Chapter Text
The feeling of starvation was not to be underestimated. The feeling of always being empty, to be obsessed with your next meal, to think of nothing but how to be full again. Humans were, to put it simply, addicted to their food. They couldn’t live without it, and they would go through severe withdrawal, like dying from starvation. It felt so strange for Kabukimono. Knowing that they were addicted to killing animals and growing out crops just to cut them down and eat them. It felt sad and disgusting, yet beautiful. Kabukimono didn’t need to do any of that. His body was fed by the energy the ley lines provided. He never felt human hunger, and while he was curious to how it felt, he didn’t want to destroy anything just to fill his already full stomach, just to satisfy his never ending curiosity.
But sometimes, Kabukimono felt hungry for something else. His hollow insides always craved to be filled, to be full of something. A heart. Maybe something called love, perhaps. But unlike humans, he didn’t need to eat at all. And he didn’t eat until humans showed him how.
When after a night full of teasing and loud laughter, Katsuragi offered him to eat a share of his plate, Kabukimono felt skeptical. He didn’t need any of this food, and there were still humans who were not full. But looking at how genuine he was in his offer, Kabukimono couldn’t refuse it. So he ate the warm bowl of plain rice, and smiled at Katsuragi’s satisfied gaze. And he hated it. Hated how the rice stick to his teeth and gums, how it was too hard to swallow (because he didn’t chew) hated how awful it felt when the warm food reached his stomach. He thought maybe his mechanical body was not fit for human food.
Although everyone on the small village considered him as one of their own, and welcomed him with open arms, he was still different. Still not human. To fit in, he ate the food even though it was not needed, drank water to not raise suspicions, held himself back when Niwa showed him how to forge, just to fill his shallow chest that longed to be human.
When the mechanic from Fontaine arrived on Tatarasuna to upgrade their furnace, things started to change. Niwa and Katsuragi was busy all the time and the mechanic called Escher spent a lot of time trying to talk to him. He was a persistent man, giving Kabukimono his food and teaching him about humans, and telling him that he just wanted to spend time with Kabukimono. Niwa told him to be careful around that man and Kabukimono agreed. He avoided the man but no matter where we went, whether the forge or the seaside, Escher was always there waiting for him.
One day when Escher and him were walking by the shore, he asked a weird question that made Kabukimono’s hair rise. “Do you ever wonder how human flesh taste, Kabukimono?”
The frightened puppet felt shivers running down his spine from the question and quickly excused himself and basically ran away to his house with Niwa. Human flesh? How could someone eat a human flesh? It belonged to a human, it wasn’t meant to be food! But the puppet couldn’t get the words out of his head. He spent the night wide awake, looking outside and up at the full moon. The furnace outside made noises that always lulled him to sleep, but tonight, the noises made him even more nervous than he was.
Everything went downhill in Tatarasuna after a few weeks. People started to get sick, and the furnace made these big, black clouds that surrounded the entire island. Nagamasa sent people to directly ask help from the Shogun, waiting in dire for his punishment. Katsuragi, Niwa and others were trying to find a way to shut down the furnace, and Kabukimono was running back and forth trying to help the sickly.
After a long day of trying to reassure both himself and the villagers, he went to take a walk by the shore. A dark cloud followed him like a hawk, waiting patiently to strike its prey. And the prey came in the form of a sail, carrying one single person. Suddenly there was a strong storm right in front of Kabukimono’s eyes, flipping the small boat like a cradle right by the shore. Before Kabukimono even begin to run towards the screams, a piece of something flew and plopped right in front of his naked feet.
A human arm, ripped out of its owner.
The puppet stared fixatedly at the flesh right before him. He crouched down, took it into his small hands. And gulped down his saliva. With trembling hands and with Escher’s words of “Do you ever wonder how human flesh taste?” ringing inside his skull like a spell, he brought the severed limb close to his face. Took a smell. The warm, wet both from salty water and blood, irony smell hit his nose full force and Kabukimono put his teeth right in the middle of the arm, and chewed it like it was a toy. His teeth ripped through the hard flesh, separating it from the bones and veins. The puppet gulped the entire thing without taking his teeth out of the rest of the limb.
Blood dripped down his chin and into his clothes. The puppet’s face flushed a dark red all over and onto his body, from enjoyment and from shame. This arm belonged to a human. But the puppet was eating it like it was from an animal. It felt so wrong. But it was so tasty. It felt like if he ate this arm, his own arm would be that of a human’s. If he consumed an entire human, would he turn into a human? Could he fill his hollow body then?
He ate and ate until only bones remained in his hands. He hid them under the sand, and ran back to the village before even realizing his bloodied clothes. When Niwa looked at him in panic and ran towards him, Kabukimono only cried and told him of the dying man on the shore, told him how he tried to help, but never told him how chest felt so full.
The panic in Tatarasuna continued and even increased when people started to pass away. The people who went to inform the Shogun never came back. So with his golden feather and with his hands dirty, Kabukimono went to beg for help himself. His days after his sin felt like a blur, dark, intense guilt setting right on top of chest along with the satisfaction of somewhat feeling full. That feeling didn’t last long however, when he realized the perfect counterpart replaced the Archon, and couldn’t even make an effort to hear his aids. He left the Tenshukaku, with a feeling so strong it felt like his chest was being ripped open and the human he ate was spilling right out of him. No one would come to help and no one would accept him either. His creator forsaken him and replaced him with the finished product, and he betrayed his people to fill that damned chest of his! He was needed nowhere, and he belonged nowhere.
He still came back to Tatarasuna, ready to tell the news, but neither Niwa nor Katsuragi were nowhere to be seen. Escher greeted him with furrowed eyebrows, telling him that he needed to enter the furnace himself, giving him a box that wouldn’t open. He entered the furnace himself, his artificial body feeling the sensation of burning alive, yet still remaining intact. He held the box close to his heart, closing the furnace with his bare hands, and emerged from it with his body shivering like a feather in the wind.
Escher had been waiting for him outside as he cached the frail puppet. When Kabukimono asked of the device that protected him, Escher gave him the answer that snapped the puppet completely.
“Niwa escaped punishment and he pointed at you to enter the furnace. He left this to you.”
Inside the box was a warm heart, red, surrounded with veins. The puppet looked at the piece of organ for a long time, and finally closed the lid of the box slowly after a while. He stood up slowly, not listening to the mechanic’s words anymore and walked away, away from the island.
He sat down inside a cave, looking at nothing in particular. He tightly hugged the box that rested on his lap, feeling himself warm up by the presence of it. Niwa knew what he did. Niwa did this to punish him, made him go into the furnace and left him alone, forsaken yet again. But wasn’t he also rewarding him? Why give him a heart, when he was supposed to be punished? Did he mean to tell him that if he ate humans, he would become a human but a lonely one? The puppet didn’t understand this situation at all. He wasn’t… He wasn’t ready to live without Niwa or the others. He didn’t understand humans enough yet. He wanted to become like them, yet…
He opened the box on his lap. The heart was still there, preserving its heat even though the night was cold. Kabukimono took the heart inside his hand and inspected it closely. If Niwa gifted him this… If he gave the heart to him, to make him a human, just to leave him all alone by himself, what did it mean?
Kabukimono brought the heart to his lips. He kissed it first, feeling the warmth of it. He licked it, sucked it, toyed with the heart Niwa gave him, just to show his appreciation. By the end of the night, the box laid empty by the puppet’s sleeping side, the ground beneath them colored with crimson blood.
When morning came the puppet took the empty box and got out of the cave. He wandered the seashore for days, until he met a sick, small boy, looking for something to eat. He felt pity for the boy, but also a sense of kinship. He was left alone to find his way in the world by himself too. He was naïve and small, just like he once was, and the puppet decided to stay with him.
When the boy called him family, his chest felt warm. He helped the boy eat and bathe, took care of him like one would do their own child. When the boy started to cough harder like the ones in the village, he stood by his side, doing whatever he can to help him. He fed him soup and tried to bring his fever down. Despite being sick to the point of not being able to eat, the boy smiled and called him his family. Family. He was his family, so why when one day Kabukimono entered the shabby house, the boy was no longer with him? His heart didn’t beat, he didn’t talk, and he wouldn’t wake up. Why? Just why did he leave him alone too? Did he learn of his sin, his inability to imitate!?
His brain clouded by despair, he opened the frail body’s chest with his hands, fingers wandering inside the still warm body to find what he was looking for. When he took the red organ out of the body, it was small. It wasn’t like the one Niwa gifted him. The veins were so much thinner and the organ itself was lighter. He wanted to eat it so bad, wanted to fill his empty chest and calm down the awful feeling, but in the end he left the house with an empty stomach and a fire behind him.
He continued to wander from place to place, looking for things to do, hearts to eat. He couldn’t bring himself to eat anything ever since the heart Niwa gave him. He was so, so hungry. He wanted to be able to feel human again. He wanted to eat, wanted to drink and sleep and whatever else his companions did. But he never stayed in a place longer than a few days.
He didn’t realize how time passed when he met a Hisashide again. They looked so much like Niwa, a reminder of his past, of his sin and his humanity. Kabukimono tried to get closer to one of them, but they weren’t like Niwa. They weren’t like Katsuragi, they didn’t welcome him with open arms and warm smiles. These people were distant, protective. They cared a lot about their families but Kabukimono wasn’t family. So, this was his punishment then. He wasn’t Niwa’s family anymore.
Still, he watched them from afar. Until they got paranoid and told him to leave the village, Kabukimono persisted with his stalking. Even then he didn’t leave without a keepsake. Kabukimono left the village with another heart inside him, this one belonging to the descender of Niwa. If Niwa didn’t want him then, he would make Niwa his. If he could accept that he was human but not want him, then Kabukimono would make him accept.
So that was how Kabukimono continued to pester the Hisashide, later on Kaedehara bloodline for centuries. He would come by every few years and select someone to take. Whoever looked more like Niwa, or acted more like Niwa. So much so that there were rumors in the Kaedehara household that a spirit cursed them, and if a child was born with a red streak in their hair, they would become a victim to the spirit.
But after a while Kabukimono got tired. Not from the guilt, no, he learned how to live with it after a while. He was tired of eating but never getting full. He was so tired of the hunger consuming his body, his being. When he looked at himself, he only saw a vessel losing its purpose. He yearned for humans so much but he could never reach them. No matter how many hearts he put onto his body, he couldn’t feel full. He wanted more, more, more, but he realized that nothing made him full than the plain rice Katsuragi offered him. Even though it was sticky and hurt his throat, he felt full and warm that night. His stomach was unbearably full but not from guilt. It was warm, so warm to be shared something. To be cared for. When he realized that no matter how many hearts he would ate from the Kaedehara’s, neither Niwa would come back nor would he would get full, he went back to the place he first rose from, and put himself in a deep sleep, never meant to be woken again, until a blonde traveler came and did just that.