Tethered Romance Part 11

My mind was dormant and I moved on instinct only because the sunlight warmed my nerves from the cold of the night that had long since faded. I turned in time with the geisha, folding the fan forward in the grasp of my straight fingers, a turn of my head, tensing every muscle in my legs to hold myself gracefully. But my mind was far away from me, and in that shrine where we danced in the snow covered garden, the innocence in me would be buried. I imagined the dance, made for the Shougatsu New Year's celebration, was sinister because I craved evil. I desired the devil in me. I had spent my life pushing that devil down, forcing that monster away, and I felt its claws scoring the flesh of my soul. The geisha dancing with me were angels, and they existed to keep the adverse of me under control. It was powerful, that feeling of coldness, malice, and with every step I took and wave of my hand, those angels were under my spell. I reasoned, and I discovered that I had a desire to hurt and control the way I had been, and the taste of it now upon my tongue was thick and overtaking.

My eyes searched scorching over the audience that passed my dancing group on their way to the shrine. I looked at everyone, individually and deductively, and only when my eyes were downcast, and I was momentarily blind to the world before me, did his aura seduce me. I was made of stone in that moment, one more flick of my wrist and sound of the air against my fan, one more turn of my body and my gaze was like a magnet to his vanishing form in the crowd. I was poised on my toes, but with a graceful sweep of my arms like wings, I dropped the fans to the earth with force and stomped out of line.

"Seishin!" A fierce whisper was after me, but I stepped out of range. "Seishin, you can't just walk out in the middle of the performance!"

I knew where to go. I had long since lost sight of him in the passing crowds, the falling powder of snow for the new year, but I knew where he would go. Dusk was settled in my room perpetually, windows covered because the sunlight was harsh and difficult. Mid day, the reflection of the snow cast dancing shadows over the curtains that blocked the light out, trapped me within the darkness, like my heart had been shrouded and forgotten. His presence was like a wave when I stepped inside, a wrapping tide that engulfed me and dragged me far out to sea, so deeply that I was breathless. I felt my way with my body and instinct to the tatami where a candle was resting, and struck it to light.

He was crouched in the corner under the window, furthest from me where the shadows stretched to the vanishing point away from the candle. His gaze rose to me and the slats of pupils in his eyes narrowed in a flash. The candle light shaded everything with a dim glow of yellow, except his eyes with bright crimson. His body was folded gracefully, but his face was hard and secret. All I could think was "shallow", "shameful". That evil in me gripped so tightly, wanted me to hate him, to seduce him. But my heart ached because he was so small, so indignant.

I took a step forward, to the flinch of his body. "Stay there, Seishin." His voice was a mountain, so unfragile compared to his body. "I belong in the darkness."

My eyes fell downcast to the shadows spilled across the floor, as if I could wipe away all the emptiness that fell upon them with the sweep of my eyes. My fingers closed around the flame of the candle, snuffing it out, denying any pain, denying any reason. I fell to my knees, dropping the candle and listening to the echo of it rolling over the seams in the floor, and I crawled forward until I reached him, close enough to smell his breath. He placed a kiss upon my parted lips. My breath escaped in a whisper of fear.

"I kept my promise to you." His fingers reached to me, stroking the length of my arm and coming to rest upon my hand. As he pressed his grasp around it, he lifted it to the curtain straight above us, and I took his cue to lift it and let the light stream in.

But I looked away from him, I couldn't stand the sight. I held the curtain, and turned my head away. His fingers gripped my chin, and forced my eyes to his face, perfectly in line with me, perfectly in focus. "Have you already forgotten? Are you so vain that you took everything I did for you as a joke?"

There was laying a glow of yellow colour screaming in the darkness, but the light from the window cast shadows on the contours of his face. His cheek bones rested higher, the hair on his face had grown long and coarse. There was a low growl in his voice as he drew his breath, a feral quality, and in the way his teeth poked through the part of his lips, I could sense the strength and energy of something wild within him.

"That wasn't what I asked of you." But as soon as the words has left my mouth I found myself on my side against the floor, as familiar as it was that he so often would place a strike upon me.

"I see a whore in myself, Seishin. That's what you are. But you made a fool of me, you made me your slave. I was a fool to think I could melt your heart, Seishin. How stupid could I be to fall for a whore? How stupid could I be to be faithful to one…"

I wanted to throw myself before him as he left, grab his ankles and beg him not leave. Not to take my strength. Not to show me there was ugliness in the world. His step was swift, heaviness lingering there that chained my wrists and paralyzed my fingers. I could picture myself buried in a layer of snow, as it fell softly, even the deep raven of my hair hidden in purity. I could see the curve of my hip, the length of my fingertips reached out calling, praying he would return with a candle. I considered just how much shame I had left to stain my dignity with. I considered just how many more times I could beg before I would become insincere. I considered the way we looked to each other, the bouts of power we both had, the moments of weakness, and the quiet tempers.

He turned his back as if he could hear the way my thoughts ran. Like he could control the light of my mind with the darkness of his most sultry gaze. "You have nothing to say this time either? Your blood runs colder than even a killer, Seishin."

I couldn't think of enough words to speak my soul. My wants and needs were confused, wrapped in a swirl lacking enough sense to disobey. "I don't want you to leave." With his softening gaze, weight of the chains lifting, I felt I knew every reason any hand had to touch me.

He rose from his spot poised in the corner, smoothing down the curtain with a flat palm, his eyes never breaking contact with me. "That is permission enough, I think."

His fingers curled into the closure of my kimono, resting loosely at the bottom of my chest, and with one downward motion he brought me to my knees. Swiftly, his fingers moved expertly to my hair at the nape of my neck, pulling, and I didn't resist as my head tilted back, my eyes forced upward to look at him. He leaned over me, placing me below him to assert his dominance over my heart and my very being. One clawed finger trailed the length of my neck from my chin to my collar, the sweat of my apprehension pooling in the hollow between my bones, the touch more than a whisper as I felt the skin tear. He was rough, and I was willing, the combination of us so typically dangerous. I swallowed hard under his grip, the skin of my neck stretched so tightly there was barely room, and I clenched my eyes shut with the discomfort, unsure what I was suffering for. I felt his hot breath against me coming in forceful pants, as if he was taking in my scent to let me go, run into the forest, and hunt me. I was convinced I could break free from his grip and run if that was what he wanted, but my attention was snapped back to him as he placed his lips upon me.

"Too easy." He whispered. "You should fight me. I won't make this painless."

When it was over, I was left with both hands pressing into the wounds at the base of my throat to catch the blood, a sense of shock numbing any lingering pain, and I was aching for water. The floor under me was solid, slick with sweat and blood, and reflected the terror in my eyes I tried to hold in. His body was heavy over me as he pushed my shoulders to roll me to my back, and I let out the sound of my breath as he rose from me, his hands unkind on my body. I had been so indulged in him, the events he played through, I hadn't noticed the silk brocade bag he dropped to my feet. The sword was withdrawn through the padded layers of his winter kimono, he nudged the soft bulge of silk with the tip of the blade. I looked up in question. "I brought you a prize to show you. To prove I've been faithful." His eyes were hollow, cast away into the bleakness. He seemed to shine with regret, for his words or drama I couldn't tell, and his words were full of intention and threat. "I won't leave you."

I had never seen his eyes in the light since the last sunset of the spring warmth. I shook with cold, apparition, as I opened the bag and threw a glance around me in the dead of the winter night. Reaching inside, I stroked a soft blackness as I cocked my head in a gentle manner. Pulling back, I withdrew the mass of black fur, cradling the fox to my chest, the last drops of blood staining the winter white of my skin.

Poised in the corner of the room, the light pooling out in a crown to mark the place of the highest passion, I was out of its reach, out of its pleasure. The fox lay in its silken grave, and I could hear it purring softly in life, frozen in untimely death. No one was looking for this being tonight, no one cared that he would not be home when the sunlight shattered to chase the darkness. My fingers squeezed a lock of my hair into a fist, recalled from the way I memorized from each touch that went together with a season of a warmth left static. No one would look for me either.

"Sugai?" I tried his name, but he was gone, and would forever remain a shadow on my heart.,

I let my teeth rest gently on the porcelain of the tea cup, the clink almost imagined amongst the sound of the snow tenderly falling through the window. For a moment, I was taken so suddenly by the dancing of the flames beneath the teapot's platform; a pedestal like the kind of Hell guarded by his unearthly minions. For a moment, I had all the jealousy in the world for that teapot, a precious item in the dead night, it seemed to shine over my lust and overpower that same weapon I had used. My fingers ran through the flames once, lingered a little longer, and I pulled them away watching the reddened skin as the pain dulled. I removed the cup from between my teeth, replacing my fingers in the space upon my lips, tongue running over the tips gently.

The world was smaller than I had ever thought it, and in the end, I had always known I would perish to love. I had expected to die. I had expected him to end me, carry my body home with him, and I would be unaware, I would be cold and still. But I had fought. And I was meant to live, else I would have simply given myself away. The night trickled in like always, the stars filled the sky, and the sun broke the darkness consistently, and I was forced to live.

On the outside of Edo, the farthest corner, there was a bridge that separated the city from the wild. It was so easy to find, so easy to cross, that I wished it with me, so my mind and my heart could finally meet and finally agree. The beats had slowed to shallow, the thoughts had laid down to rest, and my body stung with hope and fear. As my eyes drifted over the horizon far into the distance, my voice tested the pain in my soul.

"You're gone." It said to me. "You took what you wanted from me, and you won't come back again." I touched the wound at my throat, only a faint display left there. The dawn had broken, and the skin that I soiled of myself had somehow been repaired, was somehow taunting me with beauty.

That day there was a shadow and haze over my eyes. I could see nothing but lust, thirst, and there was a tug of desire within me for warmth. Every person glowed, a light that I had lost somewhere and I had turned vulgar. My thoughts were distant. I was trapped somewhere inside of myself, as if the monster of me had taken over the spot where my purity had been. But I watched those geisha perform their dances with innocence, I ran through every move in my mind's eye where I knew them.

"Are you joining us again?" She asked me, on her way to brush past me from where I stood in the doorway of the shrine. I danced beside her in line, but I didn't know her name, I didn't know a thing about her. She hardly ever looked at me, and her energy was so far from me I couldn't feel it.

She paused beside me, waiting for me to answer her, but her gaze remained steadfast into the square before us. "You've gotten so ugly, you know." She continued. "I don't know what it is. Bags under your eyes, and scars on your face." She turned her head sharply to me, and caught my eyes. But her expression melted in my line of sight. Where her face was harsh and angled, a feminine beauty slipped away from her, and tangled me.

But she caught herself. She denied that moment. "If you come back to dance with us, you better not drag us all down with you."

As she walked down off the porch into the square to join the assembling geisha, I watched her, paying no mind to the way the other one inside of me began to write a song of pain and desire. I tilted my head smirked to her vanishing form, agreeing with the song that demon in me wrote, nodding to its tune.

The knock on my door came as I blew the flame of the candle to smoke to dissolve in the air. It was ghostly, as the way I moved, and it constricted my heart so my nerves could settle themselves upon the ice of my heart. My hair fell freely around my face in a mockery of my smooth thoughts, delicate on the inside for once, determined on the outside. Greed. Nothing more than that. No excuses.

She acted defiant. She waltzed into my room as if I had called for her to come to me. I drew my breath and let it go to the beat of her footsteps, heavy, calculated, one beat after the other. I let my mind drift to it; flat against the wall, breathe, and push and pull. Victim. Hunter. That was my game. And tonight I would play by a different set of rules that I didn't quite understand.

"You're treated like royalty, you know." She said, her voice streaming with power. I wanted that power. I wanted that beautiful strength. I wanted to watch her fall to her knees as I took it from her. "You think you're so hated living way out here, so far away from the temple, but Seishin, they envy you so much."

A smirk fell upon my lips, but I hid it with my gaze cast downwards and my hair falling helplessly over it. "Do you envy me?"

"I truly hate you." A lift of my brows and dart of my eyes. Lie to me, because I feed from it. I was an angel cast out from Heaven, I always knew, and the demons of the earth just felt enough that they could laugh and prolong my torture. They could tell me they hated me, they could tell me things like love didn't exist, they could tear feathers from my back. But they couldn't soil the innocence I had locked away in the floor beneath my feet, and they couldn't take the light from my crooked halo.

"Well." I said to her. "I hate you too."

I reached for her with a motion of my hand so fluid she was drawn to me. Energy, grace that I had never felt, an ache and desire to fall to my knees and beg her to save me. But she wouldn't save me, she wouldn't go willingly. She was somehow trapped with me, and I couldn't tear my eyes from her no matter how they welled with tears and dragged claw marks through my body of the heaviest sadness in the world. Intoxication.

My hands at her throat. A slip and cry of fear. Tame me. My lips upon hers, delicate, as fragile as my soul. Her back to me, I pinned her down, she didn't struggle.

"Mitsumete." I said. Look at me. My voice low. My hand covered her mouth and I leaned down over her, my eyes in line with hers, my body pressing her to the floor. The muscles in my arms ached, the bones of my legs ground against the floor. My hair fell over my shoulders to shroud us from the outside, my body creating a utopia where my madness was held between us. Her, and me. "I lied when I said I hate you."

There was fear in her eyes for the first time. She had never looked at me so pathetically, and yet her fingers gripped me, unrelenting to my movement, as though she wanted to hold me close to her. I pushed her eyes away from me with two fingers on her cheek. "Never mind. You're hideous when you look at me."

She remained silent, waiting for my cues, willing to obey my every command because she was terrified of what I would do. Her silence was infuriating, and I was taken back in my mind's eye to every instance where it had been me in silence. How frustrating I must have been. My role was reversed, I was the hunter in this game, and my demands were simple enough but left unmet. It excited me but the frustration of her cooperation left much to be desired. "I've never had a woman in my room before." Like it had been done to me countless times before, I curled my fingers into the closure of her kimono to hold her in place, surprised at how much strength and control it gave me over her. "Perhaps, you have never experienced a man before."

I withdrew my teeth from the flesh of her neck, feeling cold as the air closed in on me, clinging to everything that had become damp with exertion and stained with blood. My breath came in droves, fogging the glass of the night's atmosphere and sky. As the human warmth sunk and faded from me, I let her body fall against the floor with the grip I had on the collar of her kimono. I watched my hands splayed out in front of me, and with a sharp intake of my breath, I pulled them back close against my chest, coughing on the blood still lodged in my throat. She lay where I dropped her, sobbing, her breath heavy with fear and relief that my hands had left her body.

I rose to my feet, sensing the grounding of my body deep into the roots of the earth. The blood was all I could taste, all I could smell, all I wanted wrapped around me forever. The blood. The pulse. The heartbeat. It was all pressing into the crevasses of my mind, my soul, holding me so tightly I thought I couldn't breathe because I was afraid of loosening the grip. I placed my palms flat against my cheeks, calming the trembling.

There was silence all around me, and a ringing in my ears. My eyes darted left and right as if caught in a dream so deeply left in sleep. My fingers were cold against my face, a contrast to the smears of blood that touched my skin. But I caught the sight of my reflection in the mirror of the vanity, the hollow black of my eyes, the crimson red of my lips, all offset by the white of my skin and framed by the darkness of my hair. I let my fingertips trail downwards across my cheeks, leaving scars of blood that turned chilled when the air touched the moisture.

"Now your beauty is mine." I said to her, as I rose from her body. I backed into the corner opposite from where she lay, and I watched as the dust and breath rose from her like the smoke of the incense. "All your beauty, all your anger, all your hatred, it's all mine now." I looked down my nose at her, leaning against the wall with my hip.

"You hated me." I continued speaking to her with a determination, as if to justify what I had done to her, to force her to hear an explanation. "And now that means the hatred you had for me is mine." I placed one hand flat over my stomach, the other flat across my chest. "But your beauty is now mine. At least I'll be beautiful."

From where I stood against the wall, I slid until my hands could touch the floor, and leaned forward to my knees. I crawled to where her body laid, the blood cooling in the night air that seeped between the walls, and settled myself beside her. One arm against the floor held my head, and the other draped listlessly across her body as though I was loving, and I gazed at her eyes peacefully. She squeezed them shut and all the tears welling there suddenly began to roll across her skin, drawing a shining trail of her sorrow down to the floor. She was using all the power left within her not to sob loudly, not to give away any more of her weakness to me. But she stayed where she was unmoving, either too scared of what I might do next if she tried to leave my room, or too injured to.

The morning rolled over me in strips of sunlight, like a passing thought in the deep unconscious of my mind. I was floating, ever so slowly becoming aware of every part of my body. My eyes were dry with tears, my breath was a whisper against the shallow beat of my heart. My chest was tense with my breath, and the logic of my waking sent my heart racing. I felt skin beneath my hand, and a jolt ran the length of my body, my eyes splayed open. My lungs burned and I let out the breath I was holding, as my attention turned to the door. The first knock upon it had woken me, the second echoed through the room. My gaze shifted back to my hand, as my fingers worked to stroke the skin of the woman laying still and cold there. "Eighteen." I said to myself. And I had slept through the night beside each one of them.

I made no effort to conceal her. I made no effort to wipe the traces of blood from the floor, from her or from the others before her. I cast my gaze downwards, looking down my nose at the ghosts of the women dragged across the floor, from the tatami to the candlelight, to the spot on the floor where the moonlight leaked through the window so that her soul would find Heaven. Smears and stains in handprints, silent screams left behind from the torture and my delight, the apparitions of my insanity and lust that had taken me over. I was too good. I was above it all, and I paid it no attention, like a mistake I had almost made.

The door slid open easily with a gentle force of my fingers. I stood blocking the sliver, the width of only one eye, only just enough to gain a entry of vision to the outside world. That world beyond the screen of my home, a place that hated me and laughed when I was in pain, sought me to give me grief and mourning, a terrifying and barren place to me that had no use for me, discarded me no matter how hard I clung.

"Are you Seishin-san?" Armor, and a katana to rival my own. A true samurai stood before that sliver of the world. For a moment, my anger softened, and I was tangled with jealousy and desire. I wished to reach out through that sliver of open doorway, reach my hand right into the chest of that samurai and take his heart to be my own.

I smirked at the vision fading in my mind. "Yes, I'm Seishin." And what I didn't say was that when I had his heart in my hand, and it was beating for all it was worth, I would devour it. I knew that lust was the only reason such a man would seek me even before the dawn broke. But I was spent and I was drunk by the night's hours that held my reminiscence.

What did he care how I felt? I was a toy to him, a pawn that was worthless beyond decency to steal and warmth to relish in. I would invite him inside, I would pay no mind to the memories lurking within my dwelling, nor to the evidence lay strew on the floor, and I would hold my breath to keep the pain inside my mind until he was done with me.

"I have a warrant for your arrest. It would be easiest on all of us if you would come quietly."

I cocked my head to my shoulder. "I see." With one push of my fingers, the screen slid wide enough for the samurai to slip through into my room. The sun had not yet found a place at a high point in the sky and the air was still cold, the interior of my room still shrouded in darkness. The perfect time for these kinds of games. "Then be gentle with me and your punishment will be well received." I let my body fall against the wall with grace, a sultry manner that was enticing.

A shackle was suddenly hugging my wrist, a weight grave that pulled my heart with it. My eyes snapped up to the samurai, questioning. I knew the sheen of lust had drained from them, and there was nothing attractive to this man about the way my hair fell or the way the skin of my chest peeked out from my kimono. Another shackle upon my free wrist, and a tug that lurched my unsuspecting body forward.

"Keep your head down and walk swiftly." The samurai told me, with a glance over his shoulder. "Don't make a sound."

My feet slapped the ground so roughly as I trotted behind the samurai, each step becoming more painful and confusing while I bowed my head to hide within the curtain of hair. I could feel every eye on me despite my cover, but my fame was undeniable. Every eye that rested upon me as I passed knew my name, knew my profession, knew where to find me nightly should a heart desire me. Shame. Publically shamed, made a show. My profession, exploded and exaggerated as I was paraded through the street. A performance, a clown, so shameful to my name that I wished to detach myself from it and take on another, "monster", "beast", "killer".

As my mind raced swifter than my feet, my steps faltered and the kimono tangled around my ankles. The momentum from the samurai's strength and forward motion brought me down hard against the gravel, feeling it tear my skin as my body came to an abrupt stop. With my arms bound above me and held by the samurai, there was nothing to catch me.

"I told you to keep your head down and keep moving!" The samurai's voice was like a hammer to my ears as I buried my head in my arms, my face against the ground. He nudged me with the tip of his foot into the space between my ribs, so carefully to press all the breath I had out, to force me to lift my head to take another and see the eyes on me in the streets. "Get up."

On both sides of me, people stood staring. They were still, their gazes harsh upon my skin like the sand against my chest where my body lay listless. I felt as though I had woken from a sleep so deep it had lasted for days, and my muscles ached with tension. I wanted to rise, to dance as they watched me, expecting a show from me, expecting that I would always deliver the entertainment that was the undercurrent of my name. And as hard as I had fallen, I wouldn't rise again.

My body lurched forward as the samurai tugged the shackles about my wrists again. The sandy ground where I lay cut deeply, spreading the likeness of salt in the wounds of my chest, and in my pride. If my audience was entertained, then my job was done. I used the shackles to pull my weight upwards, bringing my knees to support myself, and rose again. This time, I kept my head down.

A snap of a whip and a shriek of terror, pain, ripped the air apart in flames. As the smoke and blur dissipated, I pushed the thought from my mind that it was my voice screaming, my body in pain. "How many of them were there?" Whip. Sting. "Why did you torture them?" Whip. Cry. Rage.

I caught my breath, looking down upon myself. My arms in shackles against the wall where there was no escape, no shelter for my everlasting beauty. Across my bare chest, crossing lines of blood where my skin had been torn apart. Cross me. Cross me, I said in my mind. I can't do it when I'm bound this way.

"There were eighteen." I whispered, lifting my gaze as high as could, holding my head as proud as I could manage. "I have the blood of eighteen women who came to me for comfort they couldn't find elsewhere on the floor of my room. It can't be made my fault if their skin was too weak for my touch." I wanted to confess what I had done. It made me powerful. "What is your name, samurai? I believe I trained with you once."

Somewhere, and lightly, I had touched him. "Takayama." He lowered the whip as if his arm would give me rest.

I smirked though every inch of me burned. "Yes, I trained with you. I offered you my comfort as well, and you took it. You took it with such earnest I could have sworn you had fallen in love with me that night."

A slap to my cheek, I was used to it, it was nothing to me, and I laughed as I spat the blood from my mouth. "Do you have no defense for yourself?" The samurai asked me.

"None what so ever."

Deep into the night, the shackles had been let down so that I could lay comfortably on the floor. The prison was dim, wet and cold, and I was shaking not only with the chill but with the apparition looming like a cloud above me of the crime of my pride. My breath ran short and I refused to fill my lungs with the damp air, the stench of death thick and permeating, as if I had been buried in the earth. For the first time since the screams had subsided, there was silence, and I could hear the ringing in my head. I curled tighter around myself, cold settling like a blanket upon my body, open wounds screaming.

"Seishin." My name through the fog of sleep that had me tangled. As my eyes slid slowly open, I was met with a face I thought at first to be a ghost.

"Okasan?" Whisper. I lifted my head from the stone floor, to meet her hand as she gently pressed to keep me lowered.

"Shh, little one." Kindness. Something I had never heard from her, as it had taken my near death to force it from her. "What have you done?" Her hand remained atop my head, blocking my view of anything past her skin, and so I closed my eyes again. "All Edo speaks of tonight is your torture."

"What will they do to me?"

I could feel a sadness wash over her, a desperation that I understood, channeled to me through her touch. A connection in my vulnerability that I would have otherwise never experienced. "You confessed to a serious crime, Seishin. They feel no need to hurt you further, now they will simply give you death." She paused for breath as if she wanted to cry for me. I knew I didn't mean enough to her for tears to touch her. "For a monster such as you, there will surly be a purification. Misogi. They will scald you with burning water to cleanse you, you'll wish for a swift death. But it won't come. The Gods will not take you, even purity will evade you. After, I don't know what will become of you."

"Save me." A plea that I wasn't aware I possessed anywhere in my body. That I didn't think I had the capacity to utter.

"You already owe me your life, Seishin, what else can I do for you? Can I have your permission for me to destroy you?"

"I can't be destroyed any more than I am now. I wish for death, so save me."

She took her hand away to look at my face. I felt her eyes on me though I dared not look up at her, I felt her presence all around me, a warmth through the atmosphere of the prison, and I couldn't feel the cold. "You live only for beauty now, little one. If you could see yourself, you would wish for death. So why live, even just to live in punishment?"

I laughed, and the weakness of my body threw me to dizziness. "Revenge."

"Edo seeks revenge on you, Seishin, there is nothing more for you to take from them."

"I don't want to touch Edo, I want to leave it. I want to run. I want to chase the reason for my ugliness and destroy it as it has destroyed me. Then I can die. Then I'll be happy to die."

She rose to her feet, and in one swift and seamless motion, drove her foot into my exposed stomach. Blood and bile erupted from my mouth at the impact, my body without the control to hold it within me. "You always cared only for yourself this way. You are a truly hideous being. I'll save you, just for that reason. Just so you have to live and regret that ugliness."

I didn't hear her walk away from me, I closed my eyes to the world before me, and the darkness crept in again. Fingers of frigid air touched me, every part of my body shivered, every part of me feeling either cold or pain. And my hips were gently grasped and elevated by such a gentle touch, my mind was hardly jarred. "Take a deep breath."

But a jerk of my leg created the sound of a body tumbling backwards across the floor at the impact of my heel. I fell back to my stomach as the air escaped from my lungs, spread with both legs behind me and both arms chained before me, and shot every ounce of anger I could gather in a gaze over my shoulder. Fingers from in front of me snaked over my arms and brushed over the skin of my jaw line to grasp my chin. I was forced to meet the smiling eyes of another man, glinting in the sparse light in the darkness. "Hello, beautiful."

I wrenched my head away from his grasp, feeling the strain of the muscle in my neck down to my shoulder. There was no space for me to escape into, I was stretched from one end to the other, the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes. Rendered useless. Paralyzed. "My name is Seishin."

They closed in. The frigid air around me bean to stir, warmed with the movement and breath. The fear slowly crawling into my consciousness was dispersed as a shallow light from the door rolled softly across the floor, and the two shrunk away from me. I felt a moment of disappointment, to my shame, when for an instant I had anticipated the feeling of love again. "We know who you are."