Kinslayer

“I suppose, Yoshi-san, you are right. She doesn’t deserve to see this at all.”

Relief flooded through Yoshi and he almost sobbed, babbling thanks as the Gentleman turned away. And as he watched, the little man stepped up to Seimi and took the long-nosed pliers from his calloused hands, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the Gentleman leaned in close and plucked Hana’s eye from her socket.

Her scream filled the air, louder than Yoshi could have thought possible. He found his own voice caught up with hers, a shapeless roar of hatred, thrashing against the ropes binding him, spitting and screaming and flailing. The Gentleman touched the men holding Hana and they dropped her to the floor. She brought her bound hands up to her face and curled into a ball and screamed, screamed until Yoshi thought his heart would break. Tears blurred his sight, his captors reduced to smudges in the glare, the scent of smoke filling his lungs.

“You bastard!” he screamed. “You fucking bastard!”

The Gentleman dropped the pliers as if disgusted by them. They hit concrete with a dull, metallic clang. He drew a kerchief from his uwagi, cleaned the blood off his hands as he spoke with a slow and measured voice to Seimi.

“Release the girl when you are done. But this one?” The Gentleman looked Yoshi up and down. “I wish his suffering to be legendary. I wish Kigen to know, now and forever, the price of crossing the Scorpion Children. If you are an artiste, brother, let this boy’s flesh be the canvas upon which you paint your masterpiece. And when you are finished, you hang him on a wall in the Market Square for all the world to see. Do you understand me, Seimi-san?”

The man covered his fist and bowed. “Oyabun.”

A distant explosion tore the air. Marching boots. Steel and screams.

“If you brothers will excuse me, I have a wife and son to attend.”

The Gentleman spared a last glance for Hana, sobbing in a spatter of blood. Lips pursed, hands clasped behind his back. There was a brief flicker, just the tiniest moment of pity in his bottomless stare. But he blinked, and it was gone; the light of a single candle extinguished in a bottomless ocean of black. Motioning to the Scorpion Children on the spotlight’s edge, he strolled from the room, taking eight yakuza with him. Yoshi heard heavy doors open and close, the chaos from the streets outside swelling momentarily, smoke-scent growing stronger still.

Seimi was watching him with narrowed eyes.

“You’ve got balls, street trash, I’ll give you that.”

The yakuza walked to the table, picked up the chi-powered blowtorch, smiling faintly.

“But not for long.”

Yoshi drew a breath.

Held it for forever.

And there on the floor, amidst the anguish and the blood and the agony in the place where her eye had once been, Hana lay curled in a tiny ball and sobbed.

And shook.

And remembered.

* * *

The bottle fell, a long, scything arc ending in her throat and a spray of blood, thick and hot and bright. And Hana did what any thirteen-year-old girl would have done at that moment.

Yoshi crashed into their father, shapeless bellowing and flailing fists. He caught him on the cheek, the jaw, the pair falling on the table and smashing it to splinters. Hana stood and screamed over her mother’s body, head throbbing like it might burst, looking at that open, grinning throat and those beautiful blue eyes, empty now and forever.

Her father slapped Yoshi aside, his face purple, sweat and veins and spittle and teeth.

“Little bastard, I’ll kill you,” he growled.

Da raised the broken sake bottle in his good hand, leaned over Yoshi’s crumpled form. Blood on the glass. Blood on his hands. Her mother’s. Now her brother’s too? Too little to stop him. Too small to make a difference. But in that moment, Hana found herself roaring anyway, thoughtless, heedless, throwing herself at his back, beating on him with her tiny fists, screaming, “No, no, no,” as if all the storms in all the world lived inside her lungs. He spun around with horror etched on his face, as if he couldn’t believe she would turn on him. Not his Hana. Not his little flower.

“My gods,” he said. “Your eye…”

He pointed to her face with the blood-slicked bottle, features twisted in anguish.

“Gods above, no. No, not you…”

Yoshi leaped on Da’s back with a roar, wrapping his arms around his throat. Father swung his elbow, connected with Yoshi’s jaw. Teeth clapping together. Blood. Her brother fell amongst the table fragments, limp and senseless.

Da turned and slapped her, spun her like a top. She fell to her knees and he was on her, sitting on her chest and pinning her arms with his thighs. He was so heavy. So heavy she couldn’t breathe. Sobbing. Pleading.

“No, Da. Don’t!”

He pressed his stunted forearm to her throat, broken bottle still clutched in his hand.

“I should’ve known,” he hissed. “I should’ve known it was in you. She’s poisoned you.”

He pointed at their mother, irises glazed over like beach glass, the color of dragon silk.

“It’s in you,” her father was saying. “You gaijin trash. The white devils are in you. But I can see them. I can get them out…”

He held the bottle to her face, inches from Hana’s right eye, broken glass reflected in her iris.

“Da, no!” She shook her head, eyes closed tight. “No, no!”

Then he dug the bottle in.

“I can get them out…”

50 SENSATION

The world around her was so bright, so sharp, Ayane thought her eyes might bleed.

Faint breeze tickled her ankles and shins, clothing rasped against bare flesh, raising the new hair on her body in goosebumps. When Kin turned to look at her, she could feel his breath on her face, feather-soft. She shivered at the overload of sensation, all this feeling, so fresh and new. But more than that, as she watched the old man by the window, shaking and coughing and slipping toward his grave one breath at a time, she was surprised to feel pity swelling inside her chest. Pity for him, standing so close to the edge, blissfully unaware of what yawned beneath his toes. And pity for herself, that all this would end almost as soon as it began.

The mechabacus chattered on her chest. In her head. Orders. Movements. Questions.

Questions she longed to answer.

Kin was looking at her, a pointed stare, smooth and hard. And so she stood and asked for directions to the privy, bowing low to Daichi before stepping on quiet feet to the stairwell.

Three floors down into the Kage basement, the battle plan spread on the table, chess pieces and charcoal sticks and rice-paper. Ayane knelt in the corner, face upturned to the ceiling. She ran one finger along her arm,