Chapter Text
Mori Ougai slits the King’s throat on a dark, cloudless night.
Yokohama is quiet, almost as if it knew somehow that everything would change in just a few minutes. The streets were barren, the wolves were quiet, not even the leaves rustled; a world awaiting the toll of a funeral bell, the announcement of a royal death.
All the candles lining the walls have died out given the time; the only thing illuminating the room is the moonlight pooling through the large windows across from the bed. It paints the blood splashed across the walls with a glossy sheen, and when Mori turns to the boy standing by the windowsill it burns a light into the darkness of the man’s eyes.
He turns to the boy and—
(You will slit the King’s throat. You will reign as King, will hold onto it with an iron fist, until the Crown Prince, the moonchild, is older. A few years into adulthood, he will find a great love, his soulmate: the Sun itself, a man of raw power and capable of great destruction. The sun and the moon, drawn to each as they always are, will end you, end everything you have ever built. Love will destroy you, Kingslayer, soukoku will destroy you—” )
—Mori has always been a man of practical logic. A prophecy that had years until its fruition is a heady warning, and with very little of it being confusing...it was easy to work around it, to plan ahead.
This moonchild will never be given the chance to shine. Mori doesn’t know how to raise a child, but he can groom a demon; he can kill this child without ending his life.
“You will be my witness,” he declares, a cold smile cutting across his face. The child watches him, emotionless, quiet, terribly still, and Mori pays him no mind when he turns back to the now cooling corpse on the bed.
Already the blood has seeped through the sheets, drips onto the floor at a steady pace. It paints a gruesome picture; Mori has cleaning to do.
“You will tell them what happened here: the King, poor thing, finally succumbed to his sickness. He wrote his will with his dying strength, naming his dear friend and life-long healer Mori as King Regent until his precious boy is of age and ready to take the throne he leaves behind. Are we clear?”
Dazai Osamu glances at his father’s body, glances at the blood staining the floor, glances at the murderer smiling down at him, and does nothing but nod.
A handful of years before Yokohama’s crown switches hands, Kyoto’s Queen stumbles upon a ghastly operation.
The dead bodies of children littered the shores of the nearby creek, and when she tears through the rogue magicians who would dare raise their hand against children, there only remains one other soul in the building once she's finished.
“What did you find?” Fukuzawa asks once she returns home, a concerned frown on his face. Her kimono is torn to rags and she is left in nothing but the protective layer she wears underneath it; the silken clothes have been wrapped around the child she carries in her arms, his bright eyes blinking up at the former swordsman who nearly startles at the sight of his wife holding a child who might as well be her own flesh and blood.
If he didn’t know any better he would say he was her flesh and blood, but Kouyou Ozaki is nothing but steadfastly loyal and would’ve never stepped out on their marriage in such a manner. Would have never cursed a child to grow up a bastard in a royal line.
“This is Chuuya,” she introduces, stepping closer to gently grab Fukuzawa’s hand and pull him into her orbit; he allows it, as he always does when it comes to her nowadays. They weren’t always like this, and in fact had started off stilted and awkward. Years of friendship and later love would change that, would shape them into something sturdy and faithful.
He makes an inquisitive noise, but Kouyou is already murmuring softly to the child—Chuuya—who begins to tremble at Fukuzawa’s proximity. His heart clenches at the sight, briefly wondering what exactly the boy had gone through to elicit such a reaction. He knows Kouyou had gone out to deal with a rumoured trafficking operation on the outskirts of Kyoto, to quiet Golden Demon’s bloodlust and to satisfy her own anxiety over the idea of innocent children being harmed in the name of Gods and monsters.
“He was the only one left alive,” Kouyou reveals quietly, and Fukuzawa hums at that, running his thumb across the ridges of her knuckles in a silent show of support and as a gesture meant to comfort her. He knows nothing rankles the Queen more than failing to protect those under her rule, and this is certainly no different.
“Chuuya is to be ours,” Kouyou declares, whispers the secret into the air the three of them are sharing. He is the first child they take in, a secret to be kept amongst themselves, but Chuuya is hardly the last. But being first...
On that night, Chuuya Nakahara becomes the heir to Kyoto's legacy.