Chapter Sixty: Children Don't Do Naughty Things
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Curiosity, a terrible creature—it trod where it knew not to go, but when the hearts and limbs grew under the changing skies of seasons, it prodded the spirit on to look for treasures and find new things, innocent things, to explore and touch. He, too, had been an explorer in his childhood. He, too, had trodden far down the road of . . . curiosity.
He had met a girl child in his childhood years that were fraught with curiosities. Her downy cheeks were covered in a rich bloom, always; and one day, beneath the moving shadows of dry trees, she had asked of him to explore her between the thighs.
It was the strangest request, yet he was a sober and questing child to not turn her down; so he took her to a quiet garden behind the Elder's house, her plump hand in his, where slips of black and white and red fish moved beneath the clear water, and shadows of trees were thick and intruding. There she sat on the stone-slab by his side, eyes shining in the gleams of autumn sun, lips that seemed to pout for a little kiss.
Her arms stretched out to hold him in a sacred embrace. He had denied her a kiss on the mouth: her rosy lips plucked at the flesh on his neck instead. Taking a whiff of a noxious oil of pleasures, he buried his face in her hair—innocent pleasures of young flesh.
His hand, unsure of its path, went underneath layers of her red yukata to explore her plump thighs that had a tinge of pink and a bloom of budding youth. Shadows moved, here and there, and deepened between her legs to hide her anatomy. She had swooned in girl-ish rapture, lashes flickering like moths' wings upon the cheeks that tinted a darker shade, and titled her head back to rest it on his shoulder.
His fingers connected with smooth and swollen fleshes that oozed mucus upon touch. He glided them down to the slippery groove, and she breathed heavily into his ear, whimpering with helpless, soundless pleas—her breaths, hot and needy. His flesh, still slumbering between his own thighs, became lively at her sounds as though they were guiding it to ripen with soft strokes, and he craved more.
His finger wormed and explored the flesh inside—moist, tight, hot—and he felt his pores expel sweat, veins flicker with undulations of his heart's unsure nature, his thoughts exploring new things—with him inside this clammy tightness to experience the true bliss of pleasures.
Her body shivered, experienced waves of something unknown to her budding form, and went through a timid metamorphosis that would need to be repeated for the contentment of her baser desires; and in an earnest response to the ministrations of an innocent hand, a warm wetness seeped into his palm, and a sudden jolt of heat went to the core of his pleasures. His body, then, cooled off in a sudden effort to move away from that heated state of arousal: his flesh had gone soft between his legs, too.
She opened her eyes, as though waking from a trance, gaze heavy with the drunkenness of her first release. Her eyes, and their endless depths after the bliss, fascinated him so; there was a release of a deep shade of intoxication in her eyes that had risen from the maw with thrums from her heart and flesh and bones—a sinister rhythm in that young apparel that rattled his bones with a lovely vibration. Eyes told a person's tale, after all.
He could have asked of her to lie supine (in silence) upon the yellowed grass, open her wet thighs wide to allow him to intrude upon that sweet place over and over again to his heart's content; but his passion was thawed by the evening air. Her cheeks were still ruddy like roses, but her body was cast in the roof's shadows. It was getting dark.
So he left that garden, fingers still coated with her arousal, heart and loins impatient—her hand in his as they walked on a path between the sighing autumn trees. When they stopped by her house, which was under the night's cover, she stood on her toes to whisper: "I enjoyed it. Can we do it again, Itachi?"
Then she backed away, cheek glowing crimson in the lantern's bright light, face eager and sweet. He peered deep into her eyes, but that shade had faded to dimness and so had his curiosity. He did not say anything to wound her heart and walked into the embracing arms of a silent dark that sat between him and his home.
He wanted to speak to his father of these things, things that governed a body's more sinister half, but he was a boy of eleven still; his father's eyes were stern enough to halt his steps—too young and child-like to be embroiled into the tempest of flesh's lure; and Sasuke was still so young, a babe of three. What would he say to him? He played in his lap in the sun's dimming lights, cradling lilies in his tender arms, crossed over his belly, eyes brightening in happiness.
When one floated out of that heap, mounted upon autumn's wings, Sasuke's face would crumple into a frown and lips would become redder in anger. Then he, after abandoning the rest, made a feeble effort towards the chase of it, but he was too young to pursue its path. After a little run through the decaying grass, his legs would grow tired, and he would look back at Itachi's face through a sheen in his eyes . . . the lilies he abandoned had floated away—all of them.
Such quests always left the babe on the verge of tears, and he was an impatient one. And his plump arms would stretch to meet the embrace of the older one. He always insisted that Itachi should pluck new ones out. "Nii-San, new one!" he would speak in a small, pleading tone, eyes wet with new tears.
Then the task of plucking lilies began anew—a warm smile coming to the younger one's face that his brother was doing what he had asked of him in the full-moon's light. There they would tread amongst lilies and moths and shadows to locate the ones Sasuke so loved.
He adored the ones with the silkiest petals. Lilies swayed like weeds in the wind, whispered in voices, heralded the coming of a colder autumn that would be bereft of mercy and love.
Sasuke loved to put one in Mikoto's hair, and her eyes always smiled in response to her little one's gestures of love. Itachi found it strange; he had plucked so many, yet Sasuke would give them all to Mikoto but one: he saved that one for Itachi—the brightest, silkiest one!
Yet Sasuke, and his beautiful innocence, was what Itachi loved from the depths of his heart—an eidolon of innocence and love that dwelt beside his spirit; and tender was its touch and presence in his mortal coil. It was an endless source of love and elation for its spirit, a food for his contentment.
The babe's smile, blushing upon his face with divine purity, elated his heart that raced to a crescendo of delight. It would become a chamber of such sweet and blissful sounds in those moments. Yes, Sasuke was too small for such talks. He would never understand his baser curiosities; so in his heart he buried the temptation, and in his flesh he kept his lust. His tongue kept its promise to his flesh that it would never betray him before anyone. His secrets were his to keep and guard.
As weeks floated by in a haze of autumn's decay and gloom, he had foregone the talks with his father and kept to himself. His early days in Anbu were thrilling, strange even. Sex was easy amongst the members, easier than murder. Anbu-Shinobi rented rooms wherever they wanted to rut—sexually excitable men and ripe women, promiscuous men and willing youths, heady women and giddy boys, young buds of spring with older partners, too, mingled without a care.
Itachi found these liberties to be . . . a matter of stranger things, but being so young, the prospect of bodily pleasures was an elusive idea. Women whispered seductive things into his ears, but no one was brave enough to take an Uchiha Heir to her bed. He could court one in his own clan, a silly and willing girl, but he did not desire the ire of Elders lest he incurred a wave of shame for his father and censure for his unbecoming decision to soil a naïve young girl.
So, he, sometimes, snuck a hand into his trousers—past the soft puff of hairs growing on his loins—when shadows of the room draped his shaking body, enveloped in sweat to give his flesh a distinct sheen borne of arousal, curved a hand around the heated flesh hardened by blood, and moved it up and down the length to relieve this . . . this annoyance that grew inside his body with each passing day—a tumorous growth that required a medicine for its unchecked spread.
Autumn left and winter came, a chapter of death, but his body bloomed and ripened to a state of heated deliriousness—spring had occurred in winter's decay. He wished to confide in his friend, Shisui, but the prospect of shame locked the words in his mouth. He could never give voice to his worries when he looked upon Shisui standing in the light spilling from the interstices between the frail boughs. Shisui was a boy of sixteen and had reached the estate of a man by his clan's law. Itachi felt that he was so far behind, meandering in his wake to find the path . . .
Yellow and red covered the ground, dead flowers strewn about in a sea of mist. That was when he had gone on a mission to spill blood in a village. He was tasked to kill a family of three brothers. His Mission Leader, Miura, was a hard man of thirty, a Jōnin who had lived through many missions. His bearing was sure, his sword well-used in battle. Sometimes, whilst they rested deep in the forest, he caught a whiff of a rusty smell from the steel when Miura cleaned it with oil.
Sounds from dark and forest did not worry his heart; he was older for these small matters. "Does the darkness make you afraid?" Miura asked him one night, his face hidden in shadows, the visible eye housing a changing gleam Itachi had never seen there before—plea . . . lust?
Itachi considered him for a moment, unable to read his strange glance. "No," he said as his cheeks glowed a soft red in the fire's light, his gaze beheld Miura's countenance: there was something almost fiendish about it.
"You make soft noises in your bed . . . sometimes," Miura said with a little pause, his bearing wanton now, and there was much of that emotion in his eye that it threatened to spill over onto his face. A rude smile dangled from the corners of his sake-coated lips—he was a little intoxicated.
"I don't see how that concerns your curiosity," he said and watched Miura's brow frown that was half-concealed by the messy brown hair that hung over it; his smile was vanishing. Then he left the place by the fire and slept in the natural cave in the tree's bark. He lay on his back, turf pillowing his head, thinking. His eyes wandered for a brief moment to gaze upon his superior who still sat outside under the clear sky and in the company of blinking fireflies . . . Miura repulsed him.
Days went by and winds blew cold and harsh and winter settled deeply into earth's limbs. He sent a letter to Shisui, requesting of him to follow his trail and assist him in this endeavour. Their journey was cursed by whippings from a tumultuous hand of storm. Trees whipped and got torn up in the forest, and they were left with nary a choice. He got separated from his team of four men, and that was when—in the calm refuge of the cave with his superior—he felt his hand, with a bold motion, brush against his genitals.
That action brought out an immediate reaction from Itachi's body: he shuddered (followed by a backwards stumble to press his back against the cave's rough wall), confused and shamed. His cheeks grew hot and red, and he did not know how to respond to this invitation for copulation. Miura had cornered him in the cave, his body firmly pressed against his, and outside, a storm raged with ferocity, and inside, his blood boiled just the same.
Miura's hand was fastened to his loins now, kneading the flesh through the thick material of his trousers to rouse it against his will, and Itachi's arm was in his tight grasp, fingers digging into the flesh that was white as winter's whisper. Itachi clenched his teeth, unable to voice the revulsion he felt.
From this close, he could see sweat dotting the green veins that flickered and throbbed in tandem with the rising speed of his heartbeats, reaching up to his nape to visibly shiver there in a state of arousal. His breaths were hideous and hollow and smelt rank on his skin.
"Allow me," he rasped against his ear, his breath soaked in strong sake. "You will enjoy it. Tell me, where do you want to be touched? I will—"
"Let me go!" he hissed and shoved Miura back. He was a tall boy for his age and stood over five feet three inches. His limbs, though pliant, were strong. Miura staggered several steps back from the force of the action and made to rush at him again, almost in reflex, his face less soft and more enraged now; but his nerves stopped their natural workings to convey the signals of motion to his limbs at the sight of Itachi's Sharingan that blazed, a daemonic warning on his face.
Lightning illuminated his superior's face, and it was drenched in sweat; upon his countenance was an expression of utmost rage, mingled with his present state of shame that he had been rejected very brutally. Cold air poured into the cave from outside and cooled Itachi's anger. He did not say anything more and saw Miura skitter his hand through his hair in a nervous manner and leave through the cave's mouth to walk into the angry, questing hands of wind.
Itachi became more wary after that incident: the man was not to be trusted. Miura was a liability now, and Itachi felt as though he had put that night behind him, but it was not so. At last, that fateful night came, and he descended like a newborn devil on the three occupants dozing off after a celebratory night with alcohol and women.
Trees circled their abode and closed in—night's sentinels. Mist clambered upon their bodies as Itachi opened the door and walked to their supine bodies. Their apparels were expensive and new, grey and white kimonos that bore marks of a skilled cloth-maker's designs, faces calm and serene, hair puffy and soft on one side and flat and matted on the other. His footfalls came into the room in silence, and he unsheathed his sword with care, too.
One candle cast a sharp light on the bulbous nose of the one snoring rather loudly. Itachi made three swishing motions of his arm and cut the necks of careless men. Their eyes opened, expressions caving in with pain, but they had no air in their throats to scream. Their limbs convulsed, light faded from their eyes (unable to see the mess their severed jugular veins had made on their garments and floor), and they died in a quiet and still state right before his eyes. It was over. The mission was done.
Itachi had found their abode first by using the only crow he could make: he had sent one to bring Shisui to him. He was not skilled enough to make more than two for now. When he reached the meeting place, Miura was furious at his insubordination. He paid him no mind as he knew that a reward awaited him back at the Anbu Corps. His father would be proud, too.
Cold nights passed in wait, and Itachi's impatience grew as he waited for his friend to find him. He did not enjoy Miura's lecherous countenance and the bold cast of his gaze. There was a tinge of anger in the yellow of his eyes, and his cheeks wore a mild blush to exhibit his irritation.
A storm threatened to sift through the clouds' weak barrier one night when he was offered a drink by his fellow man (the last one had been sent back to the Corps for further instructions), Rafu. He was an unassuming fellow of sixteen—foolhardy and impressionable, cheeks a vast map of pink freckles that gave an impression to the onlooker that his face was about to boil-over. He always appeared baffled around them.
The drink was a mild sake, a little tangy on Itachi's tongue. It calmed his nerves and, to his shock, slowed down his nerves' signals. His body started shivering mere seconds after he partook a sip. The leather bottle dropped from his loosening grip and fell down: he did not even hear the sound as it met the floor.
Strong hands gripped him by the shoulders, and he was made to stand before Miura again. Miura's face was a hazy bundle of lines in his vision. Sweat splashed into Itachi's eyes from his brow, and his stomach burnt with the churning liquid he had sipped. Bumps popped everywhere on his skin, and it shivered, sweaty and clammy—it was so discomforting. His head was floating in the clouds, Sharingan sleeping despite his pleas for it to claw its way up, like a beast rising from a maw, to his aid.
"You have pretty lips, Uchiha—almost like a woman's," Miura whispered and traced Itachi's lips with a rough thumb, his breath hot, rancid on his Itachi's face. His words wobbled and blared in his ears; he could barely understand Miura's locution.
Rafu grasped his wrists, twisted his arms from the back, and then he was bent forward rather unceremoniously before Miura's loins. A firm hand was placed at the back of Itachi's head to keep him from raising it in protest. Whose hand? He could not say. Sweat dripped off his nose, shivering lips, quivering skin that was in the grip of fear and shame now. The floor was a murky mast by his feet, falling away into the dark ocean beneath in his mind's eye that could not fathom distance any longer.
Itachi heard a loud, clattering sound of metal, and he knew Miura had unsheathed his arousal to humiliate him. "Don't—please—" he said, and his words tumbled, nearly incoherent in the sounds of their rasping breaths. Did they really intend to take him by force—here, in this old place? He did not understand . . . their vulgarity, their boldness.
"Sweet little Uchiha," Miura began, and the unnatural rise in his voice was painful in Itachi's ears. "Your father was quick to demand my resignation over a small matter. I never deserved it. I lost everything that day, thrown down into this fucking Anbu-gutter post to herd inept boys, day in day out. I wanted to humiliate his son. Give him the shame I've lived through.
"I didn't intend to be sweet on you, but I never expected you to be so . . . lovely. You're a lively one. Stop resisting, and you can enjoy it, too." He grabbed Itachi by the jaw, and his forefinger traversed the soft seam and pushed in to part the lips that curtained his clamping teeth.
"I'll bet your throat is something special—hotter and smoother than a woman's," he said, voice husky like a drunkard's as his finger probed the gums and rubbed across his front teeth and traversed further in to scrape against the tongue.
Then Itachi simply fell sideways; his cheek met the wood; and something warm and metallic splashed across his face. It trailed an itchy path to drip down on the dust-caked wood. Creaky sounds filled the room. Then it was quiet again, and a big gloom pervaded the room, its windows bearing streaks of rich life that crawled across the glass to create thin red bars.
"Itachi—Itachi—" a voice spoke, and it was akin to a whisper for his senses. The face appeared white in the dust, suspended in the air, his vision—his friend had found him, and Itachi smiled a beautiful smile of relief and joy . . .
When the effects of that accursed drug wore off, Itachi felt whole again. His senses, along with the proper functions of his limbs, came back. It was a new morn and its light shone majestically upon the cheek of his dear friend, Shisui. He had felled both of them in cold blood: their corpses lay beneath an old cloth, dappled red with signs of violence. He could not say that he was happy with their demise. Was his father unjust to another man? The thought probed his mind more than he had thought possible.
When they drew near the Konoha's border, Itachi asked of Shisui to escort him to the House of Tayūs. It was so sudden that Shisui halted his steps and turned his back to the moon to face him. His body was dark, a shade, in Itachi's sight.
"Itachi . . . you're so young," Shisui spoke, a note of astonishment in his voice. His face must have suggested the same, but Itachi could not see, and he was not intent to draw out another vision to peer at his countenance. The dark forest spoke all around them in whispers and piteous tones, but his ears were closed off to their calls.
"I told you in my letter. It's fine. You didn't say anything then. Why are you stopping me now?" Itachi asked, his voice soft and young—it had not been moulded by years to grow deep and rich yet.
"I'm not stopping you. It's that—" Shisui stopped and ran his hand down the side of his right cheek, "—you're still too young for this. I'm sure it isn't something you can't control. Wait for a year, or two, at least? Why don't you take less poison? It's not good for you. This shouldn't—"
"I've decided," Itachi cut across him, his voice a little firmer than before. "It's a distraction, and I want it gone. Besides, my body has matured, and I don't want to create a mess in the clan with another girl. It's better this way."
Shisui was silent. He stood amongst the glimpsing dots of fireflies that floated around him upon dark's garment. Mist's fingers sifted through flora, ghostly assassins, and spread across the ground to hide winter's decaying façade. Smell of rot became intense with the arrival of a whistling wind, and Itachi's crunching steps announced to Shisui that he was going there—with or without his company . . .
Night was still young and fresh when they arrived at the House of Tayūs: it was an odd sort of place, richly decorated with the most expensive things—everything was new here and smelt beautiful. Women, bred from childhood, walked the halls to pleasure men of stature and wealth. Their edifice was one to behold: rich, elusive, lovely. Long hair rested upon their buttocks, light makeup enveloped the faces, painted with care, and flowing garments covered their bodies. Itachi was . . . enamoured to say the least, and such was his curiosity that he requested of Shisui to take him to the woman he had once spoken of.
Though fearful of what may come to pass from this decision, he did not deny Itachi's request; so he took the boy to the woman who sat in a well-furnished room amongst the sparse light from a lantern and roiling wreaths from incense sticks. A long pipe was clamped between her lips that looked sweeter than honey, and a smile rose tantalisingly to her red mouth.
"Shisui-Kun," she spoke and licked the black stem—a suggestive gesture—as her gaze fell upon Itachi's awed expression. Her brows rose, and she smiled at the look that had settled itself firmly upon his countenance in its stead now: a cool indifference to hide his true nature; she found that innocent habit to conceal things almost endearing. "You have brought a little lamb into the den of the beast." They settled opposite her across a low table, decorated with expensive, feminine things: a comb, pins, and a lovely mirror.
She smiled, perfect white teeth showing, and tapped the pipe into a small dish by her knees to deposit the charred contents there; she put a pinch of something at the base of the pipe's bowl and mashed it around there. Itachi could only hear crunch-crunch sounds emanate from the pipe. Then she heated it above the candle's kindled flame and inhaled deeply and held that inhalation as long as she could.
"Hanakoto-San, if you could spare a little time for him, I would be grateful," Shisui spoke, and Itachi noticed that his tone was deep, almost seductive.
Hanakoto exhaled in a brief, sigh-like sound, and smoke rose before her beautiful face, hiding it from Itachi's sight. She issued forth a chiming laughter, and her seductive nature came to the fore. "He is but a young boy," she paused, drew deep, and exhaled again, "and you ask of me to play with him? A little morbid, no, Shisui-Kun?"
"That's what he wants, and I've got no . . . issue with his mindset. He's reached sexual maturity, so his age shouldn't be of any concern," he reasoned, appearing a bit flustered under the weight of her gaze.
Hanakoto did not look to Shisui but to Itachi this time, and her eyes appraised his face and body with a clear mind and penetrating sight. "What a beautiful boy," she spoke, and her voice had the seduction of midnight specters—it was lovely, and the ripening boy in him was enchanted by its melody. "A little innocent for these chambers. How many seasons have you seen?"
"I turned twelve this summer," Itachi replied and kept his voice firm in an effort to make it deep and commanding; and his dark eyes filled with a sudden something for the first time in his short life . . .
Shisui hung his head in shame. This was not right, but Itachi could not be persuaded otherwise. If Hanakoto turned him down, Shisui would reason with him to quell his passions some other way; but his thoughts had only begun to scale his mind and locate reason when she interposed: "leave my chamber. He shall stay here, with me, for the night."
Surprise was writ large upon Shisui's face, but he forced a smile, muttered something about, 'I'll be outside,' and then left the room with a resigned disposition, closing the sliding door behind him.
Her gaze did not see any worry upon Itachi's face, which had previously slipped into its cool mien. She placed the pipe down on the table and tapped her hand on the futon behind her. "Come here and sit with me," she spoke and watched him disentangle the fingers of his right hand from the left one in a smooth, detached manner.
Hanakoto shifted back a little to settle herself on the futon and adjusted her garments with thoughtful movements of her pliant limbs. He edged around the table and sat down, a little cautiously, beside her, his gaze settling itself methodically upon the lantern.
She placed her hand to his cheek, and then proceeded to glide her fingers along his contours with admiration. "I am a woman of twenty-seven," she began and inched closer to take a whiff of his skin—he had no male musk to exude. "I have never had someone so young in my bed. Would it ripen enough to fill me?" She buried her face into his neck, her nose into his lush hair, pressed her lips on his nape, her hand moving down to knead his genitals.
The reaction from his body was immediate, but he sought control in its stead. To distract himself, his gaze wandered the room that was filled with antiques, masterworks that hung on the walls. There were shadows everywhere, but his Sharingan had risen and lust had unveiled, to its full, a beast—a red one. Then everything was red in the room, and he had not stopped her from removing the clothes from his torso. His sweaty back lay shivering on the silkiest kakebuton he had ever felt against his skin.
She had located the core of pleasures in his body and placed her mouth on his flesh. It bloomed to a hard state, eager to respond, and he shivered from the tips of his toes to the vibrating, pulsing thing inside her throat. He could sense his own flesh clearly, mapped by the sweeping motions of her tongue and grazing of her teeth.
Itachi could not hear his own sounds that issued forth from his lips in quick successions: his hearing was hampered by a thunderous heart and laboured breaths. Her mouth generated pulses of pleasures, the kind he had never known before; an innocent flick of her tongue and a practiced movement of her hand along his length made him spasm.
Fluids sprang from the taut crown, and he erupted into her mouth. Hanakoto pulled back with tendrils of his release upon her lips. She wiped at her lips and released a girl-ish laugh. Then Itachi felt a heaviness upon his hips, and he strained his head and watched her remove her kimono and reveal her pretty form to his eyes as she sat down on his thighs.
Her breasts, with pebbled nipples, sat high like plump, ripened fruit, and the decadent curve of her waist extended to her hip's flare; and right between her wide open thighs were coarse black hair to hide her genitals. Along her beautiful shoulders and white forearms ran a red-hot glow from fire—like sake.
Hanakoto reached over and kissed his shivering throat that was covered in sweat now, and he immediately went erect in her palm. "My, you are a lively boy," she whispered and moved her hand up and down the slick length of him. She had a delicious odour that he so loved now—it fanned his lust into a sinister state that, when she bore down on him, red gushed forth into the room that was nothing more than black and white etchings of a bleak painting before. Then Autumn Moths bloomed from the buds that grew out of red fabrics, their wings vibrating there, and then everything began to pulse in his consciousness in the same rhythm—it was purple, red, and something more sinister he could not name.
Itachi's arousal was silky, thick, hot inside her—her channel was tight, torrid, a place of dark pleasures. The vibrations from their conjoining made his veins throb with visible pulsations. Her supple organ had swallowed up his cock good. Then he raised a soft cry of impatience, his hips heaved, his pelvis rose and fell, and he released inside her; and again she squeezed, and again he hardened to experience the sweet vibrations of mating—all over again.
Itachi did not know how long it went on, his black hair streaked silver with copious amounts of sweat; the lantern's light dimmed in the room, and outside, footfalls passed softly along the corridor. Incense's scent had diminished and hers had risen to conquer it with hopeless finesse.
At last, she bent forward, ground into him roughly, and spilt on his white torso. Her hands, eager in the search of his passions, grabbed hold of his muscle-coils and the skin there flushed white. A sudden piercing colour invaded her eyes, and her voice broke in the wake of her release. Then she, wordlessly, released him and slowly the excited veins crept back . . . and a memory had ended like a part of him in this place—a quiet past running down the winding road of wanton pursuits . . .
Standing decadent against the animated lights of greedy gazes, set in the spills of white lights, wearing clean shadows of a new wood that lay cross-crossed on the fair skin, her flesh was a temple—a sepulture of all desires. The red kimono was open from the front, and full breasts were bared before the prying eyes, skin flushed with sweat. A thatch of black hair covered the genitals, their smells diminished under the sharp odour of perfumes—an airy garb, lighter than silk, sweeter than sake.
Hot fumes rose from the bath and youth went skittering left and right, and the gazes, mad in chase of its taste, skittered, too. Just a little bite, a soft nip of the nectar brewed by nature that would soon grow stale, wear upon itself the words from Time . . . and they would be content.
They so wanted to writhe and moan, envelop youth's skin: pretty young girls, pretty young boys; beautiful women, beautiful men; ethereal children, as young as eleven, with voices lilting, carrying a current of filthy innocence, sullied by old hands . . . they had it all—a tomb of lust, a grave of desire . . . red, much red. A single tooth lodged in the plump lower lip, and the flesh popped there, but common eyes could not see the red coming out—red sake on redder lips.
She reached a hand through the bars, red in the dour fingers fluttering there in the heat. Then she sat down, parted the lush thighs wide—as though she was meant to in the daze of incense and sake—and stretched the right leg that now lay taut from the hips, an inviting smile gracing her lips as delicately as the weightless caresses of fumes. What a filthy place . . .
The silk kimono slipped off her blushing skin as she tilted her head back, intoxicated. Black pot's fumes rose thick, wisps rising from the mouth to envelop the rosy red abloom everywhere, a child's toy stippled red by foul fingers. Children laughed an older laugh, and one old man sat cringed before a lovely young man, caressing his white foot, which he held in his coarse hand with delicate care. A whole world unwound behind the wooden-frame: street-legs sprawling, bird-necks stretching; stream-veins swelling in the flushing skin of earth, pretty dips intensifying below the breathing ribcage of lovely dead bones; twisting backs, turning beds of white peonies, a ruined vestal and a mottle of stains and flowing crevices—winding and unwinding little toys in many hands.
The features cast shadows in the large room's deep corners. It was nothing he had not seen before. One male youth made an enticing gesture towards him from the corner of the large house. He was finally beckoned inside. The cover of his strenuous shadow left the frame, and it shivered and sighed in its wake. Feet moved behind him, though with the stiffness an old man might possess. One old man nearly grabbed his leg, slurring. He thought him to be a new prostitute, refined in the art of mind and manners. He was mad drunk.
He did not stop, feet carrying him through the smoke floating in the air as ghosts, hiding the flesh behind a precarious veil. At last, darkness swallowed up the corridor into its fat belly, and stray shafts from beyond the partition-screen slanted in, hitting his eyes with force that red throbbed there in complaint. Chakra exploded in rooms, nooks, corners: children sullied, maidens ruined, men shamed. This house breathed out mourning songs, and still unwound again . . . and again and again, but he chose not to heed it and made his way behind the screen.
He was glad to see the light's liquid trickle that poured forth from a lantern hanging from a beam above her head as he put the Sharingan to sleep. She had put on a show to appear as a single entity in his gaze—all darkness and a single, struggling light's shower. When she became aware of his presence, she wore a curl of dissolute mockery on her fair face. She still looked the same: painted face and chiseled lips coloured with the forest berry's touch, black hair scraped back with care and decorated with expensive ornamental pins, and a fan in hand. Over the years, she had not changed much and still looked as remarkably beautiful as the day he first met her—Time had not touched her skin, her youth.
He stopped and sat down without a word of greeting. The other man did the same. She found his attitude . . . endearing as her countenance became soft and sweet as though she was dealing with a child. "I have not seen you in weeks, Itachi-Kun," she spoke in a manner as though her tongue was caressing each word.
Serizawa let out a groan, frowning. He had kept his gaze low. He did not want to raise his eyes and gaze at a few women swaying under the lights, mad somnambulists, black hair swaying against the taut buttocks like loose ink brushes in smoke's hands. Nothing covered their flesh and shame.
Their shadows danced with light feet on Itachi's left cheek, and he turned his eyes away. A sudden mischievousness flickered in her eyes, and she emitted a laugh, enjoying his cool demeanour. "My, I have never seen you flustered by such a tepid show," she spoke, voice light and seductive. "Are you flustered? If you are, I miss the sight of a sweet blush upon your cheeks."
"Why have you called me here?" Itachi asked, his voice a frosty wind in the heat of the room, returned her refined exuberance with a tight frown.
"You are cold," she huffed out in a singing voice and tapped the fan against the lips softly. "Your tongue is sharp enough to slay my heart. I would have loved for you cast aside that garb, and play here . . . with me." A sinister seduction came into her face, but its intensity was so dimmed in the dark that he did not have the patience in him to gauge its worth.
A small child came running to him, and wordlessly, he sat down by his side and touched the inside of his left thigh in a manner that was unfitting of a boy so young. Itachi looked down at him, anger fading at the sight of his innocence: his brow was frowned, and the soft bend of his mouth was quite like Sasuke's. It pained him so, heart aching at the sight of him.
The boy brushed his small hand against Itachi's thigh again, and he could bear it no longer. "Stop playing this game. Get him out of my sight," he spoke, anger invading his tone with the mildest breach.
"Reminds you of Sasuke-Kun, does he not?" Hanakoto spoke, and her smile widened at the predicable rise of red in his eyes. "He is so beautiful, too. Not much younger than you when you came to me. You could have been a predator, yet Shisui chose for you to become a prey—when you lay beneath me, weeping and moaning as I helped you come." Then she laughed again, and this time, her laugher rippled through the room like a sharp, invading sound.
The child scampered away and disappeared behind the women—still swaying in the grip of drugs.
"Leave," Itachi spoke to Serizawa without turning his head, and he obliged without a word. Seeing this as some sort of invitation, Hanakoto picked herself up, garments and all, and walked to him. Then she sat down delicately by his side, her hand reaching up to tangle in his hair.
"Why do you not use that cold tongue to warm me?" she whispered and strained to press her lips against his throat. He was quicker than her, and in one swift motion her eyes could not even see, he had her throat in his grasp, the nails of his thumb and forefinger digging into her jaw.
"I asked of you to complete a task, yet you are inept," he spoke and turned his face to look upon her: his cold mien faded, and a sinister calm set in that made a chill climb the length of her spine. "You were allowed to sell this filth in return for your loyalties. I do not see you trying so hard."
Hanakoto blinked, and then her lashes fluttered as his nails broke the white skin to create dents there. "I turn a blind-eye to these things . . . on few conditions, yet now you believe yourself to hold all the power. Are you testing me?" he asked, and the beauty of his face was no more than an edifice that hid an evil form.
"No," she let out a small gasp, her gaze trying hard to evade the instruments in his eyes.
"You are wise," Itachi whispered in a mocking tone, and from this close, she could smell the musk his body gave forth—she always could. "A week—that is all you possess. Do not make me come here again without a cause."
He pulled his hand back, and she breathed in a shuddering breath. "Look what you have done—you have left wounds in my face. I will have to call in a medic to heal these, you rude boy." She smiled a bold smile. Her seductive mouth curved, and she touched the side of his face again. "Why are you angry with me to-night? You are pliant when you get intoxicated by that noxious concoction—a different, sweeter man," she spoke, but he did not answer. Instead, he rose to his feet and left the large room in silence.
When Itachi made it outside, his eyes fell upon the boy. He was standing before an old man who had a vulgar glint in his eyes. Itachi called to him and he came running. He followed Itachi as he made his way outside the building. Then, as the wind hit him, he went down on one knee and grabbed him gently by the shoulders. In the light of the setting sun, he looked so like Sasuke—his mouth was exactly the same . . .
"What is your name?" Itachi asked softly, and the boy eased in his grasp.
"Kosuke," the boy said and wiped at his face in a thoughtless gesture.
"Where is your family? Are they alive?" he asked and saw the boy shake his head. "Are you from Rain?" The boy, Kosuke, nodded this time. He was so small that Itachi's fingers had the fleshy parts of his arms in his grasp.
"Serizawa, take him to the orphanage in our village," Itachi commanded and watched a smile cross the boy's face. "I have some matters to attend. Tell the Elders that the meeting can take place tomorrow. I have no time for it tonight." Then he whispered something and stood up.
"Yes, Itachi-Sama," Serizawa replied and held out his hand for the boy. The boy placed his hand in his and watched Itachi disappear into the darkness. He had spoken a name in thoughtlessness—Sasuke . . . ?
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