Now and Forever...Itsumademo... - Chapter 18A
Title: Now and Forever…いつまでも…
Author: Mayonaka no Taiyou/Unare Haineko
Pairing: [Juntoshi] Matsumoto Jun x Ohno Satoshi
Rating: R-ish, but NC-17 for this chapter.
Summary: This story follows Ayumu, a more or less normal child born in 2012, three years after the ending of ‘Kodoku kara Umareta Ai’ (which you can read here). His parents, Jun ( Read more... )
“Maybe he really does believe in the grace of Athena, and that he was hanging from the tree like a small helpless sparrow between the living and the dead,” sniggered Haineko as she pulled out an apple from the fridge.
“The harbinger of the undead in Norse mythology,” her ladyship chuckled, gesturing to her friend to cut in the apple in half so that they might share it. “Are you the harbinger of the undead, M. Aiba? Or is there some special providence in your fall? Like the sparrow in Hamlet… is that your fall from grace or is that a sign that you are to die? Would you like to know?”
“Eh?” Aiba baulked, backing away into the cabinets, frightened by this talk of death. “Hamlet? Sparrows? Fall? What are you talking about?”
“And I thought he was the one with the modicum of sense in his depraved relationship with M. Sakurai,” snorted Haineko derisively as she cut the apple in half and waved the knife at Aiba. “Hamlet, Act V, scene 5, ‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.’ Even the most trivial death like the fall of a sparrow is part of some divine plan. Because there is always some divine plan beyond one’s control, the important thing is to be ready. Going by your reaction, you’re not even the least ready.”
“Doubtlessly, he’s banking on Luke12:6 where Jesus told the disciples that not even a sparrow can fall without God’s notice because their suffering is seen and forestalled by the Almighty. He’s hoping for divine intervention to save him. How long can you hope, hmmm?” her ladyship’s intonation dropped into the unpleasantly cold lilt Aiba had come to associate with torture and blood letting.
“We should have let him hang on the tree instead of cutting him down,” harrumphed the Mistress of the Fifth Circle of Hell.
“Pity really, and I thought you were growing sensible,” her ladyship conceded, the edge of vitriol creeping into her voice as she flicked out her wrist carelessly and took the proffered apple half. “Don’t you wonder why M. Sakurai repeatedly hurts you? Don’t you really want to know why all this nonsense is happening to you that you had hurl yourself out the window at the drug soiree? Don’t you wonder whether it’s all just a coincidence?”
“Eh? Like what was Sho-chan doing there in the middle of the night while I was hanging on a branch for my life?” Aiba asked in one breath. “But if he found out that I had something in my system, he would totally misunderstand.”
“Exactly, you know he will wilfully misunderstand you,” threw out Lady Strange, taking up a paring knife and peeling the skin from her apple half. “That’s why you asked him to listen to you without asking for his understanding. Somewhere deep in the recesses of your febrile brain, you know that M. Sakurai wouldn’t understand; somewhere deep in your mind, you know M. Sakurai will jump to the wrong conclusion. The question isn’t whether he’s really that dense because he doesn’t want to see the truth. We all know that to be half true. No, the question is for you - since you know M. Sakurai wouldn’t understand what you told him and would jump to the wrong conclusion, why do you still trust him?”
Haineko rolled her eyes as she bit into her apple half. “Look at that face. He’s going to hedge with a bad lie.”
“I’m not…” Aiba defended himself. “It’s just that… I have to trust him. He told me he loves and that he would listen to what I would have to say. That’s enough for…”
“Yet, he didn’t ask you anything,” Haineko pointed out, dodging the knife that her friend had thrown at Aiba.
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It landed on the cabinet a few centimetres shy of his left ear and her ladyship hissed lowly, “But you could have asked him things. Did you? No! Like the coward that you are, you think you can’t handle the truth because of what you’ve seen at the drug party. Don’t you want to know what M. Sakurai was doing out there when you were on that tree? It was late, non? Then what was he was doing out of doors at that hour? If he was looking for you, wouldn’t he have made a more thorough search instead of just looking at the ground? He doesn’t consider all the factors. He’s on the inside looking out like a pathetic frog in the well and because you didn’t fall into his direct line of vision, he didn’t see you. He couldn’t be arsed to. And a part of you knows that, n’est-ce pas? That’s why you extracted the promise from him to listen but not understand.”
“No, it’s not like that!” Aiba protested.
“But it’s true,” her ladyship snarled, jumping off her perch and fencing him into the cabinet. “You’ve known that Sakurai wouldn’t hear you out and try to understand you. That’s why you kept mum on the whole Poppy room incident and your flight from the tower.”
“No, I just can’t…”
“You mean you wouldn’t,” contributed Haineko in helpful accents.
“No…”
“Denial again? Is this going to be a habit with you every time we have a break through?” snapped her ladyship, eyes flashing as she pulled the knife from the cabinet door and ran it lightly against his cheek. “Granted that Sakurai is a walking salmonella infected blood agar sample and wouldn’t try to analyse the things you say, but what about you, hmm? Do you think about what you’ve not done?”
“I advise you to answer her,” laughed Haineko, munching on her apple half.
“I haven’t done anything,” stammered Aiba, shaking his head away from the knife.
“Exactly, you have done nothing,” her ladyship purred, dragging the knife down to his throat and exerting the slightest pressure there. “Why didn’t you ask Sakurai what he was doing out there when you were playing sparrow? Why didn’t you ask Sakurai why he suddenly came on to you when he hasn’t even been remotely attentive in months? What are you so afraid of, hmm?”
“He’ll hurt me again in my heart if I ask him,” stuttered the lanky man unevenly.
“You cut yourself all the time and bleed left, right and centre,” sneered her ladyship, swiping the knife across his neck and drawing a thin welt of blood. “What’s a little more pain when you’re already filled to the brim with it?”
Aiba whimpered as the devil ran her finger down the bloody beads and sucked at resultant liquid. “I don’t want to be hurt anymore. I don’t him to hurt him.”
“Really?” Her ladyship’s lips curled contemptuously as she tiptoed and tilted towards his ear, dragging him roughly by the hair as she did so. “There’s a way out. Hurt him before he hurts you. Strike him before he strikes you, and poof - it will be over for him. No more lies, no more worries, and you’d be free.”
“And we get to collect your blood in a large vat,” Haineko added cheerfully, collecting the blood that was trickling from his neck into an old jam jar. “Black pudding supper parties, here we come!”
The tall man squirmed and gasped, wondering irrelevantly whether dying at the hands of his beloved Sho was any better than dying at the hands of two devils. “No…”
“Bah,” spat Lady Strange as she released Aiba and shoved her apple half in his mouth to keep him quiet. “You either milk him for the truth and leave him before he kills you in every possible way, or you bail out now and kill him. It’s simple. I’m done with you. Your chess match is going into sudden death, you have to make your choice and fast.”
“I can’t…” whined Aiba, collapsing to the floor.
“Then you’ll die very horribly like the sparrow in that line from Hamlet,” Haineko told him, winking and patting his head.
With that pronouncement, the two devils disappeared into an opening in the wall and faded away from the scene, leaving the shaken Aiba to recollect his scattered wits.
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