Disclaimer: I don't own Yami no Matsuei
Yet another oneshot, a companion piece to Ready, written when I should have been updating some of my other stories.
It's a slightly different format, though...
Why do you hate me so? I had only wanted to be human...
It had been a hard day.
Actually, it had been a hard nine months, period.
The father paced outside the door, worry etched into every one of his features. His third child, was coming.
He hoped it was a boy. The two daughters he had were good, but he needed a boy to carry on the family name.
Although, if he had to, he would be content with another daughter. He needed to count his blessings.
Suddenly, a tired-looking nurse stuck her head through the door, making him jump.
"Calm down," she muttered, "she's ready for you to meet your child."
Barely able to contain his excitement, the father hurried into the room. He was so happy, he didn't even question why the nurse looked so distressed, or why his wife seemed so tired. A hard birth, he reasoned with himself.
"It's a boy! He's beautiful," the father murmured, leaning over the baby. "What should we name him?"
Then, the baby gurgled and opened his eyes.
The father gasped, and took a step backwards.
It wasn't just the fact the a baby - a normal baby - shouldn't be able to open it eyes, or seem to be minutely aware of of its surroundings like this one that frightened him. It was the eyes.
Eyes the colour of amethyst - an unholy colour that should never be found on a baby. And definitely not on his baby.
Demon eyes.
Never mind that black hair already covering most of its head, or that a tooth was beginning to poke from its gums. Never mind that it reached out its hand, grasping the father's shirt. "Daddy," it said.
No.
...
No.
"That is not my son," he said weakly, backing away slowly, pulling away from the hands that grasped him. He watched as his wife's eyes were wide, but not with shock. With understanding, with fear.
And yet, she still held that...that abonmination.
How can she?
That thing was not normal. It was a freak, some kind of monster. How could his wife give birth to such a thing?
"You are not my wife," he said, sounding even weaker than before.
His wife just nodded, but with pain evident in her eyes.
The father turned, and ran out of the room. That can not, can not be his son. It was a mistake.
His hand reached up, tentively, and rubbed the place where the thing - he refused to call it his baby - had grabbed his shirt. He needed to wash his hands, to take a shower, to wash his clothing. Anything that would rid him of that.
Because he refused to say that he had produced this horror. This thing wasn't natural, can't be natural.
And it would be the downfall of this family. The father knew that, was certain of it. It would bring death and destruction wherever it goes, nowhere would be safe.
In the room, the mother smiled sadly at the infant cradeled in her arms.
With its eyes closed, it seemed almost normal. Well, normal for a months-old baby.
It couldn't, absolutely couldn't, be completely human. But she had carried it in her womb, had loved it and cared for long before she had seen it.
However, she couldn't take care of it. She was devoted to her husband, she couldn't dispute what he had said.
Still, she would let it grow, would keep it alive, even if it was just for the sake of image.
She couldn't go against her husband's emotions, and he had made it clear what he had thought of it. She loved him, more than the sky, the seas. She loved him more than even her own children.
"I'm sorry, Asato," she murmured, pressing her face one last time to the sleeping infant. It would be the last willing contact she would have with him.
"I'm sorry."
Am I such a monster that you have to hide from me?
"Awww...he's so cute," gushed the older sister, "what's his name?"
"Kurosaki," the father replied. "After his great-great grandfather."
Bright green eyes looked up innocently at the family, and tiny wisps of blond hair dotted the baby's head. It had only been born a week before, but it seemed to grow and develop very quickly. The mother was almost bursting with pride at her son.
The sister put a hand against the bed, and leaned over so that she could get a better view of her baby brother. Suddenly, she drew back, holding her hand. "Ow! I've got a splinter."
Suddenly, the baby, now called Kurosaki Hisoka, started crying, struggling and trying to reach out for his sister. She stepped back, startled, forgetting all about the pain in her hand.
"What's he doing?"
The father looked down at his baby. "He wants to comfort her." he said, happy that his son knew compassion and empathy at such a young age.
This, soon to be discovered, was not the case, as the many incidents later on showed.
At the age of four months, it was not unusual to find Kurosaki awake and wailing in the middle of the night, waking people up from their nightmares.
At the age of one year, he hid under the covers for a large portion of the day, saying that it was to 'hide from the voices in his head and the feelings that weren't his'.
And at the age of five, Kurosaki's family - out of fear or hatred or jealousy, we may never know - finally locked him in the basement. For a long time.
A very, very long time.
I feel normal...so why do you call me a freak? I am only doing what I am supposed to...
The baby was so pale, the neighbors would have mistaken it for an albino if it were not for the silver eyes.
Yes, silver eyes...and silver hair...and pale skin...
The baby was as pale and cold as a chilly winter's evening.
"He would grow up to be someone great," the neighbors would say as they dropped by the house. The baby's mother did not disagree, but kept a sharper eye on them all the same, although she needn't have worried.
The neighbors knew a lot. But though they were very opiniated about the baby next door, the neighbors were also very good at keeping silent.
If you had asked them, they had know clue what you were talking about when you asked them about the quiet pleading and begging and shrieks that rang through the night from the house next door. They knew not why the boy never went to school, and rarely was seen outside. They never wondered whether he was a demon, sent down to stir up disquiet.
And they definitely did not know why the boy was always kept in the room with all the old antique dolls.
Absolutely no idea at all.
"You're so precious," the boy's mother murmured, stroking his cheek with one long fingernail. "The best in my collection."
The boy pressed himself harder against the dolls behind him, as if the very wall could swallow him up. The rows and rows of blank eyes looked back at him, either oblivious to his distress, or uncaring. The pale boy stayed silent, knowing what would happen if he made a sound. Even so, his wide eyes was shouting the message that he was screaming inside.
Help me!
But no one ever helped. No one ever cared.
The room was a literal jumble of antique dolls and rolls of cloth and bandages that he had found. The boy had found a small grey rabbit wandering outside with a broken leg, and had brought it inside and tried to heal it.
The rabbit had ended up dying.
Perhaps it was this incident that had lead the boy into being a doctor. This dividing feeling of wanting to heal something, yet at the same time, wanting to destroy it. Just, perhaps. Or perhaps it was a family thing, insanity inheirited from his mother (he had never met his father), or the love of doctoring learned from his grandfather.
But the neighbors, for all their evesdropping and lies were right about one thing: the baby did grow up to be someone great.
Just not in the way his mother wanted...
Or perhaps it was exactly what the mother wanted.
They weren't normal. Not in any sense. Not when they were born, not now, not ever, no matter how much they may wish it so.
And maybe that was what had brought them together. Maybe what had torn them away from other people had attracted them to one another.
Pity that they were on opposite sides of the struggle.
I just don't understand...
Why aren't I normal?