A/N: Welcome to the newly revised Ayashi Yuugi! All the chapters have spruced up a little, though none of the story has been changed. Hopefully new ones will be out soon! There will be 25 in all, plus an epilogue, so you have an idea of how far along the story is. For those of you reading this for the first time: thank you! And yes, this will be shonen ai. No, this is not a crossover; no Ceres characters will appear, except maybe for a cameo by Touya, who is altogehter too hot to leave out. This is an AU where the Fushigi Yuugi characters live the lives of the Ceres characters, though the ending will be a little different than both anime.
P.S. Standard disclaimers apply, folks.
Ayashi Yuugi: Celestial PlayChapter One: Awakening
"Ryuen!"
My body wouldn't move – whether from awe or the tendril of unease creeping through me, I didn't know. But whatever it was, it weighed my legs down, left me staring at the white walls and elegant archways of my grandfather's temple. I tried to turn my head toward my name and couldn't; I was frozen in the shadow of the temple.
"Ryuen!"
I blinked, suddenly freed, tearing my eyes away from the shadows and sunbeams dancing through the trees, and turned toward the sound. My sister stood looking back at me from the gateway, hand on her hip and violet hair caught up in the cool evening breeze as she waved me forward. "Come on, Ryu! Everyone's waiting for us!"
Hurrying to catch up with her, I grinned and brushed a few loose strands of my own indigo hair out of my eyes, my sense of dread buried under excitement. "This place is huge!" I breathed, glancing around the temple grounds in wonder. "I'd forgotten how beautiful Grandpa's shrine is. I could sit out here all day."
"You do that, then," she said. "I'm going to our birthday party." With that she turned and walked onto the temple path.
"Kourin, wait!" I caught up to her again and slipped my arm through hers. "So, are you excited? I mean, sweet sixteen and all? We'll be getting some major presents, especially since the whole family will be there." I smirked and nudged her side. "A car, maybe."
She shook her head, pouting. "They'd never give us cars. Two of us? That's way too expensive." A grin tugged at her lips, and she lowered her voice dramatically. "But then, why else would the whole family be here? Twin cars for the twin Chou!"
"There is an awful lot of space to hide them, here," I observed.
Laughing, we made our way across the tranquil grounds to the temple and ducked through its low door after our parents. It was dark in the hallway, with a single candle burning near the farthest end. A twinge of pain shot through my chest as I entered the shrine, the ghost of some cold fire. I pressed my hand to my heart, gasping slightly though the sharp pain had already faded into a dull thrum. It was as if something other than my heart pulsed in my chest, a steady beating that was almost painful.
Kourin frowned at me. "Are you all right?" she asked worriedly.
"Yeah," I replied, rubbing my chest. The feeling had already begun to fade. "I just... felt weird for a minute." I shrugged, blanketing the pain with a smile. "I guess I'm not pure enough to enter the shrine, ne?" Kourin laughed and tugged me forward. The echo of pain lingered in my chest, but it was faint enough that I could ignore it; it was our birthday, and I wouldn't let something I'm not sure I didn't imagine ruin it.
We meandered through the long hallway toward the temple's dining hall, following the low murmur of our parents' voices, to where our family was waiting for us. The temple was quiet, however, and our conversation echoed through the hallway. We fell silent as we entered the vast hall, meeting the solemn stares of almost two dozen people. Our relatives were waiting for us around the dining table, silent and sober, and no one moved when we entered, save our grandfather.
"Welcome, children," he said gravely as he stood.
I looked around, searching through the sea of faces for a smile, a frown, anything but the horrible emptiness they had all carefully schooled onto their features. "Mom?" I said hesitantly as Kourin gripped my arm. "Dad? What's going on? I thought - I thought this was our birthday party."
"It is," our grandfather said, walking around the table to stand before us. A forced smile made its way onto his features, though it didn't reach his eyes. "And I have a very special gift for you two." He handed us a box wrapped in plain white tissue paper. "Ryuen. Kourin. Happy sixteenth birthday."
Sharing a bewildered glance with Kourin, I took the box, cradling it carefully in my hands. "Uh, thanks, Grandpa," I said.
"Don't thank me yet," he murmured, watching us.
I met Kourin's gaze as she frowned over at me; her hands were shaking as she tore the paper and slid the lid off the box. I peered inside it carefully, afraid of what I'd find. The uncomfortable, almost-pain in my chest had returned, and the anxious stares of my relatives burned into me like ice.
Inside the box was a scroll, ancient and worn, held together by an equally brittle scrap of leather. Kourin reached in to lift it, but I pulled the box away from her, fearing what the scroll might hold. Wait a minute. This is my grandfather. He'd never hurt either of us. What am I afraid of? Yet, I could not banish the tight knot of fear in my stomach, and the pressure in my chest was growing worse.
"Ryuen?" Kourin murmured.
"I'll open it," I said quietly, laying the box on the table. I couldn't quite hide the tremor in my voice; whatever might happen, I didn't want Kourin hurt. This is insane . . . I'm acting like a two-year-old afraid of the dark! Whatever I was expecting to jump out of the scroll, I was wrong; nothing happened when I untied the leather and carefully unrolled the ancient scroll. It was long, much longer than I'd originally thought. I only unrolled a few inches of the yellowed parchment, revealing the careful strokes of four kanji, their ink still dark and striking.
"They're names," Kourin said quietly beside me. "Genbu . . . Seiryu . . . " She gasped.
"Byakko and Suzaku," my grandfather finished.
Suzaku . . .
The pressure in my chest exploded into a thousand shards of glass that ripped through my body, tearing, burning, melting until all that was left of me was a scream of agony. All I could see was red, the red of blood, of fire, of pain. I writhed in the ocean of crimson for what seemed like a lifetime, gasping breaths of red and crying tears of blood.
A presence invaded the never-ending crimson, one I could see only with my heart, and laid a cool hand on my forehead. Red gave way to a voice, a sound that was both beautiful and horrible, that was infinitely familiar but that I knew I had never heard before, for it would have left me deaf. It was a voice my heart knew as Suzaku.
"Nuriko . . ."
The voice whispered a name that thundered in my ears, and the name turned into a word, a symbol that glowed against the red. Its brightness nearly blinded me, and when I closed my eyes and screamed in pain again, the symbol burned against my eyelids. I opened my eyes to see the red fading away, fading into the brightness of the symbol along with the pain. Soon it was gone, and I was left hanging numbly in darkness with the symbol pulsing crimson before me.
"Nuriko . . ."
And then I opened my eyes to see the temple ceiling above me, and the symbol glowing crimson over my chest. My clothes were ripped and torn, but there were no marks on my body, save for the red lines of the symbol. A red mist hung around me, but it was already fading, and I sat up.
Kourin lay beside me, nearly covered by the same mist, only hers was white, and no glowing symbol appeared to burn it way. I croaked her name and crawled over to her, reaching through the mist to grab her shoulder. A hand stopped me before I could reach her, closing around my wrist and yanking me backward.
"Don't touch her!" my grandfather snapped, shoving me aside as he knelt by my sister's prone form.
"Grandpa?" I stammered, pushing weakly to my knees. "W - What happened? I . . . Is Kourin all right?" Dear God, what's going on? "She's not . . . She's not dead, is she?"
Flicking a glare over his shoulder, he ran his hand across Kourin's forehead, not quite touching her skin. "She's not the one to be worried about." He turned to face me, and I realized that several people had surrounded me, all of them strangers I had never seen before.
I instinctively pressed my hand to my chest where the symbol still glowed. "What happened to us? What was on that scroll?"
He stood, motioning for another man, long-haired and willowy, to tend to Kourin. Towering over me, my grandfather crossed his arms and met my gaze with a hard stare. "That scroll is The Universe of the Four Gods, the resting place of the four Gods who rule Heaven and Earth." He gestured toward the white walls of the temple. "This family has served Byakko for centuries, and has waited for the day when his priestess would be born and awaken him."
"I don't understand," I whispered.
My grandfather glanced toward my sister's still unconscious form, then leveled his dark gaze on me. "Your sister will become the priestess of Byakko and summon him from the Heavens. Byakko will seal away the other three gods and rule this world, with the Chou family as his loyal followers."
I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat and pressed my hand more firmly against my chest, though the pain was gone. "And me?"
My grandfather's eyes grew cold as he stepped toward me, pointing at the red glow that my hand couldn't hide. "You are a Suzaku shichiseishi, and so an enemy of Byakko. Of us."
"What?" I breathed, dizzy with confusion and the lingering haze of red.
My grandfather took another step closer. "You are now our enemy, Ryuen. We can't allow you to find your god."
Suddenly the world turned dark, and the last thing I saw was the ring of people around me closing in, all with swords in their hands.
-x-