3. Game.
T: Having gotten to the end of this fic in pen I can say that it has a technical good ending…will make sense when you read it! I'm adding an extra warning of LONG UPDATES because I'm back at work and thus have less spare time to actually get round to typing this thing up! I'm not Clamp, though I seem to have become as evil as them somewhere along the line!
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"These marks were constructed so that any who wished you harm or who had fallen for you, would be punished in some way.
"Usually that punishment came in the form of Seishiro himself but occasionally…"
"Go on."
"There was a girl that you met during one of your cases…a round faced girl who was being terribly bullied."
"I remember."
"That girl grew attached to you, Sumeragi-san, enough that the spell took effect and she was blinded in one eye."
"Something that would not have happened if I had not come into her life?"
"Indeed and something also that held strong ramifications in the future.
"For Seishiro had not fully protected himself from the backlash of that punishment and so he too lost an eye."
He knows that he should feel angry for this revelation and what it meant for the loss of his own eye and yet Seishrio had hinted at the effects of a backlash when he had gone to see him in the hospital that first time and…
And even though it had been co-incidence that Seishiro had lost his eye when he did…
He still felt at last slightly responsible.
"I am afraid that there is still a little more, Sumeragi-kun.
"This spell has also been, in part, responsible for the suffering of the Kamui of the Dragons of Heaven."
"You mean that because of his feelings for me he has suffered more than he had need to?"
"Yes, I fear so."
"You will tell me how I might remove these brands…how I might make my amends for what I have done."
"You cannot now make amends, Sumeragi-kun, for you are no longer involved with that Kamui.
"As to the marks themselves…they shall fade once you become Sakurazukamori."
"And how can I achieve such a thing?"
Minoru writes an address down onto a piece of paper and informs him,
"That is where you shall find the next piece of the puzzle, Sumeragi-san."
He has come today to visit the woman who he thinks of still as 'Obaachan.'
She is a smart woman despite her age and often before he has been caught out by one of her shred observations.
"Is this a business visit or have you come simply to say hello?"
"A little of both, Obaachan." He replies before he catches her eye. "I will be handing over the legacy soon, Obaachan and I wished to assure myself that you are clear in what you shall be telling my successor."
"I should not have to be 'telling' him anything…
"My mother was tutor to the Sakurazukamori and her mother and her mother…in fact all the women in my family have held that position.
"In all those years the succession of the tree has been a simple affair; an heir has been chosen and taken into the care of the current Sakurazukamori.
"They have been trained as much as possible by their predecessor and then, afterwards, are trained by one of my line.
"Thus they are already the perfect killers…are already ready to take the entirety of the tree's soul within themselves.
"Yet you have changed all of that." She remarks, her tone as that of a mother talking to her disobedient child.
"I should have expected it; your mother loved you too strongly and too quickly for her to enforce the hardness that was necessary to harden your heart.
"She encouraged your lust for amusement until you made a game from everything in your life.
"I tried so hard to beet it out of you but then you met this boy…"
"You will recall that that 'boy' is to be your next student, Obaachan."
"He is Sumeragi, Seishiro and thus he shall be as poison to the tree."
"I love him, Obaachan and that is, in the end, the only thing that matters."
She looks at him with the same mix of emotions that he had felt so strongly from the tree and yet unlike the tree there is a kindness in her eyes also that relaxes him just a little.
"Minoru-san sent me here, Riji-san."
"And you are?"
"Sumeragi Subaru."
"I thought as such when I felt his presence on you and yet Seishiro being as he was I could not be sure."
"Will you tell me?"
"Do you want the truth or the speech that he prepared for me?"
His heart clenches and fearing the reply he enquires,
"Was I just a game to him then?"
"At the beginning I believe that you were…he was trying to prove me wrong, you see, trying to prove that anyone could become Sakurazukamori with the right incentive.
"It must have delighted him greatly to have you stumble upon him, for you were precisely the vessel he needed to prove his point.
"He created The Bet so that he had cause to seek you out again and reasonable cause to place those marks on your skin.
"Then when you met again he assured that you had cause to fall in love with him…cause to trust him beyond all others and then he clinically shattered that belief."
"Why?"
"Because he hoped it would cause you to hate him enough that you would become stronger that him and because he had begun to love you and he was afraid."
"Afraid?"
"You must understand, Sumeragi-kun, that for Seishiro love had become an all encompassing force more powerful even than Buda himself.
"His mother, Setsuka, had loved him fiercely, you see and always she would tell him of what her love meant for him…for his future,
"For him to realise that he had fallen for you, even a little bit, was as a shaking of his every belief.
"That was why he chose to leave your side for a little while, believing, ignorantly, that with time and distance the feeling would pass.
"There was something that would tie you tightly together, however, something he had not thought of because he had underestimated your sisters need to protect you and the effect that his betrayal would have on you.
"The latter, of course, would have meant an ending to the game and a chance for Seishiro to be free again but the former…killing your sister allowed him chance to carry on…to keep the game going.
"Yet with her blood upon his hands it became more than a game, it became about the hurt that your hate caused him and his absolute driving desire to allow you your vengeance…to make her death worth something."
"How could he believe that death was the best option?"
"I can not pretend to understand his logic, Sumeragi-kun, I know only what he told me and a little of the things he inferred to me in his body language.
"All that I can tell you is that he died, in the end, not for the sake of the tree but for you.
"He loved you and that love broke him in the end."
He had doubted Seishiro's love when the man had spoken of it on the Rainbow Bridge and yet now he believed in it with the whole heart of him.
Believed and hurt for the guilt of that belief.
"But you did not come for this tale, instead you came searching for a way to come to the tree and be accepted into its thrall.
"Seishiro asked me to give you a false account of his reasoning and then direct you to my library.
"The first I have refused to do and though I will gladly allow you the use of my library I recommend that you stop.
"You are Sumeragi and opposed, by your very blood, to the tree.
"Thus though you are the chosen candidate for succession such a thing can never be yours.
"Let Seishrio be proven wrong this one time and return back to those who love you…who will see you through your heart ache."
"Riji-san, I understand why you tell me these things and understand also that you do not know me. Thus I will not react to your words with the anger I feel at the heart of me, but rather, I will explain that there is no one else…
"Will explain that Seishiro has twisted me until I have bent in such a way that I can only interact with him…can only yearn for him.
"He is all that I am and so I can not turn back, not even should I have a want to."
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T: Heh…don't ask me where any of this logic has come from, I really would not like to say! I thought it up and then read through my Tokyo Babylon Manga again to see if my thinking hurt anything that happened in cannon…luckily, not only did it not hurt the canon it also fit it a little with Sei-chan's hospital reasoning. R+R I still need assurance about this fic!