hell
It would drive anyone crazy. I know.
Everyone... has one person who is perfect for them, right? Somewhere in the world?
What if you found them? What if you were lucky enough to find them while you were still very young? You may not have known it at the time, sure, but as time went on you would grow together. Over time, day after day spent together, sharing, then you come to the slow realization...
This person is the one for me.
And I want to be together with them forever.
Sounds nice, right? Everyone's dream. To love someone. To be loved by someone.
Well guess what. She's dead.
Before I even realized who she was for me. Before I even had a chance to enjoy it, even. My destiny was snatched away from me, and I didn't even have the chance to truly be angry about it.
Unfair? That doesn't even begin to describe it. Unjust? No, not that either.
Because you see, it gets so much worse.
She was about the same age as me. We were both at that awkward stage, something between a child and a teenager. That age in which the girls seem to generally be a few inches above the boys, and the boys tease them endlessly about their changes, maybe because the boys are slower and won't do the same for another year or two. Who knows why. It was that age, and she was feeling it and thinking about it. Uncomfortable as she noticed the increasing gap between herself and the others... the boys at the dojo.
I met her when I was looking for a fight, and she spanked me good. No seriously, she kicked my ass. I was whupped. And I was shocked. I had thought this whole sword thing looked so easy. Everyone's played stickball, or swung a broomstick before. It feels so natural.
So how was it so easy for her?
And I remember yelling... after she defeated me two thousand times... the word that was going to haunt me for the rest of my life...
"Kuyashii!"
It generally refers to frustration, humiliation, often at one's own inability. Mortification, the feeling of wanting to die rather than face reality. Kuyashii.
Kurushii. So similar. Crushing. Often used when someone finds themselves restrained against their will or has difficulty breathing.
Like my whole life.
The strangling, crushing feeling of wishing something wasn't the way it was, but having to live with it. Being crammed into a mold that you don't want to fit into. Wanting to fight back and being unable to. Not wanting things to happen the way they are. Bitter, angry, painful, smothering. Kuyashii. Kurushii.
You'd think it's easy, living with just one goal? I mean, how many times have I said it, really? The greatest swordsman in the world. That's all, that's it. Nothing else.
Yeah freakin' right. You wanna know what the biggest lie of my life is? That one. Because that's not a lie I tell for other people... hell, they could care less. That's a lie I tell myself. Every day. And it's gotten so bad I gotta hide from it now. Ignore it, every chance I get.
Think I sleep 'cause I'm tired? What a joke.
And the worst part is... I can't escape it. I can't escape my self, I can't escape her. Not even in sleep. Because sleep... sleep is the one place I can be with her. And that, my friends, is the source of all my torment.
I carry her soul with me. The girl I mentioned before. The One. When she died, her father gave her to me. He gave me her sword and for some unknown reason, said, that her sword, her dream, and her soul were now mine.
What possessed him to say that, I'll never know. But he set it in motion. The sweetest gift and the most bitter pain I could imagine. She's mine. But I can't have her.
Imagine having a rose encased in a snowglobe. The most beautiful rose you've ever seen. And you could carry it around, and watch her... I mean it, bloom, and become more beautiful every day, but you can't touch it. You can't breathe in its fragrance. You can never truly have it.
Or how about the world's most beautiful butterfly, caught and pinned to a board. You can hang it on the wall and admire it. But it's still dead.
It's sort of like that. Well, maybe not. I don't exactly have a way with words, so if you don't like it... tough. What I mean is...
Kuina has been with me, her soul held in her sword. And I've been carrying her with me since that day. I see her when I sleep sometimes. Sometimes I know she's listening to me when I talk. I feel her eyes on me during the day. Like she's always looking over my shoulder. And we, us two, are together.
She's my best friend, but in so much more of a deep way than other kids are best friends. She knows me. She watches over me.
I've always been a loner. I'm not exactly good at making friends. And it was the same, of course, with her. I hated her at first! She was the bane of my existence for that short time. But then there was that night... that night she was crying. And I yelled at her. And I made her promise, that we would both try.
And since then I've had one person... one person who I felt like knew me.
So we're together, and even when nobody else does, I know she understands. I have her with me. I can go and visit her if I want, and spend time with her. It's relaxing to feel known. You know the feeling. You're in a room full of strangers, or you're away from home, and then when you see that one familiar person, all the tension goes out of your shoulders and you are reminded that you are you. And that's all you are.
If it were just that, just being able to sit and chitchat with a ghost, that would be clean and simple. But there's more. Because by some cruel twist of fate, she didn't stay the same little girl that she was when she died. Somehow my life is feeding hers. And she has grown along with me. So instead of staying a memory, a dead little girl with messy hair and tomboy clothes, she's...
Remember what I said about that flower?
She's bloomed. She's a young woman now. Her body is not the body of a kid anymore. Her face... her skin... her hair... everything. She's like a painting. She's absolutely perfect. I mean, anything I could have asked for in a woman, things I knew and things I didn't know about, she has. If you could only see her! Her hands are like silk, and her skin... oh, god. Breathtaking.
And here's where it gets ugly.
Because...
I want her.
How can I? This is my childhood friend! She's part of me, right? I knew her as a kid. She's been dead for about a decade now. I've gone on and matured (some) and had experiences and such, and she...
She is like the princess in the ivory tower. She may appear to be my equal... but you see, she hasn't had any of those moments... she's so innocent. She's never felt the feelings that she would have had if she had gone through those horrible years... thirteen, sixteen, eighteen. I'm sure you remember what you were like and what you were doing at that time.
And her soul is as pure as it was at the beginning.
Which only makes me hunger for her more. My soul is stained with blood, and I want something clean and pure. It has to be her. I know that she can take it away. I want her to take it away.
It's been slowly building, deep inside me, for years. Like water seeping, gathering to burst a flood wall. At first it was just curiousity. She was such a strange creature, so different from me. Her awkwardness was compelling-- the way you see a baby chicken starting to grow feathers, and you want to pick it up and keep it warm until it can do so for itself. I could tell, even back then, that she felt self-conscious. And I wondered why. I wanted to know what she was thinking, why she got nervous. I wanted to understand how she thought she was different.
Then it became a strange fondness. I found I liked to look at her. Why? Hell if I knew. I just knew that looking at her made me feel... different. Especially when we sparred. My eyes caught the fluid grace of her movements. The strong muscles of her arms covered with feminine softness. The way her eyes flashed as she teased me, taunted me. Her small, delicate hands, wrapped around the handle of her wooden sword, gripping it tightly...
There I go again.
Swordfighting is, in actuality, very different from what most people think it is. Two opponents hacking at each other? Not quite. It's more of... a testing. Testing your adversary's will and strength. Feeling out their moves and impulses. Knowing their mind and following them along. Blocking, pushing, pressing, thrusting... tasting...
I can't. I can't practice with her anymore. The urge is too hard to suppress, the pain is too great. I could never hurt her, my angel. Never. But my body... my body wants to follow through and finish the duel. Finish it with a brutal finality. To take her, possess her, make her mine. Forever.
But when she teases me, taunts me with her little snapping comments, just the way she always has, she snaps another thread holding me back. Because she seems so smug in her safety. She doesn't know. And some evil part of me wants to show her just how dangerous it is to play around with me. And I hate myself all over again.
Some people are those who push ahead and take action, like to lead. Not me. My style is more like reacting. I tend to sit back and judge the situation and the opponent and then react. I see other guys chasing after money or girls, but not me. I let things chase me. If they catch up, fine. But I run hard. I run as hard and as fast as I can to avoid having to deal. And I've tried to run from this. But when I close my eyes, there she is again.
I've never asked anyone for anything. Even when people offer me things, I can't accept them. I handle my needs alone. But this is one need I cannot ignore.
It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach. The need, and then the shame at the mere having of that need, sickens me. I hate it. I wish I could cut it away and cast it aside. But it permeates my whole being and I can't get rid of it. No matter how hard I try. No matter how many times I try to scrub it away. No matter how many fights I get into, no matter how many times I let myself get cut.
Yet at the end of the day or when I black out after the battle, she is always there, waiting for me. Eager to see me. She's my friend. Accepting and warm. That may only be because I'm all she has, but when I come around the corner and see that face looking up at me, it's hard to remember that. I try, I remind myself over and over that it's nothing special. But a little part of me can't help imagining...
Imagining what it could have been like, if she were mine.
But I cannot, I will not, spoil the purity of the one untainted thing I have. It would be like tearing the petals from a perfect white rose. After all was said and done, I could never forgive myself.
No. She will remain, safe and untouched, in her little snowglobe world. I will admire her from a distance until it drives me mad. And when I reach my goal, death will free me from my desire and my pain.
Kurushii. Holding back.
Kuyashii. Denying myself.
But she will stay happy.
My angel.