Chapter Text
Majima couldn't tell how long he had been in Anagura. The days and nights melded into one, a singular indeterminate expanse, every moment punctuated by pain like a thousand invisible needles.
Those who didn't know better believed that The Hole was somewhere you were taken to be tortured - punished for your belligerence, your failure. Those who did know, knew they didn't need to.
All who chose to walk this life were marked - tattoed with a curse, etched into their very skin; everyone had heard the stories. Most thought them to be little more than superstitious rumors. Tall tales to scare new recruits into keeping in line. That is, until it happened to them. Until they watched their own irezumi morph and stretch, marring their skin with scars in the shapes of vibrant blooms and swirling clouds. Most were smart enough not to repeat their transgressions after that.
Majima could not be counted amongst them. He had fought against his instructions, tooth and nail, despite the pain that flared in his skin. And he had accomplished nothing for it. He was a failure in the eyes of everyone around him - his oyaji, his kyoudai; everyone that had mattered to him, and that he had thought he mattered to. He was nothing to them now, and the searing shame of that fact was inescapably etching itself across his body.
No, you were not taken to Anagura to be punished. You were taken there when the rot had already truly set in to the core, when the body had resolved to punish itself.
He could feel the coils of the snakes upon his flesh slowly unfurling, stretching their way inch by inch across his skin; jaws unhinged, consuming him whole. His body screamed, the angered, mournful wail of the Hannya ringing in his ears as he clawed at himself futility, streaks of blood mingling with the red of the sakura that blazed their paths across his form - blossoming, blooming, dying - leaving trails of ink in the wake of their fallen petals. He writhed under the unrelenting sensation, at once both numb and accutely aware - of his own agony, his guilt, his betrayal, his worthlessness - each feeling expanding to pattern his body with the visibility of his inadequacy. The Hannya was not kind to him. He'd know she wouldn't be when he had chosen her - had wanted to feel her wrath of fire, should that end up being what he deserved, and every second under her power burned for it.
Unfocused eyes did their best to settle on the twisted mikiri that swirled and spread across his arms; his legs; his torso. Vision, already blurred by endless tears, darkened as the ink sought its final path.
These would be his final moments; the inglorious end to a wasted existence.
There was nothing he could do but laugh.