Chapter Eleven: The Will

"GET IN THE HOUSE!" Hiro and Hatori commanded simultaneously as a bullet was fired into the darkening sky.

Screams.

Kyo, Haru, and Yuki shoved everyone into the house, and once they were inside, Yuki quickly locked the front door, Rin and Haru staying close by. The three followed everyone up the stairs. Rin sat down between Haru and Yuki, shaking as Shigure and Hatori instructed everyone there to sit down, to stay away from doors as if it were a tornado.

Maybe… he could be more like a friend, Rin thought as Haru held her hand tightly and rested his head on her frail shoulder. I couldn't possibly love him and Haru… but what have I done?

"Who is that?" Kisa whispered through her tears as she clung to Hiro.

"Kureno," Hatori answered over the gunshots. "It has to be."

"It was me," Rin admitted in a whisper to Haru's ear, although everyone was so close together that she could easily be heard. "I killed him."

The gunshots stopped and there was a knock at the door.

"Should we… answer it?"

"Ayame, don't be stupid," Hatori hissed, standing up slowly.

"If we don't answer it…" Kyo's voice trailed off, not wanting to think about 'ifs'. Tohru mumbled something in her sleep on Kyo's lap. He had tried to stay as close to her as possible, but he couldn't imagine how a person could sleep at a time like this.

"Kyo!" Momiji exclaimed suddenly. Everyone in the hall looked up at Kyo, even Yuki, who was trying to tend to his glass cuts, and Haru, who was so relieved that Rin wasn't upset with him that he was trying to get as close to her as humanly possible. "Kyo! You can hug Tohru!"

It was true. Kyo looked down at her peaceful face and realized that he had been hugging her all along. And the strangest part was… Kagura was too shaken to say anything.

The knock became louder and Momiji's realization was forgotten.

"That's it," Hatori put his hands on his hips. "I'm seeing who it is."

"No! You can't go alone!" Ayame and Shigure declared, and stood up also.

Without another word from themselves or from the ones left in the hall, the Mabudachi went back downstairs.

"Rin," Hatsuharu broke the silence that ensued after the three had left. "What did you say before?"

Kagura and Ritsu looked up. They had heard what Rin had said before, and saw it happen at the Main House.

"I killed him," Rin repeated, louder this time. "I shot him. I shot him with his own gun. I'm sorry… I'm so sorry… please don't hate me…"

Yuki sat closer to her and kissed her forehead, hoping she didn't care that some of his blood had gotten on her. Rin now had Yuki and Haru hugging her so tightly, she could barely breathe.

"Kohatio," Ritsu said quietly. "He's… he's… A…"

"It's alright!" Hatori screamed from downstairs. "You can come down!"

Unsure, the Sohmas filed into Shigure's living room.

-+-

"This is Ren."

Hatori gestured to the afraid-looking woman standing in the doorway, clutching a package under her coat. The entire Sohma family sat down in Shigure's living room, sitting as close together as possible for comfort and warmth.

"I'm very sorry," Ren took the manila envelope out of her coat. "For all of the trouble my son has caused you."

"So what happened?" Kyo asked, absentmindedly stroking Tohru's hair. "I'm so confused."

There was a murmur of agreement.

Ren opened the envelope and turned the contents of it onto the table. "First we need to straighten this out."

She picked up a white slip of paper. "I haven't had time to look at this, but I've stolen it from Kohatio's office quite a few times."

"Wait… How did you know when to get out of the house?" Kagura ventured to ask.

"Horoscope, my dear.

"If you didn't already notice or didn't care, your first clues were a throw off, aimed at the rat."

Yuki looked at the floor in embarrassment. Rin's tears had slowed down and she now lay against Yuki with Haru's hand still enveloping hers in a numb state of shock.

"Your clues were just a few sentences cut up and separated into envelopes."

"Sorry, Yuki," Momiji said quietly from across the room. Some others nodded. Now they were embarrassed that they were tricked into accusing Yuki of the crime. But that was just the genius of Akito.

"The paragraph reads:

"Long ago, God held a banquet for the animals. The sneaky rat used the ox to get there first. Do you think our rat is any more trustworthy?"

"In a way… Akito was smart," Kisa whispered. "He tried to make us think it was Yuki and we did."

And the rat and the ox had conflicts in the past, like me and Yuki did with Rin at the House, Hatsuharu thought. Ironic…

"Well if it ain't Yuki, who is it?"

Kyo was right, to a few.

"Kohatio…" Rin whispered, but nobody heard her.

"Nobody really paid attention to their second clue, but this is what it reads:

"I am not dead. My precious Juunishi are being tricked by their God. Too bad."

"But why?" Ritsu was crying.

"Yeah!" Hiro agreed. "Why would he lock us up for so long if… it was all fake?"

"And if he's not dead…" Shigure trailed off in thought.

"He is now."

"It was just a game of torture," Yuki said. "He wanted to torture us for not mourning his 'death'. He wanted to see what we would say about him if we thought he wasn't there, so he created 'Sam Kohatio' to spy on us."

"And," Ren added. "He was trying to kill the entire zodiac in the process."

"And you know this because…?" Hatori stared at her with a furrowed brow.

"It's all right here. Rini was also trying to get me to join her, Kureno, and Akito in the task of killing everyone off."

"What happened to Kureno? Wasn't he the one firing shots into the air?" Hiro snapped.

"…never mind that now. Would you like me to read the will?"

Everyone nodded. They had forgotten. In the beginning, 'Kohatio' had said that the envelope contained Akito's will, but he had not read it.

"My Dear Juunishi,

"If you are reading this, it most likely means that the game is over, and I am dead… for real, this time. I knew my plan was destined to fail. I knew that you would not die in these days I had originally planned. You love for one another is so strong, I feel that I can say without being blemished by lies, that even though you may not be related by blood, you can help each other and protect in ways that can hardly be called human.

"Love is a strange thing, which I can honestly say I feel I haven't experienced in a very, very long time. It's different with all of you, because you were born to love me, but I now admit that I forced you into this game out of my own jealousy. I forced you into this game hoping that if I couldn't kill you myself, you would kill each other in hatred. I thought that by pairing you with ones you were not very familiar with, you would grow to hate them. The exact opposite happened. Some of you are even 'friends'.

"So what do we do now?

"Although it is most unfortunate, you are all still cursed. Tomorrow, a new God will be born, and you will once again transform when you're hugged or weak. If there was a way to change this I suppose I might, but I don't know what that might be. I'm sorry.

"As for the prized promised before the game started, there really isn't much I can do. The Estate is there for you to divide amongst yourselves as you wish, and so is the money. Liberation was a lie to make the more reluctant of you play along.

"This game, I confess, was also a form of suicide for me. I knew I would die. I wanted to. I knew none of you loved me, and I felt I had nothing to live for anymore. So now I have cut my life short and passed on to wherever it is that awful spirits go when they die.

"Maybe your new God will not be so evil.

-A.S., December 19th

"It was all a lie," Kyo sighed, standing up again to read the paragraph about the curse. "We were lied to. All of this was a lie."

"So… although Rin was the one who shot Kohatio, Akito technically killed himself," Haru confirmed slowly.

"No."

Yuki stood up and took the paper from Kyo. "Don't you see? Maybe Rin did kill him, but so did all of us. He only abused us because he was jealous of us. He was jealous that we could live without knowing we would die at a certain age. He was jealous of us, and no matter how sucky we feel out lives are, he's always had it worse. And he hated us for it. He tortured us, he tried to convince us we were lower than him just so he could feel superior. He hated us so much he wanted to die. It's not entirely our fault, but we cut his life short. The only thing he wanted was love, but he didn't know what that was, and because he didn't know how to give love, we could never give it to him."

Yuki sat down again. The whole room seemed to be fighting back tears as they contemplated all of what had come out of the Rat's mouth.

"So now…" Hatori started.

"…we're stuck," Rin finished. "We're stuck and there's no way out. We're damned forever to be cursed, and tomorrow the new god'll come and we'll be back at Square One."