[FIC] Bloom, part one. (Kouyuu centric, possible eventual You Shuu/Kouyuu) Story Title: Bloom. Chapter Title: Seedling. Summary: Before a flower can blossom, it goes through various stages of growth. PG-13ish. Pairing: Eventual You Shuu/Kouyuu. Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Crap. This chapter, however, only features chibi!Kouyuu. Notes:mitsuhachi came to my aid with an awesome You Shuu/Kouyuu prompt to help my over my block writing these two. About 800 words in and with no end anywhere in sight, I decided to stop writing that story for a while so I could work on something short – the plan was to actually write and finish something, after all ^_^. As a result, I turned to a challenge community for inspiration and a second plot bunny was born that I was sure would clock in easily under 1000 words. Somewhere along the way it morphed into a four or five chapter story, which the potential You Shuu/Kouyuu way off in the distance. I officially suck. Warning: The entire story is meant to encompass as many of the themes over at 30_darkfics as possible. I’m not going to warn for individual dark themes because the story is only going to be about 4 chapters long so each one with incorporate quite a few at a time. That said, this is easily the darkest of the chapters. Be warned? Spoiler warnings: Spoilers like whoa for volume 13 of the novels and Kouyuu’s back story. Certain elements are also taken from the gaiden story that deals with the first few months after Kouyuu is adopted by Reishin, and a lot is just me playing with different ideas that didn’t happen at all. Kouyuu’s back story in the novel is completely different to the anime and CD drama, FYI.
Bloom//Seedling. Kou is four when he learns that humans can be bought and sold. The market place that he is taken to reeks of cattle and produce, and Kou stumbles as he is dragged from the back of the cart and thrown down onto the coarse gravel.
“Get up,” Chu-sama demands coldly; roughly grabbing the back of Kou’s shirt and pulling him to his feet. “You’ll get your clothes dirty. You look enough like a street urchin as it is.”
Kou grumbles something under his breath, something about how he has been wearing these robes for weeks and he’s hungry and tired and he’s sure this is all wrong although he can’t remember what right is. His words take him back to the ground again, his cheek stained red and tears brimming at his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Chu-sama,” he says earnestly, biting down on his bottom lip as he watches, waits. But Chu-sama simply growls deep in his throat, too distracted by something in the distance to employ further violence.
“Come on, the auction has probably already started. Hopefully some idiot will buy you and rid me of my bad luck.”
Kou is only four when he is forced into a line with other children three times his age in front of a cattle pen. Wide-eyed, he clutches his fists into his frayed outer robe as a crowd slowly gathers. Kou glances over his shoulder at Chu-sama, confused and scared, but all the man does is gesture for him to turn back around.
So he does.
And so it begins.
There is a chaotic order to the way the men approach, although Kou doesn’t see it through his fear. He sees only interchangeable faces that alternatively crouch and stand before him, each sending a barrage of questions up at Chu-sama while their hands, their hands …
He struggles against the hands at first; defiantly tilting his head away when they try and lock their fingers around his bottom jaw so that they can study his teeth, twisting and struggling when those same fingers run clinically down his arms, squeezing here, there, cupping his elbows, muttering about his collar bone and shoulder muscles. Chu-sama smacks him on the back of his head and commands him to stay still, and when he tries to cringe back against the demon he knows in favor of the ones he doesn’t, Chu-sama simply shoves him into those scary, invasive hands once more. But Chu-sama has to step forward and hold him tight the first time a pair of hands drags Kou’s robes up around his armpits. Kou bucks away, twists away, but there is no escape from the hands that descend systematically to his chest, to the flat of his stomach, to his hips, to his-
“Stand still or I’ll flog you until you can’t walk,” Chu-sama hisses into his ear when Kou lets out a cry and kicks out at the hands. And the hands terrify Kou, and they make him feel as though he is nothing, nothing, but nothing is better than feeling like he does after Chu-san finishes with him.
Kou does as he told. He sways slightly where he stands as the hands roam wherever they wish, seemingly blind to they way Kou’s quiet sobs make his whole body shake, seemingly unaware of the tears that threaten to run down his cheeks when they examine his teeth.
He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand. As the day stretches on, the sun beating down and the hands becoming rougher, more disinterested, Kou finds that he somehow no longer cares.
At four, Kou is starting to learn the value of numbness.
***
His first owner treats him like a toy. Only a few years older than Kou, Master Yan wishes to be like his father. As Yan senior has slaves, so then must Master Yan. Kou spends his days running between the large rooms, bringing food and toys and food and firewood and food-
Master Yan is not a nice boy. He is demanding and cold, and too often he looks to his even colder, more demanding father for guidance. When Kou refuses an order – or even worse, sets his jaw defiantly and states that Master Yan should get his own cookies for once – Kou is shoved to the ground and screamed at childishly.
His third owner is an old woman whose breath smells of death and decay. She treats him like an ornament, putting him on display whenever her friends come along, patting him on the head and platting his hair. When she is done playing with him – parading him before others – he is shoved into a small cupboard with some of her other trinkets and left there.
His twelfth owner treats him like one of his cattle. Kou is up before dawn and in bed long after dark, his fair skin becoming burnt and dark from the long hours he spends tending to the animals in the heat of the sun. Kou isn’t strong, and so sometimes it takes him longer than it should to spread out the hay or collect the eggs. Sometimes, when he is feeling irritated and disobedient, he’s slower than he should be as well.
That is what the belt that hangs on his master’s back door is for.
Kou’s sixteenth owner runs a tavern, and so Kou spends most of his evenings standing on an upside down crate washing plates and glasses. The work is tedious and long, and yet Kou finds he enjoys it somewhat, all the same. It helps that he is allowed to drink as much of the cheapest beer as he wishes, even though he’s only seven and doesn’t know anything about the drink other than it makes the world seem hazy around the edges. Still, they are the happiest three months of his childhood.
His nineteenth owner treats Kou like a whore. He wears silk robes and his hair falls to his waist in elaborate curls. Kou is taught to smile on command (it’s often more of a grimace), and how to dip his head just so (although he never really gets the hang of it). He is then served up to a gaggle of gleeful, perverse men who care only fleetingly for the quality of his clothes or the shine of his hair. They much prefer what is underneath. He doesn’t realize that this sort of servitude is any different to the kind that he’s been made to engage in before, although with each touch, each, each-
He cries himself to sleep each night, and he doesn’t know why. This is his value, his purpose. Without the men and their hands, he would be nothing.
And yet, he cries himself to sleep each night. Kou doesn’t know why.
His twenty-fourth owner is also Kouyuu’s last. At nine he is now old enough to take on the same workload as the adult slaves, and so his hair is chopped short and a small circle is burnt onto his hip to mark him properly as belong forever to someone else. He nods when it is done, even as he scrubs away his tears with his fists. There is not even the slightest hint of resistance, not anymore. There is only compliance.