by K.A. Rose
Gensomaden Saiyuki characters et cetera © and ™ Kazuya Minekura, ENIX and TV Tokyo, 1997. Used without permission, for nonprofit fan appreciation.
This is the sequel to "Brevity", that was originally posted as installment #18 in the 2004 Advent Calendar.
This fanfic is rated T:LS, meaning it is rated Teen (content suitable for ages 14 and up) for language and sexual content. Like its predecessor, it is a Sanzo/Hazel fanfic. Of a sort.
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The door shut quietly. Soft click.
He'd have wished for the license to slam it, probably
would have except for the hour and unwillingness to deal with the shit
of a hotel proprieter for disturbing someone or other's rest. At the moment
he didn't want any more headaches.
Genjo Sanzo removed his holy crown with about the
same motion as a working husband pulling off his hat upon walking in, shortly
before announcing to the missus that, honey, he was home. Except there
was no one to say it to, least not up at this hour, and he'd be sooner
damned than say something so banal anyway. All the same, if he had worn
a suit with a tie he'd be loosening it right now, and if he'd carried a
briefcase it would have been proper to toss it on the sofa before flopping
down in an armchair, complaining about coworkers and his aching feet, and
wanting a cup of tea if the missus would be so kind.
In short, Genjo Sanzo had had a long day.
Tonight was the last night of Ulambana, the fifteen-day
summer festival to honor the dead, and Sanzo had had good luck avoiding
anything to do with it up until now. He'd've continued in this way, too,
sure as hell hadn't set out this afternoon with any plans of prayers and
rituals he'd had no truck with since a child, but if it got them out of
this shithole faster (and there had been strong implication among the unwashed
masses of this town that this was the case), he might as well.
Anyway, it had been bugging him. The aural field
was a righteous mess of tangled threads and snarls of displaced energy,
torn to pieces from its quiet woven network by the movement of far too
many ghosts and spirits. The people of this town had the benefit of only
wishing to hear the sounds of departed loved ones; Sanzo had had to actually
listen to it, a wailing so constant that it robbed sleep and energy and
sent his three companions ducking under the table from gun threats even
more than usual.
It was akin to the release of a swarm of flies right
through a thick spider's web, knotting and shredding its delicately balanced
structure with their haphazard winding. No one really noticed it, not consciously,
except for the aurally trained. Hakkai could possibly spot a bit of it
but only tenuously, on the cusp of his comprehension, his magic aligned
far more within the body than imbedded in the earth. Actually, apart from
his mentor, Sanzo had ever really known just one individual to understand
the field in nearly the same way as himself.
The darkness of the inn mocked him as he ascended
the stairs.
Because it had all turned into a joke, the thing
about the Westerner. It had come to them both slowly over who knew how
many months that what they'd actually been engaged in, all the rivalry,
all the feints and double-backs, the courtesies, the truces, the careful
mutual stuggle... amounted to one great, overelaborate courtship. It was
so stupid it couldn't even be called pathetic, but there it was. And no
sooner had they realized it and chosen to recognize it consciously, the
bastard had gone and died.
Just... died. Arbitrarily in some nonsense fight.
No special irony to it, no poetic justice, just one hit in the wrong place
run far too deep and that had been it.
Sanzo hadn't seen it. He'd heard it secondhand.
And it pissed him off in ways he couldn't really express. Attachments there
were not, for if he couldn't be expected to develop anything for his comrades
from all their sessions, a few encounters in dark hotel rooms with the
other priest could surely not be said to hold much weight. No, it was just
Sanzo cared to see projects to their conclusion, on those occasions he
took an interest.
And now, whatever Hazel may have been or might have
become to anyone or anything, Sanzo would never know. Maybe he was never
any more than an enemy with a knife hidden in the base of that crucifix,
for all Sanzo could ever hope to divine. It lay beyond him now. Far too
out of reach.
The heat was oppressive, even this far late into
the night. Clouds had hidden the moon outside as Sanzo had made his way
back to the inn from his service at the near burial grounds, and the clouds
trapped the heat and the humidity, made cloth and hair stick to the skin
and sour the senses. The insect season forbade window opening even in a
desperate plea for airflow, and Sanzo's breath inside these halls was stagnant
like twice-smoked cigarette fume.
And the ghosts were not helping anyone, even if
they were on the retreat back to the dimension gates now. The monk had
done everything to prod them, but the discorporeal were sluggish with ideas.
Their mental lethargy seeped back into the brains of the relatives leaving
out their food offerings and made the whole town a bit dizzy with what
they assumed was simple grief, dug up stupid superstitions even more extravagant
than the ones they already practiced. Incense hazed the already heated
rooms, marks were painted in the windows and dug into the earthen streets,
and to add insult to the injury, someone had nailed mistletoe over the
door. Like he really needed a reminder like that from some wanton asshat
who couldn't keep his religions straight out here in the boondocks.
The holiday at least meant no rush on the local
inn, affording each member of his group their own room for once in a long
time. Sanzo was looking forward to a bit of peace. Fewer ghosts and fewer
bad memories would help, too, in actually getting to sleep tonight. He'd
seldom known himself to need it so much.
Entering his temporary quarters with a shuffle he
made to dig in the sleeves of his robes for a match to light the candles,
only to find, turning, that a few of them were already lit. A courtesy
by the staff, perhaps, oh-so-grateful-as-they-should-be for his little
service tonight. He wasn't going to argue.
The shape on his bed, however, was not likely a
courtesy of a maid.
Hazel looked up from his reading, closed the book
in his hands softly. One of Hakkai's left by yesterday, but that wasn't
an issue to bring up at the moment.
At the moment, Sanzo was able to say nothing.
"You're a bit out of season," he told the bishop
at last, his voice carried on the natural exhale.
There was a faint smile returned to him. "I feel
you'll find mistletoe was historically gathered at midsummer as well."
"'Done some research?"
"A little."
He wasn't dead.
He wasn't dead, by any capacity of the word. All
at once the old statements Sanzo had taken for fact without question were
turned over and branded myth and rumor and misinformation. And he... didn't
really know what to do.
"I believe I recall," Hazel said in the wake of
the monk's silence, "promising to reciprocate the deference given to me
on the night of my Lord's birth. Were there ever such an opportunity."
Sanzo couldn't stand the distance, how indistinct
the features were in the low light. He moved closer, until he was standing
beside the bed. Until he was sitting on the bed next to the other priest.
Distance still disconcerting.
He got rid of the last of it.
Gojyo had once joked that Hazel was worse for Sanzo
than booze, if it meant Sanzo had finally found a bedmate whose body he
was fine to keep lying next to in the aftermath. Next to, or on. He rested
with his head over crossed arms over the priest's chest, fought down the
urge for the post-coital cigarette because, as it might surprise, even
Sanzo understood when it paid not to be rude.
Besides, as the hour neared, he was becoming more
aware of it, and he couldn't let the bishop leave without the answer.
"You're not alive, are you," he said quietly.
"Neither am I dead," Hazel told him, in the same
hush. No need for higher voices.
"Yet not a shikigami."
"No."
"A ghost."
"Perhaps."
"The gate closes at midnight."
"I didn't come from the gate."
"Then where--"
"I don't know," Hazel murmured. "The better question
would be of perception. What am I to you?"
Not a ghost. Not a corpse. Not a spirit or a specter
or a figment of imagination. But what did it leave, for a creature whose
heart beat next to Sanzo's ear just as a formality?
Not a love. He knew love; it had died before his
eyes when he was thirteen. Not a hate. Not a curiosity. Not a missing puzzle
piece that made a complex picture swim into focus. Not anything that completed
anything.
"...I don't know."
Just there.
Didn't have the time to learn more. Hadn't before,
didn't have now.
And the hour passed to midnight.
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21:57 20 Dec 2004