SERIOUS HUGE MAJOR WARNING!! THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS DISTURBINGLY GRAPHIC AND VIOLENT IMAGERY!! DON'T READ IT IF YOU CAN'T TAKE IT, AND DON'T GO CRYING TO ANYONE EITHER!! I'M NOT PLAYING AROUND HERE!! THIS IS YOUR ABSOLUTE LAST WARNING!! THE 'R' IS THERE FOR A REASON, AND THAT REASON IS THIS CHAPTER.
There. Consider yourself warned.
************************************
Katsu walked into his and Yokuzoma-sensei's house, far more cheerful than he had been in past memory. He was sure that the old lady who sold him their vegetables had giggled at his back as he was walking away, and his face was actually starting to hurt from all the unaccustomed smiling.
The smile didn't last too long, though. There was … rather too much blood in the room to allow for smiling on the part of most sane people.
The entire room was covered in blood – a clotting crimson stain that fell somewhere between the "sticky" and the "curdled" categories. There were other little details, too: here a brownish stain and a clump of gore, there a morsel of severed flesh, too mutilated to exactly define – but mostly, Katsu noticed the blood. It was … everywhere. On the floor, on the furniture, on the walls and, as he stood there in a disbelieving stupor, a drop fell from the ceiling with a thick suction sound. Katsu didn't bother to look up.
Mechanically, he began to pick a trail through the carnage, still clutching the cloth bag with its few turnips and radishes that were to be today's meal. He couldn't drop that bag – the vegetables would fall in the blood and be ruined, and they would have nothing to eat. Yokuzoma-sensei would be angry. That was the only thought in Katsu's head then – don't drop the bag. If you drop the bag, Yokuzoma-sensei will be angry. As long as you don't drop the bag, everything will be alright.
Just … don't … drop it.
Katsu followed the trail of blood and assorted fleshy bits, noting in an abstract way when it branched out to include the occasional clump of hair, and once, something that looked like a part of an eye. He glanced inside his room when the trail passed it, and found that while it hadn't been spared total destruction, there was very little blood. The same was true for the kitchen – as a matter of fact, the blood was thinning out. Well, that was to be expected. A living thing only has so much blood to bleed, after all.
Eventually, Katsu stopped in front of Yokuzoma-sensei's room, and looked in.
In the stillness of the little house, the sound of one bag falling was disgustingly loud, and less obtrusive rumble of a radish rolling away was mere insult upon an already grievous injury.
It wasn't the blood. There wasn't much blood really – but Katsu almost wished there was. Blood, at least, would have hidden most of the … damage. Enough to give Katsu a peace of mind he would never have again.
The corpse dangling from the ceiling of the room was definitely that of Yokuzoma-sensei – the face had been largely untouched, in defiance to the brutal defilement of the rest of the body. Ribs gaped open in an obscene parody of a welcoming embrace, glistening with pink and brown stains. The legs and arms were ragged, pathetic stumps, and now Katsu knew where the fleshy part of the trail had come from. What remained of them were strips of skin and muscle desperately clinging to broken, protruding ends of bones. Wrapped around the neck and tied to a beam in the ceiling wasn't rope, just intestines – the excess hung down into a coil on the floor. That was probably the liver stuffed in the mouth, and most likely his stomach there, cleaved in two pieces on the floor and adding color to the room. A sort of lumpy, greenish, yellow-purple color, but color all the same. Those shreds hanging in the space where the ribs were looked to be what was left of the lungs, and there was no sign of the heart. However … "largely untouched" does not classify as "untouched," and there were a few … modifications … to the face. The eyes had been removed, for example – though, one had been replaced. If carving a hole in the forehead and sticking the eye in there could be considered replacing …
There were a thousand more details that Katsu could have named off, and he did. He memorized the scene before him, burned it into his eyes so it would never leave. Just like he had done with Sagara-taichou's headless corpse, before the Meji bastards had buried it in a shallow, unmarked grave on the side of some road. Just like then. He couldn't help but compare the two scenes, and ask what he had done in his past life, that he deserved to have every father he was willing to give the name to taken away.
He didn't hear the gasp as someone came in the open door, the rapid footsteps, or the frantic calls for his name. He didn't even feel it when hands pulled him away, turned his head from the gruesome sight. It didn't matter – they were too late. He would not forget. He would remember, until he died.
*****************************
Okay. Before anyone kills me for this one, I'd like to ask you to not. You won't get anything else that way. And yes, I did have to do it. I don't want to hear anything on that – I said I had to do it, I had to do it. It's for the Plot.
Also, next week is exam week, and you guys know what that means. I don't need to say anything else, do I?
blah: ugh. Butterfly's terrible (remembered from her long-ago days of Swim Team). And um … of course … ff.net doesn't send any such thing! Why would you think that? *whistles*
Lychee2: Kijou's name was taken from "Kijo" which, according to Mr. Online Translator, means 1) she-devil, witch, demoness, ogress, 2) lady, you(fem), and 3) mechanism. Guess which definition I used? ;) But yours was good too. And it's impossible to guilt-trip me. I have no shame. ^___^