It was unclear why they were doing this. But Ukyo welcomed the hard work. It kept her from thinking so much. She was tired of her thoughts. She was tired of the screams echoing in her head. She remembered everything as if it had been done by someone else and to a person she did not know. She kept wondering if it had been necessary. She wondered if the attack had being unnecessarily cruel. Maybe the attacker had had reasons to do what she did. Maybe at the moment, simply cutting Soun's throat had not been an option.
Ukyo closed her eyes and shook her head. She was thinking like that again. She kept thinking as if she wasn't…herself. She killed Soun. She had found great pleasure in breaking his body and cutting his flesh. And she had enjoyed even more throwing the broken body in a place where Akane would find it.
She stopped moving stones for a moment. That was more disturbing than thinking in third person. She just accepted killing someone had felt good. She just accepted the sorrow of a girl who had lost her father was nice. She was losing her mind. She was going mad. And she was aware of it. It made it all the most sickening. Her legs were trembling. She wanted to sit down and let herself go. She welcomed that strange sensation. She welcomed the sudden dullness overpowering every thought and every feeling raging through her mind…
"Rúguǒ nǐ nǔlì gōngzuò, suǒyǒu de tòngkǔ shì zhídé de…"
Ukyo latched to that sound. She strained her ears to keep listening to that cute sound.
"…Nǐ juéde jīntiān de tòngkǔ, ràng míngtiān gèng qiáng…"
She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. She took in a deep breath and let it go. Then again and again. She counted her heart-beats and she tried to understand the words that floated in her self-imposed darkness.
"Suǒyǐ rúguǒ nǐ dǎpòle gǔtou huò jiǎnshǎo nǐ de pífū? Tā huì quányù."
Ukyo opened her eyes and looked at Shampoo. The girl was pilling stones neatly on her side of the dwell as she spoke. It wasn't a song. She appeared to be having a dialogue. Ukyo wondered if she was talking to her and had slipped into Mandarin without realizing it. But as she kept listening, Ukyo realized Shampoo was talking as two people. She changed the tone of the sentences and said things in questioning tones. Questions she herself answered. Ukyo wished she could speak Mandarin. It seemed a very interesting conversation.
"Talk Japanese, Shampoo…" She said absently. "Kodachi will hurt you."
Shampoo stopped talking and whirled around. Ukyo straightened as the Amazon cut the distance between them in the blink of an eye. For a fraction of a second, she was sure that death was finally upon her...and she welcomed it. But Shampoo's eyes slowly lost their feral gleam. She raised a hand and placed a finger against her lips.
"Shush..."
Ukyo frowned. Who the hell was she to shush her?
The sound of the door banging open made her jump. Shampoo darted out of the hole. Ukyo quickly followed her. When she reached the top she found Kodachi, dressed in a dark nightmarish gown and Shampoo kneeling before her. She quickly dropped to her knees as well and waited.
"Akane Tendo's heart is broken." Kodachi announced. "First her 'Uncle Genma' and then her own father. And now that obnoxious little piglet. You have both done a wonderful job. She's also so scared."
Kodachi laughed. It was a hideous maddening sound and it echoed in the huge room where they now spent day and nights on end, constructing and working for an unknown purpose. Ukyo waited patiently for the sound to die away. But then another joined it. It was a shrill animalistic sound that barely resembled a human laughter. A mindless terror squeezed Ukyo's heart as she turned to her side to find the source of the sound.
It was coming from Shampoo. She was apparently laughing. Her eyes had lost any light of sanity left. Ukyo wanted to scream. She wanted to leap at her and shut her up. She wanted to strangle her for daring to make such a horrible sound. But she could not move. She could only stare and wait.