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Kobe Shio would forever remember the blood.
So red. So utterly, disgustingly red.
It hadn't bothered her at the time. Looking back at it, she had just been in this dazed state, unable to think well. Unable to think at all.
Her psychiatrist told her that she had suffered from a Dissociative fugue, that her father's abuse and her mother's abandonment had caused her to block away her memories and the violent reality around her. And then the monster came and took advantage of that.
She had loved the monster, or she thought she did. She was young and scared, and the monster seemed nice. Everything with her was sweet and pink and happy. Life with the monster was nothing but candy, cakes, kisses, marriage vows...
She hadn't seen nothing wrong with it. She hadn't been able to...
...Until the day a girl named Shouko saw her and took a picture of her with her cellphone, and the next thing she could remember well was seeing the monster in front of her, covered in blood.
― Shio, do you remember me?
Who are you?
― No, I guess you wouldn't...
Who are you who are you who are you
― My name is Asahi. I'm your brother.
My head hurts.
― ...Wait, what's wrong? Are you hurt?
Everything is spinning again...
―Don't worry, Shio. You are safe now.
Liar.
― We are going home.
spinning
spinning
spinning spin
The days that followed after Shouko's murder were blurry ones. Shio couldn't remember anything specific, except that the monster was more agitated. There was more emptiness in her eyes now, the empty jar that Shio had filled inside her was beginning to shatter.
And then Asahi, the brother she couldn't remember she had, arrived.
He waited for the right moment to do so, getting all the equipment he needed. Then he broke into the monster's castle while she was out to work and he ran away with her.
And the monster got furious.
Asahi was the total opposite of the monster Shio thought she loved.
The monster was sweet like candy. Everything seemed to shine around her like diamonds, and with her Shio had everything she could ask for. But inside her there was nothing but emptiness, and something horrible and dangerous that Shio was blissfully unaware of.
Asahi was bitter. He was wounded and sad and even more scared and lost than she was. He kept promising her that he would protect her, again and again, but Shio had to wonder if the one in need of protection was him. He smelt of loneliness and garbage, and every day she spent with him were ones of hunger and poverty.
But Asahi had a pureness on his heart that the monster could only dream of having. Any food he could get his hands on was for Shio first, even if when she could tell that he was more hungry than her. He told her about how their mother used to be, and why he had to stay behind so the devil wouldn't follow them. The devil... That was how Asahi would always refer to their late father, and Shio believed him.
He also told her about Shouko. She could recognized her from his description of her, but never told him a thing.
They kept low, so the monster wouldn't found them, until Asahi decided it was time to go home, to where Mom was probably still waiting for them. Shio didn't wanted to go, for she had very vague memories of that woman and they weren't pleasing ones. But Asahi begged to differ, for his dream was for the three of them to be happy.
But Shio was scared. Even worse, she had started to miss the monster. She thought that maybe, the monster could come with them. That she could have both the sweetness of the monster and her bitter but loving brother. It seemed so simple.
It was bittersweet, and she thought she didn't want it any other way.
So she called out to the monster, and the monster came running.
It was the worse mistake she could have ever done.
She was just a stupid little girl, how could she had known?
There was a time when Shio could think about the monster's name. There was a time when she couldn't imagine her as a monster at all.
Now her name left such a horrible taste in her mouth, she refused to even think of her as anything other than "the monster" if she could helped it.
She wondered if something like that had happened between her brother and her alcoholic mess of a father. Asahi had to have known their father's name, but his experience with him had been so terrible that saying his name was like saying the name of the Devil.
Well, it's not like she could asking him about it now.
Not after the monster murdered him.
And yet...
She had survived, she had returned to the world outside of the "castle". She had grown up, found a job, found love (Actual love, not whatever bullshit the monster thought love was and had tried to taught her). There had been problems, yes, lots of them. The monster wasn't around her anymore, but her dissociation didn't go away. She still had panic attacks at random times, she still had dizzy spells. Sometimes she tried to remember her brother's face, but there was nothing but a blank space.
But she had to keep going. For her brother, for Shouko and for whoever else got killed due to the monster's obsession with her.
So why...
Why was she still dreaming about her?
Why was she still missing her?
That day, after kissing her wife goodbye and promising her she would be back for dinner and that no, she needed to do this alone, Shio went to the one place she didn't thought she would visit ever in her life.
She had done her research, keeping track of what had happened to the monster of her childhood after she was arrested: She was deemed mentally insane and sent to a mental institution. She tried to escape several times, and had to be put on suicide watch a couple times too.
Shio remembered her a little too well. She remembered her pink hair, her smile, her voice. So it was a little shocking to see her now, with said pink hair getting grey and greyer, and with that carefree teenager air around her long gone. Her eyes were still the same, though: Red like blood, and completely empty of normal human emotions.
Shio had hoped she wouldn't recognized her. The Shio Kobe she was murderously obsessed with was an underage girl with two pigtails and big innocent eyes, not the adult businesswoman with a bob cut and a hateful glare she hoped would intimidate her.
She still did, though, as she smiled at her with a fake sweetness that sent shivers down her spine.
She reminded herself that there was nothing to fear: There were guards outside, and it wasn't like the monster had ever hurt her. That realization made her smile.
Satou Matsuzaka would never be free to hurt anyone else, ever again. The roles had been reversed. Now Shio was the free one, living a normal life, while her monster was caged and tamed and she was free to visit it anytime she wanted.
She stared into the monster's empty red eyes.
This was the monster who had stolen everything from her...
This was the monster who would be forever haunting her nightmares, until the day she died...
And yet...
And yet...
― Hello, Satou-chan. How have you been?