Disclaimer: I do not own Beyblades…now on with the fic!
Chapter 2: Resemblance
Light footsteps padded towards the source of the noise. The sound of a baby crying drifted from a closed door at the end of the hallway. Slowly, a beam of light crept out from under it and the room, inside, went pitch black. A pale hand cautiously turned the doorknob and proceeded into the room.
The crying sounded louder now.
While searching for the cause of the noise, a dark cloud appeared out of nowhere and phased through him in a rush to get out the door. The cloud washed over his pale skin causing the fine hair on his arms to stand on end. As he pondered on where the cloud might've come from, he noticed something odd about the room. It was silent.
The crying had stopped.
Suddenly, the room filled with a bright light, revealing a small crib in the middle of the room, partially covered by a curtain hanging from the ceiling. Dread took over every thought in his mind as he got closer and closer to the crib. Then, as if an unidentified force was controlling him, his arms reached out towards the crib. However, as he was about to pull back the blankets that covered the silent baby, his eyes snapped open
His breath caught in his throat when he thought about what was in that crib. Kai had always woken up with that dream fresh in his mind for as long as he could remember, even before his brother had told him that scary story. Kai believed that hearing it so frequently was why his nightmares continued to interrupt his siesta.
Apparently, the story was no ordinary tall tale, as occasionally used by parents to scare their children into submission with. It was a legend that'd been passed down for generations upon generations in their family. It was tradition to pass it down to younger Hiwataris, who would in turn pass it down to their children, their children's children, and so on. Tala often reminded him that their father used to repeat the story so often that their mother feared that Kai would be born with the tale tattooed on his forehead. Kai didn't remember much about his mother but hearing of such bizarre memories always brought her smiling face to mind.
Despite all this, telling someone about his dreams was out of the question. Another crazy person in the Hiwatari family was the last thing they needed.
Even though he knew it was just a dream, Kai couldn't stop his mind from wandering back to the baby. He knew the baby had been dead. He remembered seeing the condition of the baby's skin. It was the type of discolouration only suffocation could cause. The most awful part of the dream was seeing the infant's large blue eyes, wide from dying in a deranged state of terror. They seemed to stare up at him in silent accusation. It was all too much.
Thankful for waking up when he did, Kai scrambled out of his sleeping bag and checked the clock for the time.
The clock read 11:23pm.
Kai looked around only to find that he was the only person in the room. He checked the two doors across from him, hoping to find either Tala or Ozuma awake. The first room, where Ozuma normally resided in, was empty. 'Strange', he thought.
The second room revealed his older brother fast asleep under a large lump of sheets. Kai had to grin. The house was cold but not that cold. It was certainly an amusing sight. The sheets even seemed to be bobbing but Kai dismissed it as a result of his own fatigue. He was seeing things. Besides, Tala had his legs wide open. Maybe he was having a peculiar dream of some sorts. His expression sure said so. Shaking his head, Kai turned from the room.
"Fine, I'll go alone" He muttered, closing the door and continued walking down the hall.
He paused for a second as a dry cough escaped his throat. It felt like his mouth was stuffed with cotton. He was so thirsty!
Figuring that going through the private gallery was the fastest way to the kitchen, that's where Kai headed.
The truth is it wasn't really much of a gallery. It was more like a back hallway that hadn't been used by anyone, for years. The Hiwatari mansion is an antique, Victorian style residence valued at over 600 million dollars, U.S. It used to be a castle built some six or seven centuries ago. Every Hiwatari occupant found his or her own unique use for the massive manor. Because of this, it also carried quite a violent history.
For example, some time during the 17th century Queen Lativia Hiwatari created a chamber located in the basement portion of the mansion for the sole purpose of torture. Her room of torment, universally known as 'The Poke', had held prisoners during war, thieves, murderers and eventually her late husband Orlov Hiwatari. Long story short; Orlov was caught cheating on Lativia. The Queen was hurt but mostly angry, instantly ensuring a slow and agonizing death for her husband. Oh and as a little afterthought, the first thing Queen Lativia did was give cheating King Orlov her own personal twist on a classic male vasectomy. Enough said.
The years of the 1870's was the time when extreme chef Vitali Hiwatari took reign. Not only was he famous for his exceptional work in the kitchen, but he was also known to have the most wives in the history of royalty. Eighteen wives, nineteen wives, sometimes the number got as high as thirty-two. His first wife, Queen Sonja, wasn't too happy with the additional female members that were taking over her household. It was disgraceful how he made wives out of women as young as fifteen years old. He was also a bit of a mad man.
For years the Queen tried to ignore it but lately it had been getting worse. Bras and panties continued to shower the stairways after every one of her husband's Saturday night parties.
Half a decade later, she decided that enough was enough. She would leave him. She would take their only son, six-year-old Vidal, and move in with her sister, currently living in the Ukraine. She would ignore Vitali when he insisted that none of the women could bare him a child because in all those marriages they were required to have their tubes tied. She would forget she ever loved him.
Then in 1869, an exact 365 days before Vitali's cuisine hit big on the market, Queen Sonja and Vidal left without a word. No 'goodbye', no 'good luck' or even a lousy, 'It's for the best". Nothing at all.
The years that followed seemed to drag on for the King. It seemed that the more successful he became, the more unhappy he was. Suddenly the money held no meaning and neither did the twenty-plus wives he had in the house. Mysteriously, their numbers began to drop. Soon he was down to only thirteen wives.
During the hour he spent in front of the market place every morning promoting his cooking, Vitali often imagined he was someone else. Imagined that one day he would look into the crowd and see Sonja and Vidal smiling, proud to see what he'd accomplished in the past couple of years. During the hour he spent in front of the market place every morning promoting his cooking, Vitali was disappointed. He was becoming more miserable.
One maid reported that the King hardly slept at all. She was sometimes kept awake at night by distant screams coming from one of the larger kitchens downstairs. But every time she went to check, Vitali was quietly cooking away, dissolved in his work. He was always up in the kitchen cooking.
She also noticed that the more depressed Vitali grew, the more of his wives disappeared and the better his food became. Even stranger, he'd fired all of the kitchen staff so that he could be alone to cook and when invited to prepare food in front of the townspeople, he never allowed anyone to see how he prepared the meat. Vitali claimed to have secret recipes stored in a book he'd handwritten himself, safe inside the house.
Naturally, a reporter was able to bribe one of the remaining six wives. They found the secret recipe book. It contained the names of all the missing women and the various ways Vitali used to cook them. The only explanation Vitali offered after being taken into custody by the authorities was that he yearned for something different. He'd wanted to create food so good that people couldn't help but wonder, "Why haven't I come across this sooner?"
Kai understood how Vitali must have felt, generating success after success and having no one to appreciate it. Being loved one minute and hated the next. Of course Kai would never consider committing suicide, as Vitali had only six months after being charged with manslaughter. It always caused more pain to the loved ones that were thoughtlessly left behind.
'Enough of that', he thought. 'Now where is that passage?'
Knowing there were other kitchens, and ways to get to them, there was simply no point in using that particular path to get to the kitchen. However, Kai simply wanted an excuse to walk through the abandoned passageway.
The real reason Kai wished to go through that hallway was so that he could get a better look at his ancestors. Hearing those stories always made him wonder. Tala, worried as always, warned Kai about looking at figures of the past. Tala said things like "You may find out something you either don't want to know or shouldn't know". There were times when his brother's words resembled a threat but Kai thought nothing of it. Tala was merely concerned about his 'baby brother's'safety. Truth be told, Kai didn't know why he wanted to see the photos so badly either but it was an itch he'd been trying to scratch for days now.
On both sides of the corridor, past members of the Hiwatari family hung undisturbed on the wall. The gold frames surrounding them glittered whenever the scented candle in Kai's hand shone in their direction.
Kai watched in amazement as the eyes in the pictures on the wall seemed to morph all the way down the line. The first male in the Hiwatari family had eyes so dark they looked black. As the years went on, eye colour changed from black to a dark brown, to a light brown, to a mixture of reddish brown. There were a few reds, none matching his colour, and then…
Kai stood frozen, staring at the photos on the farthest end of the family gallery on the wall. It was a portrait of a man Kai seemed positive was his grandfather, even though the photo held a man nearing his late twenties.
The man had crimson eyes, dark and assessing. His skin colour was of a pale and slightly creamy complexion. The old-fashioned attire he sported looked of the highest quality and appearance. What spooked Kai out the most was the colour of the man's hair.
It was a soft blue in the front and a dark blue in the back, two-toned.
Kai's hands automatically shifted to the mass of blue on his head. If Kai didn't know any better, he'd say that the man in the portrait was hisfuture self. With a shake of his head, Kai told himself that the youth in the picture was simply his grandfather, hence the heavy resemblance.
The clock read 11:34pm
It's been a while since I last updated but I hope y'all will forgive me and enjoy this chapter…
Till next time,
-T-Bisqit