The Reflection in the Water (Closed / Kufuku)

[Sister Berenice]

Almost…

Almooost…

Her fingertips drifted back and forth, grazing the bottom of a silvery apple-like fruit. Each pass seemed just millimeters closer, but never close enough to actually fetch the fruit. Close enough to make the muscles in her straining calves and poised feet ache. Closer yet, that time. Berenice exhaled hard and pressed her small figure up against the quartz tree, lifting herself up onto her tip-toes atop the precarious and wobbling branch.

It nearly escaped once again, the devilish little thing, but her fingers closed around the base just enough to yank it down. The whole branch shook with the force of her tired arm, scattering leaves and small masked bugs into her hair. Berenice couldn’t work up enough energy to care: in fact, it was all she could not to slump over the branch like a rag hung up to dry. She let the cold glittering bark soak up some of her sweat, limbs shaking from the strain just a tiny bit.

Apples had been her favorite fruit. She liked them crisp and green, tart enough to make her mouth pucker but still sweet. Cold apples nicked from the monastery storerooms on hot summer days were a small guilty treat back then. They were as refreshing as a cold mouthful of the ice-melt water that ran down from the mountains, and twice as easy to get ahold of.

Finding something roughly equivalent in the blighted lands of the dead, albeit deep underground in what she’d learned the local demons called “the Forest of Menos”, had felt to Berenice a sure sign of God’s graceful watch upon her person. They weren’t perfect—she was thankful, for once, that her teeth were so monstrously sharp lest she spend an hour chewing away the skin—but they were certainly something. Even if she no longer had any nutritional use for them, the sweetness did a good job reminding her of those summer afternoons she spent avoiding the prioress with some other less devoted sisters.

But, Lord, were these little devils hard to fetch.

Berenice had come down mostly to restock on quartzlichen and the salt rocks that sunk down through the sand to the forest floor, stumbling upon the apple-bearing variety of quartz tree by pure serendipity. She’d never been one to turn down a sign from on high, and she certainly wasn’t about to start with such weighted branches as the ones that nearly knocked her in the head.

At least no one could say she didn’t work for her indulgences nowadays. Shimmying back down the tree was almost as difficult as getting up and grabbing the apples; her tunic kept snagging on the bark, all future areas that would need mending soon enough. She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her sleeve and went about collecting her prizes… when another silvery glint, a different silvery glint, caught her eye.

A small spring, lodged in dark rock and translucent crystal.

“…I see. Praise be, then.”

Berenice reached out with her heart to prod the area nearby for any demons. Nothing. You always had to be sure, you know. Especially when you were a foraging nun already pulling off her tunic and her habit, stumbling over your own feet to get to a nice cold pool. The only thing left by the time she submerged herself was the very obviously handmade cotton shift and bloomers, both billowing in the water. She allowed herself a little joyful laugh. How long had it been since she’d gone swimming? Had it really been… let’s see… since back when she lived along the lake? Her backstrokes and doggy paddles and butterfly strokes were as fluid as they were back then, as if she’d not missed a day of swimming. She dove deep into the spring and let herself float there. Down there, looking up at the surface of the water and how it blurred the world, she just felt… calm.

A twinge of regret ran through her like a cold current. Sister Margaret, Sister Lucrezia… the names of so many sisters came to mind, ones that couldn’t find peace in their hymns or their contemplation, ones that cried at night for fear of the abbesses… would you have found your peace if we had been able to live our lives like this? Swimming, foraging, telling those stories we used to tell each other?

The vision of the water above changed, just slightly. Berenice could still see the water-smudged boughs sheltering the pool, the sandy ceiling high overhead gone to nothing but blurry black. A smooth-edged figured leaned at the edge of the pool. She stretched her spiritual feelers out into the world again.

It… wasn’t a Hollowbreed?

In concise motions Berenice swam under veil of the depths over to the edge of the pool opposite the blurry figure. She pushed herself back to surface in slow kicks. Better not to make a sudden emergence, lest she give them a fright.

Matted blonde hair, plastered to a small-ish heart-shaped face, surfaced first. Then, a pair of curious blue eyes, blinking the water out of them. Berenice watched carefully for hostility, and, after a moment, her tiny mouth left the protection of spring.

“You're not a demon. Is it safe for you to be here?”

[Kufuku Wasureo]

    He was off du- Well, honestly, at this point he didn't much care. In the academy he'd been taught that the rules of shinigami society were very strict. There were things he simply could and could not do, should and should not do, and things that might get him executed as a traitor if he even thought about doing them. And yet in his actual tenure as one, he had discovered instead that while there were rules, if you were smart, fast, and lucky, you could get around them through one way or another. Some explanation or the other that would have the higher ups looking past your activities and to the benefit that you could provide to the rest of Seireitei. That was simply the mindset he occupied now, moving by instinct and doing what felt right. It was something the whisper on the wind very much appreciated with how talkative it had been lately.

    And of course there was that niggling worry and doubt that someone higher up the chain already knew. That they knew what he had been, and that this lenience was in some way a test or him exploring the reach of his leash. Would they really execute him? Or would they simply lock him away while he was in a form they could easily manage and control?

    Kufuku Wasureo, the man possessed of a soul that once called itself The King of Hungry ghosts . . . had his train of thought interrupted by a bug. A not insignificant sized one too, roughly the size of his thumb from the second knuckle up to the tip. Rather casually the thing landed between his eyes and settled there, not biting him or skittering, just resting. Rei sighed and tried to direct some breath up to dislodge the bug to no avail. His stomach growled at him and Rei growled himself in turn. "Ah, yes, this is familiar." he grumbled.

    With one hand he reached up to pull the bug from his face, and the other he pulled a meat bun from a hidden pocket within his sleeve to take a bite of. The bug, nippy little thing that it was, scurried around to the back of his hand when he went to pick it off, and Rei then tried to shake it free of his hand. The bug patently refused to be anywhere else, but Rei was only flailing his arm for a few moments. Something else had caught his eye. A flash of black cloth in the distance, and as he focused his senses he thought he could hear water.

    "Guess I'm not the only one breaking rules."

    He could bullshit up a reason to be here with his division, but could this other shiniga-

    It was halfway through his approach towards the spring that he decided to reach out with his spiritual senses and had to pause. That wasn't the feeling he would pull from a shinigami. It wasn't even something he'd pull from a hollow. It was human. Uniquely powerful of course, but human nonetheless. A slow grin crept across his face and he chuckled.

    'Interesting.'

    A slow exhale of breath saw his presence fade out from the world around him with his Hunter's Step. Not invisible, simply as unremarkable and undetectable as the rocks and sand and trees around him. The tiger in the undergrowth that was perfectly visible if you put in the effort to look for it and already knew what you were looking for. He did not hold it forever, just long enough to approach the pool of water and crouch by its side. He took a small breath in, identity reasserted over the nature around him, and waited. Judging by the clothes and the shape in the water, a woman. And as a head slowly rose from beneath the water at the far end, his guess was confirmed in vision and voice.

    "I'm not?" He made a show of looking down at himself for inspection. There was a slight lurch as he felt something wrong in seeing the humanoid form beneath him, but he did not let it show on his face, instead keeping the easy smirk. "Well you're right. It would seem I am not. Although, I could ask the same of you. Not in Kansas anymore, are you, Dorothy?" Bah, he hated that. He didn't even know what that was supposed to be in reference to, but it had felt right to say and he couldn't stop it. Who knew, maybe the woman would understand anyways.

[Sister Berenice]

Berenice never knew how to feel when men smirked. It always seemed to her like some indication of a secret, and they were usually secrets she would never be privy of (either forbidden by vow or by some other vagary of society). The sharper the smirk, the more interesting the secret tended to be.

You’re worrying too much, the superego of a derisive society whispered in her head. But why was he laughing, then, if not some little amusement she was not privy to? Her id slid a rope around her and waited, waited for the animal to trigger its trap, like it knew she would.

“Dorothy? Dorothea? Oh, no, my name is Berenice.” The corners of her mouth spread apart to show the whites of her teeth. If you asked another human, she was smiling. If you could ask an animal, however, they’d admire her attempt at indicating her submissiveness. Animals are smarter than humans when a situation involves two predators, you see.

“I’m afraid I’ve never heard of this Kansas though.” Was that somewhere in the New World? Her lips formed the vowels and consonants with all the gentleness of a glassblower crafting a bauble. All the sweet nothingness of a bauble, too. Bauble, babble, bauble. Unnerved babble. She took great pains to not disturb the water too much as she paddled herself backwards towards the opposite end of the pool. Why did he make her feel so on edge? It was like something leaking inside her skull, between the stem of her brain and the layer of bone. The confusion itched and chilled her both. The drip-drip-drip of a void not filled: who... was he?

Her gaze searched him for exact measurements. Modest of muscle, with equally modest stature, yet the word modest didn’t fit him at all. The way he moved made her think of the mountain lions that would come a little too close to the monastery, as if reminding all the sisters that they were here first. Even if the quantity might be called modest, he used all the muscles in his body as he moved to utmost efficiency.

Underneath the blue surface, small, calloused fingers flicked the crucifix fastened to her rosary back and forth through the water.

“I, um, I live here. Well, not here, not in the Forest of Menos. That’s what they call this place.” Her eyes flicked back to his face, trying to catch herself before she went down the rabbit hole. Berenice swallowed hard and tried not to look at his scars. She failed. Long, ragged pale tiger stripes on his flesh. They didn’t look like her scars. They looked vicious and haphazard and… how brazenly he displayed them… she swallowed again. “Up above, I live above. On the dunes. You must not live here, if you’re not a monster. I think I would’ve noticed you.” She met his amused twinkling gaze with baby blues full of questions.

Ruby red answers. She shivered from within the embrace of the water.

Id tightened the rope around her as she tripped its trap. The flooding sensation of curiosity made her gasp, a rope wound, wound, wound around in little coils, cutting off her breath until she satisfied it. Cutting off any circulation of ideas except the one that seemed to steal the air right out from within her lungs.

“I--Have we met?” Berenice blurted out.

[Kufuku Wasureo]

    It was a small shift in his stance. Down from the balls of his feet to fully rest on the soles. It felt like he was going to be there for some time, so he didn't want to cramp up and risk falling into the water. Instinct was alive, awake, and pacing about at the back of his mind, barking facts at him as immutable as the rising of the mortal world's sun. There was something energetic, magnetic even, pulling him towards her. If he lost his balance, the best he could hope for was her running away. At worst, it would mean the end of another run before he had learned enough to sate that hunger.

    They certainly couldn't have that.

    A shame that the both of them struck out on figuring out what it was that instinct had thrown from the depths of time to the surface. He would have to look it up later, and burned the phrase into his present mind. Still, it got him something. A name. "Berenice." He spoke it slowly, carefully feeling out the shape and syllables. Not just to be polite and avoid mispronunciation, but to prompt his instincts to throw something further at him. Instead he was met with silence on that front. Instead it reminded him that humans were the only creatures that did not show teeth as a threat display. A lone girl living in Hueco Mundo, where the beasts reigned supreme, he had to wonder if she was subscribed to the binary, or if it was a mix of both. An attempt to show she was friendly, but a warning she was not defenseless.

    Admirable perhaps, and lucky. Were he a pack hunter, keeping her there, focused on him alone, would be exactly what he wanted.

    Rei could not see all that much of her within the water. Well, he could, but it was not distinct, shifting and warping with the movements of the woman. A few times he almost slipped. Felt something odd in recognizing the hominid form there beneath the water. A lurch. The same lur- No, that couldn't be right.

    "You are quite right. I do not live here, currently. And you certainly would have noticed me, if I wished to introduce myself." Ah the scratching. The feeling of being on the cusp of a greater truth, just locked there behind the hunger. He had not felt this since the morning before the surgery that brought his power beneath the skin. The anticipation gnawed at him, and he knew that the final knowing would surely be delicious. Before him Berenice was like a covered platter. He need only find the proper means to reach out and pull off the top and see what lay beyond.

    That was, of course, provided she did not do it herself. That question bounced about in his skull, drowning out even the howling of his instincts. Familiarity. That was the odd pull. He knew her from somewhere, which was why she put him so on edge. It was not an instinct to run, nor to hunt. Not above or below, equal.

    Rei reached out with one hand, offering it towards her, even though she was steadily moving back and away from him. An offering. An assertion that he was safe, that she was safe with him. Was it truth? It would depend. If she knew him, then she would know his name. How she reacted would tell him all he needed to know about how she knew him. Needed to know to survive the next few minutes. After, any further details could be picked and consumed as slow as he wished. He unfastened his blade from his hip and tossed it off to the side a fair distance. Compromise. He was on the side of the pool with her clothes, but he had discarded the impotent false fangs of man. If there was to be a fight, she deserved to see him in true fighting form.

    "Perhaps. You can feel it too, I take it. That scratching at the back of your mind? The wish to know? I have a name, as I am now, but though it feels good enough, its not quite right. Not the name I had as I was. Since I have you at something of a disadvantage, it is only polite for me to offer both. I am Kufuku Wasureo, shinigami of the Thirteen Court Guards, Twelfth Division. You may not know me as I am, but as I was. I was . . ."

    Ah, how wide the smile had become. A truth he had not spoken aloud since it came to him, now reaffirmed.

    "The King of Hungry Ghosts."

[Sister Berenice]

Safe. Berenice took a deep breath when the sword landed off to his side. Safe as one could be here. It didn’t guarantee her safety—he could be as good with his hands as she had come to be with hers, for all she knew—but it was the sign she didn’t know she was looking for. The form of a man did him a favor here, as much as he might not have liked that thought.

She swam closer to his outstretched hand in long and serpentine strokes of her limbs. Their energy was her eagerness, and their tempered pace came from the same place as the thoughtful look on her face. The King of Hungry Ghosts. The King of Hungry Ghosts, The King of Hungry Ghosts.

If your hunger makes you royal, she thought, what does my hunger make me, O' King of Hungry Ghosts?

Water droplets sang in choir, each drip-drop-drip fallen from her raised arm. Her hand slid into his. She curled her nails just slightly, just enough to remind him what any sudden moves would be met with, as she borrowed his strength to pull upwards. Water bled from her attire, leaving behind a second skin of black and white cloth atop fair flesh.

“I do not know that name.” She held onto his hand. “However.”

She could not bring herself to let go. Not yet. Her blood rushed underneath her wet and cold skin where their skin met.

“Something inside me acknowledges it. I hope that will suffice for you, until…” Berenice looked down at her footsteps in the dirt, sucking at the inside of her lower lip. It was something personal, but… she could feel the warmth, the pain spreading into the nerves of long-dead memories. A good hurt. A new feeling, a lead. A lead to him.

Did that mean that was who he…?

“Until I can remember everything again. I’m trying to find what’s been taken from me. I’ll be able to tell you more when I find them.” Her eyes flicked back up to his. She smiled the nervous smile from before. No, more nervous than before.

Berenice yanked her hand away, flexing her fingers.

“Might I ask you some questions?” It came out shrill: she cleared her throat. “I fear the possibility that this familiar feeling could be related to the fiend that committed the extraction.” Berenice walked a few paces beyond where he had helped her out of the pond and knelt down over a burlap sack. Out came a large roll of fur. She unrolled it in the same motion required to wind it around her shivering shoulders. Much better. Warm, and… protected. Even if she had gone for the swim in all her holy attire, the way it clung to her skin made her feel not so holy. She needed to feel holy right now. She needed that power. “I would like to clear your name, or names, of that association.”

“I truly doubt you’re my target. But let it be known…” Berenice turned around to look at him. At the center of her chest, snug against the wet black cotton, her fingers sunk into the grooves in the knuckles of its accompanying hand. She looked like she could be praying. The nails dug hard into the flesh around them, skin turning white, barely restraining two types of fear: fear that it was him, and fear that she would get to indulge her appetite this day on something alive for the first time in ages.

That same nervous energy that pulled her smile taut like a tight rope… snapped. It could be felt in the air around her. It bled into the call of energy emitted from her body. Blistering hope, hope that sees how far it might fall if it slips just too far one way or the other.

Her blue eyes looked just the slight bit apologetic. The innocence of blue.

Her lips, rose-red, blood-red, split into a wide smile. That color of her guilt; not lipstick, natural as any other sin. Red like his eyes.

“I am a terribly hungry ghost, too,” Berenice slid her tongue along her lips, a reflection of his own smile fitted with bright, white, sharp teeth.

He would have to see for himself if they were as sharp as his.

[Kufuku Wasureo]

    "In that case, I would think that makes you mine."

His mind was racing. This was a human, yes, but she was able to do something so very similar to himself. He didn't have the sense that she was corrupted by a hollow. More that it was something that was a part of her. As natural as her hair or skin or anything else. She was not broken by the hollow, but made whole by it. Still, now instinct was telling him to bare fang in kind. This was some kind of threat display. A more potent warning that he must watch himself around her than anything before.

    That feeling just under his lungs was elation.

    Any disappointment he'd felt prior due to her lack of knowledge of his old self and the way she snatched her hand away was already gone. She had replaced the implication beneath the wet, clinging fabric with something far more enticing. So, it was to be questions was it? To determine if he had stolen something from her. Memories it seemed. He couldn't recall doing such a thing, but there were still large swathes of his past life he had not killed himself enough to learn of. Still, even if his hunger for knowledge then was as it was now, then he saw no reason to actually take the memories. Once he knew of them and learned what he could from them, it was best to leave them where they were so he could return to them later.

    Like now.
   
    "Just a moment, dear sister." He was already pulling his arms into the sleeves of his garment and pulling it open to fall about his waist, too busy to question how he had known that was a means to address her. The answer was self evident regardless. "If I am to answer your questions, then I should first follow your example and move to something more comfortable. There are far too many memories of mine to count, and I wouldn't want to answer improperly." Rei took a deep breath as the cool air of the forest rushed past his bare skin in a sudden burst of wind. The full extent of his tattoos could be seen now, tracing down his side in odd swirls and patterns, accented in some places by his scars. Rei then tucked his hair behind his ear to make sure those on his face were plainly visible as well. His heart was racing. How could it not? He would show to this human woman, this familiar stranger, something that even the captain that had aided him in his mad schemes had not seen.

    "Let's gorge, Hollow!"

    It was like cool fire racing across him as his tattoos spread, split, merged and warped into their final shape across the whole of his body. Blackened bone that almost seemed to stand on his skin rather than within it. That bright and shining smile turned to one of blackest midnight, carved of obsidian, and his eyes flickered and danced as flames before the warm red was replaced with the energetic gold most basic hollows possessed. His blood was on fire. His bones ached. His stomach howled at him, demanding he fulfil their contract borne of millennia.

    He had never felt more right.

    There was a small shift of his foot, and he had closed the distance once more, but moved no longer. He stared down at the priestess, still smiling, and even went so far as to wink. He was still there, still in control, but he was just as dangerous as her, and would not hesitate to show his true colors in time with her. "Tell me then, little ghost. What knowledge do you hunger for?"