Himitsu Shinu--Prologue

Himitsu Shinu
Prologue

February 3, 2011
11:42 AM, EST

         Time was beginning to wear on him. He had long lost track of the many years he had seen pass before his eyes, and he had stopped caring somewhere during the early nineteenth century. Or was it the eighteenth?

         There, you see? No sense of the passage of time.

         He, of course, changed as much as his surroundings, always so meticulous about his appearance, careful that every detail blended in with the ordinary rabble as much as possible. Worn boots had replaced geta sandals, faded jeans had taken the place of his hakama. The old shirt he wore he had fashioned himself from scraps of his old kimono, and a tattered trench coat kept the still-brightly colored silk from attracting too much attention to himself. He was many things, but self-centered he was not; he already got enough attention from his facial markings and pointed ears. Those markings could never be hidden completely, no matter how much makeup he wore to cover them. Instead, he simply let much of his hair hang in his face. The ears he could hide with a hat, fortunately, but hats were not fool-proof; a gust of wind or a careless bump could knock it loose.

         He went without the hat, most days, favoring instead the same violet headscarf he had worn so many centuries ago. The scarf was much easier to deal with than the hat.

         As for how he dealt with society, well… One might say that he simply did not. The authorities in many countries did not always take kindly to those who had no identity to speak of. Some would go as far as automatically assume him a terrorist and either throw him in prison, hand him over to an intelligence agency for questioning, or simply deport him, all without a second thought. He was sure that he had had to deal with all three of those circumstances at one point in time. And as governments were getting more and more paranoid as time went on, they would certainly consider him a threat if he drew their attention. After all, he had no name, no social security number, no passport, no driver’s license, not even a date of birth or medical records of any kind.

         In short, he didn’t exist. Not legally, anyway.

         He couldn’t even continue his preferred profession of selling medicines. Much of what he had sold in past centuries had been deemed illegal in many parts of the world, and pharmaceutical companies had long since taken up selling everything else.

         However, he still (sometimes) managed to make enough money by selling his wares regardless of laws. Humans from the dregs of society often came to him out of need. It was a need caused by pain, fear, anxiety, want, stress, any number of human emotions that are difficult to deal with, but always fade with the passage of time. He felt no pity for those people; it was their own fault, after all, their own choice to hide behind their insecurities and to drown their various sorrows with whatever they could get their hands on.

         That was what he was reduced to. Hiding in the shadows, selling his medicines and drugs to whomever was desperate enough to pay, never staying in one place for more than a few days before moving on, never staying in the same place twice, for risk of being remembered. A face like his was never easily forgotten.

         And the mononoke… How he dreaded the mononoke of this time. They rarely killed, which was a blessing in itself, but they endured, neither moving nor attacking, preferring to wait until he drew near. Time increased a mononoke’s strength. The more time passed by before he found them, the stronger they were.

         It had gotten to the point where the mononoke were stronger than he was, even in his demon form. Were it not for the Sword, he would not be alive.

         Even so, every time he faced mononoke, he felt his strength wane. If it continued, and he knew it would, he would soon be at half the strength he had when his power was at its greatest, all those centuries ago in feudal Japan. He would ignore the mononoke if he could, run away from then even, in order to preserve his life, but he could not. When he had first taken up the Sword of Exorcism, he took an oath, one that could not be broken save by death, stating that so long as he lived, he would use everything in his power to eradicate the mononoke. Fail, and he would die. Succeed, and he would continue to live. For over half a millennia, he had stuck to his oath, and, as promised, he had continued to live, never aging, never growing old.

         He had grown to hate that oath.

         It was not the first time, either.

         He had been human, once upon a time. A foolish young doctor, wandering from village to village, peddling his medicines and healing what minor illnesses he could. He was not very skilled in the art of healing, but when it came to medicines, he was one of the best.

         The day the Sword of Exorcism had come into his possession was a very strange day indeed. He had entered a village on the pretense of selling medicines like he always did, but he had barely taken two steps into the village square when he had people begging him to save a person who seemed to be very important to them. They had led him to a dying man lying on an old futon. The man was haggard and feverish; his long, bony hands clutched at the bedding beneath him and his breathing seemed to be nearing a death rattle.

         He had knelt next to the dying man, intent on doing what little he could to ease the man‘s agony, when all of a sudden, those bony white hands had taken hold of the front of his kimono.

         “Take it,” the man had rasped in his ear. “The Sword… take it.” A pause while the man drew another ragged breath. “It must… have… a master. There must al… always be… one. Always one… against… the… mono… no…ke…” The man’s hands slackened, and he fell back, unusual pale blue eyes staring at nothing. He was dead.

         There had been a small, sheathed blade by the dead man’s side. Its hilt sported what appeared to be a shrunken monkey’s head, teeth grinning widely and black eyes shining eerily. He picked up the sword as the man had asked…

         …And the next thing he knew, he was regaining consciousness elsewhere.

         He soon learned how to use the Sword, how to fight the mononoke. He learned how to find the katachi, or form the mononoke had taken on; the makoto, or the truth behind the mononoke‘s creation; and the kotowari, or the reason behind the mononoke‘s actions.

         And as time went on, he learned that time could not touch him. He eventually found that he had no choice but to watch everyone around him grow old and die while he remained the same.

         He had had family once, all those centuries ago. He had watched them die: first his mother passed, with his father following a few years later. Then his elder brother was killed in a dispute over money. His brother’s wife and children did the best they could, but they ended up living out the rest of their lives in poverty. Once each of those children grew old enough, they went off on their own. The girl he had been hoping to marry was wedded to another man, and she was perfectly happy with that man, at least until she died of illness after less than five years of marriage. The one child she had managed to have before then had been stillborn.

         Soon, there was no one left. He was alone.

         Loneliness had been a new sensation to him. Until then, he had remained near one family member or another, but
never interacting with them, which allowed him to stave off loneliness to a degree.

         He had wanted to die. He had tried to kill himself, even. Just a few creatively mixed medicines, and it would be over. But the Sword wouldn’t let him. Every time he had tried, his entire body had frozen, unable to move or speak until any and all thoughts of suicide had left his mind.

         That was the first time he regretted making the contract with the Sword. He had been forced to watch everyone he ever cared about die, all for the sake of being master to a demon sword…

         A chill wind stirred his clothes. He shivered, pulling his coat tighter around himself before hefting his bag back onto his shoulder. A few of the scales inside the old backpack jangled against each other. He wrinkled his nose, trying to bring some feeling back into his face.

         Damned cold, he thought. His breath formed a little cloud every time he exhaled. It was times like this that he longed for a place to stay. Even a filthy room in a seedy motel in the worst part of town would do, so long as it had a temperature that was somewhere above freezing. It seemed that even that was beyond his reach at the moment; he had no money and it was most likely that it would be a while before he would have enough money to pay for anything, let alone a room for a night.

         He walked down the empty streets, trying his hardest to ignore the biting cold that he could never seem to get used to. The bag on his shoulder was lighter than he liked; he hadn’t had any money for quite some time, so he couldn’t buy any drugs to resell. He had had to steal the last batch of it, and it was only a matter of time before he would have to do so again. The only food he had had in his possession in the past week had been eaten that morning; he technically didn’t need food to survive --the Sword ensured that-- but he preferred having food to being constantly on the verge of starving to death.

         A week. He could wait a week before he got desperate enough to steal and risk being noticed by the authorities.

         He turned into a trash-littered alley. The buildings on either side blocked the wind; it would do. He sat down on the ground, bag held tightly in his lap, back pressed against the wall. He wrapped his coat tighter around himself and shut his eyes. Any hope of sleep was wishful thinking; the best he could hope for was that he would remain undisturbed as he waited for morning.

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Author's Notes:  This is my first Mononoke fanfiction.

As you've probably noticed, this is NOT related in any way to Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke. This is a fanfiction for the anime series Mononoke, which is a spin-off of the third arc of the anime series Ayakashi Japanese Classic Horror (somethimes called Ayakashi Samaruai Horror Tales).

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Mononoke/Ayakashi belongs to its creators, whose names I am currently unaware of. I am merely toying with Kusuriuri-san (the person this entire chapter is talking about, in case you hadn't figured it out) to suit my own fangirl-ish tendencies.

Feedback of any kind is appreciated, and contructive criticism is encouraged!

Hope you enjoyed! More chapters still to come! :)