(EPISODE I)
The Shinwa’s Spring Festival was in full-swing when Kettei stumbled over a fucking stupid raised rock corner—jutting out of the perfectly smooth ground—and face-planted himself in the middle of the antsy crowd. The black colourful throng of wooden geta immediately surged upward like a tsunami, stomping all over him.
A million drills jackhammered through his flesh all at once.
His knees, his ankles, his knees, his hips, even his fingertips weren’t even spared.
“Fuck! Watch your feet!” He screamed, scrambling.
It took Kettei five tries—five hisses and bellows of pain and several hard snaps of bones—before he managed to grab to some girl’s yukata, bloody finger dug into her soft silk hem and pulled himself up to his knees.
There was a shriek blasting right in his face, but he didn’t care. He was concentrating on standing upright. The thing was, his body was already like boneless noodles and he was pretty sure the signal from his brain to his limbs were travelling the wrong ways. To make the matter worse, the earth underneath his heels was fucking upturned and spinning and he was having a very hard time to put his feet properly flat to stand upright. Moreover, his eyes were half-swollen shut and his sight was swimming and initiating hot glares every time he cracked his eyelids even a little.
He could barely suck in a breath when a blinding blow hit his temple and he was toppling side-way, flailing another wave of body masses that quickly scrambled out of the way. Something came out of his mouth—a slur, a yell, a gasp, a-whatever—and then he was on the ground again, this time landing on his ass.
This time, thankfully, people edged around him.
He laughed like a maniac, laughed until all his internal organs seemed to screw out of place. He brushed his knuckles at the side of his head, and promptly proceeded to puke his gut out.
Ah, Springtime.
He grinned, blacked out.
…….
Kettei came back to life with a mechanical sharp jerk that reeled his body comically sideways. He regretted the decision instantly.
Every sensor in his body burrowed deeper inside, rebelling against the horrid amplification.
Hell was a suitable word to describe what he was feeling overall about the situation, inside and around him.
He dully registered the stiff ache on his face first—one ache was phantom, lingering and throbbing and warm, while the other was hard and cold and prickly and also extended down to his collar and shoulder blades, unmoveable. He was familiar with both feelings.
He probably was leaning haphazardly against the stone wall that built around Shinwa Shrine or something. Or maybe someone kidnapped him. Maybe the debt collectors. Maybe he was going to get sell as sex slaves.
“Fushigina,” A sharp, pointed tip nudged at his tailbone. He groaned, tried to move. Choked on his own pit.
Fuck, he couldn’t even swallow.
A cold cylinder thing pressed against his shoulder. He shrugged it away, face automatically contorted into a snarl, but he supposed a drunken snarl that was so distorted that it was not effective at all, because, blink, and the man was crouching and shoving the water bottle down Kettei’s throat.
Kettei blinked hard, real hard, grasping some final straw of conscience that was still floating above the booze.
“Drink, you wretched drunk,” The man snapped.
Who the fuck are you? Kettei wanted to ask, although he knew it was who, arleady. I don’t fucking follow orders. Leave me alone. Let me this ‘wretched drunk’ continued on my merry wretched way.
The man pulled back, letting water dripped down Kettei’s front, and capped the bottle. “While I would love to let you die of intoxication, I can’t because you’re disrupting and assulting the attendees.” He stood and hauled Kettei up roughly, ignoring his indignant yelp.
The shrine ground was lit with thousands of lanterns and electric light, illuminated in the blackened sky. Lines criss-crossed overhead, squat, fat, cylinder-shaped lanterns hanging like ripe peaches. Even the moon, bloat and full today, seemed inferior. Voices, high and low, overlap, rising to the heat. Vendors shouting over each other, stumbling to curtsy to the customers. Girls and boys, men and female, young and old, hugging and giggling and pulling like school kids.
Kettei’s holed shoes scruffed as the man that-Kettei-will-never-speak-of dragged him across the ground. Kettei protested, of course, digging his heels in and punched the man away, but with the liquor heavily loaded in his bloodstream and fuzzed out all the details, outsiders would see an overgrown three-year-old child stomping and throwing a tantrum.
Blink.
He was plunged in the backseat and stimultanously strapped in within the same motion. Kettei’s breath knocked out of his lungs. He gagged from the artificial scent of pine tree that filtered through his haze, red and white and black streaked across his vision as he grappled and tried the door.
The man jumped in. His heavy weight tipped the cruiser physically, and the door clicked, locked, with a finalty.
“Don’t you fucking think about it.” The man said, using the same tone he had when he called Kettei a ‘wretched drunk’. “I’m driving you home, Fushigina.” Then, he turned and spoke something to the cackled radio.
Kettei mouthed the words inside his head, mocking at the absurb truth of it all. Yes, he was a fucking wretched drunk, a loser, a failure, a sore child on the street, got scowled about it yet the same people would not allowed him to drown in the deep-end and let him be done with it all.
No, they kept dragging him up. And he was angry of that.
“Do you think I’m enjoying saving your ass, son?” The man snapped, hands on the steering wheel but the cruiser was still in parked.
“I wouldn’t have fucking know,” Kettei said, wincing from but proud of the gruff animality roar in his voice. The man didn’t flinch. “You keep showing up when I don’t need you. Certainly looks like you’re trying to run into me.”
“You’re wasted. Every fucking hour. You would be dead long time ago hadn’t I ‘keep running into you.’ Instead of delegating people to investigate murder and robbery, I’ve to put people out to babysit you. That’s one hell of a way to be grateful.”
Heat flooded Kettei’s face, hot and vicious. He wrestled with the seatbelt, hitting his fists at every surface he could find. “Yeah, well. I don’t fucking need a babysitter, Gaido.”
Officer Gaido raised a contemtous sneer at the rearview mirror and started the engine. Kettei sunk in his seat, crossing his arms across his chest. Outside the glass window, the Festival was a blur of bright, streaming colours, dancing and mingling like the Northern Light. The central hearth crackles and leaps, transforming into a breathing, living animal. Soon, the dancing will start.
Kettei bitterly mourned about the free beers he could have get afterward.
Officer Gaido lowered the windows a bit when they hit the road. The fire smoke drifted to their direction, bringing along the smell of charred meat and paper and wood. His stomach growled, but he had ran out of pride and dignity to curl his toes in embarassement. In the background, the circumambient forest rustling secretive, the ice-capped trees merging as one giant body of darkness.
A gust of wind lashed through the festive air. Asorotany brushed a stray lock out of his face, a shiver crept down his spine. He didn’t notice the strangeness at first, assuming it was from Gaido’s walkie-talkie.
Until he hears whispering.
Whispering.
Not of human.
It’s the wind, murmuring and hailing.
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