Short Stories

Hayakawa Tatsuya

The streets of Japan were in chaos and anarchy. Reeking of blood, sweat and spit. Thousands of starving people and desperate bodies pressed together. Overnight, hasty tribunals were built outside of prisons for aristocrats to be swapped through, one at a time. Pulled from their cells in the middle of the night to stand trial before a teeming crowd. These trials would go on till sunrise.

Hayakawa Tatsuya, was still technically not in prison, yet. They lived in a fourtris palace called Kaguya castle.  Under something close to house arrest.  They were forced to wait their days looking at walls and listening to the mocking monotonous chants from the guards and the cries for blood from the streets.  One of Tatsuya's friends, Kanemoto Haru, was brought into the courtyard, the tribunal of revolutionaries asked Kanemoto Haru to take an oath, swearing his love of liberty and hatred of Hayakawa Tatsuya.  "I can swear readily to the former, " Haru said.  "But not to the later, it is not in my heart" those with sympathetic hearts looked at Haru with horror.  Some whispered to him to take the oath and save his own life. Haru shook his head. The leader of the tribunal brought his hand down and shouted. His body was thrown to the crowd. His body was torn apart, stabbed and beaten.  Those with knives cut pieces of his flesh to keep as souvenirs. His head, they stuck on a pike to parade through the city. 

And so, from cafe to cafe, Haru's lifeless head was placed before patrons. They were told to drink in celebration of the death of traitors. Then someone in the crowd had an idea. "Shouldn't Tatsuya see his beloved friend once more? Shouldn't he give his friend a kiss goodbye?" But Haru's head was bloodied and swollen, his hair matted and thin.  So, the crowd brought Haru's head to a hairdresser, who was forced to style the decapitated head until it had the same messy black hair that Haru had been famous for in life.

When the head was recognizable they brought it to the castle. They raised the head on it's pike until it was directly in front of Tatsuya's window.  The crowd began chanting, demanding that Tatsyua; kiss Haru's cold blue lips.  Look into his hooded swollen eyes, look at his grey skin. His sunken cheeks and perfect messy black hair. The meniscus thin bobble of head kept him safe at his side, popped.  Leaving Tatsuya with only the shutters on his windows to shield him from having to see his friend's grotesque head. The sounds from the streets though, the taunts and the jeers there was no protection from. And even when the crowd scattered, bored from waiting for Tatsuya to appear, ready to find a fresher body. Tatsuya knew sooner or later that body would be his.