1. Death Intenser
Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone;
I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,
To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.
Why did I laugh? I know this Being’s lease,
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;
Yet could I on this very midnight cease,
And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser—Death is Life’s high meed.
~John Keats
I tried to cry myself to sleep. Eventually I ran out of tears, and I sobbed soundlessly and screamed, gasping for air and hugging my knees close to my chest.
Finally, merciful exhaustion took over my body and dragged me down into a thick, sweet, heavy sleep, like sticky syrup in my eyes and ears.
No one came to wake me.
When I finally opened my eyes, the sun was coming full in my eastern window. I lay in bed until I no longer cared whether I had to get up and face the world. I was numb, and exhausted, but filled to the brim with sleep, so I watched my body roll out of bed and stand.
I stared out my southern window for what must have been several minutes before I realized that my mind had stopped working and that I had been thinking… nothing.
Ordinarily, it would have annoyed me that the first person I met was Nakago, and that he grinned at me with his customary patronizing smirk. He very kindly told me that he was sorry for my loss, and that he hoped I was well, but I could see the sarcasm in his eyes. Then he commanded me to fetch Yui-sama and meet him in the Shrine of Seiryuu.
I did not want to see her.
Not only had I acted like a complete idiot the day before, I had been rude to her. I had shown my ignorance by blurting out my low opinion of her, right in front of her face! She had been kind to me, and I had anticipated her kindness with discourtesy and spitefulness. Also, I had displayed all my weakness in front of her and Nakago. I had been completely out of control.
I hated myself in that moment, and I missed My Brother more intensely, as I realized that the other half of myself… the good part… the part that held me back from rash behavior and taught me patience and kindness… was gone.
I found Yui-sama in the hallway outside her room. Her serving maids were with her.
“Suboshi,” she said in surprise.
I couldn’t look her in the eye. I wanted very badly to shrug it all off confidently, but I couldn’t. There was blood rushing to my face, and I could barely speak above a mumble. “About yesterday…” I began quickly. “I… I’m sorry I was so rude to you. And…”
“It’s all right,” she smiled at me. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad you look a little happier today.”
I whispered my apology to her, and she… She smiled and brushed my words away. She said she was glad I was feeling better. She was… absolutely wonderful.
“Yeah...” I said, still blushing furiously. “Um… Anyway, Nakago asked that we both come to the Shrine of Seiryuu.”
We walked together to the Shrine, and she was so gentle with me, choosing her words carefully, but not with the rough ignorance of a person unaccustomed to politeness. In that moment, too, I know, she felt sincerely sorry for me.
I am sorry that her feelings have changed. But that change is not her fault.
“What are you up to, Nakago?” asked Yui-sama as we arrived. “I thought the only one you bowed to was the emperor. So, did Seiryuu show up? Even after our failure?”
I could hardly believe the sarcastic way she spoke to him. She’s so brave!
“Look well into the flames,” said Nakago, ignoring her bitter barbs. Something glowed.
“Eyes?!” cried Yui-sama. “What’s going on?!”
“You know of Taiitsukun, don’t you?” asked Nakago. “She represents the yang. This represents the yin. I have summoned him here for your sake.”
We watched as the sacred flame lept up into the incarnated yin. A deep voice rumbled, “Hongou Yui, Priestess of Seiryuu. If you wish to summon Seiryuu, then listen carefully to the method I am about to describe.”
“Summon Seiryuu?” said Yui-sama, as if she had never seriously thought she would do such a thing.
I choked on my tears as My Brother sprang to my mind. He had told me once that we were two opposites who worked together. We played with this idea, saying that I was up and he was down, I was light and he was darkness… He was yin.
And what is yang without yin?
Yang without yin is lopsided, unstable… It is unbalanced.
Yui-sama stood very close to me. I listened quietly as she and Nakago extensively discussed the Genbu Shinzaho and the necessity of acquiring it as soon as possible.
It occurred to me for the first time that, without My Brother, we could not summon Seiryuu-seikun. If we had only found Ashitare before My Brother had gone… we could have done the summoning immediately and sealed Kutou safely forever. Thank all four gods for the Shinzaho. If Seiryuu-seikun could not be summoned, Nakago would be done with us, Yui-sama would suffer, and the peace that My Brother had wanted so badly would never come to Kutou. Konan would destroy us, just as her warriors, I knew with all the certainty in my soul, had destroyed My Brother.
His ki is gone. Therefore, he is dead. I know this because I know that he would never willingly remove himself from me. Not for so long a time. Not so very, very completely.
It’s empty. It hurts.
Yui-sama and Nakago obviously did not need or want me, so when they left the Shrine, talking animatedly, I went back to my room.
I met Soi on the way. I told her that we were likely to be traveling soon to the land of Genbu.
She said, “Will you like to see the snow, Suboshi?”
She is a good person.
At that time, I did not understand how she could be so in love with Nakago. He is so cold, so cruel. He uses her for selfish purposes, just as he uses all of us. We all know this, except maybe Yui-sama. And yet, Tomo and Soi love him. They love him! Yui-sama loves Nakago and refuses to see that he is evil. This is sad, but logical. Only how can you love someone who you admit is cruel to you?
Now I know the answer.
Sometimes you love people not for who they are, but for who they might have been, or for who they could yet be.
I couldn’t stay in my room. I couldn’t stay anywhere. Everything I saw reminded me of My Brother. So I wandered.
I couldn’t stand knowing that I would never see him again… that the people who had done this to him would go unpunished. They would do it again. No one could stop them.
The warriors of Konan are heartless and cold. Their Priestess must be a petty and selfish little girl. If any of them had any mercy in their hearts, they would not have been able to hurt someone as sweet and good as My Brother. Even knowing that he had gone there expressly to kill them, they could not have hurt him—he was so good and innocent. The fact that they killed him confirms their evil in my heart, and I know that they will hesitate at nothing to plough through my country, my people… to obliterate the only home I have left and the only person who is kind to me… Yui-sama.
I tried to avoid Nakago by sneaking around the other side of a thick column, but he must have super-hearing or something. He knew I was there and called to me. “Suboshi.”
I started.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “To Yui-sama’s side for more comfort, no doubt.” Apparently, he couldn’t resist a snide little remark about my feelings. …Is it that obvious?
I hate him.
He’s such a jerk.
I stepped around the column to face him, but couldn’t look at him for a moment. Then my frustration got the better of me. “I can’t stand feeling like this anymore!” I cried. “When I think about My Brother being dead…”
“You want to avenge Amiboshi?” he asked.
“Um… yeah,” I said. Duh.
As if one insult wasn’t enough, he went on and on about how pathetic and useless I was and how I wouldn’t even be able to avenge My Brother’s death. Obviously, My Brother couldn’t defend himself against the Suzaku warriors, and I am even more weak and ineffectual than he was.
I think it hurts so much because it’s true.
“And what can you do by yourself? Unlike your brother, your abilities aren’t developed. Don’t underestimate the Suzaku shichiseishi!”
I hate him so much.
Nakago went on to tell me that he knew exactly how I was feeling. (As if!)
Yui-sama interrupted us. “Nakago? Oh, Suboshi. You’re here, too?” She noticed me! “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing at all,” lied Nakago smoothly. “In any case, have you decided to make the journey to Hokkan, Yui-sama?”
“I didn’t become the Priestess of Seiryuu,” she said with determination, “just because I wanted to summon Seiryuu. I did it because I didn’t want to lose to Miaka.”
Miaka was the Priestess of Suzaku, I knew. My Brother had told me about her.
“Besides,” Yui-sama continued, “when Miaka realizes she’ll have to fight me, I doubt she’ll act.”
“I think you may be the only one who thinks that, Yui-sama,” said Nakago, with a tone that might have been either very serious or a joke.
After she left, he told me that he knew something that I was capable of doing. And he gave me directions to a little hut in a little village, not unlike the one in which My Brother and I were born. Only, this village was in Konan. And this hut belonged to Tamahome, the warrior who had hurt and humiliated Yui-sama so deeply and who, it obviously follows from his evident brutality, had probably been the one to kill My Brother. I would do for him as he did for me. And he had killed my entire family.
Probably Nakago thought that I would die on this mission. I certainly thought that I would die. We both knew that I was not strong enough and not wise enough to win anything against the Suzaku seishi. On his part, it was smart of him to try to get rid of someone useless in a way that would sting his enemy as well. On my part…
I wanted to die.
2. Untaught in Youth My Heart to Tame
Yet I must think less wildly:—I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o’erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poison’d.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron
The journey to Konan was not very long, but it was long enough for my mood to change significantly.
By the time I arrived, I was fucking angry.
The details of what I did are unnecessary, but I will say that I surprised myself with my success.
I surprised myself with my ability. I have to say that I was fucking awesome! I have never moved so fast, so smoothly. I could have done anything then. I did! My ryuuseisui spun so quickly that they were invisible, but I could see them. I could see everything. I could feel the wind rushing past them as they spun.
Who knew that there were so many things in the world? All alive!
I knew all of them! I could see the tiniest pieces of the tree trunks moving in and out in each other. I could hear the worms in the ground as they tunneled away from my feet. I could feel all the cold and the heat and the pressure that was experienced by the entire village.
I was powerful. They feared me. They ran.
Do you know what blood tastes like? It tastes like metal. It tastes like the coins I used to suck on when I was a child. My Brother objected to my putting dirty things in my mouth, but I liked the taste. It smells, too. It smells like the red air that it is.
I could feel ki moving through me. I can’t describe it effectively. It was as if a gauzy curtain had always been between me and the world, and suddenly it had been drawn away by some tempting, ethereal hand. I loved it. It was exciting. It broke my heart with its beauty. I never, never wanted to go back.
Of course I did. Now I try again and again to push aside that curtain, and sometimes I succeed. Or rather, that supernatural hand—Seiryuu-seikun?—draws it aside for me.
Why is this given to me? What will I do with it?
Afterward, I realized what I had done with it. I tried to stay angry in order to not think about it. I plied myself with arguments involving justice and the greater good. I did not think of them as people. They were only manikins, only extensions of Tamahome…
I hate when I lie to myself, because I know that I’m lying. I can pretend that I believe what I’m telling myself to believe, but it rubs against the back of my heart, and it rubs raw.
I played the flute and I thought of My Brother. I played his favorite song, the one he breathed absently when he wasn’t thinking about anything at all, the same one he poured his soul into when he was thinking of everything in the world.
I waited for Tamahome.
I waited for him to come and kill me. When you want more than anything else to die and you haven’t the courage to kill yourself, you wait for someone else to do it. Besides, I thought, I had been so amazing all day… maybe I wouldn’t lose. Maybe I would kill him, and then nobody else would ever have to suffer at his hands.
He was the one I wanted to hurt, anyway. What was the point of all this ugly mess if I didn’t even get to see his face? And I saw it. Just for one moment, before he exploded with rage, I saw on his face the fresh, warm pain that I had felt. That smug bastard. He probably thinks he’s innocent, probably doesn’t think it’s a big deal that My Brother died. He probably feels justified in what he did. I hate him. But not as much as I hate myself.
Suzaku no miko and another warrior—a girl—were there. They didn’t do anything but hold each other and cry. Thank the gods, Soi isn’t some worthless whining little chit like that. I’m not sure why their presence struck me as important, because it didn’t matter effectively in any way.
They thought I was Amiboshi.
That just really pissed me off. Those idiots didn’t even know the person they had killed. We’re identical; we’re not fucking the same.
They tried to make some sort of pathetic excuse, why it was okay that they had killed My Brother… How can I be expected to listen to that kind of shit? I made it quite clear to them, I think, that I was SUBOSHI, and that this was payback for what they had done to MY BROTHER.
My cloak was soaked in the blood of infants. I knew that I looked wild and frightening, and this pleased me immensely. I lunged at the girls, seeing in them another opportunity to hurt Tamahome.
Being the typical hero that he is, he rushed to the rescue. He really beat the shit out of me. My ryuuseisui were nothing to his fists and feet. His speed and his grace were supernatural. But then, so were mine.
In the end, he was just stronger. And angrier. And less tired. And… yes… more experienced than I. He knows how to move and where to attack in an instinctual way that is beyond me. I knew that I was going to die and I fought as hard as I could, so that my honorable death would be worthy of My Brother’s memory.
Soi appeared. With lightning. It was very sudden and impressive.
I don’t think she was supposed to be there. Nakago wanted me to die, I wanted to die, nobody else really cared… So why did she come?
She’s just a good person, that’s all. I hated her then for saving me, but I respect her for doing what she believed was right. She snatched me from the jaws of death and laughed in Tamahome’s face.
At least she came out looking cool. I ended up looking more or less idiotic, having to be saved by a girl, succeeding only in a fight against an old man and some infants. I… hate… myself.
With a burst of lightning, Soi transported me back to the Kutou palace. I was silent and tired and angry, and I said nothing. She washed and dressed my wounds herself, and she put me to bed, and she told the servants to give me whatever I needed and told everyone else to leave me alone.
Really, it was brave of her to do something that she knew was not part of Nakago’s plan. Poor Soi. She never manages successfully to do anything proactive. Her accomplishments have only been in helping and defending other people. It’s sweet of her to be a shield for us, when she is too wounded and beaten to protect herself.
Yui-sama was like that for me, too.
3. The Exotic Act
Do I deserve credit
for not having tried suicide—
or am I afraid
the exotic act
will make me blunder,
not knowing error
is remedied by practice,
as our first home-photographs,
headless, half-headed, tilting
extinguished by a flashbulb?
~Robert Lowell
For the next couple of days, I refused to get out of bed. Nakago came to see me, but I just stared at the ceiling and ignored him. I hope he thought I was going crazy. I hope I scared him. I have this spiteful wish to anger him and—just once!—make him show some kind of emotion. Even when he yells at us, he’s not really angry. He’s blank. It’s scary. I can’t imagine being so devoid of passion.
If Nakago felt fear, or anything else, he didn’t show it. He just said that my work had been acceptable, but that he’d expect more exceptional work in the future. I was afraid to ignore him completely, so I sort of grunted noncommittally and went on staring at the ceiling. He ignored me after that.
Tomo came once. I think he might have been actually concerned, in a general way. After all, any loss to our side is a loss to him personally, as well. Tomo’s not completely evil, I guess. He doesn’t enjoy hurting people. He’s just bitter and annoying, and I have no respect for him.
I enjoyed hurting people… Am I completely evil?
But I’m capable of love! …Oh… How can I offer honest love when inside I’m rotting away in dark, dank loneliness? I even love myself after all this, which is awful. I love myself too much to kill myself… I can’t force the ryuuseisui through me; they won’t go… and I hate myself because I can’t respect myself. I am completely evil…
We’re all evil—all of us! Except maybe Yui-sama; she does evil only because she’s been hurt. But see! This is the consequence of evil! When we do evil, we pollute the world around us, driving even the soil and air into madness. The Everything, the pervasive ki, suffers from our foolishness. And everything that happens now hurts Yui-sama. And everything that has happened since my conception is my fault, my responsibility, too, because I am Seiryuu seishi Suboshi.
Not Bu Shunkaku. Not a mere human being. I am a seishi for our nation, god, and Priestess, and that is why my ineffectiveness is so disgusting.
My head ached.
I didn’t dare pray for forgiveness, or for peace. Instead, I begged Seiryuu-seikun to prevent Yui-sama from finding out what I had done. I even got out of bed and prostrated myself on the floor, willing my heart out the eastern window and out toward our stars. In the middle of the night, I would go to the Shrine to pray and cry and hate myself. I would return to my room before dawn and sleep fitfully all day. Don’t laugh at me. I know it’s dramatic, but what could call for drama, if not this? This is love and death and my god!
I tried to eat, honestly I did, but it was too much of a disappointment. I couldn’t taste anything. Everything was dry, and I choked on it. I wasn’t hungry, and there was evidently no pleasure to be gained from eating. I found no enjoyment in anything, not even in what I had enjoyed before. Like knocking things over. I spent a lot of time sighing dramatically.
I think the servants were worried and said something to Soi. She came to visit me after a few days. I think she stayed away at first because she was afraid of Nakago. She seemed very upset. We didn’t speak very much. She just sat and didn’t touch me, and we didn’t look at each other.
“You need to eat,” she said.
I nodded.
“You know,” she went on, “Nakago isn’t going to let you keep this up much longer.”
I nodded again.
I didn’t ever thank her for what she did, but I squeezed her hand as she left, and I think she understood. She smiled sadly at me.
As far as I know, Seiryuu-seikun answered my prayer. Yui-sama came to see me a couple of times, but never alone. She always had Nakago with her, or servants. I don’t think anyone told her how I was injured, other than in some battle with Tamahome on some secret mission, and when she politely asked me, I had to close my eyes to keep from rolling them at her. She was very cordial and distant.
I don’t know why her feelings seemed to change. Maybe she does know what I did, on some level. She’s so smart—I’m sure she knew that I had been involved in something unpleasant. Or maybe it was Nakago. Sometimes I wonder if he gave me such a mission in order to lower me in Yui-sama’s eyes. I suppose any trust she had for me would reduce her dependency on him. Maybe she can tell how much I like her and was embarrassed or disgusted.
There are only two people in the world I love. One is dead, and one is annoyed by me.
If I were dead, I couldn’t annoy her, or hurt anyone else ever again. …Is there a reason not to die?
But I can’t do it. I think it would hurt.
I’m too afraid.