them. But then, the history would be a reminder of the change of generations. More neko-jins were trained harder to have more strength and never treated like a little sad kitten as often mistaken.
"Woah… I remember in history class that our teacher was reluctant of saying who and what happened. He just said that neko-jin males were kidnap and rescued. So this is the truth." Mariah sat in awe when I told her.
I nodded and looked out the window. An hour ago, the clouds haven't disappeared, but now everything is all clear. Even, Rei's past is cleared.
"I wonder if sometimes nature can read our problems. Just an hour ago, it was all cloudy, just like our minds, figuring how Kun was born. And now, the clouds all disappeared and our problems seem to also clear away too." Mariah said leaning her head against my chest.
" I wonder how Rei and Kai are fairing right now in Russia, on their honeymoon." I finished. "Hope they are well. But something doesn't feel right. Argh."
"You felt that too? Like something pulled on your heart?" Mariah asked as she felt me shake a bit. "I feel something missing."
"Something is definitely not right." Just at that moment, Kun started bawling out loud.
~*~*~
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Warning the next chapter would be full of a genre you might not like.
Until then…
*~AznSlvr