#it will be my last thought on my deathbed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

luxerians · 1 day ago

Text

The Last Mask (04)

Hwang In-ho/Oh Young-il/Player 001 x Reader

Chapter 04 - Player 001

Story Masterlist

NEXT : Chapter 05

PREV : Chapter 03

After the voting, the guards began distributing lunchboxes. You reached the front of the queue and took one from a pink-clad guard. Stepping out of the line, you noticed player 390 behind you, and the two of you headed toward a quiet corner between the bunk beds on the right side of the hall.

Player 456 was already sitting there, his eyes fixed on the floor. His meal and drink sat untouched beside him. You sighed softly at his distant demeanor.

“You two are friends, right?” you asked player 390, slowing your steps.

“Huh? Me and Gi-hun?” player 390 glanced at player 456. “Oh, yeah. His mother liked me.”

You nodded, assuming they had been friends for a long time. You asked, “Has he always been this distant and quiet?”

“Not at all,” player 390 said, shaking his head. “He was actually really cheerful. Also very loud. He used to laugh at stuff no one else thought was funny. And you know what always set him off?”

Curiosity piqued, you asked, “What?”

Player 390 grinned. “Losing at betting on horses.”

“You two used to bet on horses?”

“Well, we did,” he said with a shrug. “But three years ago, he disappeared. I couldn’t reach him, and his mom was worried sick. She was already physically sick, too. She passed away not long after he vanished.”

“Three years ago? He said he played these games at that time.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it,” player 390 replied. “He should’ve contacted me after winning. I really thought he was dead.”

You lowered your voice. “Well, in a way, he does seem dead yet alive right now.”

Player 390 turned to you with a small smile. “Anyway, I haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m Jung-bae, and that is Gi-hun.”

You smiled back, giving your name in return. By then, the two of you had reached Gi-hun’s spot and sat down on either side of him.

You began unboxing your lunchbox while Jung-bae turned to his long-time friend. “Look at this lunch. It’s just like my mom used to make. What’s in yours?”

Gi-hun didn’t respond. His silence hung heavy, but Jung-bae pressed on.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Jung-bae scooped a spoonful of rice with some fried egg and held it out toward him. “Look, you’ve got to eat. You know what they say, ‘Eat up, even on your deathbed.’ Just do your thinking while you eat, or afterwards. Here.”

Still, Gi-hun ignored him. Jung-bae sighed and pulled the spoon back.

“Forget it then,” he muttered before taking the bite himself. With his mouth full, he added, “This might be for the best. I don’t know about you, but that 20 million wouldn’t even cover my interest. If we play just one more game…”

“Jung-bae,” Gi-hun finally spoke, his tone heavy. He stared solemnly at his friend. “Last time I was here, someone said the exact same thing. And in the end, that person died here.”

Jung-bae chewed quietly, his earlier enthusiasm fading. You watched the two of them, a quiet curiosity growing. What kind of experience had he gone through here? Had he lost friends? The thought that everyone he once knew in these games had died was haunting. But why is he back?

“Help us then, sir.”

The voice drew your attention. You, Jung-bae, and Gi-hun turned to see player 001 approaching your corner. Behind him were player 100 and a few others. Their presence immediately shifted the atmosphere.

“You said you’ve played these games,” commented player 001.

Gi-hun stared at him briefly before lowering his head, as if retreating into himself. You thought he might ignore them altogether until player 001 spoke again.

“I pressed the O button because of you.”

Gi-hun looked up at him, surprised. Player 001 continued, “Honestly, I was scared. I wanted to quit and leave. But you made me think maybe I could play just one more game.”

“Me too,” another player behind him chimed in.

“Same here,” added another.

You glanced at Gi-hun and murmured, “Looks like it’s a bad idea revealing you’re a previous winner.”

Gi-hun turned to you, exhaling through his nose. “I thought it would make everyone understand… that everyone here is doomed to die as long as we stay here.”

You nodded slightly, your gaze shifting back to player 001, who was already looking at you. Feeling a bit awkward, you quickly averted your gaze and pretended not to notice.

“Sir,” player 001 said, leaning closer to Gi-hun. “You know which game’s next, don’t you?”

Several players leaned in, their curiosity evident. Even you couldn’t help but wonder. Jung-bae put down his lunchbox and turned to his friend. “You’re a previous winner, so you should know. What are we playing next?”

Gi-hun avoided eye contact, his voice low as he finally answered. “The second game was Dalgona.”

The bed beside you creaked as someone shifted on it. You glanced over to see player 388 leaning toward your corner. “Dalgona? The sugar candy with a shape you can carve out?”

“That’s right,” Gi-hun replied. “We had to choose one of four shapes and carve it out.”

“Four shapes? Which was the easiest one?” Jung-bae asked quickly.

“Triangle.”

“Which was the hardest one?” Jung-bae pressed further.

“Umbrella.”

“Umbrella?” player 001 scoffed. “Some people chose umbrella? Those unlucky bastards must have bitten the dust.”

At his words, Gi-hun stared at him silently, his expression unreadable. There was something in his gaze that felt like judgment, maybe even offense. You noticed it but chose not to dwell on it, focusing instead on your lunch.

“So that means we should all just pick triangle,” player 388 suggested. “Everyone could probably pass with that.”

“Hush now!” player 100 stepped forward, positioning himself beside player 001. “If all 365 of us survive, the prize money won’t go up at all. Then we’ll have risked our lives again for nothing.”

“That’s true,” a few players behind him agreed, nodding.

Player 100 continued, “Listen. We should probably keep this information to ourselves. What do you say?”

Player 001 stayed quiet, while others eagerly nodded their agreement. But before the discussion could settle, Gi-hun spoke up, his tone firm. “We can’t do that. I’m telling you this to save everyone’s lives.”

“And we don’t even know if the next game will really be Dalgona,” you added, scooping another spoonful of rice.

Gi-hun nodded. “That’s right. If it’s confirmed that the next game is Dalgona, I’m going to tell everyone what I know.”

Player 100 scoffed, rolling his eyes before turning and walking away. The group of players who had followed him quickly trailed behind, leaving the corner quieter and less tense. You exhaled softly, relieved to have the space back.

Player 001, however, remained. He shifted his gaze to you, Jung-bae and Gi-hun.

“So, which shape did you pick?” Jung-bae asked with a curious raise of an eyebrow.

Gi-hun looked at him deadpan, offering no response.

You chuckled softly at the exchange, drawing their attention. Their curious stares settled on you, but you feigned innocence, focusing on your lunch as if you hadn’t been following the conversation.

Still, the words slipped out.

“So, did you choose umbrella?” you asked, your tone playful.

Gi-hun turned his gaze toward you, his expression flat and unimpressed. For a moment, you thought he might actually answer, but then he looked away, ignoring the question entirely. His silence was pointed, as if he’d chosen to pretend he hadn’t heard you at all.

You and Jung-bae exchanged knowing glances, both of you stifling a grin. It wasn’t until player 001 spoke that you realized he had been watching the entire interaction.

“May I ask you something?”

All three of you – you, Gi-hun, and Jung-bae – turned your attention to him. Player 001 moved closer, sitting down on the stairs beside your group. He directed his question straight at Gi-hun.

“Why did you come back to this place?” he asked. “You said you won and made it out. Then you must have received 45.6 billion. Did you spend it all?”

Jung-bae’s eyes widened as realization seemed to hit him. He asked Gi-hun incredulously, “Did you bet on horses again?”

You side-eyed the pair, amused by Jung-bae’s immediate assumption.

Gi-hun shook his head solemnly. “That money doesn’t belong to me. It’s blood money for the people who died here. The same goes for the money up there.”

You couldn’t help but silently agree. Survival guilt had clearly taken a toll on him, and you imagined the weight of it must have been crushing.

“You don’t have to think of it that way,” player 001 said, his voice calm. Gi-hun looked at him in mild astonishment. Player 001 continued, “It’s not like you killed those people, and saving that money won’t bring them back to life.”

Gi-hun leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His tone turned sharp as he replied, “If you had pressed the X, everyone here would’ve changed their mind by tomorrow. All of us would’ve made it out alive.”

Player 001 held his gaze, his expression unyielding. “That’s right. I was the last to press the O button. But there were 186 more people who wanted to stay.”

“And there were also 185 people who wanted to leave,” Gi-hun countered.

You and Jung-bae exchanged glances, sensing that neither man was willing to back down. Their differing perspectives created a palpable tension.

Player 001 broke the silence. “Let’s say I pressed X and we all got a chance to vote again tomorrow. Would everyone have been happy? Do you think a majority of O players would change their mind and thank me?”

Gi-hun’s brow furrowed deeper, his glower showing he was searching for another argument.

Before things could escalate further, Jung-bae intervened. “Enough, you two,” he said. “There’s no point in placing blame now. You know the saying. A widow understands a widower best. Let’s just focus on the game tomorrow, okay?”

He gestured toward Gi-hun and said, “He has won all these games before. If we stick together, we’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“But we can’t always rely on him,” you interjected. “He doesn’t need more pressure from everyone expecting too much from him.”

Gi-hun and player 001 both turned to you, their gazes quiet but intent.

Jung-bae nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right, but he has the experience. Any advice he has will help.”

“He’s right,” another voice chimed in. The four of you turned to see player 388, who had been eavesdropping from his bed. He hopped down and stood close. “We have to stick together. I’ll be with you all the way.”

Jung-bae frowned in skepticism. “Who are you?”

The man came to a stop in front of you all and gave a quick bow. “I’m Dae-ho. Kang Dae-ho.”

Dae-ho extended his hand to Jung-bae, a clear offer for a handshake. Jung-bae didn’t take it, instead replying dryly, “Oh, Dae-ho. Have we met?”

Dae-ho’s expression faltered briefly before he glanced at player 001, who kept his head low, and then at Gi-hun, who looked at him with indifference. Finally, his gaze landed on you. Seeing no skepticism in your expression, he extended his hand toward you.

You blinked in surprise but took his hand. He clasped yours in both of his, nodding gratefully as you introduced yourself. You could feel the others watching the interaction closely. After a moment, he let go of your hand, looking slightly more at ease.

“Earlier during the game, Mr. 456 here was like,” Dae-ho began, pausing to mimic Gi-hun’s urgent warning style from the first game. “Freeze! And I became his fan.”

You grinned at his enthusiasm while Gi-hun turned his gaze away, clearly embarrassed. Undeterred, Dae-ho continued eagerly, “I’d like to get to know you all better. Please give me a chance!”

Jung-bae stood suddenly as Dae-ho mimicked Gi-hun again. “Freeze! That was so cool!”

You chuckled softly, but the sound caught Gi-hun’s attention. He glanced at you with a look that felt half-judgmental before shifting his gaze elsewhere.

“Hang on,” Jung-bae said abruptly, grabbing Dae-ho’s sleeve and pulling it upward to reveal an ROKMC tattoo. Dae-ho looked at him, confused, as Jung-bae asked, “You were in the Marines?”

“Yes, why?”

“Class number?” Jung-bae countered, his tone sharp.

Dae-ho gave him a once-over before letting out a wheeze of amusement.

“Oh, you’re laughing?” Jung-bae challenged, unzipping his jacket and pulling up his sleeve. He revealed the same ROKMC tattoo on his forearm.

Dae-ho’s amusement vanished. He stepped back, clearly caught off guard, as Jung-bae stood tall, even combing his hair back dramatically with his fingers.

Suddenly, Dae-ho snapped into a salute, raising his voice. “Victory at all costs! I was in Class 1140, sir!”

Jung-bae saluted back, his grin wide. “At ease! ‘Dae-ho.’ I knew there was something about you.”

The sudden burst of military camaraderie caught you off guard. Are they really going all military here? Their loud banter is starting to draw attention to your corner.

“Do Marines get tattoos like that?” you asked to no one in particular, genuinely curious.

Player 001, who had been observing quietly, spoke up. “It’s not officially required. But for many in the ROKMC, getting the tattoo is a tradition.”

You nodded your head in understanding. “Oh.”

Dae-ho, still stiff in his stance, screamed, “Yes, sir!”

Jung-bae laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. “Class 746 here. Let’s make a good team.”

“I won’t let you down, sir!” Dae-ho barked back, standing straighter.

Jung-bae guffawed, patting him on the shoulder again, earning another resounding “yes, sir!” from Dae-ho. The exchange repeated a few more times, each louder than the last. You couldn’t help but laugh softly at the spectacle, while Gi-hun watched them with an expression that screamed secondhand embarrassment.

You turned away from the comedic display of Jung-bae and Dae-ho, who seemed more like overenthusiastic military recruits than grown men, and began cleaning up your lunchbox. As you took a sip from your water bottle, you noticed player 001 shifting slightly in his seat nearby.

Lowering the bottle, you glanced over and asked casually, “Have you eaten already?”

Player 001 looked at you for a moment before a warm smile crossed his face. “Yes, I have.”

You nodded, returning his smile. “Good. The food they prepared for us was worth it. It’s a waste not to eat it.”

Turning toward Gi-hun, you pointedly glanced at his untouched lunchbox. “You need to eat, sir. It’s better to mull things over with a full stomach.”

Gi-hun hesitated, meeting your gaze briefly before nodding. He opened his lunchbox without a word and began to eat.

After a brief pause, you leaned slightly closer to player 001, lowering your voice. “By the way, do you know where the ladies’ restroom is?”

Player 001 gestured toward the door on the right side of the main double doors. “That one there. The other door is for the men.”

“Oh, thanks. Wouldn’t want to get lost and get shot by the guards.”

Player 001’s smile widened. “I’m sure the guards would bring you back here if you are lost.”

You chuckled softly. “That’s comforting to know.”

The exchange put you slightly more at ease, but player 001’s expression soon turned contemplative. “If you don’t mind me asking… why did you come here?”

Your smile faltered for a moment, and you caught Gi-hun turning his head just slightly, clearly eavesdropping. Straightening your posture, you replied with a practiced smile, “I needed the money.”

Player 001 nodded slowly, his gaze steady. “That’s all of us. But if I may say… I’m surprised. A lady like you shouldn’t have to bear the burden of crippling debt.”

You looked away, lowering your gaze to the floor. The practiced calm you had maintained slipped, replaced by a somber expression as his words hit a nerve.

Noticing your change in demeanor, player 001 spoke gently. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

You shook your head and managed a faint smile.

“It’s fine,” you replied softly. Your gaze stayed on the floor as you added, “The debts are my parents’, actually.”

Player 001 stared at you, his smile fading into something more solemn. Gi-hun, who had been eavesdropping, remained silent, his expression unreadable.

“You motherfucker!”

The shout shattered the quiet, pulling your attention to the other side of the dormitory. A commotion had broken out. MG Coin (player 333) was brawling on the floor with Thanos and his friend (player 124).

With player 124’s help, Thanos delivered a hard punch to player 333. Even as player 333 lay injured on the floor, they didn’t stop. Kicks rained down on him mercilessly while gasps of horror rippled through the watching crowd.

“I lost all that money because of you, fucker,” Thanos snarled, punctuating his words with another vicious kick. “Be grateful and fucking eat what you’re given!”

Despite the violence, no one moved. Players stayed rooted in place, their expressions a mix of fear and disgust. Jung-bae and Dae-ho, sleeves still rolled up with their tattoos visible, simply watched, making no move to intervene.

You sighed in frustration. “Good thing I finished eating. Still, ganging up on him is just unfair.”

Before you could consider stepping in, player 001 stood up. He walked past Jung-bae and Dae-ho with measured steps, heading straight toward the chaos. You rose from your seat instinctively, a mix of concern and suspense building. Gi-hun stood as well, his eyes narrowing as he watched the scene unfold.

“Boys, what are you doing in the middle of mealtime?” player 001’s voice carried as he approached Thanos and player 124. “No fights during mealtime. There are elders present. Mind your manners.”

Thanos and player 124 paused, letting go of player 333. They turned toward player 001, whose calm demeanor seemed to unnerve them. “And two against one? Aren’t you embarrassed?”

Thanos sneered and stepped closer, his posture challenging. “You’re lecturing me when you ended up in this shithole too? Uncle, stop running your mouth and take care of your own damn kids.”

The dormitory fell silent as everyone watched. Player 001 silently asked, “What did you say?”

Thanos leaned in, his tone mocking. “I said save the lecture for your own damn kid—”

Player 001’s hand shot out, gripping Thanos by the neck. The hold wasn’t a full choke, but his thumb pressed into a precise spot that made Thanos stiffen immediately. The calculated grip made it clear he knew exactly what he was doing. And it looked painful.

Thanos’ hands clawed at player 001’s arm, but the older man’s hold didn’t waver. His bravado crumbled under the pressure of the unyielding grip.

Player 124 advanced toward them. “You son of a—”

Before he could finish, player 001 swiftly kicked his shin. Player 124 let out a brief scream, immediately grasping his leg in pain. Without missing a beat, player 001 delivered another kick, sending him sprawling to the floor, clutching his injured shin. The speed of it all left several players gasping in shock.

Player 001 released Thanos’ neck, standing still in the same spot, his posture calm and steady. It was a stark contrast to Thanos and his friend who were already heaving in pain, struggling to recover.

Just as you thought it was over, Thanos stubbornly got up and advanced toward player 001 again. Raising his arm for a punch, he barely got the chance before player 001 landed a precise blow to his chest in the blink of an eye. Thanos doubled over, clutching his chest in visible pain.

“Wait,” Thanos choked out, holding up a hand in surrender.

Player 001, unfazed, grabbed Thanos’ outstretched hand and twisted it. With a calculated move, he brought Thanos down to the floor and delivered two sharp kicks to his chest, sending him sprawling.

Before Thanos could fully process what was happening, player 001 stood over him, gripping his neck once again. His free hand rose, forming a fist poised to strike. The dormitory’s atmosphere turned chillingly tense as everyone held their breath.

“I’m sorry,” Thanos choked out, his voice barely audible.

Player 001’s face remained emotionless, cold and detached. His grip tightened momentarily, making Thanos gasp for air. His purple hair seemed to match the growing discoloration of his face as the players around them watched in stunned silence.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, player 001 let him go. Calmly, he stood up as if nothing had happened. A smattering of applause broke out, quickly growing into full-on clapping and cheers.

“You’re the man!”

“Nice!”

You joined in, clapping in genuine awe of his combat prowess. He had taken down two bullies without breaking a sweat. What is he, really? He must be an expert at something combat-related.

Player 001 looked surprised by the positive reaction. With a small, appreciative nod and a faint smile, he smoothed his hair, clearly a bit embarrassed and shy by the attention.

As he walked back toward your corner, where you and the others were still clapping, Jung-bae leaned over. “What is he?”

“Is he an ex-Marine too?” Dae-ho asked.

You smirked and pointedly remarked, “If he is, you two might want to roll your sleeves down. He actually stopped the bullies, not the tattoos.”

Jung-bae and Dae-ho exchanged sheepish glances before simultaneously fixing their sleeves. They continued clapping enthusiastically for player 001, pretending they hadn’t been called out.

Player 001 returned to your corner, his calm demeanor intact despite the tension moments ago. You, Jung-bae, and Dae-ho couldn’t help but look at him with a mix of amazement and curiosity.

“Sir, that was incredible,” Jung-bae said, his voice tinged with admiration. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

Dae-ho chimed in, “Seriously, the way you took them down without even breaking a sweat. Are you some kind of martial artist or what?”

Player 001 gave a wide smile. “Let’s just say I’ve picked up a thing or two along the way.”

Jung-bae exchanged a look with Dae-ho, both nodding as if they had just decided player 001 was the coolest person they’d ever met.

“Man of mystery,” Dae-ho muttered appreciatively.

You leaned forward slightly, your gentle tone more concerned. “But you’re not hurt at all, right? You seemed upset.”

Player 001 turned to you and his smile softened. “Not at all. I left and came back the same.”

His composed response only added to the awe emanating from Jung-bae and Dae-ho, who continued to marvel at him. The brief chaos from earlier now felt like a distant memory.

You couldn’t help but grin as you turned to player 001. “You know, I just told them to roll their sleeves down because you were the one who stopped the bullies, not those tattoos.”

Player 001 let out a steady laugh, the sound warm and disarming. Jung-bae and Dae-ho immediately looked embarrassed, glancing at each other before quickly shifting their attention elsewhere.

“Hey, the tattoos still count for something,” Jung-bae muttered, rolling his sleeve back up halfway just to save face.

“Sure they do,” you replied, still smiling as Dae-ho tried to look nonchalant.

The four of you sat back down at the corner. Gi-hun, who had stayed quiet throughout the commotion, gave player 001 a subtle nod of acknowledgment. It wasn’t much, but it felt like a truce of sorts after their earlier disagreement.

Dae-ho, ever the chatterbox, broke the quiet. “So, Mr. 001, you’ve got to teach us some of those moves. What was that neck grip thing? Looked like something out of a spy movie.”

Player 001 gave a faint smile, shaking his head. “It’s just a simple technique. Nothing fancy.”

“Nothing fancy?” Jung-bae scoffed. “You had that guy gasping for air and looking like he was about to cry. If that’s simple, I’d hate to see complicated.”

“I want to learn how to do that too,” you added. “It would be useful to protect myself out there.”

Player 001 replied with a widening smile. “Sure, I could teach you. We just have to focus on winning the next game and leave this place for good. I’ll teach once we’re out of here.”

“Sir, don’t forget about me though,” said Dae-ho. “I want to learn that too.”

Jung-bae chimed in, “Me too.”

Player 001 nodded, “Got it. I’ll teach you three, then.”

The conversation drifted into lighter topics, with Dae-ho recounting an overly dramatic story from his military days that had Jung-bae laughing and shaking his head. Gi-hun stayed mostly quiet, his focus shifting between the group and the room at large.

NEXT : Chapter 05

PREV : Chapter 03

Story Masterlist

I would love to know what you think so feel free to comment as long as you could!

Leave a comment on the masterlist post to be added to the taglist.

#hwang in ho #hwang in ho x reader #hwang in ho fanfic #in ho #the front man #player 001 #squid game #squid game season 2 #squid game s2

37 notes · View notes

pranabefall · 1 month ago

Text

⠀⠀THE DEVIL'S ANESTHETIC. ⠀⠀⸺ ⠀⠀blade.

syn. you were just a doctor, at the start of it all. then came the chaos, the knife, the bits and pieces of madness and coming horror. and in the center of it all, stood him ( a gentle cruelty ).

TW. ⸺ yandere + smut and dark content ahead. reader is south asian coded, blade is a little fucked up and inevitably fucks the reader up a little too. murder, corruption arcs, medical terminologies i only half know, breaking of medical ethics, the reader is a pathetic wet cat, gang violence, death, manipulation, angst, acts of murder and mentioned dismemberment, suicidal ideation, dub-con, non consensual kissing, hatefucking, blade having violent thoughts, the reader is not daijobu, blade getting off on being killed.

LOG. ⸺ this is another repost of this fic after my old account got deleted on accident. this work has been marked mature for containing smut & dead dove content. readers below the age of 18 / ageless blogs and antis, do not interact. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING.

"you can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid."

— FRANZ KAFKA.

I. DEATHBED

“We have another one.” The receptionist echoes out from the front desk.

Another one. The words still the twitch in your muscles, the incessant cleaning and arranging and scrubbing away blood from medical chairs and forceps that should not be here. There are thoughts in your head. They’re dangerous ones, lingering in places that are grimy and soaked in something tarred. They should not be there.

Another one and that’s enough to coat your stomach with ugly, stifling coldness. You don’t reply, keep your eyes down and let the man walk in.

There were never any faces to your clients. They had hands, ringed, tattooed, scarred. Some had suits. Some stank of iron. And they all had guns, or bats, or rusty crowbars and attitudes that were knife edged and brutally coarse. This one is much like the rest. He tells you he was shot in the waist and his voice is static and white noise and discord leaking out of your ears in droves till —

“— will you get moving?! It fucking hurts.”

“Yes.” you choke out. “Yes of course.”

It comes easily to you now, after months of repeating it over and over with varying degrees of perfection and prompt. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the —

( Your thoughts unravel and they’re a mess in your hands like several bits of coloured petals. The scent has washed away. They almost seem to wither, bit by aching bit. )

You step away. “Done.” you tell the suited man and ask for no payments. Your receptionist does not either when he strides outside and it’s smart because patience was a whim when you reeked of viscera. That brazen naivete was drilled out of her a long time ago ( and you too ) and the rules were set forth, rules that must never be broken. You’d seen too many zipped up body bags scattered in the gutters to dare to. You do not want to be one of them.

( Coward, that spiteful half of you snarls and you know it’s right. )

Only he does reach in and throw some loose notes against the counter. You shuffle up to her, nails crusted with brown and red and count fifty kaas. It’s peanuts. It will do.

You were a doctor.

Or at least you’re certain you were. You’d spent the better part of your decade rooted within a small university where standard IPC dialect was taught as a secondary language and the fans hadn’t been replaced for the last thirty years. It was torture during the summer and the hospital adjacent had patients who spoke in tongues you didn’t quite understand. But you manage. You tried, you graduated.

You were a doctor. Your license reads you specialised in paediatrics. Children were all you needed to deal with, some too loud to listen to their parents' chides for silence. Some so young they were small enough to fit in your desk drawer. Some of them liked to talk too and ask questions during checkups and vaccine appointments ( nerves, you reason and you answer the questions ). It wasn’t much. It was peaceful. It was alright. This is your clinic, something you'd built from sleepless nights and mountains of referral literature.

Then you’d see less children and more of those suited men as the streets grow with a cacophony you can’t call safe after this. The carpet was worn down by blood and heavy footfalls, over the thread work and your mother’s faded name in the bottom.

You weren’t treating children anymore.

Still, you hold it together. This is yours, all of this. This is yours and it's a feeling locked away in your beating heart.

When the man returns — and you know it’s him because the birth mark on his hands were hauntingly similar — he brings company. The company in itself would have seemed unassuming, and they were, lingering by the doors speaking in words too fast to comprehend till the gunfire rang out and the windows shattered.

A part of you is thankful that it’s so late, where the streets are silent and the bustle is calm. The files you were rearranging fall to the floor. You duck beneath your desk and stay there, enclosed within tumult, within chaos, within something you wanted no part of ( and you grip your hands tight, quietly wondering if that persistent cat would be fed, if your father would care to know what happened to you ).

You hear glass break, fall, fall and hit the floor with a sadistic sort of tinkling.

You hear frantic footsteps thundering up by the door.

You hear the screaming.

( You hear your heartbeat. You want it to stop. )

Something crashes into the storeroom. It was large, heavy, clothed and it let out a strangled cry before iron clogs up your nose and heat and cold fizzles up and hammers into every crevice and pore and turns your chest inside out. The man tries to shift, to get up and out of the way, shoulders knocking against the shelves in panic that feels painfully palpable. He’s crying. You see that when you bundle into a corner, eyes burning.

His body jerks and is dragged to the door.

“Don’t,” he begs till the desperation chokes his reasoning and it meters into panicked threats. “You’ll be torn apart by this, I swear, you’ll be hunted down — ”

He’s pulled at again, his limp form slipping out of sight. You hear a sick sound — a squelch, the dripping of blood and viscera and the gamey crack of bones. Your teeth dig into your cold fingers. The stinging is numbed, dim and distant, while you press against the wall and try not to wail.

There is only a single set of footsteps now. It paces like a starved animal, like a caged beast. Leave, your thoughts scramble and correct themselves. Just leave. And it repeats, over and over like a maddening chant. Please leave, leave, leave. The footsteps stop at the door followed by a slow scrape against marble. A shadow falls over the doorway. That’s when you see him.

You think he could have been pretty. But there's terror beneath that veil of frozen numbness. You don’t think he’s pretty now, when he’s stalking into the room, bloodied sword in hand ( it’s mired and cracked and mended like kintsugi but twisted and terrible ). He walks like a man who’d been broken and sewn together and he reeks of death and a sickening sweetness.

His gaze meets yours for that fleeting moment.

( it felt like that throbbing helplessness. Of everything going wrong. )

One of the suited men had not died. Not yet, in some inane act of stubbornness. He’s tackled down immediately and you flinch back and finally scream, watching the writhing pile of bodies smack each other down with ease. The swordsman ends it. There’s a chilling disparity in strength with how his bare hands tear into flesh and rips his opponent’s arm off. He’s laughing, laughing like a madman and the insane hysteria sparks a primal instinct nestled in your mind.

You’re moving before you realise it, when you spot his fingers twitch for his fallen sword. Your hands close around metal. You’re surging forward, taut at the edges. That part of you screams into the void, stripping away morality, reason, the simpler parts of shame that could have stopped you then and there.

When your fractured mind pieces together and lets the spinning room rest into clinical stillness, you’re aware of the hysterical laughter that man trembles into. He slumps against your legs, weighted, boneless. He’s still laughing, like the world had whispered a funny joke into his ear and left him to rot.

The dislodged pole slips out of your hands. You watch him crumple down onto the floor, staining the tiles. A swing, a hit to the back of his head, a break to the vertebral artery, a medullary haemorrhage, a stroke, neuron death —

You spend the next hour tucked away in that storeroom, watching the swordsman’s body convulse, then his breathing still and his body run cold.

II. NEWLY DECEASED

Once upon a time, you told yourself that you could get by. You could get by and let yourself think you were a good person despite the ugly cracks tucked away and the bated disappointment breathing down your neck. It’s the human experience, a conditioned way of convincing yourself, a way you wish to live in the quieter corners of you.

It’s a lie. A lie. A lie.

The body does not move, as dead bodies usually do. As a frame of reference, dead bodies don’t do much to begin with. You stand back up and feel nausea coat the back of your throat, then wordlessly stumble to the man. Your fingers press against his pulse. Nothing.

A part of you wants to laugh at yourself for hoping.

The police take it all away. They don’t know what you did. Or maybe they do and care so little they swat that detail aside. Death is so natural here, so common and where is the sympathy for the damned when the damned were everywhere and your kindness wears thin?

( You’re left to pick up the pieces. The cracked photo frames, the toys and magazines salvaged, the bowl of tamarind candy tipped over. Bits and pieces gathered together and sewn back together. There was a heart in these walls. The pain was always there, but a dogged part of you loves this place. )

You answer what questions were asked and let them walk away, knowing they’ll do nothing about the situation to begin with. They never do. Most policemen were tucked up in the pockets and played dogs to gang members. Some lost themselves to apathy. Money could buy loyalty in droves. It was an open secret.

You get back home and let the hot water run into your bucket. You feed the visiting cat. You wipe the counters down and unearth some food from the previous night. You turn the water off. You bathe. You eat.

( “I’m fine.” you lie to Aleena when she calls you, frantic, scared. More frantic and scared than you present yourself to be. You don't tell her you’re a murderer.

“I don’t think you should go back tomorrow. I’m not saying this to get off of work or anything but after all that?” she falls silent.

“Maybe. But I need to keep the income coming in somehow.” )

Walking into the bedroom feels harder than it should. Lead bleeds into muscle as you patter along and try to keep yourself steady against the walls. For a moment, you stop and lean your forehead against it and tell yourself not to cry ( because cowards cry, and idiots cry and it was a pointless endeavour anyway because nothing — nothing about this would change ). Your degree falls into your line of sight, framed up against the wall.

You are a doctor. You are a doctor. You are a doctor.

That guilt knocks you in the knees. The guilt, the disgusted guilt that comes from killing a man.

( It’s engulfing, like tar and cloth pressed up against your face. The breathlessness, the storm rattling against the window, the messiness of it all. You’re screaming at the pillow. You’re clawing at it. You swipe till your arm bleeds and the cacophony dies down. )

The veneer shatters and the frame is clenched and thrown to the floor. The casing cracks. You heave, look at the mess at your feet and think to yourself :

What were those eight years for?

You killed a man.

A gasp tears through. It's painful, heavy and it's glass and shrapnel. The voice in your head whispers. Nothing. It's all for nothing.

Another one crackles through the muffled distortion, straining and rattling. A clear “I told you so.” grating past the chaos, disappointed, smug, knowing.

You shut your eyes and dream of jasmine and marigolds.

( You listened to Aleena when you passed the register and took a day off in the end. It’s the one kindness you let yourself have.

You did not eat for most of the day. Your gut gnaws. Your limbs feel weak. But food, as delicious as the thought seemed, invoked a visceral response. Of corpses and blood and things that you thought yourself too far removed to disgust you. A caved in skull did all this. A caved in skull made you retch and empty your stomach out into the toilet.

You think you deserve it. )

Your watchman stops you when you head back out again a few days later for a grocery run. "Are you alright?" he asks, peering through sleep. The cat curls round his legs and he gives it a gentle pat. You can hear the content purr it lets out from where you stand, and you venture a little closer.

"A little." you reply, smiling a little. The watchman tilts his head in consideration. You'd lost count of how long he's been here. Some of the older tenants mention he'd settled in over a decade ago, when the building still had four floors instead of five and a little more space to park out back.

"You still seem scared is all." he glances over at you again. It's the worry in his furrowed brow that makes you give pause. He reminded you of your grandfather then, strong jawed, stern eyed before that softness pervades through when he'd let you scoot over next to him to sneak a look at the newspaper ( cricket scores and stock prices were all he looked at. And the Sudoku ) .

You shift in place, tugging at the hem of your jacket. "It was a little jarring. The sudden attack, that is." you admit. You don't tell him about the death, the way deceitful monsters do.

The watchman shakes his head. "Horrible thing to go through, I agree. Especially for one as young as you." The cat slinks pat his legs and under the bed. he leans forward, tire heaving at his bones and his joints. A decade. One would assume he'd retire at this point given his age. "Try not to let it wear down on you, is all."

"It's easier said then done." You mumble.

"It is." the watchman snorts. "I told my daughter about you though. She's taking medicine too…Oncology. I scraped together every Kaas I had to pay her tuition fee off." he flexes his arthritic hands. You keep listening, that sliver of curiosity winning out. "She hasn't met you…but she knows about your clinic. the children your helping…suited men aside. It gives her a bit of spark at least. So you keep going too."

You feel gutted, eyes stinging a bit. He puts too much faith in you, you realise. But there is a small touch of warmth against the rattling cold. "Thanks…" you nod. The watchman leans back.

Keep going. What a mess, really.

You return to your clinic, the day after. You decide it's the last time you'd let reckless hope bar the instinctive tearing in your gut.

There is a woman sitting on the waiting room chairs with a dangerous smile. She’s dressed well, like those elegant omen-bringers or dapper businessmen. She’s dressed like the coming consequences and it’s there, that sadistic delight, hidden behind that lazy tilt to her head.

“Good morning.” she greets, like she hadn't broken into your clinic. “Hope we’re not intruding.”

You look to her companion next to her.

The dead man ( and he was dead. He was supposed to be — you were certain ) stares right back.

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“There’s a coffee machine…”

“Hm, never mind. I was never too fond of the instant stuff. What do you think Bladie?”

'The man named ‘Bladie’ does not respond. You’d have laughed a little — if your nerves weren't frayed. You’d have laughed over a silly, inconsequential nickname slapped onto some scary looking man, then gone on your way. But the scary looking man was a murderer. And you were certain, so certain, that he was dead.

( His blood coated your hands days ago. You can’t have imagined it — not something so innately ingrained within your psyche like some sadistic firebrand.

How is he alive? How is he alive?! Why is he — )

“I could pick up some tea.” you suggest, because playing meek was the way of a coward and you were that in the end. You still had to open your clinic in another half hour. There are still parts of the storeroom that need cleaning and a window that needs replacing. The woman laughs. She looks at you like you were an adorable specimen. A pet…or perhaps a bug to be stepped on.

( It’s a cruel sort of beauty that edges her face. You’d hate to admit you were staring a little longer than you should be. )

“There’s no need for that.” she looks to the side for a moment. “Bladie was here a few days ago, you know.” you flinch, perhaps knowing the ugly scene to follow. “Got into a bit of a tussle. Of course, I wasn’t worried…he’s got a knack for seeing things through, you know…” She’s staring straight at you now. “And he’s good at not dying, one could say.”

“That’s nice.” you mumble, shifting uncomfortably. Your cheeks are cold. Don’t look at me, you try to tell the should-have-been-dead swordsman. Like that would have worked ( he keeps staring ).

The woman continues. “It's funny though. After that affair at your clinic, I had to pick Blade up at some hospital’s morgue of all places. Quite the detour if you ask me.”

You still.

She knows.

Fuck. She knows.

“I…I see.” you play into stupidity, wring your hands a bit and force a far away smile. “I wonder how that happened.”

“Yes.” she nods, solemnly flicking dust off of her velvet coat. The playful lilt to her tone is back, delicately poking and prodding away and you feel the walls close in bit by bit. You can see the man tilt his head. You want to disappear. “I’d think you know though…so how about you tell us?”

You don’t look at her. You can’t, with that horror filtering through and spotting your vision.

“Now….listen to me.” she stands, saunters up to you and you stay rooted. Your mind fogs over with cotton wool and the aftertaste of wine blooms through your mouth. There is consideration there, her pointedly dragging her eyes across your figure and taking a sick pleasure in the fear that trembles at your fingertips. A tiny part of you that still remains too torturously aware recoils. “Were you the one who killed Bladie?”

“Yes.” you reply and it isn’t you. You wouldn’t have said that. You wouldn’t have.

Her lips curl. “How did you kill him?”

“I hit him on the back of his neck.”

Her face glows. “Good girl.” she pats your cheek. “We have a favour to ask you. How about you hear us out?”

She gives your shoulders a squeeze and you’re gasping for air. “That wasn’t so hard.” she grins. The cotton wool strangles and is caught at the edges, whisping, grasping, stubbornly trying to stay. You still pull at it incessantly while you back away from her touch. It burns. What did she do to you? What did she fucking do to you —

You’re pulled closer. It’s just a tug, a simple coil of her fingers round your arm. “I’m sorry.” you blurt out. “I’m sorry. I never meant it.” There are cracks against the surface, a spiderweb and it keeps going and going and going the more you talk ( you need to shut up ).

“There there.” She coos. “How about we sit down, hm? Bladie, think you could make some space?”

You don’t want to sit down with them. You try to pull back, to run because that’s what you should have done in the first place; instead of entertaining a pair of strangers with that stupid, naive hope of safety. She pulls back. Bladie catches your wrist when you try to squirm free and you’re half dragged onto the seat between them. “Honestly. A drink would have been nice. Oh don’t worry. I could hardly blame you for that.”

The woman fixes her sleeve. “I take it you don’t know who we are?”

“No.” you admit.

“Ah. the IPC influence here isn't as deep, huh? I heard there was an overhaul a few decades ago. The revolt drove most of them out…I wouldn’t count on it staying that way.” She passes you a measured flash of her teeth. It’s all good manners and etiquette you can’t return. “But we’re not here to talk politics. I’d like you to babysit Blade for a while.”

Blade seems to be expecting it. He does not mirror your dismayed shock.

“Why — ”

“Can’t say. It’s all a part of some very important work.” She holds a finger to her lips. “Would you be a lamb and do it?”

You grip at the metal armrests hard. The room is a blurred scape, a watered down stain ( ink tracked against damp paper ). “I won’t.”

“Come now. After that stunt you pulled with him, it’s the least you could do.”

It settles hard. “I told you I didn’t mean it.” you snap. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill you.” Your unravelling seeps into something dangerous. You try to step back. To keep it together. It tangles, knots, frays and snaps and tangles again and the foundations crumble. You cannot think despite the clarity slowly creeping and the fog metering out. You cannot think because the man you killed is alive and right next to you and dead men don’t just come back to life.

The woman forces you to turn her way. “You didn't mean it?” she repeats, inquisitive, amused. “Doctor please, any normal person would have gone for the head. You made a very calculated move there…and I'm sure that pretty little brain of yours knows the consequences that come with it.”

It’s a coveted part of you that dies there, withering, burning, clipped away and cast aside and you shake your head as you’re retrained. “Don’t touch me!” you scream. “Don’t touch me!”

Because humanity despises the naked truths in the world. They’ll deny, deny, deny what stares them in the face for those fleeting, selfish little comforts skewed in ignorance. Better the downy coverlet to the thin blanket, better the sweeter lie that bitter sincerity. You’re no different. Not really. You’re not different at all.

And that woman was not a liar.

III. DISTENSION

Aleena doesn’t take well to a strange man lurking within the backrooms. Her eyes always flit to the doors and her shoulders stay tense as she directs a few straggling patients to the waiting room and updates their details into the salvaged computers. “I don’t like the look in his eye.” she whispers hurriedly. “Doctor. Have you seen him?”

“Yes . I have.” you reply simply. “Could you pull up the files from a month ago? We have a follow up due today.”

She hums, and you nod to the messy clattering from the keyboard. “He’s not from here, is he? His clothes aren’t local.” her voice dips. “Is he an outworlder?”

“Yes.” You flit through a case history. The ink has run a bit, the edges flicked a dirty red. Bile and acid sears the edges of your mouth. You don’t think throwing up here and now would be professional. And your receptionist has a very nice shawl on. “Have the police called?” you add, helplessly rubbing away at the browned stains.

“You know they won’t.” she clicks her tongue, wrinkling her nose to the injustice of it all. You bite back your tired humour. She might descend into an angry little ramble then curse those men in three different tongues. You were guilty of listening in ( it’s amusing, and she had plenty of anger for the two of you, and then some more for the smaller things ). “They’re too busy sipping cha at the local angadi.”

She keeps tap tapping away. “Do you want me to send a soft copy? Or will you directly look into the logs?”

You cease flipping through the files. “Just send me a PDF.” you mutter. “You still have a few cases to input from yesterday right? I won’t hold you up.” Another report is pushed your way. Two more patients, two more medical histories to pore over. The throbbing in your forehead is incessant and stubbornly clinging on.

Gang activity in your neighbourhood has stifled from its initial raucous to a cautious thrum. There were still glimpses and the ignored nods, and that delicate rope-work still standing strong despite men from their brackets dying some terrible death. They don’t suspect you. It would be stupid to ( because you could hardly hold a gun in their eyes, or fight back. Your claws are chipped and your fangs blunted. It’s not a mystery ).

It does not stop the occasional loitering goon up front as parents grow a little braver and a little more desperate to bring their sick children in.

You settle with your work email, tapping your foot against the faint buzz from the streets outside and the waiting area. There is the occasional loud call. Kids being kids, shushed by mothers and fathers with warnings of naughty ones being fed the nastiest medicines for bad behaviour. You’re not cruel enough to do so maliciously, but it quiets them down amidst the worried ogling.

A ping pulls you from sinking further into your pit of thoughts. The document pops up in your inbox and Aleena slows her typing to two finger taps. “Can I take a week off?” She pipes up, nervously picking at her fingers. “Next month, that is.”

“For the agelu?” you guess, a new sort of weariness settling. “I suppose you can.”

Aleena stifles away a relieved smile followed by a : “You're not going?” She looks a little surprised, then lets her eyes sweep across the clinic. “I mean…yeah I guess you won't, given the state things are in right now…”

You wince. Your father had sent a text in. He asks for you, in his own, distant way. Maybe he misses you. Maybe you miss him beneath the hurt and the anger. But feelings were messy, scary things and it was better to look away and stick your head into papers and books and words that could be read. “I’m not sure.” is the soft admission. “It's a little early, I think, for me to make a proper decision.”

( Going home feels like a fever dream now. You’d almost come to loathe the smell of marigold and incense smoke. )

That and you can't be certain if Kafka would pick your guest up any time soon. She never gave you a timing, or any sense of clarity and control in this mad scramble. Blade was to lurk in his little window in the backrooms with all the year-old files for as long as he should.

“Besides.” You finish with a hint of good humour. “I'll take full responsibility for any ancestral hauntings after. Maybe my great grandmother could make a nice home on my couch.”

Aleena purses her lips. It’s says enough. A little more if you squint hard.

“Okay that wasn’t very funny.” you admit.

“No. It wasn’t.” She tilts her head sympathetically, pressing the pads of her fingertips to the edge of the desk, half pushing up against hardwood and paper. “I have plenty to say…but you’re my boss and that would be unprofessional.”

You bite back that twitch to your lips. “A wise choice. Take care of yourself now…and don’t forget about the rest of the reports.”

Primal fear rear its ugly head and scrapes at the bars when you meet Blade’s gaze.

“I have two patients due in the next hour.” you manage to pull out, turning your heel immediately after. Any inch for a quick escape, really. “So don’t come out. You’ll scare them.” you add for good measure, like he’s a child himself, or a feisty dog muzzled and chained up.

( The kind of dogs who bite at anything and everything. The kind who quietly bare their teeth at cruel hands and kind. You aren’t certain of Blade’s stance here and now, if he was pleased with his arrangements — stuck in a room too small for him, with someone who clearly didn't want him here.

Because you don’t. There’s something about you and your face and the way it’s a traitor. It gives away your thoughts, your heart, the things you want to keep tucked away at the back but seep under the doors and stain the carpets. And your displeasure seeing him is on full display.

His corpse comes to mind. Still, dead, cold took the touch with the beginnings of rigour mortis settling when he was hauled over the stretcher and wheeled away. )

He says nothing back, unsurprisingly. He didn’t even bother speaking out as much when Kafka came in and dropped him off with all the unceremonious sneaking and threatening. You think he’ll carry on with his silence, letting whatever this delicate little semblance of distant amiability stay within its stagnant state. An untouched web.

You turn. Keep walking. You really don't want him here, you think miserably. The paradoxical warmth in his body now, when for a moment there was none. His gaze, unsettlingly intense. You don’t want him here at all.

Still, you turn once more. You speak. “Is there anything else you need?” be polite. Be polite.

Blade considers it. He looks at you. You fool yourself into believing the hunger simmering beneath harsh vermilion does not exist.

“No…” he finally relents. His voice is coarse, heavy, the whisper of a growl.

( You leave faster than you should have. )

He follows you home after the day is done ( you wish he didn’t ).

Blade keeps you within his line of sight — just within reach and just close enough to feel that faint prickle of body heat against the back of his neck. It’s an uncomfortable itch. It’s unwelcome. So you turn your head back to his silent figure and test your fingers against your bicep.

“Could you walk in front of me?” you ask.

Blade seems to consider it. “No.” he finally decides with finality edging every word. “You might run.”

“I don’t think you’d let me get very far to begin with.” you mutter under your breath. His footsteps are heavy, kicking aside loose concrete you avoid. Blade still stays an unwanted spectre behind you, treading in a way that is too soft to be human.

“I won’t.” he agrees, sounding sure of himself. Bored even. There is a scuffing sound, cloth against cloth. You’re tense again, anticipatory ( and yet, you don't dare to look back, to look at him ). “It saves inconvenience. That is all.”

You decide you’d like to be an inconvenient annoyance. That should drive him back to wherever he came from.

“I still don't think you should walk behind me though.” You repeat. Your fingers curl. You wish you had a taser. Your last bottle of pepper spray was spent as is on a few other thugs the past couple months. “You look like a creep. And a stalker. You might mug me.”

“I won't.”

“How do I know that?” You keep rambling, hysteria trickling down. It's a leaky tap, that anxious mess in your chest.

Blade blinks. “Kafka told me not to.” ( like it was the most obvious thing. You might be imagining the heavy condescension oozing through ).

That does not make you feel better. Kafka seems as reliable as a tsunami, or a flood, or any natural hazard creeping into its first few stages of utter destruction. It shows on your face, that muted mix of disbelief and horror. Blade's gaze is sharp, not quite the disconnected distance it held before. Kafka was suffocating as is but blade feels like rubble bearing down, down, down. You hate it.

“And it would be pointless, trying.” He continues. “Killing you would change nothing.”

You wordlessly rub at your knuckles, at the pulled skin of your hand. You do not talk to him for the rest of the walk. You should be more polite, you tell yourself. Be more polite. You killed this man, watched him die as his brain slowly collapsed in on itself. The least you could do after those fifteen and a half dumpster fires is extend some basic human decency, right? Be polite.

A scream ringing out gives you another thing to focus on. They're normal to hear, even as it wrenches open your viscera and leaves something sick on your tongue. It continues, growing increasingly hysterical, then stops.

( You almost run for the source, You want to. You do not. )

By the time you slip into the parking lot of the apartment and head for the elevator, you’re half hurrying Blade along. There’s nothing glamorous about the place — a standard five storey tall building just like the other projects lining most lower middle class neighbourhoods. The watchman was found out back, half passed out from his shift and stinking of beedi smoke, leaving the dog that frequented the neighbour's doors to rip into any intruders.

You don't think Blade is wholly impressed as he nudges at him with his foot. The watchman jolts with a huff and a startled snore, then passes out, head lolling to the side a little. The dog does not bark, simply trotting up to accept a few pats on the head. And indignant annoyance flares up. You sharply tug at the hem of his sleeve.

Blade jolts. The vermilion of his stare burns you.

"Leave him alone." you warn, giving his sleeve another tug for good measure. Blade's lips purse, his displeasure a quiet shift on his face for the most part, burying away immediately into the corners and crevices where things were never brought up again. "I hope you like cats." you add. "I have one who visits sometimes. She's a terror and a half…"

He grunts, stepping to the side as you fiddle with your keys, pulling away the string from your key chain and getting your door open. It’s a welcome ritual, feeling the cool breeze from your apartment filter in after a while. The cat is passed out on the balcony floor, cracking open a single yellow eye in greeting when you shuffle forth to take a peek.

“Hello, pretty girl.” you coo, feeling that heavy warmth in your arms and the softness of her fur against your palms. It eases you just enough to face Blade again.

Be polite, you tell yourself because you killed him, because he could snap your neck in two, because you think that the last thing you need is pissing off a pair of seeming psychos. “You won’t mind tea, right?”

Blade leans against the wall, maybe trying to make himself as small as possible within the cloistered rooms. “It’s a waste.” he replies, ignoring everything else; the hum from the streets below, the occasional flicker from the lights, the cat settling on the couch and sleeping an arm’s length away.

“Okay.” you mumble and set down two cups anyway.

You do not like Blade’s silence. His silence means he’d rather think about something and him thinking could involve certain death. There is a disturbed sheen glossing over his gaze. He does not look wholly there, the less he talks. Most conversions your parents had with guests were about the weather, then delving headfirst into some obscure gossip about a family three kilometres away.

Another fleeting glance at Blade has you reason that he’s not one for gossip.

( You let this silence settle in. It’s still a suffocating thing, an unwanted presence and an unwelcome guest. You think of the suited men and the gangs amok in the dirty corners and you think the silence looks like them. )

“So…our first meeting wasn’t…wholly ideal.” You speak up after a while, handing him his tea. Blade looks vaguely surprised when he takes it. “I don’t think ‘ideal’ would be the right word for it…”

“You killed me.”

You swallow. “Yes.” your voice shakes. “I killed you.” Your legs are drawn a little closer to you before you talk and you lower your voice, all that shame and guilt subduing the last bits of that cocktail of fear and tumult and annoyance. “I’m sorry for killing you. Even if you’re still alive…somehow…it wasn’t the best course of action, to be fair — ”

Blade’s lips twitch. He takes a sip of his tea, letting you stew there with your fumbling, your shame. It still goes unspoken. That damning ‘how are you still alive’. You don’t bother asking it. He can’t stay dead — Kafka said so herself. The very notion feels like an existential terror moulded to the shape of a man and you want it to stay far away from it.

“Four days.” he finally utters out, inspecting the last bit of tea staining the bottom of his cup. “I was dead for four days.”

Oh. Oh that stung.

“I’m sorry.” your voice cracks and your eyelids start to prickle. Stupid. Stupid stupid, you curse at yourself, claw at the offending load inside.

Blade snaps his head towards you. There is a twitch in his hands, slow, dog-like in the way strays jolt in alarm. You do not comment on it, awkwardly pressing at the surface of your cup while the tears are quickly wiped away and smudged against your cheeks. There's no use crying over it, you scold yourself. Grow a spine.

“Spare yourself the pity. It is not an uncommon occurrence.” is his uncomfortable dismissal. The words are nonchalant and his forehead crinkles to match the perplexed hitch to his shoulders. He probably wants to say more, speak more, tear you apart. Or he was just too put off by how pathetic you are.

“You’ve been killed before?”

“Yes.”

Horror stirs deep in your gut and a small sliver of morbid fascination shunting beneath the murky waters and glimmering up in those seconds of resurfacing.

( Can he not die? He’s still here after dying from a stroke. Does he regenerate? How does he do that? Do his cells simply have a faster metabolism? That means his neurons can too despite their limited replication in most normal people. Does he — )

The tear tracks are drying. Your face feels stiff.

“I was trying to protect myself.” you even talk like a guilty person ( it does not help. It’s subdued, the way you speak. Beaten down, half hearted. You wonder if you even want to protect yourself at all ). You don’t want to look at him anymore.

“I don’t blame you.” he replies. It’s soft, missable, sympathetic and you know that can’t be the case. Blade blinks slowly, setting his cup aside. “Would you do it again?” he asks solemnly. His hands twitch again, out of its usual bent stiffness. Beneath the dim lighting, the paleness of his skin is a corpse like macabre; greyish, sallow. He seems starved. “Would you kill me?”

Your lips part. Bile and acid burn your throat. You shut it again and shake your head and the desperation, you assume, is enough. No, no never again. You don’t want that nausea. You don’t want any more of the griping aches in your stomach and the incessant pound of your capillaries.

Blade straightens up and gives you a long, thoughtful look. He steps back and returns to his stony silence without a word. The air is restive, poisonous in how it melts away the peace.

You really should pray to that nameless god, to soften that blow. You really should pray because nothing good ever comes out of this. There’s that brush of scale against your foot, the shrinking courage when faced with dour vermilion. It’s wolfish; its jaws bear down. The cat cracks open an eye again, letting out an annoyed mewl.

No, never mind that.

IV. EXUDATION OF BLOOD

You should have prayed. The questionable existence of a god or not, maybe you'd have given yourself that tiny bit of assurance.

Even your ancestors would have done well enough. What would your grandmother say?

( Her old spirit's possibly disowned you, if she hasn’t already. She must have burned your seat in the afterlife and spat on the ashes. Bringing a man into your home, no matter the circumstance would have incited all the wrong reactions. )

You learn quick enough that Blade never sleeps. The third night after spent between lurking within the stuffy storage space and wedged next to old folders, you’d spotted him sitting upon the couch in the middle of the night. “What are you doing—” you croak out after the initial scream. He scrutinised you with clinical indifference, sweeping over your bare legs to your face. You tamp down the urge to pull your shirt down, cheeks burning.

“Thinking.” he says. There is no further elaboration to it. Blade turns to peer outside your window and the dead streets below. There is a faint echo of the strays barking trailing behind the occasional hum of a passing car. Your little town was far sleepier than the cities, where the traffic continues on, long past the morning calls and the reedy music from 24-hour bars.

“You scared me for a moment.” you purse your lips, picking at your hands. Blade blinks. “I mean, you're just standing there.” You try to justify it, fumbling a bit and coming across as far more slow than anything else. Blade tugs at his sleeve and smoothens over the damp spots.

“I'm not trying to kill you.” he reasons.

You dig your thumb down into the thicker skinned parts of your palm. It reeks of iron. He always reeks of iron. “Startled me, then. I thought you were asleep.”

Blade considers it. “I do not need sleep. Not more than what is necessary.”

Uneasiness filters in. Your throat bobs with it, unsure. “Everyone needs sleep.” you stumble out. Blade shifts, tracing along his nape with a purposeful look. His regeneration. Yes, his regeneration. Tissue rest and repair would be unnecessary with that, wouldn't it? Sleep, food perhaps, the little necessities taken for granted — peeling that away and pulling back the blinds to peer down that gaping hole, it's strange.

The grislier parts of his curse seemed to strip away those human needs. It likes to gnaw out any sense of humanity from his bones, in fact, scavenging away the bare ligaments and swallowing it whole.

“So…you’re just going to stay there then...” .

“Yes.”

Blade’s shoulders are set into its perpetual hunch. There’s something unfettered about him, roiling within deeper confines with a sense of wildness and entropy. You take your cautious step back and steel the nerves you have left ( there aren’t many to begin with — you still try ). It’s far from the moodiness he usually holds himself with and the cyclical introspection. “Could you be less…disturbing, then…?” you ask.

Silence. “Disturbing.” he echoes, tasting every breadth of the word on his tongue. You feel metal coming to rest in your mouth and dig into the insides of your cheeks. There’s a flicker from the apartment across and sterilised white shines upon the side of his face. He looks worn down, worse for wear. The darkened spots on his clothes are dyed red round his torso and dried blood crests across the rim of his fingernails. Red. Red on his clothes. Red on the floor. Red on your couch. Red —

“Did you leave this room?” it’s not a question. You’re not asking questions.

“No.”

You don't quite realise it, the scrambling and the frantically locked doors till the cold nip from your room settles against your skin and your shaky hand holds up your phone. It takes a moment for the buzzing numbness to fade to a tumultuous undercurrent and for you to dial down that emergency contact, seconds away from calling —

— a notification.

It's an unlisted contact, and a single message.

Unknown. I wouldn't do that if I were you.

A moment of pause. You don't move, balking at the sight of it.

Unknown. There's a good girl. I hope Bladie isn't giving you any trouble. If he's made a mess, just help him get cleaned up, please.

You. Is this Kafka?

Unknown. Look at you playing detective! That's cute. It is, by the way.

You. How did you get my number..

Unknown. Oh I have my ways. And I wouldn’t call the police. I can’t say I’ll stay quiet and pin the blame on you. It would be easy, hiding a few bodies in your storeroom. I like Bladie, you know. Can’t have him getting arrested and all.

It feels like you’re grasping at ice, with the way it feels cold. Cold, so cold and uncomfortably harsh against your cheeks. You want to tear into something, into your pillow, into yourself. You want to throw your phone across the room and scream till your lungs are hoarse. You want to call the police anyway and shove that into Kafka’s face. You want to cast them out into some forgettable void and be done with this fear and this painful grip in your stomach and…

…you do none of that.

Some small defeated part of you whispers its comfort. You ignore it, cast it aside, call it a fool. You’re gutless, maybe a little brainless and honestly, you half consider going back to your hometown and — no. You will not think about that. Not now. Not ever. You broke that life apart, stepped over the fragments and let your bloodied footsteps lead you here. All that hurt is not worth the quiet defeat.

The door creaks open. You peer back out at Blade. “Sorry…” you mumble. He glances up at you. “I just…i was shocked…there’s blood all over you.” You think about what you should say next. You chose your words carefully. “Did you…”

You don’t get to finish. Blade leans back and shakes his head. “I did not kill anyone.” A wry little tug twitches at his lips. “Not now at least.”

It takes a tentative step, then another for you to exit the room completely. Blade doesn’t look bothered, content in his solitude where sits. You look down at the tiled floor trying to summon forth whatever blind insanity you had. It takes a special sort for this, for this specifically where the cracks fissure into the sides and down down down to the foundations. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” A lie. There’s blood on him for crying out loud.

Still, you do not pry. “Should I…” you stop. It takes some struggle, reaching down deep and wrenching the words out into something stringed and legible. “Do you want to clean up?” you offer softly, motioning to the bathroom. “Just…a shower, I guess. I can get those washed.. Blood’s really hard to get off after all and they’re nice clothes…from my personal experience at least…”

Blade watches you, tilting his head a bit. He does look a little like a dog now, one with a wrinkled muzzle and dark, serious eyes. “Fine.” he relents after some consideration, impassively getting to his feet. He follows you to the bath, delicately sidestepping your frame to enter. You let the water heat before letting it run into the bucket, offering him a pitcher and some soap.

“You’ll have to make do with the towel…I might have some spare blankets around.” you add, because you will not have a naked man walking around your house. There’s so much your ancestors might allow at this point. This would be toeing the line from possibly being dragged into the afterlife.

He spares a grunt in response while bandages come undone. You chew against the inside of your cheek, inhaling stale metal and collecting blotched brown linen from him. He’s hesitant, letting you close, but it takes a quick turn of his wrist for you to pick out the worst of his wounds. These ones do not heal away the rawness and the sick pink of flesh. These ones still bleed.

“Can you manage?” you peep out. Blade stares at his hand, at yours grasping his.

“Yes,” he says after a while. His fingers brush against the inside of your palm as you let him go, and you take that shaky step out of the bath, leaving behind a clean roll of bandages and antiseptic at the door.

V. PUTREFACTION

The woman beside you looks tired, worn away at the eyes and around the edges of her face. “Stay still.” she whispers hurriedly, stuffing her phone back into her purse as she gathers the skirts of her seere.

The boy on the bed does not stay still, tapping his fingers away at his lap as you shoot him a reassuring smile. There’s plenty of nervous energy stuffed away in the cracks and crevices of that tiny body of his, and it barely abates with the ticking second hand from your analog clock. “Are you nervous?” you offer, taking a knee beside him. The boy purses his lips, brown eyes focused wholly onto the floor below.

“No.” he decides to be brave and squares his shoulders up. You appreciate the effort as you press at the inside of his arm.

“That’s nice.” you nod. “But it’s okay to be scared sometimes. I know how scary needles can be.”

“I’m not scared.” he insists. He challenges you, looks at you dead in the eye with the most determination he could pluck away at his reserves and gather together. “Last week I chased a ghost away from my room. I turned the lights on and screamed at it.”

You crack a smile. “Is that so? Did it try to come inside?” you entertain the thought, poke away at his imagination till you find the faint blue of a vein. You see how his mother bows her head down, looking a little sick. The boy doesn’t seem to catch on in the way his eyes light up and he draws himself up. You don;t think she wants him to see. Sometimes there are instances where you see parents squirrelling away those bits of childish innocence like uncut diamonds; biting down at grimy hands that try to snatch it away.

You cannot fault her for wanting him to be happy. He was only four.

“Yeah. I was all GRAAAAAHHHH’!” you flinch at his spirited demonstration. He’s pleased with the audience and the invoked emotion as his mother winces and tries to pull at his ear to keep him quiet. It’s too late given his excitement, ducking down to continue his babbling. “And it went ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH’! Then it left and I went to see if amma and appa were alright. They were and I hugged them to make them feel better.”

“That is brave.” you nod. “You be careful out there, okay? Don’t stop hugging your amma and appa. I’m sure they love your hugs.”

“After this, can I have the chocolate at the desk?” he asks, batting his lashes. He flashes you a cherubic grin, and you might have caught yourself smiling a little wider. It’s a rare instance of silly happiness after the mounting strain on your shoulders and the urge to rip your eyes out bloody and raw. “The one in the big bowl.” he adds for clarity; because adults, he might be thinking, needed plenty of that.

You look over your shoulder to the door with a thoughtful little hum. “It’s not chocolate. It’s tamarind candy. The sweet kind. But it’s sour too.” You admit. “Do you still want some?”

The boy draws his lips back. “I’d still like some. I like tammy-rind.”

“Well, listen to your amma and stay still, okay?” he does, his small hand reaching out to grasp at her seere’s pallu. She holds her hand out and he takes it, tugging at her fingers, then her thumb as the nervousness slowly trickles in and scrunches away at his brow and nose. “Don’t get all stiff. Deep breath in…deep breath out. You can tell me about things you like if it helps…what games do you like playing?”

“I like football.” he offers. “My cousins say I'm a baby so I can't play with them. But I'll grow big and tall one day and I will kick their legs and show them.”

“Don’t start there.” his mother warns. “You’re not kicking anyone.”

The boy makes a face just as you give him his shot, then yelps a moment at the pin prick. His eyes squeeze shut for a second, his grip white knuckled till you finally pull the needle out and pat his cheek. “Done. That’s his DTP vaccine done with. He’ll need to get his booster next year as well so keep a reminder on for that.” His mother nods, handing in the little booklet as you scribble away the recommendations and mark away at the sheet.

The boy grumbles, poking at his arm. “Do I get the tammy-rind now?”

“Of course. The brave kids always get an extra one too.” you appease, walking them out.

“Great.” he’s mollified at least, wiping away any residual tears with a discreet turn away. “And i think you’re brave too. I saw a ghost here. In the door at the back.”

You freeze up a bit. “Did you now?” you’re feeling your voice crack a bit at the end of that question. Even the mother glances over, unsettled. You shake your head and the reassurance returns. It’s nothing, nothing at all, you try to say.

“Yes. He looked super scary. But he just looked at me and told me to go back to amma.” the boy sighs.

“I’m sure that was just one of the boys who helps the doctor.” his mother reasons, her words taking a sterner edge. She’s bustling him out, putting away at his back as she straightens her pleats and fixes her pallu. “It’s not nice saying things like that now. You’d better apologise to that man if you said that to him.”

“I didn’t say anything.” the boy insists as you pause by the door and see them off after handing him his hard earned candy, ( “thank you, doctor. Say thank you to the doctor auntie.” the mother urges. The boy echoes it drolly then slips back into his stubborn insistence, pulling at her arm ). Their voices fade into the faint music playing at the lounge and the chatter in the waiting room. Aleena turns to call for the next person, peering down at the files.

A hush filters through. One of the men stands over the row of seated people. They draw some of their children closer, muted shock and fear splayed across and you feel flayed open. “Tell the clients to leave.” you mumble. She nods and sends the word out. Some of them seemed to catch on quick and pack away their folders and gather their companions. A line of men and women mill out, leaving that sole frame standing, arms crossed in wait.

You keep your eyes down as you motion to the doors. Aleena hides away as she usually does ( you’d torn into her when she’d gotten too mouthy, too brave the last time ).

“Is something wrong? I’m sure I paid off the fee two weeks ago.” you test out.

The suited man doesn’t reply yet, sinking into the backdrop of static and the panicked thudding in your ribs. You vaguely remember Blade hiding away within the archives and hope he doesn’t wander back out again. He takes his time, dragging out the seconds as he idles past your framed degree and a few photos from your childhood home.

“A few weeks ago there was an…altercation in your clinic, correct?” he states more than he asks it, rubbing at his chin.

Oh shit.

“Yes…” you nod when you sense his wait. Your nerves wither away and you lose your sense of touch.

“Some of the men on my side died here. I was sent in to get to the bottom of it all.” His narrowed gaze settles on you. “It’s funny. We know there’s a third party involved but his body went missing from the morgue before he could be ID’d. Any footage of him? Wiped clean, and aeons forbid the police trying anything when it comes to getting witnesses to speak a consistent story.” His footsteps are an echo in the back of your mind, too loud, too distracting. Blade, dear lord, his presence here is a mistake. “Now, I'm here to ask if you had a hand in it, doctor.”

“No.” you choke out. “I don’t.”

“Were you working with that man who killed them?”

“No — ”

“Did you see him?”

You're too slow to respond and it takes him grabbing a fistful of your hair to rattle it out faster. “No I did not!” you insist, squeezing your eyes shut. You recall what you tell the boy, and the empty words about bravery. You feel like a liar steeped in bitter hypocrisy. It makes you want to rip your insides out and claw at your viscera.

Nails dig into the softer parts of your cheeks as your face is slammed into the wall. It draws out a choked, gasping wheeze from your ribs and white hot pain screaming at your skull, your muscles. The small, scared animal in you is crying, crying, crying away into bleak emptiness. It tries to run, eyes blown out and mouth hung open. It tries to make you run before you’re gutted clean through. “Are you lying?” the man asks quietly.

“No. No I didn’t.” You stutter it out, pressing your fingertips into the chipped paint. “I was hiding…I-I was hiding till t-they took the bodies.” The pressure against your head builds, builds till you yelp and struggle, terrified of him digging down hard enough to cut away at your airflow and snap your neck in two. For a moment, you wonder if he’ll do just that when he finally, thankfully, lets you go…

( Your eyes flit up, desperate, moving things and you look at him, actually look at him and the cold death in his gaze. You never assumed someone could look like that — empty and scooped clean of any humanity lingering at the edges. He’s hollow, and angry*.*

You made your mistake. )

…You’re slammed back in. The scream in muffled into your wrist. “You saw nothing?” he repeats, guttural in how he addresses and enunciates every word. It’s like reasoning with a man eater. You nod, nod because it’s all you had. “Nothing at all? No faces?” another nod and the man slips back and lets you crumple to the floor with that warning.

“You better not be lying.” he tells you, slipping to the speedy notes of your local tongue. “There will be hell to pay for that.”

You’re lucky, you think, for getting off that easily. The buzz in your mind builds and smothers you against your spot and you shift a bit when Aleena presses a hand to your shoulder. Blade is right behind her and she’s flattening her lips.

“You’re a nuisance.” you tell him, annoyance and anger and all that frustration meandering and stubbornly oozing through the cracks. Blade fixes you with a glare, drawing his mouth back to a half sneer.

“Who did this?” he asks, voice dipping to trembling danger, entropy brewing underneath all that. “Who did this to you?”

“None of your business.” you snip in turn, wobbling to your feet. Your coat is blotched red around the collar and the shoulders. You didn’t realise you were bleeding till your fingertips came away sticky and wet ( you feel like you’re careening off of the edge of a cliff, in a car you have no control of ). “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.” you add, croaking through your words and the buzz and the annoyance. “So just leave. Leave, tell her I can't babysit you if this…this is what I have to deal with.”

Blade narrows his eyes. “I cannot.” he states and leaves no room for argument as his hand grabs you at the scruff and half tugs you alongside him. You’re not spared any more dignity around him, and he treats you like a wet cat nipping and scratching at his arm. “You.” he adds, turning to your receptionist. “She needs to be tended to.”

Aleena mumbles something under her breath but seeks out the first aid kit. She swats Blade’s hands away once she approaches you again. You appreciate it. You don’t want him touching you and the crawling chilliness of his body invites an ugly sort of desperation that blocks away your throat and nudges at all the parts of you you’re less than proud of.

Blade does not leave. He never does, on that bitter note, looming over the two of you by the wall, that beast twisting in his eyes like a snake.

He unsettles you with the way he stalks the emptiness of your apartment rooms, pressing his body to the wall with shaky breaths. You watch him from the crack of your door and wonder if this is what unravelling sanity looks like. If it is the face of a man ripping open his chest and screaming through the guts until that beating heart is carved clean from the cavity.

Blade is more animal than human in how he walks. The room smells strange too. You do not know what it is, in its pungent notes and the unpleasantness of it all. It’s not rot, you’ve smelled rot before, and tasted that stench of decay lain thickly on your tongue.

This is more rancid, like regurgitated food and butter. You spot a single leaf on the floor, fan shaped and dipped in sunlit gold. Then more at his feet.

His form flickers by, rustling past your door. He’s at the balcony, then he’s not. You pad out and scan the dark streets, spotting his hunched frame nestled within the alleyways tucked at the side. There is a glimpse of purple from Kafka’s hair as she presses her lips to his cheek, whispering something to his ear.

Blade seems to melt and you watch on, half transfixed from the scandal, cheeks warming when Kafka leans to the side and waves, a playful grin curling on her face. She whispers something again and has Blade turn too, and you think you’re almost drawn in, dizzyingly close to the edge of your balcony rails till reason snaps you back and you return to your apartment.

( “Bladie…” Kafka coos at him, her gloved fingers pressing up against the seam of his lips. Blade tries to hide away the dry hunger in his stomach and his mouth. “Do you like this one?” she asks.

He thinks about it. The release of death. The warmth of your hands. The tears. He thinks of the man sawed apart on the concrete, down to tendons and bones and muscle and flesh. He thinks of the scattered limbs and the bruise and your blood.

Her hands press to his cheeks. “Listen to me. Push the mara down…we don’t want to keep upsetting her now do we?” she asks, teasing in how her teeth flash. Kafka feels like a dream lost in the haze of it all. He leans into her touch and lets the flowering roots in his chest rupture and decay.

“No.” Blade admits, surreality dragging him under. He does not spare her a reply to that question. Kafka already knows. )

VI. DISCOLOURATION AND DESICCATION

“Tell me who did it.”

“No.”

Blade looks annoyed, scraping and haunting the walls of your apartment as he follows you through the kitchenette like a ghost. The brewing…whatever it was…from the past couple of days seemed to have cowed after that visit from Kafka, nothing more now than a placid beast ( as placid as a rabid mutt could be ). You clench fist into your knife’s handle a little harder than you should have.

She could have taken him back, her little lover boy guard dog and his strange balcony crawling ass —

Blade hovers close, so close. There’s an absence of heat beside you. He’s always cold, colder than a man, warmer than a corpse. That in-between he seemed to linger in. His limbo. “He hurt you. He will do it again. Tell me who it was.”

“Absolutely not.” You state, voice flattened against bemusement. “You'll just kill him.”

He stills, his eye letting out something of a neurotic twitch. He might just strangle you now, carve you open with that sword, eat your insides…maybe. “He suspects something. He must die.” He says it slowly, irritation budding through the dryness of his countenance. Your nose wrinkles at this.

“That's nice and all but you stink of death enough, and ‘enough’ is still far too much.” You angle your knife, pressing into the tender outer layers of the onion till you slice through it. The blade shudders against the impact and your hand strains into it. You bite back a curse.

( You're thinking about too many things.

You're thinking about Aleena turning in her resignation letter, and her apologies. A marriage, she'd said. And how could she turn down her parents’ demands after everything? They care. Despite the pain, you knew that too. It's that painful kind of love where you'd hurt and hurt and keep hurting them when the choices seemed so sparse. Better a bloodied knife, they'd try to say. Better a few cuts than being torn apart.

She only just found out, she admits. There was an uncomfortable shift in her body. She looked ready to crumple into herself and shatter into a million pieces. She's meant to meet him during the agelu. It's been arranged for.

How did you? you'd asked. You were afraid to ask. You shouldn't have asked. That meant looking ugly things in the eye through to the nauseating technicalities. Aleena swallows. She looks more distressed than she should. You let her weep a little and nurse those gaping cuts. Your bruises don’t smart anymore. You’d forgotten they were there.

She shows you a newspaper. And you stare on with an empty kind of apathy as you spot her details within the bridal adverts, down to her college degree and the colour of her eyes. )

( You were reminded that there's a kind of love fuelled by bitter hate. You were reminded of the sight of her shrinking back and fading into the walls of your clinic, like a collapsing black hole. It's how daughters and duties were here, a little better than the north but broken in a way where broken things couldn't be fixed.

You've seen it in a mirror once, hollow and void and dead in your eyes, and your mehendi stained hands tearing apart the the jasmine in your hair. )

Blade tilts his head and angles the knife just a bit before you could cleave a finger straight off. “I’m being reasonable. He won’t hurt you if you let me.” he tries to reason, playing clumsy diplomacy. But Blade still pauses between his words with that perplexed unsureness. He didn’t know what to tell you when you were sobbing on that couch. He doesn��t know what to say now, when your insides were burning away your peace.

You brush him away and viscerally visualise grinding him to a bloodied pulp with your grandmother’s mortar. The violence in your head helps a little.

Blade keeps watching you, turning his head away from the spattering chillies and the sour notes of tamarind staining your hands. The onions are still a bother. You think it can't quite get worse at this point, with stubborn tunicated bulbs and a dull blade. The over-stimulation you're half subjected to feels like claws on a chalkboard, gratingly demanding every bit of your attention.

“Give it to me.” It's not a request. He takes the knife before you could really mutter out sneering ‘no’. He slices through the onion, passes you a pointed look and keeps slicing ( why does he make it seem so easy? Why??? ).

“Give it back.” you try.

“No.”

“Please…?”

He nudges at your shoulder, towards the stove. Your shoulders sag and a frustrated lump gathers at your throat. At least he’s helping, you reason. You shouldn’t be so angry over this. A normal person wouldn’t want to throw a fuss over a stolen chore and a stubborn wraith. You light the stove and gather what you’d prepared. Blade was done with onions. It’s only been a minute.

…You decide to not question that.

( Please don’t kill me, you add in your mind for good measure. )

There’s something therapeutic in indulging with this familiarity. Your old home smells like this, like comfort and nostalgia in the idyllic sorts of memories. They’re the ones you lock away in a box, nestling that key deep inside your ribs. Even so, that horrible weight swells up like a tumour. It could burst any minute. It’s wearing you down and frying the ends of your nerves.

“Aleena is leaving.” you blurt out. Blade blinks. “My receptionist.”

“She told me.” Blade nods.

“She’s getting married.” you continue.

Blade considers this. “She is…young, yes?”

You nod. “Twenty four.” you swallow. Your throat is parched. “Some families do marry their children off at this age. Not all of them, of course…and not every arrangement is all that bad…I've seen some good ones.” He keeps listening, you know it in the way his head tilts ever so slightly to you. Your senses are clumped together, messy, messy, messy. “It’s none of my business.” you add feverishly. “I shouldn’t be getting upset.”

“...why aren’t you?” the question is sudden. You feel your confusion knock away reason. Blade tries again. “Married. Why aren’t you married?”

“That’s a very impolite thing to ask.” you reply quickly.

“I see.” he struggles, pondering over his next few words. “I will not push further.” You purse your lips, the conversation delicately fraying and fading out. You let the silence stagnate, hovering by the stove with your vessel-full of coconut milk.

Something inside you tugs.

“I was supposed to be.” you mumble. “He was a nice guy, was working for a stable job and had plans to buy a house close to the beach. The kid you’d see in movies, you know?” you laugh a little. “And maybe I was a little swept up. But then we talked and we both realised that…we had dreams of our own. Things we weren’t willing to let go of, a relationship he was serious about.”

The chicken goes next, as the gravy settles into a shade of brown-red. Blade is staring, something in his face set in an odd way. He looks off putting. Hungry, like those night spent pacing through your living room.

“We parted ways. There weren't any dramatic rejections…he seemed just as pleased with it, to be fair. I hear he’s settled nicely with his boyfriend…good for him.”

“So you came…here…” Blade works it out.

“Quite. Those choices weren’t wholly supported by my family. They kept trying to find someone and I kept pushing it away…I was scared I guess, and people got angrier and insistent and I started feeling less…human.” you take a deep breath in. “So I left one day. They never contacted me. My father only started again after my grandmother died. And I opened this clinic up…”

The room is blurred out. All you see are splotches of colour and a blemished, dark blue whee Blade stands, rimmed by the sunset.

You wipe the tears away.

“It’s all I have now.” you whisper, a painful crackle coating the peaks. “All of it. And it’s a nice place…I used my grandfather’s photo frames in the reception…my mother’s carpet too. It was a souvenir from the north. And…and some of the toys were my own. It took some digging and cleaning and repairing but they’re just as good as any other…” It’s flaking at the surface. You aren’t a strong person. It’s always been so easy to crumble with the weight ( like a paper doll ). “So please…please just leave before you make it worse.”

Blade regards you. He always is, watching, watching, watching, like there’s nothing else that could tug him away, take up his mind when he’s not snapping necks till they shatter.

“I cannot.” His brows are set, pulling together just a little.

“You can.” You insist, feeling stupid, childish. Its pointless trying to convince him otherwise anyway, Not without feeling hacked down and near helpless beneath his looming shadow. “You can leave. You and Kafka can, it's not that hard.”

“We have work to do and it must be done.” driven finality settles deep. He feels so far away, repeating words like a robot. It's hard to think of Blade as human in times like these, where he's either too robotic or too animalistic. It feels scripted, all wrong, all twisted up and chewed apart. “You wouldn't understand it. Leave it be.”

“I won't, if it's my business you're intruding on.” You set the coconut milk down, the steel vessel striking polished granite with a sharp ring. Your teeth grit together ( you hate feeling angry. You hate the cloudiness that comes with it ). “What if I run then?”

Blade's glare is cutting. “You will not run.” He asserts, scruffing you so easily, tugging you just a little closer. You fight back the urge to swat at him. At least you could think a little. At least you still had a tiny hand digging it's claws into your self control. “I'll drag you back. I will keep dragging you back till you cease this foolishness.”

( How were you being foolish? All you have are fragmented snapshots, the lingering sense of dread, the knowledge of something sinister brewing beneath the surface. You have a man in your house, a murderer. You have a man in your house you swore you killed. You have a man in this house who doesn't die.

How were you being foolish? You want to scream at him till your vocal chords fray and your arytenoids collapse. But Blade has probably never felt fear. You can't imagine his sympathy.

And you still killed him though. You stop. The guilt is back, and the anxious Turn of it, and the seething edge of your rage burning, burning, burning. )

“Did Kafka tell you to do that too?” poison burns holes into your words. You and Blade are sinking deeper and deeper beneath it, boring holes through your skin.

( You need to stop. You need to stop talking. )

“She wouldn't be as kind.” He asserts simply, rolling his eyes at the mention.

Defeat comes for you from the corners. You huff. “Let go of me.” your arm is shoved back, elbowing his ribs. Blade doesn't flinch, but his grip loosens and he dips his head down in acknowledgement. “Are you ever going to leave me alone?”

“When we collect what we need, yes.”

“...get it over with quickly then.” You mutter, stalking away from him. “Tell me when the chicken is cooked. Leave me alone till then.”

Blade takes a moment. “Alright.”

“Bladie, you're upset.”

Is he? Blade doesn't quite see it. But there is an ache where his heart should be. It's been there since you'd locked yourself away and he’s left to stare at the curry bubbling at the edges. Kafka laughs from the other end of the line, light, airy; she's probably wiping blood away from her swords.

“You are. Has the doctor been softening you up?” She's playful, prodding, poking, stringing along her words. “Cute. Is she why you’re calling?”

“She’s asking questions.” he steadies his phone. It’s so easy, how it slips between his fingers. It’s not the firm immovability of his sword hilt and it’s slippery, almost unusable with his twitching. Blade hears Kafka hum against his ear, kneading away at the issue before her voice picks up again.

“You know you can’t give too much away, right? We need to follow the script and if she meddles too much…”

“I know.” Blade cuts in, apathy sinking deeper. The script, yes, the script. There’s that flash of familiar awareness. The script is something to be followed, right down to the bare details. If pinstripes needed to be worn, then pinstripes must be worn and if Blade must cut a hand off, that hand must go. But even he knows of the variables being difficult, breaching at destiny’s thin skin.

“And she’ll only get hurt, Bladie.” Kafka coos it out gently, placating the tenseness building in his shoulders. “It’s unfortunate how scared little things tend to bite more. Listen to me, try appeasing her a little, yeah? I’m sure a treat or two should keep her from stepping too out of line.”

“How much longer do I have to stay here?”

“You want to leave so soon?”

Blade does not. He can feel the roots tugging at his feet, fixing him down here, leeching, leeching, leeching. The fluttering ache in his stomach has grown worse. Blade fears never slipping away and that won’t do. Wolves aren’t to be leashed. That fractured memory, the writhing ocean in those eyes…there is no place for him here.

( Destiny, destiny, destiny. The unattainable, the inescapable…Kafka whispers something else. He wants to break his wrists. )

And still, Kafka knows. He can practically see the cheshire curl to her lips. “Cute.” she repeats, drawling the word out. “I’m almost done. Just a bit of the usual…we’ll have the stellaron collected in no time and we can head out. Till then, lie low and be a doll for me before I come to collect you, okay?” he can hear the faint echo of her footsteps echoing past empty hallways. She might spare a visit soon, he realises. “And again. Try not to upset the doctor too much, yeah?”

Blade dips his head down, mollified. “Alright.”

The phone cuts away. You’re still in your room, cut away from most of his conversation. The chicken looks cooked so he turns the stove off and gropes about absently till he feels a plastic handle. Then he knocks on your door.

It takes you a moment to open it for him. “Is it done?” you ask. Blade stares down at your wide, tired eyes. “Yes.” he replies, dizzy and blotted out in the centre all at once. He can’t quite stop it, the rapid undergrowth, the rustling call of mara, that need to seize you by the face and tear into the softness of your cheeks, to bite, to taste blood, to break your bones and devour you. To feel the dig of your nails against his arms, something sharper, you scooping out his chest, his ribs and his heart till it’s beat ceases and he curls into your warmth —

“Do you hate me?” he asks quietly, unwavering. Its swelling. “Do you want me gone?”

You swallow, halfway out of your room. Blade wants to grab you, taste —

“I do.” you mumble.

Appease her. Kafka’s echo fades out once more in the back of his head. Blade presses the knife to your hand, holding its edge just over his stomach, pressing till he feels its prickle numb out. It’s where the fluttering was, unfettered when he tore his intestines out upon your couch and let the blood seep into the fabric ( you hadn’t liked that, so he stopped ).

He stops, gripping you just above the beat of your pulse. It speeds up, vivacious, so alive ( Blade is used to his steady thrum, slow, so slow unlike that of a human ). “You can kill me then.” he tells you. “If it pleases you.”

There’s a shift. The handle slips away and you snatch your hand back, face twisting to what he recognises as distress. Then you look angry, slamming the door back shut. “Don’t talk to me.” You scream through, muffled by hardwood.

Blade feels empty. He collects the knife and turns back into the kitchen, temptations spilling out when he lingers a little too long and thinks of sweet oblivion.

He muzzles himself as most dogs should be. His teeth are blunted, his claws filed.

He doesn't want to scare you.

VII. SCAVENGING

Aleena hasn't spoken much since she'd told you about 'the arrangement' ( you make it sound like some cold business deal. A travesty. Maybe you were being far too pessimistic with this whole ordeal, putting in too many chunks of those ugly memories into that basket. You could be wrong. You could be wrong about it all ). It's an all too familiar disconnect, a silent misery that you'd watch every day after. She's letting it fill out her whittled spaces, and it worries you. Worries you in the way your heart twists and your insides turn.

( Won't you be coming, he'd asked again over a messy phone call. There's a lot of things to catch up on. We'll lay off the insisting, we'll let you choose the groom this time. That would be far better, right?

And your father's words meter out to warbled static, spilling through your ears and onto the floor. )

Maybe you should put something out in penance. Let those ghosts keep to themselves and continue their silent vigils. You're not superstitious, and rituals like these feel more a far away dream since you'd moved away.

"Aleena…"

"Yes?"

"How about we go get some cha during our break?" you offer a kind smile, tired, a little neurotic but you think it will ache a lot more if you say nothing at all. That wound up and coiled-away thing in her, pulling at the set to her jaw and the firm stoicism she displays — it slowly lapses. She looks down at her feet, back up at you and blinks a long, slow blink.

"That sounds nice." she croaks out, pushing aside a stack of papers. You check the analog clock above the two of you. A lunch break was due in another fifteen minutes and there a few checkups and medical records to fill in for school diaries. You could finish soon enough."Is it at the local place? I like the one with the cardamom."

"Sure you can."

Aleena seems to think a thousand thoughts all at once. "Thank you." she whispers when you step back, trained down to the keyboard. She's not typing, tracing the plastic frame itself . You leave her be, let her stew a while before gently gathering her up and leading her to the closest stall.

( Blade was cornered in the stores. You tell him not to stir up any trouble.

"Where?" he asks.

"None of your concern. I'd like some time alone with her, please." He reaches out, curling his hands into the sleeve of your coat. His eyes look like smelted iron. You tell yourself not to flinch, to skitter away because you will not be a rabbit. For once you will not be a rabbit. "I'm going." you repeat with more purpose. "You can't tell me otherwise."

Blade lets you go. )

It's crowded as is, and you try not to let yourself be pushed out by the squeezing throng. Not until you and Aleena leave with your tea and a packet of glucose biscuits to sit by a roadside ledge beneath the tree cover.

She takes a few bites before she starts talking again.

"Sorry about the suddenness of it all."

"The marriage?"

"Yes." She picks away at some of the crumbs.

"It's okay." You pat her hand in assurance. "I was wondering if you were doing alright

Aleena seems to ponder over it. "A little. I know him. We went to the same school…so it's not all bad." She drains the last of her tea, throwing the Styrofoam cup into a dustbin. "I'm just…angry I suppose."

"At your parents?" You guess.

"Yeah." She swallows. "They've been pestering me since my second year in college. I had to keep telling them that I wanted more stability…a job. Something. I can't just keep relying on my spouse for money and all that, you know…my parents said I could do that after. That I was being selfish for putting it off."

You purse your lips. "It's good to be stable." You agree. "Sometimes it's easy to point fingers and blame it on unnecessary worry and paranoia…but from my experience, marriages like these are a gamble. You can't be too sure, even with people you think you know." You must be rambling. Embarrassment floods into your cheeks. You have the grace to look a little sheepish.

"Right! And I told them that and…" She shakes her head. "They don't get it, I guess. I mean…I don't mind settling down, really, but they keep pushing me and rushing into it and then they just put up that advert without saying anything and..." Her wide eyed hysteria is palpable. You might want to hug her, steal her away. Familiar pains tend to do that, stinging at your soft insides.

"Am I not a good daughter?" The fragility spotting it aches, unfurling, spreading forth. You shut your eyes.

"I'm sure you are." You tell her honestly. And she is. You know she is.

Aleena's face stretches, pained. "It feels the exact opposite. I might be making it all more difficult…I should be grateful, shouldn't I? They care about me, I know that and…this…" The words are turned over, thought upon. Her hands twitch, gesturing at the air with wild frustration. Aleena is shrinking by the second, cracking at the corners. "What do I do?"

Your throat dries.

"I don't know. I ran away from mine and now my family refuses to talk to me." You tell her. "There's a lot of different ways this could go. Parents react in different ways…all I can say is…you need to trust your instincts."

"I don't want to lose them." She admits shamefully, wiping away a tear. "I'm a coward."

You purse your lips. "I think we all are." You sigh. Your tea has cooled against your fingertips. “But…but I'd say it's better than being miserable the rest of our lives. It's selfish, I agree…” you feel defeat trickle down — defeat, hopelessness, a cocktail of too-many-things-at-once.. “it could work out too. It could work out and it will be alright after that. But there's a lot more before it all as well…I'm sorry. I'm not very good with advice.”

Aleena shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. "It's better than people telling me that I'm being a nuisance."

"You said you knew him too." You add.

She scoffs. "He might have changed. The most I remember is him pulling at my hair and calling me ugly."

"Oh. Hopefully for the better, then."

Aleena rubs at her knuckles, humming softly as a trill of birdsong echoes above the two of you. "Thanks for taking me in." She says, and it's spoken so softly you almost miss it. "I learned a lot working under you.and you were good to me. Better than some other bosses I had…hopefully I should still be able to work after…" She breaks away.

A gooey sort of warmth trembles inside. It's the sort that cracks you open. "You're welcome."

She kicks out her feet, letting her footwear flap shutter against the balls of her feet, then stands back up. "We'll head back then? I don't think I'd want to leave you with unfinished work on my last day…"

"That would be terrible." you agree, cracking a grin.

Aleena veers the subject away to the common pleasantries. She talks about the weather, the new park in the better parts of the city and the flowers there. She talks about the old lady who invites her to feed the pigeons. You listen as you do, till you slip back into the clinic and start the afternoon shift again. Clockwork, familiar clockwork. Still, you ache. It's selfish.

"Blade." you call out when you step back into the stores. You're greeted with silence. You're greeted with emptiness.

"Doctor? we have another checkup!" You straighten up, smooth away the frazzle, the jumbled nerves and the frayed ends. There is a time and place for panic. Not now. Not when you have work to do. So you work. You work till the minutes and hours bleed in and the sun spills past the concrete rises. You work till the night falls and you realise the silence in the storeroom seems to have grown past the occasional rattle from the shutters and the wind.

You heave in a breath. Aleena has left, pulling you into a final hug. You find yourself looking for him.

( Where is he? )

It's Kafka who drops by after closing. The anxiety nips at you, your face, your hands, everywhere, between Blade still not making a reappearance and now…this.

You hadn't met her face to face in a while and you've almost forgotten the weight she carries. She'd turned you around before you could walks away any further, her gloved hands snaking round your waist and her lips brushing against the shell of your ear. "Sorry for the visit, doc." she speaks out, like you're old friends. "Had some work to look into."

You hunch your shoulders, cowed of any initial annoyance. Something in you draws back, scared around her. It's the cat-like preening, the way Kafka smiles so emptily at you. "Right." you mumble.

"Bladie's been treating you well? I told him to be on his best behaviour."

"He's…he's alright. If you're here to pick him up…well he's been missing since this afternoon. I…i swear I didn't — "

Kafka shakes her head. "Oh no, I sent him on a little errand." she assures you, sitting down in the waiting room. She pulls you down next to her. "I've noticed he's been doing his best around you too…granted I'm sure some of his habits are a little…of putting." That smile is back, razor edged.

"It's fine." You try to say.

"Mhm. If you say so." Kafka crosses a leg over the other. "I've been souvenir shopping between work and all. I might pack up a larger haul after this final matter is dealt with. So many things to do…" She trails off, drumming his fingers against her chin as if deep in thought. "Have any places you recommend visiting? I've heard the silks here are to die for."

You hadn't known that either. "That's…nice." You lower your head, that far away beeping growing louder and louder against the chills clawing up your spine. You breath in, feeling the point of her nails press up against your cheek and turn you around to face her.

"Oh dear. I don't think you're very happy to see me." she coos. "Bladie hasn't been very good to you, has he?"

You open your mouth.

"You don't have to say anything." she cuts in with what seems to be kindness. You were almost fooled by it, set adrift, running straight into that tangle of webbing. Kafka feels predatory the way Blade does, and in ways that doesn't feel like him either, spinning you around and around in circles for those simple little amusements.

"He scares me." you blurt.

"Is that so?" Pity weighs in her sentence, cloying it together like resinous amber and sundew. She looks delighted.

"He does." you nod, feeling helplessness undo your seams. Kafka leans in close, close enough for the warmth from her breath to spill over your jaw. You want to push her off — you should, given who she is. But she clings so close, drinking it all in with strange euphoria. She's still holding your face, and Kafka was far stronger than she presents herself to be.

"You poor lamb. I hope he didn't bite you too hard." She smiles, caught in a trance as you sink further into magenta and pink and the smell of her perfume. "Then again, Bladie's always rough with the things he likes. I'm almost tempted to take you with us."

You shutter, blank out, flail about internally before all reasoning bears down with the impact of a comet. "I don't want to go with you though." You squeak, the words sinking in so quick and it shocks you.

Kafka considers you, tilting her head with assured grace. "Are you sure?" She asks again, thumb pressing up against the apple of your cheek. "It complicates things quite a bit for you. I'd say you'd be more miserable staying here than giving in, no? For one…" She's enjoying herself, her lazy gaze scanning the clinic again. "…you'll be loosing all of this."

You seize up. "…What — "

"This." Kafka repeats. "All of this. It'll be gone soon enough. Bladie and I have dipped into businesses that most should keep out of…I'll spare you the details, really…though you might just have more popping up in that little head of yours." She taps a nail against your temple.

"What are you talking about." You croak out, falling into a gaping bit. The vestiges of horror start taking root in your lungs. Kafka bites her bottom lip, playing coy.

"Oh dear, I've said too much. May as well let you in on it then." She croons. "The IPC don't have much of a hold here, do they? No wonder…granted it made going through this operation far easier." Kafka lets you go. You lean back, back away from her, sputtering. "To keep it simple, we were here to collect something. A very important something…and out of all the possibilities we had…your little route happened to give us the least amount of grief to deal with."

You grip at the armrests hard. "I don't…I don't understand…" You choke every syllable out with a tongue that feels like lead. "I don't understand." you repeat, the mania arching your higher notes. Your clinic, this clinic, the only thing standing between giving up and going back and…Your clinic ( You remember the money, the scraping together and the loans upon loans and that less naive part of you still folded into the walls and corners ).

Kafka shrugs. "I don't expect you to. You've been a tucked away and coddled into this peace your planet has blanketed you with. There's plenty more in this universe you can't quite comprehend; and there are plenty of big bad things out there that Bladie and I could hardly hold a candle to…" She grins. It's a vicious, predatory thing. Your fear is a feast to her, one lazy bite after the other.

"I don't want this. You're lying — "

"In another five minutes…" Kafka begins. "Bladie will come back , dragging a little friend of ours along with him. He'll have sustained a hit to his head, half healed. The hem of his coat will be ripped off." Her gaze darts to the clock. "Tick tock. I'll be busy after that so you'll need to be quick with what you have to say."

You're stunned to silence. Blade. An associate. It's a nightmare in the making. strangling every bit of air from your lungs. Kafka seems terrifyingly sure, watching the way you move, scramble, feeling disjointed and not all there or all quite present in your body.

"I don't want this." You tear up.

She kisses your cheek. "I know, sweetie." Kafka gives your shoulder a condescending squeeze. You may as well be stabbed in the stomach too, revulsion burning your throat, jerking you away from her. It makes you want to grow claws, to make her hurt somewhere, anywhere. "It's too bad, really. Maybe if you were a little braver, a little more gutsy, we might have struck you from that list." She laughs. "Honestly, I find it adorable. You're like a scared little stray…"

A sickening thunk suddenly echoes out back, soft against the tile, and moving trough whimpered struggles. Kafka's eyes narrow. "That seems to be our cue." she comments lightly. You look at the clock. Five minutes.

Your voice is stolen away, a failed note against the hand crushing your windpipe. You feel dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, almost stumbling over the chair. Kafka is drunk off of it, shoulder brushing against yours. It's just her, those footsteps, the smell of her perfume. "So…" she whispers. "What's it like?" Her touch sears at your wrist, edging higher. "Being scared?"

Blade steps between the two of you. His hand coming to grasp at your arm, smearing a brown, bloodied stain against the expanse and dwarfing your wrist ( he can break it so easily ). He stinks of iron and rot and you don't dare to face that monstrous view of him, just like that first day, feeling his pulse recede and the massacre he left behind under the fading colour of his eyes.

( And still, you feel guilty. Because Kafka is right. You are a coward. )

"Kafka." Blade utters, a warning stained against his stressed inflections. "Leave her be."

Kafka's lips pull at the corners, serene, seemingly innocent. She doesn't even try to hide the deception. "Jealous much?" she snickers, letting you go. Blade feels agitated, the beginnings of a riptide streaking beneath a still surface. He yanks at you, fingertips pressing at your cheek, the spot between your ear and the column of your neck. It's the most he's touched you.

( Has she hurt you, he wants to demand. Has she? )

"Don't touch her."

Kafka holds her hands up in surrender. "Okay." she relents, content and entertained with the way things seem to be. From the corner of your eye, you see a mass…something close to human, move. A scream is lodged in your pharynx. Your nails dig into Blade's hand, a hoarse, wheezing sound heaving from the depths of your lungs. The mass stretches, tries to move away. You see red plaster the white tiles beneath it.

Blade's gait shifts to awareness, sharp eyed, watching the man try to escape.

"You didn't break his legs?" Kafka asks.

"I did. This one is stubborn." Blade snarls. He looks dog like, wolf like, fangs borne between a drooling muzzle. Your eyes sting as you try to tug away, away from him as Kafka stands and saunters over to the body, that elusive little smile still present.

"Well, we have plenty to ask of him. He still has a few details to give away now, doesn't he?" She hums a little tune, yanking the man by the hair till his broken whimpers turn to miserable screaming. "Come on Bladie, I need help. And you…" She fixes that stare on the man. "Listen to me. You can't speak anymore, or scream, or cry. Not till I tell you to."

The man's cries fade out into open mouthed gasps, his face a bruised and bloodied mess of tears and snort. Blade was not kind in handling him, not with his torn tendons and the unearthly jut his legs were angled at. Your skin crawls at the sight. You reach for your bag, your phone, shaking past the initial terror to give a final call for help.

Blade looks at you. It's enough to completely shatter it, unwinding, undoing, pressing down harder against the fragile cracks in your walls and letting that mess slip away past the desperate grasp of your arms and down away on the floor.

You shut your eyes and tell yourself you saw nothing.

VIII. SKELETONIZATION

You don't hear much of the man, save for Kafka's questions muffled behind the walls. The whats, whens, wheres and hows that you can't keep track off without giving too much of yourself up ( you're afraid you do, a thousand different things will split. You tell yourself there's nothing there ). You focus in the clock instead, watching minutes after minutes pass beneath the incessant sound of it ticking, ticking, ticking.

Minutes after minutes after minutes.

There's a final exchange of words. You hear a tumble, a body hitting the ground. Kafka walks out, hardly bothered in the slightest and pristine save for that dampness of her gloves. She shoots you a charming smile, taking in how you'd tucked into yourself. "Well you're a sight for sore eyes. Scared, lamb?"

You're scared of a lot of things now, of the woman in front of you and the man outback and the man whose words they stole and the impending aftermath predicted. You're trapped in your own burning house, doors jammed shut and the window too high to take a jump. You'll suffocate in here, choke till your lungs collapse and your organs scream and fragment.

Kafka cups your cheek. "Hm, a pity. Scripts have to be followed though…sorry about that doc." She draws away and you let out a wet little sob. "Don't be too sad about it." She coos, patting your cheek. "On the bright side, I'll be leaving soon. Stay close to Bladie, okay? Can't have you running off and throwing a fuss now."

Dear lord no. Not Blade. Not Blade after all this. It feels like a joke and a half, an empty attempt at drawing out any laughter from an unenthused crowd of blank eyed faces. You stay seated, wide eyed and insistent. "No." you choke for good measure. Kafka's expression glows.

"No?" she echoes, a hand resting against either side of the armrest. You try to make yourself small, edging away from her farther and farther till her knee slots between your legs and you nearly cry out and kick her off. "Come on now." She coaxes, hand tugging at your waist, sitting you up proper. "Don't be too difficult. Bladie's not half bad."

You shake your head, blanking out through her crooning as your struggle intensifies. "Stop it." you repeat, shaking your head, seized and maniacal till your nails dig in. Kafka doesn't flinch. She's still smiling. "Don't you dare tell me I'm being —" You sob. it's messy, so messy and that pain in your chest only grows, spreading across like blooming rot. " — that I'm being difficult." You spit. "After all this, I'm allowed to. You're both insane, you fucks, I — "

Kafka presses a thumb over your lips. You bite, hard.

"Listen to me." She keeps talking. She won't stop. "Stop crying."

You stop crying. Your mind is empty white and fuzzy static stretching out like elastic. You feel her laughter against you. "Good girl." She praises. "Now, go on along with Bladie, okay? He'll do a good job looking after you."

You claw at the walls, trying to protest as your body lifts, padding out back, trapped within the long winding of corridors that didn't quite look like that once. "Kafka." you hear Blade echo again, his hands resting heavy on your shoulders. It sounds exasperated? Why? You're fine. You think you're fine. You see a magenta blur flutter around you and words spatter apart and stitch back together into nonsense and noise.

Blade takes you by the arm. You're half leaning against him, the soft, shaky breaths against his ribs and his heartbeat ( it's a slow, faint sound ). He seems to linger in place, letting you be as your nose screws against the smell of blood spotting his clothes. Then, he's leading you along the less crowded roads, shuffling past the harsh blaze of streetlights. Vaguely, you remember where this route takes you and you try to join the pieces — the memories feel so far, far away.

The mass tucked under Blade's arm moves. You look the man straight in the eye and do nothing. Your mind, your ribs are barren spaces.

You smell salt, hear the sea, the waves, the wind. The man in his arms struggles ( you're not here ). You see the panic stretched across, the way he pales to what looks like ash grey ( you're not here ). You watch Blade turn your face away, annoyance sparking in his eyes ( you're not here ). You look on anyway, as his fingers claw at his throat, so easily tearing apart soft flesh and tendon and muscle till his hands are stained warm red ( you're not here ). You're lain bare to those death throes, a wheezing from a broken windpipe, the yellow of subcutaneous fat and the ruptured arteries ( you're not here ).

"You should have looked away."

Blade's voice pulls you out. You finally breathe. Take it all in again as the cotton and the fuzz and the silk web is untangled from your notches. The man falls to the sand, nothing more than dead weight at this point.

( This could be you. )

You take a good, long look at him, at that tear stricken, marred face, that distended jaw and the awful angle to his limbs. The sand is already soaking up beneath him — he was alive once. You didn't know this person, you'd never met him and…

( You let him die. You're a doctor and you let him die. )

Blade's brow furrows when you take a shaky step back, two clear words; 'do not'. You look around you, spot one clear rout of escape amidst that hopeless need to collapse, the world spinning faster and faster and fraying and burning away at the far extremities. You try to run.

He doesn't lie when he says it's easy to catch you again.

You're drawn close, your back practically colliding against his chest before you could make it too far. That rabid, scrambling beast in your snarls and you sink your teeth into his wrist, kicking wildly till your foot connects with his shin. Blade grunts, and you slip away just a little, an inch, one more. But he's bigger, bigger and stronger and it takes a moment for you to fall to the floor, swiping into the buzz and feeling his heaving chest pressed against yours.

His hold closes round your throat. "No — " You burst out,. "No, no don't — "

Blade doesn't move as much against your kicks, face drawn to stony apathy while you try to pry his fingers away, vision blurring against tears and snot. His thumb presses down against your thyroid, breaths unevenly paced to an animalistic rhythm. He doesn't seem all there with how he seems so steeped in madness and…

…fuck it, you're terrified.

Your hand gropes to the side, closing round the uneven surface of a stone. You drive it into the side of Blade's skull, a faint crack ringing out. He falters, wide eyed as one hand presses against the wound and comes away wet. You take a gasping breath in, pushing yourself up but Blade drives you down hard, down to your back till it hits something soft, and still and dead —

( No no no nono no no no NO NO. )

The vermilion of his gaze burns you ( just like all those nights ago ).

It's already started to heal, collapsed parts of his skull scraping and pushing itself back out, repairing damaged bone and muscle. And Blade looks half drunk, sunken into rapture and starvation, his hand sliding up from your throat to press at your cheeks. You freeze, ceasing your assault to his chest and stomach.

He curls over your form, shrugging and swatting away your hands to pin you down proper. There is a wet squelch against your arm pressing against that open wound. "Stop…" You whine, trying to tug him back. "Blade. Blade stop — "

He presses his lips to yours. You slam your fist into his sternum, tasting his blood in his mouth. His teeth come next, biting against your bottom lip, taking, taking, taking. It feels infecting, like a disease, like something that shouldn't be there and you squirm. Blade's fingers tangle into your hair, giving it a sharp tug. You feel your back press against the corpse's shoulder, practically crushing you against it.

He's not gentle. Blade can't be gentle with the violence that comes with him. It's too deeply embedded into the crevices of his bone and marrow and in his veins and blood. It's the oxygen he breathes in, the lead that poisons his alveoli and files away at the pliable parts of his abdomen.

His tongue peeks through, pushing past your lips to take a taste. There's that heady taste in you, disgusting, curling in your guts and just about threatening to batter out. You kick him again.

His eyes flash, dyed more red than orange. He comes away with spit and blood smeared across his lips. You heave, staring up at him, then break down, sobbing openly. Blade keeps you still, bending down to kiss you another time, just at the corner of your lips.

"Enough." You beg him, sounding small. You feel defeated, the load wearing down the bones of your shoulder till you're crushed and collapse. "Please."

Blade blinks. He sits up and sits you up with him, nestled between his legs. You look behind you, the man's larynx having come turn free from your struggle, hanging out a hairs breath and cushioned by fat and crushed muscle fibres. You croak, tipping your weight over and emptying your stomach out onto the beach; till all you are retching out is acid and bile. He pulls your hair back, halting your mess from getting caught in it.

"Done?" he asks, drawing you back close to him, his gaze lidded. You shut your eyes.

"I want to go back home." you whisper.

"Alright." Blade promises you, putting you back down on the sand. "Don't move." You don't think you can. Your limbs weight down more and more with the passing minute. Blade drags the body out into the ocean, for a moment, disappearing beneath the surface. He returns, of course. He can't drown, or die ( He's not human, never will be ). "Come." he tells you.

You allow it, him gathering you in his arms. You don't make a fuss, or shout. "Keys." he reminds you. You hand them to him, leaning your head into his shoulder. Your tears prickle beneath your eyelids.

He takes you back home.

You don't know how he'd avoided the security guard's questioning, or the neighbours, But Blade sets you down on the little stool, pulling the bucket beneath the tap to let the hot water run. You draw your legs to your chest, thoughts collapsing into each other, fracturing and splintering as your trembling grows worse. All you can think of is gargling till the taste of blood is gone and the memory of that kiss is gone.

Blade fixes his attention on you. "You need to bathe." He says, taking a knee. You're exhausted, too exhausted to protest, trembling when he pulls away at your jacket and your pants, letting it pile up by the door.

"I can do it myself." You mumble. You question the necessity of it. He won't listen, after all.

He unhooks your bra and tugs down your underwear. "You're tired." He states. "Your attempts will not be as effective."

"Does that matter?"

Blade hums. "Kafka mentioned the need for hygiene. You could fall sick. Besides, you are a doctor." Not anymore, you nearly snap. He moves on to himself next, unbuttoning his jacket. "Detergent?" he asks when you squeeze your eyes shut and refuse to see any more. The sound of his belt buckle is next and his trousers being pulled down.

"Cabinet under the kitchen sink." you mutter. Blade steps out and you lean up against the bucket, watching the water steadily fill till it reaches your fingertips. You hear the beeping from the washing machine and Blade's returning footsteps. He settles behind you

"Turn around."

You turn. You do not look down.

He spends a moment regarding you, then empties a pitcher-full of water over your head. It's warm enough and you let your eyes slip shut as he works on scrubbing away the blood and sweat from your hair. That rotten thing curls in your belly, ringing round like a centipede crawling.

Blade's thumb wipes away the smudge on your cheek with sandalwood soap and he tips his chin up. "Don't fall asleep yet."

"Okay." you passively reply, opening your eyes. he hums and continues to wash you, treating your body with clinical indifference. You don't know what's worse, the hunger or the distance. The act of being viewed as anything but human leaves a sour taste in your mouth. "What about you?" You ask, filling the empty space. You don't want to think about tonight. You don't want to think at all.

Blade hums. "You can help." He shrugs right after. "We will be done sooner at least."

"Okay." You echo, reaching for the soap. You come to realise that he does need the help. Pulling the bandages off of him was a hard enough task. They were messily strewn on, almost cutting away his blood flow and he sweeps it aside. His wrists and his forearms are next. You don't undo the one on his thigh, furiously washing the dried fluids off of him.

What are you doing?

A part of you laughs at the obscene humour. A few hours ago, you'd have dropped dead at the very idea of doing this, if the hopelessness wasn't torn away from you the reins and left you on the backseat of a crashing car.

"You can…turn around."

Blade grunts and turns. you spurt too much shampoo into your hands. Some of it spills over. "You're scared." He says.

"I am."

He bends down a bit. It's easier to reach his head this way. "You should be. You should have killed me." He states, severity weighing his words.

Your shoulders slump, fatigued. "Please. Just stop." Your voice dips into a whisper. "Just stop. I want to rest, alright?" Blade falls silent, knitting his brow together. He nods wordlessly as you rake your fingers through his hair, undoing some of the knot building up against the shampoo suds.

( Blade thinks you're still too gentle with him, in how you trace one of his scars. But he feels the shudder, the roiling beat under your skin, the fear. He sees how easy it is to bring the tears out again and turn that mind of yours off.

He turns a little, pressing his fingertips to the softness of your thigh, just in case you try to run again. )

When you're both done, he has you swaddled in your blankets and deposited on your bed, clothes in tow. It's horrible, this tenderness. You don't think he's used to it either, in how he shuffles and cautiously pads at your arm like you're a fragile little thing, like he wasn't the one who took the mallet to it in the first place.

"Will you hurt me?" You ask, dead eyed.

Blade's lips part ( sometimes he does, when the mara blooms forth florets in his chest and stomach and he wants to break something that breathes beneath his hands ). "Will you run?" he asks.

"If I do, will you hurt me?"

"Yes." he replies bluntly, his hand resting on your calves. You know what that means. You squeeze your eyes shut and nod, laying down on the bed and curling up into yourself.

"You're a monster." you tell him with a shaky, illegible slur. All this for a preordained destiny, for convenience, because you're a coward. All this and you'll be left with nothing tomorrow. You think of your clinic and what you'd salvaged before opening it. It's foundations and the grey walls of the empty rooms it once had. Your heart poured into it all. "Both you and her."

Blade lowers his head. "We know."

IX. DISJOINTING

You did not sleep at all, last night. Blade still stalks the hallways at the unearthly hours you wake at ( five thirty on the dot ). A man is dead, a man you barely know, whose body now below the ocean's surface. Maybe the sharks ate him. And your clinic…you curse it all, and you curse that compulsion that has you reaching for your phone.

It doesn't take long to find it after browsing the local news network. A few live footage of the collapsed interior and the busted furniture. Years of work torn apart ( At least Aleena quit. At least she doesn't have to see this ).

"Do you know why they did this?" you ask, your voice scratchy when Blade comes to linger by your door frame. He'd washed his clothes last night, having pulled his trousers back on with a loose fitted tank top. Kafka must have dropped by.

Blade looks away.

"You know." You spit out, fury bubbling up, clouding your eyes, painting it all red. "You know, don't you? Look me in the eye and tell me you do, you little — "

"The man." Blade cuts in. "The man who hurt you."

You grip the sheets. "What did you do?" you whisper, numbness taking foot and taking away more and more reasoning.

"I killed him." he passes you a sharp look. "Letting him live would have put both of us at risk."

You let out a mirthless laugh. "So it's your fault then. You…you come in and just assume I would be fine with you just…" You laugh. You laugh and laugh and laugh till your ribs hurt and your sides ache because it was so unnecessary, all of this. He must be sick in the head, him and Kafka, to twist apart your livelihood and step all over it. Monsters, the lot of them. Monsters.

"Oh god you're a fucking riot. Now what should I do? I have no job…should I go back? Maybe you could get a kick out of me being sold off again, right?" You flash him a bright little smile, mania at it's finest, and anger. So, so much anger it boils your body alive.

He narrows his eyes. "You will not be leaving. They'll come after you next."

You giggle. "Of course they would." You whisper. "Of-fucking course they would. Then I'll just die. Let my father douse my ashes, if there's even a body to cremate because that just seems the best way to go." You lay back down, tugging at your hair with frustration. The mattress dips as he lays next to you, lips drawn against your nape.

It's possessive, demanding of every little thing and every little part you had to offer.

"I won't be leaving." You snarl, feeling all that spite gather. "I can't because of you. remember?"

"I know."

You press your cheek against your pillow. You're tired again. You want to sleep. "You may as well just kill me at this point." You state flatly. "There isn't much use keeping me alive. I've served my purpose right? What was it, some glorified shield?"

His grip on you constricts. You're pulled closer to his chest. "You will not die." He tells you, his nose pressing up against your neck. Blade inhales, tangling his fingers into your hair. "And I won't kill you."

You bare your teeth at him. Then you stop, and press your face to the pillow again. "Enough." you tell him, feeling angry and tired and empty and more. You try to push Blade off of you, the small of your back brushing against him. Blade lets out a hiss, nails digging into your forearm and you freeze.

He's pressed up, half hard against you.

You throw yourself away from him.

Your eye sockets burn as you flinch and struggle. "Stop." He rasps his order, pressing you stomach down against the mattress as you curl over the edge, letting out a panicked whimper, a migraine searing through your forehead. It turns into an ugly sob, into cries that bleed into the sheets, tracking saliva down as you're dragged back.

His weight bears down hard on your back, his mane curtaining your line of sight. You try to elbow him off and he wrestles your hands down, pinning them behind you. He's panting, letting out a stray growl every now and then. The edge of his nails dig a little deeper into your wrists, just as the other hand fixes itself firmly against your thigh.

You shake. You don't try to hide the glassy eyed look. You only shake.

Blade's annoyances seem to mount, his forehead pressing against your temple. ( Appease her, Kafka's voice whispers to his ear. Blade feels too much of you beneath his palm, and it stokes a selfish hunger that comes down violently ).

He trails his hand upwards. You lay slack, surrendering to it with a tense form. It tugs your nightwear down, spreads your legs a little more. You cry a little, then give up on it, his fingers exploring the softness of your thighs and slipping to the inside. He lets your hands go and you come to grasp at the pillows, nipping down at your bottom lip.

"Blade…?" You whisper, unsure.

He traces the seam of your cunt, dipping a finger inside to toy at your clit and you squeak, grabbing his arm. "H-hold on that's — "

Blade turns you over, draping your legs on either side of his hips. You look at him, pupils shrunken down at the sight of him surveying you, his lips pressing over the curve of your knee, then further down. You squirm beneath him, movements stilled by a firm hand on your belly. Blade bites hard, tearing into the skin of your thigh, breaking capillaries and drawing blood.

He pulls away to witness the bruising and the wet wail you shudder out, soothing you with his tongue brushing over the wound like a dog. You slam your foot against his shoulder. Blade simply grabs it and hoists it above his shoulder.

"Let me…" he mumbles, groaning up against your skin, spacing your thighs apart some more. You're squirming, and he roughly pulls you closer. "Stay still."

You can't, you want to say. You can't when he's touching you like that and —

He stills. "You haven't done this before, have you?" he guesses. You want to sink, sink down into a place that was far away from here. Blade's eyes are unnaturally bright, burning like coals against the dim lighting.

"Shut up and get this over with." You rasp. There's nothing here, nothing between the two of you. Maybe a few sick feelings from his side. You want it to be done with and let the maggots eat away at your body after ( if that makes it easier for him in the end ). Blade huffs, vague amusement flitting past his expression. His cheek is smushed against your thigh.

"Your first…" he mumbles, a vague story playing out in his eyes. Your legs are pushed back, and he sits himself down before you, teeth grazing through soft flesh till he latches his mouth to your cunt and presses the expanse of his tongue over your bundle of nerves. You mewl into it, jolting under his touch as his hands come to massage circles at your hips.

You stay steadfastly quiet after that, as the assault continues and he licks a strip up your slit while gauging every little shift and twitch on your face. You could have fooled anyone else with the forced apathy, fooled Blade with you looking at anything but him. He suckles at your clit, rolling it over the tip of his tongue and you twitch, bucking your hips into the grind.

Blade demands. He demands and keeps demanding, eating you out half starved and at a pace you couldn't keep up with; feeling that appendage slip into you at some point of it all. You moan ( this doesn't feel good. It shouldn't. How fucking pathetic are you?! ) trembling at all the new feelings blurring out your mind.

You tell yourself to take it. Take it and let him leave you be after that taste of satisfaction. Blade nuzzles into your cunt, smearing your building slick against your outer lips till smelted orange meets the fatigue in yours.

"You're being stubborn." he comments, pulling away for a moment. You grit your teeth, open your mouth to snap back. Blade dips down then, a finger slipping into you, massaging your insides and pacing himself with more gentleness than you'd expected. Gasping and grasping at the sheets, your narrowed gaze fixates on his, fuming, fuming.

You push his face away when he leans in close and he persists, teeth latching over your neck, licking a delicate strip up the column of it. His chest seems to vibrate — it's not a purr. It rattles at you, it's unnatural.

"Make it quick then!" you sob. "Please."

His finger curls inside you and you curl your toes into the sheets, keening into his hair. You hate this. You hate this. There is a warmth in your insides that stirs and seeps through the cracks. Blade seems to notice and takes it in with a hunger that terrifies you. He presses his pads against that sweet spot, a thumb returning to your clit. You whine, shake your head.

"Good?" he asks. It feels like a taunt.

"Shut up." you grimace, rocking your hips in pace with him. It's little jolts of that buttery feeling that has your mind sink further and farther away. Blade kisses your neck, grinding up against your ass through it all. It's awful. It's all wrong, this facade of gentleness.

You mumble, grinding at his hand as another finger is added and he stretches you out a little, testing your limits with rapture. That heat grows, grows, grows bit by bit, tuned to the way his finger curls into that spot. A moan spills out, then another and you spa a hand over your mouthy, shaking your head. You want it to stop. You want this to stop now and —

Blade's digits nudge against your cervix and he bears down on your clit hard.

It snaps, that warmth. You tighten round his gingers, clenching, sucking him in deeper and his lips part as he watches you fall apart with a jumble of words and begging. You fall back into the sheets as he pulls his hand away, laving at your mess while he undoes the buttons of your shirt. It spares a peak of the sweet of your breasts, the soft expanse of your stomach. He's seen it before. There's nothing new to it.

He bites again, not as deep this time as he pulls his pants down. You spare a glance, snapping out of the afterglow when you catch sight of him. "That won't fit." You whisper.

Blade shudders, his cock resting at your stomach. It's hot, an angry res that makes you feel uneasy. You half expect pain when he slides down to breach you entrance, you expect tears and you expect it with hunched shoulders. Blade is slow instead, thoughtful, almost. He keeps his progress slow, watching you wince against the stretch before he thrusts in deeper, finally nudging his tip to your cervix and staying there a moment.

Somewhere between all that, his hand finds yours, pressing down at your palm in awkward assurance.

You can't take it.

"What are you doing?!" you demand, whining against how full you felt. It's strange, so strange and you think you see the mad ramblings from friends and gossip over how good sex felt sometimes. But this is Blade. Blade, with his violence and his slashed wrists and the way he stank of death.

Blade pushes some of his weight on you. "It's your first time." he replies.

Your first time. A rare consideration. An emotion that bud out too late for your tastes. "Why should you care then?!" You snap, grabbing his tank top. "For fucks sake, stop treating me like I'm your lover! I'm not! You're not doing this to me because you have feelings do you?!"

The question was wholly rhetorical. It's a harsh accusation, mounted by everything else he'd done wrong. Blade falls silent, eyes wide. You leer up at him, then chortle with disbelief. "Oh god, you are." You choke out, feeling violated in a way. Feeling more violated than you were already. Blade keeps staring at you as you cover your face, cackling. "Oh god, oh god this is just unbelievable! You like me? Me?!"

You feel venom drip into your words. You feel that ache, the urge to tear his eyes out then and there. Boys will be boys. The words keep echoing through and it makes you physically ill to think of it.

"You're pathetic. You're absolutely fucking pathetic!" you cut through, grabbing his hair and pulling at it. Blade grunts, annoyed. You don't care, ripping at his face, his neck, his shoulders. "Fuck! Fuck you! After all this bullshit, fuck you!" Blade hisses, trying to shift a bit, move some more but you kick out at his thigh.

"Do not." he grits out, his voice low and angry. "Your anger is an inconsequential thing. I've seen far worse."

"You think I want your guilt, you ass?!" you demand. "You think I want you begging and grovelling for forgiveness?!" Blade thrusts. You dig down, fight against it and the sweet burn it brings. You feel that storm brew in your chest and you spit at him, jarring Blade enough with wide eyed shock ( it's a satisfying thing to see ) to slam your weight into him and roll the two of you over, your hands grabbing at his throat.

He nudges deeper into you and you cry out, feeling his tip coax into your g-spot. Still, you hold on.

Blade still watches, gauging the sudden shift, waiting to see you move. When you take a moment to gain your bearings, he grasps at your hips, guiding you down his cock and you almost falter, feeling his free hand tweak your nipples. sputtering a little, you persist, your thumbs coming to press against his Adam's apple.

Blade lets out a gasp, snapping his hips up again, drawing himself out then back into you. You feel him grind against those sensitive spaces he'd gauged out earlier and a few flustered cries sputter out before your grip tightens round your neck.

He sets his speed, increasing that pace to a faster rhythm, grasping at what parts he could, letting you take from him for a moment. You double over, teeth tearing into his cheek. "I despise you." You tell him. "I hate you for taking everything away from me. I hate you for ruining my life." You pour it all in, all the vitriol and the fury. Blade's eyes shut.

"I know." he grunts, feeling you clench down on his cock.

"I wish you'd stayed dead." You add, feeling it all pile up into a raw mass that eats you alive. "Do you hear me?"

"I know." He repeats.

"I hate you." You sob out, your tears splattering against his jaw. Your thumb presses down harder. Blade moans, his tempo increasing and catching you in it's midst, hitting your sweet spot over and over till it tumbles through to make a mess between the two of you, the baggage and the tucked away harshness. "You're pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic."

It feels so fuzzy, the heat, the faint warmth from Blade, blocking out his airflow. His movements grow frantic, almost, his grip on you bruising your hips till finally, you find you release again, legs weakening below you. Still, you hold fast, dragging yourself over the expanse of his body as he keeps up with thrusting faster and faster to a brink of near over-stimulation, all of it animalistic grunts and grows and teeth nudging at your chest.

You press down hard enough and Blade finally cums, his release coming in spurts inside of you. The cartilages in his larynx give out and you feel tissue collapse into itself ( just like that man on the beach with his throat torn out, poetic in a gruesome sense ). You watch him struggle to breath and you push down harder, hysteria bursting as you bare your teeth and drive him closer to another death.

Blade goes still below you. He's cold as a corpse.

You sway a bit, lifting yourself off of his cock, falling into a haze of cotton wool and sick satisfaction, tipping into the space next to him. He's dead. He's dead.

You shut your eyes, and you feel nothing.

You have better to do now, the unsaid and the undone. The empty buzz of pleasure slowly recedes and you grasp your phone between your hands, tapping at the message app. You let out a soft cry, shoulders shaking. There was a life once that felt far too distant. Where you'd been tugged away and folded into silk and gold till you were shackled down and told to stay quiet.

( There are many things you want to tell them. Many angry things, many quiet, introspective things. Many with a little more love lining your words, a little more longing. They still wait for you, even after shutting their doors. You know this too. )

So, you start to type.

Dear Appa…

Blade wakes when the sunlight filters in, and his arm winds round you in the silence, listening to the rustle down below and the coming commotion. Then, he rises, buttoning his pants up proper and drawing the blanket over your head. "Stay here." he tells you.

You listen to the angry voices and the encroaching footsteps from the staircase outside. Blade summons his sword, stalking out of the room, dog-like, wolf-like, his violence returned to him after briefly being cowed by your venom.

The doorbell rings ( you know who it is, through the ringing metal and the acrid voices ) and you draw into yourself.

You are not here. You tell yourself. You close your eyes and open them back up, petrichor seeping through and your feet sunk into damp soil. You let yourself stay there, in the garden in front of your childhood home, away from torn flesh and the building agony.

You are not here.

📼 — AUTHORS NOTES + ETYMYOLOGIES //

MANY MANY THANKS TO MOTH FOR BETA READING THIS.

this fic was something that took me months to write ( and honestly it shows with the mess and the rush XD ). either way, tda does touch on a few cultural topics and reflects on some of the good old desi trauma when it comes to the arranged marriage scape, something i wish i could have explored more in depth. but with a fic nearly hitting 20k and my own set deadlines...perhaps another time. so here are some of the stuff i mentioned that were picked straight off of my own experiences :

the newspaper adverts listing out bride and groom details amongst other stuff is a pretty common sight here. within my own personal experiences, arranged marriages are a gamble to say the least, considering i only knew two within my immediate sphere that worked out pretty well. add in the stigma surrounding divorce and hooooo boi.

needless to say, there is a lot of shit to unpack with arranged marriage culture ( specifically down in the south where a lot of women and men are given the illusion of 'control' but are still heavily pressured into it ). it's not as overt or obvious to be fair, nor as deeply touched upon.

there's also the weird dynamics within our families where children cannot wholly cut themselves free from their familial unit, disownment and distancing aside. due to how community takes center stage here, family plays a pretty heavy handed role when we're raised. this is mostly due to assumptions of familial disownment being tied into 'questionable behaviour' in a sense. one of my friends was turned away during job hunting solely because some employers were unnecessarily quick to judge.

add in the sheer dependancy you grow into and how tight social circles tend to be and hoooooo b o i. ( you're dead if you live in a small town ).

the reader here does exist within these two spheres, half pressured into arrangements and a duty to be a 'good daughter' by proving financial stability. the clinic isn't just a ways of keeping her away from her family and the matrimonial expectations they have on her ( and trust me, it's not just the parents ) but also her own little act of rebellion by showing them that she can manage just fine.

some of the stuff are more in line with my own community's practices. the agelu is a feast laid out to pay respects to ancestral ghosts. cha is our way of saying 'chai' within my language.

blade in this fic was also initially supposed to be very unhinged. maybe a little more out there with far darker scenes. there was an instance where the reader was actually married prior but had a difficult relationship with her husband. the divorce was what incited the disownment.

she was also a liiitttlle more involved with the stellaron hunter's plans, but i thought the sheer disconnect and the painting of the hunters in this shadowed, unclear light made more sense XD. that and how i was sadistic enough to write a whole scene depicting aleena's marriage and a few unsaoury aftermaths.

anyway, thank you for taking the time to read tda!!! this fic took a WHILE to write out given my busy schedule so i appreciate it so very much!!!

TAGLIST ノ join the taglist. — @silentmoths @meimeimeirin @sleepynoons @vourfrede @endursent.

@jessamine-rose @ofoceansandtombsanew @chiyoso @4acoffee.

#📼 — entries.#blade x reader #hsr blade x reader #hsr blade #blade #x reader #reader insert #honkai star rail #honkai star rail x reader #yandere blade x reader #yandere blade #tw. yandere #tw. dead dove #tw. dark content

240 notes · View notes