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I know how my life started.
It began with a moment of joy, a feeling of no restraints and disturbances. Though there were struggles, there was still joy. Like a baby being supported by her mother after she fell to the ground trying to walk, I felt joy. It was an art itself, a number of pictures that moved and cannot be described. Abstract- I called it. But when I grew up, the joy started to dwindle. Slowly and painfully, it was torture in itself.
I knew how my life will end. It would not be like a sword through the neck but a sword through the side. It would be slow and painful.
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I went back on a cold grey afternoon where the dense streets were still wet from yesterday’s rain.
The first I had heard was a scream. I paused myself as I stood by the doorway. It was an intrusion, a stab to my heart after a day meeting with my lover. She laid there on the floor with her bloodshot eyes staring at me. Her hand rose `tiredly trying to reach me.
“I…ni…yu…” she called my name slowly as I stood here numbed and dumbstruck. I was like a statue and a building during a war. No matter what had happened around me, I stood firm. She called my name once more before her hand fell down softly to the ground. It was flaccid and lifeless.
I rushed towards her-my guardian and teacher-calling out her name over and over again hoping that she was still alive.
Tears flowed down my soft cheek. It was cold and different from the tears the flowed before. I had no other care on the things around me or the things I should do. All I want is to hold her, embraced her and let myself wallowed in sorrow. Even the thought of suicide was an option.
Pinned down to the ground, I stared across the floor as two people, large men, bounded my wrist. I called her name continuously.
“Inihime!”
“Inihime!” I called her name-my teacher’s name. I stared at her lifeless face before me. Her face was still serene even after death. The last thing I had seen before they covered my face in a black cloth was her blank eyes staring at me and my soul. It haunted me. It tortured my dreams into nightmares. It made my life filled with no purpose.
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Bounded I was on a dark empty cellar at the side of the imperial palace. With my clothes tattered, I wept in tears.
How long had it been since I saw my teacher’s lifeless blank eyes staring at me? How long had I been carried to such place where I am treated like a poor lame lost dog? How long had I stayed here forced to obey their orders? How long before I should die?
To make myself free, I hoped, killing me is useless on my situation.
I feared on what would happen but I do not fear on what would happen to me. I knew my fate but not that of others. With a sword embedded on my chest, I imagined.
The doors opened and up came a bent figure bounded by a man behind him. His clothes were in shreds and his face was covered in a number of bruises. He was thrown unto the cellar as the man shut the door behind him and left.
I stared at him silently. It was a repetition of a nightmare. I’ve seen this before with that of my teacher lying on the ground lifeless, but he was alive unlike the morbid collectors. I did not spoke and when both our eyes met, our worlds were in deep silence.
