Disclaimer: Saiyuki is the property of Minekura Kazuya whom I worship as my goddess.
Author's Notes: Written for the 30 Angsts LJ Community (18. Photograph (lost you forever)). Part of the Like a Living Thing series.
PHOTOGRAPH
There's a framed drawing on the table beside his bed. Kougaiji doesn't usually look at it and sometimes it's as if he doesn't even know it's there, but he was the one that drew it, back when he had more control over his body than the tattoo on his arm.
There are four people in the drawing, people that Kougaiji feels he should know. Well…if he still felt anything. Sometimes Lirin catches him standing in his bedroom, half-dressed, holding the drawing in his hand and looking at it. His face is always blank but there's something in his dead eyes that makes the demon princess back out of the room and come back later.
The people immortalized in the sketch are smiling—except for one—and standing in front of a jeep. They're rendered in charcoal on paper that's older than most civilizations and if Kougaiji would bother to take out the drawing from the frame, it would probably crumble at the first touch of his hand.
During the rare moments of awareness, when he knows what's wrong with him and what's happening but can't do anything to stop it, the emperor looks at the scowling face in the drawing and presses his clawed fingers against the glass. Maybe if he presses hard enough he might feel warm skin under his touch.
One day, Lirin goes to Kougaiji's room to wake him up and finds him with a handful of dust and surrounded by broken glass and splinters of wood.