Notes:
I'm a medical student, and I'm writing this while I'm wearing a lab coat and sitting in the hospital.
I want to tell you a few things about Chizuru.
First of all, I believe Chizuru is stubborn.
The reason why I insist that Chizuru can be very feisty and stubborn, especially if someone like Kazama or Takeda took her by force, is her attitude in some routes like Hijikata's route and Kazama's route.
In Hijikata's route, she stubbornly follows Hijikata, and in Kazama's route, she stubbornly follows the Shinsengumi.
That's why I believe if a villain keeps hurting her, then she'll get mad and stop submitting and instead start acting stubbornly.
When Chizuru refused to leave the Shinsengumi with Sen, she put Hijikata's life in danger, lol. Hijikata was not a rasestu or fury in that time, and Kazama was going to return for her anyway. So there was a high chance that Kazama killed Hijikata next time. Maybe Chizuru didn't mind putting his life in danger because she was putting her own life in danger, too.
Chizuru wanted to stay anyway, even at the cost of putting Hijikata's life in danger. I know that Kazama was going to attack Hijikata anyway, and I know that Hijikata was going to be in danger anyway, but Chizuru was not aware of all those details when she refused to leave with Sen.
My Chizuru preferred to see Hijikata wounded by Kazama instead of leaving him.
That shows how much she embraces recklessness as well.
The second thing is that I believe she is capable of murdering even though she has no experience at all, and she is not a master in sword fighting.
In Harada's route, bad ending, and after the furies kill Harada, Chizuru, who still has a little hope that Harada is probably still alive, rushes to attack the furies. She is not capable of doing much, and even her father Kodo mocks her for that and says, "What do you think you are doing with that small stick?"
Another one is the bad ending in the Souma route, and after Miki kills Souma, Chizuru tries to avenge Souma by killing Miki even though Miki does not intend to kill Chizuru at all. He stabs her and moves his sword in her cavity and tells her that he is not going to kill her, but she is the reason that she is being killed by him. While he is still sinking his sword in her, and while she is dying, she catches him off guard by a dagger that she is hiding and stabs him in the heart, killing him.
In both cases above, Chizuru doesn't hesitate before she takes action.
Plus, don't forget that many times when someone kills other villains for her sake in any route, Chizuru is not shuddering at the memory of watching him kill others in front of her.
Lastly, Chizuru is unnaturally capable of sensing other's presence around her due to her Oni powers. It happens in the anime when she senses the Oni trio's presence, and even Kazama praises her for that and tells her that humans are often incapable of sensing them like she did. It also happens when she drags Hijikata, who was shot in the forest. When he is resting against a tree, she tells him that she is not sensing the presence of soldiers around them anymore.
Chapter Text
Chizuru's extremely fragile current state was the main reason that Kazama was not mad at her for stabbing him. A worker from the inn had brought cleaning supplies for Chizuru minutes ago, and Amagiri had closed the window of the room, but Chizuru didn't seem willing to clean herself right now.
Kazama didn't bother taking off his bloody clothes, and instead, he stayed just sitting where he was for minutes now. He was waiting for Amagiri to leave them so he could speak with Chizuru again, but it seemed like Amagiri was not intending to leave Chizuru's side anytime soon at all.
Without saying anything, Kazama got up to leave the room. Once he opened the door, the cat, too, got up from its spot and walked quickly toward the door to leave the room as well. Kazama was going to close the door fast behind him before he heard the sound of the slight but fast steps of the cat and allowed it to leave first before closing the door behind himself. It seemed like the cat was somehow stuck in the room or didn't know how to jump out of the window. It slowly walked in the corridor as if it knew the place well.
Kazama headed to his own room to take clean clothes as he intended to go to the bathroom and clean himself.
"What you did tonight was solely reckless, Chizuru kun." Amagiri finally spoke to Chizuru.
"If he postponed following you for hours later, then you would not be alive now." He added.
Chizuru sighed in exhaustion before she spoke. "I just wanted to leave as fast as possible. "
"Can you clean yourself?" He asked her.
"I'm fine." That was not a lie, but it was not completely true either.
Chizuru was not making any sounds of pain, but she was moving slowly, which was due to the pain. She was struggling to move her arms to the back, and she was struggling to rotate her neck to the left. It was as if there was suddenly an extra bone in her neck that was blocking her neck movement. It was not a spiking pain, but it was so stiff. Her right forearm, which she was holding the sword with, was very stiff and tight whenever she flexed it. She assumed that her pain was due to not falling straightforwardly on the ground when they hit her back with a hammer and instead she was blocked by the body of the man who she stabbed since he was still standing on his feet when they hit her back. Therefore, her body swallowed the blow, and now she is still hurt despite how her cuts are closed due to her Oni healing ability. If she was blocked by a tree, then she was most likely going to lose the ability to stand and walk completely in that moment due to the deep spine injury. Right now, she needs more time for her healing powers to repair her body. If her neck pain remains, then it's most likely due to joint dislocation, so she'll need to have someone pull her arms to different sides to relocate her neck joints again. However, her current back pain makes the mere imagination of someone pulling her arms behind scary. Now that she thinks of the details more, then she assumes that once her Oni healing powers mend her back completely, then several joints of her spine will pop when she stands up without any attempt to stretch her back. If only she had someone to gently massage her neck and back then, she was going to have her joints relocated quicker. If she was in the Shinsengumi headquarters right now, then someone would do that for her, but she is with Kazama and Amagiri.
She doesn't even feel worried that Kazama will most likely punish her tonight. After all, what she experienced in the forest a short while ago was worse than anything that can happen in the inn tonight. Therefore, for now, she wants to rest before she has to face Kazama.
Finally, she managed to take off her most outer clothes and stayed in her more comfortable ones. She fixed her hair a little with her hand before she spoke.
"I'm sorry, Amagiri san, but I need to sleep now." She said in a polite tone.
"If anything happens, just call me. My room is in front of yours." He replied.
"Please rest well, I wish to speak with you later." He added as he got up, and Chizuru nodded.
Moments after he left, Chizuru finally allowed herself to collapse on her futon. Even while laying back, she still felt the ache in her neck. She didn't even feel like cleaning herself right now.
She had the drugs and herbs she needed for avoiding pregnancy. She bought them from shops in her first escape attempt, but she still has not used them. Somehow, she neglected and forgot them as she was mainly focusing on escaping, but now she remembered that she must consume them.
Without paying attention to cleaning herself first, she goes to her drugs and herbs. She must consume them right now.
…..
While sitting in the wooden bathtub, Kazama prepared his kiseru to smoke.
He took the first breath from his kiseru and started reflecting on what he did tonight. He killed seven bandits. No, he killed seven murderers. Bandits only steal money but leave women and children. It's unlikely that what they were doing to Chizuru was the first time they were doing such a thing. Or maybe it was their first time. Maybe they were a group of drunk men whose desire for blood was unleashed, so they decided to find their first victim in the forest.
Despite his experience as a master in killing, he rarely witnessed a severely injured woman like he did tonight. It was something to reflect on.
He started a trail of detailed imagination in his mind of the process of killing Chizuru.
There were seven men, so they could have easily killed her, but the way she was wounded meant that they were not intending to kill her in seconds. They were preparing a rope to hang her, which meant they were doing everything out of extreme hate or extreme joy. Maybe they thought she was close to someone who they considered an enemy.
They circle her so she can't run away. That's when the action begins. One of them strikes her in a way that is not enough to kill her but is enough to awaken the spirit and instinct to fight or maybe in a way that she can block. She strikes back. That's when he strikes harder or he only blocks her strike, so another one of the group surprises her from the side or from behind and inflicts a bloody blow at her.
Kazama takes another breath from his kiseru and thinks about the thorns and blood on Chizuru's kimono momentarily as he wonders where they struck her first. She had several wounds on different parts of her body when he arrived.
Back to the trail of his imagination, he imagines her every grunt of pain whenever there's a new cut on her. Her sword was thick in fresh blood, which means she managed to kill one of them. When Kazama arrived, one of the bandits was dead, and some were lightly wounded. It was Chizuru's deed.
He paused smoking as he focused on imagining the details of how Chizuru was each time cut. Whenever she turns around to face the assailant, another one strikes her from a different side. He tries to imagine the exact voice she makes as she grunts and groans in pain every time. She probably fell on the ground at least once. Her voice weakens after every time she is hit by a sword. After the third cut that they made on her, she doesn't even grunt.
They are not willing to kill her right away. They intend to break her pride and find joy in that. It's like the process of achieving a sexual apex in forcing someone to have sexual intercourse except that there is no sexual tendency here. The method is the same even if Chizuru was a man or a child or an old person.
He resumes smoking as he imagines Chizuru managing to stab one of them deeply. They get extremely mad at her, and one of them grabs a handful of her hair and throws her back. Her neck joint and one of her spine joints cracked during the process of being extended like that.
Not only is her voice shallow, but her hand is trembling as well now. She is weakened. That's when they decide to injure her a few more times until her arm is unmoving, yet she is alive, so they pull her from the neck by rope.
He doesn't think that they were going to hang her from her neck, but he assumes that they were going to drag her from her throat by rope in a way that she is given time to breathe once every few seconds until she is so exhausted that her body succumbs to her wounds and dies.
How would things be different if it were a pregnant woman? Not necessarily Chizuru but just any pregnant woman. If a pregnant woman is strong enough to run, then she's strong enough to hold her sword.
Taking deeper breath from his kiseru, he imagines the same thing that he imagined for Chizuru happening for a pregnant woman. A pregnant woman whose face he can't see clearly. One of the brigands makes the final action by cutting her round belly, and a gasp is all the voice that she makes. The blow doesn't only open her stomach horizontally, but it also cuts the child's fragile figure in half. Would the woman still be alive if she was Oni?
Kazama narrows his eyes as he imagines the very details of the child's body hanging out of its mother's stomach. The woman falls on her knees with her most pained expression as she holds her stomach and her child with shaking hands. She doesn't even groan in pain. Her shuddering hand runs over a part that she is certain it's a part of her baby's backside. That's when she forgets her own state and the whole world around her as she caresses her dead child. Nothing else matters.
He has not seen a child in this inn until now. Do any of the maids of this inn have any children? Maybe the maid he spoke with earlier has a little baby that she keeps in her room, but he has never heard the sound of a baby here. It's a wrong act if she is keeping it in some room. Strange people visit the inns all the time. Anyone can steal the baby. If she has a baby, then she must keep it close to herself all the time.
……
After a few minutes, the dirty Chizuru was not asleep yet. She was exhausted but not asleep. She had used the drugs and the herbs and had nothing else to do, but she was not asleep yet.
She stared at the roof a little before she felt a motivation to get up.
She reached for her sheathed sword and put the blanket above her shoulders, and walked to the window. Once she opened it, freezing air hit her face, and her hair slightly blew.
Her clothes and the blanket were not enough to keep her warm at all, and due to the blood loss, she was more flagging to the cold, but she didn't bother to avoid the sharp air. Actually, it was like meditation, and she found some comfort.
She held her sword with both hands and reflected on the night sky above of her. It was partly cloudy with stars visible, which made it look so vaster and farther above her than other nights. The vastness gives her an urge to reach the sky as if flying is a secret ability that humans and Oni have not discovered yet, but the ability is in their instincts.
Why is there no place for her under this vast sky? Why is there no place for her under this vast universe to escape to? She wondered as she self numbed her pain by deeply breathing the sharp air.
She looked down at her sword in thought. She had not cleaned it yet, and it still had blood, just like her clothes and skin.
When Kazama was about to kill Hajime, she said she was going to commit suicide if Kazama did that, which made Kazama promise her that he won't kill Hajime, but he firced her to leave the scene. She had accepted that Hajime was dead, but she had not committed suicide yet. And she was not feeling the urge to commit suicide either. Even Kazama is not worried that she'll commit suicide using her swords since he left her swords with her and didn't take them from her. Or maybe he just doesn't care if she killed herself?
She probably had fallen into a different kind of despair that displays itself in fleeing.
She raises her head and looks at the road ahead. What traumatized her more than Hajime being gone was the state of Hajime when she was looking at him for the last time. What was making it worse was the specter of what happened to his body after he was left dead in the forest. That was making her feel guilty the most.
She feels a desire to escape, only to bury his body. If his body is still in the forest, then a horrifying sight is awaiting her. That sight makes her feel more guilty for leaving him there, and she feels her eyes burning. She had the motivation to fight the bandits, so why didn't she fight Kazama more when he was about to kill Hajime? She was going to lose, but why didn't she have the vigor to escape from the inn later to return to Hajime only to at least bury him.
Looking up at the sky again, she tries to imagine and fancy Hajime's face and features. She tries to imagine him in his best moments instead of when she saw him the last time. She wants to ease her feelings of guilt by imagining him sleeping in comfort in her own arms while she is tightening her embrace around him. He is like a child in her hold. He is very safe.
Her hands tighten around her sheathed sword. She had learned something about herself, and it's that she is not one to tolerate physical and mental torture. Actually, she can endure physical torture, but she won't endure emotional torment. That's why she endured it when the Shinsengumi imprisoned her in their headquarters.
Looking at the dark road ahead, she finally reflects on her night. She killed a man a short while ago because she wanted to escape from him. To her own surprise, she didn't hesitate when she stabbed him and to her more surprise she is not shuddering at the momery. She was trying to kill more, too, but she failed, and they severely injured her. She doesn't feel mad at Kazama as much as she feels mad at the man she killed, and at the rest of the bandits, that Kazama killed.
That was the first time in her life that she killed someone. Now that she is thinking of it while moving one of her hands lightly over her sword, she is not anxious, but she has a disturbing feel in her stomach. It's as if something very light and small is trembling in her stomach. She has a sickening feeling, and she feels it's mainly because she is mad. She feels sicker when she thinks of the kind of people that they were and what they did to her more than when she thinks of how she killed someone for the first time.
Kazama was forcing her to deliver the final blow at the last two bandits that he injured and kept for her. She refused to do that, but she didn't feel any empathy for them when Kazama killed them himself.
She feels angry as she thinks more of them. She doesn't feel any empathy for any of them for how they were killed brutally by Kazama. It's the first time in her life that she kills a human, and she is not worried about what she did even if she wishes that she didn't do that.
She unsheathes her sword and looks at the blood of the man she killed, which is still on her sword and on her sleeve. She can't think of anything except that even if she could manage to escape, then they were going to do what they did to her to someone else, and they most likely did that to someone other than her in the past.
To her own surprise, she is not even unstable at the realization of how she was close to death, but she is alive now. It's not that she was certain that Kazama was going to come for her rescue in the last moments, but she's just grateful to be alive now.
She has no sympathy for how savagely those men were killed by Kazama and how Kazama refused to just leave them acutely wounded and mutilated instead of murdering them.
Maybe it was due to blood loss, but finally, she was feeling tired now. The feeling of tiredness made her feel disturbed by the dry blood on herself. She sheathes her sword and closes the window. That's when she walks to the cleaning supplies to finally clean herself.