Okay, I'm back again, with Raiha this time. Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, don't sue me; last time I checked I had about 10 bucks in my savings.
Review this please... tell me if it sucks... gently.

Crimson Existence
by Lockheart

I stand at the window in my bedroom, letting the cold air sting my face.

Another mission accomplished tonight. Another life cut down. Another thread of fate cruelly sliced into two.

The sky is especially starry, gleaming against a dark velvet backdrop. The epitome of peace; a sight that seems to represent beauty itself.

And yet, beauty can be ruthlessly mocking. With the ability to elevate you to the highest state of bliss comes the ability to plunge you into a tempest of emotions that weigh you down into the lowest pits of living hell.

My hands are clenched, my nails digging painfully into my skin, drawing blood. Each crimson drop lands with a satisfying, if hardly audible plop on the polished rosewood of the windowsill.

I stare at the dark red beads in rapt, morbid fascination. My blood trickles down the curve of my palm in scarlet rivulets. My nails press harder into the wounds. By right, it should hurt.

But I don’t feel anything at all.

No pain, no worry, no emotion. I am by myself in a dimension where I think, but no thoughts cross my mind, where I see, but my eyes do not take in any images.

Numb.

Lost.

Dead.

Sometimes I envy the rest of Kurei’s top assassin team. They never seem to have a problem killing people… or dealing with the emotions after killing those people. But we are Jyusshinshu, after all. The elite Uruha group of ten. Regret is not something we have time for.

After every mission, I go back to the Uruha mansion, lock myself in the bathroom, and wash my hands, trying to wash away the guilt, trying to wash away the fact that just a little while ago, I have cut off another person’s thread of life. Something that, technically, I don’t have the right to do. And every time I try to wash my hands and every time I fail. Neon-san doesn’t know about this. They don’t see this side of me. Neither does Kurei-sama, but I think he knows, anyway. Yet he knows as well that my loyalty will be with him forever, and so he doesn’t comment on my emotional problems.

I can still see it. The blood on my hands. Not just mine, but the blood of every single person I’ve killed. I reek of death. I am the Grim Reaper personified.

Every day, every night, I relive the nightmare of every man that has died under my hand. Every morning I wake up in cold sweat, my heart thumping and my mind racing. And then, an hour later, I’m back to being loyal, dependable old Raiha who goes around cracking jokes with a foolish smile on my face.

That smile… sometimes I’m relieved by it. Sometimes I hate it; despise it with all my soul. Do I still have a soul? A soul is like regret - something Uruha cannot afford to have. That smile is a mask. Like a painted face on a clown, wrenched into a plastered grin. That’s me. Ever smiling, ever goofing around. But behind that mask I am steadily rotting, gradually dying.

With time, masks and lies get easier, until your entire world is a blur of fabrication and truth, where fantasy and reality is meshed together and deformed, until it is impossible to tell what is real and what is fake, because there is no real or fake. And then, even if you try to destroy the mask, you can’t. The mask and lies are part of you.

I smirk humorlessly. Who am I, to talk about truth? My very existence is a lie. Just something spun up for convenience.

A pawn.

And as a pawn, I am unable to break away from my master; my king. Kurei-sama. I should hate him… shouldn’t I? He was the one who led me into this tangled web of lies and betrayal and murder and endless, agonizing guilt.

But I can’t.

I can’t hate the man who literally opened my eyes to hell that is society today. Ignorance has never been so blissful. By some thread, by some invisible, yet almost tangible connection, I am bound to him. Maybe it’s because I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve freedom; I deserve hell, and that I already have.

Maybe it’s because I don’t care anymore. Anything else I have to go through can’t be worse than the mental torment I live in; can’t be worse than drowning slowly, painfully, in a quicksand pool of guilt.

Rolled up at the bottom of my sword sheath is an old, tattered photograph. A photograph of my family. Of me and Otousan and ‘Kaachan and my imouto. We were a happy family once. A model family. The caring parents, the intelligent, high-achieving son and the beguiling daughter. Keiko and I always shared a bond. She was my everything. Young, sweet and radiating an innocence that was soothing to the heart and blinding to the mind, because that naivete undermined her knowledge and understanding of the world around her. I was her nii-chan, her confidante, her partner in crime. And then I met Kurei-sama, and I knew that my destiny was with him, serving him.

Then he told me to kill my parents.

And I did it.

I killed them. Next he wanted me to kill Keiko. I was sixteen then, Keiko thirteen. I never realized how much she knew, how much she had seen, how much she understood, until I entered her room that night, my sword drawn. She looked at me and smiled.

“It’s my turn now, isn’t it, Nii-chan? Don’t worry, I’ll be fine with ‘Touchan and ‘Kaachan.” I gaped at her. “The police came. I told them you were away. I told them it was a foreigner who wanted revenge. I told them I hid in the cupboard. It’s all right, Nii-chan. You’ll be all right. Just make it quick.”

And then my eyes met hers, and she smiled that sweet smile. And when she realized, as I did, that I could never kill her no matter what, she walked over, took the sword from my hand, and plunged it into her heart.

It seems funny that she understood what I was doing and why, when I didn’t even know that in the first place. Even today, I still don’t.

My death is assured. I don’t know which will come first - me getting killed on duty, or me going insane by the haunting, screaming, accusing voices of those I have murdered that I hear in my head. Oh yes, death will come, and I will accept it, welcome it, even, when I can see my family again, see Keiko’s gentle smile.

But for now, I will continue to kill, fight, and suffer, until one day, my masks and lies will fall, and I will fall with them.

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