Blood Wounds | ANY ✔

[23] Iliza Scarlet: The Vanity of Awa

This chapter will be in the POV of Scarlet Iliza. All these are her thoughts. TRIGGER WARNING! This chapter contains abuse, mental health issues, depression, sexual harassment, mental torture and gore.

I apologise if anyone is uncomfortable but this chapter plays a role in the book's storyline and plot.

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The worst part about me is that in the end I became the monster I feared the most.
—Iliza Scarlet

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I was about seven years old when I watched my mother being brutally raped and killed by the man, Yang Kumji.

My mother hid me behind the closet and I watched through the opening of the door as my mother was used, humiliated and killed by that man.

My mother was one of the victims of Yang Kumji but unlike others, he kept her. Using her whenever he felt like it. I remember being terrified when one of the men, he had with him, pulled me out of the closet.

He held me while that man used my mother in front of all these men. I am disgusted to call this man my father. My eyes watched the life leave my mother's brown eyes. The last thing she said to me still haunts me till today.

Iliza never take that man's surname. You are Scarlet Iliza. I wish you weren't born you know? Perhaps I could have spared you this torture.

I screamed when they dragged me out of there. I was thrown into a room and left there for hours. I lay there on the floor crying, screaming, begging for Hiryuu to help me or kill me.

But I never knew that my misery was far from over.

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I screamed as the whip slashed against my ten year old fragile body. It had three years since mother died and three years since these monsters started to ruin me. I cried and screamed as the spiked whip hit me on my back yet again.

When my torturer thought he was done he unclipped the cuffs around my wrist causing my naked body to fall to the floor. The man laughed and kicked the side of body as I whimpered in pain.

You would think that being tortured so often you would get used to it. But you don't. You get used to the pain so much that whenever you are near something that reminds you of your pain your blood runs cold.

We are never really free of the demons of our past. We just bury them somewhere deep inside us. But some of us just don't get the chance to even get a chance to bury them. Somewhere along the pain I lost consciousness.

When I woke up I was back into room that I was thrown into three years ago. My wounds dressed and my body covered in clothes. Everytime I was tortured the maids would clean me up and dress me.

I open my drawer and pull the blade that I had kept there. I watch as the blood trickles down slowly from the scars that I make on my upper thighs. So I can hide them when I need to go out.

The torturers hit places of my body that are easy to cover so when I go out no one sees the scars. After cleaning the marks and the blade I lay numbly in bed dreading the night that was arriving.

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My fourteen year old naked, bruised body laid on the bed as I watched the man getting dressed. I was used to all this now so much that I didn't even have the will to scream for help.

I realised a long time ago.

No one is coming.

I am far from being saved anyways.

When I was being used—just like my mother—for the uncounted time something in me broke. Like a part of me but snapped. The next day I went to Yang Kumji and gave him an offer.

"I will be the seductress of your plans. I will kill anyone you want, whenever you want, however you want. In return all I want is for you to tell those people to fear me like they fear you."

"Agreed. From now on, Iliza Scarlet you will be known as the Vanity of Awa."

The reason why I started this was because I was so tired of being used like my mother that I realised that this is a fear or be feared world. From that onwards I trained like crazy.

I defeated all Kumji's best warriors and became the Vanity of Awa. I was the female who ruled Awa as hers. But even after seeing people have fear for me in their eyes I never felt the girl I was before mother's death.

I became the ruthless, sadistic and twisted killer that I promised myself I would never become.

I became the monster that I was scared of the most.

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When I was eighteen I saw a boy with dark black hair and yellow eyes with group laughing and smiling. I felt envious seeing them so happy. There were four people in that group.

There was a girl with light blonde hair and light blue eyes, a boy with bright blonde hair and reddish brown eyes, a girl with yellow eyes and dark bluish-black hair along with him.

Overtime I often saw him and slowly fell for him. His kindness, his empathy, his laughter, his smiles everything had me smitten. But like always luck was not in favor and he was already someone else's.

I planned to give up because I knew that I could not drag him into the life that I was leading. I didn't want to strip him of his happiness but somehow Yang Kumji found out about him.

Forgive me

He hunted them down and killed that girl whom he used to love. I was standing there when Kumji stabbed her in the heart while the girl with the yellow eyes was silently crying after she had seen the body of the blonde haired boy and girl fall over the edge into the waters.

The boy, Ken—whose name I later knew— sobbed and screamed like anything. I felt my heart shatter when he looked at me with disgust and malice.

But what was I to do? I never knew how to express myself and that lead them to think that I was the one who asked Kumji to kill her and him.

So I did the thing I always did. I pretended. Pretended like I was the one who told Yang Kumji to kill Kiara, the one who planned everything. Even if it meant that he hated me for his life.

After that night I never saw the two of them again.

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As I stumble back with the dagger stabbed in me, I feel a sense of sadness. Finally I can be free from the chains of my past and present. But the look of satisfaction in his eyes, remind me that a girl like me will never get a happy ending.

Why did I fall for you? If only I never saw you laugh that day.

I see the surprised look in his face when I fall backwards. But he never saw the sad smile and tears in my eyes when I fell. I watch as the boat gets further and further from my sight and I drift into the deep ocean.

Taking one last look at his standing silhouette I close my eyes.

At least I saw you before I died.

I feel the water filling me as the hand of death caresses. This is the end of my story. I never had a role to begin with. But one thing, never left my mind. I shall forever be called....

......Iliza Scarlet: The Vanity of Awa