Blade Song

Chapter 18-Sweet Light

Long after the other women went to sleep, I stayed up reading the book Kiyoshi got me. The futon was probably the most comfortable thing I'd ever laid on, but I was still struggling to get settled. I'd tried several different positions, and finally ended up leaning against the wall with the blanket wrapped around me, the pages illuminated by a dim flickering candle.

As much as I wanted to focus on the words in front of my eyes, my head had different ideas. My mind kept drifting to Yoshiko's predicament and my own origin. I'd never known either of my parents. My memories began as Seven, already under Masahiko's suffocating thumb. When I was younger, I used to wonder about my mother sometimes, who she was, what she was like, if she was one of the numbers we didn't speak of, One, Two, or Four?

I got older and stopped thinking about her as much, and eventually not at all. There wasn't really any point to wasting thoughts about someone you would never know. Oddly, tonight, I couldn't stop thinking about her. As a half-breed, it is almost a certainty that my conception was violent and unwanted. Did her thoughts run parallel to Yoshiko's? Did she hate me as I grew inside her? Does this hate shape a person? Was the worst day of her life the day I was conceived or the day I was born? Was the best day the day they took me from her arms? Did she even bother to hold me at all? Did it matter that I was sorry?

These unanswerable questions kept stacking up. Eventually, my busy mind and the low light made my eyes heavy and I found sleep, which is always brief and never pleasant.

I was standing in my old house nestled in the bamboo forest. A heavy rain beat off the roof and bamboo shadows danced on the shoji doors in the bursts of lightning. The room was cast in a soft orange glow by a few scattered lanterns. Any other time, this may have seemed like a cozy spot to hide from the weather, but not now.

A body was half hidden in the darkest corner of the room, but I knew it was her in an instant. I will never forget those hollow eyes of hers. Five.

Her hair was disheveled and her white kimono was torn open. A second person joined her in the dark, his disgusting tongue making its way from her chest up to the side of her neck. He looked up and smiled at me. My blood boiled over with rage.

"Masahiko," I growled.

I tried to run forward, but my legs refused to move. It was as though I was stuck in impossibly thick mud. My hands flew to my waist, but my blades were gone. I wanted to call out to her, but my voice was stuck inside of me. All I could do was gasp wordlessly as I pawed at my throat and fought to move.

Their bodies morphed in front of my eyes. One moment they were Five and Masahiko, the next it was Yoshiko and Yasuki. I was still just as helpless, could not move, could not speak. Yoshiko's eyes were not dead like Five's and she was not quiet, either.

I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my hands on my ears, turning away from the scene in front of me.

A hand grasped my chin and forced my head up and my eyes open.

"You will not turn away!" Masahiko commanded. "Look! This is the man you chose to serve."

I gripped his wrist and tried to pry his hand from my face, but it wouldn't budge an inch. Yoshiko continued to whimper and plead. This did nothing to deter him.

Masahiko laughed. "You want to protest, don't you? Tell me this was not the Yasuki you knew, but what did you know, really? All those times you couldn't save anyone, what do you think was happening to those women? Do you think he never took part at all?"

My fingernails dug into his arm as I continued my futile struggle. He didn't even flinch.

"Do you think someone who condones this is any better? Are you any better? Do you ever wonder what would have happened to you if you told them what you really were?" He wrapped his other arm around me and pulled me against him so that I could feel the hot breath of his low voice against my ear. "Of course you did, but you never had to worry about any of that, did you? Content to live in your lie. Isn't that right, lucky number Seven?"