A/N: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU very much to all the people who have been nice enough to review this fic of mine. This chapter is dedicated to all you guys and to anyone else who would care enough to pay attention .Warning: Perverted thoughts and language… I think I should change this fic's rating to R :P
CHAPTER TWO: HAUNTED
The abrasively familiar musky smell lingered in his nose even as he was idly pedaling his bicycle down the darkened block leading to his house. And in the eerie stillness of the night, it rang a gratingly sharp testimony to the draining yet hardly satisfying sensual stint he had wrought out on one of his regular customers about an hour ago.
Whenever he was at it, it didn't matter at all that the perfidious husband was friggin' old enough to be his grandfather or that the fuckin' old man almost literally reeked of rotten flesh.
It had never bothered him that he had to slide his tongue up and down that wrinkly sheath of skin. Or had given much fuss about the patriarchal man's scream of passion sounding more like the haunting cries of a waking zombie whenever he would thrust himself into his decaying hole.
He had never given much attention to such trivial things while he's still at work on it. After all, he could take a shower afterwards and cry all he liked while washing off all offensive signs of his corrupted secret life from his superficially unblemished skin.
Even after years of providing such services to rich, perverted folks--both male and female alike, he still couldn't help but feel as though he was doing this for the first time. How many years had it been? About ten… Since he ran away from home after a similar abusive experience with his father, he had been depending on this job to provide for his needs. He had been supplying good sex to lonely folks--taking part in these lustful people's acts of perfidy, sometimes even ridding an occasional long-suffering soul off his or her virginity.
He's quite good at it, actually, having had excellent training at such a young age. He had yet to encounter an indurate creature who wouldn't be satisfied by all the things he could do. It had been a common joke in the strip joint he worked for that he could make even a fossilized statue bear seeds and come into his hands.
He was that good. And he earned a lot from it as well. But he hated the job.
If he had a choice, anything at all, he would be more than willing to leave this place. But this was where he had spent most of his life. This was the place that readily took him in from his aimless wondering in the streets.
This was where he had become a man.
And no matter how many times he had thought of leaving it, he just couldn't get himself to do so, considering the fact that he owed his very life and soul to this joint. He wouldn't have survived this long if it hadn't been for this job.
He could've died in the streets without even realizing his dreams.
He could've lost his breath without leaving a mark that someone like him had once lived in this world.
He hated that thought. He hated it more than anything.
So he kept this job, though against his every principle and will. Besides, the amount of money these rich fucks pay for his satisfying services had always been enough--almost to the whole extent--to override all feelings of disgust and shame that came with each nocturnal session.
In a single night, he could make as much money as would a pathetic public employee clambering through a whole month of grueling labor. He would just have to bear with a night of foul play, thrusting himself into every gaping portals of passion, releasing about a barrel of his juice into some fecund and fallow apertures and-- Voila! He's a rich man.
It's the easiest job he knew. The only one he knew, actually. And despite the emotional, psychological, and even the physical torture he always got from it, he couldn't imagine himself living through a night without it.
It had become a kind of addiction. One his moral side hated to do, but his immoral one loved indulging in more than anything.
And, though bad and profligate as it may seem, it was the only other thing aside from basketball that had given him an assurance for a better future…
He ain't gonna leave this world like a sporadic wind, never to be seen nor thought of ever again. He ain't gonna be a mortal breath who would cease existing beyond the grave.
After everything he had been through, Kaede Rukawa knew he's worth more than that. Much, much more…
He finally reached his house--one he had bought out of his own sweat--walked and parked his bike in the backyard before letting himself in through the back door.
He almost thought he had entered the wrong house for what immediately caught his eyes when he switched the light on was the orderly condition of his kitchen. There was no more sign of the dishes he--for lack of time and sense of responsibility--had purposefully left unwashed on the sink since last week. The sink itself almost blinded him with its dazzling cleanliness. The floor squeaked proudly under his trainers, and there was even cooked food waiting for him on the table.
He set the bag of clothes he was carrying on one chair, as carefully as though he was too afraid of contaminating anything in his own house with the littlest dust of his recent tryst.
He then trudged over to his living room to see if it had suffered from the same transformation, as did his kitchen. And it took everything he had to keep his jaw from slacking at the sight of his new house. Yes, it was a new house, that much he could say. Not really much had changed except that it had suddenly become neat and tidy enough to suit a king. He couldn't help but feel like a stranger to his own home.
After a few more seconds of taking in the new look of his place, he found himself back in the kitchen, sitting at the dining table and deftly winning a glaring match with the delicious looking soup staring at him from his favorite bowl. He stole a glance at the bag resting on the chair beside him and couldn't keep a small sigh from escaping his lips.
He was still as angry with her as he was before, all right. But after everything she had done on her first day in his house, he stopped asking himself why he had spent all of tonight's earnings on those stuffs.
After another longing look on the alluring bowl of soup, he stood up, grabbed the bag and took to the stairs with a strange feeling of anticipation welling in his heart.
He may never understand why he bought all these clothes for that little twerp in the first place, but he sure hoped he's got her taste right.
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It was a guy with a limping gait. Cute, but a little hotheaded. Shy and anxious, yet overflowing with as much pride and arrogance as would allow him to act otherwise, which was exactly what he did.
His friends had bought her from Masato-san as a sort of initiation gift for his accession to their gang. And for the handsome price they paid, her aunt didn't even think twice before giving her away.
She was only twelve years old then, the guy was fifteen. And that night was just the outset of many similar ones to come.
She lived for three years with Masato-san, during which that whore earned a fortune from selling her around this way. Every night, repeatedly for three years, she would find herself staring into the eyes of the next man eager and merciless enough to debauch her already badly soiled innocence.
This was the past she had wanted to escape from for the longest time. The life she had successfully gotten out of just a few hours ago. But recurring memories of it proved to be a little harder to efface. Wherever she went or whatever she did, they would forever remain etched in her mind… In her dreams… Along with the emotions, the strange sensations she felt with each ravenous kiss, each possessive touch, each subduing intrusion into her being… She would feel them all every night, almost as much as she was feeling them all tonight.
Kaori bolted upright and out of that dream, that un-thwarted ghost of her past which had always come haunting her in her sleep. Her breaths came in ragged gasps and she was drenched in cold, thick sweat all over. A trembling hand flew to her chest as she closed her eyes tight, using every ounce of strength left in her to calm her raging senses down.
It took her only about a minute to get a hold on herself, as what had always been the case whenever she woke out of this all too familiar nightmare. She was about to lie back down and curl herself into a pathetic crying ball, when upon opening her eyes, she found herself staring into a pair of mesmerizing blue pools gazing back at her with a kind of intensity she couldn't quite place, nor put a finger on at the moment.
It took her only a while to acknowledge the familiarity of those peepers…
But the feeling of relief that flooded her upon realizing the presence of her onii-san sitting at the edge of her bed was only momentary. For almost as abruptly as this realization came, the feeling of dread she always felt whenever she stared into men's eyes shot through her like Novocain. It drew the same kind of numbing feeling from her… Those eyes she was looking into right now were filled with almost the same kind of desire…
The same amount of lust…
She had wanted to tear her eyes away, but every nerve and muscle in her body had already frozen and stiffened under that gaze.
She suddenly got the feeling that this wasn't the onii-san she saw in the article she had clipped out of Masato-san's sports magazine and was now keeping under her pillow. This wasn't the guy who was caught in the picture executing a graceful slam dunk that earned victory for their team in the recent Winter Tournament.
This wasn't the Kaede Rukawa she knew to be her long lost big brother…
Or so, that's what she wanted to believe at that very moment.
For that was easier to deal with than the notion that her brother was not much different from those men…
Kaori got so overwhelmed with agitation that she could hardly be bothered by anything else. Not the tears freely gushing out of her frightful eyes… Nor the solitary one that crashed into an evanescent stain on her blanket.
The haunting memories of her past had long since blinded her eyes, disposing her to an automatic judgment of everyone as being mean and perverted… Obviously, this was not excluding her very own brother.
They had not seen each other for a long time, after all. Who knew how much her onii-san had changed during those years they were apart?
Not that he had really shown her any kind of affection, in the first place.
She may not know why, but she was well aware of the fact that her onii-san hated her. Ever since they were kids, she had tried all her best to pacify even a quarter of that hatred by showing her onii-san how much she cared. And she truly did… She loved her onii-san more than anything--more than anyone in the world…
And no matter how many times he had snarled the words, "I hate you…" to her face, she never gave up trying to make him feel loved and wanted. For no matter what he did or thought of her, no one could ever change the fact that they had a fairly similar familial origin. That they were siblings, to say the very least.
Despite this irrevocable fact, however, their father had never wanted him and she never did understand that. Why would an old man loathe someone of his own flesh and blood? Why would he hurt her poor onii-san as though he was a stranger, a mere slave, while at the same time showering her with all the love and affection he was capable of giving? Were they not conceived from the same kind of sensual union between two madly in-love couple? Had they not come out of the same womb, out of the same woman their father loved with all his life? Onii-san may have slid out first, but what difference did it make?
She remembered staying outside of that filthy room ten years ago, listening to her brother's agonized cries of pain. That was the last night she ever saw him. When he dashed past her, his clothes torn and drenched in both blood and sweat, all he left behind for her to remember distinctly was that smell…
In her innocence, she had never stopped wondering what had happened inside that room. Every time she had a chance to think of her brother, that strange smell would come tingling at her nose as though she was actually watching her brother ran past her once again…
As the years past by, and her time was generously filled with matters that concerned her own life, she had gradually began to forget…
Until she met that guy with the limping gait. The moment she felt him thrusting into her, she had cried out in pain. The same agonized cries of pain that had filled her brother's room was rushing out of her mouth as the delirious guy did a frenzic dance on top of her…
And it was only after the guy had slumped feebly beside her that she became fully aware of it… That same musky smell that his brother had left behind…
And then she knew… Knew exactly what happened that night…
"I… I'm… sorry," she forced the words through her lips, as though saying them alone was harder than letting out a contaminated breath. She had always thought it was her fault that her onii-san had to suffer through that kind of abuse. He had always blamed her for everything that had happened to him. And she had taken them all as though reconciled to the fact that she was the most sinful soul that had ever grazed the earth.
She had wanted to move in with her older brother, not only because of a past she had always wanted to rid herself of, but also because of the past she had hoped to rub out of his onii-san's system, out of his every emotion, his every haunting memory.
She had vowed to make it up to him in any way she could…
"You're lucky," was all her brother said before standing up and leaving the room. But not after sending another tear crashing beside the initial stain…
This time, Kaori was aware and un-blinded enough to notice.
tbc