Where is your God now?

[moonshadows]

“It’s cold!”

Hakuryuu chirps silently at Goku’s complaint, not quite incredulous but close.

“And it’s not even as if we’re in a cold climate.”

The silent chirp at Gojyo’s comment is almost indignant. He’s never really been to the mountains before this trip, so the possibility that a sunny morning could be so chilly is almost an insult to his more tropical nature. The thought that Hakuryuu and I are the only two comfortable with the cold lends a bit of genuine warmth to my smile. Although she’s never really been to the mountains before this, either, she is a more northern species of dragon and the brisk morning air as we drive up the mountain road is invigorating to both of us.

“Hey, Hakkai,” Goku asks, “when are we…”

The fact that we’re not three hours out from the inn we stayed at last night seems to be lost on him.

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be arriving at a town soon. We’ll see it once we’re over that hill.” It’s not until I follow my own pointing finger that I realize what I’ve said, and what it means. The lake behind us should have been a warning, but it’s been so many years that I didn’t realize I’d been here before, and now we’re-

“How did you know, Hakkai? Have you been there before?” Goku’s innocent question is like the warning shift of tightly-packed snow about to give way beneath your feet.

“Well…” I can’t think of a way to answer that without violating Right Speech, but I don’t have to because Goku doesn’t wait for one.

“Oh, I didn’t know!”

Does Sanzo know, I wonder? Will he figure it out? Will Gojyo?

Goku rattles on. “So, what kind of town is it? Do they have tasty food?”

“There’s nothing in that town,” I say reflexively, hiding my alarm because now that I know where we are, I can feel my past pulling me back towards being Gonou.

I’m not that child anymore. I answer to no authority but the iron mandate of my own heart and the vows I made to dead faces. It’s been nearly ten years since I left, an entire lifetime of experiences. I’m not that child anymore. I am not Gonou.

Of course, after having let it slip that I know there’s a town there, there’s no chance of us not going there and I keep my eyes firmly on the road, but I swear I can feel a warning look from one of my companions boring into me.

As we round the last, surprisingly sharp, bend and the town comes into view, my foot slams down on the brake. Smoke rising from multiple points. Damage to more than one building, visible even at this distance.

“Must be the work of Youkai,” Sanzo says in a neutral voice that under other circumstances, I’d be proud of.

Without discussing it, we all climb out and venture into town, wary of any danger but alert for survivors.

“This is horrible,” Gojyo mutters, while Goku asks plaintively if we’re actually going to eat here. I don’t answer, because while it is horrible what happened to the town, the cold and calculating part of my mind has asked a question I suddenly need to know the answer to, but I don’t want to explain myself either.

“I’ll be right back,” I announce, already running before the sentence is out of my mouth, my apology flung to the wind behind me. Thankfully, despite Gojyo calling my name, no footsteps follow mine.

My feet still know the way, know where to turn despite the damaged buildings no longer looking quite as I remember them. Turn right here, turn at the corner there, three blocks and…

I skid around the corner, eyes searching frantically, heart racing at the horrible hope I haven’t let myself process, but reality dashes that terrible possibility.

The orphanage is intact and untouched.

The orphanage is intact, which means it is still inhabited, which means I am at great risk of being identified and that is not something I need right now. As fast as I arrived, I turn and run back the way I came. Before I reach the place where I’d left the others, however, I discover them casually strolling down the street in my direction, and I’m not sure what expression is on my face.

Goku’s innocent question of “What’s the matter, Hakkai?” dashes any hopes that I’d managed to tuck everything away in time.

“No, it’s nothing,” I say in a semi-reassuring tone, and I can see Sanzo’s shoulders relax slightly. Whatever I’m not saying isn’t bad enough to be a concern, so he’s not going to pry. Gojyo gives me a flash of the look I get when I pull of an unexpected win at cards, then looks away. He may let it drop or he may not, but he’s not going to ask anything now and there won’t be anyone else around if or when he does ask. I’m halfway through a discreet sigh of relief when another voice calls out.

“Gonou?” asks a female voice, and adrenaline floods my veins. “You’re Gonou, aren’t you?”

Everyone turns at hearing my old name, and the speaker is a Sister who looks remarkably young under her habit. I have no idea who she is or how she knows me, but then her expression shifts to sanctimonious victory and I know her.

“You’re Shaohei,” I blurt in something that manages to not be an accusation.

She nods in satisfied confirmation. “So it really is you, Gonou!”

No. No, it’s not. Gonou is dead.

She practically demands that I come with her and chat, catching up, and the others make no arguments as she drags me off. There’s a slight smirk on Gojyo’s face and confusion on Goku’s, but Sanzo looks away as if doing his best to pretend he doesn’t see anything.

Shaohei pulls me down to sit next to her on a low wall that was much higher when we were children and we stare at the water spraying from a broken pipe in the wreckage of what used to be the public font. Across the ruined square, a handful of people loaded down with what must be as many possessions as possible move determinedly towards the road.

“Aren’t you evacuating?” I ask, because even if the orphanage is untouched by the Youkai attack, it can’t survive without the town.

“It isn’t as if I have anywhere else to go,” she says with mild accusation that I may be imagining, “and besides, I feel safer there than elsewhere.”

Of course you do. The world inside those walls conforms to your view of how things should be. It isn’t marred by petty things like harsh truth and unforgiving reality.

“But what a surprise,” I say in attempts to divert my thoughts from their dark spiral. “I never expected you to be a Sister.” Especially with how she used to go on and on about how she was going to find a man, a nice man with good looks and money, and he would be captivated by her and sweep her off her feet to a life of sterile marital bliss.

“After you left the orphanage, I left, too.”

You didn’t have a choice. You were kicked out at sixteen the same as I was, it’s just that you had a birthday so it would have been summer instead of midwinter.

“…but I ended up coming back,” she continues, as though this were a silly misadventure and not the brutal awakening I’m positive it was.

“Why?” I ask innocently, feeling as if I should feel guilty for digging like this, but it’s the same thing anyone else would  ask in this situation. The fact that I’m anticipating her discomfort is almost irrelevant.

“Because I didn’t find a nice man, maybe?” She makes it a playful accusation, the sort of insincere tone I’ve heard many women use to ‘complain’ to Gojyo as part of a routine, inviting him to offer just as insincerely to make it up to her, the same familiar steps he’s danced so many times with willing participants before taking them to bed.

The implications are…uncomfortable.

Before my thoughts can begin to unfold around that, she grins in smug victory and crows, “Just kidding! The Sisters actually asked me back. Besides, I like children.”

Of course they did, and of course you do. With their vows of chastity, they can only reproduce by training the next generation to follow in their footsteps, and children are – for the most part – easy to mold into your ideals.

“You were always good about taking care of others,” I say in perfect Right Speech, keeping my dark, seething thoughts out of my voice.

My smile is the one that says the recipient isn’t clever enough to realize that I’m damning them with faint praise, but Shaohei looks delighted.

“A smile,” she sighs happily. “You’ve changed, Gonou!”

My smile tightens. “Yes, perhaps I have.” She has no idea exactly how much I’ve changed, but I’m not about to tell her any of that.

Not yet, anyway. Later, perhaps, when it will cut the deepest and pierce her misconceptions, infecting her with the creeping realization that she can’t force the world to conform to her demands by ignoring the parts that conflict with them.

“You’re much more wonderful this way,” she declares, as if proving me right, and my head comes up in the expression of an emotion cut off so suddenly that I’m not entirely certain what it was.

I wonder if she would still think that if she knew what the metal on my left ear means.

I wonder if she would still say that if she knew what I did to get it.

I wonder if she would believe me at all, or just pretend that none of it happened.

As though reading my thoughts, her demeanor softens. She wants something.

“That is,” she says slowly, “do you remember how you used to be as a child?”

Angry and bitter, just like I was as a teenager and until Kanan came into my life.

“You were always so sullen.” The words are gently chiding, as if being abandoned by your own mother and fed transparent lies about the inherent goodness of the world while everyone who smiles at you is doing it to hide how much they dislike you is no reason at all for sullenness.

I turn back to the wreckage of the public font. “Yes,” I say neutrally. “I remember.”

I remember overhearing through a window as she told one of the Sisters that she didn’t want to be on duty with me because I was ‘scary’. I remember the Sister telling her to not say things like that in front of others, the implication crystal clear that every kind word and warm expression that had ever been directed at me was just as much a lie as the one they kept repeating about how if I just loved those around me, God would watch over me.

Where was God when the one I loved most was taken away?

Where was God when I committed murder upon murder, when my chi started to mutate, when Kanan-

God doesn’t exist. There are divine powers in this world, but God isn’t one of them.

Shaohei prattles on about the time she asked me why I didn’t smile, and I countered it by asking why she did.

“Do you remember what you said then?” she asks coyly. “What was going through your mind back then?”

I force my voice to be mildly puzzled instead of accusatory. “What’s the point of asking that now?”

Her expression fades into something not deep enough to be somberness. “There’s a child who said the same thing as you.”

And, of course, she has no idea how to deal with that, so she came to me. But my only thought is – what horrors did this child survive? What memory defies the assertions of universal, unconditional divine love?

I may be this child’s only hope of escaping into the world without self-destructing.

===

“Oh my, you’ve grown so!” the head Sister says with a smile as fake as mine. I return her greeting with one just as meaningless. “It’s been so long, Gonou.”

Yes, it has. It’s been an entire lifetime.

“Will you be able to stay for a while?”

I would sooner be locked in a windowless room, alone, at night. During a storm.

“I’m sorry,” I say, not sorry at all. “I’m in the middle of a journey with some friends, so…” They don’t need to know what we’re doing. I doubt they’re even aware of what’s going on in the world outside their gleaming walls.

“Oh, but you have time for some tea at least, don’t you?”

It’s going to be more of the same if I say no, so I say yes. Thankfully, a group of young children interrupt and drag her off to draw pictures with them, and she promises me wonderful tea when she gets back.

I wonder what her rationalization is for allowing herself such a luxury.

“She hasn’t changed at all,” I murmur, the words empty of everything I actually feel. With effort, I focus on the reason  I’m here and turn to Shaohei. “Where’s the boy you talked about?”

“I’ll take you to him right away.”

===

He’s in the library, of course, taking solace in the books that can’t shun him for not smiling. There’s a not-insignificant superficial resemblance to the face that stared back at me from the mirror when I was his age. He doesn’t look up at my approach.

“Are you Linchei?” I ask, knowing all too well how it felt to have even strangers know who you were. He looks accusingly up at me through his glasses. “Hello.”

“I don’t know what those people told you,” he starts with jaded annoyance, “but you’re probably wasting your time.” He pauses for effect before announcing, “I don’t believe in God.”

“What kind of God would let that happen and then surround you with people expecting you to smile, right?” I pull the other chair out and sit across the table from him, but off to the side a little so as to not make my presence feel confrontational.

Linchei looks…deeper than shocked. Unsettled, vulnerable, scared with a flicker of hope. “What are you talking about?”

I direct my gaze out the window, into the sunlight. “My mother left me here. She told the Sisters that my name was whatever name they gave me, and that once the doors closed behind her, she would never have had a son. How could I believe in a loving God after that?”

Slowly, Linchei closes his book and puts it aside, as if any sudden movement would wake him from what had to be a dream. “Why are you here?” he asks warily.

Now I turn to face him, letting him see the sincerity on my face and in my voice. “To give you hope.”

Instantly, his expression closes into a scowl.

“You aren’t comfortable here,” I tell him gently. “Neither was I. You’ve seen how cruel the world can be, and no amount of smiles or platitudes will dull those sharp edges. But there’s nowhere for you to go, so you have no choice but to stay here, where everyone turns a blind eye to any ugliness in the world and talks about love and charity while they smile to hide their true feelings.”

“How do you know that?” His voice trembles.

I don’t bother to insult him with a reassuring smile. “Because as soon as I saw you, I knew you were just like me when I was younger. You’re sullen and angry because no one is giving your pain the respect it deserves. You want to lash out at everyone for being happy, you want to burn this place to the ground to make them feel the loss and loneliness you feel.”

Linchei’s eyes widen, and he jerks as if struck.

“You want to die,” I continue gently, “and prove that God doesn’t exist. You want to crack their faith and make them bleed the way you’re bleeding. It won’t work.”

He stands so suddenly that the chair falls over behind him. “Why are you here?” he demands again, voice tight with unshed tears.

“To give you hope,” I repeat firmly. “The world outside these walls is nothing like it is in here. You can walk through a crowd scowling and no one will tell you to smile. No one will try  to tell you that God is looking out for you. If you can make it to sixteen, you can leave this place for a world that is just as cold and dirty and ugly as you remember it being and if you want to spite a nonexistent God by dying, you can do that too.”

All the anger and aggression drains out of him. “Really?” he asks in a small voice. “You’re not lying?”

For a moment, I consider trying to explain Right Speech to him, but instead I pull up the hem of my shirt so that he can see the scar that nearly killed me twice.

“I wanted to die,” I say as his face pales. “I almost succeeded. Twice. But each time, I was saved by the kindness of a stranger who asked nothing in return, not even gratitude.” He turns to pick his chair up, and I lower my shirt again.

“I don’t want to die,” he says quietly, not looking at me. “I want this place to be destroyed, to make everyone see all the things they’re ignoring. If I have to die to do it, I’m fine with that.”

“They’re not worth it, Linchei.”

Angry again, he whirls to glare at me. “How do you know that?”

“Do you know the name Cho Gonou?”

He blinks. “No. Who’s that?”

My smile is a crescent that pain bleeds out of. “That’s who I was when I was here. Sister Shaohei is the same age as me, but she never mentioned me to you. If my misery didn’t dent their delusions, then yours won’t either. Why give them that power over you? Endure until you can get out of here, live for yourself, and forget them the way they’re going to forget you.”

“Why are you doing this?” whispers Linchei. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

“Because the world is cruel and dirty, but it is also kind and beautiful. I had no one to teach me that, to take my pain seriously and acknowledge that I had the right to not be happy. So I’m telling you what I wish someone would have told me.” His eyes follow me as I stand and bow to him. “You don’t have to believe me. But I’ve said what I came to say, so I’ll take my leave of you. I hope someday we meet again, far away from here.”

In disbelief so strong that it beats against my chi, he watches me walk out.

Shaohei is waiting just outside the door. “Gonou…” she says, eyes worried and hurt, voice weak.

“Ah,” I say with a smile as fake as the ones I got as a child. “You were listening?”

We walk away from the building, through the grounds. “I’m sorry.”

She actually sounds chastised. I suppose if she overheard even half of what I said, it would shake her pretty badly.

“Gonou…” she doesn’t look at me. “Is that really how you felt?”

All the things I could say flash through my mind, and I don’t say them. “Yes.”

“And Linchei – that’s how he feels?” At my look of pity, distress blooms on her face. “What should I do?” she asks, and there is genuine anguish in her voice. “What can I do to save him? What can be done so that he learns to smile again, as you did?”

Kanan’s face fills my mind. I don’t bother telling Shaohei that my smiles are masks as her face is replaced by Gojyo’s, then Sanzo’s and Goku’s and the precious dragon I raised from an egg. “Whether he smiles is up to him,” I say slowly. “Nothing you do will make him smile if he doesn’t want to smile.”

She stops at a bench and sits as though all the strength had left her body. “I want to save him,” she says plaintively.

I sit next to her. “That’s all well and good, but what about what he wants? What if he doesn’t want to be saved? Isn’t it selfish to demand that someone be happy because their sorrow makes you uncomfortable?”

The confusion she looks at me with says she has never considered that someone might not want to be happy, and I sigh.

“You won’t save him with platitudes and smiles. Try to be as sincere with him as possible. He’s not a plant that you can force to grow by giving it light and water. You can reach your hand out to him, but whether he takes it or not is his choice and if he doesn’t want to take it, then no amount of holding it out will make him change his mind. Respect that he has the right to be unhappy. You can’t just make a wound heal by telling it to stop bleeding.”

“Gonou…” She doesn’t look up at me, eyes on the ground. “What kindness and beauty did you find in the world?”

“Her name was Kanan.” I stand before anything else can slip out. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to find my companions and let them know I’m alright. It’s too late now to travel, so I’m sure we’ll be spending the night here.”

Shaohei looks at me in surprise, mouth forming an O with all the questions she wants to ask, but I bow and walk quickly away, leaving her to her newfound doubts.

===

My masks are firmly in place again by the time I find the inn with my dragon parked out front, but Sanzo’s scowl says that he’s not fooled and it’s Gojyo’s turn to not look at me. As it turns out, only a portion of the town’s people are leaving, so there are plenty of restaurants for us to choose from. Gojyo tells me how the town has moved the “holy” statues from the orphanage to around the town, believing that they will ward off any attacking Youkai, and Right Speech demands that I don’t voice my skepticism. I’ve been around enough holy objects to know that those statues are just stone.

No one asks me about Shaohei, or why I’m letting her call me by a name that’s dead.

She comes running up just as we reach the inn again, and I tell the others to go on ahead. It’s started snowing, the sort of mountain flurry that melts almost before it reaches the ground, and tearfully Shaohei tells me how Linchei’s disappeared out of his room. His parents were killed on a snowy night, she confesses, and I spare a moment to wonder how she could be so self-centered as to not realize that finding their bodies would make him disinclined to smile.

I tell her to go back, that I’ll handle this. She tries to protest, and I place one hand on her shoulder. “I’ll take care of it,” I tell her firmly, my chi conveying both reassurance and gentle rebuke. She nods slowly and turns away, and I glance at the inn. Time is of the essence, but the others will be expecting me. I don’t want to worry them, but I don’t trust the statues to keep any Youkai away and I know what I would have been doing at his age.

A pulse of chi from somewhere above, concern and an unspoken offer of help. I look up to see Gojyo’s silhouette against the window. In the hopes that he’s looking, I try to convey with a gesture that I’m going to check the statues, and then I’m running for the perimeter of town, trying to calculate the shortest distance between the orphanage and where the nearest statue would be.

When I find him, he has a metal pole as thick as his wrist and as tall as he is, staring up into one carved face with a mixture of terror and rage. He doesn’t seem to notice me as I walk up to him, close enough to act but far enough away that he won’t be afraid of me grabbing him.

“Destroying the town,” I say sternly as he lifts the pole, “won’t make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to feel better,” he spits at me, brandishing his improvised metal staff.  “I want everyone else to feel worse!”

Again he raises it over his head, ready to strike, and again I interrupt him. “So your plan is to destroy the statues and let Youkai destroy the town?”

He drops to his knees as if my words have physically battered him.

“All that will accomplish is more corpses, cooling in the snow. The survivors will know your pain, but then what? You’ll all be miserable together?”

“Leave me alone!” he cries, trembling as he holds himself up by clinging to the metal pole. “If I’m going to have to keep living like this, I’d rather…”

“If you want to die so badly, leave other people out of it.” My voice is as cold and hard as the pole he’s clinging to. “Don’t selfishly impose your will on them, the way the Sisters do to you. If you want the world to change, live and force it to change with your own strength.”

“Shut up,” he says weakly. It becomes a chant, his voice growing stronger until it becomes a frantic yell and he springs to his feet, swinging for the statue with all his might.

A spike of anticipatory chi from the woods suggests we have an audience. My hand catches the pole before it hits, the resonant impact telling me that it’s a pipe.

“How are you going to destroy the world if you can’t destroy one statue?” I ask coldly. He stares up at me in mute but helpless outrage. “If you want to force the world to change, you’re going to need to live and grow stronger. Like this.”

Without letting go of the pipe, I focus my chi and send it shooting like a lance at the statue behind me, then turn it into a barrier as the stone shatters, sending shrapnel in all directions. If the Youkai watching are even the slightest bit wise, this display will be a warning that they don’t really want to start a fight they can’t win.

Glowing eyes in the dark woods and cruel laughter makes Linchei turn in alarm. Our audience, it seems, has the intelligence of the pipe in my hand.

“Youkai,” I announce brightly as the first ones come prowling out into the moonlight. “They were probably watching this whole time.”

Linchei surges to his feet and begins backing away, little sounds of terror escaping between breaths.

“Where are you going?” My voice gains a mocking edge. “You want to die, don’t you? Or maybe,” I say when there is no response, “you’ve reconsidered, now that the world has given you want you claimed to want so badly.”

A Youkai with green skin leers at us. “Thanks for doing the job for us. With that statue destroyed, we can enter the town and…” The words trail off into a dark laugh that the others echo.

“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” I ask Linchei calmly. “Feeling fear with every fiber of your being, knowing that you’re utterly powerless.” My voice hardens again. “If you want to change the world, you need to live and grow stronger. Wallowing in your own misery and sulking isn’t going to change anything.”

“Hey,” green-skin shouts angrily. “Bastard! How dare you ignore us? Which  side are you on? You better think about the situation you’re in right now!”

“Please don’t interrupt,” I chide him mildly, the killing aura of the gathered Youkai turning to confusion.

Green-skin gathers what passes for his wits. “Don’t mess with us,” he blusters. “Get them!”

It’s not until two of them charge us and I charge to meet them, hands crooked into claws that slash without fear or mercy, that I realize how far into Gonou this day has sent me. Thankfully, my nails are still nails and it is needle-sharp blasts of chi that destabilize the Youkai, sending them to their knees as their bodies crumble into particles finer than sand.

“You see?” I call to a still-terrified Linchei. “Death isn’t such a simple matter.”

He doesn’t say anything, but the feel of his chi turns from self-centered rage and terror to something more humble. He may not have believed me before, but he believes me now. He wants to live more than he wants to make the world suffer.

“Then please stand back,” I tell him, moving to stand between him and the growling but uncertain mob. “I don’t want to hurt you accidentally while I take care of the rest.”

They come at me in  twos and threes, and part of me is disturbed at how much I’m enjoying this as I strike with hands and chi, taking them down almost effortlessly. Then there’s a scream from behind me, and I realize with a jolt of panic that green-skin has circled around to get at Linchei from the side.

“If I’m going to die anyway,” he growls, “then I’ll take you with me!”

He licks one claw and charges, but a grey shape charges out of the darkness to meet him and then Shaohei is standing protectively in front of her charge, defiance and fear in every line of her body. “I won’t let you kill this child!” she shouts, but green-skin just lets out a growling yell and resumes his charge.

The silver crescent blade of Gojyo’s weapon flashes out from behind one of the other statues. Green-skin never makes it to Shaohei.

“Gojyo,” I call out, trying not to sound as giddy as I feel, and the other two step out to join him. “Everyone!”

“Good grief,” drawls Gojyo, amusement dripping from every syllable. “I came out to get some fresh night air, but I found a beautiful woman being threatened.”

“I was just looking for a midnight snack,” Goku announces cheerfully and untruthfully, eagerness radiating from him.

Sanzo huffs. “I ran out of cigarettes,” he says, as though it were my fault his pack was empty.

Shaohei drops to the ground in relief and Linchei crawls over to cling to her, shaking as she pulls him into a tight embrace. They’ll be okay.

“Well then,” I say to the mob of now very uncertain Youkai, “Shall we get this over with? Sanzo needs cigarettes and Goku’s hungry.” I bring my hands up, balancing a brightly-glowing ball of chi on each palm.

For a moment, they’re all frozen. Then one of them breaks and runs for the woods, sparking a stampede of retreat with Goku in hot pursuit, calling for them to wait up.

I don’t have to look to know that Gojyo’s sauntered up beside me.

“Thank you for your excellent timing,” I say quietly, and he lets out a breathy bark of laughter.

“You had it all under control,” he responds just as quietly. “I just can’t resist an opportunity to impress a lady. Bad news though,” he continues. “There weren’t enough rooms to go around. We’re going to have to share, tonight.”

In other words, he noticed me backsliding into Gonou and he wants to make sure I’m okay. A smile of acknowledgement slips onto my face.

“I’m going to take Linchei back,” Shaohei says, and when we turn to her, she’s on her feet again with the boy passed out in her arms. “Please don’t leave without saying goodbye, Gonou.”

“Of course,” I assure her without actually claiming the name that is no longer mine.

===

Goku bids us a cheerful goodnight as he goes into his room. On the other side, Sanzo mutters a threat about us keeping him up with snoring and disappears into his own room. I let Gojyo herd me into ours, mildly surprised that the room has a double bed. We don’t say anything as we each strip and prepare to sleep, me in the soft tunic and trews I prefer and him in just trews. He waits for me to pick my side of the bed first, eyepiece on the bedside table, before he blows out the lamp and navigates by moonlight to the other side. There’s a minute or two of shifting and getting comfortable before his voice floats quietly out of the darkness.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” I answer softly. There’s an expectant silence, and I let out a defeated breath. “I grew up in the orphanage. Shaohei and I are roughly the same age. We last saw each other when I was forcibly invited to leave at sixteen.”

“That explains things,” he responds easily. I feel him shift as he turns to me. “You gonna tell her?”

“That depends,” I say dryly. “Tell her what?”

“You know. Your name. What happened. Anything.”

“If for no other reason, than to get her to stop using that name.” Blindly, I raise my hands and stare at where they should be, in the darkness. “I was…”

“I know,” Gojyo says, the words soft and reassuring.

I want to say something else, to protest that I was enjoying it, that I was speaking cruelly to a child, but the bed is soft and the blanket is warm and Gojyo’s breathing is keeping the specters away. My eyes slip shut, and sleep takes me in gentle claws.

===

We’ve just left the inn to find a place to have breakfast when Shaohei calls my old name and runs up.

“Please forgive me,” she says to the other three, “but I’m going to borrow Gonou for breakfast.”

Sanzo scoffs while Gojyo shoos us off, one hand over Goku’s mouth as he mumbles indignantly. “He’ll tell her when he’s good and ready, stupid monkey,” he hisses as Shaohei pulls me away.

“Tell me what?” she asks curiously.

Right speech. “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you over breakfast.”

She nods, and all the way to the café she’s chosen, she tells me how much Linchei’s attitude has improved and how impressed she was that I faced down those Youkai without fear. A waiter seats us at an outdoor table and takes our orders, and once he’s gone again she turns to me.

“So, what was it your friend with the red hair was talking about?”

Where do I even begin?

“A lot happened to me after I left,” I say slowly. “I am…very different than I was when you knew me.”

She nods. “Kanan must have been very good for you, then.”

She’s fishing, but it feels like Yisou’s claws in my gut again.

“She was,” I say quietly, eyes downcast, throat tight. “She was my whole world, and I  was happy.”

“Oh no,” Shaohei says sympathetically. “Did something happen?”

What was your first hint? Was it the use of past tense, maybe, or perhaps how I’ve withdrawn and my masks are slipping?

“You could say that.”

The waiter returns with breakfast, and it distracts her long enough for me to pull my composure back together.

“I’ve never seen anyone with hair as red as your friend’s,” she says after a minute or two. “What does he dye it with?”

“Gojyo? He doesn’t.”

That makes her blink in surprise. “It’s natural? It can’t be,” she says at my nod. “Hair that red is only supposed to belong to Taboo Children. If they even exist,” she adds dismissively.

My smile tightens. “Funny you should say that. Goyo’s father was Youkai, but his mother was human.”

Shaohei’s laughter rings out. “Oh, Gonou, you told a joke! I didn’t think you knew how!”

When I don’t respond, her laughter dims and dies.

“It wasn’t a joke,” I say quietly. “And before you say anything else, he’s the man who found me bleeding to death in the woods and took me in. He put me in his bed, treated my wounds, watched over me for a week until I woke up, and let me stay without so much as asking why I was bleeding in the woods to begin with. For all the cruelty the world shows to him at every opportunity because of his mixed blood, he is the kindest and most generous man I’ve ever met.”

“Oh.” Shaohei visibly casts around for another topic. “Why were you bleeding in the woods?”

“Oh, a Youkai stuck a handful of venomous claws into my gut,” I say lightly, buttering a roll, and lavish a bright smile on her. She’s going to hang herself, and I’m going to let her.

Somewhat taken aback, she asks, “Why did a Youkai stick venomous claws in your gut?”

“Probably because I had just killed almost everyone else in the keep.”

Her eyes widen with horror, but my smile never wavers. “Why…why did you k-kill everyone in…”

“Well, you see, I was trying to figure out where they were keeping my wife imprisoned. But a Youkai Lord isn’t going to just let a nobody like me take back a woman he’s decided he wants to rape and eat, so…” I shrug and bite into a slice of melon.

Shaohei looks pale now. “Did you find her?” she asks as though afraid of the answer.

“Yes, but she killed herself rather than bear a mixed-blood rape child. I suppose it’s just as well, because between the population of the Youkai Lord’s keep and that other clan, I was getting awful close to having killed a thousand Youkai, and I doubt Kanan would have wanted to have anything to do with a monster like me.”

Horrified, she tries to find another subject. “I never expected you to be traveling with a priest. How did you meet?”

“Oh, the Temple sent him to track down the man who’d killed two clans of Youkai. And he found me! They wanted to sentence me to indirect death, but he persuaded them to change the sentence to symbolic death.” I take a moment to enjoy the memory of him fighting with the High Abbott for days at a time. “So I’m afraid Gonou has been dead for three years now. I’m Cho Hakkai, now.”

“Changing your name doesn’t make you a different person,” she protests, latching onto the safest part of all of that.

“Gonou’s death wasn’t entirely symbolic.” I run my finger over the curve of my ear, watching her eyes follow the motion and alight on the inhibitors. “It wasn’t an almost-dead man Gojyo saved that night in the woods,” I say quietly. “By the time he found me, I had already become Youkai. If not for the immense amount of stolen chi that sparked my transformation, and the incredible healing factor it left me with, I would have died of my injuries.”

“That’s…you…”

“I’m a monster born of murder.” My voice and my smile are cheerful. “The friendly, polite persona you see is part of my penance, and I will spend the rest of my life atoning for my sins. You see, my name describes my punishment: Eightfold Admonishment. The restrictions of a Buddhist lifestyle are the bars of my prison cell.”

“But…you said kindness and beauty…”

I think I broke her, and I’m not sure I’m sorry for it.

“Being a murderer doesn’t erase the beauty of a dragon newly-hatched from her egg looking up at you with pure love. Being an unholy monster doesn’t negate the selfless kindness Gojyo has shown me. You can argue that I don’t deserve it, and I won’t disagree, but these gifts have been given to me freely and I spend every day trying to be worthy of them.”

While she stares into the distance, trying to process all of this, I demolish the delicious breakfast of fruit and cheese, rolls and butter and honey, mindfully enjoying every bite and the warmth of the sun on my skin. Maybe it makes me an asshole, but the bloody joy of having unloaded my tragedies on her sanctimony warms me and makes every sensory pleasure brighter.

“This has been a remarkably cathartic visit,” I say brightly once my breakfast has been devoured. “I wish Linchei all the best, but I don’t think we’ll be stopping here on our way back. For some reason, this town just brings out the worst in me. Thank you for breakfast; it was delicious.”

While Shaohei’s still struggling to string words together, I bow to her and walk cheerfully off to find my companions. They, too, are eating outdoors and Sanzo has wisely placed the other two across from each other. Gojyo is the one facing me as I approach, and over Goku’s head he grins at me.

“You look like your breakfast was better than ours,” he says, pushing the empty chair out in a silent invitation that I take, seating myself.

“Hey, Hakkai, did you tell her?” Goku asks earnestly. “That you’re not Gonou anymore?”

“Can’t you tell?” Gojyo says, smirking. “Of course he did.”

Sanzo meets my eyes as we both realize he didn’t add ‘stupid monkey’. I’m not sure what it says that he isn’t picking a fight.

“You ready to go?” Sanzo asks with half his usual grumpiness.

My smile turns dryly ironic. “Absolutely.”

“Good.”

He throws some coins onto the table, stands, and begins to stalk over to where Hakuryuu is parked. Goku grabs something off Sanzo’s half-eaten plate and shoves it into his mouth before hurrying after, and Gojyo lights a cigarette before following. I trail after them, waiting for them all to get settled before climbing into the driver’s seat, and Hakuryuu chirps happily at me as we make our way out of town and back into the mountains, continuing west.