Disclaimer: Me broke. Me no have money. Thus, me no have Fushigi Yuugi.
Author's Notes: I was originally dead set on NOT continuing this, but eh, what the hell. I have time to kill. This is not quality writing by any stretch of the… words. I decided to make the leads a bit younger than is traditional to try to prevent the Curse of the Mary Sue, but I had issues with writing them. Oh, and the lack of tension in the closet is attributed to the younger age. I'm sure there's tons of plot holes. I also would like to apologize for the, um, repetitiveness and ugliness of the prose. Oh yeaaah, and lots of f-bombs, too. And some, um, beating. Oh, and the SARS, um, parallel (that should become more apparent later on) was not noticed until this was already written, so please don't smack me. And the characterization isn't the greatest, I know. And yes, I know Aki's name is the most redundant thing ever. I resigned myself to using "Mr." and "Mrs." for Taka and Miaka because having two Sukunami-sans would just right out confuse me. Later I'll have them be referred to as Taka-san and Miaka-san, so, well, so much for consistency. Oh, and I realize how many clichés there are in this, starting with the chapter title. _;
Reviewers:
KittyLynne - You gave me the idea to make the lead younger than the normal 15-17 range, which helped muchly. ^_^
shadow priestess - It's short because it was intended as a one-shot, but I guess not anymore, hah? ^^;
Melokitty - Again, it was intended as a one-shot... but, ee, I'm not even sure where I'm going with this. -_-;
Aah, thanks for the compliments. They make me feel silly, I'm not used to them. ^^;
Chapter 1
Turn the Page
The air was dark and musty, every breath layered and coated with a generous serving of dust. Yamada Jun coughed and scrunched into a corner of the closet, shoving aside a few shoeboxes of photographs to sit down. He leaned against a puffy winter coat while a trench coat over his head half buried him. He drew the coat aside to watch Hikari as she leaned out the closet door, peeking both ways down the hall, before pulling it shut with a click. The closet went dark and he could hear her fiddling with the lock, which answered with another soft click, and soon the lights went on, slightly muffled by the coats and boxes overhead.
Jun wrinkled his nose at Hikari as she knelt across from him, "It smells like mothballs. Why do we have to hide in here anyway?"
Hikari grinned at him and pulled an old red book from under her shirt. "Mama wouldn't like us reading this," she giggled, "but we're going to do it anyway."
"We are?" Jun arched an eyebrow at Hikari. "Your mom is scary."
"That's why we're in the closet."
"Ok," he murmured uncertainly. Mrs. Sukunami could have quite a temper when she wanted to, and he certainly did not want to cross it. "What is that?" He asked, leaning over the book.
"Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho," Hikari said proudly, enunciating each syllable clearly as she ran her finger along side each character.
Jun pushed his glasses up his nose. "That's... 'the Book?'"
"Um, yeah..."
"I always thought the Book was an RPG."
"You what?!"
"Nothing wrong with those, umm, my mom met my dad in one!" Jun ran his fingers through his dark blonde hair nervously. "How... uh... did your parents meet with this? Book club?"
"Jun no baka!"
"What?"
"That's what we're going to find out... and you're going to help me!" Hikari thrust the book into Jun's lap with a smirk.
"Wha...?"
"You're smart! You can read this!"
"Yeah, but..." Jun stared at Hikari in terror. He was not going to get tangled up in another one of her little schemes. Not this time. Last time she nearly had him arrested, for God's sake! Sure, reading a forbidden book with her was a tad bit safer than shoplifting a birthday present, but not by much, especially when Mrs. Sukunami was concerned! She may have been a bubble head, but she sure was tough!
"But...?" Hikari's turquoise eyes glinted dangerously.
"B-but, eh, ahh... I need to be getting home for dinner soon! And, ahh, um, I-I --" Jun nearly swallowed his tongue at the venomous look Hikari shot him, "I, ah, ah, think we should start reading right now, shall we!"
Hikari gave him a toothy grin. "Good boy! Oh, and... we just had lunch, why would you want dinner so soon?" She winked at him.
"I, um, ah... hungry?" That earned him a prompt smack on the head. "Um, what do you want me to read?"
"All of it."
"All... of... it?" She had to be kidding! Jun measured the book's thickness between his thumb and forefinger. This was a long book!
"It's supposed to be a story about how my Mama met Papa, but it's in Chinese. I can't read it."
Jun sighed and flipped the book open. "You brought me here for some dumb love story?" At the sound of a growl from Hikari he yelped, nearly swallowed his tongue again, and looked down at the page.
Blank.
He turned the page.
Blank.
He turned another page.
Blank.
"Well?" Hikari asked eagerly, rocking on her toes.
"All the pages are blank. Nothing on them." Jun would have made a sarcastic comment, but did not feel like testing Hikari's temper. Again.
"WHAT?"
The book abruptly left his hands as Hikari began flipping through it, opening to random pages, beginning to hyperventilate. "No text, no text!"
Jun decided to tempt fate. "What kind of a joke is this?"
"Shut up!" Hikari shouted as she threw the book at him. Jun ducked and caught the book once it hit the wall.
"Ok, ok..." Jun opened the book again. And there was writing. "Look, look!" He pointed.
"The spell!" Hikari squealed and clapped eagerly.
"Don't be so loud, your mother might hear us!"
"Ok, ok..." She took several deep breaths to regain her composure. "Read it to me and have me repeat it."
"Read... it?"
Hikari rocked on her toes hyperly. "Come on, come on!"
"Alright... 'And so... the girl of... legend? Um... opened the door... of another world.'"
"And so the girl of legend opened the door of another world," Hikari repeated softly.
"'This is the story of a girl who gathered the Seven Seishi of... Suzaku.'" Jun read as Hikari murmured her repetition softly after him. "'She... obtained great power, and made every wish come true. The story itself is a... spell. Whoever finishes reading it will receive this power. As soon as the first page is turned, the story will become real and begin...'"
Silence.
"Juuuun, you messed it up! Nothing happened!"
"You didn't tell me to turn the page!"
"Ooh, give me that, you can't do anything right, can you?!" Hikari snatched the book from Jun's grasp and quickly turned the page.
And she suddenly realized that that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do.
A gust of wind issued forth from the open book, whipping Hikari's deep auburn hair away from her face ferociously. The book shook and moaned, pages rippling and turning in the supernatural wind. Brilliant blood red light began to shine from the book as the pages stopped turning, nearly blinding Hikari. She screamed and held her arms up over her eyes to block out the light. Jun shielded his eyes with one arm and instinctively tried to reach out for Hikari with the other, but when he grasped at where she should have been he found nothing. The book glowed softly red, flickered, and then died out.
And so he stared at the book. Would it eat him up too?
Jun would have stared at the book forever if it wasn't for the loud knock on the closet door.
---
Faint gold fragments of sun glittered in through the open window in the Li dwelling as the family sat down for breakfast. For once a heavy cloud of doom did not hang over their table, or house, or village, for that matter. The planting was coming along splendidly, and the plague seemed to be going into remission. In the past week there had been no new victims, and what few there were seemed to be healing. For once all their prayers had been put to good use, and, as an added bonus, there was fresh rice and fish on the table.
Yes, it looked like it was going to be a very good day.
Until their rafters glowed crimson and a girl, dressed in the most peculiar clothing imaginable, fell out of the ceiling and onto their table.
So, naturally, all hell broke loose.
And somehow, during all the screaming and panicking, the wife managed to hit the mysterious girl (and not her husband or any of her sons) with a pan, knocking her out.
And, to be quite frank, it did not look like the Li family would be having a very pleasant day.
The girl, it turned out, was some sort of demon, at least according to the village elder. He brooded over her still, bound form and pronounced her to a malignant cestule of existence, the cause of the village's plague. So, after sealing her for the time being, he sent out a messenger to search for a demon hunter from Eiyou to collect her.
And that was how Aki, the eldest of the poor, poor Li boys came to be among the three men guarding the demon as she slept, bound to a tree. It had not been his will to do so, but, after all, what business had he to protest? He was strong and able bodied. He was young, nimble, and quick, and one of the few young men who was not currently incapacitated with the plague! And, after all, would he be disgraceful enough to have one such as the esteemed village elder guard the girl? Of course not!
So soon the poor Aki was standing terrifyingly close to the demon, armed only with a spear and some prayers, which he muttered to the point of hysteria.
It was in the middle of one such frantic prayer when the redheaded demon woke up.
---
Hikari almost thought she was dreaming. Her eyes were closed, was she asleep? No, she couldn't be... her head did not throb so much while asleep. She could hear birds chirping softly, each minute sound sending terrible shockwaves through her skull. The soft breezes rustled through grass (much to her distress) and kissed her face with a sweet caress. Slowly she became aware of tight ropes going across her chest and legs, digging into her skin and cutting off her circulation, causing her feet to tingle slightly. She tried futilely to pull against her bonds, but the shock of the ropes further burying themselves caused her brain to vibrate and quiver painfully.
But still, maybe it was a dream, albeit a realistic one, complete with painful ropes and splitting headaches.
Frantic muttering, which at first had escaped her hearing in favor of birdsongs, now entered her brain little by little. And it did not help her migraine one bit. She began to whimper softly in pain, at which point the muttering stopped, before restarting much faster and far more frantic.
Bright sunlight blinded her when she opened her eyes, but after squinting she was able to make out the source of the muttering - a boy older than herself trembling, clutching a spear as if his life depended on it. As she made eye contact with him his muttering increased into a frantic chant. He took a step back, trembling.
She shut her eyes. Her head felt like it was going to explode, and the chants weren't really helping. "Please... stop..." She whispered, a few tears escaping her eyes.
The chanting did stop, but what came next was far worse - a brutal kick to the leg. She cried out in pain, but whoever had kicked her only laughed.
When she finally managed to look up at her assailant she met the gaze of a crazed young man, his chestnut hair pulled up in a bun. He laughed at her coldly. "I can't wait until the Demon Catcher gets here." He kicked her again, chuckling.
"Kazuo, n-no, she might..." The pale boy who had been praying tried to grab his arm, but the crazed one shook him off.
"I can't wait until I can see you scream like my fiancée once did." He chuckled and kicked her again. "I want you to scream and suffer when you die, just like her," he growled.
"Kazuo, she might kill more of us..."
"Aki, shut the fuck up. Can't you see? We have her. She can't hurt us!" Kazuo laughed and fingered the crystals around Hikari's neck. "With this on she can't hurt us," he slapped her, "can you, little girl?" Hikari choked back sobs as Kazuo held her head to the side by the chin, inspecting his handiwork. "See, Aki? She can't do anything. Not a single damn thing."
Aki had retreated and stood clutching his spear, staring at the ground. "I-I see."
Kazuo laughed and tightened his grip on Hikari's chin. "You know, maybe I should take this chance to show you just how my dear Yasu felt when you touched her," he growled, slowly lowering his grip to her throat. "She told me you touched her here," he tapped her tender flesh with one finger, "and you held on tight, and didn't let go..."
"Kazuo, save that work for the Demon Catcher."
With that he released the petrified Hikari, groaning impatiently.
The source of the voice was a third guard, who was leaning on his spear as though asleep. "I understand how you feel, we have all lost loved ones to her, but you can't risk killing her... she may simply possess someone else. Let the Demon Catcher handle it."
Kazuo stepped back, but did not break his cold glare. "Someday I'll make you scream," he told the crying Hikari, "and you'll know exactly what she felt when she died."
It was then that a voice called out from the tree. "What's this? My God, she's only a child. You people disgust me."
All three guards peered up into the tree. Aki and Kazuo both began to tremble, one from fear, one from anger.
"Since when is it any of your fucking business what we do with demons?!" Kazuo bellowed.
"Honestly, Kazuo... she's younger than your own sister," the voice spat as its owner dropped from the tree, landing between Kazuo and Hikari, nimble as a cat. It was a boy, maybe a year younger than Kazuo. He sighed as he shook some leaves out of his raven hair with a ghostly pale hand.
"What the fucking hell do you know about my sister, you demon?" Kazuo, again, shook with anger, while Aki shook from fear, clinging to his spear as though it would be the only thing that would hold him up. The third guard tried to get the visitor with his spear, but found it soon broken, and found himself soon punched out.
The visitor tsked and easily dodged a punch from Kazuo (who obviously had forgotten that he had access to a spear, which would have enabled him to possibly skewer his opponent). "You really should be ashamed of yourself," he scolded, taking up a fighting stance.
Aki, meanwhile, continued to tremble, growing paler by the minute.
---
Yamada Jun was trembling as well, and from a nearly different reason. The banging on the closet door, as it turned out, was a very angry Taka, who did not enjoy hearing his daughter scream. "Hikari, what's going on in there?!"
After some hard contemplation (weighing the prospect of staying locked in the closet and starving to death against being beaten to death by Taka), Jun cautiously cracked open the door. Might as well get it over with.
As soon as the door was open Taka had him by the collar. He hauled the poor boy out and began to shake him rather violently. Behind him Hikari's mother stood, looking rather shaken.
"Where the hell is Hikari?!"
Jun stared at Taka wide eyed and stuttered gibberish.
And then Taka saw the red book that Jun had dropped on the floor. He stared at the book and suddenly released Jun. "She didn't..."
Jun backed up into a wall, pale as a sheet. "S-she... vanish... book... v-vanish..."
Hikari's mother swayed on her feet. "She... vanished?" was all she could manage before fainting with a thud.
---
The Son of the Author's Notes: This is going to have a ton of reincarnations in it. Yay for clichés! I'm probably going to completely disregard Eikoden (hisss), despite taking Miaka and Taka's daughter's name from it. So, I have a question. Should Kazuo be a reincarnation of anyone at all, or just someone completely new?