Chapter Twenty-Eight

Murder-Proof

That said, he didn't enjoy being stuffed into a box inside a cabinet in the farthest corner of the room. Every time he switched to the seashell the next morning, he knew nothing changed with his position there. Abihiko had just straight up abandoned him! Nekohiko had suspected he'd be a bit unsettled by the familiar shape of the seashell once he saw it but not to such a degree...

It was a gift from his sister. What kind of a loving brother simply threw it away like trash never to pick it up again? Ah, yes. The shitty kind of brother. As usual, nothing too surprising about Abihiko. Shitty friend, shitty brother. Shitty Emperor.

Nekohiko spent most of the day hopping between bodies to try and catch the moment when perhaps -- by chance -- Abihiko would take him out again. But that didn't happen. And nothing of note happened in the Line either.

He didn't even bother to move from his basket and the entwined cat and snake bodies. Lazily, he let his eyes roam the small compartment and watch Aomi fiddle with the many clasps of her chitinous, black-to-green-to-blue dress with scaly shoulder pads that looked most like she was going to war instead of lounging on a seat with her feet up on Kataji's lap. Kataji still mostly pretended to read or sometimes sketch another anatomic plan for his carving.

"Itsuki."

Kataji's call was baffling, to say the least. They hadn't spoken to each other for days other than in smalltalk. Even Aomi lifted her eyes at Kataji in surprise.

"Kataji," Nekohiko replied in the same tone.

He had little patience for either of the two brothers crap at the moment.

Kataji shut his book, his eyes grave. "Have you ever killed a person?"

...

What kind of a conversation starter was that?!

"No." And before Daichi, he wouldn't even have to lie. So Nekohiko was very annoyed at the question itself. Was this the time for Kataji to probe him about what happened in Sai? Really? After several days of tepid silence and glowering? Spirits, was Nekohiko pissed.

"Yet you told me that you want to avenge yourself in this life, yes? What does that imply Itsuki? Does it imply murder?"

"Why are we talking about murder all of a sudden?" Nekohiko purred. "What prompted this?"

The young man peered out the window. He shrugged calmly. "I don't know. Just started thinking about it. Because murder is the ultimate way to enact one's revenge? But a harsh one. There are other ways beyond that. All of them preferable to murder. Don't you think?"

"What a thoughtful question to ask people at random." Nekohiko nodded profoundly. "And have you killed anyone by chance, Kataji?"

Kataji smiled with bitterness. "How could I? I'm not strong, I'm not rich enough to hire people to do that for me. I'm not even a Binder. Besides, whom would I kill? I don't know many people to even want to."

"I'm not strong or rich either," Aomi mumbled into her playing cards she was shuffling on her tummy. "But that wouldn't stop me from killing some people if they got on my wrong side."

Kataji rolled his eyes. "Let's not delve into assassinations, all right? Killing doesn't have to be as targeted. Walking past a person when he's dying and needs help is also a kind of murder. And so is causing death by accident. Or in self-defense. Or, obviously, for the sake of justice no matter how righteous it might be." He gave Aomi, then Nekohiko a suspicious look. "Isn't it?"

Well...

That was much more direct compared to the previous statement but Nekohiko still didn't need to engage with this immature talk. If Kataji wanted to shame him for wanting to avenge himself, great. He might even act guilty and regret his actions later.

But not before. Before he had enacted his vengeance, there simply wouldn't be any reason for him to stop. Even when shamed and accused of murder.

Actions bear consequences. Killing an innocent should not go unpunished. His murder of Daichi was only that -- a punishment. A harsh one, but nonetheless fair.

"If you say so," Nekohiko said to Kataji. "Anything else you want us to agree with you on?"

"It's wonderful that we all agree, then." Kataji put his book down, then leaned toward Nekohiko, fingers lacing together on his lap. "Because if I made a tool -- an instrument -- that I suspect might endanger someone's life, does that not also make me responsible for murder if that tool is being used to kill someone -- exactly as I have suspected?"

...where was this going?

Nekohiko really didn't like this.

"Even by accident. After all, we never control what happens around us -- whether evil or good. I wouldn't want the tools I make to harm people accidentally. I would instead want them to make people happier. And you already agreed with that, yes?" He licked his lips in anticipation. "So... am I not responsible for you, Itsuki, potentially harming someone? Even without you knowing you're doing it?"

"How would I not know if I'm doing it-- what do you even mean?" Nekohiko laughed nervously.

"You're a human Bound to an inefficient vessel. The body you're given might not work correctly. What if you have no idea you are harming someone? That would be terrible. For both you and me, like I said. So... since there is an easy way to avoid that -- why not use it?"

An obvious way to avoid that...?

A terrible suspicion sparked inside Nekohiko. His heart hastened in his chest.

Kataji cocked his head to the side with an endearing smile. He actually looked sweet now. Sweeter than any of the last few days when he'd been brooding and sulking about Daichi's murder and his denial about it.

Aomi's eyes had never been huger, though. She straightened from her lying position, all of her cards tumbling off her chest. "Kataji, are you really saying what I think you're saying? Because that's just... wow."

"It is wow! Itsuki, there's my blood Bound to you, remember?" Kataji went on, ecstatic. "I can just order you as your Master to never kill anyone -- even by accident. And the Bound body you're in would have to follow that order, with or without you being aware of it. Automatically! Isn't that just incredible?"

No.

No, this was... horrifying. Kataji wanted to Order him. No Bound dummy was able to fight or avoid the direct Master Order of the person whose blood was Bound into them.

If the dummy's Master ordered it something through the blood bond, then that order had to be carried out. No matter what!

"I wish people had such a quality, too," Kataji said wistfully. "To be able to not do evil or to harm others at all. Just give them a Master Order, and they would be physically incapable of doing that. It would make you... pure, Itsuki. Forever innocent. You know? It would never endanger you and anyone around you anymore."

"...and it would make you free of all the potential responsibility as my maker, too!" Nekohiko gritted out. "Indeed. That sounds... great."

"Doesn't it?"

"Uh-huh. Because you don't trust me that I won't kill anyone unnecessarily," Nekohiko added. "Or without a good reason to."

Everything in him was seeming heavier. Darker. Lonelier.

"No," Kataji said, his voice gentle. "It's because there is no such thing as necessary murder. Or a good-enough reason for it."

Damn it.

In his past life, Nekohiko would even agree with this statement. But Kataji was entirely too young and naive to understand the reality's bitchiness yet.

"You are my Master. And my Maker. So... your beliefs are the only ones that really matter in this case," Nekohiko murmured after a while of silence.

"Good."

As though only waiting for the sign, Kataji grabbed his bag of small carving knives and fished out of it an awl. He pricked his finger with it, then brought the bloodied thumb to Nekohiko's cat muzzle. He pressed his thumb with the bead of blood on it against Nekohiko's nose.

Nekohiko held as still as a statue. He felt like one, too.

"As your Master, I order you to never kill people. Even by accident."

Nekohiko had known his whole life that Masters of dummies issued Master Orders often and without much concern. After all, a dummy was nothing more than a machine. What did it matter to it that it couldn't refuse to follow an Order? He himself had even ordered some of the dummies he had in his possession years ago. "Never disturb me when I'm studying". "Never let unfamiliar people into my room." "Keep all the Lords away from me!"

But he had never known it was such an ugly experience from the inside of the dummy.

In response to Kataji's Master order, the cat body's limbs and bones stiffened in a paralyzing clutch. A surge of a strange force like electricity zoomed up and down his core as though changing something fundamental within his body. An essential rule transforming him because now the body would have to follow that rule even when he was sleeping or unconscious.

The body responded without delay. His cat jaws opened and forced his voice to come out, too.

"Yes, Master," he said.

And... he hadn't wanted to say that!

The realization was harsh. Not only was he forced to avoid murder in this cat's body -- it could manipulate his human will inside it, too!

What a gruesome reality!

"Aomi, that snake is also Bound with your blood, yes?" Kataji asked as he wiped his blood off the awl and passed it to his sister.

Aomi had followed everything that went before her with narrowed eyes. She flicked her somber gaze to Kataji and didn't reply.

"Please tell me you weren't so stupid that you forgot to do that," Kataji sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

"I did not forget. I'm not stupid. Why would I trust some random person I barely know not to turn out to be a murderer?" She quickly stuck her hand at Nekohiko. "Sorry, Itsssu. I don't actually believe you are a murderer. Nope, I do not! But really. What do we know about you other than what you tell us? And you told us so little about your last life... And even refused to tell the details. So... better safe than sorry."

So she could Master Order him, too, whenever she wanted? Great. Just great.

"I completely understand, Aomi," Nekohiko said through teeth.

"Then murder-proof the snake," Kataji told her. "Just to be safe."

What???

The snake, too?!

He had no way to kill at all now? Would his eventual human dummy also be murder-proofed? He wanted to curse and screech and swear so badly!

Even so, Nekohiko's mind didn't feel very restricted inside his cat form after the Master Order had taken its effect. He could think and emote as freely as he'd done before. It was only the knowledge that something vital had been taken away from him that bothered him.

"Pfff. What if I want him to kill someone for me? Naaah." Aomi wanted to get to her feet and leave the room. Kataji caught her by the sleeve.

"Do it. Now. I mean, what's the big deal?" Kataji added when Aomi hesitated. "An innocent person would never want to murder anyway, and it's not like such an order forbids anyone to knock people out if they pose a threat! It's just against murder. Not against using violence, or self-defense. Seriously. Who in their sane mind would oppose being restricted from killing people unless they're a psychopath?"

But it wasn't the order itself that frustrated him so much, Nekohiko thought. It was the meaning behind that order.

The meaning that Kataji had lost all faith in him. That Aomi had never had any, to begin with.

That meaning hurt.

"Sure." Aomi patted her dress robes straight and cocked her chin up. She didn't even flinch as she ravaged the inside of her palm with the awl's needle in a dramatic fashion. If fact, she looked quite proud to have done that and caused Kataji to wince in distaste. Her blood sprinkled all over both the cat and the snake in the basket.

Ugh.

"Move your consciousness to the snake," Kataji told him, and Nekohiko did as he was told. It hadn't been a Master Order, but he still felt like he might as well treat every suggestion of Kataji's as one.

If they had this kind of relationship now...

"As your Master, I command thee to never kill people," Aomi intoned majestically. "Not ever ever."

"'Even by accident,'" Kataji corrected her.

"Even by accident," she repeated. "Got it?"

Nekohiko prepared himself for the same lurch of the Binding spells made to respond to the dummy's Master Orders. But the lurch never came.

He had squeezed his eyes shut in trepidation, but felt nothing urging him to follow the order. Perplexed, he opened his eyes and looked up.

At Kataji's expectant, sympathetic face. At Aomi's bored one as she peered back at him. Then at her wicked grin that tugged the corner of her lips when their eyes met.

She lifted her eyebrows as though in a question of "are you dumb? What are you staring at me for?"

A warm trickle of hope crept back into his heart as he understood: there was no Aomi's blood Bound into his snake body for it to respond to the Master Order. Aomi had not made herself his Master when she made the snake dummy.

He saw no end to his bewilderment to this idea.

Aomi...? Wouldn't want to abuse him in such a way?

...how come?

Then he saw Kataji frowning and his heart jumped. Of course Kataji was expecting him to respond to Aomi's Master Order!

"Yes, Master?" Nekohiko tried to sound mechanistically but was too dumbfounded to succeed.

But Kataji still accepted it. The young man must have really wanted to believe everything bad was now forever smoothed out between the three of them and that everything would be back to how it had been before Daichi's death.

"See?" Aomi flexed her bleeding palm proudly, then kicked Kataji in the shin. "We murder-proofed him. Now bandage me, awl-boy. I'm wounded."

"Mn."

For once, Kataji didn't snap at her and didn't give Nekohiko his classic severe glares through the afternoon. He didn't even hide his nose in his books today. If anything, he now looked... happy. Like the first few weeks he and Nekohiko had spent in the sunlit workshop back in Red Stone, only starting to learn to trust each other and carve out his first body parts.

Nekohiko turned to the window, bitter.

He was still unsettled with Kataji's actions, but he preferred not to let it get to him. He had bigger concerns to deal with. One of them being the older and much less smily version of Kataji who was diligently waiting for him back in Nara.

Truly, Kataji's betrayal of him had nothing on Abihiko's.

Through the day, they'd left the Blue Forest and the Autumn Meadow regions, crisp with chilly dew, and now crept down the mountainous reaches by the seaside. Everything seemed as it always should be, drowsy. Eventless.

But the journey jolted to a halt by the time the evening rolled out.

Nekohiko didn't see how. He didn't hear the warning horn of the lead Binder blare through the skies. He didn't see Kataji's or Aomi's eyes flit up, emerging from their endless waiting. He didn't feel the Line lurch, stopping, then gear up with terrible clangor as it curled itself in for protection against an unknown aggressor.

Well -- that last thing he did hear even in his seashell form he was currently inhabiting. But he dismissed that noise and the quaking motion of the Line, faint as it was, and didn't go to check what was happening.

Because in here, Abihiko was speaking to somebody. Nekohiko hardly heard it from within the box and the bookshelf he was trapped in and so he strained his hearing to its fullest.

Such a vague, barely audible conversation -- two voices. Abihiko's and...

A low, rumbly male voice, cutting off his words sharply and decisively. Speaking only rarely while Abihiko was near rambling.

Nekohiko struggled to hear the individual words, but all he got out of this was mere recognition. That second person speaking, and the manner and cadence of his speech...

Lord Okinaga?

Why? Why so worriedly? And why was Abihiko replying to the man in such agitation?

Ugh, what wouldn't he give to be able to crawl out of this stupid jewelry box and eavesdrop on what those two were saying to each other!

At last, one of the voices came closer to his shelf.

Abihiko's. "...what do you mean -- no Binder aura reported? Did he just burn by himself?"

Nekohiko's ears pricked up.

Were they talking about Daichi?

"No aura," Okinaga repeated. "But a non-Binder wouldn't be able to kill him either. My guess is -- Spirit. But which Spirit and why?" The noise of intense pacing in the distance was only drowned out by the much closer, much more crucial sounds that Nekohiko heard: someone was opening the cabinet doors beyond which Nekohiko's seashell lay.

"My guess is Nagare Queen or Ezo and Ainu spies," Okinaga kept speaking on the background. "Only they would have benefited from murdering Daichi. Of course they wouldn't want an alliance between Hira and Utsuro Kingdoms!"

Lord Okinaga kept talking something no doubt very important. But Abihiko was clearly not listening.

With a stuttering breath, Nekohiko looked up when Abihiko lifted the lid on the box with the seashell inside. In the warm glow of the orange lamps in the room, Abihiko looked a bit healthier than yesterday but still too wan compared to how Nekohiko remembered him in their youth.

His eyes found the seashell. Slowly, he took it out of the box and brought to the light to see better. His fingers rubbed against the ridges on Nekohiko's carved surface as though in deep contemplation.

"...want to cause discord and endanger the diplomatic mission!" Okinaga finished with a crushed sigh. Yet after a few more steps, he stopped pacing. His attention snapped to Abihiko. "Are you even listening? We need to act on it and fast. At least send the Imperial investigators to the murder scene to show you are in control of the situation. You need to project the image of a strong, ruthless leader, Abihiko, or they will only get bolder."

Abihiko's gaze was far away. He clutched the seashell firmer, one of his fingers tapping its top mindlessly. "Sai? Out of all places... A Spirit from Sai killed Daichi and in such a gruesome manner, huh."

Okinaga sounded irritated. "Obviously not a Spirit. It was a human's doing and we need to respond. The sooner the better. Give orders. Summon the investigator teams--"

"I need to think."

"About what?"

But Abihiko wasn't answering. His prolonged silence and his furrowing brow made Nekohiko so tense with anticipation. He almost missed another hard and powerful clangor coming in from his other bodies. Because nothing mattered to him more than this.

Nothing could compare to Abihiko's plans and his attention on him.

But then his other bodies sent a wave of pain at him, even from so afar. And Nekohiko froze.

Sometimes, when Aomi wanted his attention on her she used to prickle one of his bodies to call him. But now, this couldn't be that. The pain was blunt, it was harsh. And it had been applied equally on both the snake and the cat.

It could only mean...

Something incredibly dangerous.

His eyes flew open inside the cat. What he saw, sent him into a stupor.

The entire compartment he and the Abi siblings were in -- had been crushed to jagged pieces all around him.

The walls were caved in, the metal bent and torn no harder than paper. The window had been blown out, the jellylike substance of the glass in an ugly splash across the floor. Pale greying sky seeped through the ripped wall like pooling water through a gash in the boat. Particles of Bound Line tissue floated in the air, dissipating as though after terrible, terrible damage.

What happened? When? How?!

Ragged, brutal noises of rusty metals outside scraped against the ground. The Line shook floor to ceiling. Both Nekohiko's bodies that were pressed down under the ruined seats shuddered in response to pain.

Nekohiko's breath caught in his throat. He slowly unwound from his ball as a cat and slunk from under the jagged furniture as the snake. He was too shocked to do anything other than take care of either of his bodies to preserve them. But then he took a mad look around him and found...

Oh no.

Kataji! Aomi?!

Queenfisher

*_* I planned to put it out last time but I forgot. Stupid me. Anyway, this is adult Abihiko's picture and I will add a pic of him to the Glossary as well!

Spoiler

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And yes ^^. That is a tiny little fir symbol made of emeralds on his crown *_*.