Disclaimer: I don't own Peacemaker. I do claim ownership of the plot and the OCs though.
Woa, took me so long to write this chapter. But here it is, enjoy!
Men and Women
Chapter Two: Sad Clown (Heisuke)
"When you came out of your mother's womb, there was a mark on your forehead, says bastard. It's too deeply branded, there's no way to take it off. Even if you look into a mirror and you see nothing, people could still tell. You're a bastard for life."
Well, that was some bedtime story.
I was four years old when I first heard it, too little to know what a bastard is. It was not until several years later that I learned it's a word specifically set aside for unwanted kids--children of the damned. As much as I resented it, the word clung to me without ever let go and became part of what I was. Old sluts at the brothel would holler out: Bastard!Bastard!Bastard!--whenever they're mad at "the bitch who delivered me" for snatching away their customers, or when they were fed up with the lurid treatment of prostitution in their lives. Young urchins would sneer at me--again, along with the "bastard" word-- as I walked around the neighborhood, feeling lower than a mongrel dog.
The word itself was a bottomless well of perpetual ignominy, from which poison gushed forth, and I was forced to swallow it back in along with hot, choking tears. Unlike other kids, I didn't have a mother or a father to run crying to. I was alone. Alone in these daily life battles which I fought and lost, because there were many of them and only one of me.
So time passed... Being the apathetic force it was, time went on without any consideration to any particular miserable human being. One year, two years, five years...time kept its tally and laughed at the day I became so sickened and weary of fighting for a lost cause that I dropped my fists and fought no more.
Now, you have to understand, pride is hard to kill with one stroke, but if it gets stomped on for so long, it'd simply die on its own. As I grew up, I learned to live without my pride. I learned how to look at sordid things that I see everyday from a facetious perspective. I learned to laugh into the face of life when life's being such an irritable bitch.
And I laughed.
Even when they curse at me. Bastard. Bastard.
Even when they slapped my face red or broke my nose bloodied for not obeying their twisted desires.
I had to laugh, in spite of it all.
With pride lost, humor was my only facade that kept me from being shattered into a thousand pieces under the relentless trample of life. I'd laughed at the woman who gave birth to me for being a slave to opium, at sluts for rotting in their own sexual affairs, at God for having no eyes to do anything about all this sordidness. Like a sad, jaded clown without any sensitivity to my own pain and other's, I'd laughed and laughed. Until one day it was all laughing. Not that I forgot how to cry, there simply wasn't any tears left to cry out.
But enough about myself. Let's pay some respect to the ones who gave birth to me, even if they didn't want me in the first place.
The woman who bore me in her womb for nine months and some odd days was a prostitute at the Red Lights district. The man who planted some part of himself in her womb was a playboy from a rich, politically powerful family of hypocrites. Their affair only spanned over night, and ended as quickly as it started. Yet, she did not drink the potion to kill me in her womb, as any prostitute would. She kept me, not out of love per se, but with the desperate hope that I would be her ticket out of this hellhole of carnality. Somehow, she had managed to conjure a sort of fantasy in her head that a baby would be the chain tying her and the man together. If rumors get out, reasoned her, that he got a bastard kid from an affair with a third-rate prostitute, his family's reputation would be utterly ruined. And seeing how his family was big on avoiding scandals, they'd have no alternative but to arrange a marriage as a gesture of saving face.
Her naive fantasy was almost perfect. The only flaw with it was that in real life, people weren't that stupid to buy in to her little scheme.
She was partially correct about the hypocritical nature of the family and their trepidation of a stained record though. However, instead of them ushering her into their house, it was them hiring thugs to demonstrate a death threat, that she would be dealing with the Devil lest they caught a hold of any kind of rumor.
After this failure, she gave up the last bits of hope she had left of ever escaping prostitution. Soulessly, she retreated into opium and conducted her business as usual, never so much as noticing the bastard she gave birth to by her side.
Except for one time...
It was a hot, blistering summer evening during which I chose to stay out late on the streets, rather than going back to the slums I lived in. Without a particular purpose in mind, I wandered here and there, smirking at well-groomed young women--whose faces were flushed as I walked by--, until I caught sight of a carriage that had halted only a building away from where I stood.
Down stepped the woman who had brought me into the world and left me there. Inside the carriage was a man whom I recognized as Shinji's dad--as he leaned out the window to kiss the woman.
His wife was so pregnant, her stomach had swelled up like a melon, and this asshole of a man didn't waste a minute getting into an affair. What was more ironic, his mistress was the woman whom I once called "okaa-san".
Dizzy with opium and frivolous pleasure, she waved goodbye to Shinji's dad and started walking toward my direction. I immediately turned my back and hurried away.
"Heisuke! Heisuke!" cried her as she trotted toward me, her wooden clogs banged noisily against the surface of the road. "Heisuke, don't you remember your own mother?"
I faced her with a bitter smirk fastened to my lips, "You? My mother? You must be mistaken."
She made an attempt to reach for my hand but I jerked away in disgust. She reeked of cheap perfume and liquor.
"I'm sorry. I have wronged you. Can we talk, just for a moment..." She added shakily, "...son?" As my eyes fell on her unkempt figure, I took notice of how much older she had become--despite the thick mask of white powder and make-up--since I left.
"How is your life?" inquired her blandly while walking by my side down the near-empty street.
I didn't answer. My mind was concentrating on blocking the painful images that were resurging from the past.
"You must hate me greatly. I'm a terrible mother. If only I could do something for you, so you'd forgive me..."
"The only favor you could've done was killing me before I was born. But it's too late now." I added acidly, "I'd forgive you if you did. At least then you wouldn't sell me off in exchange for opium."
"The man forced me! He lied to me! I thought...I could buy you back when I have enough money..." she protested, "I'm so sorry, Heisuke...I was so desperate...don't you remember? I was dying..."
"...from lacking opium. What about me? What about when that fucking homosexual raped me? Don't tell me you're sorry! When I cried my throat out, you weren't sorry at all. You were too busy smoking the opium you got from selling me to that twisted son-of-a-bitch!" Overwhelmed with fury, I spat at her face.
"Heisuke! Heisuke!" wailed her as I ran away. Ran, really, for I was afraid I'd kill her had I stayed a moment longer. My face was grotesquely distorted from grining madly, biting back anger and swallowing pain at the same time. I shut my eyes, just so I wouldn't have to see the sordid scenes from the past replaying over and over in my mind...But it was in vain...
Six years ago...
"You'll just stay here for a little while...be good, alright? I'll come for you later."
"Don't leave me here, okaa-san! Take me with you! I'll do anything...anything you want! Don't leave me!"
I clung tightly to her kimono sleeve and wouldn't let go. I was scared. Scared of this strange place where everything was either dim or submerged in darkness. Scared of the Devil who stood in the corner with his two slimy, ugly eyeballs pinned on me. Scared of everything.
"Heisuke, I have to go!"
"Okaa-san! I'll do anything you want...anything..."
I cried out violently as I ran after her. I reached out my hand like a drowned person would do to a life saver. She was so close...just within my reach...almost...almost...
"Okaa-san! Help me!"
I never reached her.
The Devil pulled me back before my hand could take a hold of her kimono. The Devil grabbed my throat so I couldn't scream out anymore. The Devil dragged me into a room and shut the door and tossed his clothes on the floor. The Devil locked my arms in his iron hands and stripped me naked of my clothes and groped with his lurid hands all over my body.
I fought. I kicked. I bit. I screamed.
"OKAA-SAN!"
She wasn't there. She was gone. She did not heard my plea. She never did.
"HELP! Somebody help!"
No one was there to save me from the Devil. I was left alone to fight my own battle. The battle I fought and lost. Lost something I could never regain.
So it happened that I stopped being a kid at the age of ten. No longer did I believed in such thing as unconditional affection. Peaceful coexistence among human beings is merely bullshit. How people treat each other is a matter of give and take: you always give and expecting something back. Like how that woman sold me to take something in return, because she's given me my life and I had nothing to give her back.
The deal that woman made with the Devil, however, was another story. The Devil has given me nothing but pain whilst I had taken none from him. Though my childish mind couldn't fully grasp the sickening aspect of what he did, I knew that I was hurt. Not just physically hurt, but worse, I was hurt to the core of my soul.
Of course, the pain didn't dull my senses and make me an idiot either. I tried to run away every chance I got. The Devil'd beat and raped me even more brutally as a mean to kill away my rebelious spirit; except it didn't die, each time I got caught, the will to escape burnt hotter. Then finally came the day God opened his eyes and caused the Devil to drug himself unconcious, so that I could break free from his hellhole.
Freedom was sweet, but a person couldn't be fed on freedom, you see. Again I was reduced to become lower than a mongrel dog, as I trudged my bony self around town, digging trashcans for scraps of food people threw out. As I dug deeper, I found that there were all sort of usable stuffs people tossed away other than food. One time I found a wooden duck with a chipped wing, a rag doll without an eye, a pair of worn sandals, a tattered--though still wearable haori, all from one single trashcan.
"You! Stop messing with trash!" called out a little girl no older than five, who was playing hopscotch in front of a fancy looking house.
"My trash!" she fumed, her hands on her hips, as if she was the house's mistress. "My ducky! My Aoi-chan!" she pointed accusingly to the toys on my hand. I thought she was pretty cute, until she cried out: "I tell Kaa-chan!" and made an attempt to run toward the house, but I pulled her back by the hem of her kimono.
RETTTTTTTTHHHHHHH
My face paled as I held a torn sleeve of her pretty--and probably costly too--kimono. It be came even paler as the kid started to cry and bawling out at the same time:
"WHAOAAAAAA! My pretty kimono! You meanie! You tear it! WHOAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
I swore her mouth was so loud it could be used as a sort of alarm bell for town assemblies.
"Shush! Don't cry, Hime-chan! Here's your ducky and dolly too," I handed over the toys, and much obliged too. But being the spoiled brat she was, the girl just threw her toys back at me and continued to scream her voice out, "KAA-CHAN! KAA-CHAN! KAA-CHAN!"
"Damn it! Stop crying already!" I was about to stuff a rag into her mouth when my eyes caught sight of the pieces of charcoal, which were used as marking stones, on the hopscotch squares.
If I can't shut her up, then maybe I can stop her from crying by making her laugh instead... Aha!
I picked up the charcoal, rolled up my shirt and doodled a funny face on my stomach, "Why're you crying, little lady?" asked I in a cheap imitation of a hick's voice. Just for extra effect, my hands were pinching at the corner of the mouth to give the impression of a talking stomach.
"Huh?" She gave up crying almost instantly. "Who are you?"
"Why, I'm Mistah Funny Face!" exclaimed Funny Face in a majestic voice, "The One and Only Kid-Friendly, Cutesy, Talking Stomach! I'm hungry, do you have any food for me, Hime-chan? This ducky, yes?" Funny Face winced as the duck kept hitting against its mouth, "So hard, my teeth are coming out! What's the brown stuff the ducky made of?"
She laughed. Humor worked like a charm. "Wood, baka silly!"
Funny Face tried eating the doll, "This one is tough! What's it made out of?"
The kid was roaring with laughter now,"Cloth, baka silly! Where you come from anyway?"
"Don't you know me?"
"No. Never see a talking stomach."
"You ain't ever seen a talking stomach? No, really?" Funny Face frowned, "Tell me, Hime-chan, have you ever been hungry?"
"No. Kaa-chan cooks lots of food. All the time."
Funny Face sighed, "No wonder. Your stomach don't talk unless it needs food. Hime-chan's never hungry."
The girl twinkled her eyes curiously, "Nii-chan is hungry?"
Funny Face nodded solemnly, "Hai. Unlike Hime-chan, Nii-chan has no Kaa-chan to cook for him. He's hungry all the time."
"But if Nii-chan hungry no more, then Funny Face no more!" pouted her, "Shinji want Funny Face!"
"Don't ya worry, Hime-chan! Funny Face is here to stay!" grinned Funny Face, then it added, "but you have to give Nii-chan food, or he'll go away!"
"Nii-chan don't go! Come inside! Kaa-chan cooks lots of food for you!" cheered Shinji happily as she took my hand and pulled me toward her house.
Shinji's mom was a very nice person, in addition to being a wonderful cook. There were rice, miso soup, fried fish, beefstew...I stuffed my face with everything she gave me until Mistah Funny Face was all round and swollen up.
"I've never seen anyone so good at eating." joked Shinji's mom as she watch me gourged my mouth with food.
"Arigatou gozaimasu..." said I sheepishly, while wiping my mouth with the hem of my dirty shirt.
"You can call me Midori-san." She beamed a kind smile at me. "What's your name, sweetie?"
"It's Heisuke..." I added more after a pause, "my last name is Toudou, I think..."
"Where do you live? I'm going to take you back, your parents must be worry."
"I don't have parents." What else could I tell her? That Mother sold me to the Devil for the white stuff she smoked, that my Father was too good to take in a bastard son?
"I'm sorry, sweetie. How did you survive all these years?" The look on her face was genuine sympathy.
"I dig out trashcans for food..."
For what seemed like a long time, Midori-san looked at me closely, or reading my facial expression rather--to see if I was a worthy kid or not--before she finally spoke:
"Heisuke, how would you like to live in an orphanage?"
"Orphanage?" repeated I blankly.
"Hai. It's a place for sweeties like you. Wonderful place too, you'll have so many friends, a lot of toys, new clothes, and best of all, real foods!"
"Honto ni?"
"Really. No more digging trashcans, no more grumbling stomachs!"
At the mention of stomach, Shinji cut in suddenly, "No more Mistah Funny Face?"
"Nani?" asked Midori-san, "What's this Funny Face?"
As of this moment, I'm officially a clown in Shinji's eyes. "She's afraid I won't be playing with her anymore."
"It's alright, Shin-chan. You can go visit Heisuke when we have time."
Shinji pouted while shaking her head from side to side, "No! Funny Face stay! Heisuke-nii stay!"
The brat was throwing a fit again. Yet this time, all it took was a glare from Midori-san to shut her up.
Mothers know best, ne?
"Midori-san, what do I have to do?" asked I nervously as we walked to the orphanage place.
"What do you mean? You don't have to do anything, except for just being a good kid...and probably help out with a few chores around the house."
"That's all? Are you sure?"
"Hai. I'm positive."
I went back to my thoughts. If that's all we have to do, then orphanage isn't bad at all. No more digging trash to obey hungry stomach, no more sleeping on porch on cold winter nights, no more itching and scabies from dirty clothes... Has God finally opened his eyes and see this miserable kid?
Yet all of the sudden, my heart felt as I realized that we were passing by the place where the Devil lived. I squeezed Midori-san's hand tightly and shut my eyes each time we took a step closer to that hellhole.
"What's wrong, sweetie?" Then she clicked her tongue peevishly, "What rotten luck!" Midori-san was refering to a funeral going on by the Devil's place.
"I know." said one of the watching bystanders, "It's about time that scum kicked the can."
"Seems like the deceased wasn't very well liked around here." commented another bystander.
"Not well-liked?" repeated the first one increduously, "Don't you know? That old nasty homosexual son-of-a-bitch was an opium dealer! What worse, the sick asshole kept little kids in that house for sex slaves!"
I winced in pain at the last remark.
"Come on, sweetie, let's go the other way." Midori-san took my hand and we walked away. Even so, I could still hear them talking.
"How did he die?"
"Was found in a well. Drowned and cracked head at the same time. They think it's an addict--one of his customer-- that pushed him down, since traces indicate the opium in storage was stolen."
"It's karma...no matter what they say...God still has eyes...afterall."
Character Note:
(Heisuke)
Don't hate me for the bad things that happened to Heisuke , he'll laugh his way through it all...Heisuke's one of my favorite PMK characters, so I want to develop his personality more thoroughly in this fic. He's funny, yet cynical; sweet, yet sour at the same time. Quite a paradox, actually (did you notice the title?). But most importantly, Heisuke is NOT GAY. NOBODY's GAY in PMK. And oh yeah, damn his mother! Stupid irresponsible btch! Damn the homosexual too! Twisted ! (alright I'll quit ranting now)
(Shinji)
Little spoiled brats are cute! Why? I happened to have one living with me, ha ha. Shinji's not gonna be one of those bore-you-to-death Mary Sue OCs, heck no! I'll make her imperfect as much as possible (AMAP), but still in the "lovable" range somehow. I will leave it to you to comment on her personality so far.
(Midori)
I'm trying to make her role more than just a foil to Heisuke's mother. She's there for emotional/moral support to Shinji, plus, it's bad enough the little girl has an abusive jerk for a Dad--no parent/bad parents 's becoming cliche' here, so I'll try to keep it down AMAP. Any suggestion to make Midori's role more significant is welcome.
READ & REVIEW PLEASE, THANKS!