Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction ❯ Sweet Vanilla ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: motionblur 
Anime/Manga: Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction | Genre(s): / Psychological / Drama / Angst | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 08.07.2002 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.2K | Visits: 475 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction | Genre(s): / Psychological / Drama / Angst | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 08.07.2002 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.2K | Visits: 475 | Status: Completed
SWEET VANILLA
[1]
I rolled out of bed with a jawcracking yawn. The light of early dawn bled through my eyelids too insistently to ignore, and as I stretched, aches I wasn't aware I had made themselves known. I winced. My right side really *hurt*.
My heart sank as I remembered why. Barefoot, I padded out of my room and down the narrow hallway to the bathroom. Yeah, I remembered. Mother again. Tears running down her cheeks, the tears that broke my heart to see as she shouted her hatred at the top of her lungs. I'd cried my own fair bit as I struggled to get free of her iron grip. Jien had heard me screaming and pried her away from me. As usual.
I pushed the door to the bathroom open lightly. It creaked, this low sound like a little kid trying to stifle a burp and not quite succeeding, and I cringed. If I woke Mother up, I was doomed. Hurriedly I slipped inside the room and shut the door behind me.
The bathroom looked like crap, if that wasn't too appropriate a comparison. The cracks in the plaster walls were getting out of hand, the bathtub was a sickly yellow, and several spiders had made their homes in the dirt-encrusted corners of the room. The tiles were slightly sticky. Pale pink light drifted through the dirty glazed window.
Maybe I'd clean it today. Jien'd already told me apologetically that he'd be out in the village working, and Mother was, well, indisposed. Logically I knew that volunteering to tidy things up wouldn't make a damn bit of difference to her, but I kept trying, hoping. I couldn't stop hoping.
I reached out and turned the cold water knob in the sink. Clear, sparkling water dripped out of the rusty faucet. At least not everything here was dirty. The stream outside where we drew this water was pristine.
I splashed the cold water over my face, trying to avoid looking at myself in the mirror. Mother was right when she called me hideous. Crimson eyes and hair, mark of the half-breed, the forbidden child. I hated looking at my reflection. That face had caused my mother too much pain. Maybe I looked too much like my father. I wouldn't know. Mother didn't have any pictures of him and she certainly wouldn't have shown them to me, even if she had them.
I grabbed my "towel," a former dishrag, and wiped my face dry. My long hair got in my eyes, and I scowled as much as it's possible to scowl while vigorously rubbing one's face dry. I'd have loved nothing more than to cut the whole mop off completely, shave my head bald, but Jien had looked appalled when I confided this.
"Your hair is beautiful," Jien had told me firmly.
"Mother doesn't think so." I'd been glum that night.
"Mother can't look past *what* you are to see *who* you are. Shave that gorgeous hair of yours off and I will personally dump you in a Gojyo-sized bucket of plaster."
I had to smile at the memory. Jien got so creative with his threats.
I hung my "towel" neatly on the little wooden bar. Maybe I'd go help him at work today or something. I was, as he'd commented, awfully strong for a little punk. He predicted I'd grow into that strength some day. Me, I wasn't so sure. Some days it felt like I was destined to be scrawny for all eternity. I could fight back all I wanted, but I was too small and useless to make a difference.
---
I ate my breakfast as quietly as I could. Mother had actually gotten up to make breakfast for me, though she'd ignored my bright, hopeful chirp of "Good morning, Mother!" She'd merely slapped some mushy scrambled eggs and charred toast at me. This was definitely an improvement over being shouted at to die, though, and the best I'd gotten out of her in months.
"Where's Jien?" she growled suddenly, her back still to me as she washed last night's dirty dishes.
I nearly had heart failure. I didn't expect her to actually *talk* to me. "He's working in the village, Mom."
She grunted. Silence stretched between us like a strained rubber band. I looked down at my plate. The sunlight turned the mushy goop into something molten, golden. For a moment I had a flash of bright gold eyes, fierce and laughing.
I blinked and the brief vision was gone. What had I been thinking about? Damnit, I hated it when I lost my train of thought.
"The bathroom needs cleaning," Mother rasped, startling me.
"I'll clean it," I volunteered as soon as I determined that she was indeed talking to me and not the air. She did that sometimes.
Another pause. "The parlor is a mess."
From last night. I swallowed. "I'll clean it, Mom --"
She stilled suddenly. I could see that dangerous stillness settle over her body.
She turned, and she smiled at me.
It wasn't the loving, grateful smile she gave Jien. No. This smile was just for me, this trembling smile on the knife-edge of sanity, torn with bitterness and hate and dripping with old memories. I felt like a cloak had been thrown over my head and drawn tightly, too tightly for me to breathe. I was acutely aware that Jien wasn't here.
"I'm sorry," I cried out automatically. My voice sounded sharp and high in the air, a startled flutelike sound as she began to walk towards me. I pushed my chair back, feeling tremors run the length of my body. It was too early for this. I was still sleepy. I was still sore. I was --
"Sorry?" The word sounded torn from her throat and her lips twitched, the smile flickering madly. Her lips split open in a scream: "You're *sorry*?"
"Mother, please!" I shot out of my chair and looked around wildly. I couldn't leave the room. She'd only come after me with greater rage. She'd broken my bones before. She'd gone for my neck before.
She slammed the table out of her way with one arm still hard with muscle. The terrible crashing noise, the way the birds suddenly fell quiet, frightened tears out of me. I ignored the tears and concentrated on trying to disappear into the wall opposite her. Her shadow engulfed me as she moved closer.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of the scrambled eggs, a mess of gold with shards of the plate stuck in it.
"You can never be sorry enough," she choked out. She began to cry. She still had a pan in her hand, I suddenly realized. The pan still dripped with soap. She'd been in the middle of washing it.
"Mother, please, I'll do anything!" My chest felt painfully tight. To hell with being tough, I was terrified for my life. I drew in a deep breath and exhaled in a sob, then I threw my arms up over my head just as she swung at me with the heavy pan. The pan collided with my right forearm and I shouted in agony, feeling last night's bruises throb with renewed pain.
She grabbed my hair as I tried to move away from another strike and beat me with the pan, weeping. I didn't understand why she wept, why she had to hurt me. I didn't think I ever would. I struggled to protect my head. "If you'll do anything, turn back time for me, you dirty brat," she wept. "Die for me. Make it so you were never *born*! DIE!"
"Mother, stop!" I shrieked. My right arm had taken all the punishment it was going to. I felt something inside it break. Ohfuckingshit. "Mother! Please!"
"Today was the day your father brought you here," she sobbed, hiccupping. The pan slid out of her grip, her face ravaged with pain. "He brought the product of his love affair into my home without any *shame*, he told me to take care of you, take care, the baby's new, he said, and he was crying because his human bitch had died. And you looked up at me with your wretched crimson eyes and I hated you, you terrible filthy child, I hate you!" Her voice cracked with passion. "I wish you were dead!"
I cradled my broken arm carefully. The room was spinning in and out of reality, the edges of my vision going black. Abruptly she took hold of my chin and jerked it up with damp hands, her claws pressing painfully into my skin. The blackness receded as I stared straight into the eyes of the only person I could call Mother, and the hate in those eyes was too much for me to bear. I dropped my gaze as she spat, "Today's the day you were born, Gojyo. You're eleven years old." She laughed, a harsh sound, as the tears glittered on her face. "Happy birthday, you hateful, miserable child." She slapped me without holding back, and my cheek smashed against the wall. My ears rang. "I said Happy Birthday!" she screamed.
"Thank you, Mother," I whispered, my voice shaking.
She let go of my face as though it burned her. "Clean up this mess," she hissed as she stumbled out of the room, the intensity of her passion leaving her shaken.
"I would have cleaned it anyway," I told the empty air. Now that she wasn't here, I started crying in earnest. There was so much inside me, I didn't know how to handle it all. I just cried, quietly so she wouldn't come back and hurt me anymore. "I love you, Mother," I choked out to the deathly silent kitchen, and wiped the tears from my eyes with my good hand. Then I did my best to clean up the kitchen, one-handed.
-----
I left the house as soon as I finished cleaning the kitchen. Mother's house wasn't too far away from the village, and I arrived in a short time, even though I was walking extra-slowly to jar my arm as little as possible.
Usually I liked hanging around at the village. For one thing, Mother wasn't in it. (Counting that among the village's merits made me feel guilty, but I couldn't help it.) For another, Jien usually was. I always felt like the villagers were staring at me, but Jien had scoffed at me when I said so and told me I was just imagining it. Evidently, though I'd never seen one, some humans had red hair, too. His friend Raiden had made a face and said the color was more a coppery orange than red, and Jien gave him a dirty look. I asked about red eyes, and the dirty look turned to me.
Jien worked as brawn for a local business, but I couldn't remember which. I stopped in the middle of a flow of people, feeling heat rush to my face. I had no idea where he was. Plus I felt like people were staring at me, at my long red hair. People always stared. I really hated my hair.
Belatedly I remembered that I was also bruised and cut up, and that at least some people were probably staring at me because of that, not my hair. It didn't make me feel any less self-conscious, and I started moving again.
As I walked, cradling my arm and trying not to show how much it was hurting with every step, I glanced at the people around me. Little human kids with big bright eyes bounced up and down besides their parents and begged for treats, toys, colorful things. Couples walked hand-in-hand, looking gooey-eyed at each other. One teenage girl tugged on her furry dog's leash, laughing. What sort of love held them all together? The kind I couldn't get, evidently. An empty, hungry feeling came over me though I'd long since lost my appetite, and I glanced away. I felt like crying again. I fought it down.
I wanted Jien. It was overwhelming. I wanted him to patch my arm up and smile at me and call me a little punk brat. It'd all be all right for a little while if he'd just take care of me.
I scanned the villagers anxiously. Nothing. I kept walking, feeling more and more overwrought, and nearly had a heart attack when a warm hand grasped me by the shoulder and a hearty voice greeted, "Gojyo-babe!"
I whirled around, my good fist halfway to the intruder's face, before I recognized him. "Seiya?"
He tossed shaggy blue bangs out of his eyes and grinned. His fangs sparkled in the sunlight. "The one and only, kid. Whatcha doin' in the village?" His grin faded as he looked me over. "Damn, what happened to you?"
"Stuff," I evaded. I was so good at evasion. "Where's Jien?"
Seiya shrugged. "Hangin' with Tonda and Raiden back at the clearing we're working today."
My face fell. I didn't want to walk anymore, but I guessed I had no choice. "You guys are on break?"
"Yeah, half-hour."
"Can you take me to him?"
Seiya looked at me intensely. I wanted to wriggle under his considering brown stare, but it was no use jolting my arm any further. "Yeah, sure, kid. My pleasure."
[1]
I rolled out of bed with a jawcracking yawn. The light of early dawn bled through my eyelids too insistently to ignore, and as I stretched, aches I wasn't aware I had made themselves known. I winced. My right side really *hurt*.
My heart sank as I remembered why. Barefoot, I padded out of my room and down the narrow hallway to the bathroom. Yeah, I remembered. Mother again. Tears running down her cheeks, the tears that broke my heart to see as she shouted her hatred at the top of her lungs. I'd cried my own fair bit as I struggled to get free of her iron grip. Jien had heard me screaming and pried her away from me. As usual.
I pushed the door to the bathroom open lightly. It creaked, this low sound like a little kid trying to stifle a burp and not quite succeeding, and I cringed. If I woke Mother up, I was doomed. Hurriedly I slipped inside the room and shut the door behind me.
The bathroom looked like crap, if that wasn't too appropriate a comparison. The cracks in the plaster walls were getting out of hand, the bathtub was a sickly yellow, and several spiders had made their homes in the dirt-encrusted corners of the room. The tiles were slightly sticky. Pale pink light drifted through the dirty glazed window.
Maybe I'd clean it today. Jien'd already told me apologetically that he'd be out in the village working, and Mother was, well, indisposed. Logically I knew that volunteering to tidy things up wouldn't make a damn bit of difference to her, but I kept trying, hoping. I couldn't stop hoping.
I reached out and turned the cold water knob in the sink. Clear, sparkling water dripped out of the rusty faucet. At least not everything here was dirty. The stream outside where we drew this water was pristine.
I splashed the cold water over my face, trying to avoid looking at myself in the mirror. Mother was right when she called me hideous. Crimson eyes and hair, mark of the half-breed, the forbidden child. I hated looking at my reflection. That face had caused my mother too much pain. Maybe I looked too much like my father. I wouldn't know. Mother didn't have any pictures of him and she certainly wouldn't have shown them to me, even if she had them.
I grabbed my "towel," a former dishrag, and wiped my face dry. My long hair got in my eyes, and I scowled as much as it's possible to scowl while vigorously rubbing one's face dry. I'd have loved nothing more than to cut the whole mop off completely, shave my head bald, but Jien had looked appalled when I confided this.
"Your hair is beautiful," Jien had told me firmly.
"Mother doesn't think so." I'd been glum that night.
"Mother can't look past *what* you are to see *who* you are. Shave that gorgeous hair of yours off and I will personally dump you in a Gojyo-sized bucket of plaster."
I had to smile at the memory. Jien got so creative with his threats.
I hung my "towel" neatly on the little wooden bar. Maybe I'd go help him at work today or something. I was, as he'd commented, awfully strong for a little punk. He predicted I'd grow into that strength some day. Me, I wasn't so sure. Some days it felt like I was destined to be scrawny for all eternity. I could fight back all I wanted, but I was too small and useless to make a difference.
---
I ate my breakfast as quietly as I could. Mother had actually gotten up to make breakfast for me, though she'd ignored my bright, hopeful chirp of "Good morning, Mother!" She'd merely slapped some mushy scrambled eggs and charred toast at me. This was definitely an improvement over being shouted at to die, though, and the best I'd gotten out of her in months.
"Where's Jien?" she growled suddenly, her back still to me as she washed last night's dirty dishes.
I nearly had heart failure. I didn't expect her to actually *talk* to me. "He's working in the village, Mom."
She grunted. Silence stretched between us like a strained rubber band. I looked down at my plate. The sunlight turned the mushy goop into something molten, golden. For a moment I had a flash of bright gold eyes, fierce and laughing.
I blinked and the brief vision was gone. What had I been thinking about? Damnit, I hated it when I lost my train of thought.
"The bathroom needs cleaning," Mother rasped, startling me.
"I'll clean it," I volunteered as soon as I determined that she was indeed talking to me and not the air. She did that sometimes.
Another pause. "The parlor is a mess."
From last night. I swallowed. "I'll clean it, Mom --"
She stilled suddenly. I could see that dangerous stillness settle over her body.
She turned, and she smiled at me.
It wasn't the loving, grateful smile she gave Jien. No. This smile was just for me, this trembling smile on the knife-edge of sanity, torn with bitterness and hate and dripping with old memories. I felt like a cloak had been thrown over my head and drawn tightly, too tightly for me to breathe. I was acutely aware that Jien wasn't here.
"I'm sorry," I cried out automatically. My voice sounded sharp and high in the air, a startled flutelike sound as she began to walk towards me. I pushed my chair back, feeling tremors run the length of my body. It was too early for this. I was still sleepy. I was still sore. I was --
"Sorry?" The word sounded torn from her throat and her lips twitched, the smile flickering madly. Her lips split open in a scream: "You're *sorry*?"
"Mother, please!" I shot out of my chair and looked around wildly. I couldn't leave the room. She'd only come after me with greater rage. She'd broken my bones before. She'd gone for my neck before.
She slammed the table out of her way with one arm still hard with muscle. The terrible crashing noise, the way the birds suddenly fell quiet, frightened tears out of me. I ignored the tears and concentrated on trying to disappear into the wall opposite her. Her shadow engulfed me as she moved closer.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of the scrambled eggs, a mess of gold with shards of the plate stuck in it.
"You can never be sorry enough," she choked out. She began to cry. She still had a pan in her hand, I suddenly realized. The pan still dripped with soap. She'd been in the middle of washing it.
"Mother, please, I'll do anything!" My chest felt painfully tight. To hell with being tough, I was terrified for my life. I drew in a deep breath and exhaled in a sob, then I threw my arms up over my head just as she swung at me with the heavy pan. The pan collided with my right forearm and I shouted in agony, feeling last night's bruises throb with renewed pain.
She grabbed my hair as I tried to move away from another strike and beat me with the pan, weeping. I didn't understand why she wept, why she had to hurt me. I didn't think I ever would. I struggled to protect my head. "If you'll do anything, turn back time for me, you dirty brat," she wept. "Die for me. Make it so you were never *born*! DIE!"
"Mother, stop!" I shrieked. My right arm had taken all the punishment it was going to. I felt something inside it break. Ohfuckingshit. "Mother! Please!"
"Today was the day your father brought you here," she sobbed, hiccupping. The pan slid out of her grip, her face ravaged with pain. "He brought the product of his love affair into my home without any *shame*, he told me to take care of you, take care, the baby's new, he said, and he was crying because his human bitch had died. And you looked up at me with your wretched crimson eyes and I hated you, you terrible filthy child, I hate you!" Her voice cracked with passion. "I wish you were dead!"
I cradled my broken arm carefully. The room was spinning in and out of reality, the edges of my vision going black. Abruptly she took hold of my chin and jerked it up with damp hands, her claws pressing painfully into my skin. The blackness receded as I stared straight into the eyes of the only person I could call Mother, and the hate in those eyes was too much for me to bear. I dropped my gaze as she spat, "Today's the day you were born, Gojyo. You're eleven years old." She laughed, a harsh sound, as the tears glittered on her face. "Happy birthday, you hateful, miserable child." She slapped me without holding back, and my cheek smashed against the wall. My ears rang. "I said Happy Birthday!" she screamed.
"Thank you, Mother," I whispered, my voice shaking.
She let go of my face as though it burned her. "Clean up this mess," she hissed as she stumbled out of the room, the intensity of her passion leaving her shaken.
"I would have cleaned it anyway," I told the empty air. Now that she wasn't here, I started crying in earnest. There was so much inside me, I didn't know how to handle it all. I just cried, quietly so she wouldn't come back and hurt me anymore. "I love you, Mother," I choked out to the deathly silent kitchen, and wiped the tears from my eyes with my good hand. Then I did my best to clean up the kitchen, one-handed.
-----
I left the house as soon as I finished cleaning the kitchen. Mother's house wasn't too far away from the village, and I arrived in a short time, even though I was walking extra-slowly to jar my arm as little as possible.
Usually I liked hanging around at the village. For one thing, Mother wasn't in it. (Counting that among the village's merits made me feel guilty, but I couldn't help it.) For another, Jien usually was. I always felt like the villagers were staring at me, but Jien had scoffed at me when I said so and told me I was just imagining it. Evidently, though I'd never seen one, some humans had red hair, too. His friend Raiden had made a face and said the color was more a coppery orange than red, and Jien gave him a dirty look. I asked about red eyes, and the dirty look turned to me.
Jien worked as brawn for a local business, but I couldn't remember which. I stopped in the middle of a flow of people, feeling heat rush to my face. I had no idea where he was. Plus I felt like people were staring at me, at my long red hair. People always stared. I really hated my hair.
Belatedly I remembered that I was also bruised and cut up, and that at least some people were probably staring at me because of that, not my hair. It didn't make me feel any less self-conscious, and I started moving again.
As I walked, cradling my arm and trying not to show how much it was hurting with every step, I glanced at the people around me. Little human kids with big bright eyes bounced up and down besides their parents and begged for treats, toys, colorful things. Couples walked hand-in-hand, looking gooey-eyed at each other. One teenage girl tugged on her furry dog's leash, laughing. What sort of love held them all together? The kind I couldn't get, evidently. An empty, hungry feeling came over me though I'd long since lost my appetite, and I glanced away. I felt like crying again. I fought it down.
I wanted Jien. It was overwhelming. I wanted him to patch my arm up and smile at me and call me a little punk brat. It'd all be all right for a little while if he'd just take care of me.
I scanned the villagers anxiously. Nothing. I kept walking, feeling more and more overwrought, and nearly had a heart attack when a warm hand grasped me by the shoulder and a hearty voice greeted, "Gojyo-babe!"
I whirled around, my good fist halfway to the intruder's face, before I recognized him. "Seiya?"
He tossed shaggy blue bangs out of his eyes and grinned. His fangs sparkled in the sunlight. "The one and only, kid. Whatcha doin' in the village?" His grin faded as he looked me over. "Damn, what happened to you?"
"Stuff," I evaded. I was so good at evasion. "Where's Jien?"
Seiya shrugged. "Hangin' with Tonda and Raiden back at the clearing we're working today."
My face fell. I didn't want to walk anymore, but I guessed I had no choice. "You guys are on break?"
"Yeah, half-hour."
"Can you take me to him?"
Seiya looked at me intensely. I wanted to wriggle under his considering brown stare, but it was no use jolting my arm any further. "Yeah, sure, kid. My pleasure."