Rating: PG, gen
Warnings/spoilers: None really, but it would help if you have read the Hakkai/Gojyo arc in Reload...four, I think.
Author's comments: I love the way Minekura Kazuya depicts Cho Hakkai. He is such a complex character and I just wanted to attempt to capture some of it. In a twisty fashion.
Bogeyman
There is a monster outside, lurking in the grey mist. He can hear its shuffle and groans amidst the constant white noise of falling rain. It has not eaten in a long time and is getting hungrier and hungrier. He opens the door a crack. Tendrils of mist like gaunt fingers curl in and he scrambles to shut the door. As long as he does not pass the boundary of the house the mist stays outside, where a nameless beast growls while waiting to devour his flesh.
He is trapped in the house. This small house with four rooms he has become so familiar with. He knows every gouge on the rickety table, where the village doctor conducted the hasty surgery to sew in the insides that were so intent on falling out. He knows every crack in the cheaply tiled ceiling, counted during his long bedridden recovery. He knows every bloodstain on the floor; they will not fade no matter how long he spent scrubbing it. It is his blood. Blood he knows the creature outside can smell even through the closed windows and door.
The other occupant of the house does not seem afraid of leaving. It is not him the monster wants. In fact, he prefers it to this house, to the company of someone mostly whole, mostly sane. Very soon, he suspects, he was going to tire of having a stranger, or rather, being a stranger, in his own home. He knows that the other prefers the dishes dirty, the ashtrays full, and the bedmates strictly female.
They do not talk much about themselves, but the way the other looks at him tells him everything.
Why are you here?
It is the look given every time the food he makes is left uneaten or discreetly thrown away, every time he is seen doing dishes or cleaning or putting away groceries, and every single time the other comes home to find someone in his house.
Why does he not leave? Why should he stay trapped inside with two strangers, the stranger that is himself and the stranger who owns this little house, the three slowly driving each other mad? Why should he act like a child, fearing the monsters in the closet?
He wants to run from the stench of his blood that has soaked into every fiber of the house, from the quiet hours when he is alone and the awkward silences when he is not, from the rain that falls every single day. He does not want this incomplete body, missing an eye and several feet of intestines. He does not want this mangled soul, no longer able to love or remain human. He does not want this merciless name, synonymous with loss and deprivation. He does not want anything.
In a burst of desperation, he flings the door open...
He is trembling so hard he can barely shut the door before his legs collapse beneath him. He kneels, resting his overheated forehead on the cool metal of the door.
It is sunny outside.
The endless rainfall is the soundtrack of a memory that will never stop playing in his head. The grey mist is the void in his eye and his heart and his soul. The bogeyman..
...is him.