Does anyone know where to find manga translations of the first four tankoubon? Sorry, my research is in a standstill...

Disclaimer: Saiyuki is owned by Minekura Kazuya. [I have forgotten to type this down during the first chapter. That's bad.]

More notes: --There will be a "slight" change in the character through which you are seeing. This is due to a new plotbubble…

--This is also the chapter wherein Gonou'll start a bloodbath. As I am a person who is fascinated by blood (and almost anything related to it, for that matter), I have tendencies to emphasize the blood and gore. Hence one of the reasons for me to put this under the R section. (How ironic... Should I change it to PG-13? ^.^)

Thanks for all of the reviews on the previous chapter. They are much appreciated.

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Chapter 2

Hunting

His head slightly bows down as a soft breeze started to surround him, brown hair swaying along with it. You suppress the instinct to draw him near you and run your fingers through the dark locks. Strange, you think, why am I starting to act like this? It's as if I actually feel something for him. Do I actually want to comfort him, an almost complete stranger? His story may be one of woe, but why is it that everything he's telling me is so familiar? Has the loneliness driven him to find pity and sympathy in everyone he meets? No, impossible, you know he is stronger than that.

Your gaze once again is directed to his eyes, which are now staring at the floor in front of him. 'I know I could have left them alone, but I couldn't help it. Something vicious as a bloodthirsty hound stirs inside me every time something is taken away from me...'

Suddenly you feel a pang of guilt, yet you do not know the exact reason for it. Maybe all will be revealed later. You look up, and to your surprise his gaze at you with the most sorrowful expression that you've seen from him up to this point. Longing, endless waiting, driven to madness by despair and sorrow; countless memories of the past; the deepest wound that had never healed, bled again each time Death came - like the frail flame of a candle, the look disappears as if it was blown away. You wonder: why is it that he hides his emotions before you could make a complete analysis of them? Instinctively, you already know that he could have masked them beforehand. But why didn't he? Why does he choose to show to you a glimpse of his deep wounds?

He continues before you can clear your mind and organize your thoughts.

'I got up, the dark flames of hatred and vengeance burning fiercely in my ravished soul. I stumbled into the kitchen and took the knife that lay near the cutting board. The half-sliced onions were still there, giving off the scent of decay...'

You close your eyes and lean comfortably against the wall behind you. Calm was the air about you as your thoughts merged with his. You feel your spirit drawing near the man's own. Your thoughts drift away from your state, yet you do not notice. His voice surrounds the both of you like the mists about the forests near dawn.

'...darkness enveloped me as I went out the door...'

+ + +

A door slams against its wooden frame. Your mind's eye slowly adjusts to its surroundings. The sky is inky black; the moon shines like a beam in a fog, making objects on the ground cast light shadows. The surrounding houses are gray and silver figures in the night. Your ears prick up. Footsteps that walk away from you in a calm pace pick up speed as the moments pass. A man is approaching the house next door. You watch with anticipation, eyes glued to the figure that now kicks the door open and raises the dagger in his hand. Through the gaping doorway you can see a man in his early thirties. Words from the ongoing tale come back to you. "...a middle-aged man with short, dark hair..." His eyes widen.

'What the- Gonou!?'

Cho Gonou smiles eerily and brings down the dagger. Blood gushes forth from the wound that was a line across the other man's abdomen. He looks at his murderer in shock, before collapsing and forming a strange angle on the floor. Within seconds, a small puddle of blood forms beneath the dead body. The first sprays of red liquid stain his clothes and his cheek. The knife is no longer the color of steel. The pale moon shines with a pinkish glow on the blade's smooth surface. Gonou glances back one more time before walking towards the next house, that mad glint still present in his eyes.

'Darling?' The voice's owner emerges from the house. 'Where-' She catches sight of her husband's corpse, and screams. You cover your ears in pain, for the sound echoed around you. It reverberated in the air and hung there, the herald of many more lamenting voices to come. The light from inside the house spills out the doorway, showing the wife cradle her husband's corpse. Another scream of fright and horror is heard in the next building.

You scramble after the phantom that was quickly fading into the shadows.

Blood was everywhere, gallons of it. He sometimes hangs the entrails of his victims on the posts and racks as if to publicly display his grotesque works. An alarm is raised, yet only a small number responds. These he also killed. Though everything is in black and gray and white (as is everything under the moon's light), you can see in your mind's eye that the vivid crimson color is present in every turn. Perhaps it is what he sees, but you still cannot be certain. He drags another one out of the bed by tugging the victim's hair with great force. Never mind if the scalp is ripped off in the process. He puts the guy back to sleep by tearing out the eyes and ripping the flesh of the torso. Agony plagued him, but Death is merciful. The man's senses turned numb. He will die at dawn, but without seeing the sun rise.

All of the victims were male, and deep down you know the reason why. To him, they are at fault. You could feel Gonou's anguish, his sense of unreality, the anger hidden deep for so long suddenly bursting forth. His logic is already in front of you, clear as text freshly printed on white paper, waiting to be judged. Let he who hath not sinned cast the first stone.

You watch from a distance, as Gonou drags some of the men out of their houses and mutilates them one by one. The others he threw out of bed before slaying them. As he had thought, most of them are cowards. They flee from the sight of him, but he always catches up and kills them without a word. He did not spare those who begged for mercy, for the only form of justice available to them was a swift stroke of the horribly stained knife. With the blood of his victims, he writes messages on the walls of the houses that were white minutes before. Traitors. Cowards. Beasts that feed off the meat and fat of their neighbors. Why must it be that you do this? Just because my sister and I are outsiders doesn't mean you have to treat us like a people apart! All of you who die tonight deserve this fate. He caught up with another and ripped the heart from the chest with the use of both his hands and knife.

He ruined half of the town by himself, all in the hours between midnight and dusk.

His mind is in a blur. The part of him that's lamenting over the losses during that night is overpowered by that urge to kill. He silently walks back to his house, leaving a trail of mutilated bodies and footsteps of blood behind him. An occasional sound of dripping is heard, echoing clear above the sounds of lament. Tiny bits and pieces of debris from the buildings he had ravaged are scattered on the street. No one dares to come out and claim their dead while he is on the streets.

The rosy fingertips of Dawn touched the horizon when he put a red stained hand on the doorknob. Only a few more minutes to go before the other half of the village finds out what he'd done. He enters, leaving red marks on the knob and the walls that he passes by as he trails his fingers on the smooth surface. They are red, but not that poignant. The blood on his hands has dried in the cold air outside. Gonou sits on the floor, leans on the wall opposite the house's entrance, and gazes at his hands and arms with lips slightly open in a ghost of a smile. The unreal smile widens on his face. My work here is done, he thinks. Time to hunt down the bastards who took her away. He ignores his surroundings. He didn't bother to put his home in order, not even the books in his study.

His other self is silenced with harsh words. A numb sensation takes over his senses. An ache that tries to make itself felt lost a war. As he struggles to contemplate on the reason for the cold emptiness he feels, you try to put your hand on his shoulder in sympathy. It merely goes through his arm, as if you are a ghost. What have I done, he silently questions himself. Is it worth it? He convinces himself that he was right in choosing to kill of the traitors in the village. He glances at the knife at his side. I have no other use of this now. It is blunt and tainted. 'Time to get a new weapon...' The knife slips from his idle grasp. He gets up and heads for his room.

You look away in sorrow as he reaches for a dagger hidden in the drawer of his desk. After tucking it away safely in his shirt he crosses the room, past the bed where he had made love to Kanan, past the dining area where they ate the meals she cooked, past the living room where they had spent their precious time together... He gently closes the door behind him and murmurs a soft farewell.

A small tear rolls down your pale cheek. Why does one such as you have to go through all of this? Why did you fool yourself into thinking this is right? You know better than to be caught in a trap like this...

...don't you, Hakkai?

+ + +

Your eyes snap open. You are breathing rapidly, and your head was starting to spin when you came 'round. Hakkai... now where did that name come from? Why is it so familiar? Your list of questions grows longer, and none of them are going to be answered any time soon. You look up, and find out that he's staring at you in amazement.

'You're weeping,' he said slowly.

You hastily wipe your right eye and cheek with your sleeve, all the while glaring at him defiantly. You just hate it when you cry, you feel so vulnerable and weak. You never liked feeling weak, you never have. It was so... So...

'Degrading?'

There is that look of understanding in his eyes. You shift your gaze to the floor in front of you. He had guessed the word you have been searching for, and now your mind was awake and alert. Never before had your thoughts been read this easily, and you never thought it would be.

'Uncomfortable with my guesses?' You shift uneasily in your seat. He chuckles with closed eyes. You glare at him pointedly. 'So sorry, but you had left your thoughts unguarded.' When his eyes opened again, that sorrowful expression is back on his face. 'I once knew a very close friend like you, a long, long time ago. The reason-' His eyes widen. It looks as if he had said too much. He looks down with a blank expression. 'Later. That will come along later.' He smiles again. What is going on in that man's head?

+ + +

By the time the sun was entirely over the hills, Cho Gonou was no where to be found and the entire village had just found out the mess he had made. Relatives and friends sorted through the piles of corpses and entrails in hopes to find a loved one, only to find it and stay away from the remains in disgust. You briefly wonder how it is possible to recognize the past identities of mutilated corpses. You strain your eyes, and to your surprise the faces are not horribly mutilated. Though some are missing a few parts such as the eyes and tongue, with blood here and there, the heads are actually recognizable. You suspect that it is a part of Gonou's revenge. People from nearby towns came and looked at the damage with morbid curiosity. The screams and wails have brought about sufficient attention; the event is going to be the talk and tale of many a villager for a long, long time.

'That man's insane,' says one of the witnesses, who had narrowly escaped death by hiding in a closet in his sister's bedroom. 'His eyes were fierce, animal-like. A relentless panther that hunts in the dark...' He shuddered. Last night's happenings had clearly scared the living daylights out of him.

The village elder says nothing and tightens his grip on his walking stick. In a nearby house there is a loud wail and the voice of a mother trying to soothe her child. Her husband was one of those who had died the previous night. 'May the heavens punish you thrice fold! May my curse haunt you until the day you die!' she cries bitterly through her tears.

You see all of this happen from behind a grove of trees. Beside you is the crouched form on Cho Gonou, who still has that empty smile on his face. He stands up and walks away, satisfied with the outcome. He knows that none of the villagers would come after him today, even if they saw his retreating form. None of them will recognize him with the distance between them, and they would still be grieving too much to care. He also knows that one day one of them will come after him, seeking revenge like he did. 'Let them come,' he murmurs. 'By the time I'm done, they'll not be the only ones looking for me...'

The sky darkens. A sense of dread comes over him. His smile fades into a frown. Something bad is about to happen to Kanan...

He breaks into a run.

*~*~*

Think there is enough gore? Too much, too little or just right? Any inconsistencies (I hope not)?

Please inform me of any errors existing in the text. Comments, suggestions, and violent reactions are welcome. Thank you.