cursebound. (Earinor & Akira)

"Are you sure? You were a child once, right...? But maybe you will stop aging when you're fully grown.", Genji suggested. Cells might just start to regenerate, just like his stayed the same for... probably a long time now. At least he wouldn't be killed as long as he harbored Otoha in his body as it seemed. What happened to her? Genji couldn't even remember her face, let alone the journey they experienced together, or at least he thought they did. He couldn't remember her death either, or what happened after. He knew nothing, nothing about Otoha, nor about himself. Most of his life was shrouded in darkness, only the years he lived as a human were clear as could be. He remembered his masters face, he remembered his homes, if only he'd be able to remember all those he killed. Maybe he would have a clue how to stop this thing inside of him then, but he didn't pay them any mind. Killing wasn't something to be sorry or ashamed of for him, it had been his job and the people he killed were no humans, they had been targets, nothing more.

Genji looked at the priest apologetically. "I... sometimes time just flies past me...", he answered. Maybe for someone living as long as him a few minutes were but a drop in the ocean, yet he couldn't even say how old he truly was. Genji stood by the door and watched Mikuni get rid of the old, cold tea, only to eventually shove the kettle into his hands. "I'm not immortal either.", he reminded the priest and thought his answer to be a bit too simple. Maybe his body couldn't die, but that didn't mean that he didn't feel pain, but talking about that didn't help. Genji quickly dropped his gaze, nodded and went to fill the kettle with water. Before long he put it back to the fire so it warmed up the water for some tea. Kneeling there only made him realize how tired he was and he rubbed his eyes. If Mikuni wanted company, so be it, but eventually he'd go back to cleaning the halls to the best of his abilities.

"That was a while ago, but yes, I was a child once. I am human, still. I don't know if I ever will stop aging, but I know for certain, that the pain this ... thing inflicted upon me hasn't killed me. Therefore, I doubt that human means will kill me, at least as long as it isnt old age. Or sickness.", he mused. Mikuni-no-Homare was the child of humans, the vessel of a goddess, and yet he was nothing like either of them, while encompassing both in his frail body, accompanied by the mind of a priest. How much would he have to pay for the ignorance of man, for the loss of his innocence and the sins that he committed by merely adhering to being praised for being something he wasn't? "Genji, what do you think fully grown means?" Mikuni cocked his head, sounding somewhat offended but also confused by the statement. "I've matured years ago, as did you by the looks of it. Do you mean until I grow a beard, until I get my first set of wrinkles? Otherwise I'm already fully grown." The priest reached for his neck as he finally let himself sink onto his bed and watched as the blonde dashed past him, outside of their room - or rather the infirmary. Mikuni had been left alone with confusing thoughts, with assumptions about himself that not only Otoha failed to answer, but Genji couldn't tell either.

As he returned, he still looked like a sopping wet kitten, one that had finally crawled into someones home after spending the past day lost in a thunderstorm, separated from its mother and siblings, crying out until their voice gave out. Genji was just like that, wasn't he? If Mikuni could, maybe he'd grab him by the scruff of his neck. "And yet your life seems neverending, as long as nobody tries to actually kill you, did I understand that right?" That sounded like the words of a heretic, and yet, nothing in this world - nothing in Houkun - was that out of the ordinary if one just gave it a second thought. Why would it be? They had everything they could ask for, even if a wandering demon wasn't exactly the best guest one could house. "Then lets make what little time you can actually catch in your grasp count, how about that? If you can wander this land for years without realizing, just how long were you walking until I found you in the orchard?", he asked, confused. Mikuni yawned and pulled one of his blankets over his shoulders. Like this, he couldn't see Genjis face, and yet, it was somewhat reassuring that he was unable to. "And ... that aside. How did you even end up like this? How has no one be able to heal you?" They couldn't all be his savior, couldn't all be Otoha, even if they could at least try. Mikuni, however, was deadset in his tracks, and while he wouldn't take no for an answer, he obviously knew that Genji might not even trust him enough after what Seimei had pulled.

"I didn't mean to offend you...", Genji mumbled, fleeing the conversation soon after. Maybe Mikuni already stopped aging a few years ago, but Genji couldn't tell and he also couldn't say why he wished it so. Mikuni wasn't a companion for him, he wasn't Otoha and even if he were, Genji wasn't sure if he should travel with anybody. Apparently he did, maybe he felt different back then and not opposed to the endless killing. If he killed regularly, the curse left him alone and one might argue that at this point, one or two more corpses hardly made a difference. If Genji was to die, there already seemed to be an army harbored within his body, that was bigger than anything the world has seen before. If the world ended anyway, why would he not kill and otherwise live a rather normal life? Was that what he thought back then? Was that what Otoha told him? He didn't know, he didn't remember who he was and it seemed like he wore different faces everytime he forgot something about his past and experienced something else instead.

Genji eventually kneeled there in front of the fire, waiting for the water to boil and with his back turned to the priest. "I don't age.", Genji answered, looking at his own hand that had been hurting and red before, but now was soft with it's natural color. Not only did the curse hold Genjis body in the same state since it manifested first, it reset his body on those parts that it infested. There would not be a scar from the first wound Seimei inflicted. The second actually hit a spot the curse hadn't infected yet and it therefor needed time to heal and the skin would remain deformed. "Mhh... only weeks I believe. I heard of this monastery by passing. The curse only reached my upper arm so... yes I'd say two weeks." And he didn't have any breaks, because he knew time was never on his side. He didn't want to hurt anyone here and yet he did. "Magic that feeds from other things than the casters soul are rare and very old. Even when I still lived as a human, I have never heard of anything like it. Knowledge of long forgotten past... it's older than me, older than anyone I ever met. History has forgotten about those curses.", he explained in his usual slow pace, as if he was only half present in reality.

They all had opinions, many of them different from their real values, but even then, what did it matter? Mikuni valued his life, in a way that others did not, while they seemingly valued Otoha, which Mikuni often failed to do. The foreign voice that scratched at the back of his head, much like a dog, out to be fed a stick, told it had done good, was there ever since he'd lost what he should have described as a second eye - a part of his life. Just now, however, he sat here, still, had become one of her agents, her followers, one that should be ever so grateful to someone like her. "You have not.", he replied. The assumption that he was no fully grown human had, simply put, been a stupid one, and what was more, an idiotic stance on something that an old geezer, someone that could moonlight as Seimeis ancestor if he truly was that old, would probably always make, for as long as he considered someone to look younger than he did, in that unaging body of his, it seemed. "I suppose you stopped? Years ago? You do look spry for someone claiming to be as old as time.", Mikuni confirmed. But what if Genjis back would crack and then hurt the moment he got up - would that be a sign of old age as well?

"So, you have been restlessly searching on how to free yourself ... for decades, or longer, you don't even recall. And now that you are here, and were taken as nothing more than someones scapegoat, almost sacrificed to a goddess you apparently knew before, when she was human or something, you still have no desire to dig deeper?" Whatever the monastery could offer them, it might or might not be the answers they expected. Even if it were, however, there was no real reason for either of them to play pretend - they could simply live their life the way it was. Mikuni let himself sink onto the bed fully, only to cocoon himself up some more in those blankets that he'd gathered when he had engaged in sinful blasphemy, by granting himself a bigger bed, by being selfish and not saying goodbye to his perished brothers, and by merely trusting Genji, too. "We should consult the goddess then. She might know something, but ... I can't exactly force her out. Or do you think she is younger than your curses origin? It all makes so little sense, even if it is ancient magic. Is there truly no one like you that can lend you a hand? Are you the only one that was afflicted by this ... thing? What about brothers or sisters in arms?", Mikuni-no-Homare asked, aloud no less. Was he speaking out of line, acting like a toddler that knew too much and too little at the same time, or was it perfectly fine for him to do stuff like this? He'd not know, but he seemed to be daydreaming about it no less.

"I probably stopped aging when the curse was uttered. This body remains in my late teens or early twenties, I believe. When I noticed it's effect I halve already been almost thirty.", he explained. Memories of times long past remained vivid in his head, even after the curse befell his body, but as soon as it gripped itself into his flesh and Genji stopped feeding it, everything grew hazy. Even now, although having killed those priests was only a week ago. He couldn't even remember the journey here, or how exactly he learned of this place. His head was full after hundreds of years, there was no room for new memories as it seemed and he wondered if it even mattered. He was stuck in this world and with this curse. Whether he remembered the past fifty years or ten minutes of killing didn't make a difference. It might be a better fate to only remember his victims faces in his dreams and not when he was awake. What good would it do to remember it all? He already felt bad enough when his mind belonged to only him and when it didn't he was fighting for control constantly.

"Dig deeper?", Genji asked confused. "I don't know whether I searched for a cure all those years. There might have been times where I gave up. There might have been times when I forgot that I already looked everywhere, or times where I didn't care... Your goddess said I changed." Whether he did and how he didn't know and he never would. He must have been a different person to have a companion with him and to be able to be with someone for a longer period of time. He also felt like he had killed for her, it sounded like it, but maybe he was wrong. It sounded like stories that didn't belong to him. "I am not certain of many things, but I am certain I am much older than your goddess. I met her only after I was cursed, of that I am sure." Once the water started boiling, Genji put the kettle away and chose some herbs to boil, the same he used before when he helped Mikuni. "I think she was still a child when I met her..." It was a feeling, an image that was right there before his eyes, yet he couldn't grasp it. It was something he wasn't sure of, but something that stuck and felt right. He stood up with the kettle in his hands to bring it over to the priest. "I don't know of any family or friends. Before the curse I was all alone too and I only remembered knowing Otoha when she spoke to me. I wouldn't know who else I met."

"You look the part. Hard to realize how much older you actually are - I'd almost mistaken you for a runaway if you had looked a bit younger, you know?" Then, all of the priests would claim his story to be nothing more than fake, something that correlated with his face. Mikuni didn't dare look at it, however - he wanted to evade the scorn, the hurtful gaze of a forlorn demon that sought to destroy all that stumbled into its path, even if he knew that it was futile to act like he was fine, that he wasn't placing a burden upon himself. His gaze, milky and blurry, darted upward and fixated itself upon a fixture on the ceiling - an old painting, rugged and barely recognizable, but exciting nontheless; something worth obsessing over, if only for a short moment. "Just how old are you? I'd assume older than humans should be, but even if you have managed to live this long, don't you ... have any idea how many years? Hundreds? Thousands? Maybe it's way less than that, or way more than any of us should fathom. In theory, you're just like me, some mortal human thing, strung along by some sort of entity without our consent. It's odd.", the priest declared. What would a murderer and priest have in common? What kind of struggles could they share? All of it was weird enough, to say the very least, but on the other hand, it didn't seem so outlandish.

"Did you not keep journals? Receipts? Anything, something of your journey up until now?" The way Genji looked, he simply came and went as he pleased, with barely any luggage - actually, none at all - to call his own. Like a vagrant, a lost soul of sorts, and one that belonged within the epitome of this monasteries teachings. "I can't speak for the Revelation. But as it seems, she revealed something to you, about your previous relationship." Mikuni sat up once more as he heard the distinct chattering of a boiling kettle, carried into his very direction; he mused at the adept acting of a man that was otherwise unfamiliar with the life in this convent, or even their customs. "What do you remember? How about your origin, your last name? Something before you became who you are, or lacking a person to be. I know I can't help much, but as I said, we have the library - it is old, ancient even - and predates Her in parts.", Mikuni explained. That it did, but worse than that, not every book they had was catalogued, either - which only meant, that this would be a long, ardorous search. "A child? How come? Do you think she stayed with you for longer than she should have? To me, she sounds hardly like a little girl.", he confessed. She could be all of those things, maybe even someone ... different. What if she was ... no, that was absurd. Those were no grounds to ascend to godhood on. Mikuni grabbed the kettle he was handed. "Hm, have you tried to jog your memory? Talk to Otoha extensively? Has she told you anything of value for you?"

"I don't know. The world has changed since my youth, that much I know...", he told the priest that had way too many questions. His guesses were as good as Genjis. Things looked different now, people behaved different, towns grew smaller strangely enough. Genji came of a world full of luxury and demons, in which anyone wielded magic as they saw fit. Life was easy. Now Genji seldomly saw any humans afflicted by corruption and in turn he didn't see anyone use magic to simply heat some water. At some point humanity must have stopped using that dangerous power, because the price grew too high, but history was also prone to repeat itself. "I deserve that punishment of mine. The world does not however. I don't seek to stop this for myself, I am doomed and had been from the start." Genji shortly looked at Mikuni, then away again. "We are different and I don't think the curse has thoughts like Otoha has. It is driven by instinct, nothing more." When Genji thought about it, it scared him less than the goddess did. She made him feel like someone he wasn't and there was something about all she said that left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Maybe someday. I don't have anything on me though." By now the priest should know that all of Genjis answers revolved around the fact that he didn't know anything. Once he left the kettle with him, Genji put some distance between them again and eventually decided to sit down below the window. He was tired, he too was hurt and maybe he overdid it a bit today. "I remember my past as a human as well as you do probably. I don't have a last name. I lived on the streets, my parent have left me at some point, or they died. I was found by a witcher, an old man who took me in. He wasn't a nice man, I was nothing but a tool for him, but he wasn't cruel either. He made me into an assassin and he taught me some magic. Eventually he died and I continued my line of work. That's about it...", he told the priest. His previous life wasn't very interesting and he had never been anything special. "I knew her when she grew up as well... but you're better off asking her about it. I can hardly remember her..." Genji leaned his head against the wall behind him and closed his eyes for a bit. He couldn't access his memories about her, instead his head stung when he tried. "We talked."

“Just how long ago was your youth?”, Mikuni wanted to know. There was no chance in hell that Genji would be able to tell him, one way or the other, and yet, he was terribly interested in the blonde as a whole. If anything, the man was an enigma, lost to time, much like any other artifact could be - he existed, on the border between myth and reality, and if the priest wouldn’t know it any better, he’d have guessed he was being visited by a ghost of ages past. “You should start seeking forgiveness, not from yourself, but from those poor souls that you’ve torn out of their lives. Appease them and rid yourself of the demon somehow, haven’t you tried before?” Genji had stopped purposefully killing people ages ago, hadn’t he? Just because a curse was ailing him, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be broken - and what was worse, it also didn’t mean that Genji was doomed to a lifetime of suffering. In fact, Mikuni would rather describe it as an opportunity to learn than anything - something that this ancient piece of history should have done hundreds of years ago. “We are not so different, though. Also, Genji, I know you’re her friend, but, do you even know how she became a goddess and lost her name?” No priest would ever call her Otoha.

“Then we should start where we can. We’ll get you one tomorrow, and you’ll write down whatever you can, even if it’s just something completely and utterly simple. Memories are important, Genji! And maybe they are the key to your curse, too.”, he sighed. To him, maybe the wet kitten metaphor seemed more and more plausible than anything - Genji seemed almost helpless enough to be grabbed by the scruff of his neck, as he screamed for food he couldn’t find, even if it sat right in front of him all the time. Stupid was, what it was, nothing more; but cute, too. “So you know stuff from before the curse, what’s with after the fact? Anything worth mentioning? Or is it all just one big blob of nothingness?”, Mikuni demanded to know as he put the kettle on his nightstand. He pointed Genji in a different direction, toward where the cups sat, and to the loose leaves that had been stacked in a tin there, to be kept as pristine as possible. Now that he shouldn’t get up, wasn’t allowed to do much of anything, he could hardly shamble over there and make both of them a cup - the vagrant would shoo him back into the loving embrace of his bed. “What about that witcher? Did he curse you? Or just, I don’t know, what even was he to you? A father?” Much like Father Seimei could have been one to him, he figured, but … obviously he hadn’t been, not ever. “I can’t really ask someone that’s dead asleep - any idea on how to drag her out?” Those two seemed to be good friends, even after all those years.

"More than 400 years at least... according to your goddess. Though I reckon it was a couple of hundred years when I met her already... it is odd, because in some way my time was more advanced than yours, yet you have contraptions I can't remember from when I was still human." Magic rules the world. It was different now, the convenience it brought was gone and and in it's stead came technology. Still, the people from this time and age had to work harder than those of Genjis original time. When he was young everyone used magic for the littlest things. Fetching water from a well, or heating it up was just a matter of snapping ones fingers, for some at least. It was a dangerous time too and Genji believed that most knowledge of that time was gone, because people wanted humans to forget the magic that caused them so much trouble once, including Genjis curse. "Forgiveness? I'm sorry for what I did and what I do every day and night. I am sorry for those I killed before this curse haunted me too. I doubt their souls have the power to forgive or move on though. Those I killed while cursed are trapped, feeding the curse and maybe making me immortal in the first place. They will not go to heaven, nor will they be reborn. They will be lost until I die and when I do, the anger and fear they felt will swarm this world. I'm not sure if after hundreds of years of killing, anyone would be able to survive that..."

Genji carefully looked up, past the blonde strands of hair. "She wouldn't tell me what happened.", he told Mikuni. There was something about her death that didn't seem right, besides the fact that she just accepted her fate and went to die, leaving Genji clueless and unable to even try and save her. That was what he gathered from her words at least. She was important to him, that much he knew, but at the same time he didn't feel like himself when around her. If he had already written a diary, maybe he'd know more. "My memories are either lost, or a chaotic fog. I can't answer your questions.", he told the priest. He seemed to want to know more, but there simply was nothing. Eventually Genji got up again, got the cups Mikuni apparently wanted and brought them to him. He didn't fancy tea, or food, or anything really. "He didn't. He took me in, gave me a bed under a dry roof and food. In exchange I worked for him, that is all." There wasn't anything interesting about that man. He was the closest thing to a father Genji ever had, but he wouldn't describe him as such. "She said she never had full control over your body before. If I had to guess I would say you are the one controlling how much power she has. But maybe she just needs rest to help your body heal. She wasn't a goddess when I knew her and I am not quite sure what that even means."

"That just sounds so incredibly outlandish, I don't know what to even make of that.", Mikuni found himself replying. He'd hoped for anything that could double as a believable story, that sounded like it came out of his teachings, from ages past when gods were little more than immortal humans, but Genji seemed to fit that description himself, all the while he was the most ghastly being one could imagine. Would he be able to ascend to godhood? Mikuni doubted it, but still, his own goddess was little more than a parasite that he harbored within his own mind. "So you ... keep them like some sort of parasites in your body as well? Don't they ever try to talk to you after 400 years, just a little bit? Anything, even if its but agonizing screams?", he demanded further. It wasn't good if he riled up Genji, probably, but Mikuni wanted to know things about him, and what was worse, he truly and really didn't dare to think that he was overstepping any boundaries at all. What did it matter? Genji could always make him shut up, no matter what, and Mikuni would still try to get some information out of him, still try to pour him some tea and act all jovial about it. Whatever else should he be doing anyway? "Have you tried killing her?", he asked, once more astonished at himself as he tried to prepare the tea as best as he could. Otoha would most likely always forgive Genji, and Genji would probably forgive Otoha, if all of this was anything to go by - and it definitely was.

“Wouldn’t or couldn’t? Should I ask her?” Not that she would tell him either, he was sure. What the hell would she even tell him - that she was nothing more than a pathetic excuse for a curious human, that he was absolutely unequipped to learn of the truth and that by, all accounts, he should mind his own business? Whatever the case, Mikuni could try, as long as Genji wanted him to. He wouldn’t stray from something stupid like that, simply because on person told him to stay away, but alas, wasn’t he supposed to do just that? What if somebody caught wind of what he was doing in the first place? It would be a blasphemy against his goddess for sure. “You had no parents, but a master, and a blade to kill with?” Once more he thrust the cup into Genjis hand, demanding he take it, before lulling himself into a sense of security - he was safe, even with the blonde here, and while he couldn’t exactly reach for him, he at the very least was trying to cheer either of them on. A smile made its way onto his delicate features, all battered and bruised. “Genji, do you like her? Did you like her? And … Maybe you’re right, she’s been awfully silent.”, he sighed. That much she was. Mikuni put his own cup aside for a bit and hit himself in the head with the flat palm of his hand. Otoha wouldn’t come out like this, and yet, he was wishing she did.

"It does. But would someone pluck your head from your shoulders, you'd still be alive. My age isn't the most outlandish here.", Genji mumbled. For him it didn't really matter how old he was. He couldn't remember most of his cursed life and he wasn't sure if he ever did. He was about to give up again, not give into the curse, but stop trying to get rid of it. There had been nothing but false hope and lies for more than the better half of a millennium. The curse uttered was long forgotten and no one would be able to help him now. All he needed to do was find a secluded space, with enough food, but no one around, but the curse would walk his body away again, it would lead him to some unsuspecting, undeserving souls eventually. No one could escape Noroichi and death wasn't an option. "I'm not sure if they are inside me. But they are somewhere they don't belong. I can see them in my dreams, I can see their plans for the world if they were let free. That is why I mustn't die." An army of undead, not very much different than Mikuni probably. Genji wasn't sure if they could be killed. The questions didn't offend Genji, but suddenly one coaxed a reaction out of him. His eyebrows furrowed for less than a second and the corner of his mouth shot downwards for a short moment as well. "What are you asking?", he wanted clarification. "The curse might have, it tried only a week ago, but it doesn't hate her or you. It's as much a choice as it is a hungry foxes to kill a hen." Genji still looked at Mikuni with narrowed eyes. "If you are asking if I killed her when she was human - no. Even though she doesn't want to tell me much, she told me it wasn't me. It might be that the curse tried to reap her before, but obviously it didn't succeed. She wouldn't be here if I was the one killing her." In the end he didn't even need her to tell him. Her soul would have been trapped immediately and it wouldn't reside in a boys head.

"She doesn't want to tell me.", he told Mikuni once more. Her death as much as the rest of Genjis past was shrouded in mystery. A thick fog lay over all of it and the harder Genji tried to access those long lost memories, the further they slipped. His head started hurting again and he wondered why that was. Maybe it was always like this, he rarely tried to remember specific things, but maybe it was the curse holding him off, or Otoha herself, or someone or something else Genji didn't know about and forgot as well. Genji received a cup of tea and quickly moved away again once he got it. He got back to the window. It grew dark, but it wasn't night falling upon them, dark clouds were shrouding the sky. Soon the first drops of rain would fall. Genji leaned on the windowsill and looked outside. The air was already humid and the rain would dampen the smell of burning human flesh. "You were silent too when I talked to her.", Genji mumbled and stretched out one hand to catch a few droplets of rain. "It doesn't matter. Once you are better, I will find a save place for you and then I'll leave."

“Are you sure?”, Mikuni sounded somewhat offended. All that this foreign demon had done to him had hurt enough - he had felt his open chest heave, rise and fall, his hurting lungs begging for more air while his crushed windpipe would only whistle in his own ears. He’d begged, pleaded with himself to finally faint, but no matter how much it hurt, he wouldn’t pass out - he somehow couldn’t. When he’d finally done it, he hid, and Otoha had raised her hands to protect him, in the back of his very own mind, not thinking twice about stepping in, right then and there, when the worst had already been over. “The goddess nests in my eye, it’s not mine. If you’d rip off my head, you’d remove it from my body, but, I guess my head would live on? Somehow?” That did sound even more outlandish, and Mikuni couldn’t even be mad about being called out for it. Being just a floating head didn’t sound appealing, though - and the pain that had to come with heaving his head ripped of was something he’d rather not feel, ever. “Are their plans the destruction of the waking world? Have you tried to seal them away if your immortal form ever expires? There has to be another way.” Another one that didn’t call upon the scorn in those blue eyes, the ones that were like daggers, seeing right through him in a very second.

Mikuni wanted to scramble to his feet, look at Genji and just understand what it was that could help him, but there was none - and even Otohas murder wouldn’t suffice, as he realized by the rather unfortunate reaction he got. “To kill a god, that’s what I’m asking. It does not have to be her, not at all, but … maybe you’d benefit from it? A gods power and love for a devout follower should heal you, in a way, I’d like to believe. But a gods soul in a curses army is maybe not a sound decision.” There, he caught himself being a backpedaling heretic, and in the need of a reprimanding session - Father Seimei would be the one that tore his head of, in theory, and would tell him just how much of a failure he was in the Revelations eyes, but that she loved him as well, that he … Mikuni gazed towards the Outlander, his window and the rain he invited into their safe haven as he drank from a boiling cup of hot water, tasting less like the leaves than he expected just yet. “Just passed out and at the back of her mind, somewhere. I wonder, what is she like towards you? As gentle and loving as she is for me?”, the priest wondered and gazed at the man that simply sat there, taking in the view before him. The clouds that were brewing at the horizon beckoned Mikuni, almost in a laughing matter, and brought with them the rain of futility, the one that would wash away all sin. “Do you like it here?”

Mikuni went on talking and talking, but Genji was too tired to listen to him. He drank from the cup of tea, drank everything in one go, just so it was gone and he had satisfied his bodies need for hydration. It didn't taste good to him, nothing did. In fact he felt like he was already dead and the only way to feel better about himself was either stopping to think altogether, or finding a way to get his mind off of things. He could just go back to cleaning, instead of standing here and listening to a boys ideas of saving him, when he had no clue in the world what was going on. Genji couldn't answer his questions and he felt awful for being offered such simple solutions, or some whichs execution was a mystery, if not the delusions of a faithful man. Even if he couldn't remember what he did all those hundreds of years, surely he would have tried the most obvious solutions at some point and Otoha would have too if she was who she claimed to be. "I won't die. This is all I need to ensure..." A way to true immortality seemed more likely than getting rid of this curse, at least then he could lock himself up without any food for the rest of eternity.

"Is that why you watched your head priest kill all those people?", he suddenly asked, realizing that this boy didn't even know his own goddess, let alone any other and what their death would mean. "Because as a devout follower you think it healed you and the other priests? Or that it healed her?" Genji sighed deeply and let his head rest on the windowsill. "I will not kill for my own benefit." No god, no dragon, no monster, nothing and no one. "Running around, killing gods and strangers, because it may have a beneficial effect, is that what they taught you here?" This place had been lost from the start and yet Genji didn't mean to kill anyone. There was a sting in his back, reminding him that the curse seemed to not only feed off souls, but gained control over Genjis body faster if he basked in feelings of frustration or anger. There were times when he felt so hopeless that he let it take control and do whatever it liked, simply because fighting got too exhausting and living was as well. He felt those thoughts crawling up, the wish to be able to shake off all responsibility he carried, with the additional weight of the priest Otoha put on his shoulders. He didn't want to answer Mikunis questions. His and Otohas past was nothing that should interest him and his feelings for her were too confusing as to just tell a stranger about them. If Otoha wanted to tell her vessel about what she thought about Genji, she could do it herself. Did he like it here? It was quiet, void of people, that was his doing, yet he preferred places like that. He simply wanted to be alone and go somewhere he could never get out no matter how much he walked. The curse wouldn't find any victims.

Stranger yet, Genji endured him - but maybe the strangest situation of all was, that the blonde had no longer any interest in what little conversation they had beforehand. The cloudy skies grew dark and the bubbling heat from Mikunis cup disappeared within his throat as he swallowed the sips he allowed himself in a few goes; it mattered little what he would come up with if he just sat idly by and observed someone like the blonde for all eternity, but on the other hand, who knew if he didn’t just need to warm up to him? Not once did the priest have any obligation to bemuse the cursed being, but he liked him, in a strange way. Maybe it was Otohas doing, her hands that clawed themselves into his mind and body, that tore on his innards and later would spill his guts, all in an attempt to simply pacify both of their growing anxiety. “You’ve lived ages, I’m still only thinking about theoretical stuff. Why are you like that anyway?” A mewling, thrashing kitten that was capable of throwing silent tantrums, that’s what this man was - Mikuni thought so, and if he’d lie to himself, he could claim he heard the Revelation snickering at the back of his head, amused beyond belief.

“What? No, what gives you the idea?” Father Seimei had not been a bad man, it was the others, or was it the other way around? Mikuni could tell, maybe, if he tried at the very least, but like this it was hard - he could do whatever he wanted and would still be unable to come up with a real answer, though. All those years, he’d looked up to him, to the other priests and demanded to know more about them, their teachings and all those things that seemed so unattainable to him - now that he was older, that his heritage was murky and his parents nothing more than specks of dust at the horizon of his ever-expanding mind, he had learned them all firsthand. Whatever would the word of old priests do for him? For Otoha? For Genji? “Do you think I’ve been nothing more than a brainwashed duckling all my life?”, shrieked, flabbergasted at the thought alone. Genji would know, he’d met and eradicated people of all walks of life - he walked a thin line between life and death, and for what it was worth, he did so remarkably well. Mikuni himself had to learn that, but the spooky thought of losing his head and being nothing more than that was revolting alone. “They might have, but why does that interest you now? The Revelation never said no to any of those things, and even when she did, they never listened anyway. Whenever all of it happened, she seemed livelier afterwards.”, he confessed. Was all that bloodshed yesterday pivotal in earning her enough power to control his body?

"Why am I like what?", Genji asked, unsure of where this question came now. Maybe it was about him being rather hopeless, about him not thinking the priest could help him, because Genji already tried. The curse was a mystery too and the person that uttered it was long gone and maybe even killed by Genji too. For they were the only ones this fate kind of fit them, but Genji shouldn't think like that. No one deserved to lose his soul, even though he didn't know what happened to them if they were not. Heaven or rebirth, the theories changed with the years, like seasons did too. How one even ascended to a goddess like Otoha was beyond him and what defines one did too. Otohas body was gone, but other than that she didn't seem different. Though that was kind of wrong, she didn't feel different. More than a feeling was not accessible by him, it was the only thing he could go off of. In the end he knew nothing and he'd forget everything again. He wasn't who he used to be as a human and he couldn't remember if he was ever different to now since.

"Well, didn't you have a reason to watch them die?", Genji asked. His job once was to kill people and his master telling him to was the only reason he had. Afterwards it was money. He wasn't fit to judge someone for taking anothers life and yet he detested senseless killing. "Where you not?", Genji asked and slowly turned around, away from the window, so he could look at the priest. "Let me ask you... when you brought me to Father Seimei, did you think he was going to help me, or were you aware of his plans from the start?" It wasn't Mikunis fault. Genji had reason to not trust this man from the start, but he wanted to believe someone could help him. It was all he had left, he didn't want to simply leave again and everybody paid the price for his selfish and reckless thinking. Now the hope was gone and he was back at the start, in front of him a priest and a goddess, neither of whom he knew and he didn't know who to believe. 'Never said no', 'even when she did', the boy was contradicting himself. Otoha told him she wasn't a bloodgod, she didn't want nor did she need sacrifices and even though something struck Genji as odd, something he couldn't point his finger at, he wanted to believe her. There, didn't he just make that mistake? Believing someone because it was easier than not to? Genjis chest felt heavy and he breathed out the air he held in sharply. Then he slowly and softly shook his head, right before heading for the door. "You should rest. I'll prepare everything so you can take a bath tomorrow..."

“Not important.”, Mikuni replied. That it wasn’t, and even if it were, there’d be no real reason for him to annoy Genji further about it. Not once did it matter, not once did he want to waste another thought on it, and right now, he felt like he was feeding a spiking flame that would eventually explode in his face if he kept on insisting to do what he was doing right now - questioning Genjis very existence. There was no way that this guy would tell him everything, but if he had already done so, then there wasn’t much going on in that head of his that was of any help. Splinters of memories was all that Genji seemingly had, all he harbored and wanted to share, and while Mikuni thought of it as more sad than anything, there wasn’t anything he could blame the man for. “Why would I have a reason? It’s gruesome and disgusting at best, not to mention that I gain nothing from it. If anything, I’d rather be rid of her, now that I know what it means to he blessed like that. It’s rather rancid.”, the priest answered in earnest. For one, he was meant to worship others, and for the other, this was nothing but absolutely insane in the first place - he wasn’t Otoha, and she wasn’t him, and yet, his body frivolously decided that they both were the same being.

Those cold eyes forced themselves into his own, onto his body and through his very being, quietly digging through his soul, tearing it to shreds in a mere second, and leaving nothing in the wake of its destruction. “Why would I be? I used to be the son of a hunter, one gifted for being born a misfit, and whisked away from my family by the time I started to learn. It’s been twenty years, I didn’t like most of them.”, he sighed. Maybe he still believed the Father a bit too much as he decided to trust him, to keep the old man company when he thought he saw sadness within his eyes. Mikuni was tired, not of the world of this conversation, but Otoha, and her constant presence - one that he couldn’t rid himself of, even if she slept soundly. “Why … what? No!” The priest sounded even more offended as Genji suggested it; he wasn’t some sort of insane person! “I didn’t even know what they were going to do until they … drugged me. And when I tried to tell you, my mouth wouldn’t listen to me, nor did my legs.”, Mikuni complained. If he could at least have done something as simple as that, he’d have had a chance to flee from his eternal prison, but Genji had torn it down in an instant, without even thinking twice. As Mikuni wanted to get up, to join him at the window and look at the rain himself, there suddenly was no need to do so anymore. “Where are you going? I’m not some little kid you can command around. I’m not tired!”

Genji looked at the priest, at the boy who didn't understand anything about life and death. Maybe Genji was too old, maybe he knew too much or maybe he was changed by all the death he saw for hundreds of years. He was less than Mikuni, he killed not even realizing that it was wrong and he didn't bet an eye when another life ended. He had less regard for a human life than he did for an animals. He changed however and even though he was too weak to stop killing himself, wasn't one monster in this world enough? "When you knew it was wrong and pointless, why didn't you do anything? How many people died here for you?", he asked. How many lost souls did he invite in to meet a fate they also wanted for Genji as soon as he sat foot in here? The sentiment alone doomed them, yet Genji was haunted by them too. Standing here, talking to a boy and focusing on all the death in this place made his stomach upset. His heart wouldn't stop racing because of the guilt and shame and because of Otoha.

"So you didn't share those priests believes, you didn't think killing was right, you weren't thinking it would help you or Otoha and even though all of that, you lived here day in and day out, waiting for a lost soul to be sacrificed for you?" Mikuni was digging his own grave. Not literally, Genji wouldn't hurt him, but the more he talked to him the more resentful he grew. It didn't feel like himself at all, but maybe it was because of the fact that his hopes were crushed and for once he didn't believe that he deserved being killed for asking for help. The things Mikuni said and the things he heard from Otoha were so inherently different that Genji had to assume one of them was lying. He didn't want this, he had enough on his plate as was and he wished upon the silence and solitude he usually found himself in. His thoughts revolved around death, guilt, hopelessness and fear, but at least he knew them, he knew the curse and what came with it. It had been so long since he actually talked to someone. Was it always this exhausting and complicated? Genji stopped in his tracks and sighed. "... She told me to take care of you. I won't leave this place without you, but I want to be alone..."

Mikuni could not and would not ever tell the difference in any of those matters. For a moment, he felt silence brush up against his skin, softly judging him for all that he had done. The priest was no saint, no one with a feel for anything, and what was worse, he also absolutely wasn't up to the task he'd been given, now, that all of his convent had been swallowed by the earth, by the rage of a restless demon that ate through another man as if he were nothing more than parchment paper. For a second, he figured it could be much worse, but was it in hindsight? Mikuni knew little of the world outside the monastery, and yet, he'd been there for eight years, had helped his actual father with honest work that didn't concern itself with following any god, but now, this was what he got, suddenly and deservedly. "I don't know.", he whispered, still somewhat offended at the suggestion that they died for him, for his body, his chassis, to be as immortal as it was, and not for Otoha, their revelation, their goddess, their penultimate destination. All of this sounded wrong, sounded weird, but maybe Genji was right, maybe he should have done something, before anything, and freed himself and others from their eternal torment at the hands of their peers.

"They didn't die for me, they died for her.", he feebly replied. That they had, and they'd never do anything more for either of them - they were but mirages in the eyes of a rotting corpse, spreading hundreds of years of disease to its followers as she kept burning in the back of his mind, in a world she herself had heralded. Thunder hit before he knew it, and Mikuni huddled himself together for comfort. Not once had he liked the forces of nature, not a single time did he consider himself to be stronger than them. "I didn't! I just couldn't leave! I never can!", the priest spouted, as he sounded dejected. They didn't quite literally shackle him here, but they had told him that Otohas place of worship was her home, that this eye wasn't his own, and that he had to pay his debts to them for raising him, for giving him a life, a purpose, and for all that they did to help his parents - shadows, dancing at the corners of his mind, foreign to him and him alone. Mikuni wanted to get up, but his body was comfortable where it was, and Genjis wasn't; it didn't tremble like his own husk, but it moved, stood in the door frame for longer than a second, and made no sound. The priest wished to be like him, just for once. "But I don't!", he finally blurted out. "You took everyone and everything from me, and now you dump me here, all alone, in this stupid room, just like all the others before you. And why? If it wasn't for Otoha, you'd be gone, you'd have left me all alone in this place!"

"She didn't want that.", Genji was quick to reply. She told him Mikuni was too scared to tell them the truth, to tell them to stop, but all he said now suggested otherwise, that he simply was compliant with it and named Otoha as the reason it happened. She couldn't control what he said or did, she could just suggest things to him, like having him touch Genjis cursed skin. It was Mikuni who did it in the end. Otoha - although Genji had forgotten her - was somewhat of a constant, an anchor in his life, someone who knew him and could tell him what happened before. She didn't seem to have troubles remembering, unlike him. Having to listen to Mikuni slandering her name while she was deep asleep made him feel angry and as if he had to protect Otoha and her honor. Yet she valued him somehow, told Genji to protect him and take care of him, told him that he wasn't strong enough to see the horrors Genji committed. He didn't know what was true and what wasn't, he had little information to go by.

Mikunis words stung like a thousand daggers. He needn't remind him of what crimes he committed here and neither did Otoha have to hide it from him. A sorry didn't cut it, and he didn't so much owe an apology to Mikuni, but he owed it to everyone who once lived here. "I only bring death... you're better off without me.", he told him, before eventually leaving him in his room. Genji didn't know what to think or who to believe. Was Mikuni just an oblivious, scared fool who didn't know how to get out of here like Otoha suggested? Or didn't value life enough to stop what had happened here? Was Otoha lying to him too? He didn't want to think about it. Once Mikunis body healed, they'd leave, find a place for him and then Genji could continue on alone, as he always did. For now, even if he only did it for himself, he got back to cleaning the halls, all the way to the wash room and even clearing a path that led outside. Then he searched for a shovel and some wood. they deserved a resting place, a grave and some kind of remembrance. Everyone of them should have their own, not be piled up like they were now. It was raining heavily at this point and the sun had already set. Genji didn't care as he started to dig hole after hole.

Was that really too much? Mikuni had tipped Genji over the edge it seemed, and as much as he hated to admit it, he should have watched his words - he’d gotten upset, much like a little kid, and now he had to deal with the aftermath of what he’d done to a man that, despite his questionable tendencies, was merely trying to help. Silence beseeched them both to stay away from one another, and yet, the sound of the door shutting itself was louder than a thousand thunders, reverberating in his very head, right then and there. He felt bad for himself, for Genji, for Otoha - he grabbed onto his blanket and pulled it over his head, hiding from the thunderstorm and the missing person that had left a space in this room. Was Genji going to come back, rip his head off and bury him with all of his people? Mikuni didn’t know, in fact, he wished it would transpire just like that and not any other way, to feel the bliss of death he seemingly deserved. Nobody came to reap his soul however, and as he tried to hide from the weather, he found himself blinking in and out of consciousness - until all was black.

The moment his body rose again, he felt groggy, exhausted and done for - the raindrops were flinging themselves against the glass panes of the windows in what seemed to be buckets, and Genji was nowhere to be found. Mikuni didn’t even know what was happening at this point, let alone could he make heads or tails of what he had been thinking about for the few hours or so - all he could tell was, that the thunderstorm had finally reached them, but that he was completely out of it. The last thing he could tell was, that he whisked a blanket out of his bed and shuffled back into his shoes and then, he felt as if he’d fallen onto the floor and passed out again, all the while his body still moved in one direction, hellbent on getting somewhere that he should be instead. He dashed past the cold cobblestone, the old walls and the blood that disappeared into the earth, alongside the loathsome smoke. Before long, there it was - the only other soul in this monastery that earnestly worked and still didn’t see the rain as something bad. Carefully, he got draped into the blanket, to ward off the cold wetness, that had reached him regardless. “Lets go back inside.”, the voice demanded of Genji. “You can continue tomorrow if it gives you peace and eases your mind, but don’t overdo it today. Come on, Genji.”