[fic] The Case - File 01 ~ Ueda Tatsuya [Part 1 of 2]
Title: The Strange & Horrifying Case of Kamenashi Kazuya
Pairing: Kame x AT-TUN
Rating: R (prologue) / NC-17 (Files)
Genre: AU, crime, psychological thriller
Beta: deshisoraba
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Here is the case file you requested, Case 1582-02-23-KT.
Warnings: Okay, firstly... ah, don't read this if you are squeamish. Seriously. You have been warned. There may or may not be character death (you'll have to read to find out) but that's not the worst of it by far. Umm.. help, Desh? Do you think this is enough warning or am I understating things? EDIT: In the immortal words of the mighty Desh, "I'm not sure there ever be enough warning for this fic. I admit I was totally unprepared though I was thoroughly warned. You can quote me in the warnings if you want, lol!"
A/N: This story is inspired by (read: ripped off like hell from) the PV for VIXX's song "Voodoo Doll" which I definitely suggest you watch at some point. Also, yeah, the full title is "The Strange & Horrifying Case of Kamenashi Kazuya" but for post subjects, let's just go with "The Case" since the full title + File 01 + Ueda Tatsuya is just long as hell.
MASTER POSTS:
Akame Shinies - HERE
kattun_fanfics - HERE
je_kamenashi - HERE
The Strange & Horrifying Case of Kamenashi Kazuya
File 01 ~ Ueda Tatsuya
Name: Ueda Tatsuya
Age: 31
Ueda Tatsuya - boxer and owner of the popular club Recess - disappeared for nearly three months in mid-2014. His account of that time is partially consistent with other accounts and with what physical evidence remains, but the story contains many fantastical elements as well. Despite the impossibilities in his story, he remains adamant.
The interview reflected in this partial transcript was conducted four months after the events described herein.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There is more of me left than of the others. I’m still in here, though that part of me - the man I used to be - is scared and quiet and so very still. I have one thing in my favor the others don’t and that’s the tiny grace to have been last. The shortest time, you see. The most refined technique. The early curiosities already sated. He knew what he was doing before I was ever a part of this... this sickness...
These were the gifts given me amidst such horror.
The first thing I noticed about him at the club that night was his softness. His newness. Everyone else was caught in the inexorable wave of lust and laughter but he just sat there watching the room, unhurried wonder brightening those gorgeous brown eyes. There was a smile but barely begun at one corner of his mouth, the only other betrayal of excitement he seemed so desperate to contain.
I remember every word I said to him that night. I play the conversation over and over again in my mind, debating the moment I should have known better. The moment I should have run as fast and as far as I could. Was it when he told me his name was Kamenashi Kazuya and that he’d love for me to join him? Was it when we talked of the biology of groups - his first love, he said - and he pointed out several examples in the crowd? Was it when he shyly but suggestively asked me to come home with him so we could try our own experiments? Was it when the door to his apartment closed behind us? When we didn’t quite manage to properly untangle before we fell asleep?
It should have been one of them. Every time I see these events, I scream at myself to notice something, anything, to prevent it this time. I think... I think I will spend forever watching this awful movie play out in my mind. I know my freedom is a lie - the bars of my new cage are no less strong for being intangible.
I don’t know what Kazuya did to me while I slept but when I woke up the mattress at my back felt hard and cold and that’s when I realized I had woken atop metal. I was wearing clothes I last remembered being strewn about the bedroom floor and when I tried to sit, I couldn’t. I couldn’t... and there wasn’t even the barest glimmer of a memory to tell my why.
You like to think you’re clear-headed. You can hold yourself together in the face of anything. You’re strong and you’re brave and you can become the hero if you absolutely have to. You believe all of these things until you’re taught differently.
Three large straps pinning me to a metal table taught me differently.
The lines on my skin from them are the faintest of my trophies - god, I need to stop calling them that! They’re not trophies! They’re just a twisted... twisted... and he loves them all so much... but I can’t look in the mirror anymore, can I?
No, I’m... I’m calm. I can be calm. I can be whatever you need me to be.
As panic threatened to undo me on that table, I turned my head to one side and then the other. All around me - as far as I could see, at any rate - was rock, grey-white stones much bigger than traditional brick. Old light fixtures flickered, giving the space an eerie, haunted feel despite their pale brilliance. The room was enormous but I didn’t see any windows.
I shouted, wincing at the way my voice echoed coldly off of those walls. “Help! Someone help me! Can anyone hear me?” I struggled but the straps were so tight. All that time spent working out and I couldn’t get any slack in them no matter how hard I pulled. I hated the desperation in my voice as I called out again, “Anybody?”
“You’re heavier than you look.” The voice was Kazuya’s and contained the faintest traces of laughter but I couldn’t turn my head enough to properly see him standing at the end of the table.
“This isn’t funny! Why did you do this? Where are we?”
There was a pause before Kazuya said, “You jumped to why much sooner than I expected.” He sounded intrigued. “You didn’t even ask what was happening before you wanted why. Tell me... is it because the answer is more important?”
“Untie me! Right now!” I did my best to sound angry instead of afraid and I failed miserably.
“Oh, you don’t want that. You want something to hold you no matter how desperately the muscles spasm and jerk,” and I could feel his fingertips brush across my forehead in a way that was eerily similar to ways he touched me before in bed. “I’ll answer a question after you answer mine. Is it because the answer is more important? Really think on this.”
It took me a minute to realize he asked me a question. My full attention was on his words. No matter how desperately the muscle spasms, he said. Desperately. Spasms. That told me everything I ever wanted to know about the what. I realized in that moment why didn’t matter to me anymore. “W-why is only important later. After.”
“Then I’ll give it to you and you will keep it safe until it becomes important.” His fingers ghosted down my right cheek this time. “You hurt me. Now I hurt you.”
“No! No, that’s not right! I didn’t... I didn’t do anything!” I wasn’t lying before. I really remember everything I said to him. Even so, I can’t find it. I know it’s there but I just can’t find the moment I hurt him. That’s why it turns out the same every time I see it, no matter how much I scream at myself.
“You left me.” Kazuya’s fingers paused at the tip of my chin. “But it’s okay. I went back and fixed it. You shouldn’t be this pretty already. Maybe it’s because you’re a boxer. I wonder...” and now he was looking at me with the same curiosity he had in the club. “Does the root of boxing lie in bone and flesh? Is it the mind? The heart? Do you know?”
I didn’t know the answer to his question but there one thing I did know. I knew I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. His eyes caressed me as if I were the most important thing in the whole world... but the look slowly changed as his gaze wandered down my arm in time with his hand. It became hateful and hungry and intent.
“Let’s find out,” he said as he pushed my sleeve up. There was a knife. I don’t know when exactly it appeared but he had it, slicing slowly into the skin of my forearm - slipping deeper as he pushed in - and I screamed. I pulled harder than I thought possible, trying to free my arm but I couldn’t move it at all. I begged and I cried and all he had to say was, “I know you’re glad to have the straps - properly grateful, even. I hear you. You don’t have to scream about it.”
Kazuya set the knife down once he sliced to the bone. I felt those same fingers which had brushed along my arm now slide into the open cut, carefully exploring while I futilely fought. After a few seconds, he gave a disappointed click. “The muscle and the bone are ordinary. Beautiful, but ordinary. It’s the same stuff everyone has. I guess boxing isn’t found there. Shame checking the heart or brain would kill you. We may never know.” He pulled his fingers out of the wound and walked out of my field of vision.
My voice cracked when I asked, “Over?”
I saw it - the stapler, I mean - in his hand as he came back to my side but I didn’t understand. It wasn’t until he started using it to close the wound that I realized what it was. “But you have many more mysteries and I have more gifts for you. You know you don’t mean it. You want to know just as much as I do.”
He was just getting starting. He was just getting started and I was already sobbing, being the strong reliable man that I am.
Let me tell you something. There’s a moment when it hits you. All of it - all the little bits your mind protected you from - suddenly combine to alter your reality irrevocably. You gasp, your mind fills... and you despair. So he talks more of gifts and then it’s all huge needles and thick metal rings. You try to hold onto the image of your right shoulder and both arms before the trophies because you don’t yet know that you can’t. That you will never see your unspoiled self again, not even in dreams.
And the way his fingers linger on the skin, adoring you even as he’s ruining you...
No. It’s gone. I didn’t know it quite yet at that point, but it was already too late to stop it from happening anyway.
After all three rings were in - one in the right shoulder, another about an inch above the elbow on the same side, and the last one halfway between my left wrist and elbow - Kazuya put the needle down. He gave each ring a hard tug. “To make sure they’ll stay,” he said, and when I cried out he smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”
Then he just looked at me, took me in slowly from head to toe. He looked pleased. No, not... not pleased. Not pleased. Enraptured. Like I’m the most beautiful thing in the whole world and he still can’t believe I’m all his... and then that moment ends.
A new one begins and I will always - always - hate him for it. He was cruel and I know he did it to leash and humiliate me. It’s the only reason he ever does it. He looked me in the eye and told me, “Now you have a choice.”
He went on to explain. “I need to take you to your room. You’ll follow me, I know. But if we get unfortunately separated, bad things will happen to you. If you’re that worried about getting lost when the consequences are so frightening, I can tether you to me. I love you that much. Or you can walk with me freely, sure in the knowledge I’ll never lose you because you’re too precious to me.”
Have you ever really thought about what it means to have a choice? A direct line drawn from your decision to everything that follows it? And what if all choices lead to the same place? The responsibility for what follows without the ability to dictate it? Choosing should empower us but it only reveals our irrelevance.
I just didn’t know it yet. I didn’t understand. I saw two roads and picked the one where I ran. I forgot that when you run you just get to where you’re going faster. It’s why he didn’t chase me. He didn’t have to when all roads led to the same place.
At the time, I didn’t know how it happened. I ran through unfamiliar hallways looking desperately for the way out and then sudden pain shot through my chest, a tight gripping. I couldn’t breathe...
And then I woke up.
There isn’t a moment since that I haven’t lamented that. If choices actually mattered, waking up wouldn’t have been mine.
I was on a couch, leaning forward like I fell asleep sitting. My heart still felt tight and when I clutched my chest with the right hand, I saw the strap circling my index finger. My gaze followed the thin-but-tough line from there up to the ceiling. It wasn’t just the one strap. Some were hanging loose over and around me but one was tied to the ring in my shoulder and another to the one in my upper arm. I turned to the other side and yes, there was a strap to that forearm ring also as well as another wrapped around the middle finger of the left hand.
There was enough slack in them I could stand if I wanted to. Glancing past them I saw I had red metal walls about four feet behind the covered couch and on either side, maybe six feet from either end of the couch. In front of me there was broken glass. Not a full wall of it. More... more like the maw of a cave, if the cave had enormous teeth. Something must have hit it with incredible force to shatter it in that way. It had been cleaned up but the pieces of the wall that remained looked ominous.
That was my room.
I didn’t know how I got into it but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to stay. It only took a little bit of painful movement and the memory of Kazuya pulling the rings to tell me I didn’t want to rip my way free. My thoughts next went to the remains of the former glass wall. Glass is sharp, right? Groaning, I pushed up to my feet.
I could prick the tip of any finger I wanted to but even stretching I couldn’t get the straps to the glass. I pulled a bit harder - it really was so close, you see - but all I earned for the effort was pain. Frustrated and more desperate than ever, I screamed, “Get back here and untie me, you sick son of a-”
“Don’t,” the hoarse plea came from an unfamiliar voice to my left and that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. “Haven’t you done enough? Don’t make him come back again tonight.”
Another voice from my right, “You blame...” and a cough, “Everyone... but yourself...”
Finally taking the time to look past my own room and my personal fate, I saw a table in the middle of a large six-sided brick room. Straight across from me was a room like mine - a cage in the wall - but inside the room was a much smaller cage which looked a lot newer. In that iron-framed glass box was another man, a bit younger than me and also tethered by a couple hanging straps. His trophies were different than mine. He just had the one ring by the time I met him but his skin was heavily scarred in a couple of places and raw in others. His black shirt was torn, exposing the shallow cuts in the skin of his chest and stomach. He was standing with one palm pressed to the glass, silently mouthing words I couldn’t follow, his eyes staring intently at the center table. His body trembled and his dark bangs were matted to his forehead by sweat.
The wall to the left of him had an ordinary door but the one to the right of him had another room - this one covered in glass also. No. No, not glass. It looked like glass to me at the time but it had to be something else - glass breaks under the force I’ve seen hit it. It was covered with strange symbols drawn hastily in white as well words in languages I’ve never seen before. But on the floor of that room was a man, this one on his knees. His shirt was more ripped than whole so that almost all of the ink-covered shoulder and upper back showed. He hunched over so far his forehead nearly touched floor and though his face was hidden, I saw his body shaking as well.
The other two walls - the ones to either side of me - had rooms but I couldn’t really see into them. I just knew someone was in there because they’re where the two voices came from just now. It’s funny... I know I saw them all there at the end and I know I’ll never forget those voices which scream even now in my dreams, but I can’t... can’t quite picture...
Don’t you think I know that we outnumbered him? Being the most recent of five tells you nothing more than the man was good enough to get away with it four times already! Does that sound encouraging to you?!
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell like that. I’m calm. I’m... I’m... just tell me what you want me to be. I can be that. I promise I can be that.
“Never thought... he’d get all five...” from the man to my left. “I was so sure...” He growled weakly to himself and then with an anger you could hear even with the hoarseness of his voice he said, “You! Why did you run? How could you hurt us like that?”
“We all ran,” the man on my right snapped back at him as best he could. He started coughing again but managed to force out, “You ran your first time, too.”
“The only one hurt by that was the dog.”
They argued back and forth in those wavering, exhausted voices but I didn’t understand most of it. Not then, I mean. I was just too new to know.
“Jin. Maru.”
Both men immediately stopped talking at the words. The young man in the room across from mine was no longer whispering to himself. He was looking in our direction, palm still pressed to the glass. “Always,” he panted, “with the fighting. We have a guest.”
The man on my right mumbled, “Sorry, Job.” The man to my left said nothing.
The man across from me spoke again, “We haven’t had a guest since Maru checked in. They forget their manners.” The corners of his mouth went up a bit and his eyes widened. His version of a smile, I eventually figured out. Probably the best he can do. “I’m Job.” He pointed to my left. “That’s Jin and that,” he pointed to my right, “is Maru. Next to me is Koki.”
“The Dog,” Jin added bitterly.
“...Koki,” Job insisted.
Maru’s voice was kind despite the strain in it as he hesitantly said, “Job, you know he’s... There’s a chance he’s not...”
Job cut in with a soft, desperate voice, “I’m tired, Maru.”
“I know you are. Sleep, okay?”
“Will you...?”
“I promise. Sleep, Job.”
Yawning, Job sat on the small bench in that tiny cage in his room. He leaned against the glass side and closed his eyes. A few breaths later I saw the tears quietly start to fall. He wasn’t actually asleep. No one said anything about it so I didn’t either. It was the unwritten rule - even Jin somewhat obeyed it.
I introduced myself to the two men I couldn’t see. Koki had by this time curled up on the floor by the window to his room, so I asked, “What happened to him?”
Maru answered with, “Same thing as us, only longer,” but his voice trailed off sleepily as he spoke. “You should get some rest before tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?”
“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Jin mumbled from my left.
After that there was no reply to anything I did or said, no matter how loud I got.
Still, he was right. Jin was right. I found that out only after a restless night of lonely, soul-searing disillusionment.
From what? Oh, you know. Everything. All the things we believe so blindly because we don’t know. Lies of power - the dream that you control of your own life - go first and the others presently follow until none remain.
Sudden noise drew my attention after so much silence. I looked across the room. Job jolted upright; he looked truly terrified for a heartbeat before shutting down all expression. That was bad enough but it was the growling from Koki that truly raised the hair on my arms, something deep and primal and speaking to fears so old we’ve forgotten them. “What’s happening?”
Job whispered with reverence, “God comes to temper us.”
The door opening and the loud thud of Koki launching himself at the clear wall of his room coincided almost to the second. It always did. That’s how we knew Kazuya was coming with the doll.
Yes, doll. Red and black stitching on white cloth with bits of straw sticking out. The story doesn’t change just because you ask again. If changing the story would somehow change the truth then I would do it in a heartbeat for you, I swear, but it doesn’t work like that. Please, don’t be mad at me. You’re mad, aren’t you? I can see it in the way you’re looking at me.
Kazuya loves to look at us, to stand just out of reach and see his beloved, beautifully ruined creatures tremble in uncontained fear or anger. It’s a moment to appreciate our nuances which disappear all too readily when he finally gets going.
When he got near Koki’s room, Koki slammed into the glass again. He was snarling and scratching at it and doing his level best to tear through it but was in vain. Kazuya’s hand trailed across the glass as he cooed over how perfect his toy had become, how lovely and precious.
The whole time, I was shouting at Kazuya. I was at the literal end of my tether, not quite able to reach him even when he stopped right in front of me. He laughed and that newness I saw at the club, it was still there. It was wrong. It shouldn’t have... I mean, how can he be like that and still do...?
Sorry. I need a moment. Just... let me breathe.
You know, I was confused when he sat down at the table in the middle of the room. I saw him pick back up the doll. His stare was curious as he looked me over. Then he moved the arm of the doll and to my horror I felt my own arm swing the same way. Not only mine. I watched Job’s arm and Koki’s match it exactly and even though I couldn’t see it, I knew Jin and Maru were feeling it too.
He let go and my arm dropped back down.
I stared in shock as he just smiled. This... this was impossible, right?
The wonder left Kazuya’s eyes, pushed out as the anger and hatred rushed back into them. The adoration was gone. What he was about to do, he did just to make us suffer. He wanted us to hurt the way we hurt him.
There’s a needle - thirteen inches long and a lot thicker and duller than you’d ever want it to be - which he used when he gave me my trophies. It was there, on the table, and when he reached for it, Koki started pacing aggressively in his room whereas Job closed his eyes and put his palm on the glass. The tears fell - the ones we didn’t talk about - and he whispered to himself. I think... I think he was praying.
When I think back on this moment, everything happens in slow motion. The needle pierces the doll. You feel something pushing against the skin. The pain hits and you swear you can feel the needle slowly spreading the flesh - in this case, the left knee - only it feels so much bigger than when he gives you a new trophy. Of course, there’s nothing to see. The skin is unbroken. It only feels like your patella is coming away from the joint. It doesn’t really crack.
It didn’t really happen that slowly, even if that’s how I see it now. The screams followed but a breath behind the needle. I clutched my knee with both hands, falling back on my couch. I thought having my arm sliced open and then stapled shut hurt worse than anything that’s ever happened to me - and it did at the time - but it’s nothing compared to the feel of bone splintering.
The pain goes just as suddenly, too. Not... not all of it - there’s an ache that never really leaves - but it’s nothing compared to what just happened. That’s the moment I had to redefine my definitions of possibility. There isn’t the smallest bit of me left anymore that doubts the realness of what happened, doll or no doll.
I didn’t have enough time to properly appreciate the faded pain before the second stab to the knee. I cried and I screamed and held my knee and when the pain finally let up, I could breathe again. Job didn’t have enough room to collapse on his side the way I did so he fell screaming forward against the glass, eyes still closed. He went seamlessly from mumble to scream to mumble, hardly a heartbeat between them. Koki was blindly attacking the wall, trying to claw his way out as he whimpered and snarled.
“Jin, why aren’t you singing?” Singing, like it was music. That’s how he really sees it, I think, and that’s what he always calls it. Our music. Music and trophies and pain and gifts and I hate him. I hate him!
I’m calm. No, really. I swear.
Jin wasn’t calm so much as quiet. Kazuya didn’t like that. When he gives us our trophies it’s fine. When he punishes us, he wants to hear it.
Through gritted teeth Jin spat, “I won’t... sing... for you... anymore!”
“Jin, no! Not again!” Maru cried. “What are you doing?”
Pouting, Kazuya said, “Look what you did. You made Maru-chan sad. Tsk tsk. It’s okay. I’ll make it better. You just need some encouragement. I’ll let you choose. Left eye or right?”
Another choice to bind us, but Jin never made it. He snapped, frantically hit the glass as he begged, “No, not the eye! Oh, god! Not the...”
This time Jin screamed with us. I think. Between the wet pain of what felt like my left eye popping and Koki’s desperate howl, I didn’t actually hear him. I did hear his weak apologies while I waited for my vision to return.
The next few hours were the strange intersection of eternal seconds and blurring memory. At first, you hold onto yourself. You remember each stab as an event. A thing unto itself. As the pain fades less and less between them, you start to break. You eventually lose yourself entirely. You react - scream, clutch at yourself, even beg for it to be over - but you don’t know you’re doing it. Your whole world is the pain.
It takes a minute to come back when he finishes. It always does.
I felt the couch beneath me again. I could breathe. I could see. I remembered my name and for just a second I thought it had all been a dream. I looked up and saw Job still standing with his palm pressed to the glass, trembling like the night before. Koki had curled up on the floor, arms across his chest as he whimpered. On one side of me I could hear Maru groan but from the other side of me there was only heavy breathing. Jin took a little longer to come back than the rest of us.
Job says it isn’t voodoo at all despite the doll. He said he studied world religions back before he existed - it didn’t take long to realize he meant his life before this place - and that this doll was something different. He said it was our avatar to God. That if we were punished directly as we deserve for our sins we would likely die so God - in his unfailing love for us - made the doll. He punishes the doll and we feel the pain... but we live. In this way, he purges our sins and imperfections. He gives our lives meaning, preparing us so we can then be transformed by him.
I don’t believe a word of it and I know I’m not the only one, but somehow no one wants to be the one to finally break Job permanently.
Kazuya calls it love also but I’m not buying that either. I know he does love us in his way, but I think Jin’s theory was probably closer to it. He believes it’s about hate. That Kazuya’s vengeance on Koki - the first of us, the one who wronged him the most - combined with an old evil and made this whole thing possible.
Does it really matter which one is true? Does that change a damn thing? No. No, it doesn’t! As I said before, why isn’t important until later and only to people who can’t grasp the what without the why. People like you.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...
I’m good. I swear. I’m... what do you want me to be? Just tell me, please...
With great effort I eventually managed to croak to the others, “How often?”
Job couldn’t answer since he was still talking to himself - I really do think it was praying - but after a coughing fit and a groan, Maru rasped, “Recently... at least... once... day. Twice... if you run.”
“How could I?”
The first real sound from Jin’s room since Kazuya left was his, “He likes to take us out and play with us.”
I can tell your mind went where mine did that day. I asked about it. “You’re saying he’ll...”
I didn’t have to finish the sentence because Jin - unsurprisingly bitter - cut in midway. “No. He doesn’t care about sex exactly. He just likes to... to touch. Make new trophies. Experiment. You know, play.”
“He’s not playing. He’s remaking us, transforming us into perfect beings. It’s our ambrosia. Proof he loves us.”
My gaze - and probably Jin and Maru’s - immediately snapped to Job at the sound of his words. Because I didn’t know better yet, I assumed Jin was going to argue like he did with Maru the night before but his voice was kind as he said, “That’s right, Job. It’s as you say.”
This wasn’t the first time they did that, either. It was the same last night. Even I wasn’t immune to it, not daring to disagree. I wasn’t afraid of Job. I just... well, it was very easy to fall in line, I suppose. What else could I do but follow them? When I relive it every night, it’s still the best I can do.
My stomach growled, reminding me of something I’d neglected thus far. “I’m hungry.”
“John 4:33,” Job replied, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly.
“John 4:33?” I asked.
“So the disciples said to one another, ‘Has anyone brought him something to eat?’”
It took me a moment to realize that was Job’s version of a joke. Jin groaned and said, “Kazuya brings it when he comes to take one of us. If it’s not you, you eat.”
With a yawn, Job said, “Promise you’ll wake me, Koki?”
Koki didn’t respond - not then and not ever in the whole time I was there - but Job didn’t wait for him. He sat down on his bench and leaned against the side of his tiny cell in his little room, closing his eyes. The tears were back.
Jin’s voice carried to me despite being quieter to not disturb Job, “Rest. Kazuya comes later and you didn’t sleep last night.”
Proving that he’d heard me but chosen not to answer - they probably all had - but I was too drained to get pissed. The anger you’ve lost takes a while to come back, you see. Days, even. After that first morning, even the fear is almost gone. You’re just too numb to feel it. You don’t feel anything. It happens after every morning when you come back to yourself, but it never lasts like that first time.
It was hard to fall asleep but sheer exhaustion eventually did the trick. I didn’t wake until Koki growled and slammed into the glass. Blinking the last bit of sleep from my eyes, I sat up just in time to see the door close behind the entering Kazuya. He had the doll with him.
The sight of it... it’s just... unsettling. I don’t know how to explain it. I fear the pain it brings upon us but I don’t fear the doll. Somehow, I can’t. It’s as wretched as we are - just as ruined - because that’s what Kazuya does to things he loves.
For the majority of the time, the five of us - if you can count Koki - were brothers-in-arms, trying to survive together. This part of the day is the only one where that isn’t true. When he came to choose, it was zero-sum. If it’s someone else, then it isn’t you.
Unless they run.
That day he came for Job.
I had overlooked the little hallways beside the rooms up till this point - they kind of blend into the wall when your focus is on the rooms themselves - but that’s how he got in to the different rooms. You didn’t need a key to get in from the outside but to leave you needed a code. He brought sandwiches for all of us - except Job - and I gobbled mine down before he’d even finished handing them out. He had to use the doll to keep Koki from attacking him and for a moment none of us could breathe. Apparently, that was the way of things ever since Koki became... whatever he was.
One he got to Job’s room, he unlocked the inner cage and swung the back of it outward. The expression in Job’s eyes as Kazuya untied him sent an icy chill through me - it was a battle between his terror and the beliefs which protect his mind - and the way he just stood there passively was incredibly creepy. The snarls and scratching from Koki clawing at his window didn’t help matters.
Job wordlessly followed Kazuya out of the room and the second the door closed behind them, I heard a sob of relief from both sides. It took me a second to realize they weren’t the only ones. I let go of the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.
“Don’t worry; he never runs,” from Maru.
Jin’s voice was flat as he said, “Not anymore.”
“That was before he was Job,” Maru pointed out.
That got my attention. “What do you mean? That’s not his name?”
Maru sighed and said, “It may as well be. It’s who he is now.”
The two of them spent the time we waited explaining a few things about Job. His named used to be Junnosuke and he fought harder than any of them. He ripped his rings out even though they took skin and flesh with them - it’s why he is so scarred though they said the newer raw spots were directly given by Kazuya - and he ran every time Kazuya took him out of his room. Every single time.
They would all get punished but he couldn’t help himself - at least, that was Jin’s opinion - and so Kazuya brought the smaller cage so he’d have less room to pull out his trophies.
I called them that again? I didn’t mean to...
Kazuya took Junno away one day and didn’t bring him back for three days. They couldn’t get a straight answer from him on what happened those three days but after that, he was Job and he never disobeyed again.
I wasn’t familiar with the story of Job but the way it was explained to me by those two was that in the Bible God and the devil made a bet about a man - whether his faith was true or if it was merely his good fortune that made his faith easy - so God took away one thing after another until he’d taken everything. Job suffered more than any man and yet through it all he held onto his faith in God. The devil just had to suck it - Jin’s words there - and when it was all over, God gave the man back everything he’d taken away.
I guess I can understand how something like that would be comforting to believe.
“He’s Kazuya’s favorite, now that the dog’s gone feral,” Jin added. “We just let him believe whatever he has to.”
“Stop calling him the dog and stop acting like you care about Job. You let him believe it because you suffer less for it.” Maru sounded angry.
“You don’t understand. You haven’t been here as long as I have and neither has Job. Spend five months here and then lecture me on being self-serving.”
It devolved after that point into childish bickering. I think... I think the reason those two argued so much was because - if you squint a bit, mentally - it brought some sense of normalcy to us all. But I couldn’t get Jin’s words out of my mind. Five months? It was only my second day. Five months might as well have been five centuries. I couldn’t do it. I just... I couldn’t. I had to get out of there. I...
>But I didn’t know how. And even if escaped, as long as I was bound to that doll it didn’t matter how far I ran. Eternity never looked so bleak.
Well, obviously we found a way.
M-most of us...
I don’t want to talk about that. Not yet. Not until I have to.
Kazuya brought Job back eventually and I don’t know what exactly happened between them but it must have been bad because Job was noticeably paler as he listlessly followed Kazuya back to his room. He let the man strap him back into that iron-and-glass cage.
The smile on Kazuya’s face was indecently innocent as he lingered in Job’s room to admire the sight whereas Job stood unmoving until Kazuya was gone. Wordlessly he sank to his bench and - side pressed against the wall of his prison - closed his eyes. He fell asleep quickly.
I had so many questions burning inside of me but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to ask them. At least frustrated curiosity was the tiniest of drops in an angry sea and by far the easiest to ignore. Besides, silence was another one of the unwritten rules I eventually learned. When Kazuya brings someone back the rest don’t speak until he either speaks first or falls asleep.
And you don’t ask what was done. Ever. That stays inside us where we can shut it away and try to forget.
Yes, I know. What would you rather we had done instead? You either do what you have to so you survive or you’ll kill yourself without touch of weapon. Though I’m honestly not sure whether the former or the latter is actually the better choice. Maybe they’re just equally terrible like all our other choices.
The next morning came sooner than my aching body was prepared to take but that was irrelevant to Kazuya, whose arrival coincided once again with Koki launching himself at his window. He had the doll again and Jin once again refused to scream. At the beginning, at any rate. Kazuya solved that problem the same way he did the first time - needle to the eye - and then told Jin he had the most gorgeous voice in the whole choir.
Jin knew - he had to know - that his stubbornness would be punished but it was an effort to hold on to what little of himself remained. I get that now. And the eye really was the best way to punish Jin because as it turns out, the vision loss is a lot like the pain - with each hit it takes longer to recover and finally you don’t recover at all - which is not a fate any of us wanted but for some reason Jin was especially afraid of it.
We all had our own thing to be especially afraid of so I don’t really judge him.
Mine? Oh, you know... just a thing. Don’t worry about that. It’s not really important.
It finally ended and Kazuya left. The first thing I heard as I was coming back to myself was Maru laying into Jin - as best he could considering the state we were all in - about challenging Kazuya like that. He said it was the second day in a row.
Coughing, I pushed myself up from where I had collapsed and asked, “He just started this?”
Jin growled in response. He shot back, “At least I didn’t run like the both of you did the last chance you had!”
“I didn’t know better.”
“Yeah, well, he did. Isn’t that right, Maru?”
“P-please stop.” The words were faint and desperate and the first thing Job said aloud since Kazuya brought him back the night before. Everyone froze for a few seconds at the sound of his voice. “Please just stop, please...” and he whispered it over and over again barely loud enough to hear.
Jin’s voice was gentle as he said, “Okay, Job. We’ll stop.”
Nobody knew what to say after that so we said nothing. Eventually Job fell asleep in his little cage again and we followed not far behind. Even I knew by this time to expect Koki to wake us when Kazuya came.
That afternoon he took Jin away with him and that’s when I finally got my first glimpse of the man behind the voice. I couldn’t see his face but he had wavy dark brown hair and glass - I think it was glass - imbedded at various places on his body but most notably along both arms. I’m not sure how it was done. I don’t want to know.
After the collective mangled sob of relief over not being the one in Jin’s shoes this day, I had to ask. “Does Jin run?”
Maru responded with, “He hasn’t in a while. He did a lot of the time when I first got here but-”
“He will run,” Job interrupted. “Each time we get a new guest, he rebels against God. He forgets our purpose here. I worry his lack of faith will be his undoing.”
“Or our undoing,” Maru added miserably.
And indeed Jin did run. We all felt Kazuya’s rage as he brought Jin down - pain came from first one knee and then the other and then when I tried to push myself up suddenly couldn’t breathe. It let up eventually - my lungs weren’t really filling with blood after all - only to be replaced by a shock to my lower back. There was surprisingly brief pain but then I realized I couldn’t move or even feel my legs. I knew the others were going through the same thing even if I was in no state to check.
Jin did this to us. He scolded both Maru and me for doing it but he still ran the first chance he got.
You know, I’ve never been happier to be angry than I was at that time. My emotional arsenal was back up to two. It doesn’t sound like much but I’d rather be angry than afraid.
It wasn’t long before Kazuya was back with Jin. While we were still recovering he threw Jin back into his room and slammed the door. He didn’t even bother tying Jin. Instead he clutched the doll harder - I swear you can feel his fingers wrapping around your heart when he does that - and drove the needle hard into the right eye.
We all screamed - even Jin - but it wasn’t enough for Kazuya. He dug in harder - twisting and wriggling the needle - and when he finally let up we barely had time to appreciate it before he did it all over again. And then again. He didn’t let up. I passed out - too many head strikes tended to do that - but for that briefest instant right before, it really did sound like music.
When I opened my eyes again I was thrilled to see my vision was more or less back to normal. That thrill didn’t last very long, however. The anger I felt towards Jin flared but I didn’t realize I was yelling at him until Maru stopped me with a harsh, “Shut up! Can’t you see what you’re doing to Job?”
>That got my attention. Job’s voice wavered as he spoke. “Y-you lied to me, Jin.” There was no surprise to his tone. He just sounded so disappointed. Even though Job was the one to predict it would happen, it clearly bothered him.
His next words were to me. “We’re all weak from time to time. He knows he did wrong and God has punished us for it so now we move on.”
It took Jin a few minutes but eventually he huffed out an apology to Job and I did the same. And though it was really easy to forget it in the face of this sickness surrounding us, he was right. We either help each other or we help him.
Yes, I know that’s not exactly what he said but when you strip away the Job-speak, the message is pretty clear. Besides, yelling at Jin took the last bit of my strength for the day and as it turned out, I was going to need it the next day. Another morning of pain and then Kazuya came for me.
Hate is an insidious thing, you know. Have you ever thought about it? It waits until you’re weak and then whispers its poisons and even though you know better - it’s not their fault Kazuya picked me this time - it still seethes in the back of your mind. You resent them for things beyond their ken and control. I’m sure Jin felt the same way yesterday when he ran. Job... I honestly don’t know whether there was room for hatred and resentment in what he believes.
Kazuya inflicted the same choice upon me as before - walk freely or be tethered - and I wanted so badly to run. I ached for the chance to try... but what could I do that Jin hadn’t managed in five months? And supposing I did make it out? What then? As long as he had the doll there wasn’t a place in hell or heaven to escape him. I’d fail and we’d all pay. Part of me liked that idea anyway - do to Jin as he did to us the day before - but even if I resented the others in that moment, catching them in the crossfire was not something I wanted on my conscience.
Conscience? Oh, yes. Back then I still had one, you see. I hadn’t been there long enough to weed out the stubborn remains of it. I’m getting it back though. I’m... I’m trying... it has to be in there somewhere. Even the tiniest piece would be...
I can’t see it. I look and I look and I can’t find it. Another thing his love took from me.
It will come back, won’t it?
I followed Kazuya - untethered - with so many conflicting thoughts drowning me but one thing I knew as truth was that I was scared. Too scared to run and too scared not to run and all I could do was go with him and hope my terrible new life wasn’t about to get even worse.
++++++++++++++++++++
Page 1 + Page 2
Pairing: Kame x AT-TUN
Rating: R (prologue) / NC-17 (Files)
Genre: AU, crime, psychological thriller
Beta: deshisoraba
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Here is the case file you requested, Case 1582-02-23-KT.
Warnings: Okay, firstly... ah, don't read this if you are squeamish. Seriously. You have been warned. There may or may not be character death (you'll have to read to find out) but that's not the worst of it by far. Umm.. help, Desh? Do you think this is enough warning or am I understating things? EDIT: In the immortal words of the mighty Desh, "I'm not sure there ever be enough warning for this fic. I admit I was totally unprepared though I was thoroughly warned. You can quote me in the warnings if you want, lol!"
A/N: This story is inspired by (read: ripped off like hell from) the PV for VIXX's song "Voodoo Doll" which I definitely suggest you watch at some point. Also, yeah, the full title is "The Strange & Horrifying Case of Kamenashi Kazuya" but for post subjects, let's just go with "The Case" since the full title + File 01 + Ueda Tatsuya is just long as hell.
MASTER POSTS:
Akame Shinies - HERE
kattun_fanfics - HERE
je_kamenashi - HERE
The Strange & Horrifying Case of Kamenashi Kazuya
File 01 ~ Ueda Tatsuya
Name: Ueda Tatsuya
Age: 31
Ueda Tatsuya - boxer and owner of the popular club Recess - disappeared for nearly three months in mid-2014. His account of that time is partially consistent with other accounts and with what physical evidence remains, but the story contains many fantastical elements as well. Despite the impossibilities in his story, he remains adamant.
The interview reflected in this partial transcript was conducted four months after the events described herein.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There is more of me left than of the others. I’m still in here, though that part of me - the man I used to be - is scared and quiet and so very still. I have one thing in my favor the others don’t and that’s the tiny grace to have been last. The shortest time, you see. The most refined technique. The early curiosities already sated. He knew what he was doing before I was ever a part of this... this sickness...
These were the gifts given me amidst such horror.
The first thing I noticed about him at the club that night was his softness. His newness. Everyone else was caught in the inexorable wave of lust and laughter but he just sat there watching the room, unhurried wonder brightening those gorgeous brown eyes. There was a smile but barely begun at one corner of his mouth, the only other betrayal of excitement he seemed so desperate to contain.
I remember every word I said to him that night. I play the conversation over and over again in my mind, debating the moment I should have known better. The moment I should have run as fast and as far as I could. Was it when he told me his name was Kamenashi Kazuya and that he’d love for me to join him? Was it when we talked of the biology of groups - his first love, he said - and he pointed out several examples in the crowd? Was it when he shyly but suggestively asked me to come home with him so we could try our own experiments? Was it when the door to his apartment closed behind us? When we didn’t quite manage to properly untangle before we fell asleep?
It should have been one of them. Every time I see these events, I scream at myself to notice something, anything, to prevent it this time. I think... I think I will spend forever watching this awful movie play out in my mind. I know my freedom is a lie - the bars of my new cage are no less strong for being intangible.
I don’t know what Kazuya did to me while I slept but when I woke up the mattress at my back felt hard and cold and that’s when I realized I had woken atop metal. I was wearing clothes I last remembered being strewn about the bedroom floor and when I tried to sit, I couldn’t. I couldn’t... and there wasn’t even the barest glimmer of a memory to tell my why.
You like to think you’re clear-headed. You can hold yourself together in the face of anything. You’re strong and you’re brave and you can become the hero if you absolutely have to. You believe all of these things until you’re taught differently.
Three large straps pinning me to a metal table taught me differently.
The lines on my skin from them are the faintest of my trophies - god, I need to stop calling them that! They’re not trophies! They’re just a twisted... twisted... and he loves them all so much... but I can’t look in the mirror anymore, can I?
No, I’m... I’m calm. I can be calm. I can be whatever you need me to be.
As panic threatened to undo me on that table, I turned my head to one side and then the other. All around me - as far as I could see, at any rate - was rock, grey-white stones much bigger than traditional brick. Old light fixtures flickered, giving the space an eerie, haunted feel despite their pale brilliance. The room was enormous but I didn’t see any windows.
I shouted, wincing at the way my voice echoed coldly off of those walls. “Help! Someone help me! Can anyone hear me?” I struggled but the straps were so tight. All that time spent working out and I couldn’t get any slack in them no matter how hard I pulled. I hated the desperation in my voice as I called out again, “Anybody?”
“You’re heavier than you look.” The voice was Kazuya’s and contained the faintest traces of laughter but I couldn’t turn my head enough to properly see him standing at the end of the table.
“This isn’t funny! Why did you do this? Where are we?”
There was a pause before Kazuya said, “You jumped to why much sooner than I expected.” He sounded intrigued. “You didn’t even ask what was happening before you wanted why. Tell me... is it because the answer is more important?”
“Untie me! Right now!” I did my best to sound angry instead of afraid and I failed miserably.
“Oh, you don’t want that. You want something to hold you no matter how desperately the muscles spasm and jerk,” and I could feel his fingertips brush across my forehead in a way that was eerily similar to ways he touched me before in bed. “I’ll answer a question after you answer mine. Is it because the answer is more important? Really think on this.”
It took me a minute to realize he asked me a question. My full attention was on his words. No matter how desperately the muscle spasms, he said. Desperately. Spasms. That told me everything I ever wanted to know about the what. I realized in that moment why didn’t matter to me anymore. “W-why is only important later. After.”
“Then I’ll give it to you and you will keep it safe until it becomes important.” His fingers ghosted down my right cheek this time. “You hurt me. Now I hurt you.”
“No! No, that’s not right! I didn’t... I didn’t do anything!” I wasn’t lying before. I really remember everything I said to him. Even so, I can’t find it. I know it’s there but I just can’t find the moment I hurt him. That’s why it turns out the same every time I see it, no matter how much I scream at myself.
“You left me.” Kazuya’s fingers paused at the tip of my chin. “But it’s okay. I went back and fixed it. You shouldn’t be this pretty already. Maybe it’s because you’re a boxer. I wonder...” and now he was looking at me with the same curiosity he had in the club. “Does the root of boxing lie in bone and flesh? Is it the mind? The heart? Do you know?”
I didn’t know the answer to his question but there one thing I did know. I knew I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. His eyes caressed me as if I were the most important thing in the whole world... but the look slowly changed as his gaze wandered down my arm in time with his hand. It became hateful and hungry and intent.
“Let’s find out,” he said as he pushed my sleeve up. There was a knife. I don’t know when exactly it appeared but he had it, slicing slowly into the skin of my forearm - slipping deeper as he pushed in - and I screamed. I pulled harder than I thought possible, trying to free my arm but I couldn’t move it at all. I begged and I cried and all he had to say was, “I know you’re glad to have the straps - properly grateful, even. I hear you. You don’t have to scream about it.”
Kazuya set the knife down once he sliced to the bone. I felt those same fingers which had brushed along my arm now slide into the open cut, carefully exploring while I futilely fought. After a few seconds, he gave a disappointed click. “The muscle and the bone are ordinary. Beautiful, but ordinary. It’s the same stuff everyone has. I guess boxing isn’t found there. Shame checking the heart or brain would kill you. We may never know.” He pulled his fingers out of the wound and walked out of my field of vision.
My voice cracked when I asked, “Over?”
I saw it - the stapler, I mean - in his hand as he came back to my side but I didn’t understand. It wasn’t until he started using it to close the wound that I realized what it was. “But you have many more mysteries and I have more gifts for you. You know you don’t mean it. You want to know just as much as I do.”
He was just getting starting. He was just getting started and I was already sobbing, being the strong reliable man that I am.
Let me tell you something. There’s a moment when it hits you. All of it - all the little bits your mind protected you from - suddenly combine to alter your reality irrevocably. You gasp, your mind fills... and you despair. So he talks more of gifts and then it’s all huge needles and thick metal rings. You try to hold onto the image of your right shoulder and both arms before the trophies because you don’t yet know that you can’t. That you will never see your unspoiled self again, not even in dreams.
And the way his fingers linger on the skin, adoring you even as he’s ruining you...
No. It’s gone. I didn’t know it quite yet at that point, but it was already too late to stop it from happening anyway.
After all three rings were in - one in the right shoulder, another about an inch above the elbow on the same side, and the last one halfway between my left wrist and elbow - Kazuya put the needle down. He gave each ring a hard tug. “To make sure they’ll stay,” he said, and when I cried out he smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”
Then he just looked at me, took me in slowly from head to toe. He looked pleased. No, not... not pleased. Not pleased. Enraptured. Like I’m the most beautiful thing in the whole world and he still can’t believe I’m all his... and then that moment ends.
A new one begins and I will always - always - hate him for it. He was cruel and I know he did it to leash and humiliate me. It’s the only reason he ever does it. He looked me in the eye and told me, “Now you have a choice.”
He went on to explain. “I need to take you to your room. You’ll follow me, I know. But if we get unfortunately separated, bad things will happen to you. If you’re that worried about getting lost when the consequences are so frightening, I can tether you to me. I love you that much. Or you can walk with me freely, sure in the knowledge I’ll never lose you because you’re too precious to me.”
Have you ever really thought about what it means to have a choice? A direct line drawn from your decision to everything that follows it? And what if all choices lead to the same place? The responsibility for what follows without the ability to dictate it? Choosing should empower us but it only reveals our irrelevance.
I just didn’t know it yet. I didn’t understand. I saw two roads and picked the one where I ran. I forgot that when you run you just get to where you’re going faster. It’s why he didn’t chase me. He didn’t have to when all roads led to the same place.
At the time, I didn’t know how it happened. I ran through unfamiliar hallways looking desperately for the way out and then sudden pain shot through my chest, a tight gripping. I couldn’t breathe...
And then I woke up.
There isn’t a moment since that I haven’t lamented that. If choices actually mattered, waking up wouldn’t have been mine.
I was on a couch, leaning forward like I fell asleep sitting. My heart still felt tight and when I clutched my chest with the right hand, I saw the strap circling my index finger. My gaze followed the thin-but-tough line from there up to the ceiling. It wasn’t just the one strap. Some were hanging loose over and around me but one was tied to the ring in my shoulder and another to the one in my upper arm. I turned to the other side and yes, there was a strap to that forearm ring also as well as another wrapped around the middle finger of the left hand.
There was enough slack in them I could stand if I wanted to. Glancing past them I saw I had red metal walls about four feet behind the covered couch and on either side, maybe six feet from either end of the couch. In front of me there was broken glass. Not a full wall of it. More... more like the maw of a cave, if the cave had enormous teeth. Something must have hit it with incredible force to shatter it in that way. It had been cleaned up but the pieces of the wall that remained looked ominous.
That was my room.
I didn’t know how I got into it but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to stay. It only took a little bit of painful movement and the memory of Kazuya pulling the rings to tell me I didn’t want to rip my way free. My thoughts next went to the remains of the former glass wall. Glass is sharp, right? Groaning, I pushed up to my feet.
I could prick the tip of any finger I wanted to but even stretching I couldn’t get the straps to the glass. I pulled a bit harder - it really was so close, you see - but all I earned for the effort was pain. Frustrated and more desperate than ever, I screamed, “Get back here and untie me, you sick son of a-”
“Don’t,” the hoarse plea came from an unfamiliar voice to my left and that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. “Haven’t you done enough? Don’t make him come back again tonight.”
Another voice from my right, “You blame...” and a cough, “Everyone... but yourself...”
Finally taking the time to look past my own room and my personal fate, I saw a table in the middle of a large six-sided brick room. Straight across from me was a room like mine - a cage in the wall - but inside the room was a much smaller cage which looked a lot newer. In that iron-framed glass box was another man, a bit younger than me and also tethered by a couple hanging straps. His trophies were different than mine. He just had the one ring by the time I met him but his skin was heavily scarred in a couple of places and raw in others. His black shirt was torn, exposing the shallow cuts in the skin of his chest and stomach. He was standing with one palm pressed to the glass, silently mouthing words I couldn’t follow, his eyes staring intently at the center table. His body trembled and his dark bangs were matted to his forehead by sweat.
The wall to the left of him had an ordinary door but the one to the right of him had another room - this one covered in glass also. No. No, not glass. It looked like glass to me at the time but it had to be something else - glass breaks under the force I’ve seen hit it. It was covered with strange symbols drawn hastily in white as well words in languages I’ve never seen before. But on the floor of that room was a man, this one on his knees. His shirt was more ripped than whole so that almost all of the ink-covered shoulder and upper back showed. He hunched over so far his forehead nearly touched floor and though his face was hidden, I saw his body shaking as well.
The other two walls - the ones to either side of me - had rooms but I couldn’t really see into them. I just knew someone was in there because they’re where the two voices came from just now. It’s funny... I know I saw them all there at the end and I know I’ll never forget those voices which scream even now in my dreams, but I can’t... can’t quite picture...
Don’t you think I know that we outnumbered him? Being the most recent of five tells you nothing more than the man was good enough to get away with it four times already! Does that sound encouraging to you?!
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell like that. I’m calm. I’m... I’m... just tell me what you want me to be. I can be that. I promise I can be that.
“Never thought... he’d get all five...” from the man to my left. “I was so sure...” He growled weakly to himself and then with an anger you could hear even with the hoarseness of his voice he said, “You! Why did you run? How could you hurt us like that?”
“We all ran,” the man on my right snapped back at him as best he could. He started coughing again but managed to force out, “You ran your first time, too.”
“The only one hurt by that was the dog.”
They argued back and forth in those wavering, exhausted voices but I didn’t understand most of it. Not then, I mean. I was just too new to know.
“Jin. Maru.”
Both men immediately stopped talking at the words. The young man in the room across from mine was no longer whispering to himself. He was looking in our direction, palm still pressed to the glass. “Always,” he panted, “with the fighting. We have a guest.”
The man on my right mumbled, “Sorry, Job.” The man to my left said nothing.
The man across from me spoke again, “We haven’t had a guest since Maru checked in. They forget their manners.” The corners of his mouth went up a bit and his eyes widened. His version of a smile, I eventually figured out. Probably the best he can do. “I’m Job.” He pointed to my left. “That’s Jin and that,” he pointed to my right, “is Maru. Next to me is Koki.”
“The Dog,” Jin added bitterly.
“...Koki,” Job insisted.
Maru’s voice was kind despite the strain in it as he hesitantly said, “Job, you know he’s... There’s a chance he’s not...”
Job cut in with a soft, desperate voice, “I’m tired, Maru.”
“I know you are. Sleep, okay?”
“Will you...?”
“I promise. Sleep, Job.”
Yawning, Job sat on the small bench in that tiny cage in his room. He leaned against the glass side and closed his eyes. A few breaths later I saw the tears quietly start to fall. He wasn’t actually asleep. No one said anything about it so I didn’t either. It was the unwritten rule - even Jin somewhat obeyed it.
I introduced myself to the two men I couldn’t see. Koki had by this time curled up on the floor by the window to his room, so I asked, “What happened to him?”
Maru answered with, “Same thing as us, only longer,” but his voice trailed off sleepily as he spoke. “You should get some rest before tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?”
“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Jin mumbled from my left.
After that there was no reply to anything I did or said, no matter how loud I got.
Still, he was right. Jin was right. I found that out only after a restless night of lonely, soul-searing disillusionment.
From what? Oh, you know. Everything. All the things we believe so blindly because we don’t know. Lies of power - the dream that you control of your own life - go first and the others presently follow until none remain.
Sudden noise drew my attention after so much silence. I looked across the room. Job jolted upright; he looked truly terrified for a heartbeat before shutting down all expression. That was bad enough but it was the growling from Koki that truly raised the hair on my arms, something deep and primal and speaking to fears so old we’ve forgotten them. “What’s happening?”
Job whispered with reverence, “God comes to temper us.”
The door opening and the loud thud of Koki launching himself at the clear wall of his room coincided almost to the second. It always did. That’s how we knew Kazuya was coming with the doll.
Yes, doll. Red and black stitching on white cloth with bits of straw sticking out. The story doesn’t change just because you ask again. If changing the story would somehow change the truth then I would do it in a heartbeat for you, I swear, but it doesn’t work like that. Please, don’t be mad at me. You’re mad, aren’t you? I can see it in the way you’re looking at me.
Kazuya loves to look at us, to stand just out of reach and see his beloved, beautifully ruined creatures tremble in uncontained fear or anger. It’s a moment to appreciate our nuances which disappear all too readily when he finally gets going.
When he got near Koki’s room, Koki slammed into the glass again. He was snarling and scratching at it and doing his level best to tear through it but was in vain. Kazuya’s hand trailed across the glass as he cooed over how perfect his toy had become, how lovely and precious.
The whole time, I was shouting at Kazuya. I was at the literal end of my tether, not quite able to reach him even when he stopped right in front of me. He laughed and that newness I saw at the club, it was still there. It was wrong. It shouldn’t have... I mean, how can he be like that and still do...?
Sorry. I need a moment. Just... let me breathe.
You know, I was confused when he sat down at the table in the middle of the room. I saw him pick back up the doll. His stare was curious as he looked me over. Then he moved the arm of the doll and to my horror I felt my own arm swing the same way. Not only mine. I watched Job’s arm and Koki’s match it exactly and even though I couldn’t see it, I knew Jin and Maru were feeling it too.
He let go and my arm dropped back down.
I stared in shock as he just smiled. This... this was impossible, right?
The wonder left Kazuya’s eyes, pushed out as the anger and hatred rushed back into them. The adoration was gone. What he was about to do, he did just to make us suffer. He wanted us to hurt the way we hurt him.
There’s a needle - thirteen inches long and a lot thicker and duller than you’d ever want it to be - which he used when he gave me my trophies. It was there, on the table, and when he reached for it, Koki started pacing aggressively in his room whereas Job closed his eyes and put his palm on the glass. The tears fell - the ones we didn’t talk about - and he whispered to himself. I think... I think he was praying.
When I think back on this moment, everything happens in slow motion. The needle pierces the doll. You feel something pushing against the skin. The pain hits and you swear you can feel the needle slowly spreading the flesh - in this case, the left knee - only it feels so much bigger than when he gives you a new trophy. Of course, there’s nothing to see. The skin is unbroken. It only feels like your patella is coming away from the joint. It doesn’t really crack.
It didn’t really happen that slowly, even if that’s how I see it now. The screams followed but a breath behind the needle. I clutched my knee with both hands, falling back on my couch. I thought having my arm sliced open and then stapled shut hurt worse than anything that’s ever happened to me - and it did at the time - but it’s nothing compared to the feel of bone splintering.
The pain goes just as suddenly, too. Not... not all of it - there’s an ache that never really leaves - but it’s nothing compared to what just happened. That’s the moment I had to redefine my definitions of possibility. There isn’t the smallest bit of me left anymore that doubts the realness of what happened, doll or no doll.
I didn’t have enough time to properly appreciate the faded pain before the second stab to the knee. I cried and I screamed and held my knee and when the pain finally let up, I could breathe again. Job didn’t have enough room to collapse on his side the way I did so he fell screaming forward against the glass, eyes still closed. He went seamlessly from mumble to scream to mumble, hardly a heartbeat between them. Koki was blindly attacking the wall, trying to claw his way out as he whimpered and snarled.
“Jin, why aren’t you singing?” Singing, like it was music. That’s how he really sees it, I think, and that’s what he always calls it. Our music. Music and trophies and pain and gifts and I hate him. I hate him!
I’m calm. No, really. I swear.
Jin wasn’t calm so much as quiet. Kazuya didn’t like that. When he gives us our trophies it’s fine. When he punishes us, he wants to hear it.
Through gritted teeth Jin spat, “I won’t... sing... for you... anymore!”
“Jin, no! Not again!” Maru cried. “What are you doing?”
Pouting, Kazuya said, “Look what you did. You made Maru-chan sad. Tsk tsk. It’s okay. I’ll make it better. You just need some encouragement. I’ll let you choose. Left eye or right?”
Another choice to bind us, but Jin never made it. He snapped, frantically hit the glass as he begged, “No, not the eye! Oh, god! Not the...”
This time Jin screamed with us. I think. Between the wet pain of what felt like my left eye popping and Koki’s desperate howl, I didn’t actually hear him. I did hear his weak apologies while I waited for my vision to return.
The next few hours were the strange intersection of eternal seconds and blurring memory. At first, you hold onto yourself. You remember each stab as an event. A thing unto itself. As the pain fades less and less between them, you start to break. You eventually lose yourself entirely. You react - scream, clutch at yourself, even beg for it to be over - but you don’t know you’re doing it. Your whole world is the pain.
It takes a minute to come back when he finishes. It always does.
I felt the couch beneath me again. I could breathe. I could see. I remembered my name and for just a second I thought it had all been a dream. I looked up and saw Job still standing with his palm pressed to the glass, trembling like the night before. Koki had curled up on the floor, arms across his chest as he whimpered. On one side of me I could hear Maru groan but from the other side of me there was only heavy breathing. Jin took a little longer to come back than the rest of us.
Job says it isn’t voodoo at all despite the doll. He said he studied world religions back before he existed - it didn’t take long to realize he meant his life before this place - and that this doll was something different. He said it was our avatar to God. That if we were punished directly as we deserve for our sins we would likely die so God - in his unfailing love for us - made the doll. He punishes the doll and we feel the pain... but we live. In this way, he purges our sins and imperfections. He gives our lives meaning, preparing us so we can then be transformed by him.
I don’t believe a word of it and I know I’m not the only one, but somehow no one wants to be the one to finally break Job permanently.
Kazuya calls it love also but I’m not buying that either. I know he does love us in his way, but I think Jin’s theory was probably closer to it. He believes it’s about hate. That Kazuya’s vengeance on Koki - the first of us, the one who wronged him the most - combined with an old evil and made this whole thing possible.
Does it really matter which one is true? Does that change a damn thing? No. No, it doesn’t! As I said before, why isn’t important until later and only to people who can’t grasp the what without the why. People like you.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...
I’m good. I swear. I’m... what do you want me to be? Just tell me, please...
With great effort I eventually managed to croak to the others, “How often?”
Job couldn’t answer since he was still talking to himself - I really do think it was praying - but after a coughing fit and a groan, Maru rasped, “Recently... at least... once... day. Twice... if you run.”
“How could I?”
The first real sound from Jin’s room since Kazuya left was his, “He likes to take us out and play with us.”
I can tell your mind went where mine did that day. I asked about it. “You’re saying he’ll...”
I didn’t have to finish the sentence because Jin - unsurprisingly bitter - cut in midway. “No. He doesn’t care about sex exactly. He just likes to... to touch. Make new trophies. Experiment. You know, play.”
“He’s not playing. He’s remaking us, transforming us into perfect beings. It’s our ambrosia. Proof he loves us.”
My gaze - and probably Jin and Maru’s - immediately snapped to Job at the sound of his words. Because I didn’t know better yet, I assumed Jin was going to argue like he did with Maru the night before but his voice was kind as he said, “That’s right, Job. It’s as you say.”
This wasn’t the first time they did that, either. It was the same last night. Even I wasn’t immune to it, not daring to disagree. I wasn’t afraid of Job. I just... well, it was very easy to fall in line, I suppose. What else could I do but follow them? When I relive it every night, it’s still the best I can do.
My stomach growled, reminding me of something I’d neglected thus far. “I’m hungry.”
“John 4:33,” Job replied, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly.
“John 4:33?” I asked.
“So the disciples said to one another, ‘Has anyone brought him something to eat?’”
It took me a moment to realize that was Job’s version of a joke. Jin groaned and said, “Kazuya brings it when he comes to take one of us. If it’s not you, you eat.”
With a yawn, Job said, “Promise you’ll wake me, Koki?”
Koki didn’t respond - not then and not ever in the whole time I was there - but Job didn’t wait for him. He sat down on his bench and leaned against the side of his tiny cell in his little room, closing his eyes. The tears were back.
Jin’s voice carried to me despite being quieter to not disturb Job, “Rest. Kazuya comes later and you didn’t sleep last night.”
Proving that he’d heard me but chosen not to answer - they probably all had - but I was too drained to get pissed. The anger you’ve lost takes a while to come back, you see. Days, even. After that first morning, even the fear is almost gone. You’re just too numb to feel it. You don’t feel anything. It happens after every morning when you come back to yourself, but it never lasts like that first time.
It was hard to fall asleep but sheer exhaustion eventually did the trick. I didn’t wake until Koki growled and slammed into the glass. Blinking the last bit of sleep from my eyes, I sat up just in time to see the door close behind the entering Kazuya. He had the doll with him.
The sight of it... it’s just... unsettling. I don’t know how to explain it. I fear the pain it brings upon us but I don’t fear the doll. Somehow, I can’t. It’s as wretched as we are - just as ruined - because that’s what Kazuya does to things he loves.
For the majority of the time, the five of us - if you can count Koki - were brothers-in-arms, trying to survive together. This part of the day is the only one where that isn’t true. When he came to choose, it was zero-sum. If it’s someone else, then it isn’t you.
Unless they run.
That day he came for Job.
I had overlooked the little hallways beside the rooms up till this point - they kind of blend into the wall when your focus is on the rooms themselves - but that’s how he got in to the different rooms. You didn’t need a key to get in from the outside but to leave you needed a code. He brought sandwiches for all of us - except Job - and I gobbled mine down before he’d even finished handing them out. He had to use the doll to keep Koki from attacking him and for a moment none of us could breathe. Apparently, that was the way of things ever since Koki became... whatever he was.
One he got to Job’s room, he unlocked the inner cage and swung the back of it outward. The expression in Job’s eyes as Kazuya untied him sent an icy chill through me - it was a battle between his terror and the beliefs which protect his mind - and the way he just stood there passively was incredibly creepy. The snarls and scratching from Koki clawing at his window didn’t help matters.
Job wordlessly followed Kazuya out of the room and the second the door closed behind them, I heard a sob of relief from both sides. It took me a second to realize they weren’t the only ones. I let go of the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.
“Don’t worry; he never runs,” from Maru.
Jin’s voice was flat as he said, “Not anymore.”
“That was before he was Job,” Maru pointed out.
That got my attention. “What do you mean? That’s not his name?”
Maru sighed and said, “It may as well be. It’s who he is now.”
The two of them spent the time we waited explaining a few things about Job. His named used to be Junnosuke and he fought harder than any of them. He ripped his rings out even though they took skin and flesh with them - it’s why he is so scarred though they said the newer raw spots were directly given by Kazuya - and he ran every time Kazuya took him out of his room. Every single time.
They would all get punished but he couldn’t help himself - at least, that was Jin’s opinion - and so Kazuya brought the smaller cage so he’d have less room to pull out his trophies.
I called them that again? I didn’t mean to...
Kazuya took Junno away one day and didn’t bring him back for three days. They couldn’t get a straight answer from him on what happened those three days but after that, he was Job and he never disobeyed again.
I wasn’t familiar with the story of Job but the way it was explained to me by those two was that in the Bible God and the devil made a bet about a man - whether his faith was true or if it was merely his good fortune that made his faith easy - so God took away one thing after another until he’d taken everything. Job suffered more than any man and yet through it all he held onto his faith in God. The devil just had to suck it - Jin’s words there - and when it was all over, God gave the man back everything he’d taken away.
I guess I can understand how something like that would be comforting to believe.
“He’s Kazuya’s favorite, now that the dog’s gone feral,” Jin added. “We just let him believe whatever he has to.”
“Stop calling him the dog and stop acting like you care about Job. You let him believe it because you suffer less for it.” Maru sounded angry.
“You don’t understand. You haven’t been here as long as I have and neither has Job. Spend five months here and then lecture me on being self-serving.”
It devolved after that point into childish bickering. I think... I think the reason those two argued so much was because - if you squint a bit, mentally - it brought some sense of normalcy to us all. But I couldn’t get Jin’s words out of my mind. Five months? It was only my second day. Five months might as well have been five centuries. I couldn’t do it. I just... I couldn’t. I had to get out of there. I...
>But I didn’t know how. And even if escaped, as long as I was bound to that doll it didn’t matter how far I ran. Eternity never looked so bleak.
Well, obviously we found a way.
M-most of us...
I don’t want to talk about that. Not yet. Not until I have to.
Kazuya brought Job back eventually and I don’t know what exactly happened between them but it must have been bad because Job was noticeably paler as he listlessly followed Kazuya back to his room. He let the man strap him back into that iron-and-glass cage.
The smile on Kazuya’s face was indecently innocent as he lingered in Job’s room to admire the sight whereas Job stood unmoving until Kazuya was gone. Wordlessly he sank to his bench and - side pressed against the wall of his prison - closed his eyes. He fell asleep quickly.
I had so many questions burning inside of me but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to ask them. At least frustrated curiosity was the tiniest of drops in an angry sea and by far the easiest to ignore. Besides, silence was another one of the unwritten rules I eventually learned. When Kazuya brings someone back the rest don’t speak until he either speaks first or falls asleep.
And you don’t ask what was done. Ever. That stays inside us where we can shut it away and try to forget.
Yes, I know. What would you rather we had done instead? You either do what you have to so you survive or you’ll kill yourself without touch of weapon. Though I’m honestly not sure whether the former or the latter is actually the better choice. Maybe they’re just equally terrible like all our other choices.
The next morning came sooner than my aching body was prepared to take but that was irrelevant to Kazuya, whose arrival coincided once again with Koki launching himself at his window. He had the doll again and Jin once again refused to scream. At the beginning, at any rate. Kazuya solved that problem the same way he did the first time - needle to the eye - and then told Jin he had the most gorgeous voice in the whole choir.
Jin knew - he had to know - that his stubbornness would be punished but it was an effort to hold on to what little of himself remained. I get that now. And the eye really was the best way to punish Jin because as it turns out, the vision loss is a lot like the pain - with each hit it takes longer to recover and finally you don’t recover at all - which is not a fate any of us wanted but for some reason Jin was especially afraid of it.
We all had our own thing to be especially afraid of so I don’t really judge him.
Mine? Oh, you know... just a thing. Don’t worry about that. It’s not really important.
It finally ended and Kazuya left. The first thing I heard as I was coming back to myself was Maru laying into Jin - as best he could considering the state we were all in - about challenging Kazuya like that. He said it was the second day in a row.
Coughing, I pushed myself up from where I had collapsed and asked, “He just started this?”
Jin growled in response. He shot back, “At least I didn’t run like the both of you did the last chance you had!”
“I didn’t know better.”
“Yeah, well, he did. Isn’t that right, Maru?”
“P-please stop.” The words were faint and desperate and the first thing Job said aloud since Kazuya brought him back the night before. Everyone froze for a few seconds at the sound of his voice. “Please just stop, please...” and he whispered it over and over again barely loud enough to hear.
Jin’s voice was gentle as he said, “Okay, Job. We’ll stop.”
Nobody knew what to say after that so we said nothing. Eventually Job fell asleep in his little cage again and we followed not far behind. Even I knew by this time to expect Koki to wake us when Kazuya came.
That afternoon he took Jin away with him and that’s when I finally got my first glimpse of the man behind the voice. I couldn’t see his face but he had wavy dark brown hair and glass - I think it was glass - imbedded at various places on his body but most notably along both arms. I’m not sure how it was done. I don’t want to know.
After the collective mangled sob of relief over not being the one in Jin’s shoes this day, I had to ask. “Does Jin run?”
Maru responded with, “He hasn’t in a while. He did a lot of the time when I first got here but-”
“He will run,” Job interrupted. “Each time we get a new guest, he rebels against God. He forgets our purpose here. I worry his lack of faith will be his undoing.”
“Or our undoing,” Maru added miserably.
And indeed Jin did run. We all felt Kazuya’s rage as he brought Jin down - pain came from first one knee and then the other and then when I tried to push myself up suddenly couldn’t breathe. It let up eventually - my lungs weren’t really filling with blood after all - only to be replaced by a shock to my lower back. There was surprisingly brief pain but then I realized I couldn’t move or even feel my legs. I knew the others were going through the same thing even if I was in no state to check.
Jin did this to us. He scolded both Maru and me for doing it but he still ran the first chance he got.
You know, I’ve never been happier to be angry than I was at that time. My emotional arsenal was back up to two. It doesn’t sound like much but I’d rather be angry than afraid.
It wasn’t long before Kazuya was back with Jin. While we were still recovering he threw Jin back into his room and slammed the door. He didn’t even bother tying Jin. Instead he clutched the doll harder - I swear you can feel his fingers wrapping around your heart when he does that - and drove the needle hard into the right eye.
We all screamed - even Jin - but it wasn’t enough for Kazuya. He dug in harder - twisting and wriggling the needle - and when he finally let up we barely had time to appreciate it before he did it all over again. And then again. He didn’t let up. I passed out - too many head strikes tended to do that - but for that briefest instant right before, it really did sound like music.
When I opened my eyes again I was thrilled to see my vision was more or less back to normal. That thrill didn’t last very long, however. The anger I felt towards Jin flared but I didn’t realize I was yelling at him until Maru stopped me with a harsh, “Shut up! Can’t you see what you’re doing to Job?”
>That got my attention. Job’s voice wavered as he spoke. “Y-you lied to me, Jin.” There was no surprise to his tone. He just sounded so disappointed. Even though Job was the one to predict it would happen, it clearly bothered him.
His next words were to me. “We’re all weak from time to time. He knows he did wrong and God has punished us for it so now we move on.”
It took Jin a few minutes but eventually he huffed out an apology to Job and I did the same. And though it was really easy to forget it in the face of this sickness surrounding us, he was right. We either help each other or we help him.
Yes, I know that’s not exactly what he said but when you strip away the Job-speak, the message is pretty clear. Besides, yelling at Jin took the last bit of my strength for the day and as it turned out, I was going to need it the next day. Another morning of pain and then Kazuya came for me.
Hate is an insidious thing, you know. Have you ever thought about it? It waits until you’re weak and then whispers its poisons and even though you know better - it’s not their fault Kazuya picked me this time - it still seethes in the back of your mind. You resent them for things beyond their ken and control. I’m sure Jin felt the same way yesterday when he ran. Job... I honestly don’t know whether there was room for hatred and resentment in what he believes.
Kazuya inflicted the same choice upon me as before - walk freely or be tethered - and I wanted so badly to run. I ached for the chance to try... but what could I do that Jin hadn’t managed in five months? And supposing I did make it out? What then? As long as he had the doll there wasn’t a place in hell or heaven to escape him. I’d fail and we’d all pay. Part of me liked that idea anyway - do to Jin as he did to us the day before - but even if I resented the others in that moment, catching them in the crossfire was not something I wanted on my conscience.
Conscience? Oh, yes. Back then I still had one, you see. I hadn’t been there long enough to weed out the stubborn remains of it. I’m getting it back though. I’m... I’m trying... it has to be in there somewhere. Even the tiniest piece would be...
I can’t see it. I look and I look and I can’t find it. Another thing his love took from me.
It will come back, won’t it?
I followed Kazuya - untethered - with so many conflicting thoughts drowning me but one thing I knew as truth was that I was scared. Too scared to run and too scared not to run and all I could do was go with him and hope my terrible new life wasn’t about to get even worse.
++++++++++++++++++++
Page 1 + Page 2