Saruhiko awoke with a worn futon beneath him and a damp sheet around him. He lurched into reality with a grab for the rusted metal bucket he had by his bed and dragged it to him violently with a screech of metal on stone.
He emptied his stomach with sore heaving muscles, his mouth left with a bitter taste though he could fell or taste neither. His stone room was illuminated by the light of the sunrise flowing in from the small rectangular cut hole high above him on the wall. The window let in fresh air and sunlight, along with the seeds that had taken root in the stone around him to create ivy patterns.
He was in the abandoned hospital that he had come to call home for the past two weeks. After Hinata's death he had run until his legs gave out, the two cases clutched tightly to his chest. His pursuers gave chase for a few miles but he lost them in the sewers. He hid inside a train car on the outskirts of town and traveled for two days without food or water on it until he reached Shizume City.
It had been pure coincidence that he found himself smack dab in the home of the Kings he was created to kill, half wondering if it was why his pursuers had given up chase. Perhaps they expected him to fufill his duty, but he was not going to give them the satisfaction after all they had taken from him.
Hinata's parting words haunted him on an endless loop, ringing through his head from dawn until dusk, ridding him of all other thoughts.
"You're cold Saru! You're heart is frozen!"
It was driving him mad.
He dragged himself from the futon and stood on shaky legs, he was dressed in the same white outfit smeared with all sorts of things that had faded into tie dye patterns from his vigorous washing. His room was a vault, or perhaps just a very well defended closet. It was empty save the futon and dirty blanket, the vomit filled rusty bucket and his case of Arsinoth, the walls made of stone or pale concrete but the door solid steel with a metal bar for a latch. He lifted the bar and pushed open the door, letting the room air out, and began his day.
He was in an abandoned hospital, on the edge of the bay and surrounded by brush and encroaching trees from the forest that extended from one of Shizume's many city parks. There were no windows, gaping holes in the foundation and cats having found a home in the grim and filth.
Saruhiko smelled the druggie's stench before he heard the bottle knocking about upstairs. He went rigid, after all that was where he had put Hinata's case of Arsinoth. It had less in it than his own, because his contained half of Seiko's, but the sight of it made him throw up what little he was able to cram into his unsettled stomach. That case was exactly a year of life, a year of Hinata's life he would never be able to live, and the fact he had still taken it after Hinata's death struck him like the death itself.
Was he still so heartless, so cold?
It seemed he was still as selfish as ever.
But now was not the time for such thoughts, and Saruhiko snuck up the concrete steps with a sense of foreboding in his bones. He crept down moss covered hallways and slipped into the only room he cared about: the source of the scent of the intruder.
The man was just a teenager, maybe twenty at the oldest but he dressed like a child. He wore baggy denim jeans that showed nearly all of his blue and white stripped boxers and a heavy dark green jacket that reeked of the perspiration that would come with wearing such a ridiculously heavy jacket in such hot weather. A black beanie was pulled over slicked back flaming red hair, and from how the male was hunched over the dirty counter top, Saruhiko could see the dragon tattoo on the back of his neck.
"What are you doing here?" In hindsight it's a dumb question to ask, seeing that the teen was searching through the cabinets with the clear intent to look for drugs to shoot, and the teen spun around quickly, clearly not expecting to be caught.
Saruhiko saw red.
Those are mine.
Those are mine.
Those are mine.
"THOSE ARE MINE!"
He couldn't see anything but the syringe in the vile man's hand, the syringe teetered so precariously in those dirty fingers. He was angry, furious, and overwhelmed with terror that the syringe might have once belonged to Hinata, that it was a day that Hinata could have lived but wasn't given the chance to.
He lunged forward like a madman, blinded to reason and having forgotten all the studies he had learned. He was unable to call forth his martial arts, too consumed by the sudden hate overflowing from his heart. He wanted these people to die, he wanted him to die because he threatened to take that which was most precious to him.
He lunged at the man and received a mouthful of blood. An explosion that sounded like that of squished fruit, a wet meaty sound akin to the times he had spent on a metal table. His anger vanished as soon as it had come, and he stared in horror at the mess of what used to be a human being. Pulsing organs and viscous tissue lay everywhere, blood dripping noisily from cabinet and tables and giving the room a sickening paint job.
Saruhiko was in shock, unsure of what had just transpired, he looked down at himself and found himself drenched in blood from head to toe. He spat out gobs of blood, unsure if it was his own, and methodically picked chips of bone from his shirt and arms. He stumbled over to the blood splattered sink and began to clean himself with an old mold covered dish rag. His mind was still stuttering, the gears trying to turn but stuck in stiff mud.
He looked up, faced with his bloody visage in the dirty mirror in front of him. In horror he stumbled backwards, his back hitting the table behind him, clattering old beakers and causing a sudden rain of blood off the side. He had killed before, done it with the thought that he was going to be stuck under those men's thumbs for the rest of his life-that he had no choice but to kill to survive.
But here that hadn't been the case.
And yet he had used it, he knew he had.
The power to kill Kings.
He had never used it before, but he could feel an unseen power lurking beneath his soul. And here he had taken away a life despite having been able to deal with the situation in a different way. Tears formed in his eyes and spilled down his blood stained face.
"I...I really am cold..." He whimpered, clenching his fists in a way he knew would draw blood. He left the room in a daze, trying to figure out how to clean away all the blood and guts, all the while trying to keep his head on straight. Tears blurred his vision, and he felt like scum.
"Oh God...I want to die."
In the wake of his murder, Saruhiko had gone mad. He locked himself in his room for weeks upon end, only leaving to tear open a cat or relieve himself in the bushes outside. He had stopped crying after the first week, stopped trying to scrub the blood away from the lab by the second, and by the time a month had passed he had lost the will to live.
Curled up on his mattress he tried to overdose himself on Arsinoth in hopes of ending his life, instead falling into a four day long coma that did nothing but leave him blind for hours after awakening. He wondered if he should find a new place to live since the blood stains weren't coming out, the small intestines had gotten lodged in the ceiling tiles and he couldn't find anything high enough to stand on to attempt to pull the rotting organ down.
He didn't know where he could possibly go, didn't know if he even cared anymore. He started to hallucinate in his nutrient and sleep deprived state of grieving, Seiko and Kazuo would appear in the empty halls and stare at him silently, Komoro Honshu would stand at the top of stairwells and grin down at him. Hinata never showed, and for that Saruhiko was infinitely thankful for.
Until one day, he was sure he saw the boy stumbling outside under a dark and stormy sky. Saruhiko was torn between felling like putting a bullet in his brain and running after the retreating figure, and finally he himself found the courage to dart from his abandoned sanctuary and out under a sky promising an oncoming storm. He bare feet sunk in mud as he raced after the boy, the outline so familiar and in his mind's eye all he could see was Hinata.
He didn't care that his clothes were stained in pink and brown from the blood that refused to be scrubbed out, didn't care that he looked like he came straight out of a zombie flick with his malnourished appearance and wildly bloodshot eyes. He didn't care that he was crying, didn't know because he couldn't feel it, and he didn't care that was chasing a hallucination into the woods of the city park.
It was only until the figure stopped to rest beside a thick tree did he realize his mistake. This boy's hair was auburn, his eyes a warm brown, his skin a nice light tan, and his clothes fit baggier than anything Hinata would have worn. No, the light pink eyes, the fair skin with beauty mark beneath his eye, his beutiful cropped black hair was gone and with it his resolve.
Saruhiko slumped into mud a ways away, going boneless against the side of a tree. He had felt such elation, such longing at the sight of his long lost love or whatever Hinata had been to him, but alas it was nothing but an illusion. The boy, upon futher examination, was the same age as him, around twelve years old, and his face was smeared with tears.
"Oka-san..." the boy whimpered, rubbing the tears from his eyes with dirty fists. Saruhiko just stared at the boy blankly, unable to find it in himself to care that the boy was lost when he himself was so very lost. He felt like lightning could strike him down at that moment and he wouldn't protest in the slightest, and in that he found shame.
Hinata would hate him for being so careless, for wanting to die when he himself had been denied the right to live. He watched as they boy stumbled away, crying out for his mother and his sister and the rest of his cries were drowned out by the sudden rolling of thunder. The crashing sound of lightening striking nearby was enough to drag Saruhiko from his collapsed stupor, and he pulled himself up with sluggish movements.
There was a church nearby, nestled in the sparse forest of the city park, an abandoned establishment that had gone under after an Anti-Christian movement in Shizume that gained quite a bit of publicity. Now the trashed and graffiti structure with a ceiling full of rotting holes was a haven for the homeless, but as fall had begun to melt into winter, the homeless fled for a more insulated building and so it would be empty for Saruhiko. He was thankful the homeless had encroached further into the city and had left his tainted abode alone, or else he would really be pressed to find a new place to live.
He trudged with no real purpose towards the defaced building, a part of him not caring if he got utterly soaked in the soon to be falling rain. He pulled open the heavy wooden door and was met with a waft of dank musty air. Inside there were two rows of pews, some smashed and toppled over, the stained glass adoring the walls was shattered and fractured, the floor littered with bags of chips and dead leaves, and the only thing untouched in the dismantled church was the marble alter that stood at the top of wooden steps.
As soon as the door closed behind him with a resounding thud, Saruhiko felt lightheaded and dizzy. It was probably because he hadn't eaten in six days or had any water in four, but it could have also been because he was utterly broken. Outside lightning flashed and was followed immediately by crashing thunder, the remnants of stained glass sparking into vibrant color for an instant before resuming their dull appearance. Wind whistled loudly through the holes in the building, the frigid air permeating through his damp mud soaked clothes but he ignored the chill he couldn't feel. Rain drummed heavily on the roof and came in through the holes, adding to the mold riddled atmosphere.
Saruhiko heard someone laughing.
He looked up blearily from where he stood in front of the door and stared at Seiko from where she sat perched on a splintered pew, her head a ruined mess and her laughter gargling blood. Her shrill choking laughter was too much to listen to and he clapped his hands over his ears and stumbled forward, if only to get away from the cackling corpse. Instead he bumped into Kazuo's bullet ridden corpse, intestines spilling from a gash in his abdomen and his eyes like flint.
"You didn't protect her." His voice was raspy, the sound of something lodged within his throat, most likely a bullet. Saruhiko shrieked, skirting around the corpse with his limbs tucked in tight, something in the back of his mind saying that he shouldn't have been able to feel a hallucination.
He teetered side to side as he stared at the altar with an open mouth and outstretched hands. "Hinata..." he whimpered, the feminine boy sitting cross legged on the altar with a smile on his lips, blood matting either sides of his temples. His knees suddenly buckled and he crawled through the filth with stars in his eyes, staring at Hinata like he was the sun himself.
He dully registered someone grabbing at him, a worried voice that sounded strange to him-like he was underwater, but all he cared about was getting to Hinata. He made it up the altar steps, leaning on an elbow to reach out further to the boy who continued to smile at him serenely and unchanging, stretching as far as his joints would allow, because if he could just brush the hem of Hinata's pants he would be saved.
He would be forgiven.
But before he could do so he was put into a headlock, yanked back so fast he was choking on air, and tears spilled from his eyes as he screamed out profanities and beat at his captor weakly. He turned around viciously, squirming in the person's hold, and his face contorted in horror at the sight of Komoro Honshu grinning at him. "Dying is all you're good for!" Seiko shrieked behind the wicked scientist's shoulder- "Freak! Whore! Worthless thing!" Kazuo chimed.
"I hate you, Saru, you and your heart of ice." Saruhiko whipped around to stare in horror at the altar, at the corpse of Hinata that began rotting before his eyes. By the time his eyes rolled and lolled from his socket, Saruhiko found himself sinking into Komoro Honshu's arms as he fainted into oblivion.
Saruhiko awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling, the scent of antiseptic and medical equipment flooding his sense of smell and causing panic to flare within him. He thought of Komoro Honshu's grin as he writhed in his grasp, of Hinata's corpse rotting on the altar, and bolted upright from the cot in which he lay. "Relax" said a voice and Saruhiko suddenly realized he was in a small clinic, test and beakers lining selves, a microwave in the corner, an examining table in the middle, his cot far to the wall.
And there was a blonde man standing in a lab coat in the doorway, piercing green eyes and a crooked smile. "You were saying all sorts of weird things back in that church, totally tripping out, little dude." Saruhiko squinted at the man, wearing glasses but unable to understand if the man was really a doctor or just an idiot.
"You were dehydrated and severely malnourished, causing delirium and hallucinations. I administered you fluids and nutrients, and you've been asleep for four hours, so go back to sleep." Saruhiko grit his teeth and began to pull the tubes from his arms.
"Woah! Stop that, you're going to hurt yourself!"
Saruhiko shot the man a glare, freezing him from running to him, "Look I'm thankful for what you've done for me but I have things to do and places to be." He swung his legs over the side of the bed, "I have something to get but I'll be back in a few hours, leave the bed empty for me."
He stalked passed the man without another word, and the doctor didn't chase after him. It wasn't that he had anything against the man in particular, more that he just detested doctors in general.
He retrieved the two cases of Arsinoth and stalked back to the underground doctor's clinic, keeping the cases behind him while he let the man reinsert the tubes. "So what's your name?" asked the doctor, eying the cases the boy kept behind his back for safe keeping. "I think I should know your's first." Saruhiko quipped back, reaching back with one hand to keep tabs on the cases that meant his life.
The doctor smiled, though Saruhiko questioned it geniality.
"Nagare Hisui."
