Ame no Akai

T h e D e a t h o f I n n o c e n c e

PRELUDE TO CONTRACT

"NEVER CHANGE THE PAST"

The hands that held her down against the bed were strong. She could not move, she was pinned; held down by the weight of the body on top of her. Rough hands slipped lightly across the side of her flat belly, slowly making their way past weakly struggling thighs and then, to the wetness lying between them. Other hands forced thin and quivering legs apart, holding them still so that the ones moving across her thighs could have a much easier time fondling the smoothness that lie there. Fingers probed and violated that once innocent flesh; making her squirm under the weight that pressed her into the mattress. She tried to scream, but sweaty hands covered her mouth. She tried to kick, but the iron-like hands wrapped around her ankles held them firmly against the bed. Those fingers pushed deeper and a muffled whimper escaped her enclosed mouth. Other hands groped at non-existent breast, pinching tender nipples hard enough to make her cry out in pain. Tears formed in the corners of tightly closed eyes as the fingers between her legs began to slide rhythmically back and forth. She tried to turn away from the hand over her mouth, but it roughly yanked her head back into place. A sharp, horrible pain pulsed through her nipple; forcing teary eyes to open wider than before. From their blurry corners, she could make out someone moving in the shadows of the room.

She knew who it was. They were always there; always there to watch. They would just let it happen, let those hands violate her unmercifully while she writhed on the bed and tried to scream out. They always let it happen. They didn't care. They just didn't care!

The fingers stopped and then pulled away from the tenderness between her legs. She knew what was coming next. She tried in vain to break free, to push the weight on top of her off; to yank her legs free of the hands that held them in place. She had to get free! She knew what was about to happen! She had to...

PAIN.

It ran through her body and she screamed into the hand still covering her mouth. Tears ran freely down her face as the pain continued to grow; without pause, without pity. She knew what was coming next! The pain would never stop; they would never stop. She turned her head as best she could as the pain became as rhythmic as the fingers had been. The figures shrouded in the shadows did nothing to stop the pain; they just stood there and watched. She closed her eyes.

She knew what was coming next.

Suddenly there was a flash and her body was burning. The room was aflame. Everyone around her was screaming as the fire seared the flesh from their thrashing bodies. The hands were gone and she was free, but it was too late. For her, for everyone who had ever hurt her. They would feel her pain as she had been forced to feel theirs. She turned her head to where the figures were standing, enshrouded in the shadow and watching her torment. But they no longer stood there. They were on the floor now, smoldering in the flames that were rolling off their bodies in waves.

When she saw them lying there, she screamed.

Her parents were dead!

She had killed them again!

-o-

Oyugi Aia's eyes flew open as she threw the covers away from her naked body. Rising quickly from the mattress, she stared off into the darkness of the room with frightened eyes. Sweat beaded on her brow and her throat was as dry as cotton. The sheets were soaked. She could not stop shaking. The dream had felt so...real. No, not a dream; a nightmare.

That had been the fire her parents had died in, the fire that had taken the lives of not only them, but her brothers as well. But she gave less than a damn about them; they had deserved to die for what they had done to her. However, Aia hated the nightmare. It insinuated things; things that she had never been comfortable with and the thoughts that went along with them.

Pulling her knees up to a rapidly rising and falling chest, she wrapped her arms around them. Why did she keep dreaming about her rape like that? What in the world would possess her to believe that her parents would have had anything to do with those bastards and what they had done to her? But how could she not? For nearly a year her brothers had violated her, molested and raped her on a regular basis without showing an ounce of pity; a glimmer of remorse. Threatening her with physical violence and worse if she told anyone about what they were doing to her. She was glad they were dead.

But even though years had passed since that terrible nightmare had come to an end, Aia couldn't shake the feeling that something…that something had not been right. Had her parents...known about what was going on? Had they actually…actually allowed that horror to happen to her?

Aia buried her head against pale, upraised knees and took as deep a breath as she could. The sweat still remaining on her body made the air coming from the oscillating fan, sitting on the small night stand, even colder than it actually was. She found herself shivering; not from just the coolness of the room, but also from the idle thoughts that kept finding their way back into her mind. Head slowly lifting, Aia glanced around her dark room. There was very little lighting to be found, save for two very dim standlamps in adjacent corners of the room and another on a small dresser against the wall closest to the fusuma. A small, curtainless window just above her bed was open; allowing both the lukewarm air of late evening and the somber light of a nearly set sun to filter weakly into the room. From outside, the cicadas continued their endless chorus; their call stretching beyond the trees and deep into the coming night.

The walls were devoid of the typical adornments that could be found in a thirteen year old girl's room; no posters of Japanese pop stars or popular cartoon characters or cute boys or anything else remotely normal. Just dark pictures of men, some crossed out with black marker, others still untouched. Those men were her life. Those men were her reason for being. They and others like them had made her what she once was – afraid, alone and violated. Men like them had taken away her innocence. Men like them had made her regret ever being alive; had made her wish that she had died in that fire with her parents. She hated men like them. She hated all men.

A light knock on the fusuma startled her from her thoughts.

"Yes," she began, quickly reaching down to pull the covers back up around her. "Come in."

There was a momentary pause and then the wide, panel-like door slid open.

"Are you alright, Aia," Sakoda Iiwa asked as she walked into the room, half-open robe flowing gracefully behind and her delicately curved face creased with worry. "I was in the living room reading and I thought I heard you cry out."

Aia sighed softly to herself as she let the covers slip back onto her lap. Sakoda Iiwa was her governess; the woman who had taken her in after she was orphaned by the fire that had killed her family. The beautiful and vibrant woman had been her caretaker for five years now and was the closest thing to a mother that she had. Iiwa had helped Aia to not only push past the hurt caused by her brothers, but to also gain a sense of strength from it. At a very young age, she was taught how to turn that hurt into a weapon. Aia could never see herself anywhere else but at the side of her beloved governess. She would do anything for Sakoda Iiwa.

Walking up to the side of the bed, Iiwa smoothed the wrinkles from the rear of her white robe and sat down beside Aia.

"Was it another nightmare?"

Aia didn't say anything, nodding instead as she pulled pallid knees back up to her bare chest and wrapped her arms around them once again.

"The same one? About your parents and brothers?"

Aia nodded a second time.

Iiwa slid closer to the slightly shivering young girl and placed a comforting arm around her small shoulders.

"Talk to me Aia," the older woman asked lightly. "Tell me about the nightmare. Open up to me. You've never been this closed before, not since the first time I laid eyes upon you. I want to help you, but you're going to have to let me in."

Aia let out a raspy breath and turned to look at Iiwa. The older woman was as striking as the first time she had seen her. With long, black hair that ran down the length of her back; full, red lips, high cheek bones and dark almond-shaped eyes that made her pale, but silk smooth skin glow in the shallow light of the room. She had to be the most beautiful woman in Japan. No, in the world.

"There's nothing more I can tell you, Iiwa-chan. It's the same as before. Nothing's changed."

Iiwa lovingly pulled her closer and slowly began to stroke Aia's short, dark hair with a free hand. The methodical caresses filled her with comfort and seemed to wash away some of the tension that the nightmare had caused. But it could not clear her troubled mind of the nagging questions involving her parents. Did they know? How could they have known about what was going on and do nothing? No. I won't believe it! They'd never let something like that happen to their own daughter and not try to stop it. It just can't be true.

"A rose petal for your sweet thoughts, my dear child," Iiwa whispered.

Aia nuzzled closer to her governess as she stretched her long legs out back under the bed sheets. Laying her head somberly against Iiwa's half-covered breast, she closed weary eyes and breathed in the older woman's scent deeply. Memories of the day's earlier pleasures washed over her as she wrapped her arms around Iiwa's waist. As always, she felt safe and secure in the presence of this woman – her loving governess. There was nothing that could hurt Aia while Sakoda Iiwa was holding her close.

"I was just thinking about the past, Iiwa-chan. Thinking about how I'll never escape it, no matter how much strength I gain from it or how much time passes. The wounds just won't heal. The pain just won't go away. It never goes away."

Iiwa stopped stroking Aia's hair and looked down at her.

"We can never change the past, my sweetest of petals," she began, swinging her legs up onto the bed swiftly. "We can only learn from it and gain power from it; use it to make those who repeat it pay for their crimes. We can never change the past, darling Aia. We can only make sure that it never happens again; to us, or anybody else. Do you understand?"

Aia looked up at her governess with loving eyes, a slight blush spreading across those rounded cheeks.

"Yes, Iiwa-chan."

Iiwa tapped her on the nose playfully.

"Good," she said, rising with the elegance of a dancer. "Now try to get some sleep. You have a very busy day ahead of you tomorrow and I won't have you attending to your duties with sleep-dust still in your eyes. You do remember what you need to do, don't you?"

"Of course, Iiwa-chan. Meet Masana Hasuku-san by the payphones at the Karasuma-Oike Train Station at eleven o'clock," Aia stated expertly.

Iiwa stood next to the bed for a moment, then turned gracefully on the ball of her foot and made for the open fusuma. Pausing as she exited the room, she spoke one last time. "And what are you going to do when you meet Masana-san, my sweet petal?"

Aia's face suddenly grew cold, her dark eyes narrowing first on one of the unmarked pictures on the wall sharply and then lowering quickly to the small table below it that held her sheathed wakizashi. They glittered dangerously when they fell upon the short weapon.

"Kill him, Iiwa-chan."

*~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~*

THE END OF PRELUDE TO CONTRACT – "NEVER CHANGE THE PAST"

© 2004 Terryll Preston