Starts in the past, ends in the present

Venomously Attractive

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y O N E

Ghostly Recollection 2

Ren had shown various signs of illness for the past few days, most involving unexplained fatigue, cold sweats, and continuous fevers. It have been over a week since she first started waking up covered in cold sweat, breathing laboriously and having difficulty sleeping from then onward. Her skin would go cold and tremble for hours even if she stacked as many blankets as possibly without making it seem as though she was actually sick. A measly cold wouldn't knock her down and because she believed in that, she continued following her schedules until said illness began acting as a hindrance. In time she found herself sleeping later into the afternoon, unaffected by the rancorous noises outside her bedroom that would have usually become some sort of rude awakening, and that's when other's started to notice. The first was a maid, who touched Ren's forehead while she slept and told Kazuya without letting the word spread any further than that. Her brother asked for a private audience, taking her into the room and asking the question – holding his breath in anticipation. His inquiry, of course, was "are you ill" and she found it audacious of the brat to even ask. He should know the answer, but he went off and asked anyway only to pass out from the lack of air. Figuring it was for the better Ren took that chance to leave, jumped over his body and out the door.

From there, she took a turn down the hall towards her father's study. As she walked she felt her vision black and her head spin as if she were about to faint. Her legs fell limp beneath her weight as she walked through the empty walkway; she stumbled until she hit the nearest wall and compose herself. I need to show up and meet him or else he'll start to suspect something.

After giving herself enough time to breath, she went on her way, arriving only a few minutes later than scheduled to find her dark-haired father smoking by the open window. His eyes flickered her way as she slid the door shut. "Sorry, I ran into Kazuya and he kept me distracted for a while."

Her father merely nodded, tossing a book onto the table in front of him. "Finish?"

Ren took a seat and nodded. "I have to admit the beginning was a little boring for an Ayano book."

"I agree."

"But the read was definitely worth it."

"The ending was obvious."

Ren scoffed. "You're too critical; I think this is definitely a step up from Vera."

"I'll have you locked in your room if you talk badly about that novel," he stated, pulling the cigarette from his mouth and pointing it her way.

She rolled her eyes. "I still think it's better."

"Vera had a good introduction and reception; you're one to talk when you didn't even like the introduction to this?" he argued heatedly.

"Vera had a promising hook, but once you got to the center and climax, everything was so predictable – took the fun out wondering what would happen next," she retorted. Besides, you're the one who agreed to that statement, hypocrite.

"I couldn't predict a thing!" he stated. "You're delirious."

"Am not!" she replied defensively.

"Don't talk bad about it when you don't even know what you're saying." He turned away.

"You're playing favorites and you know it!"

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled wryly. "You don't even know a thing, darling child."

Ren crossed her arms over her chest. "We came to discuss Gold and Bronze not that bull—" A simple glare managed to silence her and even after clearing her throat to break the ice felt the aftereffects of that menacing glower. "Vera was a wonderful story, papa." She smiled sweetly.

He nodded and took a drag of his cigarette.

"Thought so," he remarked smartly.

"So what did you think about it?" she asked, picking up the book.

"Her family was horrible," her father replied straightly. "In retrospect, that sort of ideal has been around for years, but some find it difficult to understand that it is because we are nobility that we have a right to choose who we want."

"Noble marriages happen between nobles in order to avoid having children with the blood of a commoner, it's like keeping the royal line…royal."

"That's being picky," he stated passively.

"It's keeping your offspring from being lower class."

"Keeping the blood pure is just a load of—"

"Language, papa!" she interjected with a laugh.

"Shut up." He frowned. "As I was saying, it's pretentious. Just as commoners have every right to choose whoever they want without worrying about whose family they are from, we do as well."

"Oh really?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. "Isn't social status the reason you decided to marry my mother."

He gave her an odd look. "I did not marry your mother because of her rank."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Why did you marry her then?" she asked. "I mean, you do seem to love me more than her."

"Don't forget your brother."

Ren nodded. "Are you going to tell me?"

"The truth?" he asked.

"That is if you'll give me the truth."

"I wanted to see the look on her mother's face when she presented me as her fiancé." At that, he smirked devilishly.

Ren snorted, knowing her father's feelings of hatred towards her grandmother were mutual and deep rooted. "I'm supposing that went well."

"It is my most precious memory," he answered. "She even tried to kill me, but your mother defended me and talked her mother out of it somehow."

She laughed. "That must have been a sight to behold."

"It was, but now is not the time to nitpick at my marriage to your mother."

"Yes, but judging by what you said you seem to accept noble-commoner marriages…"

"That's because I do," he answered. "I might have married a commoner if I had never met Kosoka Shunko or having the pleasure of knowing she had two very enchanting daughters."

"You're a bastard." She shook her head, disappointed.

"I'll condone your insult this once, only because even I cannot deny that fact," he said with a condescending laugh.

"And if I were to bring a commoner here to marry, you would accept him?"

He nodded. "Yes, but don't forget you belong to the Kuchiki."

"So I'd have to leave the commoner behind?"

"No, cheat," he answered, crushing his cigarette against the windowsill and lighting another.

Ren scoffed. "What kind of advice is that?"

"The sane type," he replied.

"What if we get caught?"

"Don't get caught."

"I think you were pettily influenced by this book."

He shrugged his shoulders. "That reminds me, I've had a number of women at my doorstep this morning, most of them claiming you deflowered their sons, thus ruining quite a few images. I'd like to believe this is a lie, Ren."

"That's an obvious lie!" she responded in mild outrage, though she might have been to blame.

"Good," he replied with a curt nod, taking a drag and puffing out the smoke.

Ren stood up suddenly, feeling her cheeks warm up the longer she spent inside her father study and around the secondhand smoke, which proved horrible to her current health problem. "I think I'm going to take an afternoon nap, can we continue this discussion later papa?"

She was really hanging on a thread and it was standing between a pair of sharp scissors. She felt her vision blacken the more she blinked when she tried to stop the blurring. She was teetering to stay conscious while her father made her wait for a response. When he pulled the cigarette from his lips, with sharp eyes staring at her in scrutiny, he said, "I'll call the doctor."

She laughed nervously. "Is mother sick?"

"You're really not going to take a nap, you're passing out," he pointed out seconds before she actually did.

The doctor asked Ren to stay in bed until she got better and even left behind medicine for the servants to give her on an hourly basis. She was also ostracized from the rest of the people unless they were covered because whatever she had, it was contagious. And no one even bothered telling her exactly what it was, only treated her like the common plague. Was she dying or something? It would have been nice to know, but regrettably no one explained and if she asked they avoided the question as if their life depended on it. Her mother came by her room from time to time and standing behind the shogi screen would ask if she was doing well. Ren tried her best to ignore her but would eventually ask her favorite question for the next month, "Am I dying?" Of course, even her mother dodged the bullet every time and she didn't even bother asking her father, who would have find a way to make her stop asking by instilling fear in her.

He visited her room as often as he could, though the doctor had banned him from smoking around her and reprimanded him when he wasn't taking necessary precautions to avoid contamination. Naoya sat for hours reading excerpts of Vera to her on purpose and even if she faked slumber he continued reading aloud. She knew it was his way of getting back at her for calling it bullshit, not that he let her finish, but the thought was there and she stood by it. Ayano's novel Vera was a failure among failures – Naoya couldn't fathom the reality and thus tried his best to make it seem like the best thing to grace the world of literature. He was crazy, delirious, but by far insane – mostly that.

When hours of torture ended, she found peace in slumber until she found herself rudely awakened every hour of the night for her medicine and the sound of servants pleading Kazuya to go back to his bedroom because he was risking infection. Since she came down with the illness, Kazuya kept sneaking into her room, climbing underneath her covers and snuggling up against her warm body. She never bothered saying a thing because he was cool in temperature and it soothed away the fevers until he managed to catch onto the warmth of her skin. But he never managed to catch the same illness, not even a fever. The doctor said he was perfectly healthy the last time he visited, but said Ren was only getting worse.

"Someone tell me if I'm going to die," she moaned, as she twisted and turned underneath the covers.

"Not…dying…" Kazuya mumbled in his sleep, moving closer to her.

She frowned. "You're not much reassurance, stupid."

"Cows are animals, nee-sama…" he continued incoherently, "and bubbles…t-they float too."

Ren turned to face him with a sharp glare. "What kind of dream are you having, Kazuya?"

"C-counting…sheep," he muttered with a frown. "No Kyota-sensei, t-that's marmalade pudding…"

She flicked his nose, making him groan in pain, "Ow, nee-sama that hurt."

"You're sleep-talking."

"M'kay," he whispered, yawning and rolling onto his back.

Ren turned to the clock sitting on the floor and sighed. There was an hour left before the day would start and eerily enough she was unable to fall back into slumber because of the strange noises she heard outside. The leaves on the trees and bushes rustled and there were shadows against the shogi screens in the hallway without a hint of sound. And because of it, she spent the rest of the night awake.

When the hour passed, servants poured into her bedroom, noses and mouths covered with cloths. Kazuya was awakened, greeted, and escorted out for his matutinal bath. Ren was given her medicine and had a woman sit by her to spoon-feed her breakfast which was just a grimy bowl of vegetable soup. She ate half of it before she was stuffed and sent the maids away to continue her boring day.

She re-read old books and waited for Kazuya to keep her company. One of the maids said he had gone out on an errand for his father, but that it was just a block away and that he would be back within the next few minutes. She waited for him, but instead, had her cousin Hisoka drop by.

"What do you want?" she asked rudely.

"I heard you were sick from your dad, I just came to say hello," he said by the doorway.

Ren peeled her eyes from the text and gave him an unwelcoming glare. "Hello. Can you leave now?"

"Jeez, you're moody," he said with a scoff. "I'm leaving to meet up with my new girlfriend, so you don't have to worry." He looked around the room and then down each hallway. "Where's Kazuya? I wanted to see if I was taller than him now."

"How tall are you now?"

"Me? About 165 cm," he replied proudly.

She snorted. "Kazuya just made 172 cm," she replied.

"Liar!" he stated. "He's a year younger than me and already—"

"He's five months younger than you and you can blame your short father for bad genes," she interrupted with a smirk as she turned the page. "Even I'm taller than you both."

"You don't look tall," he replied.

"One hundred seventy-seven centimeters, still growing mind you," she answered. "And it's all thanks to my parent's good genes. Besides, I'm lying down, what do you expect?"

"Whatever."

"Do you have an inferiority complex or something?"

"No!" He slammed the door shut and stormed off. "I hope you die!"

"Point proven, asshole," she muttered, flipping through a few more pages before letting out an exasperated sigh. "How much longer are you planning to take, stupid brother?"

Ren rolled around for a while longer until she heard the sound of footsteps and the voices of both Kyozo and Sayuri. They never had anything interesting to say, all they talked to her about was Kazue and no one cared about that ugly baby or her blossoming into a beautiful woman. She dove into her blankets and feigned slumber in the nick of time; as they had already slid open the door.

"Ah, Ren-chan, are you sleeping?" Sayuri asked.

She didn't answer and leveled her breathing.

"We shouldn't bother her, she's sleeping," Kyozo responded, his voice eerily ecstatic.

"It's for the better," Sayuri replied, stepping out of the room.

"Goodnight, Ren."

The door slid shut and she waited until their footsteps disappeared before kicking off her blankets. "What crawled up their asses and died?"

They probably decided to visit because she was sick; otherwise they would simply leave the house without a greeting unless they came to tell her how Kazue was the cutest thing alive.

She sat up and heard another pair of footsteps halt at her door followed by a yawn. "Ren-chan, are you okay?" The door slid open and her mother stepped inside, too sleepy to notice she was walking into contaminated territory.

"Yeah, I'm good."

Her mother nodded, holding her head in her right hand. "That's good, you should get some sleep."

"I'm waiting for Kazuya to come back," she replied lightly, eyeing her mother who looked as though she was about to fall to the ground from exhaustion. "Mama, are you well?"

The brown-haired woman took a seat besides her and suddenly pulled her into a tight hug. "Just a little drunk, nothing to worry about."

Unlike the times her mother was drunk and delirious, this time she didn't smell like alcohol and it took a lot to get her going. Ren tentatively patted her mother's back. She wasn't used to having her mother hug her so tightly it hurt.

She pulled away and smiled widely. "Your father went to get his book; he's gonna come read to you."

Ren nodded. "Finally, I was bored out of my mind sitting here doing nothing!" She dropped back onto her futon and smiled with anticipation.

Her mother stood up. "You're so very warm, Ren-chan," she said sweetly, holding her stomach with affection. "I'd stay here, but the doctor banned me too. It's bad for the baby."

She turned to her mother, shocked. Her heart thumped excitedly when the thought registered and she bolted to a seat. "Baby?"

"Oops, I wasn't supposed to say that." She giggled.

"You shouldn't have been drinking."

Her mother's eyes were drooping at that point as she was struggling to stay awake. "It could have been tea, I'm being very careful until I can tell Naoya-sama."

Ren shooed her with hand gestures with a big smile on her face. "Go rest, go rest, I'll be fine!"

Her mother placed a finger over her lips on her way out. "But keep it a secret, okay."

Ren nodded until the door shut. Another baby could mean she could train it to be her personal servant. If it was a girl, it would be for the better too, she could dress her up in all sorts of cute outfits and teach her how to be like her. She'd be Ren Jr. like her china doll. She shot a sideways glance at the doll sitting among a clutter of her things wearing her black hair long, dressed in a red kimono. "That's great news. Another me would be fun."

The thought lingered in her mind as she waited for her father expectantly, but he was taking a lot longer than Kazuya, who was already supposed to be back. She was growing bored and tired, less inclined to have a fun conversation with either her father or brother. She rolled onto her side and pulled her blanket over her head, closing her eyes once she was tired of waiting. She settled into light slumber when the sound of hurried steps and her door sliding open noisily woke her up. Someone's hands were on her shoulder, shaking her body. Whoever it was, they smelled bad, like sweat and dirt.

"Mmm," she groaned unpleasantly.

"Ren, wake up," Kazuya called. "Come on, I have something fun for us to do, let's go out and have fun. Ren, wake up, come on."

She shoved his hand away. "Take a bath first, you smell."

"Ren, let's go, there's this nice place I wanna show you, let's go!" His voice seemed desperate and his shaking was relentless.

She opened her eyes to see him staring down at her with a forced smile. She could tell something was bothering him, but was too lazy to ask. "I don't wanna go out, I'm tired right now," she muttered. "Ask me later…like…"

"I'll buy you anything! A new kimono, I saved up a whole lot of money, I can even get you sweets, just get up."

That piqued her interest. She lugged her heavy body from her futon with a sigh and rubbed her eyes. "Okay."

Kazuya took one of the thinner blankets and draped it over her head. She held onto it and looked at him as she rubbed one of her eyes. "I'm too tired, though."

"Come on, I'll carry you."

"You can't carry me around everywhere, that's embarrassing!"

"There's no one where we'll be going, come on, no one will see," he said hurriedly. "We'll get out the back door, no one's watching there." He turned around, his back facing her. "Come on."

"Okay, but I want a red kimono."

He nodded.

Ren lugged her body onto his, feeling it weigh ten times more than it actually did, but even so, he straightened himself out. "Hold onto the blanket, it'll be bad if you get worse."

"Then don't take me out, idiot."

He laughed, heading out the door after adjusting her weight over his back. "After all of this, you'll be fine," he whispered to himself. "You will."

"What're you talking about, stupid?" she whispered, resting her head on her arm to continue sleeping.

"At the end off all this…"

She smiled lightly and closed her eyes. "…I don't get it."

Present Time

Her head started to hurt after she recollected the events preceding the fire and a chill rushed through her as she waited beneath the rustling leaves for Ichimaru to come back. She wanted to avoid making another comparison between him and her brother – action-wise – in order to avoid recounting the past. She hated thinking about it just as much as she disliked talking about it. All she cared about was taking care of the bastards responsible so she could leave it all behind. She knew it would be difficult for her to really concentrate in life when the memory, as fleeting as it was, slipped in through every barrier she set up. It wasn't an accident, no matter how natural it seemed. An old woman who worked there said there wasn't a fire in the kitchen, but she died and could no longer tell the story. There were other things too. Things that she couldn't explain herself like the silhouettes on her walls or the noises. Everything was out of place.

"Ren-chan~"

She jolted and looked up to see Gin staring at her confused. "What do you want?"

"Yer daydreaming."

"So?"

"What's going through yer head?"

"Nothing important, I was just updating my schedule."

He grabbed her by the hands and pulled her up. "Let's go, all we gotta do is keep walking and we'll get there soon."

She eyed him suspiciously, but he led the way. Halfway through the trip she complained about her ankle again and he carried her the rest of the way, to her delight. Though she was a bit embarrassed about being carried to the grove, after a while of comfort, she got used to it. It seemed easy to fall asleep and the little vague reveries she met with were wonderful in comparison to her usual film of nightmares.

x L i l i m:

I'm a little iffy about the chapter, but a way to shake the feeling has yet to come to me. I'll sit on it.

I would have so much more to say, but I'll be repetitive and ask those who have yet to vote in my poll, to please do it, though this story is in the lead, and to those who already have, thank you. You guys can vote again through review because golly, I love to cheat, and I'll tally everything up. *chortles*

I see some of you like it when I reply to reviews. I'll try to do it more often without chickening out, cause I like replying as well-I just get overly anxious and weird and end up chickening out, just ask cheesebubble, who gets a kick out of seeing me suffer.

D:

Thanks to:

cheesebubble (Seriously, everything you ever write just seems wrong, fuzzy coat.), cmsrawrr (I probably left that too vague, but she was referring to her dead brother. XD So sorry.), The Loyal Newt (No problem, and thank you. :3 lol they should make a Gin version to where's waldo, I'd play it every time. And, I like how you're really hinting at that since it really is a few chapters before we reach that bump, as to whether she goes or stays...shall wait.), Insania10566 (Thank you for voting, I appreciate it! :D), la bella muerte (Thank you very much! And golly that made my day, lol!)

Thanks for reading~