Chapter Text
Fuyuki, no admitted last name, had finally done it. He had been officially disowned by the ancient and not-so-powerful Fushimi clan. Known for their long history of being very boring nobles, whose greatest claim to fame was that they once guarded the former emperor Sutoko. And then when that fame turned into infamy at the man’s downfall…well, they were forced into guarding the same man as he slowly went mad in exile.
He may or may not have taken the emperor’s works on his way out…along with a few other items.
Not like anyone else in his family could see the demons that the texts referred to. Fuyuki may be a bit crazy, but he knew that the demons were real. Convincing others was the hard part, even if they were about to be chewed on.
Not that anyone besides mother had listened, and she was…
Deep breath, and push it to the side. No crying today Fuyuki, we are stronger then tears. He wrestled his thoughts out of that spiral. Pay attention to the now Fuyuki.
He was down the driveway and a good bit around the corner. Just coming out of range of the cameras on the house. Giant duffle bag on his back, snowboots on his feet, and the scarf the housekeeper insisted he take. His kimono was not weather appropriate, but it was heavy silk, and his other option was western formal wear.
He hates formal western attire with all the spite left from a good decade of wearing suits to unimportant meetings that could have been an email. When the country closed down from the plague he had been so happy to lounge in his jocks and dress shirts at home. No talking to people in person, no subtle put downs at not having tailored suit jackets, and best of all, even after the ban lifted, no one went back into the office. He was left to do his accounting in peace. And then of course those idiot Americans set off world war three and things went to shit.
Starving to death while suffering nuclear winter had not been on his to-do list. And yet it happened anyway.
He still hated the cold.
Moving on
He’d been saving up in preparation, and today was the day he made his way out of this horrible place. No more stuffy rooms where he wasn’t allowed to touch anything. No more formal teas, or formal anything, if he didn’t want it.
No more being treated like air or worse, having people back away in fear from him. Mother had said it was his aura that made others scared of him, that he felt like a gaping maw, and she always knew where he was within a mile radius.
She always teased…
Deep breath Fuyuki. You hate this place, just cause your leaving the only home you have ever known dosen’t mean that you should cry about it.
…I can cry when I get to my new home. Until then, chin up. Shoulders back and head high.
Fuyuki, happily unnamed, had spent years under the thumb of a man who was not his father. Quietly collecting blackmail on his various affairs, fraud, and horrible gambling habits. He had spent his very generous allowance on spyware, a high-end laptop, and an internet cafe that didn’t ask questions like ‘why is a middle schooler here,’ and ‘should you be watching that,’ and his least favorite, ‘how did an elementary kid get access?’ He was fourteen, thank you very much, even if he was four feet three inches and sixty pounds soaking wet.
He wasn’t that good at hacking, but Fushimi was lazy, and it was made much easier to sneak a picture of his sticky notes then get through the firewall. He hadn’t even been caught by one of the wait staff but then again, no one paid attention to the bastard after all.
Back before Fuyuki had gotten all his memories from before, he had been far more bothered by it. The constant put downs, the neglect, and being blatantly ignored by both his fath…Fushimi-san and his servants all made for a complete mess of a four-year-old. A clingy, lonely, and extremely depressed child who, on top of having a newly dead parent, was also starting to see things that no one else could.
And then he had gotten access to his past life's memories upon his curse technique activating out of stress and putting something in his mouth that didn't belong there.
It had been a horrible wake up call.
Fuyuki and his mother had been left to rot in a disused northern section of the compound after his mother had been outed as being unfaithful. Packed up with her kimonos, books, and other possessions to be shoved in a convenient corner and forgotten. A situation he was still incredibly bitter about because she was sick with cancer at the time and that asshole had just left them both there to.
Breath.
After she died he was left alone, and the servants avoided him because of what he had done. What he had been forced to resort to out of negligence on.
Breath.
Push away that thought.
…If he had been a real five-year-old and not a reincarnation of an adult, he would have starved to death. Or accidentally set the compound on fire.
On the plus side, no one was around to see the abrupt personality switch. Or the subsequent freakout a year later at the realization that he was now fucking phychic…Well, technically, a sorcerer. Being able to see souls was pretty neat, but having to listen to them jabber at him constantly was less so. He had found that he could see, hear, speak to, understand, touch, and even taste all souls. That last one was very trippy as the ghost of his dead cat was somehow still following him around…he hadn’t meant to eat her soul, but he did, and now he could not get rid of her. Thankfully, she mostly hung out in the shrine at the center of his soul.
He knew she came out to distract him on purpose during class. He just knew…
…he wasn’t nuts, but those trains of thought tended to lead to places he did not need to tread.
But it wasn't all bad. Sure, he was lonely but he was also ridiculously wealthy and no one cared what he did with his time or allowance as long as he kept his grades up. He was content to stay where he was, slowly collecting blackmail until he overheard one of the maids mention that ‘the bastard’ ie him, was old enough to be married off.
And as someone who most days struggled with seeing humans as real people and hated being touched he wasn't going to take that lying down.
Fuyuki had, in a span of a month, blackmailed Fushimi-san into striking him from the register, setting him up with a trust fund that only Fuyuki could access, and gave him his mother’s old mansion in Kawasaki city. Sure, it was a sprawling thing that sat on three acres of land in the middle of the old part of the city, but it should have been knocked down in the 80s when mother and her father lived there. It was a large traditional house with a giant fenced-in backyard and room enough to house upwards of twenty people, and still have room for servants. Mother had taken him once after his third birthday to introduce him to his grandfather. Then she had hired a grounds keeper to look after it soon after Abe-sofu had died when he was three, but after she died…
Well, let's just say Fuyuki had spent most of his allowance on fixing structural damage. He had come out the summer before and spent two weeks cleaning the place from top to bottom, repairing screens, putting out decorations, and going through what had to have been at least two hundred years of stuff.
He kept most of it, getting rid of useless crap and selling the less expensive antiques. There were some pretty cool things buried under trunks of clothes, old books, and furniture, but only the gods knew why great-great-great-uncle Hajime had a taxidermy collection of spiders. He had screamed like a little girl after opening that truck, running face to face with a stuffed tarantula. Fuyuki had bolted so fast he made it to the rafters only to realize that the fuzzy nightmare hadn’t moved, and he was now in the territory of the real living spiders.
Fuyuki had taken that trunk out to the back and burned its contents.
Fuyuki, no longer Fushimi Fuyuki. Maybe Midori Fuyuki? Or even Jinja Fuyuki. Mother said his father had eyes like a forest at dawn, and that he should never go looking for him. But then again, being called a green winter tree was a bit much, and he could giggle to himself every time someone asked which shrine. Or he could keep his mother’s name. he was on the rolls anyway…
Fuyuki, Jinja Fuyuki
Heh. Shrine tree, or shrine winter tree.
Nahhhh
To on the nose.
His shoe hit a rock along the sidewalk on the route to the train station. Absentmindedly, he focused on pushing his chi to his foot and kicked the now glowy blue rock with some force at the small disgusting monster hanging out near an alleyway. It had enough force to take off its head, then disintegrate into dark purple blood and goop. Nasty thing. He did manage to one-shot it, and a hit is a hit. Saying a quick mental sorry towards Momo, Fuyuki rolled up his right sleeve and got out a pen from his bag. He uncapped the green marker and made a small tally mark on the inside of his arm.
There, not even seven, and he was already at work exercising demons. Yesterday, he had gotten up to 34 of the small ones and two of the bigger ones. A pretty big spike from the typical 10 to 14 that he usually saw this time of year. He was unsure what was causing the increase aside from slowly stopping his meds. Not that the demons ever vanished while he was on them. Not really. They were real, real, real. They were harder to spot during every new school year because it was much more difficult to pay attention to anything when his brain felt like it would drip out of his ears.
Fuyuki had been periodically weaning himself off of his medication since he had seen someone else be mangled by one of the big ones when he was six. Surprisingly, they had seen it then too, and it had seen Fuyuki. He was not proud to say that after he got the spider monster's attention, he booked it. The years of running from his literal demons had taught him that as long as he found a place around people and focused his energy as small as possible, they went away.
Eventually.
This time, knowing that they were real, he avoided leading it to others and went the opposite route. Going towards the outskirts. He ducked into alleyways, jumped through yards, and parkored his way up to the rooftops. Pulling out all the tricks to try and escape, but nothing worked. Fuyuki had quickly run out roof before jumping onto the sturdy wall of an out-of-the-way small temple in an act of desperation to put as much room between him and it. After bleeding off his momentum, he had dared to look back only to see the monster claw ineffectively at an invisible barrier, howling its ire the entire time. It could not pass through the tori gates.
Fuyuki had been so fucking confused. He just had his worldview upended and then was introduced to a solution that, of all things, was religious. He had stared so long at the demon that he had attracted the attention of the shrine maiden. He, of course, lied when asked what he was looking at, and then proceeded to grill her. Politely, of course. She was kind enough to go over the basics of Shinto before handing him a chi-infused good-luck charm that tingled when he touched it, before gently shoving him out the tori gate. The demon had vanished during their conversation.
Knowing that those things were real and could hurt people gave him a bit of a moral crisis after he got back home. If he was the only one who could see them, did that mean he was obligated to hunt down and kill them all? It was enough to give him a panic attack at the thought of a future as some wandering demon hunter who lived under bridges, cause no one would pay real money to get rid of something they couldn't see. Unless you were a monk. This had set off a research binge so epic he didn't leave his room for almost a day (meaning his cat Mochi had gotten annoyed at not being fed and made him leave to get food for her).
He had fallen on the decision that demon hunting would remain a fun hobby, and while he would kill any he encountered, he would only go hunting the big ones in his free time.
The kicker was that even with proper proof that the monsters were real, Fuyuki probably still had something wrong with his brain. It may not be Schizophrenia, but it was at least a form of sociopathy.
After a few days of thinking about his options, he enacted a plan. It was a very short plan, but bullet points still count.
Step one was already completed. He had confirmed that demons were real years ago. Step two, figure out what the hell the auras were indicating. Humans and certain types of demons had dual-toned ones. Sometimes they matched, and sometimes they clashed. Everything else had a single tone. Fuyuki’s were an uncommon blue and the smell of bloody red-orange Autumn sunsets. Mother’s was a bright crimson sun before she…
Purple seemed to be a colour almost solely possessed by demons; he had met one person ever with that hue, and the woman made his skin crawl purely from being in her presence. He had originally thought it a side effect, further misfiring of his brain’s wires.
Now though.
He knew it was something more spiritual.
That step was still ongoing, as he had to be subtle in gathering evidence. Asking someone directly was difficult when people thought you were either a nutter or very religious when inquiring about the topic. Thankfully, there was an entire body of pseudoscience called astrology he could fall back on. People may think he’s weird, but it's an acceptable weird to be asked your star sign and how closely you match it. It helped that he could tell when people were lying. Cut through a lot of false data when the pretty inner core would whisper falsehoods or lies to the person's less truthful answers. They spoke of other things too, very private and sometimes shameful things. Fuyuki knew way too much about anyone he came into contact with as a result. Thank the stars he wasn’t an actual little kid, no matter if his physical brain was getting in the way of his processing. Some of those things would have been scary without context.
He knew the two tones humans had, one was a soul. He knew he possessed something similar to a soul, as it had been his travel companion across the void between death and here.
Fuyuki shuddered at the memory of the silent, dark, endless expanse, pushing it to the side with practice.
Focus
And the last bullet point was how to combat the demons. He had decided when he was ten wasn’t going to not kill demons. Those things were in need of a good murder. Well, most of them.
So far, his best options outside of combat had been religious iconography and its trappings. Fuyuki was unsure as to why the reality he had been reborn into had such obvious examples of good versus evil, with Shinto and Buddhist religion as a viable counter, but considering he remembered living and dying as a different person, it wasn’t the strangest thing that had happened to him. (Some days, he swore he had ended up in a Saturday morning cartoon as a background character.)
Demons seemed to follow closely enough with folklore on similar occurrences. Mother had previously taught him about chi and meditation, so it wasn’t that difficult to jump from that into occultism in search of anything that could work.
Some things did, and others were completely useless. During summer breaks when everyone went to Hokkaido to escape the heat, he experimented on making imbued weapons (It worked, but he was shit at crafting and sealing), creating a barrier on the house (sort of useless due to lack of permanence and it freaking out Mochi), Making healing items (completely useless), Making spirit animals (It kinda worked. His cat had been able to kill curses, he swore it’s tail was splitting. The mice escaped before he got results) blatantly hunting demons, and found that If he had an omamori the small ones avoided him. But it lasted maybe a few days before he had to get a new one (unsustainable long-term and mostly useless). He hadn’t quite figured out how to make his own.
He also didn't neglect his physical training.
Fuyuki, blessedly only Fuyuki and no last name, had spent the past ten years signing up for every single self-defense class he could get his hands on. He had also invested in acrobatics, archery, and spear work, having tried swords but never quite getting the hang of them. He then practiced on the demons and the occasional human that was too stupid to recognize danger.
And then there was his trump card.
Unlike his mother, who had a form of telekinesis, Fuyuki had a spiritual maw that corresponded to his real physical one. Among other things, such as that if he could see it, he could bite it, he figured out how to put his spiritual teeth on each of his fingernails and sliced anything in range to pieces. He was not ashamed to admit that when he had gotten hold of a used copy of the Game of Thrones television show, he had spent an entire summer imitating cats. Stalking demons and slicing them to ribbons, pouncing from on high, and playing cat and mouse.
From the little guys that were more like pests up to the big ones. They were all acceptable targets for when he had a bad day.
Not that the little guys were that much trouble, just disturbing to look at. And the smell, ugh. Like day-old fish that had been left in the sun. The taste was just as bad, but they were filling, and on days he had been deliberately forgotten about, it was worth it to push past the gag reflex. The big ones were a little harder, but he had killed a few of them every month by ambush and use of his environment. Testing out theories in the process. It got substantially easier when he discovered how to radiate positive chi. He had figured it out by pure chance during a bad reaction to a drug combination that they could not abide chi infused with happy emotions.
Large parts of that day were missing, but he distinctly recalled giggling through several fights, high as a loon, watching the demons disintegrate when he touched them. After he became more coherent, there was not a single scratch on him despite missing chunks of his clothing. Whatever else it did, it unlocked a healing ability. Too bad it didn't work on scars or clothing.
…he may have a slight adrenaline addiction.
The average demon was just a ball of negative emotions and instincts. A dangerous, invisible animal to most people, some more cunning than others. Not malicious in and of themselves at that level, it was the smarter ones that were the problem. And the older a demon got, the smarter it grew. Better to kill them before they became like that demon crane, who had been picking people up from the sidewalks in Osaka only to playfully drop them over and over again until letting them fall at the height of their fear. It, like most of the big ones, didn’t need to kill people, but delighted in it anyway. Those were worth risking his hide to get rid of.
Not that most of them even managed to do more than bruise him.
Sure, it hurt when they hit him and he forgot to reinforce himself, but thanks to his ability to bite any soul in his range to death, they weren’t that hard to kill if he used his main ability. Not that he wanted to, their souls tasted disgusting. It may be the quickest way to kill them, but most time it wasn’t worth the taste.
The third type was harder to classify. They looked very close to people, had odd-looking souls, and he had only met two. One had been content to ignore him, going about its day pretending to be a fortune teller at a local hole in the wall. He had watched it for several days, and the worst thing it did was trick people out of their money for phony good-luck charms and very accurate palm readings. He wasn’t sure how no one else saw the thousands of tiny bird eyes that covered her arms, but he also wasn’t sure how anyone could even see her in the first place.
Tomoe was a complete k K-drama fan girl when he finally got the nerve up to talk to her. She charged him by the question too. Taking all his pocket money each time. From her, he learned that she preferred to eat old grief and went to have picnics in the local cemetery. That others like her could do the same, and didn't. And that the old folklore was real enough that anyone with enough motivation could turn into a demon. She laughed at him when he called her that. Said he had the wrong word but wouldn't tell him what it was, even when he came back the next week. She also stopped asking for money and demanded a favor instead. Fuyuki was not stupid enough to say yes to that and stopped visiting her.
The other had been a terrifying kitsune, and she kept showing up. Kuzunoha-hime found him on his eleventh birthday, called him her adorable grandson, and subsequently knocked him out.
Fuyuki had woken up to a new tattoo on his wrist in ancient script, and every year like clockwork, no matter how much he prepared, she would always add another. After blindsiding him first, of course.
It was a good thing no one cared enough to make him go to a doctor, and that he had been homeschooled since he was ten. As the moment he would have his shirt off, the humans would start asking questions about the tattoos he had everywhere.
After translation, most of them simply said the equivalent of hands off, or if found, return to Abe no Kuzunoha.
His crazy stalker thought she was funny and he was hoping some distance would dissuade her.
That and the massive amounts of fuck off and die wards on his new house.
All of which had lead him to today.
Abe Fuyuki, decidedly no longer Fushimi Fuyuki. Had spent his last day as his father’s shame, packing up the tiny storage shed near the back north wall of the large clan home. Hired a crew to ship it to his new house, and walked to the station hauling everything that was too delicate or dangerous to leave in the hands of normal people. He got on a bullet train to Tokyo, ticket for one with no return trip, and if he had his way, he would never set foot in Osaka ever again.
He spent the train ride registering for the closest high school, updating his information as Abe, and taking a break to kill every curse on the train with him by simply cutting his teeth on their disgusting souls.
Took maybe a ten-minute walk from one end to the other.
He did get a pretty odd look from a priest with a stitched forehead for it, though. Or maybe he was staring at the pink hair. Or his short stature, or heck, maybe the purple eyes he had somehow inherited from his grandfather. It could also have been that he decided to dress like he was going to a festival. The white kimono with the pine pattern was appropriate for February, but most humans were wearing more sensible attire. Fuyuki internally laughed at their feeble attempts to stay warm and ran another current of positive energy through his body.
He loved being able to heal, it was such a cheat ability.
Only downside was that he was alone in a world where no one else could see the monsters. Hard to make friends when only you could see the giant fire cat that was trying to eat people. Harder when you had difficulty relating to kids your age, when your past trauma of dying as an adult in a wasteland made you suspicious of everyone. Hard to seem normal at all, and eventually, Fuyuki just stopped bothering.
He had removed himself from his middle school after his first year, because people ignored him. After all, he was ‘crazy’. Social shunning to the extent where his desk was habitually removed as an extra piece of furniture was just the start. Being referred to as an object in conversation was a step too far. At least when being homeschooled online, he could pretend that people didn’t talk to him because he had been forgotten, and not because no one wanted to be in his presence.
If only mother weren’t the last of her clan, if only she hadn’t died puking her guts up from the chemo treatment that didn’t work. If only she had visited her doctor once a year instead of putting it off again and again.
If only, if only if only
Saddest words in any language.
He was sure other people like them existed, but Fushimi Kaede died before she could tell him how to find them. Dead at thirty-three from the poison that was meant to save her. Dead and ash in a ceramic urn he carried in his bag. Her crimson sunshine of a soul gone forever.
Gone for good.
Technically.
Fuyuki was finishing up on registering for online classes when he heard a very polite, “Is this seat taken?” Unused to being spoken to, as most people went out of their way to avoid him, it took him a moment to look upwards. The priest from earlier, a gentle fake smile on his face, stood next to the seat opposite him.
Weird, but why not?
Fuyuki, without a word, gestured at the seat opposite him and across the small table. He watched with hooded eyes as the highly suspicious person sat across from him.
…huh
That was odd.
Now that Fuyuki was scrutinizing the person in front of him, he saw that instead of the single soul that most people had, this man had four…
A single large acidic green that smelled of chemicals, and three smaller ones. A starless night, a fragmented gemstone, and a maw of endless teeth. All scraps, all…
…whimpering in pain
…those were people in there.
….this thing may not be a person, and Fuyuki not knowing what he was dealing with would need to be careful.
“Geto Suguru, pleasure to meet you Momotaro-kun.” said the priest under Fuyuki’s gimlet stare. He saw the red soul twitch at the name.
Huh…he knew that name…Did mother ever?
No. The only sorcerer she ever spoke of was That fucking Gojo Toji she still loved, and only so he would know his real father’s name.
The scar across the man’s forehead was also ringing alarm bells. But he had no idea why. Fuyuki knew he was being rude by staring, but kept his eyes on the…person? In front of him. “Abe Fuyuki, pleasure is mine, Geto-san.” There was that twitch again, and he heard an uptick in interest from the green. The same amount that an avid bird watcher would feel spotting a rare find.
“That was quite a powerful display back there, cutting those curses to ribbons as you did.” Fuyuki felt his breath catch as his polite mask he had drilled into his head automatically, raised like the portoculious it was.
This Geto could see.
…he had called them curses like his mother did.
He knew more than Fuyuki did and was very likely just like him…
Grandfather could cut things with his mind, and this man could do something with souls. It was very likely that different people had different innate abilities. If he could keep this person talking, he would get a better idea of what other psychics were like. However. He had no wish to join the souls of the others in this…person’s possession.
Best to drive him off.
Fuyuki narrowed his eyes at the man in front of him, defaulting to his normal reaction at praise of any kind. “Are you here to offer flattery or do you have a reason for traversing three cars to converse with me?” he said rudely, mind racing as his eyes cataloged every twitch of pain and…ohhh that was pleasure, wasn’t it?
‘What was he doing to them?’
This did not have the desired effect, in fact made the acid bubble in amusement. And for some bloody reason nostalgia.
The man’s smile moved not an inch. “How abrupt, Abe-kun, one would think you did not wish for company. Though you be young, and unaccompanied.” Fuyuki’s gaze went flat as a board, and he could feel any hint of expression drop off his face.
He did not like the implied threat. “And is your company worth having, Geto-san?” There it was again. Same red soul, same twitch of pain. Fuyuki closed his laptop with a click and, not taking his eyes off the person in front of him, placed it in the bag next to him.
Fox-like grin on his face, Geto said, “Am I to be entertainment? How refreshing.” The man tilted his head, “How about a series of questions, Abe-kun, a little brain teaser?”
Fuyuki, unmoving, asked the required follow-up question. “Only if I may ask my questions and receive truthful complete answers.”
The man waved a hand dismissively, and Fuyuki saw the very faintest hint of scars on the arm. (he knew this person. Somehow, he had seen him before.) “Very well, but only if you do the same.”
…he agreed very quickly to that. “And how will we know the other isn’t cheating?”
The amused bubbles paused, before they began to increase in tempo, “Simple, we make a binding vow not to lie to each other,” he said, eyes sliding into crescents.
…a what now?
Wait. waitwaitwaitwait.
He knew that terminology but that was in relation to a manga he had read ages ago…
Surely not. It had to have been from one of mother’s tattered books. Probably in one of the more horrifying ones on how to snare a husband.
Fuyuki did not like this human, he didn’t like it at all. But…
It would get him honest answers.
“...I would have a time limit before agreeing to anything.” He said slowly and carefully, once again looking at the twitching souls. He had a nasty suspicion about why that red one was the most active.
Geto-san placed his arm on the table between them and put his head in his hands. His chin rested on his palm. He hummed, “Until the end of the journey we are on.” Fuyuki leaned back in his chair, hand to his chin in thought.
That was vague. Not a train ride but a journey…
Fuyuki regarded the human opposite him in silence. He may run into the man again, and any information that he could guarantee was truthful would be very, very useful. “I agree. Ask away, though you must be very bored to speak with a teenager.”
Fuyuki felt a tug on his heart as something took root. The priest’s smile faded before he beamed. “Oh? How old are we? And where are you going to school, Abe-kun?” Fuyuki, about to be snarky, felt the tug tighten in warning, his heart squeezed in an invisible grip.
…the fuck.
Oh that bastard.
It was a geas, and he had walked right into it.
Shit.
Fuyuki, highly unamused, glared at the sneaky bastard in front of him. “ Fourteen, and Satozakura high school in Kawasaki city. Why do you have four souls?”
The smile ran away from the man’s face before a piercing purple gaze examined him closely. “It’s part of my innate technique. What is yours A…” The smile was back. “Fuyuki-kun?” Fuyuki, noticing the pause, hesitated. Truth huh? Guess it was what they suspected to be true as well.
“The maw with a mutation.” his jaw almost shut before a needle stabbed into his heart. “Soul interaction, and to a lesser extent, manipulation.”
Fucking damm it.
It wouldn't let him hold back information either.
The man blinked before his eyes became hooded, and he tilted his head in his hand, hair rustling as it fell around him. “Oh, how surprising.” The gleam of a purple eye reflected the light of the cabin. “What’s your real last name, Fuyuki-kun?”
Fuyuki frowned, a crack in his mask. “I don’t have too…” he paused as his chest constricted and he took a gasp of breath.
Ow.
Snarling at the other perpetually amused man, “I don’t have one. What’s your true name? Body thief-san?”
A smirk curled along the corner of the man’s mouth. “Kenjaku, disowned-kun. Any siblings?” Fuyuki forcefully made his face relax back into neutrality as his mind went a mile a minute.
He knew that name. And with the face attached, the scar across the head, and the robes of…
Oh.
Oh fuck.
Fuyuki was in a confirmed death world ‘Fuck’.
His breath came quicker and quicker, his arms trembling in place, ‘A grim dark setting where anyone can die’. His vision went black around the edges. ‘And he was a minor character!’ Wait, wait, wait. He mentally slapped himself ‘That was fiction, this is reality. People don’t die in the service of advancing character development or plot in reality. ‘Calm down. ’
Mother fucking Kenjaku smiled at him. “Oh? And here I thought my name was not well-known. However did you find that out? Siblings Namless-kun?” Fuyuki took a breath and forced himself to call down. He mentally grabbed his heart and used positive energy to manually slow its rate. Doing the same for the lungs as a very practiced mask fell into place.
“...I’ve read of what you can do, and have done. As well as a guess at your obsession. And not to my knowledge.” The smile widened as the man tilted his head at him. Mocking.
“Oh ho? A bastard? My, my. How history does repeat.” Fuyuki blinked once in confusion and saw the man’s smile widen. He leaned forward into Fuyuki’s space, and Fuyuki could smell the faint whiff of the other souls. “And knowing my. Ah. Obsession, what would you see as helping me further it?”
Shit…He needed to do something. He had the main cause of why everything went wrong in the story in front of him. Fuyuki glanced down at the most active and twitching red soul.
…He could technically see it but he didn’t want a crazy wanker like Geto Suguru in his head.
…Maybe…the soul only had so much sway if the mind could not keep focus.
“You want humanity to ‘evolve’ right?” Fuyuki emphasized the words as the man’s lip curled upwards in a smirk.
Fuyuki could feel the casual gaze of someone who had been abstinently watching a movie sharpen to attention. “Do go on.”
Well there were a few ways that didn’t result in a freaking ameba, and evolution wasn’t always a good thing. Like those anti-religious books he read, or turning every soul from off to on for power and control.
“Have you tried balancing the soul of a demon next to that of a human? Like what happens with certain types of twins.” Fuyuki could feel the weight of the man’s gaze on him as he slowly smiled with a shark’s expression. “Granted, you would need a few generations, but eventually it would be naturally occurring in a small population. That or if you managed to convince a pregnant woman’s soul to funnel all of their negative emotions into a framework next to the soul of their child. But that would be more likely to cause mutation, and make the rate of successful births drop. Easier to just turn the soul’s ability to see curses on for a significant amount of the population and let…why are you looking at me like that?”
The man was scrutinizing him heavily, before he stopped smiling and started grinning. Without even a wave of a hand, there was a swirl of negative energy, and a tiny spider demon appeared. Fuyuki flinched from it and hissed out, “Put that thing back before I eat it!”
Kenajku smirked, and the demon went nowhere. “We all have to do things we don’t like, nameless-kun. Let's have a demonstration, shall we?”
Fuyuki, eyes on the spider bit out, “I don’t work for you for free. You want this, I want a binding vow that you won’t use your original innate technique on me or any of my descendants.” he had turned in his seat and had his hands curled into claws.
The priest chuckled, he chortled, he laughed at him. Hand over his mouth, as he covered his laughter. He then placed his hands together as if in prayer. “Oh that won’t be a problem, choose your soul fallen-kun.”
Welp…it was one way of getting rid of the problem. Geto-san was not going to thank him for this.
He smiled like a wolf and ripped the red soul out of its former body with his teeth while grabbing the spider with his hand. He knew the man felt its loss immediately as he bent over in pain at the wound, for Fuyuki had been far from gentle.
He quickly spat the soul out into his hand and built a body and false womb around it using positive energy and his own DNA as a template. Something he had never attempted before, and hoped to the gods it would work. He was too young to be a dad, but this way Kenjaku could never get Geto’s ability back.
He gave the spider the same treatment, ripping its soul from its corporeal frame as Kenjaku managed to straighten up, smile still on his face. “You will pay for that, Fuyuki-kun.”
Fuyuki ignored him for what was more important and very delicately put the spider soul next to the red soul. Fine-tuning its edges until it fit like a puzzle piece around the scraps of Geto-san’s. He then gently pushed them together until they clicked into place, firmly latched onto each other. Singing in harmony and, in the case of Geto-san, pure happiness.
(warm, happy, not alone, sister/brother)
The spider didn’t seem to mind either.
(Hello Mahito-kun, I need a favour.)
Fuyuki carefully grew the tiny body, directing it to have all the organs, bones, and muscles it would need. Unfortunately, the spider half could not be dissuaded from producing extra arms or eyes. Fuyuki was able to argue it down to one extra set of arms and eyes. Then once he had the general shape right, he grew it up as far as he was willing to do so on a moving train in front of others. Kenjaku had at some point placed a hand on the red pulsating womb and was sending regular pings at it as Fuyuki grew it from a fetus up to a three-year-old.
All positive energy, and required none of his innate skill. Something that the monster in front of him no doubt discovered as the eyes were once again creseants.
Giving the body a last look, he adjusted the shoulders to make sure they would not cause pain and folded the flesh of the womb into the tiny body. Giving it some much-needed padding. He was met with a tiny version of the face in front of him, topped by a wave of dark pink hair wet with fluid. Fuyuki reached a hand above the small four-armed child's heart, feeling a steady pulse, and the body took a breath. Coughing up fluid before the small boy curled in on himself as if he were cold.
Fuyuki heard a high-pitched clicking noise come from Suguru’s throat, as two pairs of dark purple eyes opened. He blurrily looked at Fuyuki with no recognition and confusion in his eyes. As gently and kindly as he could, Fuyuki smiled at him. “Hello there, mind if I help you into something warm?” he was stared at a moment before a tiny nod was given.
Fuyuki very carefully picked up the child and sat him in his lap. Back to the aisle. He leaned over to the other chair, zipped open his bag, and searched around for a moment for the bathrobe he knew he had packed as padding. He felt the tiny head move as Geto-san looked around, only for the small body to go rigid in his arms. Pulling out the fluffy green robe, he turned his attention back to the small child who was doing his best to imitate a statue. Staring in fear at the priest across from them.
“He can’t hurt you Geto-san, and neither can he have you back. As you are mine.” Fuyuki said as he very gently wrapped the robe around the slightly damp and very sticky Geto-san. A Geto-san that once made aware of his arms, looked down at them in horror before curling up in a ball.
Crying.
Fuyuki soothed a hand over the small head of pink hair and began to rubb the back of the small form. His own eyes drawn up to Kenjaku whose smile was pure maniacal malice.
Fuyuki, as a result, did not see it coming.