Intertwined
Riku certainly had a way of crashing a party.
By the time Sora and Kairi reached high school, Riku had firmly established himself as a popular figure—if only for utterly superficial reasons. His rugged good looks won the heart of many a schoolgirl, but he wasn't as interested in dating them as much as he was in scaring them. Any girl hoping for a shot needed double-courage; one for asking him out in the first place, and secondly to withstand his stories.
It wasn't often that Riku had a chance to practice his art in front of an audience, but given his natural popularity, he was invited to many parties. They were as good a place as any to scare people senseless.
As friends of Riku, Sora and Kairi had the luxury of inviting themselves as guests, something they took full advantage of. Sora mainly went for the experience. He would occasionally dance or knock down a few drinks, but he never got too crazy. He usually spent most of his time looking after Kairi. She was the type to unwind at full throttle. You wouldn't expect it from her prim and proper demeanor, but after a single drink, she went off the rails. Anything could happen at a party and he'd be damned if he let some douche take advantage of her.
Which was why he was quite worried at the moment. He had turned away for only a second but she somehow disappeared from his sight.
The party was popping, thriving, and buzzing, even in the middle of the night. He was at some house party in a well-to-do neighborhood. The home was huge, built like a mansion, with a full second story and a grand staircase. People were everywhere, obscuring his view and making his search that much harder. With the DJ banging out loud music, calling out her name wasn't an option. He checked outside the pool area for a moment, seeing the patio lights shine on scantily clad girls and boys in the night, but determined that she wasn't there. He entered the house and pushed his way past drunks and dancers to the kitchen. No luck. He continued his search of the first floor until he deemed it Kairi-free. He ran up the stairs and began checking the rooms one by one.
Jackpot.
He finally found her in a bedroom that had about ten other people sitting on chairs and the floor.
Riku was on the bed.
Sora could guess what was going on. Some of the drunks were probably going to piss their pants soon.
"Sora, I'm glad you could make it," the silver-haired sophomore greeted.
Sora brushed off the comment and settled next to Kairi, who was nodding off on the ground. He sighed; she wasn't going to be doing much of anything in her current state. The only option now was to wait it out. He could afford to listen to a tale or two.
Riku drew the crowd's attention and grinned. "Alright guys, I'm gonna tell you all about the legend of the Paopu fruit," he explained.
Some of the audience members were confused. The legend was well-known on the islands, so it seemed rather redundant to tell it here. Sora knew better though. Corruption of innocence was Riku's specialty.
"According to the legend, if two people share a Paopu fruit together, then their destinies are intertwined forever. Sounds great, right? It's basically gotten to the point where 'share the fruit' means getting married, but have you guys ever wondered exactly how the legend came to be?"
He made a dramatic pause. Either everybody was too smashed to answer or the question was obviously rhetorical. Riku didn't mind the lack of audience participation, he worked better solo anyway.
"So I did a little research and the results are pretty surprising. There are several theories about how the legend came to be, but the best one is the Last Meal theory.
It all started with one man. This guy wasn't exactly what you would call...put together. He loved his wife dearly, so much so that he would do anything to keep her, even if it meant committing murder. For awhile, this guy suspected that his wife was cheating on him, so he decided to reaffirm their ties together. The first thing he did was find the bastard his wife was cheating with. After he did, he choked the poor guy with his bare hands, strangling him to death.
Then he went to the store to buy himself a Paopu fruit. That was how he and his wife met each other, he was shopping at the market and she sold one to him. He bought it home and told his wife that if they shared it, their destinies will be intertwined forever. Although it was supposed to be a somewhat romantic gesture, she refused to eat it. After all, she was cheating on the guy, why would she want to stick with him? He kept insisting but she kept resisting. You guys know what happened next?"
The audience was silent, hanging on to his every word.
"He forced her to eat it. She resisted, yelling that she hated him and that she found a better man. He laughed, saying that the better man was already dead. This understandably made the wife very upset. She tried to run away but he was too strong. He pushed her to the ground, kept her there, and stuffed her mouth with Paopu fruit until she was blue in the face. He yelled, We'll be together forever! as he shoved pieces of fruit down her throat. When she finally suffocated to death, he pulled out his belt, made a noose from the ceiling, stood up on a chair, and kicked it. What better way to reaffirm their ties than through a murder-suicide?
When you die from hanging, you're supposed to die from the neck snapping, but if it goes wrong, then you'll die the long and painful way, unable to breathe, your body struggling to gather air, until you simply pass out and choke on your spit.
He screwed up.
The police eventually found him half-conscious on the noose and dragged him off to jail. He was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife and her lover. This was back when the government used to execute criminals by hanging them. They don't do them solo, they usually hang em in bunches."
Sora snorted. Riku's casual attitude towards grisly topics never failed to amuse.
"We always like to talk about fate and destiny here; our islands are named after it you know, but the words apply to criminals more than anyone else, especially to a man on death row. What destiny is more certain than a death sentence?
As natives, we've all eaten paopu fruit. It's our national crop, a part of our diets, and recipes. It's only natural that a man's last meal will include it.
But like I said earlier, they hang em in bunches. They were executed in groups and they even made a weekly event out of it, depending on how many criminals were sentenced to death. The group usually receives one Paopu fruit to be split between them all. It's not like they wanted to waste fruit on guys that were going to die anyways.
When it was finally time for the man to be executed, he said to his group:
If we share this Paopu fruit, our destinies will be intertwined forever.
They split it up, relishing the last taste of their native fruit. As soon as they finished, the guards walked them to the stage. A wooden plank would have five nooses hanging. The man and his fellow criminals put their heads in the noose, and after their final words—snap."
Riku twisted his head to the side, imitating a hung body.
"Share a Paopu fruit and your destinies will be intertwined...it was true. They all shared the same fate: death. And you know what's the funny thing? They use twine, rope, to hang them up and snap their necks. Why do you think they say 'intertwined' instead of using some other word? It's because the legend of the Paopu fruit is actually based on criminals being hung.
From that point on, it became a ritual for convicts to reaffirm their ties together before death.
Somehow or another, it spread to the island and took on a more positive spin, completely ignorant of its actual origins.
So you see, every time you share a Paopu fruit, what you're really doing is making a promise, a promise that you'll die together. After all, isn't that how we're all intertwined with each other?
No matter who we are, who we were, or who we'll be, in the end, we all end up in the same place:
Dead."