For Ten Thousand Years, 1/5
anonymous
January 28 2009, 02:05:03 UTC
As I mentioned weeks ago, and finally got the time to finish writing and revising - here’s my second fill for this request. Have a try at yandere Japan, with a side of proto-yandere proto-North Korea.
March 1919
Mansei was the cry that went up across the peninsula - mansei, from the same kanji as banzai, calling for ten thousand years not for the Land of the Rising Sun, which would have been well enough if surprising, but for something that no longer existed even if its former avatars still did. They paraded, an army without weapons, as though they could recover the fallen Korean Empire through the sheer force of their voices.
Kiku allowed himself the luxury of staring for a brief time (Was it fear that stayed his hand, fear that moved it? Surely not). Then he began to issue his commands.
Like his twin brother, Yong Su came without resistance once caught. As Kiku’s officers took hold of his arms and pulled the flag from his hands he turned back to the white-clad crowd with head high and shouted “Mansei!” once more before being clouted with a rifle. He slumped in their grip, half-conscious and half-smiling, and they hauled him off, following Kiku’s lead. His smile only vanished completely when, some distance away, they all heard the gunfire begin.
***
Yong Su’s prideful resolve had broken and he struggled simply out of the instinct of an animal. His screams were wordless animal screams of pain and rage. He huddled in what was left of his white clothes in the corner of the cell, cringing when Kiku opened the door, flinching further back at the cautious approach of his hand.
No, thought Kiku. No, this wasn’t what he wanted.
***
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s not as nice as big brother’s,” said Yong Su, turning the celadon dish in his hands, “but he thinks it’s pretty too. Do you want some, then?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Then take this,” Yong Su proclaimed, handing him the dish. “As a gift. It’s the least I can do for my little brother.”
“Thank you. Though, I’m not your little brother.”
Yao would have reacted with flustered disappointment. Yong Su just laughed.
Kiku, scrutinizing his reflection and marking his growth against a wall, thought by way of consolation that if he kept growing he’d soon be of a height with Yong Su, and maybe then he’d stop calling him that.
***
“What were you thinking?” he asked. “What did you expect it to do? Why did you do this to yourself?”
Yong Su moaned. Kiku returned to scrubbing his body, washing out the blood that matted his hair. That done, he maneuvered him into the tub to soak, which proved a challenge with the lanky and unresponsive limbs. The brothers had begun to grow again in the past decades - on the first of March, when Yong Jun turned himself in with their declaration of independence in hand, Kiku had realized they were now taller than him. Shouldn’t they appreciate that?
“If I’d left you to Wang Yao,” he said, stepping into the tub himself, “he would have dragged you down with him, the rest of the way. You saw what’s become of him. Sick with opium, divided among the West. Did you want that for yourself?” Yong Su began to slump, and Kiku barely kept him from pitching face-down into the bathwater. “He was great in his time, but his time is past.”
***
There had once been three kingdoms on the peninsula, and they’d given rise to twin brothers, two-in-one. Like yin yang, said Yao. Like um yang, said Im Yong Jun, who was solemn, quiet, stately, immersed in the world of spirits and the tomes of philosophy. Kiku found little fault with him and found plenty of fault with his twin, who was loud, wild, impetuous, headstrong, irreverent. Yet it was Im Yong Su he always found himself wanting to see.
For Ten Thousand Years, 2/5
anonymous
January 28 2009, 02:07:24 UTC
Yong Su showed off his paintings and his poetry and his pottery as Kiku murmured “beautiful, beautiful.” Yong Su turned somersaults and gave puppet shows. Yong Su sang and danced and on one day, in one hour, in one moment Kiku looked up from the latest set of traded ceramics and looked at the flyaway sleeves and the stubborn stray curl of hair and the shining eyes and the laughing mouth and it occurred to him then that the creator of all these beautiful things was equally beautiful.
***
Kiku had prepared a room in his house for each of them, though Yong Su was always running away, or slipping in to sleep beside his brother. He laid Yong Su on the futon and covered him neck-to-toe with a thick quilt. There was a round of accumulated duties to attend to, and he left Taiwan to watch over Yong Su in the meantime. Wang Lan Yueh was a small girl yet but she was a quick study, fairly docile now, and Kiku was confident that under his guidance she, too, would grow.
There were some more questions from the others about the recent unrest, and he answered them smoothly. After all, it was little more than what they themselves took part in, and after the lesson he’d taught Ivan Braginsky no one dared try to take advantage of him again.
When he returned, Yong Su was awake and half-sitting and Lan Yueh was feeding him tea and rice and miso soup. Kiku felt a flare of resentment that he hadn’t been the one to greet him when he woke, which he quashed as irrational. There would be plenty of other opportunities.
He dismissed Lan Yueh and utilized her example in her absence. “Did you see her?” he asked Yong Su, kneeling at his side and taking up the bowl of soup. “I cured her of opium. I unbound her feet and I educated her.” He lifted the bowl to Yong Su’s lips and tilted it. Yong Su drank obediently, bringing up his own hands to hold the bowl, and with his free hands Kiku ran his fingers through his hair, continuing the job of untangling that he’d begun in the bath. “I’ll do the same for you.”
From the way Yong Su stiffened one would think that instead of giving him encouragement Kiku had threatened to pulp his feet and cripple him as Lan Yueh had once been crippled.
“You deserve more than to be dismissed as a hermit backwater,” Kiku told him. “So much more.”
***
There had been talk of division. Each time he’d said that he would take Im Yong Su, and the southlands. If it were solely a matter of his own human-like desire Yong Su, alone, would have been enough.
The first time, with Yao, negotiations had broken down and he’d taken neither of the twins - they’d risen up, with their genius admiral, and driven him away. He came away with considerable spoils all the same. Now he, too, had his share of that beauty.
The second time, with Ivan, negotiations had broken down, his navy had applied the lessons learned from the twins’ genius admiral, and eventually he’d taken both of them.
***
He supposed Yong Su had to be wiser than he let on, to be able to keep the plans for the March debacle secret until it happened - for all the good that had done him, in the end. Another example of this secret and selective wisdom was that Yong Su waited until the bowls of soup and rice were empty, and the cup of tea drained to its leaves, before whispering “Let us go.”
“What did you say?”
Yong Su swallowed. “Please, let us go.”
Apparently, as the shouting hadn’t worked now he would try his hand at begging. “I can’t do that.”
He looked up. This time it wasn’t for joy that his eyes shone. “Why can’t you leave us alone?”
“I can’t do that,” Kiku repeated. “Think of it in this manner: if it weren’t me, it would be someone else. Would you rather live with Braginsky-san, especially as he is now?”
For Ten Thousand Years, 3/5
anonymous
January 28 2009, 02:10:31 UTC
Yong Su lowered his head again, pulled up his knees and folded his arms around them, beginning to sob into the quilt. Kiku rested a hand on his back and waited, patient.
“All right,” Yong Su murmured at last. “I’ve thought.”
“What do you want to say, now that you’ve thought?”
His head jerked up. “I hate - I hate you! Mansei, mansei -”
The force of Kiku’s strike snapped his head to the side and knocked him off the futon, onto the tatami mats, where he curled in evident anticipation of another blow. Kiku stared (this was an era for staring) at the tears streaked across his fingers and palm, then hurriedly left the room before he could lose enough control to deliver that blow. As he slid the door shut behind him, he heard Yong Su begin to retch.
***
When they opened their doors to him again at last, Yong Su gave him a tentative smile and Yong Jun gave him a blank face. Kiku smiled back and marveled at how small they seemed now. Had he seemed as small to Alfred Jones?
They could no longer rely on Yao to protect them. They could no longer hide from the rest of the world and hope to be overlooked. The world would no longer pass them by - it would sweep them along. They would learn to look outward again, or they would be trampled underfoot. Kiku had learned that lesson well.
When he stepped closer, Yong Jun stepped in front of his brother in turn, perhaps divining his intentions. Though if he did so, he divined the intentions of either the past or the future. Yong Su looked much the same as he had two, three hundred years ago - and that was the trouble. Kiku had outgrown him.
It was a trouble, however, that could be remedied. And the remedy began here, as each of them pressed their seal to the treaty.
***
Kiku returned hours later, bearing another tray of food and drink. The room was cleaned up and Yong Su had retreated to a far corner, draping himself in the quilt. His legs were crossed, his knees jutting out from underneath.
“I want to see my brother.”
It was the same thing his brother had said, delivered even in the same measured cadence, and Kiku repeated, “You’ll see him if you conduct yourself properly.”
Yong Su’s hands clenched and he turned his face toward the wall.
“Look at me,” Kiku told him, moving closer. As he showed no sign of doing so, he set down the tray, knelt, and reached to grasp his chin and turn it. When he succeeded Yong Su’s eyes were shut, his lips a line of distaste. Yes, he looked more and more like Yong Jun, and Kiku didn’t want Yong Jun - not in this way.
“It would be pleasant,” he murmured in half reflection, “if you would smile for me again.”
“Smile?” Yong Su blurted, eyes flying open. “After what you did to us?”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Yong Su’s eyes promptly closed again. “Please,” he tried to soothe him. “There’s no need to be like this.”
“There wasn’t a need to kill them.”
***
“You killed her.”
“No.”
The queen of Korea had most certainly been an obstruction, yet in her death he might also have lost Yong Su, at least for a time. The boy was clearly no longer in a state to mull over reform and modernization with that peculiarly endearing expression of contemplation. The hems of his voluminous trousers and sleeves were heavily stained. He lifted his hands before his face, stared at them as if he didn’t know what it was that streaked them, and then stared back at Kiku and repeated, “You killed her.”
For Ten Thousand Years, 4/5
anonymous
January 28 2009, 02:14:39 UTC
“Rest assured -”
“Su,” Yong Jun interjected, entering through another door. “I’ll take care of this. His Majesty and His Highness are still alive and they need you. Go!”
Yong Su glanced to Kiku again, then to his brother, and fled.
Now it was Yong Jun’s turn to stare, not taking his eyes from him until the sounds of flight faded away with distance. “Get out.”
“What?”
“I know you heard me. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
He’d tried to throw Kiku out before, after the failed coup, and yet here Kiku was now. “I believe you are mistaken. I have no such designs -”
“That was what France said.”
“I did not -”
“I knew his game, and I know yours. You won’t have him. You won’t use him. Get out!”
Kiku bowed and withdrew for the time being.
***
“Your brother said you got these ideas from Jones-san.”
“We did. We have a right to decide, and we decided -”
“Su-kun.”
“Don’t call me that. My brothers call me that.”
“You must understand that Jones-san and his president were speaking of elsewhere, of those who were ready.”
“Where did he say that?” Yong Su demanded. His childish refusal to open his eyes bordered on absurd. Kiku didn’t laugh. “Tell me where he said that.”
“He didn’t say it, in so many words. He showed it, by his agreement with me.”
“No.”
He snapped off the word immediately, but despite his closed eyes Kiku could see him realize how flimsy the denial was. The proof was in Alfred’s lack of action.
“Ah,” said Kiku, beginning to realize in turn, “Did you think perhaps that he would hear of unarmed crowds under attack -”
Yong Su made a small strangled noise.
“- and rush to the rescue?”
The same noise emerged from the back of his throat. Kiku’s grip tightened, thwarting his attempt to jerk his head away.
“He is aware you don’t need rescuing.”
“No.”
“I can’t say it was very wise of you. Either of you. I might even call it wasteful.”
Under his fingers, Kiku felt Yong Su’s face contort. “I didn’t want it to happen! Not that way! You’re the one who -”
“Shh.”
“Don’t tell me shh!”
However tall he was now Yong Su remained injured, remained weak, and by moving just before the other renewed his struggles in earnest, Kiku managed to pin him to the floor before he caused any damage. Yong Su writhed on his stomach underneath him and screamed as though he were being murdered.
***
“Let me go!”
“I don’t believe you’ve been to my house for a long time now. I’ve made improvements since then. I hope you will enjoy them.”
“I don’t care about your stupid house!” After the annexation was finalized it had taken some time to track down and subdue Yong Su, whose natural knowledge of his land had given him a temporary advantage. And now, when he was bound at wrists and ankles and further tied to a chair in a cabin of a ship about to leave harbor, he still refused to give up. “I don’t want it! I hate you! What’ve you done to Jun? Let me go!”
“What you want does not always coincide with what you need,” Kiku told him, turning away so that Yong Su would not see how this lesson also applied to him. He reminded himself of the lesson repeatedly as he went through his papers, listening as the shouts and the thump-thump of feet kicking against the chair legs slowly died down.
When the shouts started up again he picked up the bamboo rod in the corner and told them both as he applied it that this would work out for the best, in the end.
***
“This is for the best.” He thought his sight might be blurring. “You may not see it now, but it’s for the best.”
“No. No.”
But he had exhausted himself by now, lay still and unresisting, and Kiku, near-equally exhausted he thought, lay atop him and whispered, “You’ve grown so much already. There have been setbacks, regrettable setbacks, but all things considered, I’m proud of you.”
“If you’re so proud why don’t you -”
“Shh, shh. You know that I can’t do that. But things will be better now. I promise you. Things will be better.”
“No,” he said once more, audibly faltering now. Kiku rejoiced.
For Ten Thousand Years, 5/5
anonymous
January 28 2009, 02:26:43 UTC
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there before Yong Su turned his head to regard him with one eye. Kiku reached out, and Yong Su jerked beneath him but stilled again as the knuckle of Kiku’s bent finger rubbed away his tears.
“You will be glorious,” Kiku told him. “With me, you will be part of something great. Something beautiful. Something that will endure for ten thousand years.”
“After that?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“After ten thousand years,” he whispered, and Kiku heard a bizarre juxtaposition of childish hope with childish acerbity. “Will you let us go then?”
Kiku, feeling indulgent, said, “We will see.”
***
August 1945
In the next twenty-six years, which was as long as it endured, Kiku never once told Yong Su the whole of it. That was probably for the best. Things had gotten better, as he had promised. And then, in retrospect he could see this, they had gotten worse, and that would certainly be the impression Yong Su would go away with.
He lay in bed, trying not to provoke his wounds, and listened to the loud but receding voice of Yong Su, out in the hall, chattering to Yong Jun about committees and elections. Yong Su had screamed when the news came, first without words and then a whooping Mansei, loud enough that Kiku had clapped his hands to his ears, then paid in pain for moving his arms too quickly. Neither of the twins had spoken a word of Japanese since and it had taken Kiku a while to begin to understand them again, if he ever had in the first place.
The twins were leaving his house now, bags packed with their meager possessions; he supposed it would have been far too much to expect them to stay when even Lan Yueh was counting the days until Yao came for her. Yong Su had learned to smile at him again on command, nothing more, and Kiku had been tricking himself into thinking that he’d cultivated any more substantial feeling behind that smile.
In the distance, a door closed. Kiku lay back and waited for his next visitor.
***
2009
“I hate you!”
“So you have often said.”
Yong Su flailed his arms and shouted over inconsequential things and Kiku once more dared to think beautiful - wild and vibrant in both anger and happiness. He controlled his expression and didn’t let himself think too far beyond that. He knew what came of wanting too much.
***
The March 1st Movement of 1919 was a (mostly) nonviolent, nationwide demonstration of Korean nationalism nine years after its annexation by Japan. Its initial organizers were inspired by the Fourteen Points put forth by American President Woodrow Wilson, particularly the idea of the right to national self-determination. The movement spread across Korea, but was bloodily suppressed by military police.
Japanese policy in regard to Korea began to be reconsidered afterward, especially combined with various international objections to the bloody suppression. This reconsideration led to roughly a decade of more outwardly lenient “cultural” rule, which was then followed in the 1930s by a policy of forcible assimilation that lasted until the end of World War II.
Absolutely fantastic. This is better than any History lesson I'd get at school; I'm loving this other side of Japan and the Korean twins and the emotions that were portrayed. With this, you've certainly satisfied my yandere kink, kind anon~
Ah, thank you. I have to demur as to the idea of my outdoing a qualified history teacher (if said teacher happened to give a lesson on this) but it's really flattering to hear your opinion.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the first things that popped to mind when I saw this request was Japan, specifically a repressed "I'm doing this for your own good" Japan; with both him and Korea, I again tried to merge Hetalia canon with what I know about the history between them. It's good to hear that worked for you.
Re: For Ten Thousand Years, 5/5
anonymous
January 28 2009, 04:03:11 UTC
I love you. I really fucking love you for writing this. This is just really amazing...I really don't know how to convey my feelings for this. Thank you for writing this!
Re: For Ten Thousand Years, 5/5
anonymous
January 28 2009, 08:27:15 UTC
LAKSJDLASD I LOVE THIS. SO. MUCH.
I love Japan in this. ): The Japan who thinks he is doing good (...creepily so), the Japan who actually FEELS REAL EMOTIONS and is quietly dynamic and isn't all boring and flat -- do ya get what I'm saying? Sorry if I'm not making sense, cause it's 2am AHAHA.
I don't usually fangirl Japan as a character, and -- idk, you made me like him here. NOT his actions, of course not, but the way you handled them. You gave him depth for me. Thank you. ILU, Yandere!Japan;;wea;kds
Re: For Ten Thousand Years, 5/5
anonymous
January 29 2009, 02:42:53 UTC
Oh, thank you! It's great to hear this.
I personally think Japan has his moments in Hetalia, though I don't quite fangirl, but I'm happy you have so much love for the take on him I have here, creepiness and all. I wondered what might potentially be under the surface with him, considering what I know of Japan's history with Korea, and I'm glad that the self-deception and repressed desire and such that I ended up with comes across so compellingly for you.
March 1919
Mansei was the cry that went up across the peninsula - mansei, from the same kanji as banzai, calling for ten thousand years not for the Land of the Rising Sun, which would have been well enough if surprising, but for something that no longer existed even if its former avatars still did. They paraded, an army without weapons, as though they could recover the fallen Korean Empire through the sheer force of their voices.
Kiku allowed himself the luxury of staring for a brief time (Was it fear that stayed his hand, fear that moved it? Surely not). Then he began to issue his commands.
Like his twin brother, Yong Su came without resistance once caught. As Kiku’s officers took hold of his arms and pulled the flag from his hands he turned back to the white-clad crowd with head high and shouted “Mansei!” once more before being clouted with a rifle. He slumped in their grip, half-conscious and half-smiling, and they hauled him off, following Kiku’s lead. His smile only vanished completely when, some distance away, they all heard the gunfire begin.
***
Yong Su’s prideful resolve had broken and he struggled simply out of the instinct of an animal. His screams were wordless animal screams of pain and rage. He huddled in what was left of his white clothes in the corner of the cell, cringing when Kiku opened the door, flinching further back at the cautious approach of his hand.
No, thought Kiku. No, this wasn’t what he wanted.
***
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s not as nice as big brother’s,” said Yong Su, turning the celadon dish in his hands, “but he thinks it’s pretty too. Do you want some, then?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Then take this,” Yong Su proclaimed, handing him the dish. “As a gift. It’s the least I can do for my little brother.”
“Thank you. Though, I’m not your little brother.”
Yao would have reacted with flustered disappointment. Yong Su just laughed.
Kiku, scrutinizing his reflection and marking his growth against a wall, thought by way of consolation that if he kept growing he’d soon be of a height with Yong Su, and maybe then he’d stop calling him that.
***
“What were you thinking?” he asked. “What did you expect it to do? Why did you do this to yourself?”
Yong Su moaned. Kiku returned to scrubbing his body, washing out the blood that matted his hair. That done, he maneuvered him into the tub to soak, which proved a challenge with the lanky and unresponsive limbs. The brothers had begun to grow again in the past decades - on the first of March, when Yong Jun turned himself in with their declaration of independence in hand, Kiku had realized they were now taller than him. Shouldn’t they appreciate that?
“If I’d left you to Wang Yao,” he said, stepping into the tub himself, “he would have dragged you down with him, the rest of the way. You saw what’s become of him. Sick with opium, divided among the West. Did you want that for yourself?” Yong Su began to slump, and Kiku barely kept him from pitching face-down into the bathwater. “He was great in his time, but his time is past.”
***
There had once been three kingdoms on the peninsula, and they’d given rise to twin brothers, two-in-one. Like yin yang, said Yao. Like um yang, said Im Yong Jun, who was solemn, quiet, stately, immersed in the world of spirits and the tomes of philosophy. Kiku found little fault with him and found plenty of fault with his twin, who was loud, wild, impetuous, headstrong, irreverent. Yet it was Im Yong Su he always found himself wanting to see.
Reply
***
Kiku had prepared a room in his house for each of them, though Yong Su was always running away, or slipping in to sleep beside his brother. He laid Yong Su on the futon and covered him neck-to-toe with a thick quilt. There was a round of accumulated duties to attend to, and he left Taiwan to watch over Yong Su in the meantime. Wang Lan Yueh was a small girl yet but she was a quick study, fairly docile now, and Kiku was confident that under his guidance she, too, would grow.
There were some more questions from the others about the recent unrest, and he answered them smoothly. After all, it was little more than what they themselves took part in, and after the lesson he’d taught Ivan Braginsky no one dared try to take advantage of him again.
When he returned, Yong Su was awake and half-sitting and Lan Yueh was feeding him tea and rice and miso soup. Kiku felt a flare of resentment that he hadn’t been the one to greet him when he woke, which he quashed as irrational. There would be plenty of other opportunities.
He dismissed Lan Yueh and utilized her example in her absence. “Did you see her?” he asked Yong Su, kneeling at his side and taking up the bowl of soup. “I cured her of opium. I unbound her feet and I educated her.” He lifted the bowl to Yong Su’s lips and tilted it. Yong Su drank obediently, bringing up his own hands to hold the bowl, and with his free hands Kiku ran his fingers through his hair, continuing the job of untangling that he’d begun in the bath. “I’ll do the same for you.”
From the way Yong Su stiffened one would think that instead of giving him encouragement Kiku had threatened to pulp his feet and cripple him as Lan Yueh had once been crippled.
“You deserve more than to be dismissed as a hermit backwater,” Kiku told him. “So much more.”
***
There had been talk of division. Each time he’d said that he would take Im Yong Su, and the southlands. If it were solely a matter of his own human-like desire Yong Su, alone, would have been enough.
The first time, with Yao, negotiations had broken down and he’d taken neither of the twins - they’d risen up, with their genius admiral, and driven him away. He came away with considerable spoils all the same. Now he, too, had his share of that beauty.
The second time, with Ivan, negotiations had broken down, his navy had applied the lessons learned from the twins’ genius admiral, and eventually he’d taken both of them.
***
He supposed Yong Su had to be wiser than he let on, to be able to keep the plans for the March debacle secret until it happened - for all the good that had done him, in the end. Another example of this secret and selective wisdom was that Yong Su waited until the bowls of soup and rice were empty, and the cup of tea drained to its leaves, before whispering “Let us go.”
“What did you say?”
Yong Su swallowed. “Please, let us go.”
Apparently, as the shouting hadn’t worked now he would try his hand at begging. “I can’t do that.”
He looked up. This time it wasn’t for joy that his eyes shone. “Why can’t you leave us alone?”
“I can’t do that,” Kiku repeated. “Think of it in this manner: if it weren’t me, it would be someone else. Would you rather live with Braginsky-san, especially as he is now?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you mean that.”
“I do. I’d take Russia first. I’d sooner die.”
“Please think before you speak.”
“I hate you.”
“What did I just tell you?”
Reply
“All right,” Yong Su murmured at last. “I’ve thought.”
“What do you want to say, now that you’ve thought?”
His head jerked up. “I hate - I hate you! Mansei, mansei -”
The force of Kiku’s strike snapped his head to the side and knocked him off the futon, onto the tatami mats, where he curled in evident anticipation of another blow. Kiku stared (this was an era for staring) at the tears streaked across his fingers and palm, then hurriedly left the room before he could lose enough control to deliver that blow. As he slid the door shut behind him, he heard Yong Su begin to retch.
***
When they opened their doors to him again at last, Yong Su gave him a tentative smile and Yong Jun gave him a blank face. Kiku smiled back and marveled at how small they seemed now. Had he seemed as small to Alfred Jones?
They could no longer rely on Yao to protect them. They could no longer hide from the rest of the world and hope to be overlooked. The world would no longer pass them by - it would sweep them along. They would learn to look outward again, or they would be trampled underfoot. Kiku had learned that lesson well.
When he stepped closer, Yong Jun stepped in front of his brother in turn, perhaps divining his intentions. Though if he did so, he divined the intentions of either the past or the future. Yong Su looked much the same as he had two, three hundred years ago - and that was the trouble. Kiku had outgrown him.
It was a trouble, however, that could be remedied. And the remedy began here, as each of them pressed their seal to the treaty.
***
Kiku returned hours later, bearing another tray of food and drink. The room was cleaned up and Yong Su had retreated to a far corner, draping himself in the quilt. His legs were crossed, his knees jutting out from underneath.
“I want to see my brother.”
It was the same thing his brother had said, delivered even in the same measured cadence, and Kiku repeated, “You’ll see him if you conduct yourself properly.”
Yong Su’s hands clenched and he turned his face toward the wall.
“Look at me,” Kiku told him, moving closer. As he showed no sign of doing so, he set down the tray, knelt, and reached to grasp his chin and turn it. When he succeeded Yong Su’s eyes were shut, his lips a line of distaste. Yes, he looked more and more like Yong Jun, and Kiku didn’t want Yong Jun - not in this way.
“It would be pleasant,” he murmured in half reflection, “if you would smile for me again.”
“Smile?” Yong Su blurted, eyes flying open. “After what you did to us?”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Yong Su’s eyes promptly closed again. “Please,” he tried to soothe him. “There’s no need to be like this.”
“There wasn’t a need to kill them.”
***
“You killed her.”
“No.”
The queen of Korea had most certainly been an obstruction, yet in her death he might also have lost Yong Su, at least for a time. The boy was clearly no longer in a state to mull over reform and modernization with that peculiarly endearing expression of contemplation. The hems of his voluminous trousers and sleeves were heavily stained. He lifted his hands before his face, stared at them as if he didn’t know what it was that streaked them, and then stared back at Kiku and repeated, “You killed her.”
Reply
“Su,” Yong Jun interjected, entering through another door. “I’ll take care of this. His Majesty and His Highness are still alive and they need you. Go!”
Yong Su glanced to Kiku again, then to his brother, and fled.
Now it was Yong Jun’s turn to stare, not taking his eyes from him until the sounds of flight faded away with distance. “Get out.”
“What?”
“I know you heard me. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
He’d tried to throw Kiku out before, after the failed coup, and yet here Kiku was now. “I believe you are mistaken. I have no such designs -”
“That was what France said.”
“I did not -”
“I knew his game, and I know yours. You won’t have him. You won’t use him. Get out!”
Kiku bowed and withdrew for the time being.
***
“Your brother said you got these ideas from Jones-san.”
“We did. We have a right to decide, and we decided -”
“Su-kun.”
“Don’t call me that. My brothers call me that.”
“You must understand that Jones-san and his president were speaking of elsewhere, of those who were ready.”
“Where did he say that?” Yong Su demanded. His childish refusal to open his eyes bordered on absurd. Kiku didn’t laugh. “Tell me where he said that.”
“He didn’t say it, in so many words. He showed it, by his agreement with me.”
“No.”
He snapped off the word immediately, but despite his closed eyes Kiku could see him realize how flimsy the denial was. The proof was in Alfred’s lack of action.
“Ah,” said Kiku, beginning to realize in turn, “Did you think perhaps that he would hear of unarmed crowds under attack -”
Yong Su made a small strangled noise.
“- and rush to the rescue?”
The same noise emerged from the back of his throat. Kiku’s grip tightened, thwarting his attempt to jerk his head away.
“He is aware you don’t need rescuing.”
“No.”
“I can’t say it was very wise of you. Either of you. I might even call it wasteful.”
Under his fingers, Kiku felt Yong Su’s face contort. “I didn’t want it to happen! Not that way! You’re the one who -”
“Shh.”
“Don’t tell me shh!”
However tall he was now Yong Su remained injured, remained weak, and by moving just before the other renewed his struggles in earnest, Kiku managed to pin him to the floor before he caused any damage. Yong Su writhed on his stomach underneath him and screamed as though he were being murdered.
***
“Let me go!”
“I don’t believe you’ve been to my house for a long time now. I’ve made improvements since then. I hope you will enjoy them.”
“I don’t care about your stupid house!” After the annexation was finalized it had taken some time to track down and subdue Yong Su, whose natural knowledge of his land had given him a temporary advantage. And now, when he was bound at wrists and ankles and further tied to a chair in a cabin of a ship about to leave harbor, he still refused to give up. “I don’t want it! I hate you! What’ve you done to Jun? Let me go!”
“What you want does not always coincide with what you need,” Kiku told him, turning away so that Yong Su would not see how this lesson also applied to him. He reminded himself of the lesson repeatedly as he went through his papers, listening as the shouts and the thump-thump of feet kicking against the chair legs slowly died down.
When the shouts started up again he picked up the bamboo rod in the corner and told them both as he applied it that this would work out for the best, in the end.
***
“This is for the best.” He thought his sight might be blurring. “You may not see it now, but it’s for the best.”
“No. No.”
But he had exhausted himself by now, lay still and unresisting, and Kiku, near-equally exhausted he thought, lay atop him and whispered, “You’ve grown so much already. There have been setbacks, regrettable setbacks, but all things considered, I’m proud of you.”
“If you’re so proud why don’t you -”
“Shh, shh. You know that I can’t do that. But things will be better now. I promise you. Things will be better.”
“No,” he said once more, audibly faltering now. Kiku rejoiced.
“Please, look at me.”
Reply
“You will be glorious,” Kiku told him. “With me, you will be part of something great. Something beautiful. Something that will endure for ten thousand years.”
“After that?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“After ten thousand years,” he whispered, and Kiku heard a bizarre juxtaposition of childish hope with childish acerbity. “Will you let us go then?”
Kiku, feeling indulgent, said, “We will see.”
***
August 1945
In the next twenty-six years, which was as long as it endured, Kiku never once told Yong Su the whole of it. That was probably for the best. Things had gotten better, as he had promised. And then, in retrospect he could see this, they had gotten worse, and that would certainly be the impression Yong Su would go away with.
He lay in bed, trying not to provoke his wounds, and listened to the loud but receding voice of Yong Su, out in the hall, chattering to Yong Jun about committees and elections. Yong Su had screamed when the news came, first without words and then a whooping Mansei, loud enough that Kiku had clapped his hands to his ears, then paid in pain for moving his arms too quickly. Neither of the twins had spoken a word of Japanese since and it had taken Kiku a while to begin to understand them again, if he ever had in the first place.
The twins were leaving his house now, bags packed with their meager possessions; he supposed it would have been far too much to expect them to stay when even Lan Yueh was counting the days until Yao came for her. Yong Su had learned to smile at him again on command, nothing more, and Kiku had been tricking himself into thinking that he’d cultivated any more substantial feeling behind that smile.
In the distance, a door closed. Kiku lay back and waited for his next visitor.
***
2009
“I hate you!”
“So you have often said.”
Yong Su flailed his arms and shouted over inconsequential things and Kiku once more dared to think beautiful - wild and vibrant in both anger and happiness. He controlled his expression and didn’t let himself think too far beyond that. He knew what came of wanting too much.
***
The March 1st Movement of 1919 was a (mostly) nonviolent, nationwide demonstration of Korean nationalism nine years after its annexation by Japan. Its initial organizers were inspired by the Fourteen Points put forth by American President Woodrow Wilson, particularly the idea of the right to national self-determination. The movement spread across Korea, but was bloodily suppressed by military police.
Japanese policy in regard to Korea began to be reconsidered afterward, especially combined with various international objections to the bloody suppression. This reconsideration led to roughly a decade of more outwardly lenient “cultural” rule, which was then followed in the 1930s by a policy of forcible assimilation that lasted until the end of World War II.
Reply
Reply
Reply
I'm loving this other side of Japan and the Korean twins and the emotions that were portrayed. With this, you've certainly satisfied my yandere kink, kind anon~
Reply
As I mentioned earlier, one of the first things that popped to mind when I saw this request was Japan, specifically a repressed "I'm doing this for your own good" Japan; with both him and Korea, I again tried to merge Hetalia canon with what I know about the history between them. It's good to hear that worked for you.
Reply
Reply
Reply
I love Japan in this. ): The Japan who thinks he is doing good (...creepily so), the Japan who actually FEELS REAL EMOTIONS and is quietly dynamic and isn't all boring and flat -- do ya get what I'm saying? Sorry if I'm not making sense, cause it's 2am AHAHA.
I don't usually fangirl Japan as a character, and -- idk, you made me like him here. NOT his actions, of course not, but the way you handled them. You gave him depth for me. Thank you. ILU, Yandere!Japan;;wea;kds
Reply
I personally think Japan has his moments in Hetalia, though I don't quite fangirl, but I'm happy you have so much love for the take on him I have here, creepiness and all. I wondered what might potentially be under the surface with him, considering what I know of Japan's history with Korea, and I'm glad that the self-deception and repressed desire and such that I ended up with comes across so compellingly for you.
Reply
You. Have. Talent.
Real talent.
I really wish this wasn't anonymous so I could read more of your stuff :(
Reply
You're in luck there, because I'm not entirely anonymous. There's a list of my meme fills here: http://tinyurl.com/6ufbzx
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment