Standard disclaimers apply. A fanfiction by Ran Shizuka.
Why me?
Part I
It's raining. I feel numb.
"I'm sorry…" he's saying. He can still look at me with those lovely brown-black eyes of his while he tells me he's been cheating on me. "It's not that I don't love you…" he's saying. He can still sit straight on the wooden chair in front of me while he tells me that he has been having an affair.
Sure he's shaking a little and those beautiful eyes of his are a little too bright holding back what I can only assume to be tears…but he can still look so handsome.
He can still look so handsome.
The stupid man!
His words barely touch my ears much less reach my brain. I simply can't fathom why his mouth is moving when I can't hear his voice.
Then, the tears come, and the anger.
"Get out!" I scream. From the corner of my eye I could see Jien, cowering behind the wall. My sudden outburst must have scared him. Had he been listening all this while? 'Jien, go inside your room. Mommy and daddy are just talking,' I want to say. But I didn't.
"Calm down," he tells me, holding his arms in front of me like a lion trainer approaching his beast. The nerve!
"Get out! Get out of this house NOW! I don't ever want to see your face again. Don't you dare set foot in this house ever again." I'm screaming at the top of my voice. Tears are falling down my face in streaming rivulets. After a while, I don't even hear my own voice. It seems like the whole world is closing in on me. Every sound was starting to fade away from my consciousness. But I'm still screaming at him. That I know.
I fling my arms and knock over the antique vase on the table. It crashed into bits on the floor.
He still won't leave. He still refuses. So I had to take one of the larger pieces of the broken vase and stab him. His arm bled like I've never seen anything bleed before. The floor was turning red.
"Mom!" Jien's voice.
I walk up to him and crumple down to my knees. My legs won't support me any more. Pulling him closer to me, I hold my son…my only son to my heart and sob into his neck.
Vaguely at the back of my mind I notice the no good husband of mine running out the door.
Jien has the loveliest voice I've ever heard. This soft slightly raspy tone when he's scared. "Where's daddy going?" he let me continue sobbing into his neck.
"Away dear. Far, far away and I won't have to see him ever again."
….
But I did.
It was the ninth of November. There was a storm outside. Thunder and lightning fought for control over the skies. Three urgent knocks on the door.
Jien was helping me in the kitchen.
The knocking persisted. I wasn't even sure how I could hear the knocking, considering all the noise the gods of lightning and thunder were making in their war.
Wiping my hands on my apron, I jogged over to open the door.
There he was.
My husband.
I thought he was going to beg for my forgiveness. He was going to tell me that he couldn't live without me. He was going to mouth the words 'I love you' silently and shyly to me like he did on our wedding night and I would forgive him then and there. I'd let his strong arms hold me and I'd let the rain wash away all the pain I've been suffering and wash away his sins. Jien would have a father again. Dear, sweet Jien.
How naïve.
His beautiful brown-black eyes were red from crying. Yet his tears weren't for me.
"His name's Gojyo." Not the three little words I was expecting. Definitely not the words I wanted to hear.
He looked at me in the eye. I could see pain in those dark pools but they weren't pain over losing me.
"Take care of him for me." He handed me a bundle, small and light.
A flash of lightning illuminated him for a fraction of a second. I could make out his broad shoulders, his strong frame, the shape of his hands, the contours of his face.
He was still so handsome.
"I love you," he whispered to the bundle in my arms. Then he turned and ran down the lane. The rain swallowed him up; the mist engulfed him. I was still standing there in the doorframe. Shock and surprise couldn't begin to describe how I felt.
The bundle moved in my arms.
I pushed away some of the wet cloth. It was a child. Small, light, thin almost sickly. It was a child covered in blood, fresh from the womb of a woman, weak from the burden of a troubled labour. My fingers brushed against his skin. He felt cold.
He was freezing from the rain, naked underneath the wet rags.
I took him in. The light from the living room spilled into the hallway, onto his face.
From the moment he opened his ugly red eyes I realised exactly how deep the sins my husband had committed was.
The infant…the monster I held in my arms was a half-bred. Part human, part demon.
Tbc.
