2: When the World Collapses (Suzaku's Point of View)
The Ashford Estate, General Tohdoh's Dojo, and the Kururugi Summer Home were each located within three miles of each other near the base of Mount Fuji. Between and behind them, marching up the mountain slopes, were dozens of acres of magnificent forests. Most of the trees were old and stately. A good amount of wildlife, from chika deer to Hercules beetles, made this habitat their home. Half a dozen foot-trails wound their way throughout the area, over little streams bordered by moss-covered rocks, past small waterfalls pouring down from the higher slopes, and through small glades of wildflowers. Lelucia and I spent a lot of time in those woods from the day we met on July 17th to the day the invasion started on August 10th.
Lelucia said she wasn't much of an outdoors person, but she had a decent eye for beauty, and there was one glen I showed her that she liked better than all the others. There, free of the shade of the ancient trees, a large patch of sunflowers flourished on a space on relatively level ground. Lelucia liked walking among the tall, bright-colored flowers, enjoying their faint scent, and basking in the direct sunlight. The banished Princess was a tomboy in some ways, and for whatever reason, she seemed to want to prove that she was tough. Being with me in the sunflower field seemed to make her a little uneasy, since by enjoying this place, she was patently proving her feminine side. I thought seeing Lelucia like this was cute and didn't hold it against her in the slightest.
She and I were constantly in each other's company, since our educations were on hold for the summer and neither of us had any other real friends. Besides playing and hiking in the woods, Lelucia and I also spent time attending lessons at the Dojo, where the skinny Princess tried her best to learn a few bare-minimum self-defense moves. Additionally, we frequently visited the Ashford Estate to eat, talk with Nannaru, and play board games and cards. Lelucia always won those, of course. As for Nannaru, he took an immediate liking to me, and I enjoyed playing with the young boy and giving him piggy-back rides.
A few times, at Nannaru's request, we took him to the woods with us. Even though he couldn't see, Lelucia's little brother said the forest was beautiful. He had a great ear for identifying wild birds by their songs and cries. He loved the feeling of sitting among the sunflowers even more than his sister did. Sometimes I thought Nannaru was more feminine than Lelucia. Of course, I still far out-played her in terms of all things tradtionally masculine. It was I who always carried Nannaru on my back when the three of us went to the forest. Lelucia could have carried the petite six-year-old boy herself, but only for short distances. I felt proud of myself carrying the lame child around without difficulty. I was growing stronger by the day.
The days spent with my new friends were blissful. You see, I didn't get along with my father, so I wasn't happy at home, and while I loved learning martial arts with General Tohdoh, I also wanted companionship free of formalities (and bruises). I would blush and deny it when asked directly, but I was delighted to be with Lelucia and her little brother. I grew very fond of them very fast, and I believe the feelings were mutual. Nannaru loved visiting the woods, riding on my back, and questioning me non-stop about the culture, history, and language of Japan. Because her little brother was so joyful, Lelucia also allowed herself to feel blithe and untroubled for a short time.
"Hey," I said on August 10th, when Lelucia and I were in the woods. "Is it just me? Or do you hear that? Something's rumbling."
"All I hear are the damn cicadas," replied Lelucia in her high-pitched voice. She hated large insects.
"There's something else behind the sound of the cicadas," I insisted. "I wonder if it's a fleet of our jets. Let's get to a clearing with a good view."
We ran up a tree-covered slope. Above that there was an almost sheer wall of rock about eighteen feet high. Without hesitating, I began to scale the wall, knowing there would be a good view of Mount Fuji from there. Lelucia lagged behind and was clumsier with climbing. Finally, I gave her a hand up, and we both looked to the skies around and above the mountain.
What we saw were war jets, and they did not belong to the Japanese army. Lelucia at once recognized them as Britannian. There were hundreds of them. They were passing over Mount Fuji, probably getting ready to veer northeast toward Tokyo. I had heard my father express fear many times that Britannia would invade, but seeing it happen was somehow unreal.
Over the next few days, it became clear that our fears had come true. Britannia declared war on Japan. The fighting started at multiple locations along the shorelines of the archipelago. My father, the Daijin, became insanely busy trying to prepare the military and keep the citizens calm. He had one other critically important job, too: making sure the main group of politicians and legislatures wouldn't flee the country. The assemblymen were terrified by the might of Britannia and threatened to leave at once for neutral territory that might offer asylum.
However, Genbu Kururugi was a powerful man with an influential presence, even without his authority as Daijin. He knew exactly what to say to make people listen. Thus, for the time being, the politicians were persuaded to stay in Japan. My father convinced them with a single simple but appealing speech. In mere minutes, a crowd of angry cowards had transformed into a pack of fierce patriots. I realized for the first time that the people of Japan would stop at nothing to serve and obey Genbu Kururugi, whatever he might command.
Britannian invaders clashed with Japanese defense forces starting on the 13th. Thanks to the enemy's use of the destructive, versatile Knightmares, my country's fleets, jets, tanks, and infantry suffered immense losses. It was little more than one-sided slaughter. The Japanese were forced to retreat further in-land. While they recovered and gathered up their strength, the Britannians quickly moved toward Tokyo to invade it. In the brief time of fighting from the 13th to the 15th, no less than two thousand soldiers across numerous battlefields died, and thousands more were wounded. It became clear that winning against Britannia would be impossible. Some people began to hate the Daijin for not stopping the war right away. They urged him to call for surrender. My father, however, held off on the decision and hosted a large memorial service for fallen soldiers on the night of the 15th.
My memories of that night are vague, but I know I slipped away at some point to look for Lelucia and Nannaru. With all the chaos going on, I hadn't seen them in three days. I must have become lost. When I tried to cut through a back alley, a gang of four people tried to kidnap me, saying they would kill me unless the Prime Minister ordered a stop to the fighting. I fought for my life, using both martial arts and a combat knife I had received as a present from my father. I used that present to kill one of the kidnappers. Of course, I barely understood what I was doing; it was all like a dream. Then my father and a squad of "Secret Service" bodyguards arrived and shot down the other three kidnappers. When my father approached me, I was throwing up and crying, saying I had murdered someone.
"Murder?" scoffed Genbu without so much as looking at me. "I did hear that you killed one of the kidnappers. That was justifiable self-defense. You aren't a murderer; you're a young warrior."
"Th-Then what," I stammered, as we walked back toward shelter, "what does that make you, father? You ordered your bodyguards to shoot the other three kidnappers in cold blood. You weren't in any danger. Dad, doesn't that mean… you are the murderer?"
The Prime Minister stopped and turned around. He hit me in the face, but that was something I was used to. Then he placed a stern hand on my skinny shoulder and looked me right in the eye. He must have noticed that my face wet with tears, but he spoke without pity.
"Don't ever accuse your father of murder," he ordered. "Next time you say something like that, I'll take a bullwhip to you. Listen. I ordered those thugs to be killed because I was afraid they would kill you. Sometimes you have to kill to protect yourself, and sometimes you have to kill to protect what you believe is precious. If someone ever puts precious lives in danger for no reason, then you kill them, Suzaku. Kill them. Don't show mercy."
"Yes sir." My voice was just a subdued murmur. I followed my father back to safety, and after the service ended, we wearily returned home.
*****Line Break*****
After that, I tried going back to normal life, but I was frequently sick and felt like everything was a dream. Once you've killed someone, the entire world changes. Lelucia didn't know what had happened, but she could tell it was something major. She looked like she wanted to comfort me, but had no idea what to say. Of course, Lelucia had tried pleading with her father to stop the invasion, but apparently Charles vi Britannia responded by announcing to the world that Lelucia and Nannaru were dead. Even if they claimed to be royalty after that, nobody would believe them. I'm sure Lelucia must have hated her father. I was furious with mine, too.
For several days, I stopped speaking to the Daijin, enraged that he continued ordering the army to fight when they were so obviously overpowered. Though I was only ten, I understood most of what going on. In my mind, saving lives took priority over all the other duties of Japan's ruler. If Japan surrendered, the people would be treated harshly by Britannia, but at least the majority of the 130 million people would be able to live on. If the war continued, though, hundreds of thousands might die.
Cities were falling all across the country. The Britannians had enough sheer manpower to focus their invasion of five or six coastal cities at the same time. From there they moved inland. By the 25th, Tokyo had been taken over. Everyone was urging the Prime Minister to surrender before the entire Japanese military was wiped out. Another five thousand soldiers had become casualties since the 15th, and an unknown number of civilians had been killed by the malicious Britannians.
On August 28th, when everyone expected him to announce a surrender at his press conference, the Daijin called for more fighting. It was as if the soldiers and citizens being slaughtered didn't matter to him. For him, it was a do-or-die situation. He would rather see his country fighting to the last breath, losing hundreds of thousands of lives, than surrender and see them ruled by a foreign power. I couldn't understand it. I still can't. That must have been what drove me mad enough to kill my own father.
I can't remember actually doing it. My mind has locked away the memory for my own sake. But I know I did it; I murdered my father. Nothing could ever make the world right again after that. I had become an irredeemable killer. On the other hand, because I assassinated my father, and because it was chalked up to suicide, Japan was able to surrender, and thousands of lives were saved.
*****Line Break*****
I saw my father, the great Kururuhi Genbu, in a dream. He was wearing white dojo clothes: a cotton kimono and loose hakama bottoms. His hair was tied back. Except for the fact that he was at least twelve feet tall, towering over me like a giant, the picture my mind made of him was strikingly realistic. As for me, I was on my knees on the ground, trembling, my hands and wrists soaked in blood. Beside me lay the female mercenary who had tried to kidnap me the night of the memorial service.
That night, she had beaten me mercilessly with showers of punches and kicks with steel-toed boots. Before she could draw her gun and point it at me, I had pulled out my knife, leaped at her with incredible speed, and buried my blade in her neck. Now she was lying before me in the dream, but even though she was supposed to be dead, she was looking at me with wide eyes. She had no voice, but her lips mouthed the word, "Why?" At the same time, blood spurted from her neck and pooled under her body. The amount of blood grew until I found myself in a swamp of it, wading through the red, stumbling, trying to stop crying. Above me, now eighteen feet tall, loomed the figure of my father.
I wanted to cry out to him for help; I was drowning in blood, which smelled terrible, and felt startlingly warm. But when I looked up at him, tears streaming down my face, my father's expression changed from one of cold indifference to one of terror and absolute revulsion. He was afraid of me. How could he look at his own son that way? It was then I suddenly realized that I was no longer crying, but laughing hysterically. I jumped up and flew high into the air, above the gigantic Prime Minister's head. On the way back down, I drew a katana out of nowhere, and, landing on his shoulders, I drove the steel through my father's head.
His voice was loud and hoarse as he wailed in pain and dread. Why was I laughing? Or was I crying again now? I couldn't tell. A voice in my head was shrieking, "If someone puts precious lives in danger for no reason, then you kill them, Suzaku!" I pulled the sword out of his head, like King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone, and then my father exploded like a balloon pumped to bursting. His body parts flew everywhere: limbs, entrails, and bones. I landed with a splash in the sea of blood below. And yet more blood—all of my father's—pelted down from above just like hot rain. I had killed my father. Why? I screamed in disgust and horror.
"Suzaku! Suzaku! You're dreaming. You're having a nightmare. Wake up! You're safe."
The voice that called me back to reality and tore me away from my sickening dream was that of Lelucia. She and Nannaru were looking at me anxiously, with concern clear on their faces. I sat up at once, muttering something about not needing their help. Abruptly, however, my stomach churned and I fell down on all fours, losing my last meal. It felt like I must have thrown up the entire contents of my stomach. I remembered that the dream wasn't just something my mind made up. Reality was equally sickening. I really had killed my father. I had done with a combat knife, not a katana, of course. And I had fixed it so that it looked like he killed himself.
"Take it easy, Suzaku," Lelucia said, trying to sound comforting. She massaged my back with one hand until I was able to stand on two feet again and get away from the embarrassing pile of vomit I had created. "Anyone could get sick around here," Lelucia added to make me feel better. "The air stinks."
That much was true; the smell hadn't been noticeable last night, but now that the wind that changed direction, it carried the smell of the dead. There was probably a battlefield nearby filled with corpses that nobody had the time or resources to spend cleaning up. Japan had fallen in less than a month. I tried to gather my thoughts together, pacing back and forth, while Lelucia opened a small can of pineapples for our breakfast, and Nunnaru rinsed his hands and face in a basin of river water. The three of us had spent the night outdoors, camping in the woods a safe distance from the main roads. We were on the run, and trying to reach a citizen shelter rumored to be by the river mouth.
Three days before, Knightmares and enemy jets were spotted just a few miles from the Kururugi summer home. Everyone in the district nearest Mount Fuji had tried to evacuate in a panicked rush. Everything had turned to chaos. There were stampedes of people on foot, dozens of car accidents along the clogged roads, and even some of the trains crashed. As the people desperately tried to escape, jets flew overhead dropping small but effective bombs. One of them completely decimated the Ashford Estate. I knew I had to find Lelucia.
In all the pandemonium, it was relatively easy to escape from the protective custody of the secret service and my grieving mother. On a small, virtually unused back-road, two miles from the ruins of the Ashford Estate, I found Lelucia carrying Nannaru and staggering along as best as she could. I asked them if their guardians had been caught up in the explosion that ruined the mansion. Lelucia assured me that the entire Ashford household had evacuated the house before the bombs fell. However, Mrs. Ashford was preoccupied with the safety of her little daughter Milly, and accidently lost Lelucia and her little brother in the mayhem. I then swore to see the two of them safely to the citizen shelter. It could take up to a week to get there on foot, but we had no choice. Nobody would give us transportation.
Ever since I killed my father, I have become unable to take pride in any of my accomplishments: my shame is too deeply rooted. However, I do recognize the fact that it was me who kept Lelucia and Nannaru alive for the following few days. They had no idea where to go or what to do to. I helped them by finding food—either stealing canned goods from abandoned stores, or catching fish in the streams nearby—and helping them navigate the woods and back roads in order to reach the river-mouth shelter as efficiently as possible. At any time, I could have abandoned those two siblings and gone in search of my mother and my family's elite squad of bodyguards. But by that point, I already valued the lives of Lelucia and Nannaru as much as my own, if not more.
The banished Princess realized this. On the fourth night, she spoke to me in a soft voice while we lay beside each other on a blanket. "I'll never be able to thank you enough, Suzaku," Lelucia said. I was on my right side, facing the empty darkness. Behind me, lying on her back, was Lelucia, and Nannaru slept snuggled up close to her right side. "I'm sure Nannaru and I would be hurt and starving in a gutter right now if you hadn't come along. I want to become strong enough to protect Nannaru by myself. I love my baby brother more than anything in this world. But right now, I have no choice but to rely on you. And I… I trust you, Suzaku. I'm glad it was you. You're like a knight, protecting the pathetic princess."
The guilt inside me threatened to crush my very heart. It was difficult to breath. "I'm not like a knight at all," I whispered in reply. "I'm not honorable. And I'm not strong. At least you have a reason to live: you have to be a good big sister and protect Nannaru. But me… I'm not sure I want to be alive anymore."
Lelucia turned over onto her side and embraced me, so that my back was against her chest, and while one of her arms curled around my shoulders and side, the other slipped under my head to pillow it. Neither of us had been particularly touchy-feely so far, but when the world goes to hell so quickly like it did for us, the most reassuring thing is physical touch. Even though I was only a child, I tried to fight hard to be "manly." Despite my best efforts, though, tears welled up in my eyes. It had been so long since I'd had a loving embrace. Mother was almost as cold and distant as my father had been.
"It's ok to cry," said Lelucia, strangely calm. "I swear I'll never tell anyone."
"You said before that you couldn't thank me enough," I answered back, trying to stop my voice from shaking. "But this is plenty. Keep holding me, Lelucia. If you do, I'm sure the nightmares will stop. That's all the repayment I need."
She didn't say a word, but I felt Lelucia nod, and heard her sigh in relief. She held me all night long.
The next day around sunset, we finally reached the citizen evacuation shelter. Some 30,000 people had gathered there. Lelucia and Nannaru were reunited with the Ashfords, and me with my mother. We were told that Japan had officially surrendered, and that Britannians were already starting to take possession of the land. They would claim this as a new Britannian territory, and name it Area Eleven. Even this shelter was now being run by Britannians. For all we knew, they could kill us all on a whim. We found out that, in fact, the people in charge had already killed some of those taking shelter here. They culled about a hundred of the strongest males, "to show who's in charge and discourage any uprisings," in their words.
The sunset turned the skies orange as Lelucia and I sat watching the cruel Britannians burn the dead bodies of the hundred male civilians inside a metal dumpster. The smell made us both sick. At the time, I was far more depressed than I was angry. But when I looked at Lelucia, I was startled to find that she was quivering with rage. The glint in her vivid purple eyes could only be called murderous. And it was then that Lelucia Lamperouge swore,
"I will destroy Britannia!"