Index
Chapter 1: 1. Humility
Chapter 2: 2. Kindness
Chapter 3: 3. Abstinence
Chapter 4: 4. Chastity
Chapter 5: 5. Patience
Chapter 6: 6. Liberality
Chapter 7: 7. Diligence
"If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet your father, kill your father. Free from everything, bound by nothing. Live your life as given."
This, too, tastes sharp and addicting, heady and ashen and needed. He watches the rain comes down and is admonished.
The feel of a broom in his hands is familiar as the cigarette clenched between his fingers, red leaves on the ground, a world gone suddenly unsteady. Koumyou Sanzo's smile was something, he thinks, that could destroy anyone and make them over again, inexorable as a river flowing to the sea. He does not know how anyone could have looked at that smile -- how those shit priests could have looked at that smile -- and not been changed. Gravity, orbit; worlds would fall into the pull of that smile.
The cigarette is down to the filter, and the rain isn't stopping, and Genjo Sanzo rubs out the stub on the lid of an empty beer can. When he lifts his hand from the glass of the window's pane, a faint, heat-fogged outline is left behind.
They were gods but common soldiers; it is obvious enough, it is true enough, and Homura thinks that even Shien, even Zenon, cannot see anything, for the moment, but the futility. Sending common soldiers against the Sanzo party is just tossing away men who could be used; it's the mindset of gods not yet used to having blood on their hands.
But Homura is a contradiction, after all, a heresy looking to find what it is to live through the method of his death, and he understands what this means to them: A challenging foe to outmatch them, a proud death, the realization they'd been beat, not rotting away in isolation and waiting for a death that would never come.
He says as much to Shien, briefly, and he thinks he sees understanding dawn; he is grateful, perhaps, that Shien will allow him that much.
It's not until he looks up and sees the sun that he learns hunger; Sanzo takes him by the hand and leads him off the mountain and feeds him. As he devours, as he tears into the food with a stomach wakening again to need, Sanzo has few kind words.
Goku basks in the violence, basks in the smack upside the head and the verbal abuse; it feeds something in him that has been emptier than his belly.
Gojyo's drunk off his ass -- not that rare an event, perhaps, but rarer than it could be; he's got to be getting well into twenty beers before it starts to show like this, flinging down on the seat next to Hakkai and wrapping a casual arm around him as he's wont to do with any of his friends. His breath is hot and thick with the smell of alcohol as he breathes on Hakkai's cheek, talking too loudly. "Ehhh? What's difficult, Hakkai?"
"Don't worry about it," Hakkai says, which is not so much an answer as a choice to defer an explanation until Gojyo is sober, or perhaps never; when sober, Gojyo should be able to figure out the answer on his own. He might pretend otherwise, but Gojyo isn't stupid; he may not always know what to say, but he always knows when not to say it.
Another gust of fermenting breath in Gojyo's sigh. "You're just finding trouble where there isn't any now."
"Ah," Hakkai says, deliberately bright, smiling at him cheerfully. "Isn't that always our way?"
Gojyo's weight presses him back into the sofa and this is another thing that they won't talk about later. Hakkai gets beer and lust both second-hand, through Gojyo right now, and eventually he sighs. He does not wrap his arms around Gojyo's shoulders, does not press his hands against Gojyo's back, but he winds his fingers into the red thread of Gojyo's hair, binding them together.
"You're drunk," Hakkai tells him, with a light, gentle teasing.
"So what?" Gojyo muttered. "Feh, you should get drunk sometime."
"Unfortunately, I don't have that skill," Hakkai says, which is true enough; they'd run out of money in drink before Hakkai would be as unsteady, unfocussed, open as Gojyo is now. "I'll drink with you next time, and keep an eye on when you've had too much--"
"If you drink with me I won't be drunk, I'll be dead," Gojyo complains. "It isn't fair when I have to keep up with you."
"Saa," Hakkai says, amused. And, a few minutes later when it's clear that was that, and they're done for the evening, "You're heavy."
"Comfortable," Gojyo says. "I'm not moving."
"I'll have to move you, if that's so."
"Don't care."
Hakkai sighs, and nods, and says, "Up you go." Seeing Gojyo already almost asleep, more drunk than he'd admit, he carries him to bed.
"It's too dangerous," Kougaiji says, but his mind is already leaping ahead. He has no choice; his hands are bound. There are dozens of demons he could send instead -- nobody disposable, because none of them are disposable to him. And Yaone has failed enough times that he would be justified.
Her eyes are calm and perhaps a little sad. "Please," she says. "I can be of use."
He swallows his pride. "Good," he says, harshly. "Do so."
"Kougaiji-sama!" Her pleasure is bright, brilliantly, so he must turn away to see Lirin looking sulky, to see Dokugakuji smiling at him with a smug, almost proud air. He scowls at them both as if daring them to comment.
"Ahhh, I want to go too," Lirin complains. "Brother--~!"
His patience has limits, though; he can only stand to risk so many of them at once. "You'll stay," he growls.
Hakkai looks up from chopping nappa. "Welcome back," he says. "Did you get the ingredients?"
"Eh," Gojyo mutters. "Just rice and egg. The stall was out of the rest."
It's an incredibly obvious lie and it's all Hakkai can do to bite his tongue and not call Gojyo on it. Gojyo must have a reason, after all. Hakkai thinks, perhaps Gojyo has had bad luck in gambling -- the fare is always thinner on those nights -- but he dismisses the thought almost as quickly as he has it; Gojyo has no shame in admitting a run of bad luck, though he'll usually have some reason he 'went easy' on his opponents. If he's 'gone easy' on them too often, Hakkai will simply gently suggest that he go gambling instead and Gojyo cook, and Gojyo's pride will make him come back with extra wealth that night. He can do it when he tries.
So it must be something else -- and that's when Hakkai notices the small dirty handprint on Gojyo's pantleg, as if a child had grabbed hold and tugged to get attention. A beggar child, perhaps, or at least some sort of waif; certainly someone hungry...
"Well," Hakkai says, and turns back to the food to hide his smile. Gojyo would loathe getting found out in it. "Perhaps they'll have restocked by tomorrow then. For now, we have rice, and egg, and nappa; we'll manage somehow."
It's really not an issue of trust.
It's just that nobody -- youkai, human, or not -- can look everywhere at once, and it would be the flaw of the person who sees it if that person didn't block for his companion -- not the flaw of the person who hadn't seen it.
They'll be okay anyway, of course. None of them are weak, and none of them need the others, and most of them wouldn't die even if they were killed. It's just a matter of pride.
It's better this way.