Part 10: Bleeding Out
Rin stood with his eyes closed against the onslaught of hot shower water pouring down on him, drenching his naked body in its fervent rain.
It felt good after a hard week of sulking in his own dirt and grime beneath his bed covers. The warm water was soaking his hair to a solid black that stuck closely against his skull, revealing his pointed ears. He brought his hands to his head and pushed his fingers through the dark wet locks, sluicing the water from his hair and splashing down into the drain at his feet.
Baubles of water like small marbles clung to his lashes like tears. They fell once they became too big and heavy, rolling down his cheeks and collecting at his chin to continue their descent and join the rivulets plummeting down his chest, back, and thighs.
For once, his tail was swinging free from its usual position at his chest and waist. Rin had subconsciously relaxed enough to drop his guard and allow the extra appendage to unwind from around his torso. It felt good to let go like this, he thought. He'd been so worked up these past few days, winding himself into a tight ball of stress what with Shiemi and the others…
It was mostly Shiemi, though. Ever since that night—he couldn't remember how many days ago it was; he'd lost track of time and didn't care to know just how many days he had stayed a pathetic mess, nor did he intend to mark out a day and recall the rape of one of his good friends, and so forgotten it remained—Rin hadn't been able to stop thinking of her. How much he had screwed up. How he wanted to make it better…to make it up to the girl he cared so much for.
She wasn't doing good. Last night had been the most recent report he'd gotten of her—after Shura had barged in on account of Yukio and beaten some sense into him (and he would be eternally grateful for this). The female Exwire was subject to trial if she didn't get her act together, Yukio had told him. She was technically neglecting her duties as Exwire for the True Cross Organization and had taken an over-extended amount of leave-time. This was as good as desertion in the eyes of the Council. She had come too far in the program for her to quit now and turn back. She'd taken an oath, just like the others, and she would be held to it—just like the others, no matter how justified the cause.
She was being watched and condemned like a criminal…just like him.
Rin slammed a fist into the back wall of the shower stall, feeling a square tile crack under the pressure, and he felt a small surge of satisfaction. Yet this was not enough to dull the fire burning inside of him.
Shiemi doesn't deserve this, Rin thought. Maybe I do because I've done stupid things. But she hasn't. It makes no sense. It's not fair!
While she wasn't the brightest or strongest girl he'd ever met, Shiemi was the most pure-hearted of them all. She kept them all in line—she kept them together like one big family. She saw the best in everyone and forgave perhaps a little too easily, but they all had their faults, and if that was hers, that was not a hard burden to carry. That wasn't so bad.
She's lost that innocence, though.
The thought came unbidden to him. It was unwanted and unwelcome.
He growled low in his chest—a real growl unlike the fake ones humans were accustomed to making that sounded forced. Rin was a half-demon, and he could be intimidating even in small ways like roaring a lion's roar if need be. He was part beast, after all.
He mourned the loss of Shiemi's naivety, and not because it fit idealizations of what the "fair sex" were supposed to be like, but because it suited her. She had been happy that way, and her innocence had been a wise sort of thing that rubbed off on the rest of them, curing them from their own self-despair and darkness where no weapons or spells or even magic for that matter could. It was so rare to see such purity at an older age, and it seemed a shame to shatter it.
But now it had been corrupted. Now Shiemi was the one drowning in her agony, and who would be there to save her?
I will, Rin vowed. I will bring her back. I will save Shiemi, no matter what. No matter what it takes, I will get her back.
He shut the shower off and stepped out of the steamy stall onto a soft mat to dry off the last of the water droplets from his body. His long, serpentine tail automatically curled back around his chest as he wrapped the towel around his waist.
Maybe I can't give her back her innocence or fix her so that she goes back to being the way she was, he thought grimly.
But I will bring you back, Shiemi. I promise.
Yukio had visited Shiemi that morning, giving her the news of Rin's soon-to-be arrival later that afternoon in order for her and her mother to prepare themselves for company, as well as for the girl to mentally and emotionally steal herself.
Rin swallowed nervously as he and his brother walked up the dry dirt path to the Moriyama residence. They moved at an even, reasonable pace, but to Rin, the distance from them to the house seemed to stretch on forever.
The half-demon had dressed slowly after his shower, drawing out the interval between the time they were to depart for their visit and his remaining time to get ready psychologically for the confrontation.
Who said this was going to be easy?
He glanced to his side at the garden in the back of the house, expecting to see the vibrant plants and stout foliage that he'd grown accustomed to in all his frequent visits to the Moriyama place.
Rin's eyes were wide, taking in the bland landscape of the abandoned garden that Shiemi had seemed to spend all of her time in. Her once pride-and-joy was now a desolate, decrepit wasteland, dried up and dull in color.
Her flowers had drooped low on their stems, their leaves and petals lying in withered brown piles like corpses on the battlefield. The vegetables had rotted in deflated shells of decayed flesh, and the grass had dried to a brittle sand color.
Shiemi's favorite place in the whole world looked ravaged and empty. The scene looked almost apocalyptic.
The younger Okumura, noticing his brother's sudden hesitation, stopped in his tracks to stare at Rin's forlorn stationary form. It was the stillest he'd ever seen his brother be…besides the last week of refusing to get out of bed. The older twin could be a statue.
"Rin," Yukio called.
Rin turned his head away from the garden's ugly state, moving his gaze to stare some place off in the distance beyond Yukio's watchful eyes, not really seeing. Before he caught up to his more responsible brother, he bent down and plucked a yellow dandelion from the edge of the dirt path, pocketing it. Rin matched Yukio's pace as they trudged up the steps to the Moriyama shop entrance.
Yukio knocked a few times before Shiemi's mother answered.
Rin held his tongue from speaking his troubled thoughts aloud at the woman's appearance as she moved to the side to allow them to pass into the building.
Looking at her, the half-demon's eyes raked over the wrinkles that seemed to have formed fresh just this week—he didn't think she'd had them before. Her cheeks seem to droop over hollows in the flesh. Bags adorned the underneath of her eyes from insomnia, starting to tint a mauve color. Her lids were heavy, obscuring half of her blood-shot eyes. Her hair appeared thinner and patches were missing, as if she'd torn them out. All in all, it looked like there was a tangled mess of a wispy gray nest atop her head. She seemed to have aged fifteen years.
"How is she?" Yukio asked, taking a seat in a chair she offered to him at the table.
"The same." This appeared to be the obligatory response.
The woman's eyes swiveled to stare sharply at Rin. Her look was so much of that of a hard one, the half-demon thought she was glowering at him. Only until the corner of her creased mouth quirked up in a grim half-smile was he able to relax.
"She says your name sometimes," she said, watching his reaction carefully. Her voice was raspy and coarse and thick with drink.
Inwardly, Rin flinched, feeling a strange mixture of relief and trepidation. What did it mean that she called for him in her sleep? Outwardly, he blushed, but kept schooled his face to remain calm.
"May he see her?" Yukio asked her.
She nodded. "She's in her room. Same place she's been this whole week."
Rin thought he saw contempt and blame in her expression aimed at him, and yet there was a sort of desperation, a hope that he could possibly fix this, that he could cure her beloved daughter who seemed so lost.
Even as the dejected teen left the room to Yukio and Shiemi's mother, he still felt her eyes boring into his back, never leaving him once, even as he shut the door behind him.
Rin found her in the little apartment her grandmother had occupied close to the garden before she'd died.
He'd opened the door as quietly as possible, only wide enough to allow his passage before closing it just as softly behind him.
The room was dark, the only source of light a small candle on her nightstand. Its flickering glow cast strange shadows on the walls that moved with the wick's wavering flame.
The half-demon tiptoed feather-light across the floor to her bedside, his eyes on the large, misshapen mass in the middle of the bundles of blankets forming a safe nest around her on the bed.
"Shiemi," he said. "It's Rin. It's me."
The covers made no move. She didn't speak.
His knees brushed the edge of the bed as he leaned forward, his hand hovering over the lump that he knew to be Shiemi's huddled form.
"Shiemi?" Rin tugged gently at the blankets hiding her.
"Don't touch me," she hissed, the noise muffled beneath her layers. "Go away."
His brow furrowed and Rin frowned down at her. He felt his anger flare for a moment before dulling under the guilt and self-loathing. Determined as ever, however, and undaunted, he reached over and yanked the covers back.
Shiemi lay there before him, clad in an old gray T-shirt and black shorts that were obviously too big for her; the drawstrings had been wrapped twice around her hips and knotted in front with still some length to spare. If he had to guess, he'd say they were her father's old clothes that had been left behind in an old closet or chest somewhere.
The shirt and shorts were soiled with her grime and ripe sweat. He could smell the bitter scent of her body odor. Her hair was greasy with the natural oils secreted from the body, and it was knotted in a yellow haze about her head. Her bangs hung in her face, outgrowing their usual length level with her eyebrows.
What horrified Rin the most were the angry, hideous red scratches and sores decorating her arms and legs and neck. They were raw and raised like welts on her otherwise pale skin. The majority of them were fresh and bleeding steadily. Her sheets were spotted with old and bright cherry droplets. A small collection of them formed a larger stain that looked like a puddle, partially hidden beneath her crumpled body.
A jolt went through him when he realized the wounds were self-inflicted.
He was rendered speechless for a moment as Shiemi squirmed on her bed, fighting to curl into an even tighter ball. She whimpered.
That caught his attention. He sat on the edge of the mattress next to her, warily watching her. Her sores were chafing and rubbing against the blankets as she struggled to hide herself from him, and Rin mentally cringed when he thought of how irritating and painful that must be, but she seemed to be paying that no mind at all.
"Go away," she snarled. "I don't want you here. Go away, Rin."
"No," he said, his voice hard. He snatched her wrist, gripping it gently, but held it with an unyielding iron strength that came naturally to the spawn of Satan.
"Don't touch me!" the blonde girl shrieked, trying to pull her arm away from the bastard. "Don't touch me!"
"You have to look at me first," Rin said. "Look at me. Look me in the eye, and then I'll let you go."
Shiemi paused in her thrashing, seeming to contemplate his words. Grudgingly, she lifted her head to meet his gaze.
He held in a gasp at the state of her face. It was simultaneously pale and splotched, shiny ruby red around the eyes, which were swollen, giving the impression that she was squinting at him. Raw tear tracks had scraped pink lines down her cheeks and to her jaw.
Rin kept his eyes even with hers. He swallowed a hard swallow before saying, "See? That wasn't so bad, was it?"
He offered her a grin, but she was staring down at their hands, his still wrapped around her wrist.
"Oh, right," he said, quickly releasing her. He rubbed at the back of his neck sheepishly. His fingers pulled at the short hairs at his nape, tugging the roots absent-mindedly.
The half-demon was unsure of how to proceed. What should he say? How could words make any of what she'd been through okay?
So it both surprised and relieved him when she was the first one to break the heavy silence.
"Rin," she said.
His eyes found her face, which was sad now, the anger it had harbored earlier had given way to a sort of hollow melancholy. Her look was panged when she met his stare.
She was shivering slightly despite the hot June day. Her hands rubbed at her gashed arms. The flesh turned scarlet under her vigorous touch.
"What do I do?" Shiemi's owlish green eyes stared at him, wide as saucers.
"I don't know," he admitted, breaking eye contact self-consciously. "I'm sorry."
"You were always smarter than me," she confided, not seeming to have heard his whispers. Or she had outright ignored them. "You always knew what to do. You always pulled through for us. You worked so hard."
Rin blushed. She really thought so? Was she proud of him? Did she really look up to him like that?
He threw her an abashed look. She didn't seem to notice, her thoughts too far away from him now. Her eyes were distant, though they were aimed at him.
"You and Yuki-chan both. You're both so strong and smart and always seem to be so far ahead of me that I'm sprinting to keep up. That's why I wanted to train with you, so I could catch up and get better. I wanted to be able to stand up for myself…"
She trailed off, but Rin knew exactly where her thoughts were taking her to. He could feel a physical pain, like a hand that punched through his forcefully and wrapped a vise-grip around his heart and clenched and squeezed, just by looking at her.
Because he knew that although she'd fought so hard in order to make a name for herself and gain higher ground—although she'd fought so hard in order to become stronger and more powerful…it hadn't been enough. She'd lost her battle against Amaimon and paid a heavy price. She'd been chastened not with broken bones or ruptured organs or missing limbs, but mental and emotional scars she'd carry for the rest of her life. She'd lost her innocence and her pride to a stranger who did not love her. The Earth King had humiliated her in his own way.
Anguish and guilt stormed his gut, realizing he'd taken her for granted in all this time. Her optimistic attitude, her genteel, her compassion, her tender innocence. Even when she'd learned of his true family lineage, she hadn't been this abrasive or this tragic. She'd at least retained her personality then.
He could barely recognize her now.
"Shiemi," Rin began, unsure of really what to say. He wracked his brain for the right words that would reassure her. He wasn't a hero. He didn't know the answer to everything. He wasn't smart or calm like his brother Yukio. He was brash, ill-tempered, quick to anger, and quite the moron, according to some. He was putting his heart on the line, as well as Shiemi's, and the thought sobered him. Yes, maybe he could get through this. Both of them. Together.
Rin took a long breath in and exhaled. He would tell her that he would be there for her, and he would do his best to help her through this and give her time to heal.
Instead, he blurted out, "I love you."
Well, fuck you, too.
Bleeding Out by Imagine Dragons