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Memoir of Sango...
"Come on, ototo-chan, you can do it. Come to me..."
The little girl reached out towards her brother. In return, the infant squeaked, slowly lifting himself up on unsteady feet. Grasping the coffee table, Kohaku settled himself onto his feet, leaning on the furniture for support.
Suddenly, there was no more coffee table, the infant Kohaku staring out towards his sister with uncertainty.
"Come on, Kohaku... I won't let you fall..."
The child took a step towards his older sister. Sango opened her arms to her brother, his small hands finally leaving the table. "Ane...uueee... San-goooh..."
Her large brown eyes widened. "Mama!" she whispered, "Mama, come quick! Kohaku, he's walking!"
Her mother appeared from the kitchen, her own brown eyes widening from behind her glasses. "Kohaku!"
Hearing his mother's voice, Kohaku stumbled halfway to his sister's arms, landing backwards on his rear.
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Session Eighteen- Kohaku, part two
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Kohaku.
Yes, that was the boy's name. Rin never let him forget it. It was the boy she was in love with. Needless to say, he wasn't too happy about the fact, the girl hadn't even hit her teenage years. At the time, he didn't believe it.
Yet, here she was, sitting in the waiting room of the ER, with no intention of leaving. He wouldn't have been surprised if she had fought him tooth and nail to get him to take her here. But instead she was silent, merely having to look at him with pleading eyes. She hadn't spoken since he found her, sitting against the side of the school, her uniform covered in a blood that was not her own. She was completely shut down, and for a moment he saw the frail little seven-year-old she was when he adopted her.
Closing his eyes, he tried to push back the migraine that threatened to surface. Looking across from him, he saw Kagura watching him, Rin sleeping against her shoulder, obviously exhausted.
"If you must stare at me, at least try to make it less obvious." The woman smirked in response, something she did often. She was obsessed with him, fruitlessly trying to seduce him, yet taunting him and insulting him at the same time. But it was part of her former profession. She used to be a prostitute, because of that, he found her one morning half-dead on his doorstep.
"You know," she said, dismissing his comment, "you never answered my question."
He lifted his head, looking for her to continue. Rolling her eyes, she continued. "Why do you try to progress and reach the top, when you know that your hard work will only be forgotten with time?"
He watched her. "Why not?"
"Because the whole thing seems pretty pointless."
"You're lying," he replied, his tone nor his expression changing, "if you really thought that, you would've killed yourself a long time ago."
Her smirk wavered slightly. "So you're just going to work yourself to death all your life?"
He sighed, knowing where this conversation was going. "Like I said the last time we had this conversation, and the time before that: Not everyone needs love to be happy, Kagura."
Her grin dropped completely. She started mumbling something under her breath, "... say it happens to every prostitute... not the one who didn't have to pay for it..."
Suddenly, she stood up. Walking over to him, she dropped her purse into his lap. "I'm going to the bathroom," she said, stomping off.
He watched her leave, then looking down at the purse she "handed" to him. It was more than obvious that she wanted him to open it.
There was a cardboard box inside. Pregnancy Test.
His eyes widened.
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"Have you heard anything, Kagome?"
The young girl entered the waiting room. "They're still operating on him," Kagome replied, "he's in critical condition. It was a direct hit, well, almost..."
Sango looked up, standing from her seat. "Kagome?"
The candy striper lifted up the object in her hand. Sango gasped, and with shaky hands, took the object. "It resisted most of the force of the bullet; he's still got a chance because of it."
"Thank you, Kagome. I'll be fine here."
She sighed, her trembling fingers running across the flat surface of the item. She ran her fingers across the blood-stained hole that penetrated the top of the object. Clutching it against her chest, she walked over the other side of the waiting room. It was ironic; something that he held so much stress over had given him a chance to live.
"Rin."
The young girl looked up. Sango frowned. The entire front of the girl's uniform was covered in blood; Rin's large brown eyes now looked dull and tired, as if she'd gone without sleep for months. For a moment, Sango held no greater sympathy for anyone; the young girl had been through more than enough in her young age.
"Rin, can you hold this for me?" Sango asked, holding out the object. The girl looked from Sango, to the sketchbook in her hands. Kohaku's sketchbook. There was a long pause before she nodded, carefully taking the pad from her hands as if it would crumble as the slightest bit of pressure.
Returning to her seat, she looked at Miroku from the corner of her eye. He'd been silent all through this, and she in silently thanked him for that. He'd been left in the dark for too, and felt herself feel more and more guilty. Come to mention it, he had all but poured out his heart to her. He hardly knew her at her.
Leaning her head against his shoulder, she looked at the clock on the wall. It would be a good three hours before they were even near done in surgery, knowing step by step every method that had to be taken. Knowing the risks, knowing the chances, knowing the procedure... knowing exactly what measure were taken when they had to tell the family the patient was dead. Hope was something lost to many doctors as they continued to work, and the ability to live was a method, not an act of faith.
"Naraku."
Miroku looked down at her with a questioning glance. She'd been silent for a while, closing herself off. "Hmm?"
"Naraku... is the name of the man who shot Kohaku. He is also the one who... killed my parents."
Her voice was dry, as if she had used all her energy just to get those two sentences out of her. He held her tighter against him.
"My father worked in the hospital as head pharmacist, giving out drugs, filing out prescriptions, and the like. That's how he met Naraku. Naraku tried to make a deal with him, he wanted to steal the drugs and sell them on the black market. Of course, my father refused."
3 Years Earlier...
It was cold.
Whether it was because of the winter weather or because of the dark presence in the room, she didn't know.
There was a long silence in the house, broken only by the sound of metal hitting wood as her mother chopped vegetables in the kitchen and the light sound of Kohaku in his room, sketching furiously. Father had sent them away to their own devices, but she had remained, seated firmly on top of the stairway. She knew without a doubt in her mind that her father knew where she was.
She heard the stranger speak again first. "...No?"
"Murdering indirectly is still murder," it was her father's voice; "I refuse to give you drugs just so you can make a quick dollar from drug addicts. Not to mention there's a citywide drug shortage in the city. Ill people need those medicines, not the addicts who just want a quick fix."
She shivered as she heard the stranger laugh.
"You are very noble, Takahashi," she heard him say, "stupid, but noble. Of course, this is Tokyo, Takahashi. You have two kids, right? You've read to them when they were young, those little fairy tales. But do you have the bravery to tell of how the world really is? They always learn the hard way."
Then she heard the sound of the door open. The stranger's voice was heard again. "Then I will teach them."
"Naraku, he left us alone for a while," she said, "but a few weeks later, he returned, when I was home alone..."
She screamed.
As useless as it was, she did it anyway, more from instinct as from anything else. He must have wanted her to, for he smiled at her action.
"Sango..."
There was something about the way he said it made her really hate her name. She held the knife in her hands, backed against the kitchen counter, the entire room in a state of disarray from her trying to escape him. She stood with as much strength as she could muster. Her eyes never left him, half her face hidden by long brown hair, her ponytail having been ripped out during the fight.
He lunged again, grabbing her wrist and holding her firmly between himself and the counter, his lips mashing with hers. She fought him with desperate fervor, screaming, kicking, and scratching, but only seemed to make him fight harder. Finally, she managed to get her wrist free, the wrist that held the cutting knife.
She hesitated.
She couldn't do it, and she hated herself for it. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she slightly loosened her grip on the weapon.
"Taidama! Sango, we're home!"
She heard him curse under his breath. Without a word, he exited the house through the back door.
Her family found her curled into a fetal position on the floor, crying to herself.
"They fought all night over what they would do..."
"Well, what am I supposed to do? I can't just let him get away with that!"
"I understand that koi. I know, my daughter was nearly raped this afternoon too! But if you report him, you'll make him angry!"
"Then we're screwed anyway! I have to take care of my family, and I'll do it anyway I can, even if I have to kill him myself..."
"They reported him, which didn't go too well with Naraku, as you can imagine. So when my parents decided to try to turn him in, Naraku decided to do them in..."
Kohaku was first to run into the house, complaining about a project with too much work involved. Sango stayed behind with her father, engaged in some random conversation which didn't spark the boy's interests.
"Mom, we're home," he looked around, heading towards the kitchen, "Mom, are you-"
He didn't scream, his body unable to move as he stared in a state of shock at the scene before him. It wasn't until his father and sister entered the room that anything registered in his mind.
"Mother!" It was his sister's voice. She sat slumped next to the body. Their mother's body, resting in a pool of her own blood. Sango looked down at her dead mother, then at her own hands, stained a dark red. "... No..."
Her hands trailed down to her mother's stomach. Her shirt had been cut in several places. She had been stabbed. Several times.
It took her a moment to register as her father examined her thoroughly, gently cradling her in his arms. He had always seemed young in her eyes, but now, as he held his dead wife against him, he looked a hundred years old.
Laying his wife down again, he stood up. Averting his eyes away from his children, he stated firmly, "Sango, watch your brother and call the police." He retreated hurriedly from the room, and from the house.
Kohaku watched him go, still silent from the shock. Averting his eyes back to the scene before him, he watched them, his body trembling. Before she knew it, he had run out the door, then out the house.
"Kohaku!" she yelled, but she knew he was long gone. Looking at the doorway, then at her mother, she cried.
"Mother..."
Closing her eyes, she hunched over her mother's form, weeping silently.
"Kohaku returned twenty minutes later, now covered in our father's blood. He led me into the park, saying that Naraku killed our father. That path in the park that I didn't want to go through, that's where we found his body. They died around this time three years ago."
He noticed that she was clinging to him. Her eyes were shadowed by her long bangs, but he could still see the trails of tears down her cheeks. He was surprised she managed to keep her voice steady. "Sango-"
"A few weeks later, after the investigators and police had come and gone, a new story made the front page of the news. Apparently Naraku had managed to twist some evidence, because the article stated that my father killed his wife, then went out into the park and killed himself. Despite what we told the investigators, they didn't listen to us, until a year later, when they found some new evidence that proved us right. But by that time, my family's name had already been slandered."
It was then Sango found herself clinging to him, Miroku clutching her as if she would die if he let go. He said nothing, knowing from experience that all the words of comfort ever spoken couldn't help her. All he could do was hold her, and stay with her.
"Sango!
She lifted her head up at the sound of her name. Kagome hurried towards them holding a clipboard against her chest. "There's something wrong!"
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The first thing that hit her was the sound of the endless monotone that came from the heart monitor.
She saw them through the large window revealing the emergency room. A crowd of doctors were crowded in the room, almost all of them she knew. They surrounded him.
"Charge four hundred!"
"Clear!"
"... Five hundred!"
The pattern continued various medical commands and terms yelled across each other. From the corner of her eye, she saw Rin standing across the hallway, her arms across her shoulders. She leaned against the hallway, her body slowly sliding down the wall until the reached the floor. Her once lively, large brown eyes were now dead blank, as if she was lost somewhere else. She looked exactly as she did when she was seven years old, when she came in Sango's office the very first time.
Turning her attention back to her brother, she banged her fist against the window. "Kohaku!"
Suddenly, the action stopped, the doctors growing quiet. Then she heard it:
"Time of death- 7:13 PM..."
She thrashed her arms wildly, almost desperately. Her eyes were blinded by tears, panicked yells coming from her small form. She only fought harder as two arms wrapped around her waist, dragging her back away from the window. She knew perfectly well who it was. "Kohaku! KOHAKU!"
The endless, monotone beep continued.
Suddenly, her body went limp in his arms, giving one last cry of desperation. "KOHAKUUUU!"
The beep continued.
She collapsed, slipping out his hands. She landed on her knees, slamming her fists against the cold floor. 'No... no, no, NO!'
Miroku watched her, then looked through the large window. The doctors spread away from the patient, revealing Kohaku, lying still on the hospital bed as they proceeded to lay a white sheet over his dead form.
He hadn't even felt his legs move as he ran into the ER.
Pushing the surgeons aside, he quickly made his way over to the boy's limp form, snatching the paddles from the nurse. Praying silently, he rubbed the instruments together, and pushed them against the boy's chest. Kohaku's body jolted at impact.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep Beep!... Beep!...
Sango, Rin, and the doctors looked at Miroku, and then stared at Kohaku. He was still unconcious, but alive all the same.
Dropping the instrument in his hands, Miroku's eyes met Sango's as she entered the room. Suddenly, she collapsed again, this time his arms catching her. She held him tightly with every ounce of strength she had left. She was crying again, but this time it was more out of relief than anything else.
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You all are SO lucky!
A year ago, when I was planning this story, Kohaku WAS going to die in this chapter. But I rethought the whole concept, and realized just how much he was needed in this story, particularly in the "final battle."
Anyway, my detail sucks, particularly in the final scene. But this is the single longest chapter I have ever written. Period. That makes me feel accomplished.
Happy New Year everyone! I'll be spending New Year's Eve and New Year's Day counting review. One of my resolutions is to be my previous record of reviews by reaching three-hundred reviews. Please help me with this!
Preview of Next Chapter:
It was amazing how easily one person can ruin someone's life.
Sango's Memoir- Diary
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Posted 12/31/04, Happy New Year.