A/N: Hello! This is a little something I've been working on for a long time since I first got into Hakuouki a couple of years ago, and I feel like I'm finally ready to show it to the world! I've been really nervous because, well, if you're familiar with OC stories, there's a particular trope that is despised in the community, and I've decided to try to break it here by writing it right. I hope I've succeeded? God knows how many times I've reread this over and over again to try and get it just right ;w; Anyways, for those who don't know, I'm a big fan of writing OC-centric stuff, so I'd really appreciate an open mind and as always, I only ask that you read 3-4 chapters before you make a judgement about my story. If you still don't like the story by then, feel free to leave a harsh ranting review and I promise I won't bother you with long defensive PMs. Enjoy now :)
Akira I
There are some idealists who believe that any unusual feature you are born with is related to how you died in your previous life. Assuming people who think this are correct, Akira must have died from getting stabbed in her left eye. Or of an infection to her left eye. Or getting mauled in the left eye by an animal.
Speculating about such things brought her comfort in the early years of her life. Believing that the peculiarity about her appearance that terrified her parents and neighbors was the result of an event she could not control helped her to shift the blame for it away from herself and to whichever nameless, faceless person that had caused the demise of her previous incarnation.
Akira's brother approved of this way of thinking and even encouraged her to continue coming up with theories as to why her eyes colors were mismatched.
A fairy kissed her left eye and left it a brighter color.
The god who was responsible for her creation just lost his glasses at the time.
Maybe the gods just dropped her off in the wrong time period or the wrong place, and she was actually supposed to be born into a world where heterochromia was a normal and common feature.
If there was a proper place where a girl with one brown eye and one gray eye belonged, the gods must have missed it by centuries and leagues because where Akira ended up was a remote Japanese mountain village in what the westerners, whose lives will someday fatefully cross with hers, called "the eighteen-hundred-forty-fourth year of Our Lord," born to parents who were highly superstitious and were not-and never-ready to accept a daughter with such a defect.
"She-demon" was a name that she heard often in her toddler years both from her parents and others who lived in the village and since then, several variations had arisen, all circling around the demon theme. The population of the small village feared and avoided her, but other times they found the boldness to openly regard her with disgusted, malicious eyes. Which is worse: to be feared or to be hated? That question dominated Akira's toddler mind often, and she wished they would just pick one or the other.
As far as she remembered, her parents had never spoken a word to her other than abrupt orders to stay inside the house or to go to sleep, and the closest they'd come to expressing affection is reluctant tolerance. Her day-to-day life consisted of staying out of sight and carefully watching the moods of her mother and father, gauging their reactions to everything she did and looking futilely for signs of acceptance or love.
From an early age, she understood and accepted the ritual of family life. Don't talk your mother or father. Don't look at your mother or father for too long. Don't talk too loudly. Don't go outside the house without wearing something over your face. Don't talk to the neighbors. Don't look at the neighbors. Don't bother your brother; he is studying hard and will become a great and educated man one day. Don't distract him when he comes home. Pretend as if you don't exist.
.
To Akira, her brother was an amazing person, someone who had travelled beyond the confining walls of their modest country home, who had seen a far larger world than imprisoned Akira could ever hope to see through the small, coverless window of their bedroom. He could magically process information from what looked like mindless scribbles across a piece of paper, and he even spoke differently since learning proper grammar with his tutor. The homework his tutors assigned was filled with concepts that Akira couldn't begin to understand, and his writing was beautiful and neat and earned the praise of their parents and many of others who lived in the village.
It wasn't so much Akira distracting her brother that her parents ought to have worry about but rather her brother distracting himself with animatedly telling Akira about his day every time he came home from school. His stories were the highlights of her otherwise monotone and purposeless daily life, and their parents eventually gave up trying to keep him away from Akira as long as he continued to make progress through his education.
"Come here, Akira."
He waved his sister over with a reassuring smile while their parents weren't looking one day when Akira was three and he was ten.
Akira walked over to him silently. With time, she had gotten good at not drawing attention to herself, and she had observed that her parents were happiest when they didn't notice her in their lives. Thus, much of her energy was put into suppressing her own presence, and this behavior soon became second nature, even in the company of her brother, the one person she trusted.
"Do you want to learn how to read and write?"
He had a barely hidden twinkle of excitement in his dark brown and completely normal eyes.
Akira stayed quiet, but the subtle change in the wideness of her eyes was enough to tell him that she was interested, very interested. And alarmed.
Kei waved a hand dismissively and smiled that boyish smile of his that Akira could only describe as the smile of someone who had the sun for a soul.
"Don't worry, Akira. Mother doesn't have to know and if she finds out, I'll just tell her it was part of my homework to teach what I learned to someone else. What do you say? Shall Kei-nii-san teach you how to tell a story from looking at scribbles?"
When Akira started nodding without even realizing what she was doing, something inside her broke, but it was a good type of breaking, like destroying the first door to a musty jail building that had held an innocent prisoner for too long.
.
People felt sorry for her parents, and Akira knew it. Her parents were humble peasants just like everyone else in the village, and yet somehow they'd produced an offspring that was an omen of misfortunes, a child whose defect was surely a curse from the demons. Though they pitied the Chosokabe family, it did not mean they had sympathy for it and for several months after Akira was born and word spread through the village, no one would buy the crops her father harvested or the baskets her mother worked so hard to make. When people looked at Kei, however, they smiled and did their best to pretend that he was an only child and not only the pride of his family but also the village for he was one of the few who was educated.
Kei often tried to deny it, but Akira knew without any doubt that her birth damaged her family's reputation beyond total repair. The only thing that prevented them from completely being shunned by the other villagers was Kei. Charismatic, smart, and ridiculously kind Kei, who probably would've been even more popular if he didn't spend most of his free time with his supposedly cursed younger sister.
Akira would have been too young to have her own memories of it, but she had deduced from unintentionally eavesdropping on her parents' hushed conversations that the only reason she wasn't disposed of when she was a few days old was because Kei had raised such a big fuss against it.
At her best times, talking with her brother, learning how to read and write, and conjuring her own images of what the lands beyond her bedroom window might look like, Akira loved Kei for not only giving her a chance to live but also for loving her back.
At her worst times, when her mother wept at the sight of her, when her father blamed his bad harvest on his cursed child, when no one in the village even had the decency to lower their voices while talking about the pitiful Chosokabe family, Akira believe that her brother was the biggest fool of all to save her. She was an unwelcome extra mouth to feed, a waste of space in their already tiny living quarters. It was because of her that their parents argued and fought every other day, each blaming the other for being the cause of Akira's existence. Each time they caught sight of Akira's dual colored eyes, they were reminded of their burden.
Kei told her one day, absentmindedly, while doing his homework with Akira sitting behind him, something that she would never hear again for the rest of her life.
"Don't tell anyone, but I think your eyes are really pretty. I wish I had an eye that didn't match my other one."
Akira clenched her fists and curled her legs even closer to herself than before.
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do."
"No."
Akira repeated with more force, causing Kei to actually turn away from his homework and look at her, letting at a breathy laugh.
"Figures. People always do want what they don't have, huh, Akira?"
"You don't know how precious it is to be normal until you're not."
Kei put down his pencil and looked over his shoulder at Akira with a hint of annoyance in his eyes accompanied by a disapproving pout.
"There is no normal, Akira. There's just people, who are all a little different from one another but in the end, we are all people. Look, the brown of my hair is a little lighter than yours, right?"
Akira subconsciously touched her own darker, borderline black, hair. It was long and tangled from years of lack of maintenance; her appearance didn't matter anyways since she rarely saw anyone outside of the family.
Kei continued with enthusiasm, his previous disapproval disappearing as he spoke more positively. His hands were warm when he picked up Akira's bony and freezing cold fingers.
"Everyone's appearance is going to turn out a little differently. But if we look at …hands, for example, they have pretty much the same structure. Diversity is part of being a person so really, your eye color variation isn't that big of a deal."
She watched him smile widely before he spun around to get back to his writing.
"…Really?"
"Of course, Akira. Big brothers don't lie to their little siblings, you know."
.
When Kei was thirteen, he discovered his gift for drawing, and that was also the year he travelled further from the village than he had ever gone and did his best to capture the amazing sights he saw on paper in order to show Akira upon his return. That year, when Akira was six, she saw her brother's drawings of the ocean and rivers and the view from the top of the mountain and the flowers of southern Japan, and she wanted to go there too. Her desire to leave-escape-bubbled up inside her. She wanted to fly away.
One day, Kei suggested another one of his utterly insane but wonderful ideas after showing her his drawings.
"We'll split up the world."
"What?" was Akira's unintelligent reply.
He smiled as if he was glad that Akira asked.
"The world really is a beautiful place and considering that I've seen the whole world, and you, Akira, have hardly seen any of it as of right now, the entire world belongs to just me."
Akira stiffened, unsure of where her brother was going with his plan.
"That's not fair… I want some of the world too."
"Exactly, so your nii-san is going to give some of the world to you, even though you haven't seen it all yet, and then someday I'll take you to go see your parts of the world."
He smiled proudly as if it was the greatest design known to mankind, but he was already smiling-how can someone who is already smiling smile even more?
Akira's face lit up slowly as she became fascinated with the idea, completely been won over by the thought Kei's grand scheme.
"To start off, I'll bequeath to you, my sister, the flowers, the mountains, the moon, and the sun."
The grandeur and dramatic way he declared his gift caused Akira to crack an extremely rare teeth-showing smile. Something fluttered inside her, and she sat up a little straighter, more attentive, because she owned the flowers, the mountains, the moon, and the sun.
"And I, the great Kei, shall get the ocean, the rivers, the sky, and the forests, of course."
"I'll trade you the sun for the ocean."
Akira really liked the ocean. And the sun didn't suit her as much as it suited her brother.
Kei contemplated the trade momentarily.
"No, not worth it."
"I'll hand over the moon too."
"Alright, deal."
Akira nodded and although nothing really happened, she suddenly felt freer and more powerful because her brother split up the world between them, and mountains and the ocean were hers.
A second door of her internal prison building softly clicked open.
.
Akira snuck out of her house for the first and last time when she was eight. Her brother had left an important book at home that he needed for school, and she didn't want him to get yelled out by his tutor, so she thought that she'd just quickly slip out and give the book to Kei before he'd gone too far. It was a cloudy day but not chilly, and Akira snuck out of the back door of her family's dingy house, clutching her brother's book to her chest nervously. Promising herself that she'll be back very soon-too soon for anyone to notice she was gone-and that she was doing something to make her brother happy, she circled around to the front of the house and started off. She imagined him wearing a relieved and grateful smile when she finds him.
The people in the village did not appear to pay attention to her much, and Akira, encouraged by their indifference, grew bolder in her exploration of the world that she had always seen outside her window, always out of reach. She openly gaped at the sky that was so bright even though the sun was absent and inhaled deep breaths of the air that smelled of things she could not identify. Her thin legs carried her further and further away from her house until she couldn't see it anymore.
With her turning her head this way and that, to a passerby, Akira must have looked lost because that would have been the only reason a middle aged woman would have approached her from behind, placing a worried hand on her shoulder.
"Have you lost your parents, little one?"
Startled, wide-eyed Akira spun around to face the woman, shoving the hand off of her shoulder hastily. In slow motion, she saw the warmth in the woman's concerned eyes fade away like scattered flower petals and quickly replaced by unpleasant surprise and horror.
The woman recoiled back with a cry as if Akira had burned her, and her scream drew the attention of nearby strangers who, until this time, hadn't paid any heed to the young girl. The woman shrieked something incoherent while shakily backing away from Akira, pointing a trembling but accusing finger at her.
Akira ducked her head, willing all the people to disappear or better- for herself to disappear. She stumbled backwards, staring right back at the woman, unintentionally mirroring her terror. Her back bumped into something, and she realized that it was another person, this time a man whom she had caused to drop a stack of wood he was clutching.
Everywhere she looked, strangers' eyes glued onto her, some narrowed with anger but most watering or wide with fear. She desperately searched from one pair of eyes to another, hoping with all she had that she'll find a pair that looked at her normally or even with a hint of sympathy. No such eyes looked upon her.
There was a shout, but she couldn't discern where in the gathered crowd it came from. Urgent whispering filled the once peacefully quiet air and from somewhere, a baby started crying.
The crowd parted astoundingly quickly, people jumping back to avoid being touched by her, as Akira fled.
In no conscious direction, she ran, her throat burning and closing up, making it hard to take in the big breaths she needed in order to get away quickly. She stumbled and tripped after a few steps but practically flew back up and kept running as if it never happened; she wanted to get away so badly.
Not long after the commotion, Akira was found by her father whom she'd never seen so utterly furious and dragged back home by the hair, sobbing and screaming.
Perhaps for all the years Akira had been locked in the house, her parents had been hoping that if she remained hidden long enough, she would be forgotten. They often spoke as if Kei was their only child, and no doubt it had been slowly working until Akira finally disrupted the progress by sneaking out that day.
First, his father hit her once they were back in the privacy of their house, and it was the first time Akira remembered that he physically hurt her.
A single phrase played repeatedly in Akira's muddled mind as her father resorted to kicking her as she lay limp on the ground.
How long has he restrained himself from doing this?
When her mother returned home, already aware of what happened from hearing the talk of the village, she quickly took her husband's place, screaming with grief as she smacked Akira repeatedly, sobbing about how "I told you to never leave the house."
But no matter how much they beat Akira, it could not reverse what had happened that day, and the rumors erupted in the village again with new fervor and spread perhaps even faster than ever before.
Supposedly, from what Akira heard as she lay dazed on the cold floor while her parents argued with one another about what the hell they were going to do, the village had hosted a few travelers that day, and surely the travelers would not be able to keep their mouths shut about the "She-demon of the Mountains" once they depart. Not only did Akira again damage her family's reputation, but possibly also the entire village's.
Kei returned home that day to find his mother and father both exhausted and spent as he walked through the sitting room. Both their eyes were red and neither of them greeted him when he arrived. He found his sister curled up in the bedroom he shared with her, her body shaking and face littered with bruises and cuts. Upon closer inspection, he saw that her eyes were closed and a wet stain was on her cheek pressed against the bed.
She still clutched his school book in her hands, and he gently slid it out of her loose fingers and set it aside before circling around to lie down next to her, trying to make as little noise as possible.
Akira shifted, proving that she was not asleep as her brother had thought, but did not turn to face him.
"It's not a beautiful world, Kei."
.
The demons came to Akira not long after she snuck out of her house that day.
She had vague memories of their visit, so vague in fact that for years she was convinced it was all a dream, a sleepy hallucination her exhausted and desperate mind had conjured to offer her even the slightest comfort after the disastrous recent events. Only when she encountered them again years later did she fully understand the purpose of their appearance before her so long ago in the bleak darkness of her room in the remote village home.
On a cold winter day, they materialized out of the shadows, three figures whose faces Akira never completely forgot despite the gloom of the night which should have made it difficult for her to see clearly; one with dark skin, one with cold eyes the color of blood, one with no eyebrows. Even in her half unconsciousness, Akira sensed an abnormality about them that would put her heterochromia to shame and as if recognizing her own kind, her sub-consciousness told her demon.
What had further convinced Akira that it was a dream was her strange lack of reaction to the trespassers. In her sluggish condition, not even the revelation that demons-real demons that the villagers could scarcely imagine-stood before her, could elicit even an expression surprise at their intrusion or a call for help. Her brother was away from home, visiting another city with his teachers, and Akira was alone.
In her hazy, dreamlike state, the girl was aware of the demons, taking on the forms of men and standing over her while talking amongst themselves; their conversation was in a language that was Akira's own, and she half listened, teetering on the line between interest and indifference.
"Eye discoloration… humans to lose their shit. I told you… recognize a she-demon… got your hopes up…"
"… The chances… one of us. Needed to confirm… cannot risk leaving to abuse of humans…"
"… Take her with… Too young to tell…"
Akira could not guess how long they debated amongst themselves before she surprised both the men and herself by speaking. Her voice came out cracked and so soft that any creature lesser than a demon wouldn't have heard her.
"Have you come to take me away…?"
Silence followed her question, and Akira had just begun to lose hope that they'd answer her when one of the three finally spoke up.
"That is likely. Will you come with us?"
"… Am I one of you?"
"It's too early to tell right now, but we hope so."
"If you're so sure, let's just grab her and go."
"No, it would cause unnecessary issues for us and this girl if we are mistaken."
Akira heart ached dully as she squeezed her eyes shut against hot tears. If demons themselves recognized her as one of their own, then she truly was a curse to her family, and Kei had made the biggest mistake saving her. In that moment, the demons seemed like incarnations of the gods who were responsible for Akira's birth into a world that didn't want her, who knew her better than she knew herself, who had all the answers. A sudden desperation to know the truth came over her, and she struggled to speak louder and with more urgency.
"Please, please, tell me if I am human or…!"
When Akira recalled this memory over and over again throughout her life, she was sure that she would have almost gladly gone with the demons if they'd simply told her that she was one of them, given the amount of credibility the nature of their existence gave them. She would have believed them wholeheartedly and been happy to leave with them, to carry her curse away from the village, and to disappear from the human world forever.
But instead, their answer to her pleas that night set her life on a completely different course.
One of them had had enough pity for her to convince the other two to provide a proper resolution for Akira's inquiries, and the girl felt one of her limp hands being lifted.
"If you really want to know, there's actually a simple way to tell. You'll have to take some pain though."
To Akira, that condition hardly deterred her. What was a little pain in return for finally making peace with the subject of her true nature, an uncertain dilemma that had plagued her for years? What harm did pain do when she's used to receiving it from her own parents? Even if it killed her, would it not be worth it have resolution at last?
The girl put up no resistance when one of the demons unsheathed a long knife that looked like a blade of ice in the glow of the moonlight and prepared to press the sharp edge of the weapon into her hand.
"Wait."
It was not Akira who stopped the procedure but the demon with no eyebrows, his eyes narrowed at Akira's wrist and forearm which had been exposed as her hand was lifted and her sleeve slid away.
Dark bruises littered her arm from Akira's most recent abuse at the hands of her mother and father some days ago.
The demon with no eyebrows gestured to the ugly splotches on her skin and urged his companion to put away the knife.
"This proves it. We have watched her for two days, and in that time we have not observed any instance of violence that could have been the cause of these injuries."
Blood red eyes instantly narrowed at her with displeasure when only seconds ago they held great interest and even hopefulness.
"I see. How disappointing. If that is the case, there is no reason for us to stay here among this filth."
Akira did not understand.
"What does this mean…?"
Two demons had already turned to leave, all their interest in Akira vanishing so swiftly that it almost offended the girl, but the one with no eyebrows lingered to reply to her.
"A true demon would have healed from your injuries long ago. Your recovery rate is even weaker than that of an average human from what I can tell. You are no demon, Chosokabe Akira."
"…"
Akira could find neither the words nor the energy to speak, but her body slumped as if she had been released from being bound by chains, and she closed her eyes against a wave of tears that she knew was coming though she didn't even know why she cried.
When she opening her eyes, all that was before her eyes was the gloom and emptiness of her room and the loneliness of the wind gently blowing around some of the dust on the floor, erasing any footprints the demons may have left. Akira could almost believe that they were never there in the first place.
In the morning and the immediate days that passed, Akira would forget about what she presumed to be a dream, but as time drifted further and brought with it hurt and lonesomeness, the memory came back to her in her darkest moments, and the words of those men who may as well have been figments of her imagination offered a slight but enduring comfort. Their voices floated quietly in her sub-consciousness and provided just the thinnest string to pull her from the abyss when she thought she would tip over the edge, never to find her way back up again. They, the demons, never fully healed her from the hatred of the world-nothing ever would-but they planted the seed to one of the great mysteries of Akira's life that, when solved, would complete the circle of her story.
She would know them by their names in twelve years.
A/N: Thanks for reading all the way until the end! I've written up to 25,000 words of this story already, and honestly it's difficult to figure out how to split chapters ;w; this chapter and the next one were supposed to be one chapter, but then I would have had a first chapter that's over 8,000 words long OAO; A-ah, anyways, I hope you liked it, and feel free to leave a review!