#akuroi.

“Hikaru” studied Sayuri in the same way a five year old boy studies an ant under a sunlit magnifying glass: deadly curious and pristine, god-like if only cruel. He wondered when Sayuri will start to twitch, scatter in every way away from the danger— but the only movement in the forest was the slow rustle of “Hikaru’s” white cotton shirt, and, much to his dismay, he found Sayuri unmoving in spite of the fear coursing through her veins. Half bored and half impressed, “Hikaru” shifted his weight onto his right leg, observed, with quiet intensity, the sharp line of her chin held stubbornly straight, a bravado forced through her visceral tremble which was, in its own special way, quite savory.

The tangible silence that shrouded them transfigured into a hollow pocket that seemed to render things in slow motion. The impurity moved closer, undeniably so, but somehow with a dawdling gait that left too spacious room for suspense, sleep walking on the patchy green bedsheets of the earth. (If I listened closely, I could hear it chant MINEMINEMINE with salivating greed, a cadence that— both spontaneous and regretful to myself— I recognized in my own unspoken gaze I held on Sayuri all this time: MINE TO POKE AT, MINE TO PROD; MINE TO MEASURE HOW MUCH MONSTER I AM ALLOWED TO BE BEFORE I UNKNOWINGLY CROSS THE LINE.)

In the folds of quiet, “Hikaru” thought about the bloody mouth he and his brother must have come from— always hungry, always ravenous. An inherited starvation passed down in the bloodline. One that made “Hikaru” indulge in the scene before him as if it were an obliging sweet treat. He hummed.

❛❛ Ya sure about that? ❜❜ The timbre of delight was unshakeable in his voice, berries and sugar and almost sticky in its drawl. ❛❛ They may not have teeth, but I promise ya they ain’t so nice about it. No one ever comes here, y’know. They like t’take their time, chomp ya piece by piece. Romantic, yes, but not so forgiving. ❜❜  “Hikaru” reminisced how he’d been urged to do the same a few years ago, when that white haired boy had stumbled panting into his sacred grounds. Would Sayuri really give herself up to this? Would she utter a dying wish? Offhandedly, the white haired monster wondered if Sayuri had anything to beg for, to live for; if she had been able to moor herself to anything or anyone in the waking world of man. It nagged at him, these unanswered questions, floating untethered in the dark back corners of his mind. Yet he remained, on the outside, unfazed. 

Considering my biology, it’d be ironic to call myself virtuous. Considering the old woman I killed on my second day of living— plum-wrinkled skin and a screech like screws on chalkboard— it’d be an act of delusion to even contemplate. I've got more teeth than I do morals, and yet I’m always rendered some second-rate saint when talking to her. I’m starting to think it’s some twisted game to her. One where she slinks away at night looking for blood, just to see which way my head will tick the next morning, or the way I’ll search for the right words, if any, to reach her. Though I’ve come to learn she’s impervious.

Still, I can’t evade the tension augmenting in my shoulders, the downward drive of my brows as her sing-song voice chirps, familiar in its indignant taunting. ❛❛ God, ❜❜ I mutter, and though I’m not religious by any means, Yoshiki is; and having spent most (if not all) of my afternoons with him, somehow his vernacular caught on my own tongue and carried its own particular weight, faithful or no. ❛❛ Ya really don’t think much of it, huh? ❜❜ I look at her, her mouth, and speak again before it could fully complete its grin. ❛❛ Y’know, ya go on an’ on, talkin’ ‘bout how much better you are 'an them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that ain’t the truth. Learned about it in psych— inferiority complexes… Makes ya act out, y’know, overcompensate in ways t’make yerself feel big. Sound familiar? ❜❜ It's a cheap attempt to rile up something in her, even I knew, but in moments like these I’d rather be dead than silent. She’s annoying when she thinks she wins.

Though I kept my voice level thus far, when her fingertip admonishes my nose— as though I am the one in need of a scolding when it was she who threw a bloody tantrum— a strong wave of irritation flickers through me (an emotion I’ll later come to know as degradation) before it very quickly flatlined into something more familiar as she questioned, wide-eyed, who would care— ANGER. Anger as I remember the woman I call “mother,” fretting over dinner each weekday and sure to cave into grief if she only knew her son is already dead. Anger as I remember Yoshiki, crying breathless by the river stream under the summer sky, mourning for his first love even when its corpse had been sitting right next to him. This was the closest I’d ever come to virtuous.

It shouldn’t have felt so good, “Hikaru” thought, to turn around and meet the pale moon of Sayuri’s face, drained of color. Yet it did. She’d always been so sure-footed, so quick-witted in the city, but the safety net of suburbia fades lamely in the face of moss and debris, and the breathtaking fear that lined the red of her mouth, the dark halo of her irises, was proof enough that the realization had perhaps finally sunk into her: in this abysmal forest inhabited by the strangest of creatures, Sayuri wasn’t strange enough to leave without bitemarks and bruises— ghoul and all.

“Hikaru” glanced at the impurity holding Sayuri’s gaze and couldn’t resist the spastic twitch of his lips. The endless green leaves that backdropped the outline of her body swayed, as if even the forest was in on the joke. ❛❛ Aw, hell, ❜❜ “Hikaru” cursed, though the tone in which it sailed was more cloying than it was concerned. Silk smooth, teasing red. ❛❛ Now ya’ve really done it. Those ‘primitive’ things’re so lonely, they’ll snatch up anythin’ with a set of eyes. ‘Fore eatin’ them, o’course. ❜❜ “Hikaru” moved his gaze from what could be called his brother, and veiled it onto Sayuri. The silence that followed carried a message, one wrought with “Hikaru’s” morbid sense of pride: this is the world without its so-called riches, its technological makeup. Wood and centipedes, arachnids and unknown space. Are you still unafraid?