Even after starting school, Yuma continued to pull Yui into the garden for chores. Yuma could do two or three times as much work as she could in the same time, but she was still useful! After harvesting, the next step was to sort it all. Ruki would organize the pantry and make the final decisions about what would be canned or jellied or simply stored away, so all Yui had to do was make piles in the kitchen and larder.
She'd just finished bringing in an entire basket of snap peas when she heard Yuma roar:
"Those fucking assholes!"
The sound made her stomach drop in premonition. She hurried through the hallways and peered around the corner.
In the foyer, Yuma ran his hands through his sweaty hair. Ruki held his hand to his face in a similar gesture.
"Sow! C'mere!" Yuma spotted her and motioned her over with a jerk of his hand. "Now!"
Timidly, Yui entered. "Is something wrong..?" She pulled off her work gloves.
"One of the Sakamaki bastards got Azusa." Yuma spat. "He looks like shit. He probably didn't fight back, damn him!" Yuma vented his fury by punching one of the hallway walls.
Her hand flew to her mouth. "Oh no… Is he okay?"
Yuma snarled at her. "Did you hear me? NO, I said he looks like shit. They got his fucking face!"
Yui shrunk back. His face…?
Ruki turned on her and spoke seriously. "Azusa habitually resists treatment. You will fix him up."
The bathroom door was open, spilling fluorescent light into the hallway. Yui approached slowly.
The tiles were sprinkled with dark liquid, and she stepped around the spray of drops.
She found Azusa curled up in the corner with a black eye and hasty bandages on his face. The sloppy gauze was printed with bloody fingers and not enough to cover the colorful bruising and the ribbons carved into his cheeks.
She knelt down beside him. "Are you okay?"
He smiled, but it was strangely lifeless. "Of course…" He laughed. "It hurts… It's wonderful..." His knees were pulled up to his chest, so he unfolded them. "It's pretty, right?" He peeled back the bloodied gauze covering the mess.
They said she was a masochist. Ruki said she'd grown accustomed to suffering, like a trained animal. Azusa said, "we're the same." Sometimes, she wondered if they might be right about her, but…
Wasn't this too sad?
"Yui-san, are you crying…?" He leaned in, entirely forgetting about his face full of gore.
She shook her head. She ought to be frightened… but all she could feel was sorrow.
She quietly explained that Ruki sent her in to treat him. She didn't say Ruki once told her to stay away from him, and that he'd probably weighed the costs in his mind before sending her in. He was fighting Azusa's fixation on pain with his… strange kindness to her...
Azusa didn't argue. Perhaps he understood that he couldn't keep "friends" on his face? He pulled off his bloody shirt for her, revealing more bruised and scratched skin stretched thin over a ribcage and hip bones. Suddenly, Yui understood why Yuma fussed over Azusa's meals so often.
"Aren't they pretty? These bruises… like berries..." He rambled. "Yours, are too..." At her confused look, he reached out and moved her hair aside. "The wounds… on your neck. You have so many… from so many fangs..."
Yui covered them with her hands.
He paused, and squinted as if trying to see through fog. "Or...are you jealous...? Does it make you feel...strange, to see wounds on me… that aren't yours?"
Yui shook her head and got to work, pulling out supplies. She threw a towel on the bloodstained floor. It would need to be scrubbed and the blood stains might be hard to remove, but this would work for now.
"Ah. I wanted to tell you… Belle has a new family." Azusa leaned against the mirror, pressing the gauze against his cheeks. "A mother, a father, and a little girl..."
Her hands stilled inside the first aid kit. "The shelter contacted you?"
"No… but… They seem...nice. Big house. Belle has a yard to play in… ah…" Azusa revealed his bloody face again. He clutched the gauze like a security blanket. "Do you think she'll forget about us... if she has her new family…?" His pale eyes cast down.
"O-oh… I don't think so..." Yui worried her lip. "If the shelter didn't contact you-how did you find out?"
His answer was the one she didn't want to hear: "I... watched the shelter, and followed them..."
Yui winced. "Azusa-kun, you can't do that anymore, okay? Please trust that Belle is going to be alright."
"They re-named her Kuro. Isn't that… a boring name?" Azusa pouted.
"It's not as pretty as Belle," Yui soothed. "Promise you won't spy on them anymore?"
"Alright, but… If you change your mind… we could get her back..."
"I think Belle would be happy with a little girl." It was an idyllic image, but Yui didn't like the shadow in the background of a vampire stalking their house. She hoped Azusa would keep his promise.
"A family… in a big house... is better than us?" Azusa's hands played with the gauze, tearing it apart. "I wouldn't know… ah." He looked up, and the paleness of his eyes startled her. "What about you?"
"I-I never had a family in a big house, either?"
"Ah, I see."
On the tip of her tongue was a story she knew by rote: Yui was the only child of a single parent. Her mother died when Yui was little, and her father joined the clergy after her death. But that story wasn't true. In her mind flashed a photo of a priest holding a blonde baby in a pink blanket.
Yui began to dab iodine on the cuts. "So, um. Who… did this to you?"
"Oh." Azusa blinked. "Kanato-san."
Ice filled her heart. "He cut you?"
"No… He hit me lots, though." Azusa sighed, and a smile unfurled across his face. "I gave him the knife, but… he refused, so… I showed him... how to do it."
Yui recoiled. She dropped the brown and orange cotton ball on the floor and it rolled near her foot.
These cuts… were self-inflicted…?
"What's wrong...?" Azusa grabbed her wrist. "Where are you going…?"
Yui yanked on her arm. "I-I… I need… something."
"What is it...?"
Air. She couldn't breathe. Yui's free hand fluttered weakly around her face. "Oh, I don't know…" She sat down.
She knew he hurt himself… She knew that, but Yui wanted to understand Azusa. He'd been kind to her. He'd shown compassion for Belle. Yui wanted to be understanding… of his strange ways… the odd rules he followed… But she couldn't accept this.
The violent gashes painted a picture in blood: wrong. This was wrong. Self-inflicted or not, this was wrong.
Something is wrong with Azusa-kun.
In a week, Azusa's face was completely healed.
He looked at her pleadingly, silently saying what he did was… over. Perhaps to Azusa, what happened meant as much as the evidence it left behind, but Yui couldn't forget.
Azusa wanted people to hurt him. Azusa hurt himself, too. Would this happen again?
She focused on the scar crossing Azusa's nose.
"What is it...?" Azusa leaned in, putting them on eye level.
She brushed her fingertips across the scar. With both hands, she traced the smaller ones on his cheeks, too. "These scars don't heal." When she noticed his wide-eyed look, she quickly withdrew her hands. Her face burned.
This kind of mistake…! She was too used to touching his face!
Azusa leaned forward and grabbed her hand and placed it back on his cool cheek, leaning into the way her fingers instinctively cupped his face. He watched her growing blush with thoughtful eyes scanning her face. "… These are old…from before… when I was human."
Azusa's thin rib cage and scarred chest and arms. She'd felt the unexpected roughness of his palms and the little cuts on his fingers that never faded...
… when he was human.
She withdrew her hand from Azusa's loose grasp, and reached out to the scar on his nose once more. Firm to the touch. Just a small, discolored bridge from one cheek to another that split the skin in two.
He blinked at her.
If the scars from when Azusa was human will never fade, but his new wounds will heal- that could mean Azusa was covered in invisible scars. Was there an inch of his skin that hasn't been subjected to some form of mutilation or torture?
