Sacrifice--Hozuki x Reader (Hoozuki no Reitetsu)

Chapter 5

I'm dead.

(F/N) was acutely aware of that fact, and strangely accepting of it. She was dead. Her habit had finally killed her. Still, she found she couldn't regret living her life that way.

For several moments after she died, she floated in blackness. Then she began to see shapes in front of her eyes. There was a young girl, and (F/N) somehow knew this was her—one of her many previous lives.

Her home in that time was a small village. The houses were cramped, and people still wore side-bunches. The previous incarnation of (F/N), known then as Shion, was the daughter of the Village Chief. She was energetic, and loved by all. She, in turn, loved everybody, including the orphaned outcast named Cho.

"I found you!" Shion poked her head into a bush where Cho hid curled up in a ball. He stared at her impassively, and when he spoke, it was in a monotone.

"Why do we have to play this game?"

"I told you! It's fun!" She dragged him out of the bush by his arm. "Come on, smile a little, will you?"

"I am smiling."

She examined his face, and shrugged. "I'll take your word for it. Anyway, if you don't want to play hide and seek, what do you want to do?"

He thought for a moment. "I like magic tricks."

"You can do magic tricks?" Shion grinned. "That's so cool! Show me! Show me!"

"Shion!"

She flinched. Her father was coming up the forest path. His expression told her he was already angry, and when he saw Cho, he became livid.

"What are you doing with that boy?" he snapped, grabbing her arm and yanking her away. "He's not even supposed to be here! I'm shocked he's still alive! Why don't you ever play with the children actually from the village?"

"I do play with the children from the village!" (F/N) insisted. "I just want to play with Cho-kun, too!"

"Come on," he growled. "I'm meeting with the village elders. I need you to watch your mother."

"Okay..."

~o0o~

Shion's mother was very sick. She spent hours at her bedside unable to do anything but replace the wet cloths on her forehead. She noticed the water was getting cloudy, and hefted the bucket into her arms, stumbling towards the river. On her way there, she passed the hut where her father was meeting with the elders. She paused, curious, and listened to their conversation.

"We've had no rain," her father said. "We need to offer a sacrifice."

Shion held her breath. Was that really the only way? She didn't want anyone to be killed, but if they didn't have any rain...her mother would die.

"Not from my family," one man said.

"Not mine, either," said another.

"What about Cho?"

Shion froze.

"Oh, yeah," another man said, "there's that Cho kid."

"He's an orphan, and he's not even from this village to begin with!"

Shion dropped the bucket and ran.

~o0o~

"Cho-kun!" she screamed. "Cho-kun!"

Cho poked his head out of his hut. "What is it?"

She grabbed his arm, and ran, pulling him into the forest.

"You have to get away from here!" she shouted. "My dad...he's going to offer you as a sacrifice!"

"I see...so that's what it is."

Shion paused, and stared at him.

"How are you so calm? If you stay here, you're going to die!"

"Then I just have to leave. It's simple really. I'm not even from this village to begin with."

Shion hesitated. Her hand trailed from Cho's arm to his hand, holding it tightly.

"I don't want you to leave...I'll miss you."

"Will you miss me that much?"

She nodded.

"Then...I suppose there's something I can do."

~o0o~

Shion sat by her mother's side, watching the shallow rise and fall of her chest, when her father bust in.

"Where is Cho?"

She flinched, and scrambled to the corner of the room. She knew her father would be angry, but she didn't know he would be this furious.

"I...I don't know," she whimpered.

"Don't lie to me! The others saw you leave the village with him! Now tell me where he is!"

Her father slammed his fist into the wall, and Shion flinched. If he hit her, it would hurt a lot.

"He left," she lied. "You can't find him."

"You little..." her father growled. "Do you know what you've done? If there's no sacrifice, there will be no rain, and your mother will die!"

Shion stared at her mother, so weak she hadn't woken up even with all the noise. Her father had said this illness was from lack of food, right? If it rained, there would be food, and her mother would recover.

"Ungrateful brat," her father growled. "You've just killed your own mother."

He was about to leave when Sion's voice called out, soft and weak.

"I know where Cho-kun is." She took a deep breath, her lips moving on their own. "He's in the cave on the east side of the mountain."

~o0o~

On the day Cho was sacrificed, everyone gave non-heartfelt apologies. Cho sat on the alter, his usual impassive expression on his face, but Shion couldn't stand to look at it. She kept her head bowed, her heart empty.

"All is well," Cho said in a monotone voice. "This is how we set mens' hearts at ease in this day and age. I bear you no malice."

Shion raised her head. Was he really that okay with it?

Suddenly, his expression darkened.

"If there really is a such thing as the afterlife, then when you die, I will see to it that every last one of you gets what you deserve."

It dawned on Shion, then, that she had killed someone. She had been selfish, and Cho died as a result. She spent the rest of that lifetime as an empty shell, and when she died, she always reincarnated right away so she wouldn't have to live with the memory, but it still affected her. She always had one thought in her mind: I can't be selfish. It carried over even thousands of years later, when her name became (F/N).

As the ancient memories came to the forefront of her mind, it wasn't hard for (F/N) to figure out that the boy named Cho was now a man named Hozuki. It was no wonder she wasn't surprised he was an oni, or that she had a feeling he was dead. She had killed him, and now she would have to face him in the afterlife.

I want...to disappear...

That was her only thought, even as the soul-snatchers, energy-stealers, and spirit-binders came to take her away.