Categories > Anime/Manga > Saiyuki > roads not taken
Leitmotif
What a lovely colour -
It's only a colour. An ordinary, common colour, not worth any particular notice. But notice it the women do. They cannot seem to find another topic of discussion whenever he is around.
What a lovely colour -
- oh, that woman is crazy, but you can't blame her; imagine, having to raise her husband's half-breed bastard -
- I'd have killed my Ryuu if he'd dared do that to me.
How did you manage to dye it that way?
He's heard enough. He pushes back his chair, rises, takes his leave. They are disappointed, but they will forgive him.
- did you see his hair? It's like blood -
They are wrong. Red is not the colour of blood. Red is the brightness of glass trinkets that makes a woman's rouged lips turn up and her eyes sparkle.
Red is the glow of warm embers in the fireplace; it is the astringent sweetness of wine on his tongue and the bright heads of poppies in the yard, it is the sun bleeding into the sky at dusk.
He knows the colour of blood very well.
Blood is the salt-metal taste of a cut lip, stickiness gumming his swollen eyelids shut against the light, it is hot-stinging-bitter tears running into the crusted brown gashes on his cheek. It is the pooled black coagulating beneath the beautiful and terrible woman, her store of hate split open to the white of bone and spilled on the ground before him. It is the shadows in Jien's empty eyes that cannot meet his -
Jien, such a nice young man, that poor boy -
- Jien who had killed her not to save him but to save his mother and himself-
- it's like blood -
Red is the blush that suffuses an apple overripe and headily fragrant, spilling its juice as it yields softly to his teeth when he stops by a fruit stall to greet the young girl who always has a smile and a sweet apple for him.
- have you seen him lately?
- and the footsteps echoing in the street outside as he waits in the darkness through the nights and days, the carcass turning into carrion, knowing Jien would not return.
Red is not the deathly pallor of the man lying in the rust-brown earth before him, guts showing pink through torn flesh and blackened streaks running down his face like the tracks of tears.
-it's been days, hasn't it? What is that smell?
Only a man, crawled from heavens only knew where, dying, and glad of it as his mother could never be, whose body had been borne uneasy with writhing maggots into the ground.
- look at the blood!
Are you dead? he asks, and the man raises his face slightly, smiles up at him. Gojyo feels shock like cold claws in his gut, but -
- is he still alive?
Could he be as glad to live, this dying stranger with his delicate features, so beautiful and terrifyingly familiar?
- better if he wasn't, who will take him now?
Does he dare try to bring back this exhausted creature that has all but gnawed off his own leg, this youkai that can look at him and smile as though all colours were one to him?
- the colour of blood -
Can he leave him behind?
He can't move, can't decide.
Indecision, too, is a choice.
The feverish light in the dark eyes dim. The man sighs, lowering his head, and closes his eyes.
Gojyo drops his cigarette on the damp earth, and carefully crushes out the dying ember beneath his heel.
What a lovely colour -
It's only a colour. An ordinary, common colour, not worth any particular notice. But notice it the women do. They cannot seem to find another topic of discussion whenever he is around.
What a lovely colour -
- oh, that woman is crazy, but you can't blame her; imagine, having to raise her husband's half-breed bastard -
- I'd have killed my Ryuu if he'd dared do that to me.
How did you manage to dye it that way?
He's heard enough. He pushes back his chair, rises, takes his leave. They are disappointed, but they will forgive him.
- did you see his hair? It's like blood -
They are wrong. Red is not the colour of blood. Red is the brightness of glass trinkets that makes a woman's rouged lips turn up and her eyes sparkle.
Red is the glow of warm embers in the fireplace; it is the astringent sweetness of wine on his tongue and the bright heads of poppies in the yard, it is the sun bleeding into the sky at dusk.
He knows the colour of blood very well.
Blood is the salt-metal taste of a cut lip, stickiness gumming his swollen eyelids shut against the light, it is hot-stinging-bitter tears running into the crusted brown gashes on his cheek. It is the pooled black coagulating beneath the beautiful and terrible woman, her store of hate split open to the white of bone and spilled on the ground before him. It is the shadows in Jien's empty eyes that cannot meet his -
Jien, such a nice young man, that poor boy -
- Jien who had killed her not to save him but to save his mother and himself-
- it's like blood -
Red is the blush that suffuses an apple overripe and headily fragrant, spilling its juice as it yields softly to his teeth when he stops by a fruit stall to greet the young girl who always has a smile and a sweet apple for him.
- have you seen him lately?
- and the footsteps echoing in the street outside as he waits in the darkness through the nights and days, the carcass turning into carrion, knowing Jien would not return.
Red is not the deathly pallor of the man lying in the rust-brown earth before him, guts showing pink through torn flesh and blackened streaks running down his face like the tracks of tears.
-it's been days, hasn't it? What is that smell?
Only a man, crawled from heavens only knew where, dying, and glad of it as his mother could never be, whose body had been borne uneasy with writhing maggots into the ground.
- look at the blood!
Are you dead? he asks, and the man raises his face slightly, smiles up at him. Gojyo feels shock like cold claws in his gut, but -
- is he still alive?
Could he be as glad to live, this dying stranger with his delicate features, so beautiful and terrifyingly familiar?
- better if he wasn't, who will take him now?
Does he dare try to bring back this exhausted creature that has all but gnawed off his own leg, this youkai that can look at him and smile as though all colours were one to him?
- the colour of blood -
Can he leave him behind?
He can't move, can't decide.
Indecision, too, is a choice.
The feverish light in the dark eyes dim. The man sighs, lowering his head, and closes his eyes.
Gojyo drops his cigarette on the damp earth, and carefully crushes out the dying ember beneath his heel.
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