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Kikuo knew, and had always known, that he was his father’s son. Nothing could have changed that. His father’s blood ran in his veins.
His parents did their best to shield their only son from their “business.” No approval to attend meetings, no violence allowed in the house, his grasp of the yakuza world carefully kept unblemished like the skin on his back. He strove for it anyway, his heritage, within and without the boundaries he was allowed, a youngling rebelling against love, the love he was generously bestowed and was perennially ungrateful for; and on a cold winter day, he’d finally got it.
That day, his father had looked at him, the piercing-white snow blurring Kikuo’s vision. Strangely enough, his voice rang booming and clear in the carnage, like a gong. His lips moved, and Kikuo heard, “Look.”
The snow had buried all Kikuo had ever had. He had graduated, had earned his birthright. This is how I die, his father seemed to say. It is your turn now. Look.
-------
His mother, on her deathbed, had expressed the wish that he pursue an honest living. So he obeyed, and learned to live among the humans, like a leopard trying very hard to pass for a house cat.
He didn’t spare a thought for Harue, for Tokuji, for the old world he’d left behind - Harue was starry-eyed and easy to lie to and yet easier to leave behind, and the rest, well. Everyone who mattered had died.
Kabuki was his salvation, his saving grace: Put on the makeup, slip on the costume, and he was no longer himself: he was a scorned lover, a maiden in love, a creature blind with revenge. He danced inside the plays, inside their waves, let their voices flow through him, like a docile marionette steered by invisible strings. He let them fill him up and held nothing back: Their resentment, their resolve, their passion, their hatred, these poor creatures who were imagined and yet more real than anyone he’d ever met. Within them, Kikuo ceased to exist; within them, Kikuo came ever more alive.
So he got in a car to Osaka. He watched the snow build and build on the crevices of the car windows, slowly melting as they crossed over to a warmer climate, like tears. The sky was grey and then blue. Father, are you watching? He wondered. Look.
During the many, many years of his apprenticeship later, it rarely snowed in Osaka.
-------
At Tanba-ya, Kikuo met a boy who was pure and warm, like a freshly bloomed summer flower. The boy was also a brat.
Shunsuke was pampered and whiny and proud and tightly wound with anxious pride, even if he didn’t act like it, too eager to impress his father and trying too hard to conceal it, and failing spectacularly anyway. He would maintain this trait until early adulthood: playing it up like it was a child’s play, feigning confidence, desperate to convince everyone and himself of his belonging, his birthright. Not that it needed much convincing - it was predestined, matter-of-fact, that his father’s heir, his place in the world, could only be Shun and Shun alone, the position had been waiting for him, waiting for him to rise to it, and despite Kikuo’s best efforts, it could never be filled by anyone else. Kikuo wouldn’t learn this until it was too late.
What did he think when he first met Shun? Kikuo didn’t remember. Just like Harue, and just like Akiko much, much later, Shun had fluttered in the periphery of his vision, swam in and out of his consciousness, as the view before his eyes was filled with Kabuki, its costumes, its colors, its movements, its sounds, a waking dream.
Then Kabuki was Shun and Shun was Kabuki. Responding to his lines was Shun, practicing on the riverbank was Shun. The warmth on his hand as they raced from class to home was Shun. Kikuo would turn his back and instead of a grave of empty air, he’d be met with Shun’s eyes; he would hear Shun’s thudding footsteps on the wooden stage floor beating alongside his heart. Shun was his shadow, Shun was his mirror, inseparable. They were entwined, half of a whole.
His first time on the stage was Shun.
Kikuo could see it clearly now, the cruel and selfish reliance he had on Shun, an offense he’d committed successfully once and so Shun had let him get away with over and over again for years and years: they were both shaking, both young and afraid. And yet it was Shun who had held his hands, had hardened his own to apply makeup on Kikuo, like a whisper, like a caress, putting on that bravado he always had until he couldn’t, until he left Kikuo behind, “Stop being stupid, you scaredy cat. What’s there to be afraid of? The young master is here for you.”
On that same stage, in a place no one could see, Shun had secreted a smile at him, past his crusted-up makeup, past his performance. And briefly, only for a second, Kikuo forgot the cold.
-------
He saw Mangiku twirling under the light, snow whispering softly around him, the entire universe shrunk in on this single pinpoint of light, this beautiful monster, the Kokuho, and knew he’d be chasing this view, this moment’s spark, for the rest of his life.
-------
What did he want from Shun, Kikuo sometimes wondered.
One summer night, he snuck into Shun’s futon and nuzzled against his nape. They were a bit too old for that, had sprouted gangly limbs that they didn’t quite know what to do with, and yet old habits died hard.
Shun was soft and heavy with sleep, alcohol’s influence. “What is it, Kiku-chan?”
Kikuo nuzzled again. “Stealing your warmth.”
Shun flailed his arm around, trying to locate the target. He hit Kikuo, but just barely - Shun was like that, Kikuo doubted he’d ever hit anyone seriously in his life. “It’s in the middle of the summer, you dork.” But he lay still, evidently too tired to push Kikuo away from rubbing all his sweat against him.
The sounds of cicadas quivered around them. Moonlight filtered through the shoji, dripped into the room in a dream-like translucent haze. Shun’s rhythmic breaths punctuated the silence - he had fallen back asleep.
Maybe it was the angle, but Shun’s nape seemed to glow softly in this light, milky-white. Kikuo’s fingers twitched.
He raised his hand to trail along Shun’s neck, hovering right above his skin, not quite touching, not quite removing, as if there’s an invisible but insurmountable barrier between his fingers and Shun’s skin. He watched the small hair on Shun’s nape rise, mesmerized.
Shun stirred. “What are you doing now, you brat? Leave me alone.” Nuzzled his face into the pillow, deep in sleep again.
What am I doing, Kikuo mused. As he skimmed over Shun’s skin he’d felt, almost heard, Shun’s pulse racing under his finger, warm and alive. He wanted to trace his fingers along that vein, wanted to press his nail right into the blood vessel, feeling the liquid boiling up against his control, struggling, unable to escape.
I want to eat you, Kikuo realized. I want to tear you apart and eat your flesh and drink your blood. I want to consume you whole, Shun. Want to feel your blood racing in me. Want to just slit your wrist open, and drink it and drink it and drink it. You have no idea how jealous I am of you.
And yet Shun was wary of him too; he knew.
There had been talks of successors, and inheritance, and whatever the old geezers in this world liked to talk about. He had punched the rep from the association, the guy named Takeno, because how dare he talk about Kikuo and Shun like that, but he knew the guy had a point.
And so Shun was wary of him, his undeniable talent loomed like a fault line beneath their feet, ready to crack them apart. Shun who hated Kabuki and loved him, Shun who wanted to make his father proud. Shun who he knew he’d steal from, because he wanted what Shun had more than anything. He had to; he had to become the best Kabuki actor in Japan, he had to become Kokuho, he’d use his talent to clear a path of blood if he must. It’s either that or this life meant nothing at all. And Shun- Shun-
He didn’t know what to do with Shun.
Don’t be scared of me, he wanted to say. I’ll inherit the Hanjiro name, and it’d be okay because I’d keep you here, and we’d be happy together.
-------
Kikuo had tried to love Harue, once. It seemed like the right thing to do.
It coincided with the same time Shun started frequenting clubs and brothels with a regularity that could only be called hedonistic and self-indulgent. Kikuo didn’t see any point in that, but, well. Shun had people. Which meant it was high time he got someone too, didn’t it?
He had kissed and fucked Harue, had run his fingers along every inch of her soft, feminine skin, in the huddled blue of her room, had lain down in post-coital exhaustion on her faux-fur mattress. Not once did he feel the flash of rushing headiness, the violent urge to consume, to destroy, the same way he saw Shun’s nape, Shun’s wrist, a wrist of a boy, tanned and rough and harsh, and yet so delicate to Kikuo, so fragile he wanted to break them with his own hands; and yet to hold, to protect.
But nobody else could be Shun. And he already had Shun on the stage. So anyone was fine. And if anyone was fine, it might as well have been Harue. Harue who’d been beside him since childhood.
He proposed to Harue, and she turned him down.
It was fine. Anyone was fine. So he turned to Fujikoma, and had a kid with her.
-------
The sudden rise in national popularity of the To-Han duo had, unfortunately, led to a sludge of public appearances and interviews that Kikuo never quite liked. Most of the questions were repetitive and inane, pertaining to trivial aspects of his personal life that he felt they had no business inquiring about. A rare few times, though, the questions were interesting.
“Toichiro-san, many fans have praised your spectacular manner of embodying, 'disappearing' into the characters, and turning the stage into your world. It’s almost like magic,” the journalist chuckled. “Can you let us in on the secret of how you can pull this off so convincingly and consistently? Say, for example, do you have a special routine?”
Shun nudged him.
“Right, well,” Kikuo chewed on his words, “I don’t have a special routine or anything. I guess it’s something that accumulates through lots and lots of practice. And,” he smiled, “I’ve always been fond of the world of Kabuki. The world inside the play, you know. I step into that world, and everything feels real, realer than the real world even, so it’s not difficult to “act”, like you said, because I’m not acting.”
“What do you mean, 'realer than our world'? Am I not real to you then?” Shun pouted, obviously sulking because Kikuo had given a cool answer, judging by the shrill squeals of the fans below.
“Oh, is our little kid sulking?” Kikuo reached over to ruffle his hair. “Don’t you worry, Shun-bon. You’re always real to me.” Sometimes the only thing, the realest thing, Kikuo didn’t say.
Then Shun had left, left with Harue, and nothing was real anymore. Nothing except Kabuki.
-------
He felt Shun’s hands, the tip of the brush he’s holding, on his face, tracing familiar lines, painting Ohatsu’s makeup.
“You’ve never lived like Ohatsu, so you can’t die like Ohatsu,” his master had scorned him, a few days ago, when they practiced. He’s suddenly thinking of that now.
Shun had found him shaking in his dressing room, had called his name and held him, held him together, as he always did. He had seen the way Shun’s eyes softened and fell, glistened with tears, as Kikuo reached out for him, clutching on to him like a lifeline. And Kikuo knew then, what he was going to give up.
Ohatsu had died for her love. Here, on this day, Kikuo had given up his heart for Kabuki.
-------
“Ah, did you count the bell? Of the seven strokes
That mark the dawn six have sounded.
The remaining one will be the last echo
We shall hear in this life.”
Kikuo had looked back, Ohatsu had looked back, that day, in The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, and saw no one - nothing but the backstage darkness yawning open like a monster unhinging its jaw. And beyond the darkness were the sparks, the sparks he’d chased all his life.
That was when he knew he was dealing with no god, but a devil. And it was alright, because before him was flooding lights, so bright that the darkness was a small price to forfeit. The stage was where Kikuo truly lived.
It was alright, Kikuo thought, even without Shun. Because Shun was only half and Kikuo was whole, filled to the brim with Kabuki, and so Kikuo would go on, with or without Shun.
But how dare he, how dare he- Kikuo’s mind had whispered, in the pockets of time that Kabuki’s enormous presence wasn’t large enough to fill. How dare he turn tail from their competition, how dare he leave the stage and run away like a coward, too much of a chicken to face Kikuo head-on, to even give Kikuo a proper closure. To not even contact him, not even with a letter, for years and years.
Kikuo decided that he hated Shun. For his bloodline and his birthright and his cowardice, for stealing from Kikuo what was rightfully his.
Look at me, he sometimes imagined saying to Shun, loftily, angrily. Look at what I’m taking from you. I’m taking your roles and your spotlight and your fame and your heritage. I’m taking care of your father and mother. Look, coward, your father asked me to inherit YOUR title, the one thing that was meant to be yours. And guess what, I’ll become Hanai Hanjiro the Third in your stead. If you don’t want it, why can’t I take it? This was your punishment for running away. You stole from me, like a little thief, so I’ll steal from you too. Now we’re even.
-------
His master had called out Shun’s name in his final moments, and Kikuo could say nothing but sorry, and he knew, came upon the reckoning, that his life was cursed by Shunsuke: no one could be Shunsuke, not even him.
I’m sorry, master. I’m sorry for not being Shunsuke. I’m sorry that if I hadn’t existed, Shunsuke would be sitting here beside you, and everyone would have been happy. I’m sorry, but I have to reach that view. I have to, even if it means your unhappiness. I’m sorry, Shun.
And this too was a reckoning: Even if the name was his, his blood wasn’t the right kind. He was never going to be enough, not for his master, not for Kabuki, not for anyone. The moment he’d lost Shun, he’d lost his saving grace.
He watched dark blood drip and stain the wooden floor, stage staff yelling to close the curtains, master reaching out to some invisible point, yelling out an alternating litany of Shun’s name and “Don’t close the curtain!” in delirium.
Even in his death, his master couldn’t choose.
Master, did you know, Kikuo thought, in the eye of the storm, the silence after the mania. I wanted him to be here as much as you.
-------
Shun still called him “Kiku-chan,” and nothing could ever go back to the way it was.
Shun came back, but not for him, for the damn son of his and Harue’s. It was not until Shun timidly asked him to “Go see Harue too” that Kikuo realized Shun thought he was gonna be mad at him for this.
No, Shun, you stupid dolt. What you stole from me was something else.
And he had hated Shun more than ever, those years, hated him for siring a child with that woman, for taking away with such ease what he’d sacrificed his everything for, for taking away those things not for anything else, but for his bastard of a son. “I’m sorry, but it’s for Kazu,” he’d said, and it had made Kikuo see red with rage, because it’s always fucking blood with you people, isn’t it, and Kikuo was meant to be an outsider, was always gonna be one, because his parents were gone and Shun was gone in every way that mattered even if he came back, and now they were gonna take Kabuki from him too, the only thing that he had left.
And Shun had looked at him with those disappointed eyes when he asked about Akiko, the poor child who’d loved him and he’d failed in using just to land a role, and what the fuck did Shun know about anything, and he didn’t need Shun’s fucking pity or judgment and everything was too much to bear, so Kikuo punched him.
The stupid idiot Shun had the audacity to apologize for punching back. Kikuo punched him some more and left.
Because Shun was always like that, wasn’t him, was always quick to anger and quick to forgive, too soft to make good on any of his threats, too much of a bleeding heart to truly hurt anybody. But Kikuo, Kikuo was always ready to throw a punch, ready to hurt, his father’s blood racing underneath his skin, wild and violent. He’d never stopped for anyone. Not Harue, not Shun before, and not Akiko now.
“Stop it. What are you even looking at?” Akiko had sobbed and asked him. She’d had enough, he supposed.
And he had laughed. “You’re right, what am I looking at?” A grave of empty air, he’s a marionette on invisible strings, Kabuki running in his veins, and it wasn’t enough to be his salvation, his saving grace. The sparks never showed.
He never saw Akiko again.
-------
“Dance for me, I know you’re ready,” Mangiku told him on his deathbed. Kikuo guessed that meant Mangiku deemed him worthy of becoming a monster.
The Kokuho, now quartered in a matchbox room with no furniture and no one around except for a lifeless doll. He died shortly after.
Kikuo moved back to Tanba-ya and started teaching Kazu, per Shun’s request.
He had disliked Kazu for a while up until- well, up until the kid dared to pout at him for not letting him go play basketball, the pout so like Shun’s when he was small that Kikuo had a brief moment of whiplash.
He was careful when teaching Kazu, never lashing out at him, never hitting him too hard. Shun didn’t like being hit like that, his eyes always smarted with tears after, he remembered.
And it was nice, being on stage with Shun again. The blood of their family did protect him; Shun had taken only a few years to regain his footing. They came back as the Han-Han duo, as equals. Shun had flinched away from his head flick, had grown up without him, had changed in ways and shapes he didn’t recognize now, but it was okay - Shun still secreted that smile at him on stage, when they performed Wisteria Maiden, and sometimes Kikuo looked back at the creature he was in that abyss of a few years ago and felt like he was staring at something through thick glass: something strange and alien, the person he was without Shun.
But Kikuo had made a pact with the devil, all those years ago, and so the devil dictated: Shun had to cut off a leg. Diabetes. Just like his father.
It might as well have snowed, the way Kikuo’s blood ran cold.
-------
What did he want from Shun? Kikuo wondered if Shun knew.
They were sitting in Shun's hospital room, a few days before his operation. Harue had gone out somewhere.
Shun didn't say anything, didn't look at him; he just kept chewing on a banana while staring out the window. Icy-grey sunlight cut through the window lattice, swathing him in strips of a thin cold glow, like a ghost half gone. Kikuo distantly noticed that Shun's hair had, strangely, gone grey. It felt like just yesterday, they were still racing home from school on Shun's bike, the pink blooming sky opening up before them. Shun's gangrene legs, his grey hair, where did they come from?
The AC strained and heaved, spitting out antiseptic air. Kikuo twisted his hands together, shook his legs; he didn't know what to do. The chill in his bones refused to go away.
Shun's huff of a laugh jolted him somewhat, "What are you so nervous about? It's just a minor operation."
Kikuo didn't say anything.
Shun glanced at him, then glanced away.
"Kiku-chan, from now on, Tanban-ya really will have to depend on you as the main attraction. I'm graciously stepping down lest you're outshone by my brilliance." His voice turned sombre. "Don't worry. As long as I'm here, those old geezers won't dare attack you again."
"It's not like that." Kikuo croaked out, helplessly, what felt like his first sentence in days. "Shun, it's not like that."
"I know." Shun was still staring outside the window. "But sometimes I don't know if I do, Kiku-chan. Just sometimes."
-------
“She says these words as if but to herself,
Then questions with her foot: he nods his head,
And taking her ankle strokes his throat
To let her know that he willed to die.”
Shun stamped his left foot on the ground. “This foot, if it metastasizes to here,” his smile was the ugliest thing Kikuo had ever seen, “I’ll either have to cut it off too, or die.”
“I wish to play Ohatsu,” Shun then told him, mouth still tugged up in that hideous smile, “It’s not that I’m being competitive or anything. I just want to play Ohatsu the only way I can.”
“Do you imagine that I could go on living even for a moment if I were separated from Tokubei? Kuheiji, you dirty thief! Nobody could hear your nonsense without being amazed. No matter what happens, I’m going to die with Tokubei. I shall die with him.”
“Fine, then,” Kikuo saw himself saying, “Then I’ll play Tokubei.”
“She taps him with her foot; beneath the porch
He reverently takes it in his hands,
Then embracing her knees he weeps for love.”
The flood-lights glared. The world didn’t exist. Kikuo lay on the ground, clutching Shun’s feet like it was his lifeline. Please, he begged. Please.
Don’t condemn me to walking this road alone, Shun.
A few minutes later, Shun collapsed on the hanamichi.
“And in the nightmare darkness gropes for Tokubei.
At last they catch each other’s hands
And softly creep out to the entranceway.”
He wanted to go back for Shun, but Shun wouldn’t let him. Shun crawled, inch by inch, inch by inch… Stop it, asshole, what are you trying so hard for? You weren’t like this before. Just sit down and cry and let people take care of things for you, like you always did.
Kikuo dragged Shun, step by bloody step, writhing in pain, backstage.
“They cling to one another, weeping bitterly,
And wish, as many a lover has wished,
The night would last even a little longer.”
“You think we can finish this together?”
“Of course. Who do you think I am?”
There’s no use in talking any longer. Kill me, kill me quickly!
Kill me, kill me quickly!
Kill me, kill me quickly!
(Shunsuke, Shunsuke, Shun. How could I ever let you go?)
Kikuo pulled the blade from its sheath and pointed at Shun. No, it was Ohatsu, no, it was Shun, it was them both. Ohatsu had taken Shun from him once, and she was going to take Shun from him again.
(Kiku-chan, you have to let me go.)
He wept.
He understood, suddenly understood, that this was the devil's true punishment: that it had given Shun back to him, only to take him away, this time for good.
“So many months and years, his hands begin to shake,
He stretches forth his arms—of all the pains
That life affords, none is as great as this.”
“Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance!” Someone yelled.
But he didn’t hear them. All he saw was this: Shun’s face, looking at him for the last time, smiling up at him in agony. All he felt was this: Shun’s head on his shoulder, the warmth burned, looking to where, he did not know.
His master’s words echoed.
“Ohatsu was sad that she was going to die, but she was also happy to die with her lover.”
Were you happy then, Shun, to die in my arms?
-------
Shun left and left him alone on the stage, just like his father did.
From then on, Kikuo walked the hanamichi alone.
-------
Kikuo once overheard the children reading one of those foreign books. A line went, “All history present in that visage. The child the father of the man.”
Kikuo didn’t know what it meant, but he thought it must be true.
He had finally become Kokuho.
He put on the costumes, the makeup, and went on stage. They asked him to perform The Heron Maiden. It was snowing, the day of. Snow fluttered over his umbrella, piling up, falling down.
“Was it worth it,” Ayano had asked, “to trample on all those people to get to where you are today?”
"I'm praying to the devil to become the best Kabuki actor in Japan. I'm willing to give up everything else."
Was it worth it? Who the hell knew. All he knew was those sparks, those sparks that had caught in his eyes who-knew-how-many years ago, by that point had become so distant to him, like smudged mirror images.
And yet he knew he had to chase them. He had to. Otherwise, what was the point?
"And what did the devil say, daddy?"
"He said, 'Okay. It's a deal.'"
The girl turned into a heron, then turned back into the girl. Blood oozed from her shoulders; she twisted and thrashed in her torment. She was going mad, mad with resentment, mad with pain. Such was the price of love.
Snow fell, and fell, and fell.
Was it worth it? Kikuo wanted to ask her.
The heron flapped her wings once, twice, each one weaker than the last. She stretched her neck, like trying to appeal to- what? Was it a God? Or a devil?
The world turned blinding white.
The heron fell, and Kikuo fell with her. Into a carpet of snow.
And Kikuo saw.
“Father, are you watching?” He smiled. “Look.”