Chapter Text
Giyuu's sister was killed and eaten by a demon a day before her wedding, and he tried to warn everyone about it when they found him hidden in the closet the next day, crying and gasping for air.
No one believed him. Some people even said they should get rid of the murderer (because they thought he had been the one to kill his awesome and beautiful sister). Others called him crazy and insane with disgust, while some pitied him because of it.
He hated every second. His throat and face burned with the humiliation, the rage, and the helplessness of not being trusted. Warm and loving faces turned away from him with fear. They looked at him with pity, with disappointment, with rage, with anger.
He was hit with rocks and shoved in the streets as he hunched over himself with a single salmon he managed to fish. The other kids stole it from him.
Some of the villagers managed to find some distant relatives. "Healers of the mind," they said. "They will fix you."
Giyuu saw them once and knew he wasn't safe with them.
And he had been right.
He tried to escape while they were traveling, but as he yanked his hand away from the man's, the woman with him grabbed his hair with a tight grip.
No one helped him as he trashed and cried. "I don't want to go!" he screamed. "I'll behave! I won't say anything about demons again! Please!"
He cried for the elder's help, for Tsutako's fiancé's help, for anyone's help.
"Please! I don't feel safe with them!" he attempted.
It had worked before.
Once, when he said that the river didn't feel safe, and stopped the people from going inside. The river had been deceptively calm, and only one person had drowned that year, thanks to him.
It had worked when he said Tsutako should postpone her wedding because he felt a thunderstorm was coming. And he had been right.
So... why?
why was no one helping?
A rope snapped. He heard it clearly.
Whatever embers of trust that were still alive were stomped and killed there and then. And he stopped fighting. His eyes didn't stop leaking, but he stopped wailing. He stopped pleading.
His voice burned in the back of his throat. His eyes hurt. And for the woman, his long hair was just a leash to tug on.
His sudden silence had been deafening for the village. His eyes had burned with betrayal and a vow of vengeance, and some people even thought they had committed a terrible mistake.
His supposed relatives tied his wrists as the village disappeared from sight. As other people prepared a cart, and (the worst part for him), he saw dogs.
Dogs that looked at his tied wrists and started growling at him as he was forced to sit down.
He remembers something nicking him near the back of his neck and feeling drowsy as they showed him a syringe, the thing responsible for the sudden pain in that zone that disappeared just as quickly.
And then everything went black.
All he feels is pain. Doesn't know what's left, or right, or up, or down. Doesn't care or feel how the trees tear his flesh apart as he runs.
He runs away from the bad place. hE HAS TO.
He feels drowsy, he feels pinpricks in all his skin, he knows the scars that tore their way to his flesh and bones like the back of his palm. His hair is dirty, his lips bitten and dry. His eyes are sunken.
He hears barks, or maybe he's hearing growls. Those could be dogs or the monsters his mind made up for him.
He knows in his bones that it's soon to rain.
That will make it harder to keep running. He didn't care where.
It'll also make it harder for the dogs to keep following him. Or are they demons, wild animals, bees? doesn't care, he just knows they recognize his scent.
Speaking of bees, he feels them buzzing in his brain. Muffling everything. He doesn't even know how he's moving, he just knew he had to run.
"You could lose your step, fall, and die in some gruesome way," said joyfully one of the voices in his mind.
"Run. run. run away. run away as fast as he could. run. run. run away. run away as soon as he could," sings another.
The sudden upbeat and (maybe) too joyful melody made itself known in his brain. Nowhere is the right thing to think while actively fighting for your life, but Giyuu can't possibly recall his life being anything but chaotic, full of pain, dread, and fear.
Giyuu had received a ton of dehumanizing names while trapped in that good-for-nothing place: Piece of Shit (he had bitten someone, so he's proud of that one), Patient Number 2501-09, Waste of Space, Poor Useless Bastard. And the usual and no less rage-inducing: Crazy Child.
...
He doesn't even remember falling, but does remember a jaw closing around his hand, crushing and destroying his bones. And— he's already so detached from his own body he doesn't even register it.
In fact, he doesn't register anything else until he comes back to himself like an hour later and finds the rain washing away the blood on his hands. There's a bloody rock near him.
"You really are a murderer. Those people were right," whispers something in his ear.
"You killed it! You killed that dog!" wails another voice, the volume of it feels like it's tearing his brain apart.
"Shut up!" he screams at the silent forest around him, his bloody hands go to his hair. "Shut up!" he repeats, yanking his hair and maybe tearing some of it from his scalp, willing the voices to get out and leave him alone again.
He doesn't even realize he lost a nail, he doesn't acknowledge the bite on his leg, and he doesn't care about the multiple open and infected cuts littered around his body.
He runs, forgetting about the asylum, about that prison of the forgotten, the ones the society deemed useless and expendable, the ones that don't matter and can be used as experiments for even more medical knowledge for people who do matter.
He runs away from the voices. He has to. He needs to. He's not insane. He just needs to prove it.
He's not insane. Not insane, not insane notinsane not—
"Run. run. run away. Run away as fast as you can. Run. run. run away. Run away as far as you can. Run away. run away. you won't escape. run. run. run away. you'll never be alone," sing-songs the voices
"sHUT UP. I will be the one who gets to live! I'll prove them all wrong! I'll kill them myself!"
The kid had been nine when he was forced into the mental institution. He doesn't even remember his family name, and his name has lost its meaning from all the times he said it to himself to not forget it: Giyuu. But what the fuck did it mean!?
A hand closes around one of his wrists, and the crazy and unfortunate child turns around, ready and more than willing to rip his arm from his body if he has to.
Giyuu. Oh, lost, crazy, desperate, and hungry thirteen-year-old Giyuu. Stops any attempt to escape at the sheer absurdity of what he's seeing:
A man with pink hair, with a blue-tinted pale skin, blue lines—marks—running in it. But what shocked him the most was the fact that even his mind hadn't come up with something so fucking weird—
The man's eyes were gold. The man's eyes said Upper Moon Three.
This is real. He thought, with his own voice.
And for some, even more weird reason, his body relaxed at the face of what he recognized as a powerful predator.
Even his mind had been finally silenced.