Ochite yuku by Trismegistus

    Ochite yuku
    by Trismegistus

     His first memory was of pain.

     Celestials, those with the audacity or the boredom to seek pleasure in the world Below, frequently mated with mortal women, though female Celestials rarely engaged in such pursuits. It was an unseemly practice, and men could more easily dispose of the evidence of their...misadventures, whereas women...

     But his mother had been an enterprising woman who was not willing to deny herself pleasure over such trivial concerns. She was also not willing to sacrifice her reputation to the unfortunate aftereffects of a night spent Down There. No stranger to gossip about halfbreed children, she knew what the results of such a liaison would be, and because she thought she was clever enough to have discovered a solution...

     As soon as she realized she was pregnant, she told her husband, a minor functionary, and all her friends, and celebrated and hoped it would be her husband's child.

     But if it wasn't...

     Her brother was a Celestial who had his own good reputation to protect. And when auguries confirmed for certain that it was not her husband's child, she paid a visit to her brother and convinced him, for the sake of his good reputation, to attend to her during delivery.

     As soon as she delivered the baby, she dismissed her women and handed the thing to her brother without once looking at it, and said, "Cut."

     And he took the baby from its mother and raised the knife that would cut away the one golden eye, the proof that this child was a child born to a Celestial mother and human father.

     The mother lay on the bed, waiting for the usual cries of the newborn to change to cries of fear and rage. But they did not.

     Had her brother lost his nerve? "Do it," she hissed.

     He spat to the side of the bed. "You slut," he said. "This is no human's baby."

     For the first time she looked at her child. The iris of one eye was brown, a common enough shade among Celestials. But the iris of the other eye was neither brown nor the golden iris of the halfbreed.

     It was a monstrosity. Huge, orange, glaring, evil. Deformed.

     "You slut," he said again, laughing. "You bitch. This is a youkai's whelp. You got onto your back for a youkai?"

     "Does it matter?" she hissed. "Get rid of it."

     Still laughing, he shrugged and raised the knife. Youkai or human, what was it to him, either way? His complicity in this act ensured her silence, which ensured that his reputation remained intact. The blade slashed down, across the forehead, into the soft tissue of the eyeball, and down toward the cheekbone. The baby screamed in pain.

     But when he pulled the knife free, the eye grew back. He swore, and lanced again, and that horrible eye bled once more, and healed. The baby was screaming in rage, its mother in horror. He stabbed, twisted the blade free, stabbed again, then tried to cut the thing from its socket.

     And the eye healed as soon as the blade was withdrawn. The eye of a half-Celestial, half-youkai spawn.

     Cursed thing. Filthier than any offspring of Celestial and human.

     He wiped the blade on the soiled bedclothes and fled the house, looking neither at mother nor child.

     His first memory was of pain, though he did not remember its cause. All he knew was that he had one good eye and one eye that was covered by a patch which never quite hid his scars.

     An accident, his mother had said. A complication during the birth. And was unimportant enough to be taken at her word. Poor thing, said the other Celestials, if they said anything to him at all. But they usually mocked, or ignored.

     Heaven was a place of beauty. Celestials were beautiful. Were supposed to be beautiful. An empty, scarred eye socket was not beautiful. He was told to never take off the patch.

     It wasn't until he was older, and didn't care about doing what he was told, that he discovered why he wore it in the first place.

     And none of them knew. For all their talk of forbidden pleasures and forbidden liaisons with humans, and of the utter filth of mating with youkai, which were the filthiest of the sentient species Down There, none of them knew.

     He walked among them, a thing supposedly more sickening than anything else under Heaven, and they never knew that he was what they claimed to despise.

     His family was nothing important. He showed no special talent for lettering, or rhetoric or diplomacy, but his breeding was too good for him to become a servant. It wouldn't have been proper.

     And so he went into the army. A good enough career, for him. He liked fighting. And because he was good enough at it, he rose in the ranks. Of course, he could never expect great things from the army; he wasn't smart enough, slick enough, to play the games that got you the really good promotions. But a post supervising the training of new recruits, that wasn't so bad.

     He got his own quarters. Small, but his. He got enough cash for alcohol, for prostitutes when he wanted them, for cigarettes. He got to handle some of the better weapons, the ones that could do real damage, if that sort of thing had been allowed.

     Most Celestials thought his job was a dead end. It was the place where the higher-ups dumped people who should have been entitled, due to their family name, to some position in life, but who weren't intelligent enough, or beautiful enough, or who had been born after too many other sons, to get a good position. Most Celestials thought his job was pitiable, though not so bad as an actual servant's.

     He couldn't have given less of a fuck. It was perfect for him. He got an official rank and title, and was so piss-unimportant that as long as he showed up to train soldiers for a few hours each week, no one paid any attention to what he did when he wasn't on the parade ground.

     He spent a lot of time Down There. It was a pretty interesting place, as far as those things went. Youkai were running amok, and although he, Celestial that he was, couldn't actually kill anything, he could certainly do just about everything but. Humans were easy to terrorize, and fun. Just materialize in front of them and take off your limiter.

     The humans ran from him, and the youkai did the actual killing.

     But even that got old, after a while. He had gone Down There one day, bored to begin with, and the idea of helping some youkai slaughter a few humans seemed as boring as anything else. There weren't any youkai near the village where he was anyway. But there was a bar.

     Eh, what the fuck. He hadn't had a drink yet that day, anyhow. He wondered how the sake in that little village shithole would match up to Heaven's sake.

     It was rough stuff, but that agreed with him. And he found that he liked the company. Better than either Celestials or youkai, of which he was both. Celestials...Heaven was incestuous. You talked to people who could get you places, or you didn't talk at all. And youkai...youkai were tribal. You weren't a part of their tribe, you didn't deal with them, or they with you. Humans were different. Humans would approach a stranger, almost any stranger, and talk.

     Even a stranger who looked like he did. And Heaven knew there were enough humans with scarred faces walking around these days. So his scars didn't seem to put the humans off as much as they did the Celestials.

     Humans talked to you, even if you were scarred. Even if talking to you couldn't help them. Even if you didn't have some impressive pedigree. It was seductive.

     So he quit terrorizing them and started drinking with them. Couldn't really have a conversation with them, didn't know how. But he could nod and grunt over some stupid comment about the weather, or the crops, or the cute waitress, and that was enough for most of the people he met at the bar.

     For all they knew, he was one of them. A stranger, yeah, but not so different aside from that. Look at his face - must have fallen on hard times, those scars, fucking youkai, can't let a person live an honest, peaceful life. And he found himself first nodding his head, and then agreeing. Celestials, humans, youkai - he'd hated them all pretty much equally up until that point. Now he found himself starting to feel a ... kinship, almost, with the humans.

     And then he met her. Mirin. He passed her sometimes, going from the entrance to Heaven to the bar, as she was coming from her house down to the village market. No husband, no children. Parents killed by youkai. Didn't want to be a burden to anyone, so she lived by herself on the edge of town. He hadn't paid her much attention at first. Just some story, like all the others.

     But she had a sweet smile. And he was lonely. And though he didn't know why he was doing it, he started leaving the bar just in time to see her heading back home. And then one day he tried out one of those stupid comments about the weather humans seemed so fond of.

     And she responded. She was shy, a little frightened. But she smiled - at him, and said something back. Mirin. She was sweeter than any woman in Heaven.

     He hadn't believed she was serious. He thought she was humoring him whenever she answered him. But then the rest of the townspeople started...saying things. To him, about how it was such a shame for such a nice girl to be without a family. How it wasn't proper for her to be living alone, no husband to keep her safe. Well, that he could understand. A woman without some man to protect her was unheard of in Heaven; apparently it worked the same way Down There.

     He didn't let himself think about her as much after that. She was talking to him because she wanted a husband, someone to stop all the questions and the rumors. It was just like Heaven - talk to the people who could help you - though on a smaller scale.

     He wasn't angry. He understood. But he tried not to let himself wonder about her any more, started spending less time Down There.

     It was around that time that he met Shien. He'd seen Shien before, from a distance. He was one of the climbers. Politest asslicking language, soft voice, eyes lowered modestly to the ground. It was enough to make him sick, seeing it.

     No reason Shien should have stuck out from any of the other asslickers, except that people seemed a little frightened of Shien. Not that Zenon watched. Not that he was interested. But people did seem to avoid Shien if they could, or if not, to talk to him as quickly as possible and then leave. And Shien didn't seem to take as much abuse from higher ups as the other bootlicks did.

     Now that he was spending more time in Heaven, he started seeing more and more of Shien. At some point - he could never remember exactly when it was, or what was said - Shien had approached him. Spoken to him.

     Then he understood what was so frightening about Shien. The man was odd from a distance. He was...sickening...from nearby. White skin, too pale even for Heaven. Fine bones, too fine for even Heaven. And his eyes, lowered modestly to the ground...were not open at all. But he didn't need to open them. Zenon could feel the point of Shien's mind sliding through his thoughts as easily as a knife through butter, and all the while there was Shien's soft voice and courteous speech, as if nothing was wrong, as if he hadn't been invading Zenon's mind at all.

     He hadn't known what Shien wanted with him. It wasn't as if he was going anywhere with his post training other nobodies, whereas Shien was some sort of commander or something; at any rate Zenon knew he had some important position in the Toushin Taishi's unit. It was obvious that Shien was one of the smarter ones, someone who was going to get somewhere after he'd stabbed enough backs. Why he was wasting his time with Zenon, Zenon couldn't understand.

     But Shien kept seeking him out. Talking to him sometimes. Standing nearby and saying nothing sometimes, but he was always there. After a while it ceased being so unnerving. Zenon discovered that Shien made a point to be around him because he could, in fact, do things for Shien. Shien's emotionless face, his studied submissiveness and courteous language were unsettling. They were twice as unsettling when he was standing next to Zenon, with his uncouth mannerisms and rough mouth.

     Shien followed protocol to the letter. It had pissed him off when they'd first met. Then he realized that it was Shien's way of mocking Heaven, the same way he mocked it by pissing all over the etiquette and protocol that he was supposed to hold so dear.

     It wasn't as though he and Shien were friends. He didn't need friends, never had. But it was nice to have someone standing next to you who hated Heaven as much as you did. And it was fun to watch Shien frighten the piss out of all of the other functionaries and lackeys.

     Still, he missed humans. Started going back Down There again. It was late autumn now, people had taken in the harvest and were waiting out the last warm days of summer with late nights, lots of drinking and eating. He didn't go back to the village, exactly, but it was easy to mix with the drunken crowds after evening fell. He liked the excitement of it, groups of rowdy farmers stumbling drunkenly from one village to the next, lanterns illuminating flushed, happy faces.

     Celestials were not supposed to go Down There unless they had official business with mortals. It was one of the rules of Heaven. Every Celestial broke it at least once. Most Celestials knew of at least one hidden gate, usually several. The one he used was hidden by a thicket of low growing trees Down There, and by the waterfall of an ornamental garden in Heaven.

     Usually he had no problems getting in and out of the gate, but now, with revelers stumbling home into early morning, he had to be careful. He spent a lot of time making sure no one was around to see him. Illicit gates to and from Heaven existed because the people who used them were careful. That would all end if some human accidentally stumbled out of the world Below up into Heaven because a Celestial had been too obvious.

     There was a steady stream of people passing back and forth tonight, which meant that he couldn't just walk through the gate. He wasn't worried - he didn't have to train anyone tomorrow, so it didn't matter if he had to spend the entire night waiting for the humans to go home. He settled down against a tree trunk and shut his eyes.

     He awoke to the sensation of danger. Youkai, and lots of them. He sensed their presence even before he smelled the blood and burning wood. Youkai. Youkai hadn't attacked all season; it was one of the reasons the harvest celebrations were so large this year. With no threat from the youkai tribes people could afford to be out at night, could travel the distances between the various villages and farmsteads without fear.

     The youkai had only been biding their time. He stood slowly, familiar rage heating his brain. Anger was not new to him, but this anger was. These were people who had shown him friendship, and they were being killed. And for no reason. He turned down the path and headed toward the village, flames from the burning buildings lighting the way for him.

     They were massed just outside the village limits. Youkai. It would have been so easy to kill them and get it over with. Easy except that Celestials didn't kill and for all that he hated Heaven, he was still a Celestial. He reached for his limiter, and took it off.

     They scattered before him like leaves. The rage grew. Cowards. They would attack humans, who were weaker, slower, and outnumbered. But one youkai, one youkai who wasn't part of their tribe, and they ran. He chased. Like the humans before, the youkai never knew that he wasn't capable of harming them.

     He rounded a bend in the path, advanced on a cowering group of youkai. He saw himself reflected in their eyes, and he was horrible. Grey, dull skin, knotted with veins. Claws. Teeth long and sharp. And the eye. The huge, yellowed eye. His lips drew back in a smile.

     A scream, sharp and high and terrified, but not a youkai's voice. He turned, cast about for its source, and the youkai fled into the trees.

     She was cowering by a boulder. Blood covered her clothes and matted her hair. They must have been taking her with them, back to their stronghold. He saw, but he couldn't believe.

     "Mirin?" he said.

     Her hands dropped from her eyes at the sound of his voice, which was his but not like his. Harsher, louder. She started to say his name.

     He turned, cowered. No. No no no no. Not her. It couldn't be her. "Don't look at me," he hissed.

     He heard her draw breath, whether in fear or disgust, he didn't know. "It's too late," she said. Her voice was shaking. Not in fear or disgust, but anger. He couldn't blame her. He would be sickened too. He had been sickened, the first time he'd seen what he was.

     "It's too late," she said again. "I've already looked at you. You're youkai. And you didn't tell me."

     He wished he'd never talked to her. He wished he'd never tried that line about the weather. Fuck her for ever smiling at him in the first place.

     "Zenon..." she said. "I don't care. Take me home."

     His hands dropped from his face.

     After that it had been easy. He'd gone back to her house and that had been it. It wasn't as though she had any family to care where he'd come from, to wonder who his family was and why he had left them and come to this village. And the surviving villagers were too busy collecting the pieces of their own lives, rebuilding what the youkai had destroyed, to worry about his background.

     For the next few weeks he thought that everyone had it backwards, that this was Heaven and that Heaven was the hell Down There was supposed to be. She was the sweetest woman he'd ever known. She was soft. She was gentle. She was his. She wanted him to be with her.

     Down Here is Heaven, he thought.

     It hadn't lasted. It wasn't perfect Down Here either. They got into fights. She didn't understand why he disappeared for days at a time, why he left her alone and would neither take her with him, nor tell her where he went.

     But there was no way that he could tell her he was in Heaven, those days and weeks that he was gone.

     There were other things, too. He was revolted, the first time she bled. Celestial women didn't do that. He was reminded that Down There was dirty, carnal, and that was why everyone, Celestials and Humans alike, said that Heaven was preferable.

     He was relieved when it stopped for good, one month. She was frightened. After all, he didn't understand, at first, what it meant.

     Then she had his son.

     His son. His son, that he had helped to create. Perfect child, with miniscule hands and miniscule feet and soft, sweet-scented skin. He wanted nothing more than to spend every second Down There, with them.

     But Heaven chose that moment to fall into uproar. Something had happened, something concerning the Toushin Taishi, an itan, a group of troublemakers in very high positions. Heaven's bloated, ineffective bureaucracy began to take itself seriously again, and suddenly everyone was watching his neighbor, looking to see who was absent, who it might be advantageous to blame, in the name of one's career.

     There was no way around it. He had to spend more time in Heaven, or risk the consequences. And he was not going to put his family in danger. He...cared...about them...too much to do that.

     He couldn't stand Heaven's bars anymore, so he spent a lot of time wandering the various palace gardens, smoking cigarettes and leaving the butts for servants to find and dispose of. He had tried to spend time with Shien, but Shien had apparently decided that someone other than Zenon was more worthy of his time. Zenon saw the two of them together sometimes, the newcomer tall, dark-headed, wearing a long cloak and jeans, Shien standing next to him, straight-backed, head inclined politely, listening to whatever this other person had to say.

     Eventually, things began to calm down, and he could make occasional visits to his family again. Mirin was angry, and he started stealing things, small things, a flower, a sake glass, a few jewels, from the Celestial palaces to make her happy. He missed her, and his son. He wanted nothing so much as to be with them.

     "I've heard, Zenon," Shien said to him one day, as he was standing in a copse of cherry trees, wishing he was with Mirin. "I've heard that you have a family Down There."

     "Yeah," he said, not terribly concerned. He lit up a smoke and stared into space, wishing Shien would go away, wishing the week would end so he could go back to his family, the family that Shien had apparently heard so much about.

     Then came the poke of Shien's consciousness into his mind, gentle as a lover. Is that all, Zenon?

     He snorted, thought about Down There, about the humans and their short, desperate lives, about how they'd run before him in terror, and had been killed. Thought about how he would undo that now, if he could. Thought about the youkai who killed the humans. He thought about Mirin, without parents, needing a husband so people would stop whispering whenever she left the room. He thought about his son, so tiny, so vulnerable.

     "I like it Down There." He smiled. "I'm a badass," he said, mimicking the whispers of the other Celestials, "and there's a darkness Down There that suits me."

     Shien's mind remained for a moment, evaluated, withdrew.

     "Is that truly your response to this situation?"

     He shrugged. "Does it matter? They'd've kicked me outta this place sooner or later, anyway. See you." He wandered off down the path, not even bothering to turn around and acknowledge Shien properly. He'd let Shien have his fun.

     All it had been was fun, as threatening as Shien might have sounded. He wasn't in Shien's unit. Since protocol demanded that an officer report any member of his unit suspected of becoming too involved Down There, Shien would follow protocol to the letter, and not report him. By the letter of the law, he was not any of Shien's concern, belonging as he did to a different branch of the army. So he realized that Shien had been having fun at his expense.

     What he hadn't realized was that Shien might have been warning him, as well.

     He was called to the Emperor's throne room a few days later. He walked down the long, carpeted hall, contempt rising in his throat like bile.

     "Zenon," said the Emperor, as he fell into a low bow before the throne, "You, although a Celestial, have flouted the Laws of Heaven and mated with a human woman." The Emperor of All Heaven continued on in his plodding, monotonous voice. And in the end it was not imprisonment or demotion, but exile, Down There.

     Zenon felt all the anger, the rage at the pointlessness of this place, bubbling to the surface.

     "Ah, what does it matter? I can't stand it in this shithole. Being sent Down There to relax with my woman and my son is just fine by me." He felt the inaudible gasp, the shock of the courtiers, at his words. Fuck them all. This was exactly what he'd wanted. He was going home to Mirin and he would never have to leave again.

     Still, it was hard living Down There. He had to feed his family, and he needed money to do that, which meant working. He had no special skills, no trade, but they were setting up a militia now, to protect the village against the youkai, and he found work teaching the humans how to fight. He was with his family now, but he still worried about them, about keeping them safe.

     Then had come Souei. He was youkai, but a youkai who had managed to survive unaffected by the minus wave. He felt like he didn't belong in his clan. He didn't want to kill any humans.

     Zenon could sympathize. He had gotten at sympathizing, living Down There. He'd walked out of Heaven, Souei had walked out of his tribe. He knew what that was like.

     Souei was perfect. He was young, strong, and had nowhere else to go. So they gave him a futon in the corner of their house, and he stayed and kept watch over Mirin while Zenon was training the militia, or helped Zenon with the training on the days Mirin spent in town. He was a good fighter, Zenon admitted. He knew he was leaving his family in good hands.

     And then had come the one, horrible day when he came home to hear Mirin screaming, and had run into his house to find her dying on his floor, and Souei standing over her, blood dripping from his claws.

     Souei, the youkai who had not fallen victim to the minus wave. The youkai who had been sent by Heaven to kill his family. And because he was a Celestial, and Celestials could not kill, he would never be able to avenge them.

     He wandered for a time, his grief so complete he barely knew who he was. But eventually, he went back to Heaven, as the Emperor had known he would. There was nowhere else he could go.

     Shien was waiting for him at the entrance to Heaven.

     "You son of a bitch," he whispered. "You knew this would happen. You knew and you said nothing, and now..." His rage was pure, blind. He hated them all.

     "Mattaku desu," Shien said, smiled his small, chilled smile. "Control yourself, Zenon." Then he turned around, looked over his shoulder.

     "Come," he said. "There is someone I believe you should meet."

     A figure leaning against a tree behind Shien lifted his head at Shien's words, and smiled. Zenon recognized him as the man Shien had been spending so much time with, the man who everyone in Heaven mocked behind his back, and cowered in front of. The gentle, cherry-scented wind whipped his long, flame-colored cloak about his feet.

     "This is Homura," Shien was saying, "The Toushin Taishi of Heaven's Armies."