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To be immortal is to be oppressed, as Atsushi has learned for his a thousand years on Earth. Once people learn that he cannot die, he becomes something other than human. Not greater than, certainly. If they think he is a god, then he wouldn’t be treated as he is. He wouldn’t be used as a sword and shield, an experiment, or an animal. They wouldn’t dare hunt him down as an escaped prisoner or wild game.
He’s lucky to not have experienced the world alone. Centuries ago, he was speared through the gut by a man whose hair was black except for the white edges during the Goguryeo-Wei War. When the man’s back was turned under the assumption that Atsushi would remain dead on the ground, Atsushi returned the favor with all the vigor he could manage. He watched the man’s life begin to fade from his eyes.
Atsushi turned to continue fighting and no sooner did he feel a cool blade pierce his heart.
The resentment he experienced from the pain soon faded into disbelief, and then relief when he made the connection that he was not alone in his heavenless immortality. However, they were still on opposite sides of the war. Proper communication didn’t start until long after the fighting had ended, and even then, their encounters weren’t exactly friendly. Each conversation was short and usually ended with one or the other limping home with a new, permanent scar that could only be inflicted, as they learned, from a fellow immortal.
The exact date on which Atsushi’s luck turned around is lost to him. Time became inscrutable as his bondage was passed from one clan to the next. At one point or another, the mysterious, volatile man stopped trying to fight him at every move. Their conversations lasted longer, and Atsushi was finally able to glean his family name.
“Akutagawa,” he’d muttered. They were standing in a small valley tucked between two looming mountains, just outside of a neutral village. The villagers were in the midst of sacrificing cattle to whichever deity they believed in. Atsushi had stopped caring long ago. He found no deity he could put his faith in besides himself.
“Akutagawa,” Atsushi repeated, testing the name out on his tongue. It rolled off easier than his war-born alias Rashoumon. “Is that your given name?”
Akutagawa assessed him with a critical gaze, his expression betraying little other than mistrust. “I don’t want to hear my name from your mouth.”
It wasn’t said in vain bitterness, but rather with plain indifference. Atsushi refused to take it as a personal attack, no matter how hard his heart screamed in agony at the statement. He redirected his disappointment to an alternative interpretation: an opening for change. Akutagawa didn’t trust him yet, but in the future, he would tell Atsushi the name that only belonged to him.
Presently, Atsushi whispers Ryuunosuke’s name under his breath over and over again as a prayer. Akutagawa is no more a god than Atsushi, but after searching every corner of the world, he’s become the only deity Atsushi wants to pray to.
“Who is this Ree-you-eno-see-key? Who do you condemn?” The English noble grabbed his face, nearly spitting in his eye with his demand. Atsushi shut his mouth and closed his eyes, unwilling to look the white man in the face.
Traveling the world was an idea they developed after participating in various other conflicts in the homeland. The assassinations, wars, and petty squabbles never seemed to end, and they couldn’t escape it within the island. After spending some time in a bustling harbor, Akutagawa studied as an apprentice under a maritime craftsman and built a compatible ship for two immortals with no destination in mind. They abandoned their posts overnight, and they drifted across the sea until they reached the Han Dynasty.
From there, they traveled inwards, living decades in one place before moving on to the next. Bloodshed followed their footsteps — war was never more than a hairwidth away. The need to fight after spending so many years on the island toiling away under clan flags raged within them, and before war could tear them apart again, they fled.
That was how they found themselves in Engla Land during the Crusades, a unique religious war that didn’t take kindly to the likes of Akutagawa and Atsushi. While the war wasn’t being fought on English soil, it brought a heightened religious fervor to the home country.
They’ve never been in a predicament quite like this.
People were quick to bond and use them for their desires, but none had expressed disgust at their existence. Atsushi wasn’t revered, but he wasn’t an object of hatred and heresy. The Christians think differently. Immortality, for people that did not look, act, or dress as they do, is a sort of crime in their religion. There is only one deity, and for any human to be immortal is to claim deity status, which is then an attack on their god.
Or something like that. Atsushi hasn’t had enough time to become fluent in the native language, nor understand the intricacies of their religion.
The noble lets go of his face when he sees that his attempts at gaining information are getting nowhere. Atsushi blinks his eyes open and tries to move, but the heavy metal box he’s been shoved in and the nails keeping his hands and feet together prevent any significant movement. He could rip them out, technically, but his energy is depleted. Hours of torture have led to a slow heart and fuzzy brain.
When the noble steps away to command his cell to be sealed, Atsushi scans the crowd once more. Nobles, knights. and peasants alike are gathered at the edge of the harbor to watch the heretic drown for his sins. Public executions are supposed to be exemplary, but Atsushi is only aware of one person who could possibly head the warning the Crown is sending.
Finally, just before the door shuts on Atsushi, he finds Ryuuonsuke at the very back of the crowd, hidden in the shadow of a market building. His eyes barely meet Atsushi’s, and from so far away, it’s impossible to tell what his expression is made out to be.
The knights had stormed their home, they had not taken Akutagawa. They only recognized Atsushi, and as such, Atsushi made a quick agreement with Ryuunosuke that he would not reveal himself and resign himself to the same fate Atsushi was given. Akutagawa only relented under the pretense that he was allowed to rescue Atsushi, or that Atsushi had to get himself out promptly.
If it had been down to Akutagawa, he would have killed everyone right then and there. Atsushi knows this because he knows his partner better than he knows the back of his own hand.
But, a century ago, Atsushi proposed that they cannot kill for a millennium. They have killed too many innocents, Akutagawa more than Atsushi. It is within their duties as stronger beings to refrain from massacring the weak.
Ryuunsouke made a blood contract with Atsushi on this deal, and thus far, it has not been broken.
Since they didn’t understand their native language, the knights were blissfully unaware of the compromise. They didn’t know that the two beings they withheld had been fighting for a hundred generations before their time, since before their country had even formed what it is today.
The door shuts on Atsushi, cutting him off from the crowd and Akutagawa, and the only light he can see filters through the small holes cut for air and water alike. It takes a great deal of effort for the knights to lug him on the ship waiting behind them. It would be funny if he were not dreading the fate that was about to await him, and he has yet to puzzle a way to escape his captivity.
Shouts trail as the ship leaves the harbor, and their voices eventually fade to the calls of the English sailors, knights, and the rock of the wooden ship. An anchor is attached to the metal box.
Then, after an amount of pushing and pulling, he falls overboard and sinks into the depths of the tumultuous ocean. The anchor keeps pulling him down, down, and down while the salty water seeps into his cell from the peepholes.
Immortals cannot be killed, but if one wanted to try their damn best, they would do it like this. By the time the box reaches the bottom of the floor, he has already drowned three times. His nostrils fill with water and his lungs collapse under the lack of air until it brings him to the brink of death. His organs then heal, but with his environment unchanging and the constrained space, he cycles back into the same death. His attempts at beating the box until it breaks don’t work. He eventually gets his hands and feet free of the nails, but the water keeps him from having any force behind his fists.
His only reliance is on Ryuunosuke. Atsushi whispers his name under the dark sea, with salt water burning his eyes and the thick metal box restraining him to never-ending death.
—
In the year 2016, dozens of miles off the coast of Southampton, England, a group of five researchers dives into the Atlantic Ocean to examine the local sea life of both plants and animals. They swim along the sea floor and slowly make their rounds, taking pictures and mental notes while simultaneously enjoying the quiet sounds of the gentle rush of water around them.
Fish pass by the feet, some curious but most avoiding the humans. They laugh, and though two of them have been deep-diving for over a decade, they can never get past the bliss of the nature that surrounds them.
One researcher spots a shine from the corner of her eye after taking a picture of the pod of dolphins swimming adjacent to them. They appear healthy, she notes, with no visible signs of prevailing illness or starvation. She turns and presses her hand against the shine, soon recognizing that she’s touching metal. Quickly, she sweeps aside the rocks and sand. More metal greets her.
Waving over the two nearby researchers and signaling for help, they begin to earnestly uncover the unknown object. She thinks it could be a lost missile or cannonball, both of which would be hard to carry alone, but if they all worked together, they may be able to bring it to the waiting boat. As they continue to uncover the metal, however, she starts to think otherwise.
It’s much too big to be even a missile, and what they manage to uncover appears to be an old door. After receiving an affirmative signal from the rest of her team — all of whom eventually drifted together to work on the object — she reaches for the lock and worked on breaking it away. Since it’s long rusted, it gives way after a few harsh tugs. She holds the lock as two other researchers heave the door open.
Her guesses as to what lay inside throughout the process of unveiling the door evolved into golden treasures, weapons, or even a rotted corpse. She wasn’t particularly fond of the last one, but it was always a possibility.
Only one thing rests behind the old metal door. Her stomach twisted inside out as she met the purple-orange-hued eyes of an alive boy.
His skin is pale, nearly translucent, and his mouth is gaping open while his chest heaves for anything other than the water it desperately expels. She isn’t the first to act; three other researchers grab a hold of the boy and immediately break away to the surface. She knows they aren’t going to get him up there in time before he drowns, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.
What flops onto the team’s boat isn’t exactly human.
His eyes glow with unnatural light, not to mention the strange colorings, The fact that he survived the journey up to the surface points is logically impossible. He coughs out the water in his lungs and hugs their only towels close to his body. His limbs shake, but he doesn’t seem emaciated from hunger or thirst. His skin is clear of pruning, and he stares at the lead researcher with a ferocity unlike anything she’s ever seen before.
He doesn’t speak the same language as her. If she were to guess, it sounds like a mixture of Latin and Japanese, the latter of which the boy is ethnically from. At their incomprehension, the boy closes his mouth, then reopens it to say one name only.
“Akutagawa Ryuunosuke.”