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Soulmate AU but otherwise set in the canon universe. They are mostly in a strange middle ground between platonic and romantic. Fluff and light angst. Minor Geto/Gojo
Suicide mention and graphic depictions of violence.
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『 The higher-ups would not be pleased with the reveal of Jujutsu, but he'd never quite found it within him to give a fuck.
Every sound echoed back with reinforced volume. The creak of steel near vaporised by the torrid heat of Red; stone splintered from a now structurally unsound arch.
She opened her eyes again, searched over his blindfold for something to latch on to. He watched as her fingers clutched onto the fabric of her clothes, wrinkling them.
It was now that Satoru realised two things.
He knew those hands.
She was the woman that had made that face a few days ago.
Ah, shit. 』
Satoru was not one to care for the elusive. He grounded himself in the material - the honest (and the man in front of him). But, when he could recognise her hands at just a glance, Soulmates cemented themselves as something damningly corporeal.
Peculiar: that was the easiest way to describe Satoru's vision and how vastly it differed from the norm.
Subjective was the term that he preferred. Still, was everything not that way? Objective. Tangible. Intangible. They all depended on interpretation.
To Satoru, his normal - his Six Eyes - were as true as the Sun rising from the East and setting in the west. To 'see' was to observe the movement and presence of cursed energy atoms through their many interactions with light. Sometimes they vibrated in a low, sluggish motion, swayed with the breeze and diluted themselves amongst the imperceptible. Other times they shone bright in his peripheral with an intensity meant to demand. Every atom was uniquely individual yet became tailored to a collective.
Even the absence of information was information enough to understand his surroundings. Where there was nothing, there held a building. Where he expected to feel a presence and came up with only a trace of cursed energy, stood a non-sorcerer.
To him, this was the absolute truth.
Or rather… it used to be as much.
The Sun settled at its peak, snug in an azure sky above a city Satoru couldn't guess the name of. Instead of atoms decaying, stabilising, the world inhaling when he exhaled - he saw vivid colours with no inhibition. So similar, yet so far removed from his reality.
This was what his Soulmate saw.
Open expanses of countries he'd never experience otherwise sprawled over the horizon, humble stonework bled into the contours of intricately laid masonry. Waves lapped in the far distance against heat-soaked sand; the phantom sound of the ocean worlds away reverberated in his ears. Mere mirages could cloak the rest of his senses, drag him into a fantasy where he might be walking beside them rather than spectating.
Nevertheless, he always gravitated to the elegant hands that found themselves in his foveal vision - the same kind that had accompanied him for over two decades. From small, stubby fingers that grasped clumsily at half filled glasses, to gloved and perfectly manicured nails tapping away on keyboards: he had seen them from beginning to end.
Sometimes they were adorned with rings. Mostly they were empty.
Today, those hands were decorated with ribbons that wound around their wrists, a warm red - a shade too light to be reminiscent of blood - that reflected light brilliantly with its satin composition. These soft lines travelled down their arms as far as he was allowed to see, a flutter of their tail ends in his peripheral.
Satoru felt himself smile. As much as he held very little sentiment for soulmates and all its encompassing sensibilities, he was at least glad to know that someone out there led a decent life free of curses.
Especially when he looked out of his own window at the murky, grey rain that splattered unrelentingly against the window of his high rise.
Saying he had free time was a lie - the preposterous kind that was so untrue that it was laughable to even think, let alone say out loud. Satoru didn't have free time: he stole it.
But today, he had some semblance of it. He'd broken through a simple domain in an abandoned train tunnel within five minutes - more like one if he was being a braggart - and now had the rest of the day to himself. Hopefully no one would find out he was wasting the day away because his phone would be sure to blow up the moment they did. Satoru often debated changing his number and not saying a word.
Lately, visions of the beach had haunted his every blink, sticking to the back of his eyelids in a hazy overlay. They were more frequent than usual, though still less than they had been in his youth.
When he had not yet reached the rapacious jaws of teenagedom, he let himself be consumed by daydreams of living alongside whoever held the opposite end of his red string, allowed a fragile, more adaptable mind that had not yet been hammered by Jujutsu to be swayed with the idea of divine intervention. After all, a child would love what was new, what was novel. To him, seeing things, however battered and faded, was akin to skirting on the edges of Pangaea and seeing the vast, unending horizon.
When the Gojo clan had exerted more force on to the gravel, he saw them differently. Now, Satoru had started to ignore them, treated them as hallucinations that bothered him endlessly in their persistence and consumption. His Soulmate was uninteresting, boring, even more so in the wake of onyx, silken hair and rich, mono-lidded eyes that looked directly at him - directly through him.
Now, he took them for what they were: Little snapshots of something interesting in between his mouthfuls of desert.
The sweetness of the mousse was much more pronounced than the one's he'd had in Central Tokyo, or even in Kyoto. He wasn't complaining, far from it. In fact, he wished they'd all include this much condensed milk instead of the whisper of white chocolate that was all too common.
So full of air, it melted the moment it touched the warmth of his tongue. The small pot was gone within a few giant bites but Satoru was insatiable.
Hence, he bought another, standing with no care or thought to the idea that others might think him to be greedy. Maybe he was. So what?
"It was so weird!" A woman tittered to his left, her words partially muffled by the din synonymous with popular cafés. "I don't know why I never considered that I might see myself kissing you."
He allowed himself a quick, wayward glance. The woman, her cheeky rosy with something halfway defined by embarrassment and amusement, giggled again as she brushed her fingers over her peachy lips - chasing the phantom of the vision she'd seen. If the mischievous grin was anything to go by, the lady in front of her was her other half.
Satoru inched forward in the queue.
"Did you see through my eyes?" She asked her lover, a whisper meant for the two of them. A shame, truly, that they were in public where his attuned ears and eyes missed nothing.
Satoru didn't have to look to know that her lover's smile was saccharine. "I didn't, no. But I'm glad because I'd rather only see you."
A hand smacked against a crocheted shoulder; her fingernails catching deliberately in the little nooks of yarn. "You're a smooth talker." A contemplative pause. "I think I should wear cool tones instead. I looked flushed."
His turn was next and he ordered two, no… three! More pots of that mousse. One was for Megumi, the same one that would undoubtedly sit in the fridge for hours after it was gifted, until mysteriously missing the next day with no one owning up to it.
"-You can wear bright yellow and it would still look good."
He sat back down.
For all the information that Six Eyes could provide him with, it didn't tell him nearly enough to satiate that burning curiosity of 'what has my soulmate seen?', and that other, more elusive question of 'why have I never seen their face?'. From what he had heard over the years, this was an anomaly. It was how the vast majority of Soulmates found each other, a smattering of the other's visage caught in stolen reflections. Sometimes in rivers: mostly in polished mirrors.
Satoru had yet to catch more than a flash of their jaw.
The mousse was a little thicker this time - a different batch to the first one. It coated every inch of his mouth, clung to his teeth in a cloying film.
If he was the kind of person to concern himself with other people's opinions, he might have tried harder to wade through the chasm for clues. There were benchmarks here and there - signs that welcomed them into different cities, the flash of a reoccurring logo that preceded a modern building with an open reception. However, he had always had more important things to tend to - things that involved the people in front of him instead of this proverbial Other.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. It remained unanswered.
Another mouthful of the mousse passed his lips when he looked out of the window. The sheer image of himself - thick, blacked out glasses, blue button down and plain black trousers - glistened in the window pane. Today, the weather was mild.
Then, he found the gaze of a passing lady. Or, rather, she snagged his through strange and unprecedented means.
The lady walked shoulder to shoulder with another woman, her head turning to look directly into his eyes with pinpoint accuracy, before pulling a face that he could only describe as grizzly.
With the muscle at her upper left lip pulled up in an arch that showed her teeth, and a single eyebrow raised comically high, Satoru could only stare back, incredulous.
Then, just as quickly as she had done it, she faced forwards and walked out of view.
What the hell.
Reconnaissance was arguably worse than hunting down a curse. There was something about the scavenging, of being unable to eliminate the blight at the root, that made it grate on his patience more than he liked.
Hence, he avoided it when he could. It wasn't as though a special grade was needed for a measly treasure hunt. Yet, he was sent on them at least once every few months.
Today was one such day; A phantom had been sighted in the Kansai region by sorcerers and non-sorcerers alike.
As uncommon as it may be for the blind to see, it was not so unusual for the truth to penetrate through layers of ignorance. When cursed energy was plentiful enough, it might show itself in moments superseding death. This one had been quietly gorging itself for months with remarkable restraint.
Even so, cursed spirits weren't known for their benevolence or their patience. For now, it was up to him to determine where it manifested itself before it could reach the last of its restraint.
Track the residuals, look at the reports of where it had last been seen, deduce the most likely points of resurface.
Routine stuff, really.
This corner of the city was dismal, the air half choked with cursed energy from the nearby University of Osaka campus. The back alleys of student accommodations were a perfect breeding ground. Concrete walls curved all around in a haphazard mockery of a gated community, the space simultaneously plagued with towering structures that barely passed building regulations. Tokyo Jujutsu High looked like paradise in comparison.
The residuals here were more potent than he expected, a thick, heady grey that bordered on Grade One. It made him frown in contempt, the feeling secondary only to annoyance.
Wouldn't it be easier to just have him track it down now rather than later, when it would surely become a much bigger, much more damning, problem?
Still, Satoru completed his walk through like instructed (even if that was the only instruction he cared to follow). Then, as he prepared himself to leave, he was wrenched from the quiet alley into the Earth shatteringly loud roar of the subway - the push and shove of bodies distorting any sense of stability - before the world tore open with a curse so large, so grotesquely powerful, that all went silent in its wake.
Satoru recognised the Metro map on the wall.
Shin-Osaka station.
The distance was crossed within minutes, the cursed energy signature an exact match. In that time, his Soulmate's vision faded back into his reality - to the spasming array of atoms thickly concentrated along the station with a backlogged exit.
This curse could be erased with a simple Cursed Technique Reversal: Red.
Unfortunately for him, it had already set its beady sights on civilians who would be snared in the indiscriminate fire. Red would incinerate it and them.
People cursed in startled confusion. Others shoved others in between heaving, gasping breaths. Men, women, children. Every one of them huddled against the sweating, tiled walls, trying fruitlessly to find a way to reach the exit that had been barred by this beastly curse that they could not see.
The jaw unhinged - a thousand rows of needlepoint teeth glistened under the white light. It chittered, perverting the lullaby of songbirds into something utterly repulsive. Someone to his left muttered a prayer.
Hubris had fattened it - made it ignorant to the presence of the person who would devour it with a flick of his finger.
In front of it, cornered by the stairs, were three people. A woman and two men - all of whom looked unrelated to the other.
"Come this way," Satoru instructed. The men would not budge, cowed by this… this thing that brought them to the cusp of mortality, bent their perception of tangible into something unfathomable. "I said come this way."
Perhaps it was harsh. Fundamentally, he did not care.
Not when they were the closest to safety, and the curse had caught onto how its three course meal would be slimmed to just one. Wobbly legs carried heavy bodies up the subway stairs, the avalanche of others followed.
The woman turned to him, eyes so wide that his whole silhouette lay encompassed within. She struck him as strangely familiar.
"Can you see it?"
Her nod was jerky, as if it took her a moment to understand.
It gurgled in anger, a haughty sense of self driving it to close the gap. Satoru wondered where it had gotten the confidence from: the burdens of students were nothing if not full of loathing.
"Close your eyes for me."
For a moment, it looked as though she would refuse - unable to give it all up for someone who looked like the eye of the storm.
Yet, she yielded.
With a raised hand, the electric glow of Red pierced through the station. It sent shockwaves trembling through stone foundations and, most importantly, killed the curse the moment it materialised.
The higher-ups would not be pleased with the reveal of Jujutsu, but he'd never quite found it within him to give a fuck.
Every sound echoed back with reinforced volume. The creak of steel near vaporised by the torrid heat of Red; stone splintered from a now structurally unsound arch.
She opened her eyes again, searched over his blindfold for something to latch on to. He watched as her fingers clutched onto the fabric of her clothes, wrinkling them.
It was now that Satoru realised two things.
He knew those hands.
She was the woman that had made that face a few days ago.
Ah, shit.
While Satoru didn't think a hospital visit was necessary, he offered no resistance when she wanted to get checked over.
While she seemed to understand some Japanese, it certainly wasn't proficient enough for navigating the Japanese medical system, ergo, he translated as best as he could.
And, yes, that involved the two of them huddling around his phone while the translator droned in its robotic English, twisting itself around words that he knew would sound like phlegm-filled hacking if he tried. Satoru decided - in between all nurses that fluttered in and out - that he would try a little harder to learn her tongue.
He scratched his head, uncharacteristically awkward now that the hustle and bustle had died down. His Soulmate was in front of him, alive and well - if a little frazzled.
So… now what?
"You know Japanese?" Satoru asked rather stupidly.
Thankfully, she didn't seem to mind, seemingly more focused on getting comfortable in the cushioned seat of this random retro style diner.
When it came down to it, he had never thought about what his Soulmate might be like.
He wanted someone principled, unwavering in the face of their ideals - someone his equal that looked at him with an understanding that he wasn't something for the hammer to chip at, but a mountain of soft, pliable clay that would eagerly take the shape of those delicate, firm fingers. Satoru wanted what was right in front of him: tall and honest and rigid to a fault.
His Soulmate was someone else entirely.
"I do a little. It's more conversational than anything else." Her voice was steady, almost professional in its consistent intonation. "I started learning when I realised my Soulmate"-a pause as she looked him over-"you- were from Japan."
"Oh?" He leant back in his chair. "Well, it's pretty good. I can't say my English is half as advanced."
"I'm sure you can get by." Get by, he could. "Thank you for helping me."
Satoru laughed - a sudden and boisterous sound that made her blink. "We can just leave the formalities. We've seen enough of each other's lives to not be strangers, right?"
"Right." Her nod was accepting.
Not much a conversationalist, apparently. "You like travelling?"
"Mm." She smiled ever so slightly. "Is it that obvious?"
"Just a little."
"I think it's nice to get out and see the world. I've had Japan on my list for a while now." She had known that he lived here but had waited until now to visit? "It is a beautiful country; I chose a nice time to come."
Spring had come early, settled its warm haze over the flora and fauna. Blossoming Sakura trees already lined hundreds of walkways, delicate petals often drifting along in the wind. The atmosphere was unlike any other - as he had overheard many tourists express. "It is. If you like deer, Nara Park is full of cherry blossoms. It's not far from Osaka, if you're planning on going there."
"I might. My friend is a little scared of deer, though."
He pulled a contemplative expression. "Probably best to avoid it, then. They're everywhere and they beg for treats. I visited a few years ago and they were all trying to steal my kudzu-manju." Satoru paused. "It's like a sweet bun with paste inside."
"Would you recommend it?"
A finger pressed to his chin in exaggerated thoughtfulness. "No. It's not sweet enough. You should try the shaved ice desserts instead."
The weight of her gaze on him wasn't as uncomfortable as it was contemplative, as though she were trying to work her way through all the layers of fabric he had on, down past the stiff muscle tissue and into the steady, unrelenting pulse in his veins. Many had tried to find out; none succeeded (bar one). Then, it relented with a conclusion he wasn't privy to. "Are you blind?"
Quite the opposite, rather, but the straightforward nature of her question amused him. "Not really."
"Then are your eyes sensitive to light?"
"You can say that."
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "I've never seen a person wear a blindfold apart from when they're recovering from eye surgery."
"I have special eyes," Satoru deigned to say. "I prefer to cover them so people won't become jealous."
"Is that so?" She humoured. "They must be supernatural."
"Exactly." The smell of frying oil was especially potent now, the far off sizzling of tempura and chicken rising and falling in volume with every swing of the kitchen door. Their simple order of karage should be out soon. "Do you know a lot of people who have had eye surgery?"
It was meant to be a harmless little quip, yet he was left open mouthed when she nodded with no hesitation.
"Yes. I'm an ophthalmologist." Oh. "I diagnose and treat eye diseases."
He clicked his jaw shut. "That sounds lucrative."
"You can say that."
Suddenly, all the questions he had on how she afforded her numerous getaways made sense. At least he knew that she wasn't a street pharmacist (or something equally as stupid). "Do you have your own practice?"
Her hum was soft, manicured nails tapping lightly against the wood. "I co-own one with my friend. I thought it was too much hassle to run one by myself."
"You're a practical lady. I've always heard you shouldn't mix friends and business."
"You just need to choose the friend wisely."
Satoru tried not to take that one to heart.
Nevertheless, this entire meeting had a strange air to it. This was two Soulmates meeting, was it not? So, why did she look at him like he were a client of hers - as if she itched to reach out and peel away the blindfold. It was enough to make him shuffle in his seat and hope that the food would come quicker.
Satoru had long concluded, amidst his many idle musings, that his lack of interest would be a big problem.
The opposite seemed to be true.
"You're right," Satoru surmised, tone chipper. "Your eyes must be special, too. You could see the curse."
An astringent sourness tightened her expression - softened almost the same moment it surfaced. "Curse…? I don't know what you're talking about."
Satoru sensed the shift. He tread lightly on unstable ground. "You do," he drawled, purposely light, "it was the thing in the station. You told me you saw it."
"I must have been mistaken. I didn't see anything." He'd trodden wrong; all the familiarity they had built crumbled into dust, ashen and sullen as it settled into the fine lines of her set jaw. "I believe there was a gas leak causing problems."
Satoru had the sense to not push again. "Yeah. There must have been." The waitress walked over, putting down the plate of freshly fried karage between them. An array of sample-sized sauce pots followed behind, arranged in a neat arc around the main plate. Once the waitress left, he gave it another once over before gesturing over it. "Ladies first."
Everything was crisp to perfection, crunching even with her mouth closed. "It's good," came her level verdict, devoid of any grudge. "Try some."
His smile remained pleasant, a thin veneer over his non-plussed musings. His Six Eyes never lied. She was a non-sorcerer, and the life-long visions proved that she could not see any curses. The most reasonable conclusion was that the amount of concentrated cursed energy had lifted the veil momentarily and spooked her.
A normal enough reaction, to believe it a break of the mind when under pressure. An an eye doctor especially wouldn't want to admit that their vision was impaired.
Yeah, that was it.
The rest of their conversation was straightforward. 'What's your favourite food?' 'How many days a week do you work?' 'Should I visit Okinawa?'
"Ahhh." He slumped into his seat, rubbing his stomach theatrically. "I think I have room for dessert."
The serving platter was empty, a feat that was mostly the handiwork of Satoru.
"Something sweet does sound nice…"
He grinned, wide and unapologetic, and rose to his feet. "Let's go and get some!"
Satoru had learnt many things about his Soulmate, most of which were inconsequential - the kind of chatter that was as frivolous as his heart's desire for something sweet, sweeter, and sweetest. He now knew that she didn't normally drink anything caffeinated because it would make her hands shake - a definite hinderance go her job. He also knew that she preferred cats to dogs, unlike himself who was the opposite.
'You remind me of a cat,' she had said to him, a thought so absurd that he nearly choked mid-swallow of his loaded crepe. 'What? It's not so absurd. You move with a lazy energy and you do as you please."
'Do as I please? How do you know that?' he'd queried in return, only to wish he had kept his playfulness to a minimum.
'I used to see you with another boy, one with long black hair. I saw you sneak out of classes and be scolded later. If I'd known Japanese back then, I'm sure I would have heard you being chastised day and night.'
His smile hadn't wavered (though he was glad she could not see his eyes).
A cat…
No. Satoru didn't think such a description fit him at all. He was no feline, nothing so easily defined. Satoru was the third in that space between cat and dog, disobedience and loyalty, freedom and willing servitude. There were lines he blurred that he could not focus on anymore, not when they all curved back into the image of a man he'd never had the courage to completely leave behind.
In almost all matters of strength he lorded.
In this instance, his wax wings were nothing more than burning copper coils under the Sun.
"I'm surprised you're a teacher," she had said, holding on to no niceties when she allowed her incredulous expression to take hold. 'You don't seem to be the type.'
He didn't think so, either. But still Satoru smiled - a reassured thing that never faltered despite many a reason. 'I'm a man of many mysteries.'
"Why did you make that face at me?"
The question was asked with an air of nonchalance betrayed little of how, in fact, this one thing had been taking up entirely too much space in his thoughts. It was small, a thing of such utter insignificant that he, himself, didn't know why he still thought about it.
She was frowning; he knew this like he knew that the precious copper kochusen hidden behind the polished museum glass was a grade 4 cursed object. "What face?"
"You know"-Satoru drawled, a purposeful whine clinging to the tail end of his words-"when you went past that cafe. I was enjoying my chocolate mousse when you made such a frightening expression."
Her eyes diverted from the sutra container she had been examining - the same one where she had quietly opined that its remarkably white lacquer reminded her of his hair - and moved towards him in a manner so scrutinising that he, for a brief second, thought he might have been mistaken.
Then, her narrowed gaze softened itself. "Oh." A smile pulled at her lips, tugged them upwards in the faintest curve. Satoru had noticed she always smiled in this way, as if a real one - pearly teeth and honest eyes - was too much effort. "I remember now." Then, she giggled.
If he were to see himself through her eyes, Satoru would have found himself muddied with something only partly shared: hands pushed into his pocket and a nebulous mirror of her joy in his face.
"I thought you were faking being blind."
He was more confused than before he'd asked. "Really?" He mulled over what to say next. "Do you make it a habit to pull faces at the supposed blind?"
Her shrug answered exactly nothing. "The blind are not fragile. They can handle a joke."
"Even if they don't know that there's a joke being played?"
Shit. Satoru realised how it sounded the moment he'd said it and immediately tried to play it off with a distraction, scanning the Heian era themed exhibit for something that might take the attention off the massive blunder he'd made.
"I think they can experience much worse than someone pulling a stupid face at them. If they're blind, they won't know, and if they're not, then they're just confused for a moment." He pretended not to notice her wayward glance, instead pretending to be very interested in a random artefact. "Don't think too hard about it, Satoru."
He hummed as though there wasn't this sudden weight in him, something slowly, achingly, crawling its up from the depths of his stomach and settling itself just shy of the soft tissue at the back of his throat. If he tried, he could croak out a reply, say something passively satiating about how she was disconcerting and that her actions and demeanour were worlds apart.
How strange to hear her call him so casually.
Many people said his name. Yaga, Maki, Panda, Sugu-
It wasn't something new, and it hardly elicited a reaction from him before. It shouldn't have when he knew she had little care for those kinds of formalities - if his own Soulmate couldn't call him Satoru, then no one else on Earth could.
His heart was beating entirely too fast.
"This room is boring," he said truthfully. It was boring, and he was only feigning a modicum of interest because she seemed to like visiting museums. Personally, he couldn't have cared less about whatever ancient crap had been dug up and put on display unless it had enough cursed energy to be interesting. "It's all just vases and pieces of metal."
They walked together into the next room, the theme of ancient Egypt overwrought. Crude depictions of Pharaohs in their sarcophagi littered the walls, their unseeing gaze piercing through the fabric of history to observe the modern man. She stared straight at them. "Even vases and metal say something interesting. Not many things can survive almost a millennium without a story."
What bullshit, he thought to himself. If everything needed to have a meaning, then nothing truly had meaning.
His silence also held a story, one that she read with relative ease. "You don't think so?"
This time, he stepped a little more carefully. Satoru let himself absorb what he was looking at. Stolen treasures, a section of hieroglyphs chiselled out from a wall, even a clipping of a mummy's wrapping. All of it held a unique part of human history, and yet he found nothing of note besides the faintest buzz of cursed energy that had long since fizzled into a lethargic pulse.
Granted, he liked this part more than the Heian era section.
"I think there's more interesting things to derive meaning from." Satoru filtered his thoughts slightly. "A few cracked vases might tell us what kind of things people liked to store back then, but it's nothing deeper than that."
The cursed energy residuals were always too faded for him to distinguish. Recently, the only artefact he cared to examine was Sukuna's finger.
"What about paintings and scrolls?"
"I like those."
"So you're more interested in creative human expression?"
Satoru was never more thankful that his glasses hid his eyes until now. "I mean, I guess?"
He'd… never given it much thought, as absurd as it was to admit at his age. Frivolity was nothing new to him, and some might say he over indulged in it, but that frivolity was limited to the immediate self- too many sweets to fill his stomach, a quick picture of Megumi to annoy the boy and to amuse himself. Yet, Satoru did not sit down and create. He sat down and worked. He worked, and ground himself into fine dust of red, blue and purple, and continued to work until those colours mixed into the murky haze of another's tall, handsome silhouette.
His worth was not in his ability to create something beautiful. Indeed, it was the opposite. Satoru's beauty was in his destruction, his proficiency in destroying the human expression of negativity. Was that his canvas? He wondered briefly. Might it be beautiful when I use Lapse Blue?
"What do you like the most?" Satoru asked her. Partially because he didn't want to linger anymore on his own inclinations, and mostly because he wanted to know her thoughts. "Paintings, scrolls, vases- whatever."
He allowed himself a cursory glance, bathing within the now familiar hue of her eyes. It was warm, warmer than he'd expected despite the otherwise frigid conditions. In this stolen pocket of time, her lips had yet to move from their relaxed curve, nor had her pupils shifted to hold his image in their depths. For a second, Satoru could observe the Sun without being blinded.
"My favourite are diary entries, or journals." When he followed her line of sight, he found himself right at a rudimentary example of one - a wax tablet etched with the then-new teaching of ancient Greek. "My brother, um, he had a collection of diaries that filled a big shelf in his room. I always thought he collected notebooks because he liked the way they looked."
A brother. It took a moment too long for him to recall anyone in their visions that might have fit that nominal title. Faintly, he remembered seeing a young boy, no older than 15, with a nose and mouth like hers and a deep, haunting sadness within his eyes that Satoru had been too young to distinguish.
"I'm guessing he doesn't write in a diary anymore, then," Satoru half joked, waiting for a laugh that never came in the condition he'd anticipated.
It came a quarter of the way, more manual than genuine. "Not anymore, no. He passed away at 16.
Faintly, contrition settled its fleet footed paws onto his skin, danced alongside the shadow of a sorrow shared even if not completely understood.
"I'm sorry." And he meant it.
She let that smile progress, haltingly, to halfway. "He was kind-hearted despite his troubles. His diaries told me a lot of things that I didn't understand until I experienced them myself." A tired sigh left her. "Being a teenager is a form of torture."
Satoru laughed despite himself. Fuck, if he didn't agree with that. "Too right."
"I think," she started with the tone of something lurking behind the horizon. "you would benefit from doing something with your hands. Actually, I booked a class for making a passport cover tomorrow. Would you like to come with me?"
And who was he to say no to his Soulmate?
"I don't need you tagging along with me to buy sunglasses." Megumi, ever the moody teenager, nursed a sour look of indignation when Satoru had announced he was coming with him. Unluckily for him, Satoru was coming along regardless of his wishes. "Seriously. Don't you have something better to be doing?"
"Nope."
It had been a long while since he'd had some time with Megumi that wasn't sitting at Tsumiki's bedside, a bystander to sibling affection that he could only observe and never understand despite his intense, bleeding desire to. Megumi never looked younger than in those moments where his head rested in his sister's lap with his hand over hers, inspecting them to see if he needed to file her delicate nails to the almond shape she preferred. All he could do was act as the benefactor and keep her warm in a hospital that remained unfortunately oblivious to the curse bound to her body; Satoru thought it better not to intrude.
Still, he didn't want Megumi to live under this shadow. No matter how much it pissed the boy off, Satoru made sure he had a healthy dose of forced levity.
"I'm the sunglass connoisseur." He peered over the lenses as proof of his claim. "Follow me, I know just the place."
Megumi obliged, trailing half a step behind him.
Originally, he had intended to take him to his favourite designer outlet and let the (divine) dog loose, but he'd turned his head at the last moment and looked directly into a quaint little opticians that had a surprisingly large collection of glasses. Megumi's vision was perfect. He ushered him in anyway and ignored the sceptical stare.
"You come here for your glasses?" was the question he ignored.
"Look around and see if you like something here."
The place was much smaller than the grand clinic in his visions. There were no white corridors that led to rooms with equipment too specialised for the layman, no modern reception with a woman that looked like she'd sooner be anywhere else on Earth. It was close, and also not really.
Megumi, to his credit, browsed the displays with little commentary. By now, Satoru knew his mannerisms and could tell that he was interested in the sleek YSL pair. A few seconds later, Megumi picked it up and tried it on.
"My Soulmate is an ophthalmologist," he said all of a sudden. Megumi turned to look at him with the glasses still on - they suited him but Satoru thought there was better out there. "She does this kind of shit all day long."
"You have a Soulmate?" Megumi questioned, making him almost sigh. He was definitely being facetious because Satoru knew he had mentioned her once, maybe twice before actually meeting her. (Right…?)
"It's very rare to not have one, you know."
"Yeah but you've never said anything about having one before."
He stood corrected.
The YSL's were put down, replaced with another, sleeker frame from Matsuda. Satoru preferred this one. The lightweight metal frame and light purple tint was better suited for Megumi's delicate, if permanently scowling, features.
"When did you even meet her?" Megumi probed, acting as if he couldn't care less when, clearly, he cared enough to keep asking.
The contrarian habits of teenagers, Satoru thought wistfully.
Then again, it was rather novel to hear that he, the same person who had never publicly been in a relationship like so many others did pre-Soulmate encounter, had now met the person he was supposed to be with.
"Almost three weeks ago. She's a foreigner."
Megumi glanced at him from the corner of his shaded eyes. "Does she speak Japanese?"
"Yeah. She's practically fluent."
"Probably not a sorcerer then."
Satoru shook his head. She had only a slight amount of cursed energy.
He made a noise of acknowledgement.
A part of him wished Megumi would inquire a little more, to provide an outlet for these simmering, boundless thoughts that had been within him since the day he'd met her. They were complicated and they were simple - a pendulum swing between either, or.
"Is she here for a holiday or…?"
Satoru nodded with enthusiasm. "She's leaving next week. It was a girl's trip, something like that."
A few more pairs of sunglasses were picked up, deliberated over, and then discarded. Again, he came back to the Matsuda frames. "It took you until 30 to meet each other"-Megumi ignored his protest at being aged up-"Are you even going to keep in contact?"
"What?" Satoru protested again. "Of course we are. What sort of question is that? Look-" he produced his phone where he had taken many - admittedly, too many - pictures of the passport cover class. Most of them were of his beautiful creation, a black beta fish with the most delicate fins against the backdrop of a golden, voracious sun, and some were of her. There were candids of her side profile, her eyes sparkling under the natural light of the studio, even one where her mouth was half open with an unfinished sentence that she'd told him to delete and he never did. "See? We've already done things together!"
"I see you around the students past school time," she had remarked while he had been in the middle of figuring out whether he wanted a more golden tinge of yellow as his background colour or something a little cooler, a little less shocking upon first glance. "Do they do extra curriculars?"
Satoru gave no visible indication to his moment of pause - kept a single eyebrow raised in that faux contemplation he was trying to perfect. "You're going to get me in trouble if you say things like that with no context"
"Well, I always see you around them after night time," she replied, looking from her shockingly gaudy pink cover to his. "You don't strike me as a pervert so I wanted to know."
He had audibly spluttered, lost for words before somehow, very strenuously, managing to force a lighter expression. "I'm glad…? And, yeah, I take them out for extra training," came his half-formed reply before he noticed her eyes were on the golden yellow. Satoru decided that evading this topic was necessary. "This one's better, right?"
Her nod was certain, and her discerning eye for details was for more refined than his. "I think the Japanese passport looks better with the gold."
"You're right." So it had been decided.
"Is this supposed to be a date?" Megumi asked, lip curled up at the corner in an expression that was a cross between pity and disbelief at Satoru's recollection of events. "It sounds like she doesn't give a damn about you."
He merely smiled. "Why? Do you think I'm the type for a whirlwind romance? Your Sensei just prefers the mundane activities of the average person."
"Shut up," was the reaction to his fantastical statement. "She's only tolerating you because you're her Soulmate," he added, just to add insult to injury.
"You're so cruel, Megumi." Satoru didn't quite fancy being confronted with that thought at half 2 in the afternoon, but it had come to stand in his vision regardless. Maybe she was only tolerating him because of that, though he'd barely seen her have any inclination of romanticism towards Soulmates. It was almost funny: two people who cared so little had been matched by fate. "I think she's already in love with me."
"Tch. Good fucking luck to her."
In an act of practiced benevolence, Satoru pretended not to hear him. "Enough about me. What about your Soulmate, hm? You're so tight-lipped about these things. I think you already know who is it and you just don't want to say anything~"
"Are you going to pay for my sunglasses or not?"
Satoru knew it was her brother the moment the phone screen came into focus.
The photo, in all its ordinary-ness, was a product of its time. The main subject was a young boy erring on the edge of being a man, with his gangly limbs and soft cheeks that still held the tell-tale pudge of youth. His hair was messy (Satoru didn't know whether it was from a lack of attempt at combing it, or because hair at this abstract age never liked to adhere to the laws of physics) and his arm was wrapped around a younger, smaller girl who simply looked happy to be there. The flash illuminated their eyes in rings of red, with his brace covered teeth shining bright enough to blind. It was a picture with little discernible backstory. A young teen boy with his even younger preteen sister.
Her fingers, the same ones that he'd known far longer than her face, stroked over her brother's cheeks, as if she might feel the skin give in to her gentle caress. Her longing had no sound, nothing more than the gentle zoom in until her younger self eclipsed the edges of the screen and he, his lopsided smile, was all she could see.
The uncomfortable feeling of being a voyeur welled within him yet he was helpless to blink away this hazy mirage of a life so interwoven with his and simultaneously so alien. In all these phantoms, Satoru had never felt her emotions like so many others claimed they could. By now, he had concluded they were exaggerations, typical to the supernatural nature of fate.
Now, he realised he had just never cared to feel them - so encompassed was he in his own plights. The slow, burning ebb of her sorrow felt like his own, something to choke him when he looked upon this unfamiliar face. He saw her trace over his face, felt the unrelenting desire for her brother to blink away the flash and smile wider like he had done so many times before.
Crystalline droplets fell onto the screen and blurred his image, distorting it behind the salt and the water. They enlarged his eye, a blurred smear of something cocooned within the iris.
Satoru blinked and it was over.
When Satoru caught her alone the next day at a well-known patisserie, partly by coincidence and mostly because he had Ijichi send him occasional updates of where she was, he almost couldn't look directly at her. It was not due to any noble feeling of shame at the flagrant stalking, or even heart-throbbing empathy for her friends going elsewhere for their breakfast- No, nothing of that sort.
"Why are you moving away?" She scolded, frowning as if he were another uncooperative child who'd been dropped off unwillingly into the chair opposite. "You're the one who asked me to inspect your eyes."
Shy was not an adjective applicable to a man like him, but what else could it be when he felt hot under the collar at her proximity? Yes, he had asked for a demonstration, but this was a little invasive, wasn't it?
"You're in my bubble," Satoru retorted, fully aware that this was his fault and unwilling to admit it. "I've never seen you get so close to your patients. I don't need special treatment."
She was completely unimpressed, pulling away for a moment to shine the phone flashlight directly into his pupils as punishment. He shielded them with a yelp. "I don't have my specialised equipment, that's why. Hold still or I won't look."
"Fine," he admitted defeat, refraining from an under-the-breath mutter when it was clear she wasn't joking. Somehow, keeping his eyes open against the light of her phone was the hardest thing he'd done all year; it drilled directly into his pupils and made him see a white that had nothing to do with the void.
On a whim, he had asked her to check his eyes for any anomalies. Yes, he knew that there weren't going to be any, and yes, he had asked because he needed something to do that wasn't pining for a bite of her sweet strawberry cream tart. Still, he was curious.
"I will take a picture. Don't blink."
With his eyes opened wider than ever before, Satoru felt strangely vulnerable as she looked into the depths of his Soul. It was not a foreign want for him to perceive the world as everyone else did, to be able to see the true range of colours in her eyes as was intended rather than the person shaped cluster of cursed energy atoms. This desire of his had waxed and waned, reached its climax in the year of 2006 , and was now approaching yet another peak in the samsara of his repeating history.
In a way, he was impaired. His nuances were different from everyone else's. A smile to him was a migration of atoms away from the head towards the stomach where the 'organ' for Jujutsu was nestled. Loss wasn't in the minutiae of one's frown, or a flash in dark brown eyes, but rather a surge of energy towards the head and the chest, vibrating and dancing with poorly restrained force.
Her energy was similar to his, a few hues darker than the canary yellow that brushed over his youth. Hers was a rich, vibrant orange - so perfectly likened to that of the sunsets she projected to him. Right now, there was a steady flow of it to her head.
She sat back in her seat, almost perplexed. "I've never seen anything like it before."
"Any problems, Doctor?"
"Your pupils glow blue instead of red, but it's not a health condition." She showed him the picture. "You have tapetum lucidum, which is only present in animals." At his blank look, she translated the term and let the robotic voice repeat it to him.
"A layer of tissue behind the retina?" he clarified, to which she nodded. "Is that a good thing?"
"It's a strange thing. You were right when you said you see things normal people can't." She murmured something unintelligible. "You should donate them to science."
Satoru pushed his sunglasses back on. "I think my eyes will are too much for the scientific mind, and I'm kind of using them right now."
"They seem like they're too much for your mind," she retorted. She wasn't wrong. "This must be some kind of undocumented condition."
He inched his greedy fingers towards her plate, and gave a placating smile when she saw him paw at it. His pining had won. "It's not undocumented. They're called Six Eyes."
Despite her following his tactical mission of stealing a bite, she remained indifferent when he actually did take one - a rather big one for someone that had known her less than a month. "I've never heard of it before."
"It gives me vision that's like a sixth sense," he explained, the cream so light and airy that he was reminded of the mousse from the café. Satoru refrained from another bite since that would definitely be pushing the boundaries of propriety. "I can see things that regular people can't."
"Like Superman and his x-ray vision."
He thought about it for a second and then nodded in agreement. "Yeah. Like that."
"When you die, can you donate them to me?"
Just for that, Satoru shook away all sense of decorum and took a even bigger bite, making sure she watched him do it from the conception of the idea to the execution. "I'm scared to know why."
"Because"-she started, leaning back against her chair with all the aloofness in the world-"I want to put them in a jar by my bedside."
The grade four curse was little more than a fly to Gojo Satoru.
It sat on the shoulder of a teenager who looked as if the jaws of puberty had swallowed them whole, their eyebags heavy and back slouched at such an angle that it was a wonder they could stand at all. Pale skin pulled over their bones, a translucent sheet that showed off every undercurrent of blue and green in their body.
Funnily enough, they kind of reminded him of Megumi.
Nevertheless, a fly was just as annoying as any other animal. It buzzed in the background, growing more and more bothersome when its rapidly beating wings veered too close for its own good. In this instance, the insect had decided that it would chatter in a pitch too personal for anyone other than its unfortunate perch to hear.
Satoru noticed her looking at it incessantly while the teenager trudging by. Her pupils were wide, iris almost erratic in its efforts to completely digest this error of the human psyche. A park wasn't the place to see such things, he was sure she was thinking, why is it here?
"You can see it, can't you?" He pressed onto the yellowing bruise, held his thumb there in the hopes of feeling a pulse beneath the stronghold. "I know you said that it was a gas leak, but a gas leak wouldn't affect you for this long."
Her pleasant attitude fragmented. Satoru opted not to see the hairline fractures.
"See what?"
His thumb pressed further in.
"The curses. They're the manifestation of negative emotions. When they're strong enough, they become a physical entity."
"Satoru," she warned. "I don't know what you're talking about."
They both knew it was a lie.
As much of an liar as he was, Satoru wanted to drop the façade. If she could see them, even occasionally, then he wanted to be open enough to be a comfort to her. Who would better explain the world of Jujutsu if not the Strongest himself?
"Come on," he whined, stretching his legs out beyond the boundaries of the bench and into the footpath. "Don't play dumb."
This was where he should have apologised, where common sense screamed at him to not bury his heels in the sand.
"I think you should stop bringing up things that are irrelevant." Her teeth were gritted, staring at him as if he had transformed into that curse himself, his six eyes manifested onto his face and all six of them blinking owlishly. "You can tell I don't want to talk about it and you still bring it up. It's inconsiderate, especially when I don't bring up things I know will bother you."
Satoru was not a man to back down. Hence, he huffed. "Like what?"
The Inverted Spear of Heaven lodged itself within him once more, the phantom drag of the blade tearing through his organs once again making him wish he had worn his blindfold instead - that way she wouldn't be able to stare directly into his eyes.
"Like when you killed that man you used to be best friends with." Curse his insolent nature. "Or when that guy stabbed you from your stomach to your neck."
Nausea turned him inside out. Whatever humbling thing he assumed she might bring up paled in comparison to the realisation that she had seen him at his weakest, in the far and few in between bouts of uncontrollable instability. Whatever force of the Heavens decided to share intertwine their strings was most certainly cruel and unusual.
He felt his throat close.
"You saw that…?" He snapped his mouth shut at the hurt in his voice.
Her bag was slung onto her shoulder, the leather handles stark against the light cotton fabric of her clothing. "It's best if we take some time apart. Soulmates are a favour of the divine so they shouldn't be taken for granted."
Somewhere far away, her voice uttered a farewell. And, in that fleeting somewhere, Satoru felt her manicured hands tighten around his worldly heart.
His calls had been going to voicemail for the last two days, with his messages yielding no better response. He was far from a beggar, and even further from a man that could admit his shortcomings, but there was no roundabout way of avoiding blame: Satoru had orchestrated this mess and she was only playing the instrument according to his conducting.
Satoru: can we meet up ₍₍⚞(˶˃ ꒳ ˂˶)⚟⁾⁾ ?
Satoru: I know you go home soon and I thought it would be nice to say bye
Satoru: Dessert's on me?
A wash of embarrassment overcame him but he had too many things to say to let himself wallow in the ordeal of being uprooted. God. It was so humiliating to be honest. It had been humiliating back then, and humiliating now. This was the unfortunate repercussion of descending from his alter.
Satoru: don't ignore me (๑-﹏-๑)
Satoru: hellooooooo
Finally, she appeared online and he held his breath. Satoru knew not to hope for anything too profound, yet his traitorous heart pounded inside of him.
MC: I apologise.
He wanted to launch his phone as far away from him as possible.
MC: My flight is early morning tomorrow so I don't have time
MC: Maybe we can arrange a video call when neither of us are busy?
MC: I'll speak to you later
Ah.
It was not for lack of desire to reconcile that he decided not to message back, but rather a softer, more human feeling of rejection that kept him from it. Satoru could've made do with even an hour of her time, to try and untie these threads that, up until now, he had tucked away under the black fabric of his uniform in the hopes of hiding their rugged, noose-like loops.
Instead, he groaned with his face against his desk. It seemed like he would have to renew his passport after all.
"Mr Gojo," the receptionist muttered, a thin veneer of professionalism masking the discomfort that itched under her skin. Satoru saw through it immediately. "We have to ask you to please stop coming so frequently. It is… ah- becoming a distraction for the other patrons."
Was coming once a week frequent..? He thought he was being rather conservative considering he had to make his way from Japan to the clinic each time. The round trip was no joke!
"Sorry," he offered without a hint of genuine apology. "I want to make an appointment."
"I'm afraid she is booked out for the next few months." What a lie.
Still, Satoru smiled and nodded, acting the part of the magnanimous man as he left, turned the corner, and then immediately teleported himself into the corridor where her office was.
Through peeking past the door, he knew she was inside by herself. Who was he to deprive her of much needed company?
"Hello!" He announced, appearing in front of her as she jumped, knees bumping into the underside of her desk. "Are you working hard? You're hunchbacked over your computer."
"When did you-" she looked at the closed door that gave no answers. "How did you get in?"
"I made an appointment." Satoru said no more and no less. "What are you doing?"
"Satoru…"
"What?"
"I'm busy."
He sat himself down in the chair opposite, lounging on it with no ounce of shame in his body. "I understand. I'll be quiet." With a gesture of zipping his lips, he grinned. "Like a mouse."
He was being annoying and he knew it, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Annoying was what got a reaction, what would make her stop avoiding him. Being persistent mattered the most because when he wasn't, that was when everything went to shit.
When spinning around on the chair, Satoru could quickly take in all the views of her office, and bask in how perfectly balanced it was in maintaining a professional and personal balance. The walls were decorated with abstract art in metallic colours, covering the canvas in unregulated splatters. He hadn't thought she would like this kind of style - she seemed to enjoy more classical styles, the kind that took over a year just to conceptualise.
A shelf just to the left of her desk was decorated with a book nook, a little café with miniature furniture and a smiski with a frown on its illuminated green face. Was it glow in the dark?
Satoru stood up, running his fingers along this rigid spines before one in particular piqued his interest.
'Blind and Null.' It was a curious title that made Satoru pause and reach out to pluck it from its home between medical diagram books. He held the thick book, the edges covered in gold foil that gleamed under the sterile light.
"What's this?" He queried, opening up the front page to an acknowledgement: 'to those who are one in a world made for two'.
Satoru pretended not to see how she stopped typing. "It's a story about someone who doesn't have a Soulmate."
"Oh." The first page gave a glimpse into its sweet prose, the scene opening with a description of a tittering couple beside a lake full of mated swans. "That's random for a ophthalmologist's office."
Her wry smile gave away very little. "It is." She typed with one hand, the other moving to her lap. "There's not much on people without a Soulmate, but I thought I should think about how they live."
To be without a Soulmate, she said without moving her lips, was to be without social standing, to be an aberration in the world of singularity. Satoru could only nod in agreement. "It's a good thing it's rare."
"…I believe my brother had no Soulmate," she said, the tinge of wistfulness hard to ignore. He wanted to bite through his tongue. "He would ask me about mine all the time." Satoru kept his gaze firmly on the book, let himself imagine how she would see the cover. "Whenever I asked about his, he'd change the topic. I asked him a few times to describe them but he just said it was a secret, or some other vague bullshit."
"He never told you?"
Her cheek rested against her palm as she focused on the book. "No. My parents thought he was just being shy. I'm not 100% sure but…"
His fingers curled tighter around the hardcover edge.
Suguru… he had been the same. While the world of Jujutsu sorcerers didn't typically lend itself to an idyllic life, he had seldom brought up the topic of Soulmates - to the point that Shoko was convinced they were an old bastard that Suguru was ashamed of. Back then, Satoru had joined in on the teasing despite the ache in his own chest and the subtle, earnest notion that he'd give up those abstract hands in his minds eye if it meant a future with him.
Suguru had merely deflected, or swallowed them down with a thick lump in his throat.
If Satoru had been anyone else, someone more world-wisened, he might have put it together before now. In the last ten years, he had wondered how the thought of Suguru's Soulmate's opinion hadn't stopped him. Wouldn't it have grounded him to see another's life through his eyes and understand that, even if they weren't heroes, they were doing something for the betterment of others?
But if that didn't exist, then what did Suguru have to lose other than himself?
"Can I borrow this book?" He asked, suddenly unwilling to part with it. Even if it was fictional, it held a piece of a puzzle worth solving. "I'll bring it back."
She turned off her computer, rising to her feet. Satoru followed. "Oh. Yes, you can. It's a sad story but I found it thoughtful."
Whatever reply he gave, he didn't remember. Instead, he found himself back on plane, thumbing through the pages while imagining another's face.
Bright red veins invaded his precious few hours of sleep.
A breeze far too cold to be the same sunset-hour flow he'd initially let in brushed over his arms, weaved its way through infinity as he blinked, trying to cast away this image.
Another vision? They were so frequent these days.
The view was uniquely grotesque for its microscopic detail. Of course, Satoru was no stranger to the finer quality of things, but even he could not claim to be familiar with the inside of an eye. The network of blood vessels that wound around the red backdrop, the faint orange glow of muscle and tissue and the faint reflection of the optic nerve. It was almost enough to make him squeamish!
The eye became smaller and smaller, until the equipment was pushed away and the face of a young Japanese boy stared back at him, his bottom lip curled with the effort of not crying. Beside him, a woman with his nose and an almost identical set of deep set eyes were full of pleading, lips moving in a sentence rendered inaudible. If he tried hard enough, he could decipher a few words.
'Monsters'.
'Doctors'.
'Help.'
Her hand rested on her mouse, index finger tapping lightly here and there before it was pushed to the wayside. The computer screen was indecipherable.
A smaller plastic folder was opened, and within were multiple drawings of creatures with mutated, deformed bodies that Satoru recognised with little trouble: Curses. They ranged from hauntingly human in form, with elongated limbs and eerie smiles that fed from the human fear of the uncanny, to compressed, ugly looking things that couldn't have been larger than a child's hand in size.
Her fingers curled up into her fist before she neatly tucked them into a pile and closed the folder up again, handing it back to the woman who looked ever close to tears.
It was a foundational oversight for fate to only show visions and not audio. If he could have heard them speaking, he could have offered her some help - tried to do something for this young boy that had inherited a gift too ghastly for someone with no other tether to Jujutsu.
All he had to go off of was mother and child - and it was frustratingly little. With a note in her palm, they departed from the office.
In the end, it faded away and he was left to stare at his ceiling once more.
—His phone rang.
With an outstretched arm, he reached around for the device before holding it to his ear, murmuring a lacklustre greeting.
"Hello?" A woman's voice trembled, the chord of desperation within it so poignant that Satoru knew exactly who was calling him. "My Son's doctor gave me this number and said you can help. Please… You're my last hope. He's been seeing all these horrible things and- and everyone I go to says there's nothing wrong with him."
His voice and all its boastful lustre had diminished, become stuck in the dredges of his throat upon his realisation.
A window.
Fuck. He was so stupid. How hadn't he realised it before? He must have been too besotted by other things to notice what was right there, smothered within the honeyed orange of her energy. He'd been looking to the skies for a miracle when it had been little more than a pen's stroke of the Heavens.
"I can try and help." Satoru cleared his throat of its roughness. "But you have to be open to listening to me."
'I am currently out of office. I will return on 23 XXXX. For urgent enquiries, please contact the reception via email or telephone during opening hours.'
Satoru was jealous. Just how many holidays did she go on in a year? If he had this much free time, he'd be unreachable and come back with a gut bigger than his ego.
Still, as green with envy as he was, he had something to settle, and these last few months of stagnation had whittled his patience down to the bone. A man who worked in subtext had to know when being direct would better serve his purpose.
So, here he was - in a country he had no business being in other than to try and find her again. And, of course, she was with the same trio of women that she'd been with the last time. Oh, to be rich in friendships and in time, what he wouldn't give to have the same (so long as it required no effort on his part, of course).
As he walked around the resort, the same one he'd tracked her down to, Satoru fell into the trap of melancholy. It was an easy thing to drown in when the air was humid and the chirps of cicadas felt like they were ringing in his ears rather than in the perfunctory drone of the background.
Even now, when he thought too hard about the fact that she was his Soulmate, there was a disconnect within him. Soulmate. To have a Soulmate was a tether, and a tether was the antithesis of a man who had surpassed mortal limits in all ways except the biological. Should it not stand to reason that he could choose his own Soulmate and not care that she was upset?
No, he concluded. It did not stand to reason.
Not when he had seen her, her family, her life in snippets he'd taken for granted. No matter how divine he tried to be, he would always find himself lassoed to sentiment and a desire to connect that infinity could not prohibit. That was why Satoru had let him go unattended to for so long, long enough to cultivate his own twisted family and make headway in an ideology that would never achieve anything substantial.
He lived in a world pioneered by the Strongest but made for the less fortunate others in his life.
"Hey- hey! You!"
A woman stumbled towards him, her face scrunched up into a scowl as she pointed a finger at him. Her long brown hair whipped the air behind her while the dressing gown she wore threatened to come undone from the briskness of her pace. Satoru tried not to stare at the gaudy neon green flip flops on her feet.
"Me?" Satoru pointed to himself, fully aware there was no one else here aside from the one or two straggler teenagers who'd escaped their family's room.
"YOU!" She stopped just a few inches from his face, almost toe to toe as she waggled her finger in his face like he were a naughty, scheming child and she the stern, uncompromising nanny who'd been hired to subdue him. "You weird albino bastard!" Her drunken hiccup interrupted her scathing confrontation. "You're stalking my friend!"
"Me?" Satoru repeated, mouth agape at the accusation. "Weird albino bastard?!"
She jammed the finger into his chest, or, rather, the infinitismal space between her finger and his chest, and glared. "We all know you're stalking her. Stop it! We've seen the security footage of you standing around the clinic all day, and you look like a freak!"
"Ha?" He tried very hard not to be indignant, but he failed miserably. "I'm trying to… talk to my Soulmate!"
Curse him and his rudimentary English.
"You can talk to the police 'cuz we're going to report you for stalking and attempted murder!"
Satoru did shriek in indignation this time. "Murder?!"
In the vague distance, the smell of her perfume - light and breezy - drifted towards him. He quickly decided to up the theatrics and hope that he could charm his way into a conversation.
"Murder!" She repeated, finger jamming into his chest this time as he released infinity. "I'm going to beat you up! And then you will leave her alone."
Satoru feigned shock, though he was secretly glad that she had friends who were so willing to confront a man at least two heads taller than them.
The closer her scent drifted, the more he riled her friend up with asinine jokes that fell embarrassingly flat in English, until she punched him and he let himself fly through the air in a dramatic, beautifully elaborate, show of woe.
He called her name, rolling around on the floor with his arms wrapped around his stomach with all the agony of a toddler expeiencing their first knee scrape: which was to say it was the most catastrophic thing ever and, simultaneously, the most inconsequential. "Your friend is beating me!" He pleaded, dazed and gone to the world as he looked at her through squinted eyes, letting his blindfold rest over his forehead, dishevelled and curated. "How can you let this injustice happen to me?"
She said something he didn't quite catch, but he didn't care about that when she was gently ushering her friend away to come over to him. She stared down, incredulous. "Get up," she instructed. "Her punch was no where near hard enough to do anything. If it did, then your muscles are for show."
"Ugh! Not even an apology?" Satoru sat up, fixing his blindfold with a pout. "She's quite the scary lady."
"She is," his Soulmate agreed with no debate. "Why are you here?"
"Because I wanted to talk to you." Satoru wasted no time in laying out his position, hoping that she wouldn't just walk away like every other time. "About what I said in Tokyo." Upon her expression, he hurried to clarify. "I'm not going to insist on anything, but I would like to talk about it."
If she considered telling him to fuck off, he was glad that she had the kindness in her heart to not show it. "I'm busy tonight, but I can find some time tomorrow?"
"Okay. Do you promise?" Satoru held out his pinkie, hoping that she would indulge him this once. "I'm not leaving until you agree."
"Really?"
"Really."
So, she did as he asked and linked them together before letting go. "Meet me here tomorrow at 6pm. I would talk to you now but… my friend will vomit if she is let alone."
"Right." Satoru shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts, attention drifting back to the woman who was trying to step on the little crab that was scuttling by. "You should get her back to her room. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yes." Her nod was firm, much like her grip on her friend's arm as she manoeuvred her away from the poor crustation. "See you tomorrow."
The tang of the ocean air hit the back of his throat in a way that was far too reminiscent of Okinawa.
He had not worn anything suited to the occasion despite his internal debates on whether starfish swimming trunks were appropriate. For once, he had made the conscious choice to not try to brush it off, and instead simmer uncomfortably in this limbo where time meant very little.
He thought about what he should say, and how she might react. His natural instinct was to pretend nothing had happened, to acknowledge it later when it was inconsequential, could be laughed off with little repercussion. Had he been even a few years younger, he wouldn't have even thought to do otherwise.
However, old tricks became stagnant and boring. She had seen him, flayed him open to see the darkest parts of his life that had only ever had one other
witness, and held them within her like they were her own memories. Satoru supposed he had done the same. Her hands, her holidays, the flashes of her childhood that he'd never fully pieced together; all of them remained as fragments of her within him.
"Have you been waiting for a long time?" She asked, sandals crunching against the sand under foot.
Satoru shuffled to make space even though there was more than enough room. "No. I came not too long ago."
"That's good." The waves had little appetite for the land tonight. The foamy water only came so far in shore before retreating. "How have you been?"
"Pretty good." Rather than beat around the bush, Satoru decided to rip the bandage off once and for all. "I'm sorry for what I said. I shouldn't have insisted."
She settled down beside him, the warmth of her a more sturdy, inviting presence than the fading heat of the Sun. "It's okay." Then, she sucked her teeth, wondering where to go from here. "I'm sorry for bringing up sensitive things, too."
Sensitive… that was definitely one way to put it. His most traumatic, life-altering memories were sensitive; yeah. They were. "It's fine," Satoru decided on, because it was. As horrifying as it was to know that someone else had been witness to what he thought were private mosaics of the man beneath the 'strongest', he couldn't blame anything other than an abstract fate. "At least you understand why I am the way I am."
"Yeah. I don't think I could have been like you through all that."
"I don't think anyone would want to be like me," he said not so much self-deprecating as much as it was honest. "But I'm not sorry for trying to get you to talk to me again."
She smiled. "I didn't think you were."
Her gaze was focused out towards the water, on the reflection of the world that he could only imagine. If only Soulmate visions were more practical, then he could comfort himself with superimposing her reality over his and shed the discomfort of being isolated.
"Can I ask who that man was?"
He didn't dare brave a look. "Which one?"
"The one who was always with you."
"…His name is Suguru."
Another pause followed, more charged than the last. "What happened?"
"He- ah. It's difficult to put into words," Satoru gave a half smile. "He used to be my best friend back in highschool but, through a serious of unfortunate events, he saw the worst in people and decided he didn't want to protect others anymore. We became estranged until… what you saw."
"I see." It took no genius to realise she was holding back the innumerable questions on the tip of her tongue. Satoru was utterly grateful that she had this restraint: the wound was too raw, and he could feel it seeping. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"It was inevitable," Satoru surmised. "I wish it went differently."
"The 'what if's are always the hardest. It's difficult to not linger on them." Her hand inched closer to his, but remained decidedly apart. "My brother… He would always tell us that he saw things attached to people. He would describe them like they were monsters, and he drew so many of them in his diaries. All of them are filled with hundreds of these drawings." She swallowed. "We tried to get him help many, many times, but they always said everything was okay and that he had an overactive imagination."
Satoru knew how it ended. "He was seeing curses."
"Yeah." Her voice didn't crack despite being on the very edge of it. "He killed himself because of it. I always"-finger pinched the corners of her eyes, urging the tears to stay at bay-"I always thought he must have a mental illness that made him see these things. But then I started to see them after the subway station and I realised that it was something else instead."
"I'm sorry," was all he could offer that didn't sound pathetic, but he meant it honestly and earnestly. He was sorry that her brother had suffered because of ignorance, that he had been driven to an unthinkable extreme at such a young age. It was a tragedy that was swept away too often under the umbrella of illness and paranoia, and he couldn't imagine it was any better outside of Japan. "Normally, people are born with the ability to see them, like your brother, but also being in a life and death situation heightens people's sensitivity to stimuli; it was why you could see the curse in the station."
"And you can see and destroy them."
"I can," he confirmed.
Whatever tears tried to pool in her waterline were blinked away. "Why can I still see them? I'm not in danger anymore."
"Your brain has been altered permanently." Her soft 'oh' made his chest ache. His hand brushed against hers, pinkies looping together ever so lightly before he held them up like a promise. "You don't have to worry. I'll exorcise them all for you.
Her small smile was all he needed. "You can't kill them all."
"I'm the strongest, of course I can." With his glasses pushed up into his hair, Satoru used his free hand to reach into his pocket and produce a small pocket knife. "This will kill them, too. It's a grade one tool."
"I have to kill them…?"
"Only if you want to." His pinky tightened further. "Or you can call me and I'll save the day."
Her fingers slipped from his grasp for a split second, only for her hand to slide into his completely, the warmth of her skin shocking to a body that had been shrouded in infinity for the last decade. "I don't think you can travel internationally that quickly."
"I can if you move to Japan." She shook her head and Satoru put on a pout that was entirely out of place on his face. "I'm serious! I can show you around to all my favourite dessert places, and we can go to the deer park without your friend being scared of them, and you'll get the VIP treatment because you're with Gojo Satoru!"
He wanted it. Satoru wanted it so badly he could almost feel himself salivating. He had pushed it all away in the hopes of bridging the chasm with Suguru, a man he would consider his second Soulmate until the day he, too, succumbed (and would do it again for because those moments where they were on the precipice of something were too precious). Now, he knew that it never needed to be one or the other. There was enough room within him for more.
"That sounds lovely," she agreed, thumb stroking over the details of the knife before she placed it into her bag. "But I'll have to think about it."
"Take all the time you need." Satoru held her hand tighter, tighter than he had held anyone else's before as the ghostly silhouette of yellow and orange melded together into something kinder to his heart but no less painful to love. And then he added: "but not too much."
Set just before the events of the Sumeru archon quest/coincides with some of the questline. Fluff, kind of e2l but the lovers is more subtext, I suppose.
A lot of identity politics and xenophobia from the Akademiya. Semi-brainwashing from the Akasha Terminal.
11.3k
『 The air crackled, sunlight glinting off the blade that sliced through limbs with no-uncertain ease. "You are wanted by the Akademiya; any resistance is futile. If you do not come willingly, I will bring you to justice by any means necessary."
For a moment, there was little to no expression on her face. Whatever shock had been in her system had boiled away, leaving a state of apathy behind he wasn't particularly familiar with. It was pleading, begging, anger and desperate fury that he reckoned with and grown to expect - not this unwavering stare of her eyes into his.
"Is this how you repay people who save your life? You threaten them with 'justice'?" The curl of her lip was sharp; he knew it was out of disgust. "Who are you to accuse me of committing a crime?"
"The General Mahamatra."
It was Six Cardinal Sins within which he operated, dared to hold his head high to. But, it was when those sins blurred into something man-made, something erring on the side of human arrogation, that his own steadfast rules began to judge him on the order of ma'at.』
The rainforest or the desert. Justice or impudence. A Potter or the General.
There was little on Earth that Cyno may consider being affected by, and even less of such that he might admit to being worthy of a reaction.
The desert cared little for these distinctions other than to challenge them. To it, he was as insignificant as the sand of which bled between his toes, scorched the calloused skin with an eagerness to toughen what was already wrought with thickness. Perhaps there was meaning to him, a collective that his lonesome gave meaning to - a grain in the system that bonded with the molecules of the others.
But he was insignificant, still. It didn't matter if the sun might scorch him to ash under its unflinching light.
A hiss escaped through gritted teeth. Ordinarily, he would traverse the desert at night when the temperature was more favourable, less deadly. This time, he had to make an exception. He only had two days before his duties beckoned him to return and the pouch he had dropped could be retrieved.
If he was less sentimental he might have let it sink into oblivion and become entombed with the rest of the Scarlet King's bounty.
Only… Collei had hand stitched it for him: an almost crude coin pouch that barely held more than a few thousand mora. Really, Cyno cared more for its thought than its beauty.
Hence, he used what little amount of free time he had to retrace his latest hunt - wherein he had tracked down a scholar who had made off with a sizeable amount of the treasury fund.
It was foolish and desperate. So desperate that he felt something akin to pity when the man sobbed, echoing words on how he had squandered himself into unimaginable debt to pay the Akademiya tuition fees. It was nothing he had not heard before, but the manner in which the man pleaded - forehead to his feet and snot dribbling over the curves of his trembling lips - made Cyno truly linger on how consuming debt can be.
The sun beat down harder, made the nape of his neck itch where it slithered through the cover of fabric. No matter his preparations, the burning heat would make itself known in every crevice possible.
So, he carried on walking with the Akasha Terminal in his ear, informing him that there were only 15 minutes left until he arrived. He breathed a little easier when the destination finally came into view.
The pouch remained untouched, buried only minimally in the sand. Its meager contents of 514 mora hadn't attracted any attention, he thought to himself in mild amusement.
His fingers brushed against the scalding metal clasp, poised to reach under and extract it from its bounds-
The ground gave way.
It was as mundane as any day would get within the God King Amun's empire. The sandstorms had become more frequent in intensity, but not enough to discourage the millings of the people, to dampen the sounds of sellers announcing their wares and hagglers wittling down their prices to a fraction of the cost.
Today, he had to purchase more scrolls. They could not be subpar, and certainly not anything less than reinforced papyrus that soaked up ink with a voracious appetite but didn't allow it to bleed uselessly into surrounding fibres. These scrolls were going to hold the words of his Lord, after all.
The staff in his hands was more decorative in this moment, a mere symbol of what it meant to strike down onto dry Earth and crumble what trembled beneath. He had no intention of using it, yet dozens of eyes followed with a subtle drag that betrayed their weariness.
He did not bother with reassurance.
The bows of heads followed like a wave through his passing footfall- soft in its lulling gesture but emboldened in the undercurrent of his power. It were as if they were compelled by an invisible hand, divine fingers tugging at the strings in a realm everyone was too unworthy to see yet blessed enough to experience.
He didn't think he was worthy of such respect. There was little he did other than his duty of remaining faithful; which was to say that he lingered in this space undefined between the celestial and the mortal. Not yet ascended whilst comfortably above commonality. A precarious middle.
Still, he had the humility to acknowledge the people with a sweeping gaze. As a priest, who was he without the people to share his gospel to? A retainer of the God King was only as good as its capabilities in engaging the people, after all.
He continued his walk with this single minded dedication. Papyrus scrolls. The store with the most quality product was sheltered in this area among the towering golden bricks and intricate bead curtains that adorned the entryways.
"Mister. Excuse me, Mister!"
This voice was in his head - so loud and piercing that he could not help but wince.
"Are you awake? I can't tell…"
He blinked-
No. Cyno blinked.
The world around him dissolved like sand bleeding from between cracked fingers. Whatever respite he had found in another's world was gone, leaving him in the borderlands of consciousness and awareness.
Ah. His head pounded like a rod was pushed between his tender ears.
Above him, a blurred mirage of a woman stared down with a furrow between her eyebrows - analysing him like one might a choking child after the incident. He supposed there was little distinction right now between him and that notion, especially with the sand that caked his throat and left him hacking up what had lodged itself deep.
"Please, have some water," she insisted, pressing a cool leather skin pouch into his fist. It was heavy with fresh water, and he barely managed a croaked word of gratitude before swallowing a good few mouthfuls of grains and liquid.
The sharp pain echoed throughout his cranium, lodged itself firmly between his ears until he could only grit his teeth in the hopes of diverting some tension. When his body had first become a vessel, these kinds of migraines had plagued him day after day, and night after night; Cyno wasn't appreciative of reliving it.
At least he had the clarity of mind to not drink the whole pouch - though he was greatly tempted. "Thank you," he managed, gaze falling to his dirt-dotted cream tunic. 'What happened,' he wanted to ask but, oddly, could not bring himself to say. It had felt so real, the faces of the masses warm and tangible if he'd extended his hand - let his fingers graze over their clothes…
"You activated something," she said. "It looks like it has Hermanubus' seal."
Oh. "I see." He swallowed again, thick and coagulated. "I didn't see anything."
The pouch was in his pocket; he didn't remember putting it there. Nonetheless, it was as heavy as it had been in the beginning.
"Can you stand? I brought you to a cave, but there is wenut activity close by and I'm worried they will try to attack."
Luckily, he could. The vertigo was mild, if a little disconcerting. "I am fine. Your concern is kind but unnecessary."
"I think it is quite necessary, especially when you were not responsive for a good five minutes."
Cyno had the sense to not argue. Rather, he pinched the corners of his eyes to collect whatever particles had inched their way into the ducts, and wiped them clean. The fuzziness at the corners had dissipated, leaving behind the clear set face of an elegant woman - one that the Akasha was readily scanning.
"Where are you from?" She continued to speak, eyes following his as they carved over her face, analysed each of her features as though he might erect a statue in her likeness. "You look like you're from the south of the desert."
How strange. She was right.
He didn't realise that was so easily discernible.
Then, the Akasha clicked - glowed such a stark red that it nearly blinded him. 'WANTED CRIMINAL!' it warned, flashing in his mind's eyes with an intensity meant to spur him to action. 'Wanted for theft and destruction of Akademiya property. MUST BE APPREHENDED!'.
"Hello?" She tried again, waving her hand to try and gather his attention. In her eyes, he must have looked like a helpless, dizzied animal - one with middling clarity right up until his staff pressed drew static in the mere millimetres left between her delicate skin and its sharp, metallic edge. "Wha- Why are your raising your weapon?!"
The air crackled, sunlight glinting off the blade that sliced through limbs with no-uncertain ease. "You are wanted by the Akademiya; any resistance is futile. If you do not come willingly, I will bring you to justice by any means necessary."
For a moment, there was little to no expression on her face. Whatever shock had been in her system had boiled away, leaving a state of apathy behind he wasn't particularly familiar with. It was pleading, begging, anger and desperate fury that he reckoned with and grown to expect - not this unwavering stare of her eyes into his.
"Is this how you repay people who save your life? You threaten them with 'justice'?" The curl of her lip was sharp; he knew it was out of disgust. "Who are you to accuse me of committing a crime?"
"The General Mahamatra."
A sudden laugh coloured the air, one that made his fingers tighten (and then loosen) around the laminated shaft before it lowered. "You? The General? You couldn't even save yourself from a simple domain. If you are the General, then the Akademiya is truly built on iniquity."
Cyno gave no reaction. "Your opinion matters little," he surmised, unbothered by the disdain with which she bore holes into his skin. "I advise you save your energy for the journey back."
If he was honest, he'd never heard such colourful curses and imaginative insults. Had he not had his heart hardened through years of criminal dealings, he might have snapped back at some of them - especially at the ones where she picked apart every little thing he did - down to the space between his toes.
(Cyno hated to admit that he consciously tried to hide his feet from her after that.)
The Matra had prepared a cell beforehand, a simple thing with a slightly softer pillow than normal. She had rescued him, after all, and no good deed could go unrewarded - or unpunished, as she had irritably put it.
"Your case will be judged by the Matra before you are put to trial," he told her, deftly undoing the bounds around her wrists. While she had made no move to run away, they were loosely placed as precaution. "If you wish to confess to anything, call for one of the Matra, and they will answer."
She scoffed. "Confess… You assume my guilt before the trial has even began. What happened to innocent until proven guilty?"
"The Akasha Terminal does not flag people without due regard."
"That sounds like you will beat a confession out of me."
Cyno merely pulled the bounds away, making sure that they had not marked her skin. "That is against our code of conduct. No one will lay a hand on you."
"How reassuring. I'm sure your code of conduct is as moral as you are."
Somehow, he didn't think she was complimenting him.
"If you require anything, let someone know and you will be tended to."
He turned to leave, only to catch the thick wad of spit she had spat at his feet. It landed with an alarming accuracy, mere centimetres away from brushing against his bare skin.
Cyno stepped aside and continued onwards. She did not look over her shoulder, nor did she care to regard him with anything more that same vitriol that he had incited with his actions. The weight in his chest mattered not - not when he knew his terminal did not falsely flag. The right of her aid did not overturn the wrong of property destruction and theft.
His conviction rate was 100% because of his diligence and discernment; Innocent was not a word in his proximity.
Hence, he squashed the guilt that ebbed within him. There was much worse in this world than a scorned woman.
The other Matra had offered to be the ones to investigate her case; it was menial and something that he would not normally concern himself with, yet he had declined on no other basis other than he had some personal interest in it. No, he did not tell them this; yes, he was piling up uncompleted paperwork in his office, but he found it of no dire consequence.
For someone that had incited such shocking reaction to his Akasha - the scarlet that was primarily reserved for some of the more dangerous outlaws in Sumeru - her home had little to no security. There were the few locks imbued with elemental energy, nothing more difficult to open than a box of chocolates with his electro vision, but it was scarce otherwise.
Regardless, Cyno made no habit of lingering in people's spaces, and certainly not in women's houses. He kept his gaze straight, tried not to stare at the congealing glass of milk on the kitchen counter before he caved and dumped it out (since it was too cruel to let it turn into a mound of festering mould).
He looked for where the elemental energy was the most concentrated, following the faint trails until he was inside of her bedroom.
While he told himself that it was merely business, and he had a duty to uphold, he could only sigh. Why the bedroom? he thought to himself almost petulantly, trying not to catch the eyes of the embroidered tapestries hung on her walls. Why not the cellar, or the attic?
It was a small house on the seam between the Ashavan Realm and the Wall of Samiel. Nestled perfectly against the backdrop of Caravan Ribat, it was the perfect place to buy and sell canned knowledge with ease - with a swiftness that wasn't easily afforded elsewhere in Sumeru.
To think, she might have gone unnoticed for much longer had she not been out in the desert that day.
(And he might not have made it out unscathed, though, he preferred not to dwell on that).
The elemental energy was the strongest in her bedside drawers. It hummed in his ears, low and obnoxious in its continuous drone. Cyno opened the drawer - only to be met with rows of neatly folded undergarments.
What an underhanded tactic.
He'd done worse. Seen worse. Tackled worse.
His hand hovered over the clothes, stayed there like it couldn't bear to move a single millimetre closer.
Shit. He should have let the Matra do it instead of insisting.
With a resigned sigh, he took a deep breath and plunged his hand in. His teeth were gritted, as though the cotton fabric might breathe its own air and break through skin with gnarled incisors. Cyno pressed his fingers to the base of the drawer, feeling for where the capsule might be, before realising it was a hollow bottom.
It was with much mortification that he removed all the garments. He did not look at them as much as he tried not to disturb them - which was to say he plucked at them like they were the most delicate thing on Earth.
The hollow bottom gave way with a strong tug, revealing three glowing green capsules. The hum grew louder, the concentrated dendro bringing about a faint autumn leaf scent. Cyno collected them as quickly as possible, haphazardly putting everything back where it was. While he doubted she would return for quite some time, he didn't want to give off any impression that he was a pervert.
Being called a traitor was easy to deal with. A sexual deviant? Not so much.
'History of the Wall of Samiel IV; Bartering in Aaru Village; Legends of the Three God Kings XI'.
All three of them were reported missing.
They were hardly anything worth hiding, and certainly not something worth getting prison time over. Time and time again, he was faced with crimes that had everything to lose and very little to gain. What benefit was there to stealing such impertinent canned knowledge? They wouldn't yield any profit, nor would people go out of their way to buy them discounted.
Evidently, he thought with a subtle shake of his head, some people couldn't keep themselves away from trouble until it snowballed.
Once he had left the four walls of her home, the scent of autumn leaves intensified - pulled him towards the back garden where an outdoor stove smouldered with the embers of a pyro flower's core underneath it. The cast iron pot was singed, black along the bottom with thickly caked soot.
Dendro shimmered within, powdered glass telling of something that had been crushed and crumbled into its simplest form. When he dragged a finger through it, he knew instantly that it had been a capsule shimmered within, powdered glass telling of something that had been crushed and crumbled into its simplest form. When he dragged a finger through it, he knew instantly that it had been a capsule.
"These were found in your home."
She cast him a sideways glance, as though he were barely worth the effort of turning her head. "I've never seen them before."
The claim was so outlandish that Cyno was momentarily stunned. Out of all the things she could have claimed, she claimed ignorance? There was no man, woman or scarab beetle that didn't know what canned knowledge was - not when the Akasha system was as ingrained in Sumeru's everyday life as it was.
"Is that so?" He asked sceptically. "They were hidden in your bedroom, where you are the only occupant of the house."
"Conducted some research, did you? Did you have fun being a pervert?"
He pursed his lips imperceptibly. "You cannot hide something with such concentrated dendro energy. Not even Allogenes can conceal it." When she didn't move, he spoke again. "Being tight-lipped will only lead to harsher punishment. If you co-operate, there is potential for your sentence to be less severe."
She turned her back to him completely. "I'm not convinced on the word 'potential'. What do you want me to admit to? Someone could have framed me; I live in an area where travellers pass through daily."
"Perhaps in an alternate world ," Cyno said, "Your elemental signature is on these capsules and there was a pot in your garden that suggests destruction of property."
"Suggests," she emphasised, " and I am not a vision bearer."
"Everything has innate elemental energy."
Her scoff rang loudly against the stone walls. "So why bother questioning me? You have the evidence. Are you here to provoke me to anger instead? I cannot stand the sight of you."
"I wish to know why you have them. Did you intend to use them? Sell them?" Cyno stood against the bars of her cell, faced with her back and the scent of damp that clung to every inch of this space. No matter how vigorously it was scrubbed, the everlasting spores of fungi were more persistent.
"I don't use that bullshit Akasha Terminal. People like you who rely on it are incapable of intelligent thought; everything must be spoonfed to you, and you believe whatever nonsense has been injected into your brain without question." Her anger was bright, so heated in its intensity that the room felt a little warmer afterwards.
Wow, he thought to himself, she has quite the opinion.
"Then why do you have them? They are worthless on the black market."
Stilted silence hung between them, the canisters glowing faintly green in the pouch that they were held in. She had yet to even acknowledge them. "I refuse to speak with you."
"That is fine. However, the other Matra have different tactics to make you talk."
"They can beat me all they like; I have nothing to say."
Every conversation with her was like pulling out his own teeth. "That isn't what I meant."
"Can you get out?"
Finally, Cyno relented. The Matra would not dare raise a hand or a weapon to her, but they needed an admission of guilt. There were rules in place to prevent any undue cruelness, but that did not mean that the others would be kind, or even patient.
He'd get to the bottom of this no matter what.
All her income came in clean - a regular civilian that sold her pottery and utensils to those who travelled along the worn path towards Caravan Ribat. Her taxes were done well in advance, every last mora accounted for with receipts, and there were no criminal convictions on her record aside from this pending case. For all intents and purposes, she was a law abiding citizen that had migrated from the desert to the forest a few years ago.
On paper, this was a case that should have been open and shut. She possessed stolen goods and had subsequently ground them into spot and ash, hence the destruction of Akademiya property.
Yet, there was no MO.
Very rarely did people do things with no motive. Even spur of the moment crimes had a reason why, something that ignited that spark towards action - whether it be anger, a lapse in judgement or simply because they wanted to.
As she had said, she seldom used her terminal. It had been used less than five times since its activation three years ago, and each time was for less than ten minutes. A few uploads of legally bought canned knowledge had been completed, all of them containing information on the habits of tribes in the desert. There was nothing else.
He had let her Akasha play through the information, trying to find what had prompted her to covet these specifically.
Nothing.
Cyno could only return to the office and write out another form with little updates. If only she would talk without being roundabout or down right hostile, but he knew that he'd left that possibility behind long ago.
The three capsules mocked him with their dull green. He'd played them through, wondering if there was something hidden within their faintly glowing exterior.
No such thing.
Bartering in Aaru village had consisted of transcribed conversations between patrons and merchants, with aside dialogue given on how the customs worked and on how to avoid being conned out of extra money. Legends of the Three God Kings had been run of the mill, too, with information mostly centring the Greater Lord and her feats of courage involving the desert and the other two Gods.
The only one that had seemed slightly strange was the condescending tone in the History of the Wall of Samiel. Cyno wasn't a fan of the way they had framed the interactions between the people of the desert and the Akademiya, the air of condescension not lost on him. Regardless, it was unaltered.
The quill rested against his finger, the ink bleeding further into the paper where the tip rested on the end of her name.
Another officer had asked him, albeit in a roundabout way, why he was so bothered with this case. It was small, inconsequential in the vast scheme of erroneous data that was being kept hidden and purposely rewritten, yet he made time everyday to look over it.
Perhaps it was gratitude that spurred him on, a desire to repay in some minute way by lessening her sentence. Cyno understood it was stupid; he was the entire reason she was even sitting in that cell with an inert frown. Even then, stupidity could not console the guilt that ebbed through him whenever he looked at her name on these pieces of paper.
A General isn't made through exemptions, he told himself (and willed himself to believe) - only through dedication.
There was little as humbling as sitting back against a cold, stone wall, and being ignored for an hour straight.
"You truly won't talk to me?"
Oh, how the mighty fell. He was acting like a lovesick fool that couldn't let go - only with the lovesickness supplemented by a humiliating drive to get a reply. The imported box of expensive nuts and chocolates he had brought as a semi peace offering were ignored, tossed aside with a grunt when he'd presented them as a belated token of thanks.
"I know that I am pestering you, and I apologise, but you have not eaten nor have you spoken to any of the other Matra." And they certainly did try. Whatever person was unfortunate enough to be the one tasked with interrogation, they almost always came out with a solemn expression. When pressed, they grumbled that her tongue was too sharp and jaw unwilling to loosen. "Going on hunger strike is ineffective. Your court date is in two weeks."
"I told you that I will not speak to you." Her clothes had changed into a simple cotton tunic, the beige of it dull and uninspired with frayed hemlines. They were made with no particular silhouette in mind, and sat according to that intention: frumpy and unflattering.
"Me and everyone else, is it?"
"I have the right to stay silent."
"You do," Cyno agreed, shifting slightly so the wall no longer carved its pattern into his bare back. "But that right isn't always the best decision to take."
A breath was drawn, one so soft that it could have been mistaken for the whisperings of the draft that somehow managed to worm its way this far down under the Akademiya. "Actually, I think I will talk."
Finally.
With his whole body now turned to face her, he waited with baited breath.
"Have you taken a look at the contents of the canned knowledge?" she asked, looking into eyes so richly brown they almost shone red under the faint light.
His nod was prompt, unguarded. "I did. They were standard recounts of desert history. There was nothing of interest."
"Did you go through it all?"
He made a noise of agreement.
"You saw nothing wrong?" Agree or disagree, he was damned either way judging from her tone.
He remained silent.
"Nothing? You thought that the description of the tribes as uncivilised people who tear each other apart was apt? You didn't care that it said the Wall of Samiel was built as a filter for only those 'educated enough to cross'?"
Indignation crossed her features, marred what was soft into something harsher than the down-turned curve of her lips. For the first time since she had been placed into this cell two weeks ago, she came closer - crawled towards him as though she were a beast intent on ripping out the shimmering plumes of his head-dress. The muscles in his jaw tightened, caught in this gaze that wished to maim him, that stared through him like she could will the snap of his neck through sheer determination.
Her hands curled around the bars. Her nails were filed into a neat almonds.
"Traitors like you make me sick," she snarled. "You think you are so established, so above the rest of us, that you don't care what happens to the rest of us who come from the desert - so long as your owners reward you with a cheque."
Try as he might, Cyno felt the tidings of impatience lapping at him. He had to endure.
"You can masquerade yourself as Justice Incarnate, but your soul will be weighed with your betrayals. In those capsules that the Akademiya spreads are lies. They paint us like we're scum that the Greater Lord didn't care to save, but they do it subtly enough that people that aren't bothered to notice, won't notice." When her eyes searched his, he wondered what she expected to see. "I would have thought you'd pick up on it, but the Sage's dog won't dare bark at its owner's faults."
He kept himself level, met her eyes with the same intensity. "Your anger at being caught does not mean that I am to blame for the injustices faced by other people."
"Other…?" Those carefully filed nails wrapped around his necklace, tugged him closer until he could smell the Sumeru rose shampoo that was given to all prisoners. "We're not 'other'. You will always be a desert dweller like us. You can study here, learn their language and open your mouth when they tell you to, but your skin is still brown. Your accent is still there." She let him go with a shove: pulled her hand back to her side after wiping it on her clothes. "I don't care that I was caught. I care that you think it's more of a crime to destroy propaganda than to make and distribute it. Your sense of justice is not based in morality."
Cyno stood up. So much for trying to reason with her. He had wasted hours sitting here despite knowing she was as unreasonable as unreasonable came. "Console yourself with whatever you want. The law will be upheld, and I am not a traitor for making sure that those who have broken it will face the consequences."
"You say the same shit every time you come down here no matter what I say. Resize your hat; it must be blocking your ears." Her scoff of laughter was hollow. Her back was to him once again. "Go run back on all fours to Azar."
"I do not answer to the Grand Sage."
"You're still here?"
He should have let it go, told himself it wasn't worth it to argue with someone that was hurting- "I worked my way up the same as anyone else," he stated, disregarding his sense. "My position was not earned through begging, or by standing on other people. Everyone is treated equally."
"Judged by where they come from, more like."
He shook his head. "You are incorrigible."
"I don't give a fuck."
His teeth were gritted the entire walk back to the surface.
(Her back ached from the hours of laying against the stone bed, the woollen blanket doing little to curb the bite of muscle pain and fatigue. The days had blurred together, blending into endless hours of staring at the ceiling, of fiddling with the jewellery in her ears and spinning them around so often that long-healed piercings swelled up in irritation.
Another sigh escaped her, one amongst a thousand others. Two weeks had passed inch by inch, crawling along on its hands and feet until she felt the phantom sores on her body - an itch that only worsened whenever footsteps sounded outside of her cell. Sometimes, it was accompanied by the sounds of protests - another catch of the Matra dragged in to fester behind iron walls - mostly, it was silent, save for the sounds of keys jingling.
On the rare occasion, the General Mahamatra would come by and her blood would boil in her veins. There was nothing more agitating than forcing down a mouthful of flavourless rice porridge with a pitiful drizzle of overly fried onions, and then being made to endure his chatter.
For a man with a reputation of being stoic and silent, he liked to talk frivolously; Unlucky, she was the only victim of this uncharacteristic quirk. Always single-minded, always grating.
However, another box of those chocolates sounded nice right around now when the flavour in her mouth was all but gone. So what if she'd thrown them in the moment? Food was food, especially when the 'chefs' of the prison could barely muster the courage to salt their meals.
That man…
She sighed once more, turning onto her left now that her back had started to ache.
If he came again, she would definitely give him another earful. There was little on Teyvat that set her off more than those who turned their back on their own people, and then had the gall to argue about whether or not it was righteous of them to do so. An idiot with a hat too big, she was convinced, an idiot with no sense of duty other than what the higher ups instructed.
Did he sleep soundly at night, she wondered. From his near flawless face, it seemed like he never missed a wink of beauty sleep. The notion made her snort; the General applying face-cream with the likeness of a blushing bride just before he slept - flat on his back and arms crossed as if laid in a sarcophagus.
Idiot.
Sudden footsteps drew her out of her wandering thoughts, the clinking of metal so close by that she couldn't help but crane her head over her shoulder. An officer pushed a bundle through the gaps, his expression dull and unimpressed.
"The General Mahamatra has sent these blankets," he said. She did not deign to give gratitude. "Hello? Did you hear me?"
"Yes," she replied dryly, "I did."
"So ungrateful," he muttered intentionally loud enough for her to hear. "He must only bother with you because of your pretty face."
Another stupid man to deal with.
"Jealous?" she couldn't stop herself from saying, feeling more than satisfied with herself at the reflection of his disgruntled look. "I'm sure he'll notice you if you do something exceptional."
An insult followed that she didn't care to repeat. It was always the same thing with these men, some useless misogynistic phrase that had been recycled and tired from the beginning of time.
"Heretics like you are why the desert dwellers are so easy to fool. You all believe things with no evidence, and then wonder why you're up to your teeth in debt. Your God isn't coming back." Suddenly, she wished she had a bowl of that porridge just so she could throw it at him. She hardly believed that the Scarlet King was coming back, but she didn't expect him to other her in a favourable way. "You won't be getting out soon, regardless."
Her body was upright in a matter of seconds. He was so painfully smug, the bands of grey in his hair glimmering under the kerosene lamplight. The sash across his body boasted multiple awards, all of which undermined by the triumphant smile across his lips at successfully getting a reaction. "What do you mean by that?"
"You're looking at a minimum of 20 years."
20…?
The tang of iron coated her teeth, gave her that burst of flavour she had been craving. She'd known better than to hope, yet it still struck her as obnoxiously harsh.
"You better pray that you stay pretty," he remarked, just to add salt to the barely scabbed wound, "or the General won't look at you twice again."
She made sure to remember every badge on that sash and the sneer on his face. The lack of name badge mattered little when faced with spite. "You should focus on being pretty, too." Her smile mimicked his like a canine's bared teeth. "Go and apply some mehndi to those white hairs, you old bastard."
At least only Cyno had the keys to her cell because she was sure that he would have brandished that baton attached to his belt with a renewed zest for life if he could get inside. Instead, he could only curse up a storm outside of her cell, all words of which fell on deaf, unbothered ears.)
"Do you know who this woman is?"
The painting he had done of her was rudimentary at best, and childishly crude at worst. Upon her almost violent refusal at taking a picture, and the Akademiya Kamera only capable of subar picturs with a moving subject, Cyno had to unleash his inner artist.
That was to say, he tried his best. His brush strokes could not hope to capture her looks, let alone those eyes that he could recognise from the intensity of her stare alone. Still, he hoped that she was somewhat recognisable to the people who lived around the area.
Most of the people had some idea, telling him that she often came to the markets to sell her wares and would leave by 5pm because her skin was sensitive to the sun. It was a strange thing to hear - that someone from the desert couldn't handle the heat of the golden sun, but he was hardly hung up on this.
"She hasn't come for a few weeks now," Ahmad the vegetable seller remarked, his thick eyebrows furrowing together. "Normally, she takes the stall next to Lubna Auntie and helps her throughout the day. The last time she was absent for this long was because she caught some illness from a Fontainian fish monger."
Cyno nodded solemnly. Foreign illness were nothing to laugh at. "Did she ever sell any canned knowledge?"
He shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of. The girl hates anything to do with the Akasha, and won't sell to anyone who's wearing one." A shrug punctuated the ironic observation; Cyno's Akasha had been quietly processin everything the whole time as a second pair of eyes. "Beggars can't be choosers, if you ask me. What those bastards at the Akademiya say has no use to me."
"Has she always disliked the Akademiya?"
Ahmad raised an eyebrow, looking him up and down in a way that made his skin itch. Shit- did he recognise him?
Then, he smiled, coming in closer with this smile on his lips that meant trouble, his neatly trimmed moustache twitching. "You're asking so many questions about her. If you have an interest, you'll have to talk about something other than the Akademiya, or you'll never get anywhere."
Cyno's mouth hung open. The merchant's smile grew wide until he clapped Cyno on the back, making him stumble forwards despite himself.
"Between you and me," he whispered. "She's a scary lady. I've never seen someone scare off so many trouble making eremites with just a stick, but I'm sure a handsome young man like you can tame the beast. Just say a few sweet words and grovel when you need to."
"Right," Cyno uttered with faltering confidence, "I shall keep that mind." These types of nosy old geezers would never listen if he denied it, and it was a battle he would not win without a loss of pride. "Was she a former student?"
"Definitely not. She said something about being a contractor for the murals in House of Daena, but she'd rather milk a cactus than be a student there."
The rest of his conversations were similar: people recognised her here and there, stated that her dislike for the Akademiya was obvious, and that she wasn't the type to bring trouble to herself for no reason (but not the type to ignore it, he noted). Most did not wish to entertain conversations for too long, and Cyno didn't push his luck.
With the sun starting to set, he approached a few others along the outskirts of the small market area to varying levels of satisfactory response. As his final attempt for the night, he approached the stall of an elderly woman who sold flowers on the verge of wilting despite the syrupy water they were perched in.
The florist whom had turned away less than a second after glancing at the painting, merely grunted.
Of course you have no idea, he thought to himself, people here only care about money.
The paper crumpled between his fingers in sudden horror; the curve of her replica's face scrunched into a further, deeper frown.
What was he thinking? Why was he thinking that?!
He knew he had no right to this woman's time, yet something so uncharacteristically rude had crossed his mind?
The taste in his mouth soured, any semblance of focus disappearing as his Akasha continued to scan the faces of unsuspecting people. Despite having weak access to the main data areas in Sumeru's rain forest hubs, it whirred in his ears as if trying to drown out all rational thought.
Cyno turned it off, a queasiness settling within his stomach that felt like it was inviting bile. His hand fumbled in his pocket before producing a pile of mora, buying the last few bundles of flowers she had for the day and leaving hurriedly after.
Maybe he needed to take some time off.
His eyes burned from the hours of carefully trawling through hundreds of canned knowledge capsules, the dendro energy staining his fingers a luminescent green. They piled up around him, translated into his akasha with information that he knew to be false - yet couldn't help but believe - and half truths mixed in with the intentionally underhanded commentary of desert life.
Beside it, a scroll of all the authors was unfurled. Rather than hundreds of names to match the volume of canned knowledge being produced, the same dozen names repeatedly showed up. Concentrating such a vast topic down into the hands of less than 20 people would introduce nothing but bias presented as fact - and the Sages that commissioned them knew this better than anyone else.
The inconsistencies made his head swim. 'King Deshret's Mausoleum II' had stated that The Greater Lord Rukkhadevata assisted in building the structures in the desert during their shared reign with the Flower Goddess, while 'Eremite Tacit Knowledge' claimed that the structures in the desert were not crafted until after the death of the Flower Goddess and the remaining two God Kings had split their domain into two. It was abundantly obvious that quality control was non-existent - and had no chance of being vetted when they, and dozen others, had flooded the market within months.
She had been right from the very beginning; he'd didn't know how he might look her in the face.
His Akasha was pushed to the side, the earpiece dull once it had disconnected. Without it, the fog that had seeped into the crevices of his brain began to alleviate, the haze that he hadn't realised was there was gone.
So that was it. The Akasha create dependency after all.
His audit was lengthy, his wrist aching with overuse, but he continued until the entire scroll of parchment was filled with perfect references and a wax seal of the General. However, even as he delivered it directly, he knew this was simply lip service. No crook ever willingly showed their hand.
Ultimately, his hands were tied.
(Another box of sweet, candied nuts lay just within the confines of her cell, pushed past the narrow bars and haphazardly placed. It took no long, nor hard thought to realise who they had come from, and, unlike before, she opened them right away. Only a foolish man wasted his money on a woman who was unperturbed by his efforts, but she'd reap the benefits without complaint.
The carefully wrapped paper was torn into jagged ribbons - tossed into the mess that the Matra had the audacity to call 'pillow filling'. The nuts were triple glazed, shiny to the touch and even tastier on the tongue. Half of her wondered if he might have poisoned it; the other half didn't care.
Under the first tray lay a letter, carefully folded and written on a piece of paper torn from a notebook. A small jackal drawing in the corner confirmed it as his.
Her tongue clicked. She still opened the paper.
'I have verified what you said. Although I cannot clear you of your crimes because there is evidence of it, I am working towards having you acquitted. I understand that you do not trust me, and I do not dare overstep by asking for it, but I hope that you can have some faith that you will not spend much longer in prison.
The state of academic integrity in the Akademiya is in a state I have never seen before; I am ashamed at what the Sages have been approving under my nose. I cannot share too much with you right now, though I can say that many of your theories are right. I wonder if you've had some insider training; Did you take any Akademiya sponsored projects?
I will come by within the week to speak to you. Your verbal response would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Once you have read this letter, please dispose of it carefully. I will send someone to bring you wet towels and a change of clothes. If you have any meal requests, please let the Matra know; I have instructed them to not refuse.
Yours Sincerely, Cyno.'
For a moment, she let herself stare at the perfect, cursive script. It was the kind only a scholar could have, elegant and refined through years of gruelling lectures and essays of above average quality. Then, she tore the letter up, erasing the small smile on her face as fast as it came.)
When Nayab came to him looking rushed off his feet, panting as though he had held his breathe until his lungs could bear not a second longer, Cyno paused his brisk walk to listen.
"General Cyno," he huffed, clutching onto the staff that had began to change colour where the salt of his skin had seeped into the atoms. "The Sages are pushing for execution for the young lady. I've tried to speak to her, but she refuses to say a word."
Where Nayab's fingers pressed against his spear, they only gripped tighter after delivering this news.
"Execution?" Cyno echoed, expecting to hear a crude laugh after this. The death penalty over something so lowly? "Are you mistaken?"
Nayab swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing. "No, General. Even I thought this was too severe but they are pushing for it on the grounds that the knowledge she destroyed can't be recuperated. They said 20 years originally but…" He trailed off, any contradiction pointless in the face of absurdity.
"None of what she has stolen is worth execution. They were low level capsules that are easily replaceable." Yes, he was well aware of knowledge being one of highest forms of capital - second only to mora - but it was not worth a human life. Never. "I will speak to them."
So he did, assigning his routine patrol to a nearby officer as he headed straight for the Grand Sage's office. Azar was not a man who welcomed unprompted visits: Cyno was not a man who cared for propriety.
Nonetheless, when Cyno knocked, he waited until he had heard an 'enter' before coming in to a stony face and a body sat too upright in his seat to be natural. "Cyno, what brings you to my office? Has something happened?"
Yes, he itched under his skin to say, something has happened. You are hiding things from me and expecting me to play the lolling-tongued dog.
Rather, he settled for something more amicable. "I have a few concerns I wish to bring forth."
The man folded his hands together, the illusion of full attention doing little to convince Cyno of his authenticity. "What are they? They must be troubling you if you've come to me firstly without arranging a meeting." The thinly veiled jab was almost laughable. Arrange a meeting so you can destroy evidence beforehand, he scorned.
If Azar thought Cyno cared about that, then the man didn't know who the hell he had hired. "Someone is attempting to override the Matra's ruling and sentence a woman to death over canned knowledge. We both know this is a gross overreaction, but I can't help but wonder why this sudden push."
Grey eyebrows furrowed together, Azar's frown lines only becoming more pronounced. "Is this the woman that stole and destroyed official Akademiya canned knowledge?" Upon Cyno's lack of reply, he leant back in his gaudy seat. "Cyno, Cyno, Cyno. You and I both know it is bordering a sin to destroy knowledge and conceal it, especially when we have taken the time to distribute it to the people of Sumeru. If we're lenient on this, then we have to be lenient on everything."
It took all the strength in his body to not react to the disgustingly condescending tone. "It is bordering, but it's not crossed the boundary. Killing a woman over some low-level capsules is asinine."
"If we don't have some sort of quality control, then why even have the Akademiya? We should let any lowbrow individual do whatever they please, is it?" Azar shook his head, as if reprimanding a child. "It's setting an example, Cyno."
"You don't set examples through murder."
The Grand Sage tsked. "The council can judge her fate. That's what the court system is for. I don't personally make these judgements."
"I am aware," Cyno gritted out. It was always like this. The man talked in circles like he had written his dissertation specifically on worming his way out of difficult conversations. "I am asking that the Sages do not interfere and escalate a sentence unnecessarily."
On the table, the sun shone through the stained glass panels, in smatterings of rainbow. They decorated the bare skin of his thighs, danced over his femoral artery. Cyno noticed Azar shuffling some documents out of his view. "Yes, yes. I'll tell them to keep your words in mind."
"Secondly, I submitted an audit into the academic integrity of what was written in those capsules; I found them to be bloated with half truths and unreferenced claims about Al-ahmar and the people of the desert." Azar avoided his gaze, choosing to shuffle and reshuffle a stack of documents that were similarly full of idle musings. "I haven't heard anything back for a week now, and I personally delivered it to your mailbox."
The man rose to his feet, hands behind his back with inflated importance. "I'm a busy man, Cyno, I can't answer everything within minutes." A week was hardly a minute, especially when he was reprimanded for taking more than three days to fill out and file paperwork. "The Sages personally vet all the canned knowledge before they are distributed. They wouldn't let anything subpar be published."
"Is that so?" Cyno muttered, unimpressed.
"In all honesty, it's better if you turn your attention on more pressing matters. The Sages are the highest level of authority, Cyno, we understand what should and should not be published." His laugh was grating, the kind that had never known any real mirth. "It's not the Matra's job to focus on what we're doing."
At this, Cyno stood up. "Are you suggesting you're above the law?"
Wrinkled hands raised in mock surrender. "I am saying that you are focusing on the wrong things. We are disciples of the Greater Lord and we share her vision for knowledge. We do not need supervision."
Knowledge his ass. He'd heard enough of this nonsense to know where he stood in the eyes of this man. In the end, the sanctity of Ma'at meant little to the Grand Sage that could order as he pleased, and it only sunk further beneath him when the one delivering it was a desert dweller.
"Alright. I will take my leave." Before I lose my patience and draw my weapon instead, he decided against saying.
His back was turned, only the echo of his name keeping him still. "Yes?"
"General Mahamatra, I have noticed that you aren't logging all your actions in the Akasha. I recommend you do not fall short of your duties in the future."
He held himself still - grateful that the tightness of his jaw was invisible to the Grand Sage. "Duly noted. Please excuse me."
The door slammed shut under its own weight.
As if he'd do anything of the sort.
Night had become thick in the Sumerun sky, the crescent moon high in the sky as Cyno headed into the prison. It was not a foreign sight, far from it, really, but it was not common for him to come so late.
The attending night duty staff welcomed him in, left when he dismissed them and said he would be stationed there for the night. They had little reason to doubt the word of the General Mahamatra, especially not with the loftiness of that title.
He only hoped they would face too much trouble when morning light broke.
Her name was soft on his tongue, whispered so softly that it might not have been uttered at all. It repeated, rolled over and stuck to the roof of his mouth, before she finally stirred and turned to him from underneath his gifted blanket.
Despite the finger against his lips, he knew she was dying to say something - anything - especially when the lock clicked loudly in the absence of prison murmurings. 'Don't speak,' he mouthed, his touch deft as he pulled the cloak around her body, the hood shrouding her visage. It was created as a backup, the kind thought of the tailor who had made the original jackal eared clock.
Nothing was taken with her aside from a thinner blanket, the other used to form a vaguely human like shape under the covers. No one would notice until it was too late, and they'd certainly not think to cast the blame on to him.
It wasn't until they were far away from the Akademiya's shroud that she finally let herself speak. The chill of the rainforest night settled against their skin, travelling up the hemp sleeves of their cloaks with every hurried footfall. "Are you letting me go?" she asked, almost afraid to say it too loud in case he changed his mind - dragged her back to that cell in a show of psychological warfare.
"Yes," he confirmed, fingers tightening on the sleeve as he rushed them along the outskirts of the city towards his home. "I have resigned from my position. The Akademiya are trying to cover something up, and I cannot investigate from within anymore. I know the Grand Sage and the Akasha is involved somehow."
"Resigned?" she repeated as if the word itself was completely foreign. Honestly, it was when used in relation to him. Even a month ago, he would have thought it some ill-advised fantasy. "Why?"
Her fingers brushed against his in a light pulse of warmth despite the frigid temperature. "They were using the Akasha to track me." A deep breath. "You were right," he confessed, too sheepish to look her in the eyes just yet. "The Akasha creates dependency. They wanted me to use it and log my actions so I would follow their orders without hesitation." Then, he paused. "I was acting like a traitor - not entirely of my own free will - but it was my actions, nonetheless. Please forgive me."
This once, he allowed himself to be a little avoidant and act as if he couldn't feel the pressing force of her infinite gaze against his profile. He didn't want to tackle what would stare him in the face, and he didn't want to know what beast would bare its teeth: whether it was triumphant or pitying.
"Won't they try to arrest you?" she questioned, derailing what he assumed would be the next line of conversation.
"Perhaps," he said before pausing to reconsider. "Most likely."
"I'm surprised you bothered with freeing me, then," she commented, bemused. "You made yourself a wanted criminal."
It was the complete opposite of everything he had embodied for so long, and he'd certainly only cemented himself as a hypocrite, yet he found that he didn't care at all. "I'm aware," he acknowledged with slight purse of his lips. "However, the law should prevent unnecessary punishment, not be used as a tool against people who are challenging the unjust. If I have to take the fall, I will take it."
A part of him expected something sarcastic, a snarky comment about how he was playing the martyr after being the cause of her troubles.
It didn't come.
"You'll be fine," she reassured, fingers gripping onto the hem of his sleeve. "The truth has a way of coming out no matter what. Grand Prick Azar will get his dues."
"Grand Prick Azar," Cyno uttered, admiring the unabashed disrespect. "You're right. I will bring him to justice."
She shook her head in disbelief. "You have such a one track mind."
His home was warm, a contained wood burner keeping the inside heated in his absence. He had packed just before he left, leaving a bag full of belongings he would take with him into the east of the desert. Beside it lay a smaller, leather pouch filled with mora. "This is for you." He pressed it into her palm, refusing to take it back when she all but threw it at him. "Use it to find somewhere safe to stay, but do not come near Sumeru City, Port Omos or Aaru village. There will be Matra dispatched everywhere. If you need to go home, take your things and leave within the day."
"Where are you going?"
"I cannot tell you."
Her hands were held open in surrender, the pouch dangling from the strings laced between her fingers. "Then you should stay away from anymore ruins, or I won't be there to save you."
"I'll do as you say."
"Hmph."
When silence fell between them, it wasn't as awkward as it was strangely charged. All these weeks he had only seen her clearly during their very first meeting, with the rest of the rest conducted under indirect lighting that cast unnatural shadows over her. Even now, the overhead light was harsher than the sun, drowned out the softer edges of her features save for her piercing gaze. He couldn't meet it for longer than a few seconds, his open palms swiping against the fabric of his shendyt.
"I will say"-she started, breaking the silence-"your sense of justice is very rigid. It can be admirable, but impersonal. The best of us are those who are the best to the less fortunate."
It stung, but it was true. "Justice is best when impartial."
"To a certain extent, yes, but impartiality can remove humanity." She shrugged lightly. The hood fell from her head. "For example, you can criticise the people of the desert for believing in Al-Ahmar's resurrection even when we all know that it is near impossible, however this ignores how the Akademiya are the ones sowing seeds of discord in the first place to create a rift between everyone. Fanaticism doesn't come out of nowhere, right?"
"I agree with you. The Akademiya has always had their prejudices, and I know it first hand, but that doesn't mean everyone in the system is corrupt. I was adopted by a former Sage, and I know with full confidence that the only thing he has been unjust to are his cucumber plants; they've been in a pickle." They both stared at one another without a word until Cyno cleared his throat. "You see, it's a double entendre because 'being in a pickle' means to be in trouble-"
"I got the joke," she interrupted him. "I didn't realise it was on purpose."
"Oh."
She gave a short, incredulous laugh. "Maybe I misjudged you. Only someone crazy could be the General."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's an observation."
Cyno nodded, his tongue poking his cheek. He'd never felt like more of an aimless buffoon than now-
Then, she reached into her pocket and took his hand. Thin, golden ribbon that had been carefully deconstructed and rewoven into a frail cat was placed into his palm. "I made this with the gift box ribbon. You can have it."
His fingers closed around it, already imagining it within Collei's pouch. "Thank you." A pause. "We should leave soon to get ahead."
"We should," she confirmed. "Will you return to the city?"
"If the circumstances are right, I will."
The door locked behind them. She moved to the left, Cyno to the right. "Then I will come back, too, and I expect a nice meal on your mora."
He certainly wasn't going to oppose that. "Do you have any dietary restrictions?"
"No. It only has to be tasty." Then she added, "and expensive."
Cyno's lips curled into the slightest smile. "Whatever you want."
One year later
His stomach was fit to burst, almost comically round as he tried to hide it under the shawl he had brought along. While it was doubtful anyone would notice, or even care since their own bellies were in a similar, pitiful state, he had an image to maintain - and a glutton wasn't included in frame.
However, Cyno couldn't help but be astonished at how much Paimon could eat. The little fairy ate more than three grown men combined, and still managed to fly without any wings.
"Ahhh," Paimon exclaimed, patting her tummy after a libertine burp, her smile accomplished. It was certainly an achievement to eat two sharing thali's by herself, he thought. "Paimon hadn't eaten this well in a while. It's so nice to relax after everything that's happened."
Murmurs of agreement followed from around the table, faces from the desert and rain-forest alike congregated upon Nilou's invitation. Cyno had initially thought of declining as he'd been inundated with work following the Lesser Lord becoming archon and his rejoining of the Matra; Tighnari's unimpressed sideways glare had him swiftly changing his mind.
For now, he wouldn't think of what mess lay in wait. A good celebration was deserved after the hell that everyone had endured for the last few months - with the goodness coming in the form of endless food.
He stood up once he heard drunken hiccuping and the announcement of another round of toasts. His stomach couldn't take anymore, and the sight of him groaning in overfed agony was not pretty.
Outside of the Grand Bazaar, the night was young. Stars twinkled above, the stickiness of a crowded space melting away with the breeze. The faint tang of sand and ouid was carried along it.
"Oh! Cyno!" The door opened and Paimon floated through towards him. "Traveller asked me to give you this." From almost thin air, Paimon brandished a sizeable box, her little face scrunching from having to hold it. "Take it quickly, it's heavy!"
He took it quickly. There was no sender. "Who gave it?"
"I don't know. She just said that it was from a shady woman in a jackal cloak, you know, like your hat." Paimon tapped her chin in thought. "Open it. It might be a trap."
He knew exactly who had given it, and he honestly couldn't rule out that it might be something unsavoury - even if the chance was slim. "Thank you," he said, giving her a grateful nod of his head before undoing the tape keeping the box together. Inside lay a limited edition Raiden Shogun TCG card, one he'd been chasing down for the better part of 6 months, and thick, decadent fudges from Fontaine. At the very bottom was a box of candied nuts.
"Do you know where the woman who gave this went?" Cyno asked, stomach churning with something sickening, something between hope and relief.
"Um, Traveller said she was near Katheryne. Maybe she's still there?"
"I see. Tell Traveller I said thank you." Paimon had barely lifted her little hand to wave before he was gone, leaving her baffled and muttering to herself about how he seemed eager.
It had to have been a few hours since she'd given the gift to the Traveller and the chances of her staying around were slim. Even so, he hurried over with the speed of a man possessed, the box clutched to his chest like he could push it into his heart and cradle it within him.
"Are you still here?" he called out into the still air. Even Katheryne had left for the night, the area devoid of anyone aside from the call of cicadas. "Where could you have gone?" Cyno murmured under his breath, only to hear giggling.
"Who are you calling for?" A shockingly familiar voice came from above him, his eyes catching sight of her leaning against the window sill of the nearby inn. Golden light lavished her from behind, shrouding her face in darkness. Cyno knew there was a smile on her face. "It's rude to be so noisy at night."
"Forgive me," he said, not meaning it at all. "It's good to see you again."
"I can't hear you from up here, say it again."
"It is good to see you again."
"One more time!"
Cyno suppressed an eye-roll. "Then meet me down here if you cannot hear."
Unsurprisingly, she heard that loud and clear since she appeared a few moments later. "You know, news travels fast. I knew the Akademiya was untrustworthy, but trying to instate a false god is beyond my imagination."
"Yours and mine," he agreed. "Azar and his minions were banished to Avidya Forest, so they are of no concern."
Her eyebrow raised. "Who decided that punishment? I'm sentenced to three weeks in a deplorable cell and they get a forest retreat?"
He shook his head. "I'd hardly call it a retreat, but it was the Dendro Archon's decision." A moment passed. "She is more benevolent than I am."
"What is the archon like?" she asked, eyes roving over his face so slowly that he felt self-conscious.
"She is kind and understanding," Cyno summerised, thinking that an abridged version would suffice for now. "She is certainly more open to change than the Sages. I cannot comment on a God's understanding, but I think she will adapt quickly to the needs of Sumeruns."
She listened dutifully, and he wondered what she might be thinking. If he might guess, it would be on how the relationship between the Akademiya and the desert would change. There was still a mountain to climb, and the summit was edging on the planes of Heaven, but Cyno had faith that Nahida might be the one to lead that expedition. "High praise," she said, finally.
He shuffled, fingers brushing against the tacky tape. "How did you know I wanted this card?"
"A birdy told me you're a TCG lover."
"Who tweeted?"
She chuckled at the - admittedly - terrible joke. "I asked the Chief Officer of the Forest Rangers. I heard he is close to you."
Huh. And Tighnari hadn't said a word to him. He would ask about that.
"Where did you find it?"
"I took a trip to Inazuma. Nice country, but I think the person I went with was a little… too much." She shook her head and sighed heavily. "It was a young man from Fontaine, and he was strangely obsessed with Inazuman women and light novels: called them exotic and innocent. I'd recommend going alone."
It was his turn to look disconcerted. "Sounds harrowing," Cyno sympathised, "if you wish, I can accompany you next time."
The moment he said that, he wanted to turn into a beetle and hide in the cracks of the stone beneath their feet. That stare of hers was no light punishment.
"As long as you don't moan when you eat a stick of dango, feel free."
"Rest assured, I wont." Cyno felt stilted, like the things he wanted to say were inconvenient yet consuming. Would she be annoyed with all his questioning? He had wondered how she was doing, if she was well. His worry had been for nought, not that he expected otherwise. "Will you be staying in the city now that you've been pardoned?"
"Why? You want to arrest me again?"
Heat blossomed along his neck. Cyno was suddenly grateful that his skin didn't blush. "No. In fact, I think you would make a great Matra. You have the tenacity and drive."
"I think I'll pass on your generous offer," she said, "I prefer my pottery and mural work, but let me know if there's any commissions you need doing."
"I'll keep you in mind." Some areas were in need of rework. "You didn't answer if you're staying in the city."
"For this month, yes."
Perfect. He could make some time in his schedule. "Then let's have dinner sometime soon - as expensive as you want."
Her smile was bright, eager. "Are you free tomorrow?"
For 1000 Long Years, My Jaws I Whetted; Today, I Hold Them Unsheathed Before You
Qian Kun x Fem Reader
Ancient China/Silk Road Era with Chinese Mythology. Historical Fantasy and Reincarnation AU. Strangers to Lovers. Immortal/Human
Explicit gore and violence; period typical attitudes (no overt sexism, don't worry)! religious conflict; dubious morality; exorcisms; cannibalism.
26k as of chapter 1/2 (chapter 2 will be out soon)
『 Heaven's will was absolute. Any transgressions would not be easily forgiven, be it by their own creation or otherwise. In the eyes of the realm above, all were equal and inequal.
Starvation for starvation. A millenia for a millenia.
If only Qian Kun knew repentance would become second in the throes of his immortal heart's desires. 』
It is very heavily implied that the reader is from a specific country since it was impossible to keep it ambiguous.
The sun has returned to the west mountains:
Deep and far rises the blue night sky.
Where does the past and the present end?
Thousands of years have been blown away by the wind,
The sands of the sea-bed are fused into rock.
Fish are still breathing bubbles under the Emperor's bridge.
Time has wandered its long road,
And the bronze pillars were long ago destroyed
By Li Ho (791-817). Translated by Ho Chih-Yuan
०वर्ष (0000)
The river banks of Feng Du moulded to his steps, blanched soil clinging for a moment before crumbling, falling.
Miasma hung heavy around the rigid red pillars of the temples. Only when he, Qian Kun, passed through, did the light find respite and illuminate what had not seen brightness for a thousand lifetimes. Behind him, the thick shroud returned. Infront of him, it melted away.
Kun hadn’t been summoned this time, or any other time that he visited Diyu (the realm of Souls), yet he found himself wandering the cities that lay within, situated on a layer above the enactment of judgement but in the centre of where it was ordained.
Here he could watch the silvery mist of souls pass through. They shimmered like pearls, iridescent despite the dark that shrouded all light. Only the river shone a molten gold and twisted through meanders that faded into canals of farther cities; the ferry never travelled that far. It didn’t need to
His golden paws folded under him, tucked neatly under his belly while his tails curled lazily around his hind legs - twitching occasionally when a blade of grass tickled the sensitive limbs. It was here that he liked to observe the rite of passage. Perhaps his hobby was one that was unfitting of a creature forged from the hands of Heavenly deities. Still, he would argue that the duties of the Pixiu included overseeing the essence of those who passed through.
Most Souls accepted what was to come. They obediently took their place on the sturdy bamboo boat, a vessel that was neither simple nor too decorated, and listened to the quiet sounds of liquid lapping against the hull. Some asked where they were: the majority already understood.
The ones that dared to ask were eased with a smile, the rowing pausing momentarily before the kindred ‘Grandma Meng’ took their hand.
‘You are moving on, my dear,’ she would say, ‘you do not need to fear. Whatever will come to you is what you deserve.’
Kun always found that turn of phrase to be quite vague.
Nonetheless, it always soothed their questions and he would watch them continue to drift with each stroke of the oar until it was lifted and anchored in its holster with practiced ease.
A golden pot perpetually bubbled to Grandma Meng’s left. Inside, the savoury broth was warm - never scalding. She would ladle a generous portion into a mahogany bowl and hand it over.
‘Once you are finished, you will be judged.’
They never hesitated to drink. Every last drop had to be swallowed.
From here, Kun could choose to follow Souls he found interesting and witness the work of the divine: their judgement.
Today, this routine was no different. He’d seen it thousands of times before, knew the process down to every subtle ripple of the river as the boat pushed through.
While Souls retained nothing of their corporeal features, it was not impossible to tell who from what. Feminine Souls were always a little lighter, more platinum than silver than masculine ones. The immature would shimmer more vibrantly, a certain sparkle to them that hadn’t been dulled by the motions of life.
Right now, it was a masculine Soul.
His tails swished lazily as a soft snort left his snout.
“Where am I?” They questioned.
As always, the answer was the same.
The Soul shifted, glimmering restlessly as they held onto the edges of the bowl and drank it all with an urgency that proved unusual.
He got to his feet with an ignited sense of curiosity and followed behind the wisp of silver as it travelled through the system of the city. It came to a stop at the centre of the city, materialising in front of the ornate scales and the feathered pen that would determine their fate.
The podium itself was carved from premium jade, each curve and contour of the engraved design created by the talent of the celestial. Images of the river, of the capital, Youdu, and the Heavenly gardens that Kun called home were depicted with faultless clarity.
The Soul could not see him as he could see it.
Kun stood beside the podium and read the details that emerged with every precise brush of onyx ink. Details changed and adjusted for the individual whilst adhering to the rigid structure that all must follow: ‘Reincarnation cycle number. Noteworthy deeds. Filial Piety. Misdemeanours. Final Sentencing.’
It was with this structure that all creatures with consciousness were judged. During life, unlawful actions may remain unwitnessed and unpunished but in this realm, under the ever-watching eyes of all and nothing - the divine and the damned - every action will be accounted for.
This cycle was not new to Kun. He understood it like he understood the clink of coins in a purse, like the taste of good fortune that forever lingered on the tip of his forked tongue. It was by the hands that governed these innate laws that he was created.
‘He has struck his starving child dead and consumed him for sustenance. His until-death repentance is sincere and will be taken into consideration.’
For a moment that lingered for a touch too long, Kun could not believe his eyes. He blinked. Plumes of smoke barrelled from his nose and melded with the acrid dark unique to Diyu. Surely, this could not be-!
‘500 cycles are to be completed in the 11th layer.’
A mere 500 iterations…
The ink that adorned the silk was sourced and processed from the bark of the Heavenly tree rooted in the utmost layer of Tian. Any suggestion of a mistake regarding this was akin to blasphemy.
Yet… Kun was unable to forbid himself from thinking as such.
Humans had been sculpted from clay - every feature lovingly crafted and shaped into perfection through the vision of their creator. However, like clay, they embodied the imperfections of their material. There would always be cracks, hairline splinters in the ones that could not shoulder the pressure. Faults may be glazed over but their scars would not fade - such was the folly of allowing free will.
To him, this was the worst of mankind.
Murdering a child was a crime so abhorrent, so decidedly evil that the punishment of being slowly, suffocatingly crushed under the weight of stone boulders was almost too merciful. Even if bones splintered, broke through skin in haphazard manners and punctured airless lungs, taking a life that had no chance to mature beyond the nest of their parents made this consequence too light.
Kun did not see sufficient atonement. A single week of repentance was not enough.
He was a Heavenly creature - the protector of Souls and good fortune. If he did not seek justice for the Soul of this child, he should not dare to align himself with righteousness.
He stepped forward, shadow eclipsing the podium, and usurped the pen. For a moment, it resisted - bound by principle - until he tugged again and it relented.
His tails held the pen tightly.
‘Additional 500 cycles within the 7th layer must be completed.’
Layer 7: For those who have killed dishonourably, a mountain of sharpened knives that begins from the deepest floor of Earth’s ocean and concludes at the very edge of Heaven’s lowest layer must be climbed.
Kun stepped back, relinquishing the pen.
It hovered and analysed what had been added. Finally, it confirmed what was written with a flourish and a stamp of the Jade Palace to conclude.
The next Soul appeared.
He extended his wings, the crimson tipped feathers catching the stagnant air before he was airborne. With every beat of his wings, the breeze became clearer, fresher. His body was not bound by the constrictions of the realms below, as was clear by how he had graced the gardens of his home within seconds.
With a shake of his body, he rid himself of the last traces of melancholy and began to ponder on how he should spend the rest of his day.
I have not visited Dongtian in quite some time. The grottos are supposed to be quite beautiful at this hour.
Ink spilled from the end of his tails, marrying the perfect blade of grass that it fell upon.
Underneath him opened a chasm.
What followed was a sensation so blinding that Kun could only scream - beg for mercy that he was not afforded. Fur ripped from tender tissue - muscle torn from bones. The tendons of his heels were severed, the taste of his own blood so foreign and so foul that he thought it akin to drinking sewage-
He could not breathe.
For the first time in his long life, he was experiencing pain.
Only seconds ago, his wings had the authority to pass through the heavens and let him nestle amongst the clouds. Now, every single bone within them was shattered and mangled. They contorted, twisting inside out until he could not distinguish feather from flesh.
Golden blood rained down on Earth as he plummeted with no recourse.
Falling. Falling. Falling.
He hit the ground.
Crusted blood flaked off his skin when he finally found the strength to sit up. It dripped slowly from the wounds that had yet to scab, dribbled like liquid stars over the blades of sunburnt grass that had been flattened by his body.
Kun crawled, his scraped knees unable to withstand the pressure of holding his entire body. He crawled, and crawled, and crawled with a lameness that had him thinking that he had been cast into his own circle of hell - damned to drag his limbs behind him for a reason unbeknownst to him.
The pool of condensation was murky, vastly different to the sublime clarity of heavenly water bodies. In those, it was as if he had been looking into a mirror - able to see the powerful face of a dragon born from hardship, and the rigid body of a lion that moved with deadly swiftness.
Now… he saw features he did not recognise.
A human visage stared back at him, almost offensive in its foreignness. Kun was not a human, had never considered himself to be within the same realm of classification. His essence was light and justice - fortune incarnate. Being human was the antithesis of all he had groomed himself to be.
Yet, these big brown eyes reflected back at him, bore into the frayed nerves that pulsed rhythmically.
Not all had changed, evidently. The antler on the right side of his head remained as it always had. All his teeth remained elongated and sharp, poking out from under his lips to graze against warm toned skin.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for his wings.
Once broad, the wingspan six times the size of his body, they now hung limply at his back. The feature that he had treasured the most was destroyed. Each hour he had spent meticulously preening himself was in vain, his efforts tangled within the mess of blood, cartilage and bone.
There was no restoring them. (He didn't want to admit it). Without them, he could not fly home.
His fingers trembled as they reached out towards the sky, the cloudy endless expanse too far out of his grasp. These mangled limbs would not carry him back, and these foreign ones would not aid him. There he lay, cast from the heavens for a transgression that he was not privy to.
Was it so easy to be exiled? To be stripped of all he had known and live as the ‘other’?
What dare he do other than plead, extend and stretch his five fingered hand for the faintest touch of hope?
It was fruitless.
Moisture seeped into the back of his clothes, the beautiful silken hanfu stained with soot and dew. Fabric clung to his skin - skin that felt so much more frail, so much more mortal.
Kun wobbled on his feet, grass and mud squelching between his toes in a manner so unpleasant he winced. Every stagger and stumble propelled him forward, along the barren expanse of the hills that laid out before him.
Faintly, the thought that even Diyu was more prosperous crossed his mind.
No matter how far he walked, how many times he limped towards the endless horizon, he found that he could only go so far, doomed to circle the same thousand acres of land: barren, untilled and operable.
Days and nights passed overhead, light filtering through the sparse branches of the trees. It was a small kindness that he could not feel the blistering cold of the night, that he could lay beside the stream and see the ripples of water - however less magnificent than that of the gardens.
Though, it did little to quell the wrath that raged within him.
How was he, a being embodying all things holy, cast down to this realm with no respite? No warning nor reason? And why could he only reach so far before that same decrepit and listless hut fashioned sloppily from clay and sticks marred the skyline?
After 3 days and 3 nights of wandering, he found himself at its door.
No longer was he unsteady on his feet. The wounds of his wings had begun to scab over.
The door yielded with the lightest touch, crumbling at the splintered hinges. Inside, the odour of raw dirt and mildew overpowered. It was hardly big enough to house any animal, yet the bed of hay and feathers that rested at the furthest left wall spoke of this being a human residence.
‘What a pity,’ he could not help but think, ‘to live in such dismal conditions.’
A scroll too neat and too proper stood out sorely against the backdrop. Despite sitting on a table embedded in dust, it remained clean and delicate. There was no resistance when he unfurled it.
‘Qian Kun.
Your act of arrogation toward the ruling of Souls is certainly unjust. You have damned a Soul to further 500 cycles of turmoil for a reason that was neither discussed nor expressed. Your place lies within the 3rd layer of Heaven - of which does not give you the authority to overstep.
As all things are judged, you will be, too.
Your constitution is unique, hence, your punishment will reflect this. For the undue suffering you have signed on, you will toil the lands for 1000 cycles and reap what the Soul could not. Only when the Soul has passed their 1000 cycles, you shall also be forgiven.’
So, that was it. How cruel.
He was being punished for overstepping, irrespective of how justified it was. A parent who devours their own child was not deserving of gentleness in his eyes, for they had not extended it to their own kin. Sympathising with the child was deserving of exile, was it? He could not forgive this.
He shouted until his voice was hoarse, held the scroll in his tight fist until crescent moons from his clenched fists blossomed in his palms.
There was no answer (and, deep inside, he knew that there would not be one for 1000 long years).
१००वर्ष (0200)
The presence of fresh dirt was hard to forget. It was pervasive, clinging to all that it soiled with a pungence that he could only be rid of through scrubbing with dried honey locust seeds and leaving it under the sweltering sun.
He did not pause. Rather, he worked in spite of the mud that thickened on the soles of his shoes and rooted into the hem of his oversized clothing. At first, he had tried to work in his hanfu but no amount of hubris could deny the ruin that the fabric underwent and it became obvious that tilling in larger, hemp clothing was more suitable.
Fortunately, time was unlimited and whatever hours he didn’t spend outside was spent on either sewing or working on the abode he had built. And, after two hundred years of work, he might dare to call it somewhere adjacent to home.
Kun knelt by the upturned soil, dropping seeds that he’d collected from nearby plants. If there was one thing he desperately missed, it was the sprawling gardens that greeted everyone the moment they stepped foot within. Heaven had flowers that would never grace the dirt of the mortal realm, the kind that glowed a gorgeous pink in the day and luminescent teal come night. Such flowers could not survive on the tumultuous level of nutrients here; he would be surprised if they sprouted at all.
So, he settled for expansive orchids of fruit trees and meadows of flora that he had cultivated throughout the seasons. The animals that he’d nurtured in his boredom seemed to take to the surrounding nature, and he could enjoy some sort of company amidst the silence that otherwise dominated. Mostly, they had migrated by themselves and been incentivised to stay. He did not mind: he was far fonder of them than humans.
Gloved hands patted the mounds of soil down, continuing along the dozens of rows before he rose to his feet before watering each plot. They would take four days to sprout seeds and within a few weeks they’d become saplings.
In the distance, one of his precious cats, Gui, wandered out of the door with her tail swaying leisurely behind her. Her mewls were soft, too spoiled to put any volume behind it because she knew he would tend to her every beck and call.
She was right.
With a clap of his hands, the excess dust fell into the wind. The gloves were dropped and he came closer, scratching under her chin and stroking her tortoise-shell patterned fur. Her purring was loud, vibrating through the skin of his hand before her nose pushed against his palm.
“How greedy you are,” Kun chided, tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth. “Gui. This entire orchid may be harvested for your appetite, and you will still nudge me for more before it’s settled in your stomach.”
Gui meowed as if in agreement.
“Hm. Come this way.”
Her little legs followed at his feet into the timber and brick house, the bamboo floors glistening from the coat of oil he’d varnished them with. In their brief journey, the other two cats, Yue and Hua padded over - intelligent enough to know that once their master was headed to the kitchen, their stomachs would soon be full.
Satisfied with one dried fish each, they tended to themselves and cleaned up every bone and scale.
No matter how short their lives were, Kun found a certain fulfillment in caring for them. They were gentle creatures that scarcely begged for attention and didn’t withhold affection; he far preferred them to dogs. He’d housed a pekingese dog, a creature so small that he wondered how it hadn’t died partway in its climb up the hills, and vowed never to do so again. It was a needy thing, whimpering when he was away and barking when he was near. Though, its one redeeming quality was how obedient and lively it was.
Kun continued his work outside, leaving the felines to their treat. The front garden would not remodel itself.
It was as he worked, arranging white stones along the border of the plants, that a thick, putrid stench wafted toward him.
Yet another? This was becoming a far too common occurrence!
Kun thought to ignore it and let it fester - just until he had finished his work. There were only a few meters left for him to decorate and then-
The panicked bleating of his goats had him dropping all stones unceremoniously.
How bothersome. A place so remote shouldn’t have a problem with malevolent spirits and miasma - there were no humans around to stir such things. And somehow, he had seen more of them manifesting along the borders, disturbing his livestock and killing the flora he’d laboured for.
Yes, there were the one or two travellers that he saw making their way across using the paths at the very back of his domain, but they were hardly enough to justify the trouble he was having to quell. Maybe they’d passed away along the route and their essence was stuck in a state of limbo…
Either way, it was not his concern.
This one was particularly shapeless. It clung to the fence, oozing along the wooden posts in a coagulated, purple mass. The skin trembled as it moved, shivering and pulsing with every slow inch along the ground towards the bleating goats.
Decay filled his nose, catching in the back of his throat. A grimace crossed his face when it trudged towards him.
Bones dislocated. Joints cracked and popped. His mouth opened, jaw unhinging from the taut corners with his forked tongue unfurling - flickering in the air to taste the level of toxins. Rows of sharp, pearlescent teeth shone in gruesome warning, the soft hum at the back of his throat drawing it closer… closer...
Kun swallowed it whole the moment it fell into a lull. The taste was sour in the moment but washed away moments later.
It seemed to have been festering for a while, only now growing large enough to try and claim one of his animals - as if he would ever let such a thing happen.
Kun turned to his animals, making sure that they had their food and were not injured before returning to his stones.
As was his life for the last two centuries - this routine he had cultivated out of nothingness and the knowledge that he could not stew in filth for millenia. Perhaps by the end of it, he would see the rise and fall of all the earth around him, or maybe it would stay the same as it always had. He knew every inch of soil, stream and road, what species could prosper and what would wilt.
The only thing he didn’t understand, and didn’t care to, was the occasional trotting of humans passing by. They never came closer, and he half wondered if they were able to perceive him.
Regardless, Kun would see it from beginning to end, and he would do it in the now peaceful quiet of this mountainous land.
३३३वर्ष (0333)
How strange.
The influx of malevolent energy had been surging the past few years for a reason that he hadn’t been able to understand until very recently.
The number of humans that travelled along the dirt road had steadily increased from one a year to two, perhaps three, and now - all of a sudden - it had become tens of people per week. Of course, there was a reason that Kun was not privy to. Still, it was bothersome to continuously exorcise the amalgamations of resentment and scum.
“Gezi,” he addressed his grey cat, a descendant of his late Gui. “Stay inside for now, my sweet.”
She mewed in a tone so achingly similar to her great grandmother’s, her paws under her body as she resigned herself to another languid nap. Good, he thought, he didn’t want her to be caught in any misfortune.
Kun closed the door, hand brushing against the protection talisman he had hammered into the thick red wood.
This odour was pungent, like the decay of rotting meat that had been left to sit in its own melted fat and juices. Kun’s nose twitched, acclimatising to it.
The source resided at the path - just as expected.
Even so… he’d never seen one so large.
Purple swallowed the leg of a man, digesting it with crimson oozing from every orifice. The man’s face was waxy, pale with perspiration that glittered along his forehead. If he didn’t have the ability to sense the fragility of a Soul, then he’d have thought the man as good as dead.
They spoke in a language unfamiliar and unheard of to him. They were talking about him, looking towards the stranger in clothes far different than theirs and an expression that told nothing.
“You… help?” One of them managed to ask, tones sharp and grating to his ears though understandable.
Kun simply nodded.
The faint shimmer of glamour glistened in the air, unrecognisable to them as anything other than the catchings of sunlight. It masked the way his jaw split open, how his skin stretched over every bone and muscle with enough strain to tear. This was his small mercy to them - that they did not witness the true horror of exorcism and the nature of what was consuming their companion.
This one lingered on the way down, as if trying to crawl back up his esophagus.
It dissipated into nothing before it reached his stomach. The muscles of his mouth stitched back together, presenting a normal, familiar, humanoid figure.
“He will recover,” Kun informed, words stilted and unwelcoming; they did not notice.
Their friend was cradled, held in their arms before placed gently on the cart with a bed of straw amongst the tawny bags.
“Thank you! Thank you, Mister!”
Coins pressed into the palm of his hand despite his reluctance to accept. They would not let him return it, and he thought it better to accept than to argue with foreigners. There were plenty of uses for melted down metal, after all.
He turned to return home. The job was done.
The horses and cart drew into the distance and out of bounds. Kun made his way along the path, intending to branch off closer to the house when something called out.
“Mister! Mister!”
Midway through his step, he paused. The inflection of this voice was unlike anything he had ever heard. An accent thickened it, similar to the men he’d just bid adieu, yet it held this feminine lilt he’d only experienced one before when dealing with the spirits of Heaven. The skin between his thick eyebrows pinched together.
“Please help,” she pleaded, countenance shadowed by the hood that covered her eyes. The cloak covered her from head to toe, simple floral embroidery decorated the hemlines. However, the most striking aspect was the thick, heady scent of aromatic spices that clung to her body.
Hadn’t he dealt with enough humans already? His only option was to relent.
“What is the matter?”
“Come this way.” With a small gesture of her jingling hand, he followed her lead. Kun did not stare unduly at her, his gaze resting at her feet so he could see where she turned and the pace of her steps so he would not overtake. However, the soft tinkling of her steps were hard to ignore, the flicker of jewellery against her ankle briefly catching his attention. “Here. They are with blight.”
Ah…
The scene was filthy, the remnants of resentment having faded away but the effects lingered. Men laid with opened eyes and gangrened limbs, shock etched into the rigid muscles of their faces. They had been caught at a weak moment and paid the ultimate price.
“There’s no saving them. They have passed on.”
She hummed in soft acknowledgement. “Please help me bury. I will compensate.”
All arguments he had were swallowed, kept lodged in the soft spot within his sternum. Had it been a male, he may have been less inclined but it was a young woman. Despite adhering to different laws and social dynamics in his home, he inhibited a male body and understood that he held an advantage of strength.
“No need. I will help you.”
“Thank you. I created burial sites.” Her hand lifted as she motioned towards the plots of land she’d painstakingly carved, the more delicate fingers sore from the manual labour. She had accomplished the hard part with only a shovel that lay propped against the cart he presumed was hers.
Did she have no companion?
“Is your escort elsewhere?” Kun asked, uncharacteristically curious. In all 333 years he had resided on the moral plane, he had yet to see a woman - and even then, he was well aware that they did not travel without a male present.
“Yes. He is ahead.” So they had separated.
The bodies were cold, warmed only at surface level by the sun that had begun to set. The cloth wrapped gently around them, covering their dignity. In his arms, the bodies were light.
He did not waver because of their weight, or the dangling limbs that caught in his robes. Rather, it was from the subtle frown of her lips.
Was the way he handled them displeasing?
“Are you acquainted with them?”
“I am not,” she replied. “I happened upon.”
“Are there certain things you want me to do, Miss?” Kun persisted, unwilling to unintentionally disrespect a body. “I will follow your lead.”
“No. This is enough.”
He obliged, placing them within the graves. When he moved to the next, she covered them with soil, patting it down smooth with her bare hands.
The actions were done in silence - no idle chatter amongst them. Orange turned to hues of pink and purple, darkening until the last rays of the sun dissolved into inklings of night.
The last of the three men had been tended to.
“Mister. Your compensation.”
A small pouch of coins was held out; Kun accepted wordlessly.
Her companion had not yet returned and the night would only deepen. Leaving a woman without protection left behind a heavy feeling, and he found his tongue moving of its own accord.
“Will he not return for you?”
“He will,” she confirmed. By now, her entire face was shrouded, only the faintest shadow proving that she was tangible, living. “Does Mister know a- how to say…?” Her tongue clicked against her teeth. “Inn?”
Not for a long while.
“No.”
Once more, the chiming commenced as she moved her arms. “I see. Then, thank you.”
Swaying stalks of grass tickled his legs, the midnight breeze and beginning of cricket chirping. Something within him was churning, unable to let this woman go without being certain of her safety. Humans could not see in the dark, and many of the creatures that lurked within its shrouds knew this.
When her stallion stood to its full height, snorting and stomping its feet, Kun could not bear it a moment longer.
“Leaving in the dark is a death sentence.” When he stepped forward, he took care to keep a distance from her. “I have a cabin at the Southernmost section of my land. Your stallion and cart may be left in the stables.”
She did not move.
“Miss,” he implored. “I harbor no desire to harm you. Should your escort come to look for you, I will direct him to you. But I cannot, in good conscience, let a lady leave without offering a safe bed for the night.” What followed was more silence, punctuated only by the everlasting sounds of the night - a hum that he turned to background noise until this moment where it had become harrowingly loud.
Then, she took the reins of her voice and gently tugged her horse towards him. “You are most kind, Mister. I believe you.”
During the last century, Kun had begun construction on a smaller version of his home at the base of the land. At first, it had been a passion project, mostly to give him an idle hobby that was in close proximity to the stream. Fashioned in a style emulating his own dwelling, the little cabin would be comfortable - if a little small. He came to a standstill in front of it, lighting a fire in the pit. The flames flickered, their shadows dancing to its rhythm.
“When you lock it from the inside, it cannot be opened from the outside,” Kun informed her, hoping to reassure any doubts. “I will take you to the stables.”
Her voice was stark against the quiet backdrop, almost startling him when it broke through. “It is only you?”
What was the purpose of her question? “I live here by myself, yes.”
“It is so far from others.”
Well… he was aware. Kun had spent centuries conversing only with animals and himself. Humans were not interested in aimless chatter with a creature far removed from themselves, similarly to himself.
“It is.”
There was nothing else said on the matter.
The horse brayed, quietened by a gentle rub of its muzzle and the guidance into a warm, wooden stable. Her cart was left in the far corner.
“This is board.” Copper coins reflected in her palm.
“Board?” He repeated, unsure of what it meant. “Keep your money. I have no use for more.”
“You don't want it?”
“No.”
“I insist.”
Kun turned to leave, her figure standing against the light of the flames before she entered the cabin.
Humans were strange beings, and human women even more so.
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For 1000 Long Years, My Jaws I Whetted; Today, I Hold Them Unsheathed Before You
Qian Kun x Fem Reader
Ancient China/Silk Road Era with Chinese Mythology. Historical Fantasy and Reincarnation AU. Strangers to Lovers. Immortal/Human
Explicit gore and violence; period typical attitudes (no overt sexism, don't worry)! religious conflict; dubious morality; exorcisms; cannibalism.
62k (2/2 chapters).
『 Heaven's will was absolute. Any transgressions would not be easily forgiven, be it by their own creation or otherwise. In the eyes of the realm above, all were equal and inequal. Starvation for starvation. A millenia for a millenia. If only Qian Kun knew repentance would become second in the throes of his immortal heart's desires. 』
It is very heavily implied that the reader is from a specific country since it was impossible to keep it ambiguous.
Uncannily bright,
The moon too
Has no place to hide,
Crashing through the rafters
As it leaves the sky—
My absent friend
I begin to dream in your colours.
- By Da Fu (712-770). Translated by Wong May
d९८३वर्ष (0983)
“You speak as if you’ve come out of ‘The Story of Yanxi Palace’,” the middle aged woman declared, baffling Kun who had simply asked if she needed any help. The woman had been heming and hawing whilst dawdling around the edges of his estate as though she were lost, only stopping to pluck some of his carefully planted flowers.
Still, he had overlooked that. If a woman wanted to pick some flowers, he had no qualms. But, it was how she stared at him when he approached in good faith, peered at him from under the brim of her ridiculously large brimmed hat and looked him up and down - that had him wondering if he was the one misinterpreting things..
“Pardon me?”
The lady made a noise he had never heard escape from a human until now.
“Are you an actor?” She asked, continuing to stare at him with eyes reminiscent of a raven. “Are you filming something here?”
“I’m not sure that I follow ,” Kun said, syllables slower than usual. “What is ‘The Story of Yanxi Palace’? Is this a popular book or poem?”
Now, the woman moved a hand to her mouth, covering it as though he’d offended at least three generations of her ancestors. “Are you joking?”
“I can assure you, Miss, I am not.”
“Your generation-! You’re all too caught up with watching ridiculous dramas about CEO’s and evil Mother-in-laws. You don’t even recognise the classics,” she exclaimed with such passion that Kun tried his hardest to understand. Unfortunately, making sense of this woman was beyond his capability. “Are you married?”
Quite obviously, engaging in any conversation was redundant. “Miss,” he implored, “do you require any help?”
She held onto the flower, clutching it within her tight first before sniffing. “No.”
“Then I shall leave you be.”
Really, he could only shake his head and move on with his day. Over the centuries, humans had only become stranger and more incomprehensible. Their speech had changed into something more garbled and lax, slowly losing the more refined manner of speech over the years. The change always felt stark, as though he were stuck in time while the world continued to spin - every small comfort of his had become unrecognisable outside of his bubble.
Travellers had become scarce, replaced by those who called themselves ‘tourists’ and ‘visitors’. Occasionally, a roaring, hulking thing of metal and pungent fumes would tear by, rumbling the ground underneath without any explanation. There was no miasma, yet it felt unnatural as it shot past at unprecedented speeds.
“Dian,” he called out, returning to the gates of his home and past the blossoming gardens, “Dian, my darling, where are you?”
A siamese cat jumped out from the bushes, her face wet from burying her face in the pond and trying her hand at eating the koi (of which he had haggled with a tourist for). What a silly cat, he thought affectionately, letting her jump into his arms and nuzzle against his face, the koi are big enough to eat you.
She purred the loudest out of all the cats he’d ever raised, almost vibrating when she was held, and she was certainly the clingiest - always desperate to be near him and howling when he was gone for too long.
Kun hardly minded. It was comforting to have her curled up against him, to hear a purr as he worked on his usual hobbies. While everything around him eroded and fell, he had remained steadfast in the mountainside he called his.
Dian nosed at his clothes, trying to find a treat that he didn’t have. “You greedy thing,” Kun muttered, putting her down so he could toss her a dried chunk of fish. “All of you cats have been greedy. Almost a thousand years and your appetite never changes,” he continued to mutter as Dian ate with gusto.
Almost a thousand years…
Kun exhaled.
He had found it best to not count the years; the ache had never truly gone away. Whatever was left of his sentence, he would serve it dutifully and with humility.
९८९वर्ष (0989)
Smoke billowed from his pipe, the heady scent of tobacco lingering with every puff. He inhaled, letting it fill his lungs with no effect, before exhaling again. When he had been gifted some foreign plants a few centuries ago, the man had told him it was a new, foreign import from America's. Where that was, he had no idea nor desire to find out, but it left a warm buzz in his chest that mimicked a nightshade he would occasionally chew the leaves of in Heaven.
The day was warm, and easy, birds chirping overhead and occasionally pecking at the pile of seeds he had left out. He’d made a game out of watching them, counting the new species that would migrate out of the region and drawing them with varying accuracy.
Today was nice, he mused, a typical day where he spent a good portion of his day doing nothing but observing. That was all these mountains had to offer - a tedium he forced himself to find comfort in.
In the moments that his mind went astray, he wondered if he would ever miss this land that he had so painstakingly inhabited. He always concluded that no, he would not miss being cast into isolation, but the memories that he had made over the years.
Kun exhaled, leaning back against the tree stump with his pipe between his fingers.
Then, his eyes caught some movement amongst the shrubbery. A cream hat bobbed in and out of the green, their face obscured by the shadow of the brim.
He languidly reached for another piece of perfectly ripe mango, eyes never leaving their target. How can one person carry such a large bag? It was almost devouring them; Kun could only imagine how sweaty they must have been underneath it.
They held a black box to their eyes, lingering on different things with no rhyme or reason. How bizarre. Humans had certainly become more eccentric over the years with their creations and hobbies. Some of their things were fascinating, but most of them he saw no use for. What use was there to ‘innovate’ on what already worked well?
Still, he watched with curiosity as they continued to skip from place to place with the box lifted to their eye or held in their hand. If they came closer, he would ask them what it was.
Another sliver of mango was pushed into his mouth. A buzzard came to rest at his side, its head cock as it observed him with beady eyes. Kun snorted, a plume of smoke escaping his nostrils: the buzzard blinked and began to preen itself.
His attention shifted back to them once more.
They moved like a hummingbird, light on their feet and excitable. Somehow, the weight of their luggage did not hinder them.
Kun stood up with lightning speed. “Don’t move!”
Their head turned at his shout; they came to a halt a second too late.
He ran down from his post, descended within seconds but they had already fallen down the ravine - its insidious drop hidden by overgrown vines. An earthquake had split the earth open and shifted the horizon, left behind a cruel accident waiting to happen.
And it had, in his lapse of awareness, claimed a victim.
They lay at the bottom, eyes closed, blood trickling onto the unforgiving stone. Miraculously, they landed on their back and was saved from breaking their spine in two. Only, Kun doubted they were forgiven of other serious injuries.
Air whistled as it dragged through his teeth, the climb down into the ravine precarious. Their leg bent backwards in an unsightly angle, broken and in need of attention. All he could do was cuss himself between every other thought.
“Are you awake?” He tried.
No response.
“Can you hear me?”
Silence mocked him.
The hat tilted. His nose twitched at a familiar smell.
He almost fell back.
A face he never dared dream of seeing again lay in his arms, nestled like a babe in their mother’s tender hold.
Was he hallucinating? Had this batch of tobacco been unknowingly poisoned and he was seeing illusions of his deepest desire?
Her visage was unmistakable. Kun could not forget it no matter how hard he tried. Not once in over 600 years had her memory faded in his mind. Not a thought of her was free of regrets and the bitter dream that their story could have been different somehow, someway. He had painted, sketched and embroidered each of her features until his hands recreated them without conscious effort.
How could this be?
Those same round cheeks, the memorable slope of her nose, those lashes that fluttered against her cheeks. Even the piercings were a one to one match. All of it was as he knew it - was haunted by it.
His touch was feather light, trembling while trying to ease her arms out of the straps so he could hold her better. If he could lift her back into daylight, he could better assess her injuries.
Kun swallowed, the lump in his throat unbearable as he held out his hand, hesitated, before opening her mouth. Her tongue had not blocked her airway.
His arms wrapped under her back, cradling her as he listened to each shallow breath. For now, she was alive.
“Do not fear,” he reassured despite the tsunami that had come crashing ashore. “You are safe with me.”
Through the thicket, Kun climbed. Her hat shielded her face from stray branches and he kept her leg supported. Any further damage could mean amputation - and that was the last thing he wanted to do to a human (to her).
Still, as he walked with this weight in his arms, he was uneasy. His eyes stung at the glimpses of this woman.
This wound would never heal. He would live in a perpetual cycle of countless scenarios that would never come to be. Kun had accepted it as such long ago.
However, this was more akin to a vicious stabbing than picking at a raw, unseen scab.
The pain he’d managed to suppress erupted all at once, his mind and heart disbelieving while his eyes swore that he may only witness the truth. They bore into her image, scrutinised the trickle of warm, drying blood that tainted her skin.
My mind is playing unkind tricks, he soothed himself, her birthday is near.
The grip on her body did not loosen. Kun did not dare look down again until he had reached his abode and could safely put her down.
It was with an unfamiliar tang of nausea that he worked, the mango sickly sweet at the back of his throat as it rose again. The Pixiu swallowed; he did not pause in his care.
Many animals had broken their limbs in similar situations. Hence, he had become talented at dressing their injuries and straightening jagged bones. Yet, he could not help but tremble when he touched her - dared not brave a glance at her face as he fashioned splints and tightly wrapped linen around its perimeter to straighten the obscene angle.
His love unloved was long gone. Her body buried and resting where his feet were forbidden to take him. He rubbed his eyes raw, itching to remove the veil of poison and heartache that had undoubtedly contaminated his vision.
Despite this, the woman before him, injured and concussed, wore her delicate skin.
For 1000 Long Years, My Jaws I Whetted; Today, I Hold Them Unsheathed Before You
Qian Kun x Fem Reader
Ancient China/Silk Road Era with Chinese Mythology. Historical Fantasy and Reincarnation AU. Strangers to Lovers. Immortal/Human
Explicit gore and violence; period typical attitudes (no overt sexism, don't worry)! religious conflict; dubious morality; exorcisms; cannibalism.
26k as of chapter 1/2 (chapter 2 will be out soon)
『 Heaven's will was absolute. Any transgressions would not be easily forgiven, be it by their own creation or otherwise. In the eyes of the realm above, all were equal and inequal.
Starvation for starvation. A millenia for a millenia.
If only Qian Kun knew repentance would become second in the throes of his immortal heart's desires. 』
It is very heavily implied that the reader is from a specific country since it was impossible to keep it ambiguous.
The sun has returned to the west mountains:
Deep and far rises the blue night sky.
Where does the past and the present end?
Thousands of years have been blown away by the wind,
The sands of the sea-bed are fused into rock.
Fish are still breathing bubbles under the Emperor's bridge.
Time has wandered its long road,
And the bronze pillars were long ago destroyed
By Li Ho (791-817). Translated by Ho Chih-Yuan
०वर्ष (0000)
The river banks of Feng Du moulded to his steps, blanched soil clinging for a moment before crumbling, falling.
Miasma hung heavy around the rigid red pillars of the temples. Only when he, Qian Kun, passed through, did the light find respite and illuminate what had not seen brightness for a thousand lifetimes. Behind him, the thick shroud returned. Infront of him, it melted away.
Kun hadn’t been summoned this time, or any other time that he visited Diyu (the realm of Souls), yet he found himself wandering the cities that lay within, situated on a layer above the enactment of judgement but in the centre of where it was ordained.
Here he could watch the silvery mist of souls pass through. They shimmered like pearls, iridescent despite the dark that shrouded all light. Only the river shone a molten gold and twisted through meanders that faded into canals of farther cities; the ferry never travelled that far. It didn’t need to
His golden paws folded under him, tucked neatly under his belly while his tails curled lazily around his hind legs - twitching occasionally when a blade of grass tickled the sensitive limbs. It was here that he liked to observe the rite of passage. Perhaps his hobby was one that was unfitting of a creature forged from the hands of Heavenly deities. Still, he would argue that the duties of the Pixiu included overseeing the essence of those who passed through.
Most Souls accepted what was to come. They obediently took their place on the sturdy bamboo boat, a vessel that was neither simple nor too decorated, and listened to the quiet sounds of liquid lapping against the hull. Some asked where they were: the majority already understood.
The ones that dared to ask were eased with a smile, the rowing pausing momentarily before the kindred ‘Grandma Meng’ took their hand.
‘You are moving on, my dear,’ she would say, ‘you do not need to fear. Whatever will come to you is what you deserve.’
Kun always found that turn of phrase to be quite vague.
Nonetheless, it always soothed their questions and he would watch them continue to drift with each stroke of the oar until it was lifted and anchored in its holster with practiced ease.
A golden pot perpetually bubbled to Grandma Meng’s left. Inside, the savoury broth was warm - never scalding. She would ladle a generous portion into a mahogany bowl and hand it over.
‘Once you are finished, you will be judged.’
They never hesitated to drink. Every last drop had to be swallowed.
From here, Kun could choose to follow Souls he found interesting and witness the work of the divine: their judgement.
Today, this routine was no different. He’d seen it thousands of times before, knew the process down to every subtle ripple of the river as the boat pushed through.
While Souls retained nothing of their corporeal features, it was not impossible to tell who from what. Feminine Souls were always a little lighter, more platinum than silver than masculine ones. The immature would shimmer more vibrantly, a certain sparkle to them that hadn’t been dulled by the motions of life.
Right now, it was a masculine Soul.
His tails swished lazily as a soft snort left his snout.
“Where am I?” They questioned.
As always, the answer was the same.
The Soul shifted, glimmering restlessly as they held onto the edges of the bowl and drank it all with an urgency that proved unusual.
He got to his feet with an ignited sense of curiosity and followed behind the wisp of silver as it travelled through the system of the city. It came to a stop at the centre of the city, materialising in front of the ornate scales and the feathered pen that would determine their fate.
The podium itself was carved from premium jade, each curve and contour of the engraved design created by the talent of the celestial. Images of the river, of the capital, Youdu, and the Heavenly gardens that Kun called home were depicted with faultless clarity.
The Soul could not see him as he could see it.
Kun stood beside the podium and read the details that emerged with every precise brush of onyx ink. Details changed and adjusted for the individual whilst adhering to the rigid structure that all must follow: ‘Reincarnation cycle number. Noteworthy deeds. Filial Piety. Misdemeanours. Final Sentencing.’
It was with this structure that all creatures with consciousness were judged. During life, unlawful actions may remain unwitnessed and unpunished but in this realm, under the ever-watching eyes of all and nothing - the divine and the damned - every action will be accounted for.
This cycle was not new to Kun. He understood it like he understood the clink of coins in a purse, like the taste of good fortune that forever lingered on the tip of his forked tongue. It was by the hands that governed these innate laws that he was created.
‘He has struck his starving child dead and consumed him for sustenance. His until-death repentance is sincere and will be taken into consideration.’
For a moment that lingered for a touch too long, Kun could not believe his eyes. He blinked. Plumes of smoke barrelled from his nose and melded with the acrid dark unique to Diyu. Surely, this could not be-!
‘500 cycles are to be completed in the 11th layer.’
A mere 500 iterations…
The ink that adorned the silk was sourced and processed from the bark of the Heavenly tree rooted in the utmost layer of Tian. Any suggestion of a mistake regarding this was akin to blasphemy.
Yet… Kun was unable to forbid himself from thinking as such.
Humans had been sculpted from clay - every feature lovingly crafted and shaped into perfection through the vision of their creator. However, like clay, they embodied the imperfections of their material. There would always be cracks, hairline splinters in the ones that could not shoulder the pressure. Faults may be glazed over but their scars would not fade - such was the folly of allowing free will.
To him, this was the worst of mankind.
Murdering a child was a crime so abhorrent, so decidedly evil that the punishment of being slowly, suffocatingly crushed under the weight of stone boulders was almost too merciful. Even if bones splintered, broke through skin in haphazard manners and punctured airless lungs, taking a life that had no chance to mature beyond the nest of their parents made this consequence too light.
Kun did not see sufficient atonement. A single week of repentance was not enough.
He was a Heavenly creature - the protector of Souls and good fortune. If he did not seek justice for the Soul of this child, he should not dare to align himself with righteousness.
He stepped forward, shadow eclipsing the podium, and usurped the pen. For a moment, it resisted - bound by principle - until he tugged again and it relented.
His tails held the pen tightly.
‘Additional 500 cycles within the 7th layer must be completed.’
Layer 7: For those who have killed dishonourably, a mountain of sharpened knives that begins from the deepest floor of Earth’s ocean and concludes at the very edge of Heaven’s lowest layer must be climbed.
Kun stepped back, relinquishing the pen.
It hovered and analysed what had been added. Finally, it confirmed what was written with a flourish and a stamp of the Jade Palace to conclude.
The next Soul appeared.
He extended his wings, the crimson tipped feathers catching the stagnant air before he was airborne. With every beat of his wings, the breeze became clearer, fresher. His body was not bound by the constrictions of the realms below, as was clear by how he had graced the gardens of his home within seconds.
With a shake of his body, he rid himself of the last traces of melancholy and began to ponder on how he should spend the rest of his day.
I have not visited Dongtian in quite some time. The grottos are supposed to be quite beautiful at this hour.
Ink spilled from the end of his tails, marrying the perfect blade of grass that it fell upon.
Underneath him opened a chasm.
What followed was a sensation so blinding that Kun could only scream - beg for mercy that he was not afforded. Fur ripped from tender tissue - muscle torn from bones. The tendons of his heels were severed, the taste of his own blood so foreign and so foul that he thought it akin to drinking sewage-
He could not breathe.
For the first time in his long life, he was experiencing pain.
Only seconds ago, his wings had the authority to pass through the heavens and let him nestle amongst the clouds. Now, every single bone within them was shattered and mangled. They contorted, twisting inside out until he could not distinguish feather from flesh.
Golden blood rained down on Earth as he plummeted with no recourse.
Falling. Falling. Falling.
He hit the ground.
Crusted blood flaked off his skin when he finally found the strength to sit up. It dripped slowly from the wounds that had yet to scab, dribbled like liquid stars over the blades of sunburnt grass that had been flattened by his body.
Kun crawled, his scraped knees unable to withstand the pressure of holding his entire body. He crawled, and crawled, and crawled with a lameness that had him thinking that he had been cast into his own circle of hell - damned to drag his limbs behind him for a reason unbeknownst to him.
The pool of condensation was murky, vastly different to the sublime clarity of heavenly water bodies. In those, it was as if he had been looking into a mirror - able to see the powerful face of a dragon born from hardship, and the rigid body of a lion that moved with deadly swiftness.
Now… he saw features he did not recognise.
A human visage stared back at him, almost offensive in its foreignness. Kun was not a human, had never considered himself to be within the same realm of classification. His essence was light and justice - fortune incarnate. Being human was the antithesis of all he had groomed himself to be.
Yet, these big brown eyes reflected back at him, bore into the frayed nerves that pulsed rhythmically.
Not all had changed, evidently. The antler on the right side of his head remained as it always had. All his teeth remained elongated and sharp, poking out from under his lips to graze against warm toned skin.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for his wings.
Once broad, the wingspan six times the size of his body, they now hung limply at his back. The feature that he had treasured the most was destroyed. Each hour he had spent meticulously preening himself was in vain, his efforts tangled within the mess of blood, cartilage and bone.
There was no restoring them. (He didn't want to admit it). Without them, he could not fly home.
His fingers trembled as they reached out towards the sky, the cloudy endless expanse too far out of his grasp. These mangled limbs would not carry him back, and these foreign ones would not aid him. There he lay, cast from the heavens for a transgression that he was not privy to.
Was it so easy to be exiled? To be stripped of all he had known and live as the ‘other’?
What dare he do other than plead, extend and stretch his five fingered hand for the faintest touch of hope?
It was fruitless.
Moisture seeped into the back of his clothes, the beautiful silken hanfu stained with soot and dew. Fabric clung to his skin - skin that felt so much more frail, so much more mortal.
Kun wobbled on his feet, grass and mud squelching between his toes in a manner so unpleasant he winced. Every stagger and stumble propelled him forward, along the barren expanse of the hills that laid out before him.
Faintly, the thought that even Diyu was more prosperous crossed his mind.
No matter how far he walked, how many times he limped towards the endless horizon, he found that he could only go so far, doomed to circle the same thousand acres of land: barren, untilled and operable.
Days and nights passed overhead, light filtering through the sparse branches of the trees. It was a small kindness that he could not feel the blistering cold of the night, that he could lay beside the stream and see the ripples of water - however less magnificent than that of the gardens.
Though, it did little to quell the wrath that raged within him.
How was he, a being embodying all things holy, cast down to this realm with no respite? No warning nor reason? And why could he only reach so far before that same decrepit and listless hut fashioned sloppily from clay and sticks marred the skyline?
After 3 days and 3 nights of wandering, he found himself at its door.
No longer was he unsteady on his feet. The wounds of his wings had begun to scab over.
The door yielded with the lightest touch, crumbling at the splintered hinges. Inside, the odour of raw dirt and mildew overpowered. It was hardly big enough to house any animal, yet the bed of hay and feathers that rested at the furthest left wall spoke of this being a human residence.
‘What a pity,’ he could not help but think, ‘to live in such dismal conditions.’
A scroll too neat and too proper stood out sorely against the backdrop. Despite sitting on a table embedded in dust, it remained clean and delicate. There was no resistance when he unfurled it.
‘Qian Kun.
Your act of arrogation toward the ruling of Souls is certainly unjust. You have damned a Soul to further 500 cycles of turmoil for a reason that was neither discussed nor expressed. Your place lies within the 3rd layer of Heaven - of which does not give you the authority to overstep.
As all things are judged, you will be, too.
Your constitution is unique, hence, your punishment will reflect this. For the undue suffering you have signed on, you will toil the lands for 1000 cycles and reap what the Soul could not. Only when the Soul has passed their 1000 cycles, you shall also be forgiven.’
So, that was it. How cruel.
He was being punished for overstepping, irrespective of how justified it was. A parent who devours their own child was not deserving of gentleness in his eyes, for they had not extended it to their own kin. Sympathising with the child was deserving of exile, was it? He could not forgive this.
He shouted until his voice was hoarse, held the scroll in his tight fist until crescent moons from his clenched fists blossomed in his palms.
There was no answer (and, deep inside, he knew that there would not be one for 1000 long years).
१००वर्ष (0200)
The presence of fresh dirt was hard to forget. It was pervasive, clinging to all that it soiled with a pungence that he could only be rid of through scrubbing with dried honey locust seeds and leaving it under the sweltering sun.
He did not pause. Rather, he worked in spite of the mud that thickened on the soles of his shoes and rooted into the hem of his oversized clothing. At first, he had tried to work in his hanfu but no amount of hubris could deny the ruin that the fabric underwent and it became obvious that tilling in larger, hemp clothing was more suitable.
Fortunately, time was unlimited and whatever hours he didn’t spend outside was spent on either sewing or working on the abode he had built. And, after two hundred years of work, he might dare to call it somewhere adjacent to home.
Kun knelt by the upturned soil, dropping seeds that he’d collected from nearby plants. If there was one thing he desperately missed, it was the sprawling gardens that greeted everyone the moment they stepped foot within. Heaven had flowers that would never grace the dirt of the mortal realm, the kind that glowed a gorgeous pink in the day and luminescent teal come night. Such flowers could not survive on the tumultuous level of nutrients here; he would be surprised if they sprouted at all.
So, he settled for expansive orchids of fruit trees and meadows of flora that he had cultivated throughout the seasons. The animals that he’d nurtured in his boredom seemed to take to the surrounding nature, and he could enjoy some sort of company amidst the silence that otherwise dominated. Mostly, they had migrated by themselves and been incentivised to stay. He did not mind: he was far fonder of them than humans.
Gloved hands patted the mounds of soil down, continuing along the dozens of rows before he rose to his feet before watering each plot. They would take four days to sprout seeds and within a few weeks they’d become saplings.
In the distance, one of his precious cats, Gui, wandered out of the door with her tail swaying leisurely behind her. Her mewls were soft, too spoiled to put any volume behind it because she knew he would tend to her every beck and call.
She was right.
With a clap of his hands, the excess dust fell into the wind. The gloves were dropped and he came closer, scratching under her chin and stroking her tortoise-shell patterned fur. Her purring was loud, vibrating through the skin of his hand before her nose pushed against his palm.
“How greedy you are,” Kun chided, tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth. “Gui. This entire orchid may be harvested for your appetite, and you will still nudge me for more before it’s settled in your stomach.”
Gui meowed as if in agreement.
“Hm. Come this way.”
Her little legs followed at his feet into the timber and brick house, the bamboo floors glistening from the coat of oil he’d varnished them with. In their brief journey, the other two cats, Yue and Hua padded over - intelligent enough to know that once their master was headed to the kitchen, their stomachs would soon be full.
Satisfied with one dried fish each, they tended to themselves and cleaned up every bone and scale.
No matter how short their lives were, Kun found a certain fulfillment in caring for them. They were gentle creatures that scarcely begged for attention and didn’t withhold affection; he far preferred them to dogs. He’d housed a pekingese dog, a creature so small that he wondered how it hadn’t died partway in its climb up the hills, and vowed never to do so again. It was a needy thing, whimpering when he was away and barking when he was near. Though, its one redeeming quality was how obedient and lively it was.
Kun continued his work outside, leaving the felines to their treat. The front garden would not remodel itself.
It was as he worked, arranging white stones along the border of the plants, that a thick, putrid stench wafted toward him.
Yet another? This was becoming a far too common occurrence!
Kun thought to ignore it and let it fester - just until he had finished his work. There were only a few meters left for him to decorate and then-
The panicked bleating of his goats had him dropping all stones unceremoniously.
How bothersome. A place so remote shouldn’t have a problem with malevolent spirits and miasma - there were no humans around to stir such things. And somehow, he had seen more of them manifesting along the borders, disturbing his livestock and killing the flora he’d laboured for.
Yes, there were the one or two travellers that he saw making their way across using the paths at the very back of his domain, but they were hardly enough to justify the trouble he was having to quell. Maybe they’d passed away along the route and their essence was stuck in a state of limbo…
Either way, it was not his concern.
This one was particularly shapeless. It clung to the fence, oozing along the wooden posts in a coagulated, purple mass. The skin trembled as it moved, shivering and pulsing with every slow inch along the ground towards the bleating goats.
Decay filled his nose, catching in the back of his throat. A grimace crossed his face when it trudged towards him.
Bones dislocated. Joints cracked and popped. His mouth opened, jaw unhinging from the taut corners with his forked tongue unfurling - flickering in the air to taste the level of toxins. Rows of sharp, pearlescent teeth shone in gruesome warning, the soft hum at the back of his throat drawing it closer… closer...
Kun swallowed it whole the moment it fell into a lull. The taste was sour in the moment but washed away moments later.
It seemed to have been festering for a while, only now growing large enough to try and claim one of his animals - as if he would ever let such a thing happen.
Kun turned to his animals, making sure that they had their food and were not injured before returning to his stones.
As was his life for the last two centuries - this routine he had cultivated out of nothingness and the knowledge that he could not stew in filth for millenia. Perhaps by the end of it, he would see the rise and fall of all the earth around him, or maybe it would stay the same as it always had. He knew every inch of soil, stream and road, what species could prosper and what would wilt.
The only thing he didn’t understand, and didn’t care to, was the occasional trotting of humans passing by. They never came closer, and he half wondered if they were able to perceive him.
Regardless, Kun would see it from beginning to end, and he would do it in the now peaceful quiet of this mountainous land.
३३३वर्ष (0333)
How strange.
The influx of malevolent energy had been surging the past few years for a reason that he hadn’t been able to understand until very recently.
The number of humans that travelled along the dirt road had steadily increased from one a year to two, perhaps three, and now - all of a sudden - it had become tens of people per week. Of course, there was a reason that Kun was not privy to. Still, it was bothersome to continuously exorcise the amalgamations of resentment and scum.
“Gezi,” he addressed his grey cat, a descendant of his late Gui. “Stay inside for now, my sweet.”
She mewed in a tone so achingly similar to her great grandmother’s, her paws under her body as she resigned herself to another languid nap. Good, he thought, he didn’t want her to be caught in any misfortune.
Kun closed the door, hand brushing against the protection talisman he had hammered into the thick red wood.
This odour was pungent, like the decay of rotting meat that had been left to sit in its own melted fat and juices. Kun’s nose twitched, acclimatising to it.
The source resided at the path - just as expected.
Even so… he’d never seen one so large.
Purple swallowed the leg of a man, digesting it with crimson oozing from every orifice. The man’s face was waxy, pale with perspiration that glittered along his forehead. If he didn’t have the ability to sense the fragility of a Soul, then he’d have thought the man as good as dead.
They spoke in a language unfamiliar and unheard of to him. They were talking about him, looking towards the stranger in clothes far different than theirs and an expression that told nothing.
“You… help?” One of them managed to ask, tones sharp and grating to his ears though understandable.
Kun simply nodded.
The faint shimmer of glamour glistened in the air, unrecognisable to them as anything other than the catchings of sunlight. It masked the way his jaw split open, how his skin stretched over every bone and muscle with enough strain to tear. This was his small mercy to them - that they did not witness the true horror of exorcism and the nature of what was consuming their companion.
This one lingered on the way down, as if trying to crawl back up his esophagus.
It dissipated into nothing before it reached his stomach. The muscles of his mouth stitched back together, presenting a normal, familiar, humanoid figure.
“He will recover,” Kun informed, words stilted and unwelcoming; they did not notice.
Their friend was cradled, held in their arms before placed gently on the cart with a bed of straw amongst the tawny bags.
“Thank you! Thank you, Mister!”
Coins pressed into the palm of his hand despite his reluctance to accept. They would not let him return it, and he thought it better to accept than to argue with foreigners. There were plenty of uses for melted down metal, after all.
He turned to return home. The job was done.
The horses and cart drew into the distance and out of bounds. Kun made his way along the path, intending to branch off closer to the house when something called out.
“Mister! Mister!”
Midway through his step, he paused. The inflection of this voice was unlike anything he had ever heard. An accent thickened it, similar to the men he’d just bid adieu, yet it held this feminine lilt he’d only experienced one before when dealing with the spirits of Heaven. The skin between his thick eyebrows pinched together.
“Please help,” she pleaded, countenance shadowed by the hood that covered her eyes. The cloak covered her from head to toe, simple floral embroidery decorated the hemlines. However, the most striking aspect was the thick, heady scent of aromatic spices that clung to her body.
Hadn’t he dealt with enough humans already? His only option was to relent.
“What is the matter?”
“Come this way.” With a small gesture of her jingling hand, he followed her lead. Kun did not stare unduly at her, his gaze resting at her feet so he could see where she turned and the pace of her steps so he would not overtake. However, the soft tinkling of her steps were hard to ignore, the flicker of jewellery against her ankle briefly catching his attention. “Here. They are with blight.”
Ah…
The scene was filthy, the remnants of resentment having faded away but the effects lingered. Men laid with opened eyes and gangrened limbs, shock etched into the rigid muscles of their faces. They had been caught at a weak moment and paid the ultimate price.
“There’s no saving them. They have passed on.”
She hummed in soft acknowledgement. “Please help me bury. I will compensate.”
All arguments he had were swallowed, kept lodged in the soft spot within his sternum. Had it been a male, he may have been less inclined but it was a young woman. Despite adhering to different laws and social dynamics in his home, he inhibited a male body and understood that he held an advantage of strength.
“No need. I will help you.”
“Thank you. I created burial sites.” Her hand lifted as she motioned towards the plots of land she’d painstakingly carved, the more delicate fingers sore from the manual labour. She had accomplished the hard part with only a shovel that lay propped against the cart he presumed was hers.
Did she have no companion?
“Is your escort elsewhere?” Kun asked, uncharacteristically curious. In all 333 years he had resided on the moral plane, he had yet to see a woman - and even then, he was well aware that they did not travel without a male present.
“Yes. He is ahead.” So they had separated.
The bodies were cold, warmed only at surface level by the sun that had begun to set. The cloth wrapped gently around them, covering their dignity. In his arms, the bodies were light.
He did not waver because of their weight, or the dangling limbs that caught in his robes. Rather, it was from the subtle frown of her lips.
Was the way he handled them displeasing?
“Are you acquainted with them?”
“I am not,” she replied. “I happened upon.”
“Are there certain things you want me to do, Miss?” Kun persisted, unwilling to unintentionally disrespect a body. “I will follow your lead.”
“No. This is enough.”
He obliged, placing them within the graves. When he moved to the next, she covered them with soil, patting it down smooth with her bare hands.
The actions were done in silence - no idle chatter amongst them. Orange turned to hues of pink and purple, darkening until the last rays of the sun dissolved into inklings of night.
The last of the three men had been tended to.
“Mister. Your compensation.”
A small pouch of coins was held out; Kun accepted wordlessly.
Her companion had not yet returned and the night would only deepen. Leaving a woman without protection left behind a heavy feeling, and he found his tongue moving of its own accord.
“Will he not return for you?”
“He will,” she confirmed. By now, her entire face was shrouded, only the faintest shadow proving that she was tangible, living. “Does Mister know a- how to say…?” Her tongue clicked against her teeth. “Inn?”
Not for a long while.
“No.”
Once more, the chiming commenced as she moved her arms. “I see. Then, thank you.”
Swaying stalks of grass tickled his legs, the midnight breeze and beginning of cricket chirping. Something within him was churning, unable to let this woman go without being certain of her safety. Humans could not see in the dark, and many of the creatures that lurked within its shrouds knew this.
When her stallion stood to its full height, snorting and stomping its feet, Kun could not bear it a moment longer.
“Leaving in the dark is a death sentence.” When he stepped forward, he took care to keep a distance from her. “I have a cabin at the Southernmost section of my land. Your stallion and cart may be left in the stables.”
She did not move.
“Miss,” he implored. “I harbor no desire to harm you. Should your escort come to look for you, I will direct him to you. But I cannot, in good conscience, let a lady leave without offering a safe bed for the night.” What followed was more silence, punctuated only by the everlasting sounds of the night - a hum that he turned to background noise until this moment where it had become harrowingly loud.
Then, she took the reins of her voice and gently tugged her horse towards him. “You are most kind, Mister. I believe you.”
During the last century, Kun had begun construction on a smaller version of his home at the base of the land. At first, it had been a passion project, mostly to give him an idle hobby that was in close proximity to the stream. Fashioned in a style emulating his own dwelling, the little cabin would be comfortable - if a little small. He came to a standstill in front of it, lighting a fire in the pit. The flames flickered, their shadows dancing to its rhythm.
“When you lock it from the inside, it cannot be opened from the outside,” Kun informed her, hoping to reassure any doubts. “I will take you to the stables.”
Her voice was stark against the quiet backdrop, almost startling him when it broke through. “It is only you?”
What was the purpose of her question? “I live here by myself, yes.”
“It is so far from others.”
Well… he was aware. Kun had spent centuries conversing only with animals and himself. Humans were not interested in aimless chatter with a creature far removed from themselves, similarly to himself.
“It is.”
There was nothing else said on the matter.
The horse brayed, quietened by a gentle rub of its muzzle and the guidance into a warm, wooden stable. Her cart was left in the far corner.
“This is board.” Copper coins reflected in her palm.
“Board?” He repeated, unsure of what it meant. “Keep your money. I have no use for more.”
“You don't want it?”
“No.”
“I insist.”
Kun turned to leave, her figure standing against the light of the flames before she entered the cabin.
Humans were strange beings, and human women even more so.
Superhero/abilities AU. Angst and slowburn with a happy ending
Explicit gore and depictions of violence; dementia mention; self endangerment.
42k as of chapter 2/3
『 One might argue that there is little difference between a hero and a civilian: bravery, hubris, perhaps loyalty.
Could a Ren breathe in this foul odour, tolerate how his words - once prophetic - were now nothing more than heresay? Could a civilian listen to inaudible whispers, feel the sting of his teeth breaking skin?
Did it really matter when it all bled into one? 』
Ping pong.
Ten watched the ball go back and forth, his eyes on the small white circle that bounced back and forth between the paddles. He didn’t play this often, if ever, and he certainly didn’t think he was half as good as either of them as the ball ricocheted from one end to the other.
“You’re so bad at this,” she taunted Hoseok, her hand loosely wrapped around the handle as she grinned. “Put your back into it. You scared of versing Ten?”
His gaze shifted, eyes burning into the side of Hoseok’s skull as he gauged the man’s reaction.
Hoseok smiled despite his faux show of exasperation. “Scared? I thought I’d let you win so I can see you eat shit later on.”
“Wow.” Her eyebrow was raised, looking over at him with an expression that he knew was full of mischief. “You hear that? You’re held in high esteem.”
Something warm bubbled within him, almost unpleasant if not for the smile that tugged at the edges of his lips. “You need to get better before you compete against me.”
“Uh, don’t get cocky.” The ping pong ball soared with the ferocity of a bullet, hitting him in the leg and he winced despite himself, trying to discreetly rub the area of impact. “I let you win.”
“ You get too cocky,” he couldn’t help but retort, narrowly dodging yet another ping pong ball that threatened to go straight through him. “What’s the score?”
“8:3,” Hoseok replied, placing his paddle down onto the table as he stretched - arms behind his back while Ten stared for a moment before changing his line of sight and hindering his desire to linger on the taunt muscle. “I admit defeat.”
“Step into the ring,” she said, Hoseok moving aside to let him into his space, the faint smell of leather lingering in the air. Ten ignored it, choosing to keep his peace of mind intact.
With his body in the arena, he prepared for the storm - the category 5 hurricane that came in the form of a ping pong ball being shot at his stomach with force enough to bruise.
“Are you trying to kill him?” Hoseok quipped, leaning closer as if to see if the ball had seared a hole through the sinewy muscles.
Not even a glance up was offered as she batted the ball back that Ten served. “Does he look dead?”
Despite himself, a small smile made the corner of his lips twitch when Hoseok looked at him. “Are you dead?”
He hummed, tilting his head so soft, honey skin was exposed. “Do you want to check?”
The flustered expression on the older man was worth it.
As much fun as badminton had been, there was something so much more fun about a game where he wasn’t continuously dominating. Though, strangely, ping pong was proving to be more tiring than he thought it would be.
This time, he lost on the best to best to ten, failing when he was distracted by Hoseok for a split second as the mansquirted water into his mouth from his squeezy bottle.
The phone buzzed and Hoseok stepped aside, disappearing to the bathroom to answer the call before returning once again. “I have to go.” He looked at his phone, a pensive expression on his face. “Eomma is asking for me.”
“Oh, is she okay?” She asked, paddle dropped onto the table and Ten watched it bounce, the sound ringing in his ears before it fell still. Her eyes remained on Hoseok, the man’s nod almost missed had Ten not glanced at him at the last second.
Yet… there was something strange that nagged at him, a feeling that Hoseok wasn’t being honest. But he had no basis for this, and he had no intention of antagonising someone who was his friend’s close friend.
The phone was shoved into his pocket. “Yes, don’t worry. I just don’t want to keep her waiting.” Brown eyes met his, and Ten blinked - surprised by the sudden and unexpected eye contact. “Sorry for leaving early. I’ll make it up to you.”
“No, it’s okay. You should prioritise your mother.” He waved off the apology, not seeing a need for it (be it sincere or otherwise). “We’ll see you later.”
When Hoseok left, it was with an air of swiftness, his jacket half off his body as he left, giving them both one more glance before bowing his head and heading through the door - the sound of it closing echoing through the room.
Ten picked up the paddle, an eyebrow raised in invitation and she took it after a moment of watching the door. He ignored the way his stomach knotted.
“You look at him like you like him.” The words were light with a teasing lilt, though he focused intently on her expression, trying to decipher even the faintest flutter of her lashes.
The paddle was held up across her body, like she was preparing to launch the most powerful smack of all time onto him. “You look like you need to shut up.”
“Is that confirmation or denial?”
“I like him as a friend,” she replied, and the knot tightened.
For some reason, he couldn’t help but push on this. “Really?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t mind being more but we’ve never spoken about it and I’m not going to be the one to bring it up.”
God. He should have just dropped it.
“I see.” Ten batted the ball, lacking the lustre he had just a few minutes ago. When he looked up, she didn’t meet his gaze. “Does he not show interest?”
“I don’t know. We’re the same as always.” She shrugged and Ten forced his mouth shut, not wanting to ask anymore questions that he wouldn’t like the answer to. “Hoseok’s really nice, yeah. I honestly thought you’d like him. He seems like your type.”
Now, Ten couldn’t help but furrow his eyebrows. Sure, he thought Hoseok was extremely handsome, as did anyone with eyes, but his type…? “What do you mean?”
“You know, you said you liked older men, the kind and strong type. He’s basically that, no?”
For once, he was unsure of what to say. “I guess.”
The ball hit his face, her laughter following. “If you like him, I’ll wing woman for you.”
“Shut up.”
“Ten and Hoseok sitting in a tree-”
By now, he should have been used to her stupid comments. They normally passed right over him, but this one was getting on his nerves. “Don’t even finish that.”
Her hands were held up in surrender. “Yes, Sir.”
This silly woman…
Ten smiled despite himself, passing the ball to her again and they resumed their match - the ball never once leaving its designated area. He tried to focus on the back and forth, attention locked on the flicks of her wrist as she tried to get him out with random bursts of energy or pathetic swipes.
But, his mind was occupied. “What does Hyung work as?”
“He’s an insurance broker at Sachin,” she replied, gaze flickering between the table and him.
He mouthed the words, tasting them on his tongue and they left a strange after taste - one that was difficult to discern. “That’s really good. How long has he been there?”
“For a long time, actually. I think he got in on an internship when he was a teen?”
That achievement was impressive, especially considering how lucrative Sachin was with their staff and hiring process. “Wow. He must have been really lucky to get in.”
The ping pong ball flew past his arm in the split second of distraction. “Lucky like me”-Ten rolled his eyes-“yeah. But he’s told me he doesn’t know how he feels about the job anymore. I mean, it was obvious. He works part time but he’s really burnt out.”
“Why doesn’t he quit?” Hoseok hardly seemed like he was struggling for money, considering the random luxurious items he would catch on the man, from the diesel cut out shirts to the Graff watch on his wrist.
“He’s in a contract with them for another 4 years, and it’s not worth the hassle to get out of it, supposedly.”
Ten nodded, knowing a little too intimately what it was like to be trapped at a dead end. “Oh. I hope it gets better.”
“Yeah.” She served once again, the ball flying by and she laughed loudly. “You’re losing your touch already.”
Oh hell no. He was not taking that lying down!
20 minutes later, with their time almost up, they had scraped their way into a draw that was unbeatable. Even though they wanted to play another round, the people were already outside and waiting for the hand to hit the hour.
“Next week I’ll beat you,” she promised, tucking the rackets away as Ten wheeled in the table, pretending to crush her between it and the wall. “Sore loser.”
“You didn’t even win.”
“Don’t care.”
With one last side eye, Ten parted ways with her at the reception desk - watching her leave through the revolving doors.
Just as he was about to leave, his eyes caught onto the record book, and something told him to go closer. Ten glanced at the page, flickering through them all before he stopped on the comment he had left weeks ago after the hall was left a little messy.
Underneath, in neat, meticulous writing was a note he had neglected to see: ‘Sorry for the mess ㅠ_ㅠ. Hope it was better for you this time! - Hoseokie-Hyung ♡’
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〘 It was hard to express how he felt under normal circumstances, let alone when he felt like he would turn to slush should he dare to gaze upon you. 〙
Winwin x gn reader. Yandere themes. Unhealthy obsessions. The general jist of all things yandere.
✧ It was a funny thing, really, to know that the nicest person in the whole office didn't like you. People would dismiss it, say you were reading into miniscule things without bothering to listen. To them, you were dirtying your nails digging for diamonds in a barren site
✧ But you knew it. You knew Dong Sicheng didn't like you. It was obvious to you how he would go out of his way to avoid you, to purposely disengage whenever it was your turn to talk in a meeting. You'd long since given up on expecting any replies to your emails, too.
✧ 'How can he hate you? He's just shy. He takes a while to warm up,' Jaehyun would say, echoing the words of everyone before him and the inevitable ones after him.
✧ Maybe he was shy, you'd entertained that idea. Maybe it because he didn't know how to approach someone in the adjacent department but not his own. Or perhaps he was just unsure of how to break the ice now that it had been months since you'd been onboarded.
✧ Regardless of what it was, you were certain. It was just dislike. Hate was a harsh word, and you didn't think you'd done anything to warrant such a visceral reaction from a man you'd only said 'hi' and 'hello' to once or twice (to a silent audience, as it were).
✧ Whatever, you thought. It was just whatever. If Sicheng didn't like you then that was his problem. All you cared about was if he did the work; all other matters were unimportant.
✧ But... Dislike and admiration was a fine line. Easy to cross, one might say.
-
✧ When Sicheng first saw you, he didn't think too much of it. Of course, you were one of his new coworkers and he had some semblance of interest in saying hello
✧ And he was going to! He told himself that it would be today. Tomorrow. The next time he saw you at lunch or when he passed your desk by...
✧ There was this lump in his throat, something not foreign to a man that had worked from the bottom up to land this job despite his naturally introverted personality and tendancy to hide away in his own thoughts. Even then, he'd always managed to choke out small talk. Being introverted didn't mean he was incompetent.
✧ So why was this feeling debilitating when it came to you?
✧ Why did he go home and think of all those vague glances he caught of you when you walked by his desk - always giving him a polite smile when when he couldn't muster the courage to fully look up. Sicheng knew that own day you would stop smiling at him, and he'd only have himself to blame. He'd spend hours staring at the ceiling, cheeks hurting at the corners from smiling.
✧ Damn. He was going crazy.
✧ Nevertheless, crazy was subjective and Sicheng could tell himself that he was just shy. That's what everyone said: he was shy. It was normal to think about someone and want to talk to them. There's nothing wrong with wanting to try some of the sweet smelling hand cream that you always seemed to have on your desk.
✧ So he did. When he knew you were on holiday, he reached into the bottom cabinet and pulled it out, fingers gripping tightly onto the packaging before he pressed some into the palm of his hand and scurried away within seconds.
✧ Of course it was decedent, melting into his skin like butter and leaving them soft, shiny, supple. This was how your hands must have felt all the time.
✧ You wouldn't know that he went out and bought the exact same one, that he'd swapped it with the one in your desk so he would have the one that you touched, used.
✧ No harm done, right? Sicheng doubted you would notice if he used a few of your pens or sat in your seat. He helped himself to one of the snacks you kept hidden, savouring the quality chocolate that coated it before replacing it once again. He wasn't stealing if he was replacing.
✧ When you returned, the smile of a person who was mentally and physically refreshed on your lips, Sicheng found himself mirroring it (even if he ducked out of view).
✧ He watched, watched and learnt. All those minutes he spent admiring at you from afar had culminated in this. Sicheng just wanted some pictures, something that he could look at. Besides, you were beautiful in every angle, whether tired or fresh faced. Every moment of your routine was engrained into his timetable, from when you'd leave the house to how you'd spend your first few minutes setting up.
✧ Log in. Have a sip of your drink. Scroll through your emails. Reply on teams. Then, get up and talk to some coworkers.
✧ Rinse and repeat.
✧ In his heart, he was well aware that he could just speak to you. Becoming part of this routine wouldn't be hard. All he had to do was say hi. He could easily use all he knew about you to start a conversation.
✧ It was awkward, and you seemed surprised. He did it regardless, stopping by your desk just moments before he knew you'd be leaving for lunch.
✧ "Hi," he'd said, fiddling with the box of raspberry pastries he had in his hands. Sicheng had seen you eat them - taken a few too many pictures when you licked the tart fruit from your lips. "Are you busy?"
✧ "Uh, no. I was just going to go for lunch." Just as he'd guessed. "Did you want to talk?"
✧ You were so cute. So... So... Cute. Could adults be this cute?
✧ "Do you mind if I join you?"
✧ Obviously, you agreed. You never said no when someone asked to have lunch with you. Sicheng was already planning on suggesting the amazing sushi restaurant just down the road - the exact one you always went to on this day.
✧ "I'm surprised," you missed, walking by his side and he moved himself closer, brushing his shoulder against yours whilst pretending like it did nothing to his already trembling heart. No matter how many times he'd sprayed your perfume on his pillows, it paled in comparison. "I thought you didn't like me."
✧ His lungs felt like they would implode. He could feel his pupils dilating, the heightened rush of blood. "I've never disliked you." I could never.
✧ And he meant it. He understood what had kept him awake all this time, had burrowed under his skin and rewired his nervous system.
✧ "Really? Well, I'm glad. I didn't want to have accidentally offended you."
✧ Sicheng smiled, the apples of his cheeks warming into this peachy shade of pink. "You didn't. I just tend to be a little... shy."
Superhero/abilities AU. Angst and slowburn with a happy ending
Explicit gore and depictions of violence; dementia mention; self endangerment
23k as of chapter 1/3
『 One might argue that there is little difference between a hero and a civilian: bravery, hubris, perhaps loyalty.
Could a Ren breathe in this foul odour, tolerate how his words - once prophetic - were now nothing more than heresay? Could a civilian listen to inaudible whispers, feel the sting of his teeth breaking skin?
Did it really matter when it all bled into one? 』
A two for one deal on broccoli, or another pack of prime rib?
This was the decision currently plaguing Hoseok’s mind as he stood in the middle of the fresh meat aisle, eyes glossing over the red cuts of beef that lay on the shelf in neat patterns - the dates and times letting him know that they had been stocked less than an hour ago.
Ugh.
If he bought the broccoli, he’d be getting his vitamins in, as well as his five a day. Yet his gaze wandered back to the pristine cuts. They were lean, the fat cap minimal and it was the perfect size to last a few dinners.
Pick me, it called.
Choose me, it begged.
Love m-
“Are you okay?”
Hoseok turned his head, ears quickly becoming warm as he cleared his throat into his fist. He couldn’t help but feel embarrassed at his own mundane musings. “I’m fine. You?”
“You’re staring at the beef,” his friend said, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly as she regarded him. “In a way that’s not normal.” She added.
“Is there a normal way to stare at beef?” Came Hoseok’s quick rebuttal but, of course, he was no match for her.
“Yes, and you’re not doing that. It seems like lust.”
He couldn’t help but roll his eyes. It’s like she purposely found the most outrageous thing to say even in the most normal of situations. How could someone look at beef with lust of all things?
The scoff that escaped him came from deep within his chest, punctuated by his arms crossing over his chest. “Should you be saying these things to a customer?”
“Depends,” she replied, tapping her name tag out of habit and he read it despite himself - counting out each syllable in his head, “does the customer want discounted sirloin?”
Now she was talking, and it wasn’t nonsense for once. “You have some? I was looking earlier and I couldn’t find anything.”
Her smile was coy, not quite at its full potential but he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Not in plain sight. You know that Seojun guy?”
“The one who drank your peach tea?” Hoseok asked, vaguely recalling this name and character from one of her abundant stories about her coworkers.
“Yeah. Him”-she looked around for a moment- “he hid some to take to his family when his shift was over. But fuck those kids, you know? They don’t need three sirloins, especially not when their daddy is a thief.”
“...Right.” No matter how hard he tried to school his expression into something serious, he just couldn’t. “How much is it?
“You’re not going to tell me how immoral that is?”
“He was immoral first. Two sirloins is enough to feed the family.”
Her smile widened and held up her finger, motioning him to wait before she disappeare around a corner that was definitely not in the meat aisle. Had Seojun hidden it in another freezer section? What a cheeky man! He thought.
For a few minutes, he was left to stand there with one hand on the shopping trolley and the other on his hip. This store was one he visited frequently because of how close it was to his place, and also that he could weasel his way into various discounts using his friend’s employee status. It was also big enough that he never needed to go anywhere else after. He was all too familiar with the plain white walls and different aisles.
Then, she came back with a deliciously large slab of meat and a pretty yellow sticker that said exactly what he needed it to: reduced.
“Here you go.”
It was handed over, cradled in Hoseok’s arms before he set it down tenderly into the trolley with her watching his every move. “Thank you. I was stuck between broccoli or more meat.”
“No problem, but, um, why not just get both? The broccoli has a deal on.”
“I want to stay on budget,” he replied, shrugging and she suddenly laughed, confusing him. “What’s funny?”
“The budget fits two cuts of beef but not broccoli?”
The red on his ears returned tenfold. “I have vegetables at home.”
“Mm. That's what they all say.”
“Don’t you have a job to do?” Hoseok asked, tempted to push his trolley towards her and see if he could run it over her croc's covered feet. He decided against it. “One that doesn’t involve judging my shopping?”
“No, actually. This is customer service.” She moved to the shelves, picking up an item that was in the wrong place and moving it over. “Come here, it makes it look like I’m helping you with something.”
Hoseok obliged - but not without an eyeroll.
“How much protein do you have in a day?”
“Around 200-300g depending on the day, why? You interested in building muscle?"
“Kind of. I think my days of eating pudding for breakfast are over,” she mused, looking at the gravy sachet in her hand before putting it away.
The constant background noise of the freezers filled the air, humming quietly behind them as an elderly woman shuffled past them in the aisles. For a moment, she peered at both of them before turning away to examine the poultry. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little sweet treat in the morning. You look pretty healthy as you are, anyway.”
“Maybe right now, but I don’t think my arteries will thank me for it in the future.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled, “you’re right. If you need any help with a meal plan, just let me know and I’ll help you out.”
At this, she smiled, a hand moving to the end of the trolly with her fingers wrapping around the metal hatching. “I’d ask for your workout routine, but I think I’d collapse from heart failure.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“Your bicep is the size of a newborn. But, yeah, if it’s not too much trouble?”
Even if it was a little bit of trouble, Hoseok would have readily and willingly drafted out a fitness plan for her - if she asked, of course.
She let go of the trolley. “Okay, I need to go now. I can feel my manager getting pissed at me for taking too long. I’ll talk to you later?”
He nodded. “We’ll talk later. When do you finish?”
“In 5 hours. I started an hour ago.”
“They reduced your hours again?”
This time, her expression was more like a grimace than anything humorous, her nod stilted and rather annoyed. Don’t ask me about it right now, it said, and Hoseok was wise enough to heed that warning.
“Okay, bye.” He nodded his head, reversing out of the aisle with his tolley.
“Bye bye.”
And, just as he left the aisle, he saw someone approaching her, their head of shaggy black hair glistening under the phospholorescent lights and their voices falling just short of his ears.
Hoseok turned away, ready to pay for his items and get out of there.
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