FicWad

Hours later, Rem blearily opened her eyes. There was a strong sensation of cold stone against her face; slowly, Rem realized that she was sprawled on the floor. She heaved herself to her feet-the heaviness in her limbs was only partially imagined. She was bound to the wall behind her by thick, heavy chains. Regaining some of her senses, Rem made herself intangible and tried to walk out of the chains. Once again, it didn’t work.
Booming laughter came from directly in front of her. The King was standing there, grinning widely. “Don’t bother trying. You won’t be able to get out of those. I designed them myself, out of the finest tzargantium.”
“Why?” said Rem. “Please…why?!”
The King sighed. Incredibly, horrifically, his voice still had a gentle timbre that would have inspired unending trust in any other shinigami but Rem, now that she knew better. “It’s so frustrating when I’m constantly being reminded that you young ones don’t know nearly as much as I do. Tzargantium is found only in the shinigami realm, and it is one of the few things a shinigami can’t phase through-which makes it very useful. A King couldn’t execute a law-breaking shinigami without tzargantium weapons. That’s precisely why my Royal Scythe”- he paused to smugly gesture toward the scythe he’d constantly been carrying- “is made of tzargantium. Otherwise, a shinigami could avoid its execution by simply dematerializing and allowing the weapon to pass through it. As you can see, it’s also quite effective at keeping a shinigami confined.”
“No, that’s not what I meant! Why are you even doing this in the first place? What have I done to deserve it?”
“What have you done?” asked the King. The look he gave her pretended at wistfulness, but truly, it was pure glee. “Why, you’ve done nothing. Nothing at all. All your life, you’ve been an exemplary follower of every rule I’ve set down. It’s more the fact that you exist, really…”
“I…I don’t understand…” Rem whimpered.
“Of course you don’t. I’ve been very careful to make sure no one knows anything about the time before I was king. The sole reason you’re here, and the sole reason I’m going to kill such a pretty little thing as you…don’t look so shocked, for a female shinigami, you’re quite the beauty…is because you are the daughter of Shoboro, and I won’t rest until I’ve wiped out the last filthy carrier of his worthless genes.”
“Daughter of What? What does that mean? Hey, wait! Where are you going?” Rem cried as the King turned and walked down the long room-she hadn’t noticed it before, but now she was in a cathedral-like room with several pictures of shinigami on the walls.
“Later, young one. Right now, I’ve got to go turn the viewing holes back on. I knew it would create less hassle for me no one saw me down in the human world, and if all the shinigami believed you were dead as well; but if I leave them off much longer, someone’s going to get suspicious.”
The King took off up the hole in the wall, leaving Rem alone. Futilely, she tried again to walk through the chains; but as she’d suspected, the King was right-she wasn’t going to be able to get out of them. She tried desperately to think of a way to escape, but the nagging pains in her jaw and at the back of her head kept derailing her train of thought. And there was a new pain…in her back? Rem twisted her head to look over her shoulder, and moaned with horror. A large metal plate was completely covering her back, and it was held in place with several screws driven directly into her skin.
The King came whooshing out the hole in the wall and flew directly to the other end of the room to stand before Rem.
“What have you done to me?” asked Rem, still staring at her back.
“Just a little extra precaution. The plate on your back will prevent you from extending your wings, so even if you do manage to escape from your chains through some miracle, you won’t get far. I’ve been hunting for you for so long…letting you escape is simply not an option. Speaking of which…do you know how long you’ve managed to elude me, Rem?”
“No…”
“I’ve been looking for you ever since you were born…four hundred and seventy years, give or take a few. Do you know what that means?”
“…All I can say for sure is that you’re lousy at searching, if it took you so long,” said Rem.
The King laughed uproariously. “You little rascal! But seriously, Rem, you’ve caused me so much grief with your constant elusiveness. So many years I’ve waited for you to come before me for advice, so many years I’ve been disappointed… I’d love to kill you right this instant, but that wouldn’t be fair. I should make you suffer as you’ve made me suffer…but I simply can’t bear to make myself to wait another four hundred and seventy years, so I’m letting you off a bit easier. I’ll only make you suffer for a measly four hundred and seventy weeks, which will start…today.”
The King took an easy stride forward and gave a slash with his scythe.
“Ouch!” Rem cried, grasping the fresh wound on her arm that was dripping sand.
“You get one of those every week. See? I’m not that merciless. This way, you’ll have some measure of how much time has passed…and how much you have left. Well, my duty as King forces me to take my leave. I’ll see you next week, Rem!”
And with that, the King was gone. Rem sat in the muffled silence, clutching her wound closed.

The King was true to his word. Rem was left alone in the dark, silent chamber most of the time, and once a week the King came down to deal her a fresh blow with his scythe. She never said “ouch” again, however. While waiting in the grey near-darkness that first week, she’d vowed to never let the King have the satisfaction of seeing her in pain again, and she bore the fresh cuts with barely a grunt. For the first few weeks, the injuries were bearable…once she got used to the pain, it was easy to ignore, and the wounds did heal over time. But as time wore on and her injuries piled up, Rem began to tire. All the sand she’d lost made small piles at her feet, and the slashes began to take longer and longer to heal. After ten months, Rem became so drained that she couldn’t stand anymore. When the King came to deal the next blow, Rem couldn’t even raise her head to look him defiantly in the eye, as she usually made a point of doing.
After the King made a fresh gash, he clucked his tongue sadly at her. “This simply won’t do,” he said. “As I suspected, a shinigami isn’t capable of taking the brunt of so many injuries without wearing down somewhat. At this rate, you’ll die before your four hundred and seventy weeks are up. Here. Eat this.”
He tossed her one of the shrivelled appendages of a gaunt, wasted tree from the shinigami realm. Rem looked at it balefully.
“Mmm. Looks tasty. Let me guess-this is going to cause my innards to burn for a few months, saving you the trouble of coming down every week.”
“What a sassy little beast you’ve become! All of Justin’s reports say that you’re so serious, and always so respectful…I didn’t know you had such a sarcastic streak, Rem.”
“Neither did I. I suppose there’s just something about being confined and tormented that brings it out of me. If you’d prefer polite and composed, letting me loose would probably work.”
“I don’t think so. Just crack open the shenzu nut and eat it.”
“Why should I? Seeing as how I don’t trust you anymore, you’ll have a hard time convincing me.”
“It’s a powerhouse food for shinigami who are injured or growing. No addictive fructose; and it builds tissue so fast, you’ll be good as new by next week-just in time for our next meeting.”
Rem stared at the shrivelled, pod-like offshoot. She’d seen things like it before, but it didn’t look edible, even compared with the misshapen fruit that sometimes bothered to sprout from the crippled, tortured trees of the shinigami realm. Rem supposed she could handle a little more pain, if the king was lying-she was used to it by now-and the prospect of some relief from her injuries was very tempting. Suspiciously, she cracked it open and gingerly bit into a round, brownish-red object inside. It was smooth and creamy, with the texture of peanut butter, and it had a hearty, pleasantly bitter taste.
“What do you mean by “growing” shinigami? You haven’t answered my question about what a Shoboro is, either, or why I’m here.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to that. It’s a long story that I don’t feel like telling right now.”
“Then tell me in bits. I don’t mind.”
“…Fine. If you insist…,” said the King, his usual disarming smile back on his face, which only disappeared whenever this “Shoboro” was mentioned. “Remember me telling everyone that shinigami stopped eating because the shinigami realm became so barren, and the shinigami stomach evolved until it no longer required sustenance?”
“Yes, that was fairly recent, about a hundred years ago,” said Rem.
“Well, it’s complete hogwash. A shinigami doesn’t just spring into existence, like I’ve led you all to believe. They grow and develop, and they need food and rest in order to add to their bodies-much like how your body is adding what was lost because you’ve eaten that shenzu nut,” said the King. “But once a shinigami matures, it doesn’t need food or sleep anymore, because it’s finished adding to itself. It has nothing to do with environmental conditions.”
“I see. Why so much deceit?”
“It’s all part of my agenda. My aim is to rule this realm with absolute power, for the rest of time, and that would be difficult if anyone even remotely suspected what went on before I was King.”
“What went on, then?”
“That would take days to explain.”
“That’s fine. I don’t exactly have something else I should be doing. Maybe my time spent down here would be more agonizing if I knew the horrible truth about why you’re doing this. For example, just what is this dreaded Shoboro?”
The King stiffened at the word. “I already told you. Shoboro is your father.”
“But what does that mean?”
“What are you, stupid? He. Is. Your. Father. How can I be any clearer?”
“It would help if you explained what “father” means to a shinigami!”
“The same thing “father” means to everything else- the male who created you in conjunction with your mother.”
For a moment, Rem wondered if the King was crazy, or if she’d heard him correctly. “Hold on. That can’t be. Shinigami can’t reproduce, or even mate in the first place,” she said, perplexed.
“Rule XXXVI? Ah, yes. A masterstroke on my part. There are male and female gods of death, but it is neither permitted, nor possible for them to have sexual relations with humans. The gods of death also cannot have sex with each other. Brilliant,” said the King, gleefully quoting himself. “The way I’ve worded it, to the average moron of a shinigami, it sounds as though intimacy between two shinigami is a physical impossibility-but notice how I don’t actually say that. I simply say that they can’t. It not because they’re not physically or emotionally capable; it’s because I won’t allow it. If shinigami start choosing mates, then their loyalty lies with their mate, not me. If they start producing offspring, then their loyalty to their King is even more weakened in favour of their children. I saw proof of that back in my early days as king, back when I was contemplating letting the other mature shinigami live. Better to keep the loyalty of my subjects utterly undivided by making sure I’m the only family they’ll ever have or believe they’re capable of having.”
The room fell silent for a moment as Rem digested what she’d just heard. After years of hearing that shinigami came into existence through the same mystical force that caused death notes to work, the mundane idea that a shinigami could be born from two other shinigami just didn’t sound plausible to her. “Why should I believe that? For all I know, you’re just lying again in order to play games with my mind.”
“If you want proof, Rem, look at your fellow shinigami. Can you tell which ones are male or female, even though there are no physical or behavioural differences between the two?”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“And you can tell that all by yourself, with no interference from me or anything I’ve said that might have been a lie, correct?”
“Yes…”
“So how can you tell? What’s the difference between a male and female shinigami, or the two genders of any species, for that matter?”
Rem thought carefully. “Well, in most species, males tend to be larger…”
“No, no, think again. In all species, Rem. What do all males have in common, no matter what creature they are? In other words, what does the term “male” even mean?”
Rem wracked her brains, trying determinedly to think of the answer. “I don’t know,” she gave up at last. “What is it?”
“The only thing that every male has in common, despite the species, the very meaning of the world “male”…is nothing more and nothing less than the role they play in reproduction. The same thing goes for females. There’s no difference in size or appearance between a male and a female shinigami, no difference in personality or behaviour…the only thing you instinctively perceive when you see another shinigami and decide on its gender is its role in reproduction. I don’t force you to do that. It’s something you do on your own.”
Rem thought hard about what the King had said, trying to see a flaw in his logic…and it unsettled her that she couldn’t. He was right…there was no perceivable difference between males and females, but they did have genders, no doubt about it…so did it have to be true…? In any case, on thing still nagged at her…
“So, this Shoboro…my…father…,” said Rem, “why do you hate him so?”
The King abruptly lost his habitual grin, and growled angrily. “For as long as I knew him, his main goal was to ruin my life,” said the King. “And I responded by trying to ruin his. I finally thought I’d found a way out, when I petitioned for kingship of this realm- a way of upstaging him permanently. I’d always dreamt of becoming King, of wielding that kind of power…but then Shoboro applied to become King, just to spite me. He’d never shown any inclination towards Kinghood before then, of course. I should have been appointed King…I was far more educated, I had far more ambition, and I could have done great things for this realm. But of course, Shoboro was crowned, merely on the basis of his bloodline. That’s how I know you’re his daughter…you have the female variety of royal markings, right there on your mouth. Living below Shoboro was simply unacceptable, and I vowed to become King, no matter what the cost. Shoboro took everything from me, during my campaign...when it came to dealing with each other; our philosophy was always “an eye for an eye.” When his actions resulted in the deaths of my mate and children, my only choice was to kill him, his mate, and their children. The only thing incomplete about my victory, until now, was the fact that I couldn’t find you. You see, I can’t leave the tower, because everyone needs to think that I’m the large golden shinigami hanging out there, invincible and indestructible. The only way I’d be able to find you would be to wait until you came to me for advice, so I could get a good look at you and get you into the tower. Imagine my surprise when I’m in the viewing hole control room, looking at what’s displayed on all the viewing holes outside, and who do I see but the female I’ve been searching for all these centuries! I was very angry when you made me risk my cover for a moment and leave the tower, in order to stop you from dying for a human before I could kill you personally. But no matter-I have you now. There. Are you satisfied? Do you understand why I’m keeping you here? Good. Get some sleep and finish that nut, so you’ll be in good enough health to take the rest of what’s coming before your death.”
With nothing else to do, Rem did get some sleep, and felt the pain seep out of her body and watched her wounds heal over the next few days with relief. It was as if they’d never existed. The nuts worked just as the King had said-if he’d done anything decent since they’d entered this tower, he’d been honest to her, at least- but that honesty carried over into continuing her punishment right on schedule. Over and over, he repeated the cycle of wearing Rem down until she was inches from death and letting her recover, only to start the torture over again. Things went on like that for five years, without Rem and the King having a single other meaningful conversation.
****
“Horrible…” said Gukku. Sidoh had stopped listening ten minutes ago and was sitting on a rock a ways off, adamantly humming to himself with his fingers in his ears.
“So, then we came along…” said Ryuk.
“No,” said Rem. “I heard the worst of it after that…”