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He had been hurting her.
He deserved it, Chinatsu thinks as she drags his lifeless corpse across the ground, leaves rustling and twigs cracking in her wake. It is night and she doesn't have to care about being silent when everyone in the village is already snug in their beds for tonight, safe in their warm houses. They never noticed that she was hurting in one of those safe and warm houses, with no way of fighting back or escaping. What could be covered up in the morning was covered up and she had looked like any of the other village girls on the outside.
But Chinatsu knows. She doesn't quite belong to the village, being of the woods, but she recognises hurt when it is dealt out and hurt when it is received. The girl was supposed to be safe and warm in one of the village's houses but she wasn't.
Chinatsu sees her, a tall, slender girl of eighteen with lovely skin where he hadn't touched her, a strikingly brave figure walking the village in the day. Chinatsu recognises strength in her iron core and the glint of her eyes, the shadows in her face growing darker by the day. She knows that if she hadn't done away with the man, she would have done it herself, eventually.
So Chinatsu had done it for her.
She belongs to the village and Chinatsu does not. She needs to live under their protection, even if it was the false protection of a community which had failed to keep her safe once, and Chinatsu doesn't. She is a girl of the village and Chinatsu is a wild child of the woods, only spoken of in bedtime stories and ghostly myths. Chinatsu has much less to lose by a killing a man, when she has already done away with so many in the past.
Some part of the man's corpse hits a snag, jarring Chinatsu's arms, and she drops him with a curse, turning to see his broken body against the ground. His arm is bent at an awkward angle, caught on the raised root of a nearby tree, and Chinatsu marches over to set it right.
The leaves on the ground rustle and Chinatsu falls back against the tree in a crouch, raising her makeshift weapon, a sharpened branch, the same one she had driven through the man's heart.
In the waning light of the moon, Chinatsu sees her, walking towards Chinatsu, dreamlike, her feet skimming the ground as if she was floating. She is as beautiful as Chinatsu remembers her, her lovely skin shining pale in the moonlight, her hair cascading around her shoulders in dark waves. The shadows in her face are still there, set under piercing blue eyes that look straight at Chinatsu.
Reflexively, Chinatsu straightens up and drops the man's arm, lifting her chin defiantly to meet her gaze.
"Go home," Chinatsu says to her, her voice harsh with disuse. "Go back to sleep."
She doesn't listen. "Why did you do it?" she asks quietly and even her voice is lovely, laced through with steel resolve. She would have done it tonight if Chinatsu hadn't done it first.
"It wasn't right," Chinatsu responds curtly. "He shouldn't have been hurting you. You shouldn't have to bear something like that."
"How did you know? Nobody else knew. Nobody," she spits the last word out like a curse, her lovely voice raw-bitter.
"I watch, I see. It's amazing what you see when you don't involve yourself with others."
She falls silent, a pale, unmoving ghost in the dark woods. Chinatsu watches her for a moment before tucking her weapon away and reaching for the man's arm again. She pulls it away from the tree root, none too gently, and tosses it back on the ground.
"Can I help?"
Chinatsu glances up at her and sees her looking at the man's corpse, her eyes like cold, hard glass. Chinatsu shrugs. The blood is on Chinatsu's hands and the man is heavy. And she has a feeling that the other girl had already taken the precautionary steps to absolve herself of the crime when they can't find the man the next day or the day after that or any of the days after that.
"Suit yourself," she says and the other girl reaches for a leg while Chinatsu heaves the other one up.
As they proceed deeper into the woods, the girl tells her quietly, her voice barely audible against the racket that the man's corpse makes against the rustling leaves and cracking twigs, "Thank you."