Till Death Do Us Part - Commission Piece - GakuKai Fanfiction

Commission Story

A lamenting piano tune drifted through the underground, the music dancing around Kaito's head as he sat on one of the displaced coffins that were placed haphazardly around the rooms beneath the living world.

It had been about a week since Kaito had been brought here. It had been a mistake. He had fled from his wedding rehearsals in a panic, his mind flooded with the misshapen vows that he had practiced in the mirror several times that, by some cruel trick of memory, was lost to him within the church. His parents were determined to lift their social status by making him marry into Meiko's family, and according to his unwilling fiancée, her parents were using them both as a means to keep their disgraced noble name from being marked for the poor house.

They did not love each other, there was no romantic connection between them, but they agreed to carry on with the wedding as a sense of duty. However, when the day of rehearsals had come and Kaito found himself before the alter with Meiko at his side, a panic began to bubble up within in him, consuming him and choking him as it flooded over into his throat. He stumbled over his vows as flashes of a future that he did not desire formed in his mind, a wife that he was not in love with, children that neither of them wished for. He had run.

He had found himself in the woods beyond the town when his senses had returned to him, slumping against the nearest tree, and sobbing into his hands as his cowardice consumed him, leading him to vomit at the side of the trunk he used for support. He was a coward, he had disgraced his family and abandoned Meiko who had expressed a sense of solidarity with him, if they were forced to marry strangers then at least they both had the same feelings about the situation.

He had paced the woods, attempting to calm himself down. He had to do this, he had no other choice, he and Meiko had to get married for their sakes of their family. He repeated his vows over and over in his head and out loud, pulling the ring from his pocket. As the confidence filled him the vows came out in flow, as poetry, spilling from his tongue with a grace and conviction that he had never before expressed. Getting carried away he found what he assumed were surfaced tree roots and placed the ring upon one of the roots, finishing his vows and bowing his head to his imagined bride.

That was when the roots outstretched, wrapping around him, and pulling his arm downwards as the fingers grabbed his wrist a little too tightly. He was not being pulled down intentionally, the man beneath the soil was pulling himself upwards. The man was haunting. The arm that had gripped Kaito was nothing but bone and one of his legs was in a similar state, his clothes, which appeared to be a finely tailored wedding suit, were tattered, and rotted, matted with dirt and mud. There was what Kaito assumed had once been a rose, now crushed and wilted, long dead. Matted and filthy purple hair fell down the man's back and shoulders, falling to his hips and clear, crystal blue eyes locked onto Kaito, latching onto his arm as he spoke, his voice low and rich, velvet tones breaking so dramatically away from his appearance.

"I do."

That had been Gakupo. Kaito had woken up in an underground town, surrounded by what Kaito could only have described as zombies. Corpses that moved and spoke, including the man who had brought him here who, much to Kaito's horror, was claiming to be his husband.

He attempted to run, realising that he had no way to get back, no way to return to the land of the living. He was alive, he was breathing, and his heart was beating, but he was trapped in the world of the dead. Gakupo had followed him and had been able to find him in a calmer state, still afraid yet willing to listen.

Gakupo had been murdered. His situation had been similar to Kaito's own, he had been forced to marry a woman he did not love and who did not love him. They agreed to marry out of a sense of duty but Gakupo had panicked the night of the wedding and found himself in the same woods that Kaito had found him in. Gakupo's luck had been much worse than Kaito's own, he had been followed by his fiancée's brother and had been murdered without a chance to defend himself or even speak.