Chapter Text
Yeah I remember that day. It had been raining hard all day long and It didn't let up even when this story started.
I had just finished a game of poker with a usual guy, a poker buddy of mine named Soshi. I was havbing a good night, had good hands, anything I lost I pretty much immediately won back easily. Soshi was getting frustrated and I knew it. But why in Hell should his grumpiness put a freakin' damper on my night?
"Ooooh Gojyo~"
A pretty lady on my side was making googly eyes at the money I had just scored. Yeah, I knew that she was a hooker. I knew she and the other three girls who were fawning over me just wanted to get laid and paid once the game was over. When I was broke again… they'd just move on to the next poor sap who knew they'd leave, but searched for love in all the wrong places.
Just like me.
I lay down my hand then. Four queens. I won again.
"Damn it… Damn it just take it. Just take it all." Soshi was getting pissy, and I knew that wasn't a good thing. I knew that he was going to pop his lid soon.
"Hey, C'mon now. These three beautiful women standing around me are more important than the four on the table." Always a player. Always something to say about some skirt. That's just… who I was… who I am.
Damn it… Damn It… DAMN IT!!" He lost it. I stood, taking out my weapon, knowing it would come down to him and me fighting this out. The sharp pointed ears that now appeared, the markings that showed up on his face, the elongated K-9 teeth that glistened with drool as he growled at me… The Soshi I knew was gone.
I knew that this wasn't going to end well. Not unless I killed him. I ran at him then, the blade of my shakoujou slicing through the air as a hot knife would through butter, and went straight through his upper stomach and lower chest. He disappeared in a bloodied evaporation, which seemed to happen to everyone who was gruesomely killed on the streets here in Shangri-La.
~A While Later~
"Mmn Gojyo you're so…" Honestly… I was ignoring them. Their words meshing together to form one somewhat static sounding blend buzzing around my head as I looked at my cards. A different bar. A different hand, but pretty much everything else was the same. Different women who all could be the same for all I knew or cared, but a different player on the other side of the table. Soshi was dead now, I had to find a new guy to score my money off of…. Damn and I always made money off of that guy too…
"...And that hair. So red, it really turns me on fire." She was trying to be sexy and compliment me as her fingers played with a strand of my hair from within the ponytail I wore it in. The back part up with my grown out bangs loose and framing my face. She was trying to compliment me, but all I heard was 'red hair'… all I heard was the screaming of a woman long since dead. Tears falling down her cheeks as she yelled at me for having this cursed red hair and eyes. I didn't even hear the other girls at the table start to chastise her for commenting on it, saying that I was sensitive about my hair.
I got up then and plastered a fake smirk on my face, they never knew that all my smiles around here were fake, put the cards back down on the table, then I picked up my coat and held it with one hand over my shoulder. "You win this hand buddy. I think I'd better get going." I didn't even know this dude I was playing with, but right now… all I could think about was what that girl had said. I could only think of the clawed hands gripping my hair, pulling it hard and beating on my head and face until I thought I would either pass out or she would rip the hair out by the roots.
Stepping outside, I finally noticed that it was a downpour. 'Why?' I wondered, the thought running through my head, banging on the walls of my mind and trying to find a way to break through my skull and into the world so that maybe, just maybe I could find an answer to the question that I dare not ask. 'Why can't the rain just wash this red from my hair?' I had imagined standing in the rain, and blood dripping off of my long crimson locks for as long as I can remember.
'I wouldn't mind having black hair. Or white hair even, though I would have to say that black would probably suit me better. White would be like giving a professional whore a white wedding gown. It just… wouldn't quite fit somehow.' I thought a lot as I walked back to my house, the run down small building was always a mess, cigarettes and beer cans everywhere. But as I neared my house, just over the hill, that's when I saw him.
He was laying there in a puddle of rain, blood, and as I looked closer, his own guts. He looked terrible… he looked dead. His brown hair and plain shirt were both soaked completely with rain, and blood. This was a man who had killed many people, and I knew that before I even said anything.
I moved his shoulder a little with the toe of my boot, I was sure at that point that he couldn't feel it though. Naturally I was kind of worried for this guy. Dying or dead on the cold, wet ground just a few yards from my own house. Couching down I looked at him and slowly his eyes opened. Hated crimson met with astonishing emerald as those pained, tired, yet strangely piercing green eyes opened.
"Hey man… You alright?"
I repeat, the guy looked terrible, the blood, as much as I would have loved the rain to have washed the red out of my eyes and hair… I knew that wasn't the case. He was bleeding very badly, and surprisingly enough still alive. So asking if he was alright….
"Yeah… stupid question."
There was something in the way that he had just looked at me… that said he'd been to hell in a handbasket all in this one day. The worst day of his life probably, just like mine was so many years ago. I don't know why I picked him up, grimacing a little to myself when I felt just how bad his injuries were. His insides were literally spiling out of him. I had to quickly push them back in to his stomach which I hoped to high hell would all be in the right working places. I knew if I messed it up, that alone would kill him.
Something in those eyes made me want to help him. Something in them…. Sparked something within me that I hadn't recognized in years. I couldn't help but to think that when he looked at me… he laughed at me too.
"C'mon man, Lets get you out of the rain." I muttered, knowing that he wouldn't be able to hear me. He was probably passed out again. Lucky bastard. But I brought his soaking wet body into my house, laying him down on my bed. I got a doctor to look at him and surprisingly enough, I had managed to not kill him when I shoved all his internal organs back in place. Good on me! I could imagine how much pain he was in. His face was contorted in pain even as he was asleep in my arms, then my bed. This guy really had a hard time today.
I watched him sleep. I don't know if it was morbid curiosity, or just that I was for whatever reason, so transfixed on him that even my beer or cigarettes couldn't distract me from the brunette's sleeping form. He looked so peaceful, I couldn't help but to think how cruel a bitch fate was for him that she could mock him this way. To give him a peaceful countenance after whatever shit had gone down that day.
"She really is a bitch isn't she…"
I couldn't help but mutter the words around the lip of my beer can as I sighed sitting by my bed. I was just waiting for him to wake up at this point. The doctor had come and gone without those piercing emerald eyes opening once. Luckily for him the doc said that I knew enough about the inside of a person to know where everything was supposed to go.
I figured that he'd be fine now, he just had to keep away from infection and he'd be perfectly fine. Which meant unfortunately for this beer swgging redhead… no booze for him and no cigarettes for me. My high-lites would have to just sit in the carton in my pocket for a while.
It wasn't long before I heard him groan a little, his eyes opened. I moved then, standing at the head of my own bed with the other's head right below my own. My hair hanging down like curtains framing both our faces. "Well now, You're finally awake.
The corner of my mouth upturned into a small smirk, but I'm sure my eyes betrayed me, as they almost always did if there was anyone who cared enough to notice. I was confused, worried, and curious. Not happy that he was awake, not anything. Just… wondering. Always wondering.
"Yes… I'm awake."
His response was soft toned, calm despite being in a strange place with a strange man. A halfbreed man nonetheless. Yeah, red hair, red eyes… I'm a halfbreed in case I didn't mention it before. But this man, he was calm and those eyes… he still laughed at me silently with those eyes.
…
It was a while later, I had cut my hair short and wore a bandanna. We had met Sanzo and Goku, a dumbass monkey and a prissy priest who took Gonou from my house, and from my life. I hadn't known him, or anything about him, but when they took him… my house was empty again. They took away the man who had bathed in the blood of a thousand demons, becoming a demon himself, and despite everything… the priest said that he had to pay for his crimes.
I was in the market, and looking at the red apples when someoen came to stand beside me. A soft, calm, yet this time… happy toned voice came from a man with a monocle, a sahs on his shoulder, and piercing emerald eyes that used to laugh at me.
"They're pretty good this time of year, aren't they Gojyo?"
He was back. He said that Gonou had died, and he now was Hakkai. Cho Hakkai. I let him stay in my house after that point, in his own bed though.
Cho Gonou, the man that I picked up from the road was dead. But I don't mind anymore. Cho Hakkai is now alive and because of him and two other guys… a stupid ass monkey and a prissy priest… I grew my hair out again, and now, my house isn't empty anymore.
It's annoying.…
...and fun.