From Darkness to Light

Burial and Guilt

Out in the woods where his three other brothers were buried, Tengen sat with his legs underneath him and blankly stared at Akihiro and Kokumaru's lifeless bodies. It finally registered to him that this was actually happening. When he left the Uzui Manor only two hours ago, no one had tried to stop him. His father and his only surviving brother did not follow him, and the guards outside made way for him as he walked past them. Somehow, he had summoned the strength in his legs to keep moving until he reached the core of the Uzui Forest, where he remembered the location of Fumiyoshi, Saizo, and Kurena's tombstones. When they had died, his father had crudely and inhumanely buried them out here without even a marking for their grave, but Tengen had taken it upon himself to give them tombstones so as to honor their deaths as a good sibling should. When he had killed Himeko and Tsuda in that dark forest so far away, he had laid their bodies to rest in grave sites next to each other before setting off to confront his father - there was no way he was going to leave them there like that. He remembered it vividly; the agony that it caused him and how he had to take breaks to sob about the loss of his siblings and the guilt that he felt. Himeko was only thirteen, about to turn fourteen next month, while Tsuda had just turned fifteen two weeks prior and found the whole idea of arranged polygamy a drag. They were so young. They had so much potential, so much life yet to live. Tengen had so much more love that he wanted to give them. But eventually, he powered through the tears and solemnly laid them to rest. He prayed over the makeshift mounds he erected and prostrated himself before them so as to ask for leniency, begging for them not to hate him for what he had done. He stayed there for a good while, contemplating if he should just kill himself instead of seeking revenge, but he had decided that he needed to confront father - if not for his sake, for theirs. 

Now he had to bury his siblings one more time. Even though this reality was cruel, Tengen had at least hoped that he could bury all seven of his deceased siblings together in one spot, so as to make sure they were all able to have comfort in each other's company. The morbid thought of digging up Himeko and Tsuda and bringing them here had definitely crossed his mind, but it was immediately followed by his knees collapsing and him wailing that he could never do that. He lacked the stomach to see them again one last time. Now, the longer he waited, the weaker his limbs became. 

He knew that burying Akihiro and Kokumaru was something he absolutely must do, but he also knew that by doing so, he would be shoving his brothers into the earth and admitting to them that they were dead. They were dead, and now he's accepting it and moving on carefree. Burying them meant that he fully gave up on saving them, and now he would selfishly live his life while the two of them rotted away. His guilty conscience was tormented with survivor's guilt telling him that he needed to suffer as much as they suffered, and this meant more self-hatred and more self-torture. Don't bury them! You did this, now look at them! 

Even in the midst of his thoughts, however, he knew he had to make things right and give them the resting place they deserved. Even if his mind was telling him that he should suffer, he knew that delaying this funeral any longer would be an insult to his fallen brothers. He had no right to sit here and childishly indulge in his self-hatred when they were desperately asking to be put to rest. The night loomed over Tengen as he laid their raw bodies into the holes he had dug for them. In the shinobi world, dead bodies were never encased in coffins as the prevailing moral was that life should be returned back to life. Nature is the ultimate source of all things, so human beings should return to it just as they were. Despite newly abandoning his shinobi life, Tengen still adhered to this way of burial and felt that his brothers would want it to be this way as well. With his bare hands, he grabbed the dirt and poured back into each hole, slowly watching as both their faces became obscured and their bodies eventually covered entirely. Instead of using a shovel, he wanted to make this procedure feel as personal and intimate as possible. If the dirt that he caressed with his hands surrounded his brothers in their eternal slumber, perhaps they would rest more peacefully knowing their brother painstakingly wanted to see this through. Using a shovel would mean the process has no sanctity; the cold metal would be the one to be doing the burying, not Tengen himself. And so, the process took around thirty minutes to complete where Tengen weakly transported each grain of soil to adequately fill in their graves, whipping himself with mental lashings with each handful and pour. However, after a few more minutes passed, he was finally done.