Seven Days of Falling

a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi

chapter eight
"Leaving Hope"


Masuyo caressed his cheek where the man had struck him, and her fingertips felt raw against the freshly-bruised skin. "It would serve you well to do as you're told from now on," she said.

"Why didn't you stop him?" asked Kouta.

She frowned and withdrew her hand. "It wasn't my place."

"He would have listened to you."

"I don't know about that."

"You just stood by and let it happen."

"So did you," remarked Masuyo, but at his pained expression, she continued more gently, "But don't dwell on it. Better to just relax and accept that there are some things you can't change."

She handed him a cup of water, and when he brought the rim of the cup to his mouth he realized that his hands were trembling. He tried to focus on the sweet taste of the liquid sliding down his throat, to allow it to calm him in the way that it always did, but today that was proving more difficult than before. The scene he had witnessed between the man and the boy continually repeated itself in its mind, along with images of places and things he could not ever remember seeing before.

His body was tense from stress and exhaustion and his mind was foggy from lack of sleep. He had a headache.

When he handed the cup back to her, Masuyo said, "I've spoken to an acquaintance of mine who says that the jewels you carry are rare and expensive. If you'll loan me one of them, I can take it to him to confirm the exact price."

Kouta's hand few to where the stones rested against his chest, and he stared at Masuyo with tired, uncomprehending eyes.

"I'll bring it back to you with the estimate, and you can decide whether or not you'd like me to sell it. If the price is high enough, you can use the money to leave."

His eyes widened. "Leave?" He lifted one of the stones from around his neck and held it in front of his face, looking into his tiny reflection once again.

He had thought he wanted to leave. But if he left, would the confusing things he imagined become a reality for him, then?

"And you'll give it back to me?" he asked.

"Yes," she said reassuringly as she took the necklace from his fingers. "I'll have it for you the next time we see each other. There's no point in worrying, Kouta."

But he could not help it—from that moment on, he only worried more.

—.—

There was a small structural weakness in the base of the wall of Kouta's cell. When he was returned to isolation and discovered the series of cracks and breaks in the brittle stone, he seated himself in the dusty corner and began to dig. He picked and scraped at the stones with his bare hands, and when he managed to break off a small chuck, he used that as a tool to work more efficiently. When he was tired, he curled up against the wall and stared into the darkened corridor.

He felt oddly bare with only one stone around his neck, and awaited his next visit with Masuyo if only to get the other one back, but no matter how hard he worked or how long he waited or how intensely he stared at the empty corridor, he never heard the sound of grinding stone at the end of the hall that signified the opening of the door—and so the guards never came.

Kouta dug until his hands were raw and his fingers bled. He unraveled the bandages on his right arm and left them lying in a pile on the floor. The tattoo covering the length of his arm held the resemblance of some flaming creature, but its image caused no memories to resurface in his mind.

He had felt of the eye on his head, could feel it pulsing against his skull, and wondered if it was somehow causing strange images to appear in his mind.

After an indeterminable period of digging at the wall, his fingertips stung and dripped small pools of blood on the floor, yet the cracks in the wall were not significantly larger than they had been when he started.

Kouta gathered up the pile of small rocks he'd managed to break free and walked to the front of his cell. Singling out the largest, sharpest stones of the bunch, he leaned back, and applied all his weight into throwing one of them through the metal bars and into the cell across from him.

The stone issued a resounding crack as it hit bare wall, and so Kouta threw another, and another, and—

There was thump and a sudden cry of pain.

"Come out where I can see you!" Kouta said.

There was a moment of nothing, and then a small voice answered him: "Leave me alone!"

Kouta threw another stone, and once again it hit its intended target.

"Stop," said the voice, but rather than sounding authoritative or angry, the tone was one of hopelessness and distress. "Please," it said. "I'm tired of being hit. . . ."

Something about those words permeated Kouta's confused and empty heart, and he released the stones he had been holding, letting them fall to the ground at his feet. "Let me see your face."

For a long time, the voice did not respond. Then there came a shuffling of bare skin on the floor, and a small face appeared through the bars of the other cell.

It was a young girl.

Her hair was blonde and matted, her clothes ratty, and her face smeared with dirt.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She blinked back at him, her large, empty eyes clouded with anxiety, but she said nothing.

"Say something!" he said.

She flinched and peered through the bars down the corridor between them, as though fearing an intrusion. When she turned back to him and spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, "You don't understand."

He twisted his face in confusion.

"Don't hurt yourself." Her words quiet and rushed, and Kouta followed her gaze to his bloody hands. "You'll only make it worse." She turned from him then, and Kouta could see that she was shivering beneath the too-large clothing hanging over her emaciated body.

"Wait," he said, as she walked to the back of her cell. She paused only briefly before disappearing once again into the darkness.

Kouta looked down at his hands again, which had begun to sting quite badly. Every exhalation he made materialized as a puff of fog in the air in front of his face, yet he did not feel cold, at least in the physical sense.

He was alone again.

—.—

Kouta continued to scrape away at the hole in the wall, despite the girl's advice not to. It hurt, and his hands were raw and bloody, but he was past caring. A strange sense of emptiness filled both his inner and outer world, and a dark longing for something with which to fill it. He had formed no realistic plan and had stopped attempting to decipher his feelings and actions. The fact was that he had no idea what he was doing, in any sense.

He had visited Masuyo twice since giving up one of his gems necklaces to her, and she had yet to return it to him. Each time he inquired about it, she brusquely told him that demon she had given it to had needed to confirm its price with other sources and the appraisal would take longer than expected. Her short, unhelpful answers and soft caresses left Kouta conflicted: She left him feeling uncertain and scared, but he was beginning to crave those feelings like he craved time with her. He hated himself for feeling so desperately lost and lonely, and for not being able to deny the pleasure of her companionship even if deeply-rooted instincts cautioned him against it.

"You're nothing to her," the blonde girl whispered to him one day, staring at him wide-eyed through the bars of her cell for the second time in their acquaintance. "No matter what she says to you, you're nobody here."

The weight of those words and the flimsy whisper she uttered them in made Kouta angry enough to explode in a snarl of emotion, and he gripped the cell bars hard in his fists as he filled the entire corridor with his roar. When he was finished, the girl was gone. She did not come out again, and Kouta did not expect her to. Hot metal burning on his palms, he retreated to his own dark corner, collapsing on the blanket the guards had given him. He fell asleep furious and awoke feeling empty and complacent once again.

What felt like an eternity passed, and at the end of it, he found himself once again with Masuyo.

The first thing he said to her was, "Give my necklace back to me."

"I've been informed that you have been trying to break out of your cell," she replied. She didn't sound angry, but Kouta knew he had done something wrong, and so he apprehensively drank the cup of liquid she handed him, using the time to consider a response. "Two of the bars were melted almost all the way through," she said. "From what the guards tell me, it is a miracle that they remained in-tact."

He swallowed the last of the contents of the cup and licked his lips, wondering vaguely at the taste left on his tongue, which was sweeter than usual by two-fold. Masuyo was looking directly into his eyes, her gaze penetrating and probing, and Kouta found himself lost for words. "I wasn't trying to—"

Masuyo suddenly took his face in her hands. "How did you do it?" she asked, a desperation in her voice that sounded all-too-familiar to Kouta's ears. "Where did you come from? Where did you get those gems?"

"Those are the things I've been asking you," Kouta said.

She ran her thumb across his cheek. "How is it you are so warm?" she asked him, an almost mournful gleam passing over her dark eyes before she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.

Her lips were cold, making the brisk gesture seem almost passive. Kouta accepted it, but did nothing in return. That feeling of calmness was threatening to overtake him again, and as Masuyo ran her hands downward past his chest, the sensation of her fingers on his skin felt distant and faraway—in his mind it almost seemed as though he wasn't actually experiencing any of it. There was a tug on his waist and, looking down, it registered in his mind that she had loosened his belts.

He heard something fall to floor and realized he was no longer holding the empty cup.

The next moment, he was on his back on the cot and she was straddling him. Looking up at her face, he was struck with a strange sense of familiarity, but despite his state of relaxation, it only served to make his chest more heavy with loneliness and longing.

"Stop," he said, but the command was half-hearted at best.

"You want this."

Kouta was sure that he didn't. "This isn't supposed to happen," he told her. "Someone is . . . is . . . supposed to be here."

Masuyo paused and looked down at his face. "What?" she asked flatly.

"She's going to take me back. She . . . she. . . ." But Kouta could not remember. What he was saying didn't even make sense to him, so it couldn't possibly make sense to anyone else. "She . . . I think she looked like you."

"You're hallucinating."

"But I—"

"No one is taking you anywhere!" she snapped.

"I think I can remem—"

"Be quiet now," she said.

"But—"

"Quiet." She pushed her hand against his groin, and only at the rush of pleasure that her actions produced did Kouta realize the intensity of his arousal. He groaned softly as her hand slid inside his pants and grabbed hold of him, all other preoccupations leaving his mind. "It's time you learned what is expected of you."

Masuyo's hands were freezing, but he thrust into her grasp anyway, blindly lifting his hips into her touch. His entire body felt numb except for the dull ache of lust. He wondered vaguely what he was doing, but he had never known—ever since he had met her, he had not known anything useful except that he was here and there was nothing he could do about it. Every twitch of his muscles felt empty, and he knew that all of it was wrong. His mind was muddled in confusion, but his body didn't care.

He didn't really feel this. He didn't feel any of it.

Vaguely, he thought of the cup of liquid—water?—and something in his mind flickered. Flickered, and that was all.

He made to lift his torso off the cot and reach for her, whining in frustration when he was pinned back down. He grabbed at the front of her kimono, fingers pulling back the material and just grazing her bare skin before a sudden sharp pain broke through the haze of desire that had been blocking out his thought processes.

"Don't touch me!"

Her shriek rang in his ears as he held his hand to his cheek, and he stared up at her wide-eyed, stunned at having been hit, but even more-so at the object which was now hanging in his view.

"My necklace," he murmured.

Masuyo looked down, surprise taking the place of rage in her eyes. She let go of him, using both hands to tuck the stone matter-of-factly into her kimono before moving her hands once again to his pants.

Something inside Kouta wrenched and squirmed, a disgusting feeling bubbling up inside him, threatening to boil over. "You lied to me," he told her. "You said you didn't have it!"

"I suppose I did," she said, her tone far too flippant for his liking.

"Give it back to me."

"It's mine now."

"No!" he shouted, and for a split second she actually looked shocked at the outburst. "Give it back!"

He clawed at her clothing, grabbing hold of the cord around her neck and struggling to see past her mass of hair in order to remove it. She lifted one of her hands in the air and made to smack him again, but he easily caught her wrist mid-swing.

"Let go," she snarled.

"Get off of me," he shot back. "Return what's mine." He pulled at the necklace, willing to break the cord if it meant having the item back in his possession, but instead of ending up with the gem held victoriously in his hand, the next moment he was curled up on his side on the cot, clutching his groin and gasping at the agonizing pain there.

"You clearly don't understand your situation, Kouta. I have the power here."

Kouta thought that he might cry, but he used every ounce of willpower he had to fight back the urge. Through his blurring vision, he saw Masuyo withdraw her knee and climb off the cot.

"N-not . . . fair. . . ."

"Of course it isn't," was all she said. "Nothing in this life is."