Chapter Text
Human clad Monsters sidestory: Flashback
chapter 3
Why did Takeo not choose to kill himself in those hellish days? Although he knew he was very difficult to kill---even by his own hands. His body had become too strong, his wounds healed too fast for injury of any sort to become fatal to him. Still, despite of it, if he had tried hard enough then he might really have had found a way to end his own misery.
Fire and exposure to sunlight would have hurt him badly enough if he wanted a way out so desperately, for a number of times he had come so very close to giving up when pain and humiliation became far too great to bear. But in the end he kept dragging himself through those dark days, letting himself go through every single performance, receiving every single bit of shame and humiliation, it was as though something deep inside him was still refusing the option of dying. It simply refused the option of dying along side with him. It was something far too ancient, too cunning, too dark to a point that it would not give in to Takeo's pitiful cry for relief and mercy.
Those hellish days went on for what felt like an eternity, until his chance of escape finally revealed itself, when the entire Edo city seemed to go up in flame.
Being the most populated place and the central of political power and trade, Edo was an overcrowded city filled with shabby built wooden structures and narrow streets, making it easier for fire to spread from one district to another, especially during winter, when the weather was cold and dry, the frequent use of fire and the extra firewood meant bigger chance for disaster.
Fire, the natural enemy of his kind, one of the few things which was powerful and devastating enough to destroy him. Ironic fire was what helped him to escape the living hell that was the freak show.
It was one of the greatest fire outbursts to ever engulf the city, very soon the fire had gone completely out of control, swallowing an entire district down after another. Chaos broke out everywhere, screaming rang through the night when people ran for their lives. In the middle of the chaos, Takeo managed to escape his cage out of sheer luck, he had to kill his owner and also those who tried to stop him when they caught him trying to escape. He was outnumbered, without any weapons, Takeo thought he would certainly die but with strength and cruelty he didn't imagine himself to possess, he killed his jailers and finally broke out from his prison.
It was almost the same like how he had ended his parents and one of his younger brothers long ago, but this time he was fully aware of what he was doing, he had consciously committed murder. This time there could be no excuse.
In the middle of the inferno, Takeo had nowhere to go, he could only do his best to run away from the flame. It would be too big of an irony if he was to be burnt alive, after suffering and surviving for so long. From this point onward, this young lost soul swore to himself, with everything which he once held sacred, that he refused to be a victim again. He would not be subjected to anyone else's misery, ever again.
He would do anything to stay alive, and stay free, in order to survive after escaping from the freak show. He would hide in the shadow, take whatever he needed, all in the name of survival.
Everything - just to keep himself from being reduced to a mere animal again.
However, it wasn't long before he once again returned to Edo, whilst the residents were still in the middle of the long progress of restoring their livelihood, struggling to get back on their feet. Takeo realized that the highly popularized cities were his sole sanctuaries. People might fear him, call him a monster or a demon - just like his audience did back in the freak show. But Takeo decided to be a monster who could blend right into the nameless crowd, he would do what he must do to pretend to be one of them. In order to blend in, he would need the protection which the massive, crowded city could offer.
In the rural region he would be more easily singled out and hunted down for simply being an unfamiliar face to the villagers. Hiding in the city region, he had a better chance to survive if he could manage to lose himself in the sea of people, who continued to roam the crowded city even after the devastating fire. Countless days seemed to blend together in a great blur to him after his escape. He spent most of his waking moment searching once again for food and shelter, he robbed and stole when he had to, he also needed to make sure that no one noticed his 'strange' behaviors or get suspicious.
When he could help it, he rarely killed. Despite being what people would call a demon, Takeo did not think he enjoyed mindless, purposeless killing. Leaving bodies behind at his wake would only inspire suspicion and panic. which might eventually force him out of his hiding.
He could not staying in one place for too long though, not even in Edo. In order to escape from suspicion Takeo soon realized he must drift from one place to another often, if he wished to keep his secret. Cities or towns were always among his first choices. Although as he would later realize, there was no other more ideal hunting ground than Edo, the largest, most magnificent city of the time. No matter how far he had traveled, no matter for how long he had been away, he would eventually go back to this city. Everywhere he turned, he could see unsuspecting mortals nearby, who could be easily claimed and drained with no one ever noticed what had happened.
Takeo bid his time, doing his best to stay out of sight as he moved across the city, he learnt to use various fake identities to hide his true nature: merchant, servant, seasonal worker, traveling actor, traveling priest or monk, shaman,craftsmen, drifter... There was hardly any role he hadn't played. When being questioned about his past and origin, Takeo learnt to tell different lies to different listeners, he told them vague but believable stories such as the tragic loss of livelihood or family’s farmland, of being in debt, to explain away why he ended up being a wanderer who needed to move from place to place so frequently. He would do everything, to tell all sort of lies to stay away from suspicion, for he couldn't afford to be captured once more.
Time passed by with him barely noticing the change of seasons and the flow of years. He lived on when the other people aged and eventually died and faded away. Until one day Takeo looked at himself in the bronze mirror, then reality finally dawned upon him. Such long a time had passed but he did not seem to have aged a day. The man finally realized he had been alive for far too long, so many years had already passed by, to a point that his wife, his remaining siblings--everyone who had once known him, could no longer possibly be still alive.
With this realization, Takeo knew he would be a loner, it seemed to be his unavoiding fate when people died around him as he alone remained untouched by time, while he lived on by feeding upon other people, stealing their blood and lifeforce.
As a creature who lived with an unnatural long life span, Takeo’s long life gave him the chance to see, to experience things that no mortals would ever dream of witnessing. He roamed the earth through the time of wars, starvation, plagues and social unrest in between, but Takeo survived all these, war and diseases fail to harm him whilst the others dropped like flies around him in bad situations. And he still did not even seem to age a day.
Life for the inhuman creatures was...strange, to say the least. The paths they traveled through the quite a strange journey. During his time living at the edge of the mundane world, Takeo had came to see the darkness which lingered near the land of the living. At some point, Takeo was worshiped as a living deity by small underground groups of fierce cultists, who offered themselves to him willingly. The other time, he was feared and shunned for being what he was: a freak, blood sucker, abnormality, unwholesome creature, monster.
For more than a few times, the man woke up from a trancelike state only to find himself standing among lifeless, broken bodies of his victims, blood everywhere, seeping down his own chin, spilled all over the floor, smashed across walls and even ceiling; letting him know that he had lost control to his killing instinct. But unlike the first time, when he stood over the broken bodies of his family; he was less bothered by what he had done, the feeling of shock, disbelief and guilt faded slowly away as time passed, like he was finally getting used to what he had become and what he was capable of doing.
Takeo’s path began to cross with the other inhuman creatures, a few of them were of his own kind, but the others were different. Who would have guessed there were so many unwholesome creatures living within the unsuspecting mass. Unwholesome creatures they were, for all of them had broken at least one taboo that led them to become what they were now. Be it accidental or intentional, once they crossed the line there was no going back.
Throughout the years, Takeo slowly became more aware of the existence of these other creatures, some of them wanted to harm him, some of them wanted him to stay away from them, some wanted to use him, some Takeo learned to avoid for safety measure, some of them simply had no interest in him. It made no different. They were all deviants and outcasts of different sorts, some were fallen gods and spirits, fallen demi gods, the others life-stealers, deity-slayers, users of dark magic, cursed mortals, hybrids between mortals and beasts. Some of them were humanlike, some were weaker than humans, whilst the others powerful beyond belief.
Takeo's kind was drinker of blood, to be more particular they lived on mortals' lifeblood - animal’s blood might help them to survive, still blood of living, struggling mortals was more or less the only thing which could satisfy their horrible thirst. For the longest of time he tried to find the origin of the creature he had become, but all he had ever able to find was vague tales of superstitious, half truth and confusion. Blood drinkers went by with many names, they could be male or female, most of them looked outwardly human, but their bloodthirsty nature would forever set them apart with mortals.
Among strangers, Takeo pretended to be a one of the mundane, but beneath this layer of pretending, he was friendless, always alone, with nowhere to belong. There was not a single person in the world who was tied to him, and he belonged to nowhere and to no one. Years went by, he had once thought that was how his life would be, unchanging, existing but never truly alive.
Having no interest in what was going on in the society when it did not concern his survival. The passing of time was noticed only when Takeo jolted into awareness by how greatly people’s appearances and conditions had been changed. Changes had arrived with what people now called modernization. Slowly, laws and social norms were changing, allowing people to choose their own way of life instead of binding them to one craft and one identity. The strange looking foreigners with blue or green colored eyes, different nationalities, different skin and hair colors were allowed to travel across their land, bringing with them new knowledge of the outside world, new inventions, new possibilities.
What affected him the most was the introduction of modern inventions, the Edo he had once known so well was now going through a rapid transformation. Now the city was patrolled by organized police, the districts rebuilt and the streets lid with streetlamps - man-made light which drove out the shadow and the darkness of night more effectively than anything else he had ever seen. Making it more difficult and at the same time easier to hide himself. Since due to the spreading of modern education and newly introduced ideas about science and what was rational and what was not, the mass was becoming less aware of creatures like him. Now people chose to believe demons simply did not exist, people even were taught and encouraged to think that way. As a result any mention about demons and anything supernatural in public would be viewed as foolishness and superstitious, at the back of their mind most people still feared the darkness and the unknown, but now those thoughts were suppressed, no one was supposed to take this fear seriously for it was being viewed as superstitious and weak.
Still, on the other hands, mortals had remained unchanged in many aspects. Despite the increase of food supply, material comfort and wealth, mortals still fought among themselves in order to gain more possessions, at the expand of leaving the unfortunate ones starving and homeless. They killed, they raised wars among themselves, creating one self-made disaster after another throughout the process they learnt to call ‘history’.
Through what they called ‘history’ was what Takeo would call ‘repeating the same mistakes’, again and again.
He had already lived too long, too worn to be curious about anything or anyone else by the time the dreams came to him.
These were dreams that made him gasp when he woke and sent a shiver down his spine every time he recalled it. Takeo could not recall when did the dreams start invading his sleep, his dreams were filled with moving shadows, and a pair of unseen eyes fixing upon him. In those dreams he always found himself in a strange scenery, where his surrounding was always bathed in an unnatural misty layer of crimson light, where shadows were always shifting at the corners of his eyes. A dark, lifeless place where the sky was forever shrouded by black grey cloud, he knew he had never seen this place before during his waking hours.
Before those dreams arrived, Takeo had long believed his ability to dream was dead ever since he was first attacked and transformed, but night after night after night he had similar dreams. And an unspeakable voice lingering in the air, calling out to him. As if it had something to tell him, as though it wanted to lead him somewhere. As though it was something of the utmost urgency and importance...the only problem was that Takeo could not understand what it was. What was he seeing? Why must he visit this strange landscape again and again in his sleep?
One night he stopped on a street and looked around, taking in the scene of huge skyscrapers made of steel and cement surrounding him instead of low, shabby houses made of wood. He was in one of the busiest districts within Tokyo, surrounding by men and women who wore Westernized modern clothes instead of the kimono or yukata, which he was so familiar with when he was still alive.
The Edo he once known had also came a long way, it had evolved as a mega city and was renamed Tokyo.
Takeo himself had also transformed, after more than a century, he had already become an expert of forging fake identity and blending in with the crowd. He frequently changed his appearance, occupation and address, he changed his own names and identity in order to be enable to live in secrecy, unnoticed. Now he looked like any other citizen in the 21st century Japanese society. He dressed just like every other ordinary man, his face clean with a neutral expression to hide the truth about him, his hair was trimmed according to the latest fashion for men, and was dyed brown. He possessed the knowledge which fitted his image of a well educated man of the age, and his understanding of the world as it really was, hidden deep beneath the facade.
He looked like just someone you would pass on the street without glancing back once. There was nothing about him which could draw unwanted attention. You would not be able to tell from this man appearance that there was something different about him. That he was a nocturnal creature, that he fed on mortals in order to survive.
Beneath this facade of ordinary, laid an restless soul, haunted by an impulse and needs he could not name, and unexplained dreams which seemed to be too ominous, grotesque and vivid to be overlook. It did not take long for fragments of these dreams to materialize in the waking world.
Takeo began to see pieces and fragments of his dark dreams lingered at the corners of his eyes. Phantom forms of moving shadows twisting at the street corner, flashing across the cold smooth surface of a glass window, shifting behind a half closed door.
The shadows were calling out to him, as much as that mysterious which echoed at the back of his head. Come
He did not know it was the Blood Path reaching for him.
Different kind of inhuman races had their own different paths to travel into the night.
And the dark creatures who lived on blood had a wet, thick trace of crimsonto lead the way toward their nightmarish world of shadow and madness. Takeo was of no exclusion. After more than a century of existence, despite not being fully willing, Takeo would soon finally follow the Blood Path, and eventually came face to face with the madness.
to be continued.