#vltri

            Even his bones would itch if he thought too deeply about it, and it was on those days that he would take to lying on the floor, covered in a thick blanket that transformed his body into a heap of nothing as he struggled to stay cool under it.

            This was the thing that made life nearly impossible for the boy. He couldn’t look in mirrors at himself, he couldn’t walk without hunching over at a painful angle; he couldn’t even sit without fidgeting and pulling at his clothes. His parents scolded him for it constantly, on top of everything else. “Why won’t you stand up straight? Why don’t you wear something more flattering?”

“Why can’t you just stop acting like this!?”

            The boy grew to resent them. He had confessed the reason, and they had only become angrier. They bought him horrible dresses and skirts, yanked on his arms and pushed on his back until he stood up straight, and eventually started forcing him to wear a formal kimono everywhere. “You must look like a presentable young woman,” they had said. He had only thrown it back in their faces, tearing every piece of expensive flowered fabric to shreds in front of them until they called professionals to hold him down and force him into them. The clothes were even specially tied so he couldn’t get them off himself.

            He threw up sometimes. The silk fabric fit tightly against his skin, the obi specially highlighting what he was trying to hide. The crawling of his skin and the fabric binding it made him feel so sick that it sometimes pushed his body into a physical reaction. He stood with a horrible taste in his mouth, wanting to find the nearest pair of scissors and cut the disgusting clothes off his body. But his parents had taken all of his other clothes and being naked had the same effect.

            So he bore it. He had no choice. Day after day, he screamed and cried as they forced the clothes onto his body, but no one around him ever felt any remorse. His parents watched with cold eyes.

            The boy’s only solace was his painting. Sometimes he could escape into it and forget for a few minutes. It was the one thing about him that his parents approved of, but he ignored their backhanded words of praise and hid his paintings away from their eyes. This was his. They had taken everything else, but this was his.

            Then one day, he had seen something. Having been dragged to a party for the socializing of rich families, he had snuck away from his parents to find a place to himself. He had happened to gaze upon the neck of one of the guests, and what he saw captivated him. The man bore a spider crawling up the side of his throat, the long legs reaching up to touch his face.

            The boy had made his way up to the man, getting his attention and quickly asking about the spider. The man had told him it was a tattoo he had received several years earlier, as a symbol of his family. The boy had questioned him thoroughly, having never seen a tattoo before, but had quickly deflected any questions posed to him about why he was so interested. Finally, he dismissed himself from the man’s presence. ------

            Stabbing the needles into his legs was a feeling he relished. The crisp feeling of pointed metal breaking skin and the sharp pain that accompanied it was so real and so present it could actually scratch his itching skin. A pleasant ache throbbed through his legs as he poked and prodded the flesh, painting beautiful scenes with temporary inks. It was almost enough to make him feel connected with his body.

            Years of practice and carefully hiding his supplies from his parents and the man was finally ready to put his long planned revenge into action. He carefully measured the drugs he had acquired in secret and slipped them into his parents’ food before he presented it to them. He watched them eat it with a dark gleam in his eye and waited for them to pass into unconsciousness.

            When they awoke, their arms and legs were bound, and the man was sitting over them with his precious needles in hand.

            “For the crime of attempting to murder your son, there is only one punishment.” His words were cold and precise as he stared into each of their eyes in turn. “I will do the same to you.”

            The both of them had screamed as he drove the needles into their flesh, black ink swirling on their faces which were contorted in pain. Under his father’s right and his mother’s left eye he painted a black skull across their cheeks, forever branding them as the murderers they were. He poured all of his anger and malice into those tattoos, dreaming that they would kill those two who had tried to kill him.

            When he had finished, he stole their money and his father’s clothes. He left them there, bound hand and foot on the mat, and escaped to a city miles away. He paid for everything he could get to finally fix his body, then set up his own tattoo parlor with the rest of the money he had taken, and quickly proved his skill to the people there.

            He gave himself the name Ryuuhou. The seahorse he had tattooed upon the side of his throat was his own way of representing his life and the origin of himself.

            Years later, news of his parents’ death reached him. He heard that there were dark wounds on their faces which had festered and eaten away at the flesh there. They had died from the infection. He went to see their corpses, only to confirm this story, and discovered that it was entirely true.

            He imbued those tattoos with so much malice that they acted out his desires. However, he found that he couldn’t reproduce the effect on anyone else.

            It wasn’t long before a man by the name of Toue caught wind of these seemingly unconnected occurrences and understood what they meant. Ryuuhou was more than delighted to accept Toue’s offer to scientifically enhance his gift, allowing him to channel his anger at the world to bestow mind-altering tattoos on anyone.

            The son of a famous yakuza boss—a young man by the name of Koujaku—was the unfortunate first recipient of Ryuuhou’s gifts.