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Douma wakes up and squints against the harshness of the lamps in his room, then rolls over to shake away the residue of a dream he can't quite remember, the same way a dog, or a cat, would frantically shake water of its fur after it's been thrown into a river and left to drown.
Half-heartedly, he raises an arm sluggishly to cover his eyes, before a knock on the shoji door causes him to blow out air and lower it once again. There's something strange in the air, chilly and heated all at once, causing the space around him to waver in and out like a mirage, stretch and shrink like a coil before it springs. Like a bomb before it explodes.
"Who is it?" He asked out of ingrained politeness, already knowing it was one of his followers, Takeshi, behind the door. "Takeshi, Sir." Takeshi's muffled voice came from behind the door, containing that slight rasp it normally had. He never quite did get over that cold.
"It's time to counsel." Takeshi says, timidly, fidgeting with his hands when Douma finally opened the door and towered over him.
It's always time to counsel.
"Alright." Douma says.
For hell, this was a rather strange place, Douma thought, when he woke up to the golden tiles on the ceiling of his bedroom. Familiar, he thought wryly. He walked out of the room and looked around, tilting his head at the paintings he saw hanging on the wall.
They were identical, every single one of them, to the ones in the cult. He smiled to himself in amusement. Maybe he was back in the cult.
There was the painting with the cranes, the painting with the lady strumming a biwa-which reminded him of Nakime, Douma listed, as he followed Takeshi down the hall. The painting with lotuses, floating in a pond, and then there was the portrait of Buddha. Douma stopped.
He had arrived.
There were thick, yellow curtains obscuring the room that lay ahead of him. Douma grimaced slightly at the sight. How ugly, that shade of yellow was. He ought to get it changed soon.
Douma tore his gaze away from the curtains, rainbow eyes flickering backwards, just for a moment.
All the paintings were gone. So was Takeshi.
The hallway was so dark, so Douma couldn't see his room anymore. The longer he stared, the more it was as if the darkness was inching closer to him, eating away parts of what's left of what he can see of the wooden floorboards.
His mind is playing tricks on him again. The dream resurfaces, but Douma pushes past the yellow curtains, and it rots away in the hall.
"Lord Douma!"
His name was spoken like a chorus, a sigh. Applause erupts from his entrance. They speak like a hivemind, incapable of formulating their own free will. A hivemind tethered to him.
They sit in a line, a long one, but neat and perfect and straight, trailing and winding endlessly. His heart feels too cold and too dreadful if he spends too long trying to see where the line ends.
Douma sits up straight, and puts on his best smile, "Come forth."
The first one had their head bowed low, so low that Douma could not see their face. "What is your story?"
They said, bashfully, tilting their head as if it were a strange quirk and yet still keeping it lowered, "I have no story to tell, but when I heard there was a man out there with silver hair and eyes the color of a thousand crystals bound together, I just had to see it for myself."
"Yes." Douma said. They spoke their syllables strangely, as if singing a verse in theatre rather than conversing. The strange tension came back, creeping, intruding like a parasite would.
"I've thrown away all my property and fortune just to catch a glimpse of your face," They sighed, in song, "Lord Douma!"-And that was when they looked up.
They had no face.
Where there should be a nose, two eyes and a mouth there was nothing but the smooth expanse of skin. Where the skin should cave in to form eye sockets and ridges for the brow there was nothing.
"Lord Douma!" Everyone chanted, and it was then that Douma noticed none of them wore a face. No identity to attach to. Takeshi didn't have a face either, because he can't remember it. He didn't even notice, then. "Take us to paradise!"
He recoiled; even the thought of his own name was suddenly too disgusting to bear. It was here, as if smelling weakness, or even fear, in the air, the army of what could not have possibly been human suddenly clambered forwards, each person trying to climb over the other.
"Save me, save me!" They're barely human, Douma thinks, trying to not let the disgust show on his face. They're all selfish, why should he be the one to-
One of them grabs him by the ankle, and he kicks them off, but something's wrong. He shouts, because where their hands touched, frost began crawling from. The cold burns. Here, being a demon didn't matter. There may be demons and humans in life but both of them start and end as people.
Wait, here? Douma blinks as the frost inches higher, ice crystals digging into his skin and immobilizing him. When he breathes, white clouds began forming. But the ice suddenly brought him clarity, and the rest of the people melt away into muscles, then bones, then nothing at all.
That's right.
He can't move. He's going to get devoured by his own followers and he can't move, can't do anything because he's trapped in ice. It nips at him and it burns just as hot as fire does, just with none of the warmth. Because-because-
The first follower reaches him, and their rotten teeth clamped down and tore flesh from his back. He screams.
Douma is in hell.
When he was young, Douma liked playing with dolls. Wait. No, he didn't like them. He just played with them. He kept thinking of this strange fantasy where only a game of make-believe can turn into reality-that some day, his parents, his followers, the adults would come to their senses and end his stupid duty.
Sometimes, it didn't even need to be all the adults or his parents. Just an adult. One. He wasn't picky. He was never a picky child.
And that adult would see through all this non-sense and he would be the one saved instead of pretending to save people. That was when he still knew that saving them was a lie.
"And, you're telling me this child can hear God?" The Man said, his voice deep but only as deep as a child could make it go.
"Yes, yes! This child can do anything!" The Lady and her Husband says, and this time, even for the Husband a high and mocking voice was used, turning them into caricatures of themselves and where a hint of resentment began to crawl in. They laughed, high and forceful, because he hadn't really figured out how to laugh and sound like he meant it yet, which was why they were only sticking to crying for now.
"Do we have any proof?" And it is against The Man's bold accusation that the childishness melts away into something more intense, like an infection seeping into an open wound something dark makes its way to the play.
"We have nothing but faith! Or are you saying you don't believe in God himself?" The Parents chorused indignantly; angry lines painted onto their wooden faces. Here, they were the villains.
But The Man held his head high. "We have nothing to prove the existence of God! Nothing concrete!" His voice stayed unwavering and strong: admiring characteristics of a hero who sticks to his ideals. "There is no God, and if you aren't lying then you're fools!" This was said in an uncharacteristic cruelness for a hero, or a child to have.
"Finally!" And now, a new figure is introduced, only, it's been there the whole time, sitting sandwiched right between The Parents: A plain, small wooden figure painted in whites for his hair and as many colors as they could scrape up for his eyes. "Someone sees the foolishness that had been occurring!"
"Young man!" The Man said grimly, but there was a hint of feigned warmth, as if a child was attempting to mimic a concept he didn't fully understand.
"I stayed because I felt bad for all these stupid people!" He declared, and the wood clacked against the floor as he moved towards The Man.
"Really?" The Man said, then he chuckled, all exaggerated in a 'Ho' 'Ho' 'Ho' sound. "How kind of you. No worries though!" And now the tiny figure and The Man was held together in one hand, and Douma stood up, wobbling over slightly from his oversized robes, and began to run.
"Your duty is now over! You won't have to ever think about these stupid, stupid people, ever again!-" But then in a startled hiccup, his robes once again getting in the way, he crashed against the floor.
For a moment, Douma lied there-stunned, not quite registering what had happened, dolls still clutched tightly in his hand.
But then the illusion was broken, and suddenly, Douma had felt very, very upset indeed. His nose wrinkled, and with a shout, he hurled the dolls across the room.
The Man cracked when he hit the wall and broke in two once he made contact with the floor.
Footsteps thundered down the hall, and then the shoji door opened.
"Goodness!" His father said, crouching down to examine the broken splinters of wood. "What happened here?"
"I-I don't know." Douma lied, though it wasn't his best one. "It just broke on its own." He blurted. He shouldn't stutter next time.
His parents bought it though, the stupid people they are, and his mother sighed wistfully, red nails smoothing over the balloon flower patterns on her kimono. "I thought they would have last forever..."
His father stood up, dusting of his clothes. "This must be an ill omen from God." He said, gravely.
"Indeed." His mother said. "God must not want our child playing with dolls." Douma looked up suddenly at that, but his parents continued on without noticing his reaction at all.
"Get rid of them." His mother said sharply, suddenly paranoid and intense. His father hummed, and began bending down to pick up the splinters and the broken corpse of The Man. When his collar lowered, Douma could see the faint bruises and lipstick trailing down his neck.
"They're much too girly for a boy to be playing with them anyway." His father muttered.
"Wait!" He says, but their minds were already made up. They had already left the room.
-
Fire crackled, and Douma watched numbly as the hardness of the wooden dolls darkened before melting into a mixture of ash and mush, their figures melding and crumbling until he wasn't sure if he was staring at The Parents or The Man.
When Douma opens his eyes again, the first thing he does was throw up. His hand came away in the color of mud, and at the center of it, a lotus sits. He gags at the sight. He already knows where this was.
In front of him, was a door with the Wheel of Law crested on it in gold.
"Haven't I suffered enough?" He doesn't beg, but it's a near thing because he's kneeling and his voice is cracking: The only thing stopping from such a gesture from being begging was the fact that he tells himself he's not.
Perhaps
He growls, trying to look for something he knows isn't there. "Stop toying with me! Stop, stop, stop this!"
And then the voice says, ever omniscient, Are you willing to repent?
"Repent for what," He snarls, lunging forwards before chains erupt from the ground as they always do and chain him in place. "You've seen all that! You know!" The chains rattled as he fell forwards, still stubbornly keeping him upright as he wants nothing more but to sink into the ground and dissolve into nothingness. He sobs, but it's a short, shaky sound. Then he wipes of his tears and it's like he's never cried in the first place.
I do.
"Then let me go!"
Are you so arrogant as to believe that you've done nothing wrong in your life?
Douma stills, and the rattling of the chain comes to a halt. "I've helped a lot of people." He says, but he sounds as weak as he did then, when he told his parents the doll had broken by itself.
You did. But would you really desire me to show you the list of your sins instead? Ones that unlike your demon comrades, began from when you were still human?
Douma winced from the pressure of the voice. He began tentatively, "I know that...parading around as a God was blasphemous." Haltingly, he began to defend himself. "...But I didn't know you were actually real then! I'm sorry!"
You deceived people.
It was spoken in disdain towards his very being. Still, on the defensive, he cried, "It made them happy! It made my parents happy if I played along!"
But it was fake.
It continued, when Douma fell silent, unable to retort properly, because it was true. What did you want, Douma?
He breathed quickly and harshly. He doesn't want to think about this. "I figured out a solution to make it true though!" He says. "When I became a demon, when I absorbed them, and, it meant they'd be free from the sufferings of their life!"
The voice was unwavering. And you lied to them.
"I didn't!" He shook his head frantically, "I..." But that's not what I asked. What did you want, Douma?
Douma struggled even harder, craning his neck to turn away from the door. "That's-that's never mattered before!" He cried. It matters now.
"Don't I get a choice in this then?" He pleads. "If it matters now can't you leave me alone?" His desperation melts away into anger, once more. He snarled, past the thudding of his still heart, "Or is this just another item in the long list of things I don't have a choice in?"
I'm very sorry. But you have to.
Douma slumped against his chains. "That's what they all say."
His eyes opened when something wet touched his hair. Looking up, he sees a lion, in front of him. The door is gone. It rolls something towards him. Douma watches, immobilized by chains as it comes slowly towards him. It's The Man.
Carefully, almost fearfully as if-if he touched it too hard, it would crumble away into ash, Douma touches the wooden figure.
His parents gave him a bird, once. It was the rarest songbird they could find. And they said it was special, just like him, and it had a song so sweet even the toughest samurai's heart would falter upon hearing it.
It was in a golden cage and its feathers were white save for the tail where black feathers zig zagged the feathers on its tail. For a songbird, it was quite large, big enough to perhaps be the size of an owl. It had clear, blue eyes, and at this he muttered at least its eyes could decide on a color. But his parents were right: it did sound nice whenever it sung.
Sometimes, he sees the bird struggling against the lock on the cage, hooked talons sloppily scratching at it, as if it would make the gold melt away for it enough to escape. And Douma wouldn't stop it.
He'd stare, heart trilling in anticipation at every faint click he hears, as if the lock really was going to break down and set the bird free.
And then the bird stopped trying, and his parents died. Died made it sound like his parents died of old age, or natural causes though. Dying sounded too passive, like they just sat there and some illness took them. His parents murdered each other.
He could never tell if the bird made good company or not, because after every major decision he's ever made, it would just stare, like he'd just made the wrong choice. He hates it.
He wants to hurl its cage against the wall. He wants to scare it. It began plucking its own feathers though, one day, and Douma sat down with it.
"What are you doing?" He asked it, and it stopped for a moment, eyes flickering up to him before its beak returned to its feathers once more.
"You're ruining yourself." Douma's eyes crinkled, and he looked at the sight in distaste. By now, most of its feathers were frantically groomed off, and the bird looked more like something the cooks would put into the oven to prepare dinner for him. He observed the bird for a little while, and then suddenly, it hit him like an epiphany.
"But if you were ugly, no one would want you anymore, and you'd be free..." In his feverish excitement, he ran into the bathroom to retrieve a pair of scissors, then ran again back to the bird. It now stares at him, almost curious.
"I can cut off all my hair and stab my eyes out and then people won't have anything to praise me with anymore..." Douma turns the scissors until the pointed end points at his eye. He blinks for a few moments, trying to make his vision focus on the steel of the scissor.
After letting out a breath, and lowering his shaking hands, he sighs. "But I'd go blind and I won't be able to see anymore without my eyes." Absentmindedly, he began running his fingers through his scalp, feeling his silver locks. He muttered dejectedly, "And hair dye would always never be enough, and my hair would always grow back no matter what I do...hair is just hard to maintain."
The bird chirps at him. He smiles wryly at it. "But your feathers won't grow back. The only thing you still have right now is your songs."
He clutches the cage, holding it closely to him, and says, darkly, "But you're still just as stuck here as I am, so I won't let you leave, even if you grow old and blind and you lose your song..."
-
When he turns twenty, Lord Muzan turns him into a demon. The bird isn't there to witness his transformation, but it was there when he stumbled, later, into his room, with a mouthful of human blood and guts. He collapsed onto his futon.
"I think this is it for us." He opens a drawer for the first time in years and he holds out an equally golden key, hand shaking either from adrenaline or exhaustion.
It takes him a moment, hands still slick from blood, but eventually he unlocks the lock and opens the door to the cage, and then puts it next to an open window. The crickets were still chirping, even though it's night...
"There you go. You're free." The bird doesn't leave the cage. It hardly even moved. It chirped, once, maybe even in confusion.
Douma frowns. "Don't you understand? The cage is open. Go."
Tentatively, the bird hops forwards, and its head poked out of the cage, almost disbelievingly. But then, as if hit by an invisible force, it recoils, shrinking away from the exit, and returns to its prior station.
It's here that Douma's patience snaps. "Why won't you leave?" He lunges forwards, hand plunging into the cage, when it melts away and Douma hits something else, solid, instead.
A door swings open from his push. It's the door of his cage. The memory of him grabbing the bird and crushing it melts away. He's the one in the cage, and it just swung open for him.
Why didn't you leave then? The lion circles him, turning its eyes up in silent question. Ahead of him, of the door, lies darkness. Why didn't you leave when your parents died? Why didn't you leave when Kibutsuji Muzan turned you into a demon?
"You're the god here." Douma says bitterly. "Why don't you tell me."
Step out of the cage.
His gaze remained glued to the ground. "No." The lion's tail batted against his face almost teasingly. "I already said that I played along because I pitied them for their foolishness." He blinks the heat from his eyes. "I...I don't know what you want me to say."
I'm not wanting you to say anything. I want you to step out of the cage.
"Damn you, God!" He grips the bars, heaving. If there was a mirror, the visage that greets him upon gazing into it must be one of a wild animal. "Why are you doing this? I'm dead, my life is over, I've lost." He squeezes his eyes shut and dug the heels of his hands into them, whether to hide his tears or check for them he isn't sure. His hands come away dry.
The lion rubs against his leg. Why is leaving so hard for you?
"God, I don't know!" He sobs. "I'm terrified and I don't know why!" He slides down. Still inside the cage. The lion sits next to him.
You were born in a cage and grew up in one. The voice said. You don't know what awaits outside. You can't imagine a life without the cult and thus you can't imagine what's outside of this cage, only darkness.
His voice comes out muffled from behind his hands. "So I'm like the bird then?" He laughs, but only as sincerely as a hunter blowing a bird call whistle. "I don't love the cult. I loathe it."
And yet you depend on it to give you a purpose. Did you enjoy it, did it make you feel better about yourself when you helped those people? Does it make you feel like you were superior to them? Douma didn't say anything. Then maybe, what your parents told you, what everyone told you, had been affecting you more than you thought.
"What was I supposed to do then?" He snapped, offended by the very idea of it.
Nothing.
Douma startled. "Nothing? Then why-?"
And I will ask you again Douma, The voice said. What did you want?
Whatever remark he was about to make died in his throat, and finally, Douma lapsed into silence and contemplated the question. "When I was alive I wanted..." He trailed off. "When I younger I wished that I could leave..." He murmured. "And then when I suddenly felt like leaving couldn't be an option anymore I-that was when-"
When he suddenly realized he hadn't felt anything his entire life thus far. "So then I wanted to feel something. I felt like something was wrong with me because I can't feel a thing that others experienced."
Funny you should say that.
Immediately he was indignant. "Hey why, what's so funny you were the one who asked if-is that-?" He stopped, gazing ahead.
It's the girl who killed him, one eye blind, laughing with the boy with the hanafuda earrings Lord Muzan ordered them to kill. You two were exactly the same.
Douma felt himself scowling. "What was all that she said to me then?" He huffed, turning away. "Well it doesn't matter 'cause Shinobu was the one to get me to feel something so--"
Was she really?
Douma turned back around. "What's that supposed to mean?" You've assumed that you never had any emotions at all. But is that the case? Or did you just never seem to recognize them as such? To want is to feel, Douma. And you can't have no emotions but also be discontent.
"Gosh." Douma inhales. "What's wrong with me then?" The lion begins walking away from him. It moves out of the cage with grace, and melts into the darkness.
You thought you were a star, Douma, but in truth, you are a blackhole. From the moment you were born you had nothing but darkness and an emptiness inside you. In your conquest to shine just like the stars you pulled them into your orbit and destroyed them, hoping to take some of that light for yourself. But you can't. Because from the moment you were born you were a dead star, a collapsed one. Your life ended before it even began.
You never had a choice in the first place, so there was nothing you could do, and by the time the option of choice finally presented itself to you, you couldn't see it anymore.
The cage dissolves into a swarm of butterflies, and Douma stumbles, with nothing holding him up anymore. He falls.
Akaza hugs a lady, but his name is actually Hakuji. He's crying, and who knew? His hair was actually black when he was human, and not pink. And his eyes were blue. And he's happy, because someone he loves greets him in hell.
-
Kokushibou sees his younger brother, apparently the man Lord Muzan was so afraid of. He looks just like him. They're twins. His younger brother smiles when he sees him. And he's happy, because someone he loves greets him in hell.
-
Rui sees his parents, and he cries to them, apologizing. Like Akaza, his eyes are blue and his hair is dark. They forgive him. And he's happy, because someone he loves greets him in hell.
-
Gyutaro and Ume have each other, even in the end, and she rides on his back as he carries her to hell. And they're happy, because even in death they have each other.
-
Douma screams, clutching his head. "Stop showing me this!" He roared. Because in death, Douma is alone, alone, alone. No one came to him but Shinobu who hated him and only came to make sure her poison finished the job.
Even his parents, for all the affection they claimed to show none of them showed up. He said he'd never felt loneliness before. He said he never felt such things but-but was that all a lie?
Flashes of a big futon and empty halls and a giant establishment and just him, tiny as a child walking around it. Was he lonely then? His eyes watered. The sound of children playing outside. Stupid children but they were having fun. They were being children and he wasn't-
Do you want to repent?
There's a faint click as the metal of the Wheel of Law crest hits against the wooden door.
"I want to die." He says, hands still pressed against his eyes.
There's a sound, almost like a sigh, whether of disappointment or exhaustion or pity he wasn't sure, and the world fades.
Douma wakes up and squints against the harshness of the lamps in his room, then rolls over to shake away the residue of a dream he can't quite remember, the same way a dog, or a cat, would frantically shake water of its fur after it's been thrown into a river and left to drown.