Fandom: Tokyo Babylon / X
Title: The one you love the best.
Pairing: Seishirou + Subaru
Rating: PG
Description: Seishirou meets a boy and is immediately reminded of his mother's words, "No, the person you love the most isn't me."
(Paired with/sequel is "When my hands held sakura")
(This is a bit off the timeline, but I was relatively new to TB when I made this.)
Disclaimer: Tokyo Babylon isn't mine but I love it as if it were...
"Okaa-san! Okaa-san!" I shouted as I saw my mother walking through our garden once more.
But I would never forget the first time I saw blood on her hands when she turned around...
...and it wasn't from a prick on her fingers from cutting the roses...
The one you love the best.
by Miyamoto Yui
When I was very young, my father hardly came home, if at all. I used to question this to my mother, but she just smiled and nodded the way she always did when she couldn't or didn't want to answer a question. Then, she would change the subject and start cooking.
After that, I didn't ever ask again. Though she tried to hide it, I could see the twitch she would have whenever I mentioned it. It wasn't a twitch in anger...no.
It was like breaking glass. Her face became disfigured. The smile that I had always loved would become displaced.
No...I couldn't bear that...
I loved her too heavily...
When I turned three, my mother held me in her lap that morning and began to rock me until I woke up from bed. Softly, she sang,
"You are here,
and yet you're so far away.
I touch you,
but when I do, I'll break you.
I love you with all my heart,
too much to ever...
To ever let go.
Don't forget me,
when the snow falls on that day,
painted in red rather than white,
remember the sakura
falling to the ground so softly.
Remember me always like that.
You are my most important person,
the thing I love the most,
don't ever forget.
Don't ever forget me.
Because the one you love the best,
is the one you'll hurt the most...
And that won't be me, my love..."
I didn't understand it then. And my mother began to smile, but she kept on crying while she held me tighter in her arms.
"Happy Birthday, my Sei-chan," she'd said as she kissed me on the lips and pushed me out of bed with a gentle hand.
Then, she took my hand and we went out.
With cuts and bandages, she still held onto my hand.
Walking around the park, we regarded the sakura falling relentlessly to the ground and my mother picked one up. She handed it over to me.
It was so soft...
I had never held something as soft as my mother's hands before...
She was trying to tell me something then...
but I was too young to understand.
When she went around with me in her kimono, she did nothing but touch things and comment or point stuff out to me.
I think this was one of the happiest times in my life.
But one day, while running home excitedly from kindergarten, I slammed the front door and shouted, "Okaa-san! Okaa-san! Tadaimasu!"
I wanted to make her so proud of me when I came home from school. But when I opened the door...
...there was that bloodied hand being lifted up gracefully.
In horror, I regarded them and held the door for dear life.
The blood dripped to the snow and painted it like watercolors. On the ground, my handsome father bled to death with a peaceful look unlike any other.
She was holding him with that smile on her face. The saddest smile I could have ever seen on anyone's face...
yes, it's a paradox, but her lips were contorted to that usual grin she always had…
so it still counted as a smile.
Had my mother completely lost her mind? What...what was happening?
I was too shocked to even scream out my emotions.
I was terrified to the point that I stopped breathing and began to cough for oxygen. But I couldn't move…
"Ah, Seishirou!" She turned her head as she held my father closer to her body. With the heavily scarlet-covered hand, she beckoned to me to come closer to her.
Shaking my head, I protested, "No, Mommy."
She tilted her head. "Come to me, My baby."
Believing her as I always did, like any other child greatly cared for by a loving mother's call, I went to her. Though I was shaking, she held her other hand out to me.
The hand untouched by the red stains held me close. She kissed my forehead.
"You may not understand. But because your father and I loved each other, I had to kill him."
This made no sense to me at all.
With both of her hands on my face, she looked straight into my face. "In our family, the most perfect love...is if you kill them. And some day, I will have you kill me through the heart as I did with your father."
Shaking my head, I said, "No! I could never do that, Mommy!"
Holding me firmly, she said, "It is your destiny, Seishirou. As the heir to be the Sakurazukamori."
With a deep breath, she said, "You are an assassin. This is in your blood. You will learn with time."
Then, we buried my father under a sakura tree in a park.
I did learn with time.
Unfortunately...
I knew how to manipulate people. I knew how to use them. And I figured out how they could be used for my whims without even seeming so.
And yet, I knew this was wrong...deep in my heart...
I learned also how my mother smiled.
I had assimilated myself to smile like that. In times of being coy, in times of being happy, in times of sadness, I was perfect in my execution of a smile. It was a grin with too many things behind it, regardless.
And soon, I had lost meaning on which was sincere and which was not.
But at times, I would feel tinges of the realness of it all...
I didn't care anymore.
I had learned to treat everything, including animals and people as mere things.
The more I saw my mother come home with hands tainted in other people's blood, the more I became unafraid and numbed to cries of torture.
Then, that fateful day came when I would take over. In the snow, my mother's kimono and hands were painted as if it were raining red raindrops itself.
And then, I killed her with my hand through her heart. "Until I met you, I thought your father was the one I most loved."
"I love you the most, Mother."
She shook her head and smiled. "No, the person you love the most isn't me."
Again, she shook her head as she remembered my father and the time she had killed him.
"Sayonara, Okaa-san," I said as I bent down to kiss her on the mouth.
We functioned as if it were nothing...
As if this were an everyday occurrence even with a smile.
Even if it pained me.
In our family, you smile though you could be crying your heart out inside...
that's how we could keep calm...
that's how twisted I had learned to become...
And I buried her next to my father under that same sakura tree.
For days, I'd gone to school and wandered by that park wondering about the past and its circumstances. I thought about what my mother said and the song she had hummed to herself before I broke it with my 'Tadaimasu' that day.
My hands weren't tainted...but for fun I would try for today. I would gradually learn how to dye my hands without feeling anything at all.
A few days later, I found a girl below me. I looked down at her as I sat on a branch of the sakura tree where my parents were buried. Jumping down, I gave her a smile as I slashed through her diaphragm.
Heartless.
There was no room for tears.
You are an assassin.
It is your destiny…
But when I did this, there was a little boy that had watched me doing this with wide eyes.
And that was when my mother's words reiterated themselves in my head as if she herself were whispering them to me with her gentle voice: "No, the person you love the most isn't me."
Wanting to play with this idea, I put him to sleep and made him blind in seeing the dead little girl bleeding next to us as I said, "Kirei na sakura, desu ne? Sakura, osuki desu ka?"
Cutely, he nodded. "Hai!"
As I explained to him that there were people buried under these sakura trees, he became horrified. Then, to tell him more of the truth, feeling the power of intimidation at my grasps, I said that the petals were pink because of the blood of the people buried.
My parents' blood is here,
to tell you the truth, little boy...
"Aren't the people in pain?" he had replied in tears.
And for the first time in my life, after the learned instinct of not caring for anyone's or anything's life, I began to feel a bit guilty as well as shocked at his deep response.
My heart skipped a beat as I smiled sincerely at him and bent down to his level. "Let's make a bet. When we meet again-"
My sakura flew in a frenzy as he shouted with his sleeve to cover his face, "Sumimasen! But I can't hear you because the wind's too loud!"
It was then that I put him to sleep.
But I blocked his memory as I kissed his hands and marked it with my teeth. His hands were dripping crimson.
"No, the person you love the most isn't me," my mother's voice protruded deep inside of me as I looked at this boy.
Blocking his memory even further, I embraced him. "I understand now."
Softly, I kissed the boy on his warm lips.
"This is the day I let you live," I said to the adorable sleeping face.
This boy is special...
I can feel it...
Holding him even tighter, I couldn't let his warm body go yet.
I haven't held something as soft as my mother's hands...
...or the sakura petals...
You are as soft as them. Even your heart...
But you are my prey.
And you are mine.
All mine...
Owari.
-
Author's note: Creepy, twisted...so seductively Seishirou...
2001