Disclaimer: I do NOT own Yu Yu Hakusho, nor do I own its characters.
THE MONSTER
He scoped about for any oncoming traffic, but observed none at all. To his surprise, the entire area was completely void of all life, even when…downtown?
…Where was everyone?
Something was not right about any of this, and the town itself was not at all recognizable. The vicinity was grungier than usual, vapid even, and the man-made structures stood like villainous silhouettes looming in from a distance. All the more maddening, the fog made it nearly impossible to see shite.
Other than his own, not a single soul was around.
Everything was so still, there was a silence that echoed in an ominous ring.
Kazuma hopped back into his ride.
"Fuck this place, damn Ghost Town."
Instinctively he reached to turn the key, only to fondle around on the wheel after his grip clasped upon nothing more than thin air. The key was missing, and the first clue should have been the ceasing of the incessant digging that always accompanied when leaving your key in the ignition point.
He glanced down on the floorboard, shifting around in the seat to see if the key had somehow fallen down there. After failing to detect his keys thus far, he jumped out of the vehicle and began checking under the seat, in the cracks, the built in coasters, and even in the door panel—though that itself was a ridiculous thing to do. The ginger even went as far as to check around and under the automobile, that is, he crawled around on his hands and knees for a measly two minutes…in vain!
There was Nothing, Naught-a, Zero, Zilch, or a Nil.
He turned up empty handed, and with no keys in sight he spat out obscenities. After surveying his surroundings with yet another turn, he climbed back into the SUV to retrieve his cell. Yet, once he slipped back inside, something bizarre caught his eye…and it was not his cellphone.
The mysterious letter from beyond…had appeared mysteriously in the front passenger's seat.
"What the fuck?"
Exactly!
Maybe the letter was alive after all? He certainly could not recall ever bringing that thing with him. Hmm, it being "haunted" sounded like a far more reasonable explanation than it sprouting legs and sneaking into his vehicle and then finally somehow crawled itself up into the seat while he was not looking.
He reached over to pick up the letter, but suddenly hesitated when fear crept over him.
Fear? Afraid? Afraid of what? What was he thinking? That superstitious attitude never helped him any at all in the past, so why would it now? If anything, he learned to face the issues ahead and head on, rather than dealing with them later when he "felt" like it. Had not life taught him that important lesson at an early age?
Such a thought exhumed a memory from his childhood…
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH HAAAA HAAAA WEEEEEEEHHHH!"
"Quiet!" His father's voice cracked, the man's thunder cutting his cries in half.
Kazuma was a shrill nine year old, if not almost ten at the time. He suffered issues in his social life, as he did in his teen years and likewise into adulthood, especially at school though the concerns at home often attested to be far greater on the scales of severity. Why?
The boy jumped at the harshness in the adult's tone, his cheeks wet and stained by tears. "But…but daddy, it's REAL." He pleaded for understanding, for reasoning. "I saw it! It tried to hurt me!"
For reasons most normal people could not comprehend, for things he saw that no one else could, and the things that haunted him.
"Stop crying." His father rebuked. "That crying isn't going to solve anything, other than prove how much of a wretched louse you truly are deep down. So, stop being such a pussy."
The boy gaped at him, overcome by hurt and disbelief. He dreaded his father for those reasons.
He minded his father, examining as the man lit up a cigarette, only to puff away on its noxious vapors as it hung on the right corner of his lips. "Look at you, behaving like a newborn. Mister Sensitive, I've seen toddlers act way tougher than you." He stuffed his hands into his pockets and then jeered; "Need a diaper change, little man? Oh, that's right, you're not a man at all but a BIG wannabe, who's weak and will never prove himself worthy of what it is to have an admirable title."
There was a brief pause as ashes were flicked away into the passing wind. Amazing how the embers never manage to singe the man's hideous mustache, though such was an absurd imagining conjured up in a child's mind.
"Being a man comes with responsibility, kid." The man further edified. "It is not necessarily the gender itself, but the ideology and with that comes the might, strength, and power that is earned and not inherited and neither can it ever be given. For if not a man, then you are a monster; that is, an entity who appears as a man but is not and thus is not equal to man, nor does he have the rights of man. In this current age, being born does not alone qualify you to be a man; then again there has always been a fine line between man and monster and such entities live to prove whether they are one or the other."
The boy stared at him, rapt in the wisdom given, even though he did not understand the lecture entirely. He continued to sniffle, even so, fear residing and impervious on turning him loose.
And his father saw such weakness in him. "Look at you, you little monster, sniveling and whimpering like a kicked dog. You are not worthy of being my son, and you are not worthy of the name KUWABARA—not worthy to be a KUWABARA!"
Those words stroke a chord with his younger self, perhaps the main cause to the concentrated bitterness that often surged from within. Even for a boy, he quickly grew to hate his father, perhaps always did. "You… SHUT UP, OLD MAN! YOU TAKE THAT BACK, GODDAMMIT!"
That bastard guffawed like the madman he was, amused by the boy's sudden hostility.
The boy whom he once was had often wondered as to why he could not have a normal father like everyone else. A father that actually struck him like Urameshi's old man had often done whenever that imp got into trouble, rather than a father who made a complete mockery of him and so terribly humiliate him at any given chance when it presented itself. Correspondingly, he once longed for a father that stuck around when you needed him, even when unwanted, and not be elsewhere selfishly playing mercenary; for having a cutthroat for a father was the hardest part of all.
The man often forced the boy to do grueling chores. Actually, his father put him to work and with the lack of reason other than he fulfill his "fair share", which proved to be nothing more than exploitation, his father having took advantage of his ignorance. His sister stood by and did nothing to help, not even so much as slip him a hint. In fact, she endorsed the suffering of his free labor and punished him whenever he stepped out of line.
Frankly, he did not know what was worse: having a cruel somebody like Shizuru for an older sister or having this callous papa to look up to? He had no mama to shelter him, let alone unable to remember her face.
He became all the more aware of subjugation and all the more disgruntled by the age of sixteen; his patience had run on empty. Exhausted and belligerent toward his circumstance, he rebelled by that age and to his astonishment met little to no resistance from either of them. And it was then—and only then—did he receive the respect he always craved from his family.
Evidently, there was a lesson in all of that: Give others an inch and they will take a mile? …Perhaps not. More or less, it all had something to do with "monsters".
Sad to say it took him so long to get the picture, but Kazuma was a rather slow individual during his youth.
Being an optimist, he knew one thing for sure: he did not want to be like either of them, cold and pitiless. Good had to win, had to triumph over evil, and good things happen to good people while the bad got their just rewards. But from the true pragmatist's point of view, "idealism" was another word that meant "stupidity". They, the only two surviving members of his family, were realists.
"Atta boy, there's fight to be found in you yet."
Fight? He always had "fight" within himself, for he did not and could not ever succumb to defeat. Ever determined, Kazuma Kuwabara could not even consider the chances of losing, for success was his only option and failure was not…if he could help it, that is.
It was better to burn quickly and bright, than burn slowly and dull without a fight.
This "iron man", no matter how feckless, was NOT going to be a slave to his fears, and so he fought.
The psychic took hold of the envelope and traced the sullied edges with his thumb, all afore he carefully tore it open. Upon reaching into the packet, he discovered a folded piece of parchment. He removed the paper from within its holder, and that the paper revealed to be smeared by dismal hues on a crude drawing.
Kazuma's eyes broadened, three times the size, while his rustic orpiment orbs contracted.
Had he seen this before…somewhere…?
He drew this when he was six. The psychic could not remember why, when exactly, or for what reasons, but he knew he drew this and at that age, the greatest tipoff being that his name was written alongside the year on the back of the parchment. The recollection persisted to evade him.
The illustration was that of a building, an eerie one at that for the entire structure was painted black.
The structure was not the only thing that caught his eye, however, as there was a figure…a menacing character surrounded by a pool of red, and likewise covered in "bleeding" shadow. The being looked to be man yet beast yet nothing in between, and with a fearsome blade in hand he was cutting through space… The thing was cutting through dimensions.
The thing was cutting through dimensions, carving out the sky as IT peeled the blue back like skin from a piece of meat.
…TO BE CONTINUED…
I would love to thank my readers and also my reviewers: IamEnVIOUS, Kitty Uzumaki, and Malika Ariya Amari!
In this chapter, you've read my hypothesis as to why Kuwabara holds so much animosity towards his father. Those of you who have read the manga, you may have noticed this animosity when his father made a special appearance.
As for Kuwabara's observations made on Yusuke, allow me to explain. It was mentioned in the manga that Yusuke's father was quite strict and thus he hated his father for that reason and that reason alone. Also, it was hinted that Yusuke's father had been around, all along, somewhere in the background. I, myself, believe that it was his father who paid for the new apartment that his mother and he (Yusuke) had moved into rather than his ridiculous claim of his mother receiving help from a pimp. Remember, Yusuke was a bitter teen and was known for his impertinent remarks.