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Ninth Beat
Day 16
"Multiple-Personality Disorder. Or Dissociative Identity Disorder, as it's more frequently referred to these days. It's actually quite common; affects about one percent of the population in humans, though there haven't been counterpart studies conducted for youkai."
"What is it?" Yaone asked.
"It occurs when the brain begins to shut off sensory data and attempts to shield itself from input by creating an interim entity," Dr. Nii Jianyi explained, "and reaches full stage when these mature into full identities with discernable personality shifts apart from the host. High quantities of stress can bring it on, but most likely this is a relapse into a disorder initially brought on in childhood."
Yaone and Dokugakuji ducked their heads. No one knew much about Kougaiji's childhood.
"Symptoms are all present," the scientist went on, addressing a clipboard. "Signs of depression, mood swings. Sleep disorder. Eating disorder. Panic attacks and sudden phobias. Headaches. Time loss. Uncharacteristic habits. Tendency toward violence."
"He already had that," Dokugakuji argued, both servants beginning to recall all the holes punched in walls in anger.
"Increased tendency, then. Of course, we've also heard from various sources of convulsions and nervous twitching, lack of coordination, self-violence--"
"What?"
"Throwing himself down stairs comes to mind."
"Oh my..." Yaone whispered, covering her mouth with a hand.
"And then there's the presence of the alter. Very finely developed. Not only has the prince created a side personality, but he's chosen to imitate that of another individual. That we can see, anyway; we've yet to get the personality to fully surface."
"What would it even matter to talk to Sanzo--"
"Not Genjo Sanzo," Nii corrected. "This is an important distinction that must be made. There is no one inside the prince's head except him; all alternates that may emerge are strictly facets of the one personality. Characterizing it as a separate entity will only propagate the illness in the mind of the patient."
The two servants fell silent for a moment. Yaone was blinking back moisture in her eyes. Dokugakuji chewed the inside of his cheek.
Then he said, "Can he get better?"
"With time and careful study, science and medicine can overcome all obstacles," Nii said with resolute confidence, tucking his pen back in its slot on the clipboard. "Don't worry. Gyokumen-sama is treating his highness's health as a top priority. Your master will be back on his feet soon enough."
~*~
Kougaiji heard the entire conversation, echoed through the damp stone walls, and later, when things mumbled off into departures and the iron gate to the jail row swung open. He did not look up.
He sat huddled, arms around his knees, resting with his side against the cell wall. Arms and legs stiff without movement, eyes wearing out staring at nothing.
"Are you ready for our session today, highness?" he heard Dr. Nii ask, heard the scrape of the chair against old stone and the click of a pen as he sat down.
"Don't you have work to do?" Kougaiji mumbled back.
He could feel the smile on the human's face, even if he didn't turn to see it for himself.
"Am I not conducting maintenance on one of my units?"
Kougaiji said nothing.
Stared at the window that cast cold morning sunlight down, as colorless and sterile as moonlight.
Heard the scientist laying his clipboard aside, as all pretense finally evaporated.
"May I speak with his holiness?"
"He's asleep right now."
"Very convenient."
Kougaiji was growing impatient with the man's tone. He tore his gaze from the window and glared at Nii out of the corner of his eye.
"What do you hope to gain from any of this?"
Nii grinned like this was a question he had been anticipating.
"It's for the benefit of science, of course."
"Bullshit."
"No? The psychiatric community would wet itself with the offer of a case of this magnitude. Full-on mental integration of a human and a youkai? I've conducted classes stressing it would be thoroughly impossible."
"So basically, you're delighted to get proven wrong?"
The smile took on a brittle edge. "In some specific cases."
"Like when it could make you rich."
"Oh, no!" Nii exclaimed, holding a hand to his chest as though he had just been brutally offended. "Simple fortune and fame are already assured me, through Gyokumen-sama and our efforts here. No, boy, this is..." and then he grinned with all the menace of a wolf on the verge of a kill, "...a personal delight of mine."
~*~
"Yaone."
The chemist stopped in her ascent and looked back down the stairs. Dokugakuji was looking up at her apprehensively.
"You don't believe him, do you?"
She puzzled at this. "We have reason to doubt?"
He climbed the steps between them so that they walked side-by-side to the ground level. "You familiar with Occam's Razor?"
"'The simplest answer must be the right one'?"
"And what seems more logical? That this is some fluke magical accident and that really is Sanzo in that head of his, or that he's the victim of stress and repressed trauma and unresolved childhood issues?"
"M-magic, clearly," Yaone stammered, sort of at a loss. "But--"
"And I know when Kougaiji's lying. He's a really bad liar." Dokugakuji all but mumbled it, seeming to be talking more to himself than his companion at the moment.
"Were he ill," Yaone tried to argue, "he wouldn't be able to distinguish between lies and the truth. Would he?"
"Look at that man and tell me you see someone without a clear grasp of reality on his side. He's as much in his mind as he's always been. Despite what other shit he's got going on."
Yaone stopped as they reached the head of the stairs, prepared to split at the corridor to go their separate ways. "Then," she quavered, "if we're to assume he was in his right mind the other day, before Gyokumen..."
"Then he's made his stand, and we're about to have another war on our hands," Dokugakuji confirmed. "This one from the inside."
"But to defy the crown..."
"Yaone." The seriousness of the tone commanded her to look up, and meet his eye. It was such a sobering expression such as she had hardly ever seen on him, and left no room to misinterpret what it meant.
The time for ambivalence and mixed intentions was gone. If their lord could make a stand, finally and clearly, then it was to them to decide also.
Dokugakuji said, "Who do we serve? Gyokumen and the king?"
She shook her head quickly. "Only Lord Kougaiji. That's been our decision."
"Then where he goes, we follow. That's how it's always been, hasn't it? Even if it means our open opposition to the revival. Even if it counts as treason."
Yaone nodded this time, slower, reconciling this with herself.
"Yes."
"And that means..." Dokugakuji said, breaking eye contact to glance around them. "That there's something I promised that I need to see to."
"Can I help?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I think either way, we're going to have to get in there to see him sometime."
"Doctor Nii said we could visit starting tomorrow--"
"Not Kougaiji. Well-- yes. But who we really need to talk to is Sanzo."
~*~
It was late when Nii Jianyi left. Far more content with himself than Kougaiji thought he was right to feel. And Kougaiji's head feeling several degrees bludgeoned with a baseball bat. Managing two conversations at once was not entirely easy.
Later a pair of servants of some capacity, that might be called orderlies or prison guards if they weren't so plainly two peasant boys shoved into positions they couldn't care less for, came by and conducted standard clean-up of his cell and gave him his food. He knew it was probably drugged. He ate it anyway.
Later, as the tranquilizers did their work and Kougaiji lay curled on the floor in that fuzzy halfway state between consciousness and sleep, he said,
Shut up.
Who, me? Sanzo asked in surprise.
Not you. That voice. It won't leave.
Sanzo made a weak effort at amusement, though they both knew it didn't work too well.
Told you it was annoying.
~*~
Overhead, unseen, the threads of the aural network coiled and twisted, spun and, occasionally, broke.
Too many voices were already vying for space in the prince's head. But now they were going to be joined by one more.
It knew no language, it spoke no emotion. It was an intelligence so old that the only relic left to its sentience was its pure, unbridled malevolence.
And it was waking up.
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