Karasu leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He'd been working without a break for an unknown amount of time. A glance towards the window confirmed that it had been too long. The light filtering through the clear pane of glass had darkened to orange and the shadows in the room had grown long.
Karasu closed the lid of his laptop and resolved to finish his work tomorrow. He was the boss so he didn't have to answer to anyone.
He rubbed absently at the white bandage wrapped around his right hand. He'd gotten so caught up in his work that he'd almost forgotten about it but the ache was forefront in his mind now that there was nothing to distract him.
His employees had asked about it. Karasu had told them that his bird had bitten him. They'd laughed. This wasn't the first time Karasu had mentioned the bird and his employees seemed to be of one mind about it. They all agreed that he pampered and spoiled the bird too much. Karasu couldn't blame them. He often talked about how beautiful the creature was. How sweetly he sang. How he'd been wild when Karasu first got him and how Karasu had tamed him to take food from his fingers. While drinking with his employees at the local bar, he'd been very seriously informed that he needed to get a wife. That having such an attachment to an animal wasn't healthy for him.
Karasu had just brushed aside the suggestion while smirking into his glass. They had no idea.
He left his office and went to the kitchen. After retrieving a covered plate from the refrigerator, he went into his bedroom.
The room was huge and luxuriously furnished. Karasu liked his comforts. As the wealthy CEO of a pharmaceutical company, he could afford them. The bed was king-size and sheeted with black silk. The lighting was soft, soothing after the bright glare of his laptop screen.
As Karasu set the plate down on a small table, a metallic rattle drew his attention to his left. Violet eyes met jade green. Karasu smiled warmly.
"Hungry, are you, my pretty bird?" he asked, the smile holding on his face. He tapped the cover of the dish with one long, manicured nail.
The rattle came again as the owner of the almond-shaped jade eyes shifted. Slim fingers wrapped around one of the gold bars of the elegantly beautiful birdcage.
"H-hai." The boy's voice was small and weak. His pink tongue flicked out to lick dry, chapped lips. Though the boy had been in America for more than half his life, he had never spoken a single word of English.
Karasu could have taken an American boy, of course. It would have been much easier. But he didn't want an American boy. He wanted a boy from his native homeland of Japan. The boy's accent brought back fond memories of Karasu's childhood in a remote seaside village where no one spoke a foreign tongue.
Karasu uncovered the plate, revealing to the boy's sight fresh cut vegetables and sausage. The boy's eyes devoured the meal greedily as he leaned forward, pressing his cheek into his hand, which still gripped the bar.
"Kudasai," he whispered. "Kudasai…."
"I don't know if I should feed you," Karasu informed him as he poured a glass of water from the pitcher that had already been on the table. It had amused him to leave the water where the starving boy could see it but not reach it. The boy had nothing to eat or drink for the last three days.
"My hand still hasn't healed yet." Karasu ran his fingers across the bandage that wrapped around his palm. During his last feeding, the boy had sank his teeth into Karasu's flesh. Why he'd done that was beyond Karasu but it couldn't go unpunished.
The boy's entire posture screamed of desperation, his face still pressed to the bars. He was sitting with his legs tucked to the side, the leather cuff wrapped around his ankle visible. A short, slim gold chain went from it to one of the bars. That was to keep the boy from escaping when Karasu opened the cage to clean it.
The cage was about three feet higher than the boy's head and not more than a metre in circumference. Karasu had no intention of getting a larger one. He felt that the boy had grown into it nicely.
It was as elegant and fancy as the rest of the room. The bars were thin and spaced wide enough for Karasu to slip his arm through. They were made of gold-coated steel and curved in at the top, meeting gracefully in the centre to form a dome.
A beautiful cage for his equally beautiful bird.
"Gomen'nasai," the boy sobbed hoarsely. "Gomen'nasai."
Karasu reached between the bars to card his fingers through the boy's long scarlet hair. It had been short when Karasu first acquired the boy ten years ago but he'd allowed it to grow over the last two years. He'd decided that he liked it better when it was long. It enhanced the boy's feminine features and softened his appearance. It was worth the extra care required.
The boy leaned into the caress, pressing into Karasu's hand. A tear spilled down his cheek.
"I know you're sorry," Karasu told him, his voice dripping with honey. "You'll be good now, won't you? You won't bite your master again, will you?"
Those last words he spoke in Japanese so that the boy would understand him.
Karasu's hand cupped the boy's cheek, feeling the wetness of the boy's tear against his palm.
"Kudasai," the boy begged. "Tabetai."
"I would hate to have to remove your teeth because you can't behave yourself," Karasu said.
The boy shrank back, all the colour draining from his cheeks, leaving his face almost as pale as a geisha's. Karasu couldn't quite hold back his smirk at the boy's reaction. He was frightened. Good. He should be frightened. Karasu would follow through with the threat if he had to. He never made idle threats and the boy knew that well, through years of unpleasant personal experience.
Karasu removed his hand from the cage and turned back to the table. He picked up the glass of water and moved it towards the cage.
Seeing it, the boy pressed his chin between the bars of the cage, his eyes once more brimming with desperate hope.
"Open your mouth," Karasu ordered him, still in his native tongue.
The boy obeyed, revealing the velvet pink cavern of his mouth. Karasu pushed on his bottom lip, then poked his finger into the boy's mouth.
The boy maintained his position as Karasu poked at his tongue, teeth and the inner flesh of his cheeks. Even when Karasu shoved his finger as far as he could down the boy's throat, the boy did not bite him. He did, however, make a small gagging sound. Karasu withdrew his finger and brought the cup still held in his other hand forward. He tipped the clear contents into the boy's mouth.
Not all of it made its way down the boy's throat. Some dribbled onto his chin and the floor. The boy swallowed convulsively, then coughed. His tongue snaked out to lick at the excess water on his chin as he tried to get every drop.
"Arigatō," he whispered. "Motto kudasai."
Karasu set the empty cup down and picked up a piece of carrot. The boy's eyes locked onto the small orange morsel as if it were the nectar of life. He opened his mouth without being asked to and Karasu slipped it in. He chewed and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing as he did so.
The meal was cold but the boy ate every piece presented to him. Karasu praised his good behaviour, pleased with the boy's submission. It seemed that the lesson had been absorbed, at least for the time being.
After his dinner, the boy curled up in the cage, back pressed to the bars. His legs were drawn up with his arms around them. He looked younger than his sixteen years. As Karasu circled behind him while undressing for bed, he could see the boy's bones jutting out of his back beneath the straight fall of his silken red hair. The whip marks Karasu had left on him were fresh, coloured an angry red.
Karasu contemplated taking the boy out of the cage and whipping him once more, as he had for the last three days running, but decided against it. The boy had behaved himself so far. He could have an evening's rest.
The boy was rewarded with another drink from the water glass before Karasu ordered him to sleep. As the boy curled into a ball on the floor of the cage, naked skin blanketed by his own hair, Karasu swept a black cloth over the cage, hiding the contents from view. The cloth was thick and impenetrable. Inside the cage, the boy would be entombed in pitch black.
Out of sight but never out of mind. Karasu dreamed of silky skin, sanguine hair and lips as soft as a dove's cry while he slept.
Trapped in the darkness of his prison, Karasu's cage bird did not sleep. He scratched uselessly at the invisible bars with blunt, bleeding nails. Madness clawed at the remnants of his intelligence, seeking to tear apart what little remained.
Ten years he'd been this monster's prisoner. For ten years this birdcage had been his home. On the occasions when his master allowed him out, he was beaten, raped and abused, only to be shoved back in and left to pluck at his wounds.
The physical wounds healed eventually but the emotional and mental wounds remained, festering like infected cuts with every day that passed. The boy couldn't even remember his real name anymore. Or his family. Or his home. All he knew was this cage.
Even if he did find freedom, what was there left for him out there? With no one to return to, what was the point of escape?
He was a pretty bird, a fettered bird, his wings clipped, destined to waste away and die in captivity. Never to know the joy of open sky again. Never to feel the wind beneath his wings.
In the darkness, the boy continued to peck uselessly with weak nails against the bars of his prison.