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Part 9
Page 2
Dokugakuji was not very big on gods. He'd never been,
even back in the days when life was still new and fresh and meant something.
Oh, sure, gods existed as much now as then, but that didn't make him a
big fan of them. Especially the gods of irony.
He supposed it figured, in the cosmic sense. That
as soon as Kougaiji reversed course on their entire operation, they'd run
aground on some crisis. Not that Kou had even heard the details yet. Or
heard anything at all. It hadn't taken Doku very long to discover he'd
set a kekkai barrier over the Ministry of Records to shunt off any sort
of ethereal or germane contact, but it had taken him a lot longer to decide
to do something about it.
This was very nearly turning into a war, right up
there with their first big break-up around the second century mark. Dokugakuji
was sure Kougaiji wouldn't like to gear up for a second performance, if
only because of the property damage, but that seemed to be where he was
leading it anyway. Stalemate and mutual silence, cold closing off to kill
any sort of discussion. And Kou actually thought this was all right,
at a time like this. What sort of reincarnate was so important that he
had to hole up for days in the records library until his lover got sick
of the treatment enough to take drastic measures?
That stupid bitch Xiao Shujuan. If only she didn't
exist. That righteous little monk should have trotted merrily off to Nirvana
and stayed there, damn it. He didn't need to go and be a distraction
in the king's life again. Heavens, not again. It was bad enough in the
old days when the two were both alive and young and acting like infatuated
teenagers. But nostalgia bites even worse than the original obsession.
If Xiao Shujuan were the one to show up at that
hotel door bearing the delivery, Dokugakuji was going to take Sanzo's gun
off the wall and shoot her.
So when the knock came, the tall youkai forbade
Sushma from rising to answer. He stepped forward himself instead, straightening
collar of his robes and brushing back the beads of his earring, that clattered
noisily in the dead silence for the second before he opened the door.
It was that damn blonde at the door. He could have
counted on that.
But he hadn't expected the boy.
The eyes. That he'd never really locked onto. The
face he'd never really gotten a good long look at, the last times he'd
seen him. The face he'd told himself he'd left behind five hundred years
ago.
Dokugakuji blinked. It took him much longer to realize
his mouth was open.
"You," he squeaked. And wished it sounded slightly
more dignified.
The hair. The hair was what was really throwing
things. He hadn't remembered that color on him.
Him. He.
Gojyo. Little Gojyo.
He could remember his little bruised and bandaged
face, glaring up at him through fronds of thick red hair that could never
go away. That angry, shaking look of 'how dare you' when Doku told him
not to cry.
Could remember that smirking, stubbled face with
the cigarette between his teeth and a blade swirling at him, pure glee
and boyish excitement and no will to ever hold back.
That serious warm smile when they embraced in the
dark of a forest on the eve of the greatest fight of their lives. The wide
pale eyes after the storm had passed and it had seemed such a miracle that
any of them had survived.
The years that blurred, the smile that softened
and yellowed with cigarettes and spoke proudly about how the kids were
going on, how he and Hakkai were going to be grandparents soon, and how
wasn't it weird that one time, long ago, he could never even imagine living
past the age of ten.
The burial.
Hakkai's face that night at the wake, the eyes completely
drowned in tears.
The boy here and now with the piercings in his skin
peered up at him. He had red streaks in his hair, fading dye. To actually
choose that color--
"Hey mister," Jianmin said. "You gotta problem?"
Dokugakuji blinked again. Twice, three times, shook
himself. "I need a drink..."
Hypocrite, his brain was telling him. Total hypocrite.
You really can't understand? You really don't get what drives Kou? If he
sees in that girl's face half of what you see in this boy's...
When he looped the boy into a sudden tight bear
hug, it was really only Shujuan that looked shocked. It came a lot slower
to Jian, and when it did, translated itself out into the remark, "What'd
I tell ya? Best couriers in th' business."
Dokugakuji wanted to ask everything. His name, his
age, his parents and family, school, job, hobbies and favorite foods and
who was he seeing now, was he staying away from the women, the drink and
the smoke because, above all else, damn, the smoke is what was really lethal,
but how do you say that...
The world had not stopped, though, and even if Doku
could get on fine without breathing, Jianmin was making very loud complaints
about this necessity. He let the boy go.
"Geez, man," Jian wheezed, rubbing a sore shoulder.
"That oughta cost ya extra."
"Er," Doku managed.
"Weirdo," Shujuan added, seeming vindicated.
He wanted to say, You, kid, come back tomorrow,
will you? We'll get lunch and talk, and I swear it's not a gay thing, shut
up you little punk, man you never change, do you. There was a great driving
urge to give the boy a noogie and wrassle him to the ground and pinch his
cheeks and call him all the stupid child insults he could think of, just
to rile him, because that's what brothers did.
...Brother.
Brother's not even a corpse in the ground anymore.
Even the bones are probably all rotted away in his grave. His marker's
disintegrated, all memory of it is gone from the world, but for that part
in Doku's head that cataloged the location next to the grocery list and
what an important premier's daughter called her cat. He was trivia. And
he was dead.
A lot of things were dead.
"Gods damn you," he murmured, gaze still on Jianmin
but not really looking at anything now, not anything at all. "All of you.
What do you do to people?"
"You all right, sir?" Sushma called from the hall.
"Are they staying a while? Shall I make some tea?"
He ignored her, though the two children brightened
immediately at the prospect of food. But in his mind things were still
working, turning over themselves. What he had to do. They couldn't stay
here, him and Kou. They had to get out. It wasn't just for that phone call
the other night and how that changed everything now. It wasn't even Kougaiji's
fascination to solve little Shujuan's problems for her. It was because
they, all of them, all these reincarnates that they had ever run into in
five hundred years, were all just drops of the same great poison.
And with that thought, everything swam back into
focus.
"You," he said to Shujuan. "You brought what I asked
for?"
Shujuan hefted her side of the crate. "You gonna
be paying us back with interest for this?"
His mouth twitched. "You would ask for interest,
you little brat..."
"Hey," Jianmin warned.
"Don't defend her! I'll bet she treats you like
shit."
"Yeah, so?"
"Hey, shut up," Shujuan bristled at her friend.
"You get what you deserve, shithead!"
"And she's always talked like that to you,"
Dokugakuji capped smugly.
Jianmin shrugged shyly. "Well, I mean..."
"Man, take charge! Don't wait twelve years like
you did last time."
"What last time?"
"The last time you were a total pussy to this bitch!"
"HEY!" Shujuan shouted.
"I'll go make the tea, shall I?" Sushma babbled
from the hall.
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