Koumyou drops the age question for the moment, following his son's lead and focusing on the big issue at hand here.
"Do you remember when I introduced you to Ukoku Sanzo?"
Think of the devil, and there he is.
"He and I had quite the past, you know. And that boy he had with him..."
Koumyou clears his throat a little uncomfortably, and takes a drink of his tea.
"Looked a lot like I did at that age. Well... at that age I was still shaving my head, but if you took a young me and gave him my current bangs, it would be eerie."
He's tangenting, but only a little. Young future Kami-sama, a child prostitute who looked just like that, had been another sign of what was festering behind Ukoku's cold, dead eyes.
"Those youkai never touched me while I was alive. And I did save you, yes... but from an assassination neither of us could have countered quickly enough. An assassination targeting you. I felt it coming, and I got in its way."
He gives that a beat to soak in a little before continuing.
"I suspect I was meant to stand by and watch. Muichimotsu, and all. And then I'd have been free to spend all of my time with my very possessive, entitled stalker of nine years. The youkai were scapegoats, sent for me to mow down while you died. Plausible deniability, and another move in the chess game for us to both slyly allude to later the way we did most things in our little dance."
Koumyou sits back a little and sighs, looking less serene and more tired.
"Or perhaps I would be angry enough to finally attack him. Either way would have been a win in his book. I expect he was very angry with you for daring to be more important to me than he ever was. For being someone whose life I chose over the future he had planned for me. He's never been a gracious loser, that one."
Ukoku had been a spoiled brat from start to finish.
"You could have been ten times stronger than me and I would have done nothing differently that night. I regret what it did to you; it's haunted me ever since. But I don't regret saving you, just like from the river. It's what a father should do, isn't it? If there had been another way, I would have taken it. If we both could have lived, I would have done that instead.
"But I just wasn't strong enough to watch you die. So I abandoned muichimotsu, and you had to see... that. I know what that's like, seeing something like that happen to someone important to you. I watched the very same spell do the same thing to my last living friend, when you were four, and then I was ordered to travel with and train his killer for a year. Goudai's killer, wearing his sutra and crown. I think after that is when I stopped listening to orders from above.
"I'm the one who named him Ukoku, you know? Because a single raven cried out the moment he killed Goudai."
no subject
"Do you remember when I introduced you to Ukoku Sanzo?"
Think of the devil, and there he is.
"He and I had quite the past, you know. And that boy he had with him..."
Koumyou clears his throat a little uncomfortably, and takes a drink of his tea.
"Looked a lot like I did at that age. Well... at that age I was still shaving my head, but if you took a young me and gave him my current bangs, it would be eerie."
He's tangenting, but only a little. Young future Kami-sama, a child prostitute who looked just like that, had been another sign of what was festering behind Ukoku's cold, dead eyes.
"Those youkai never touched me while I was alive. And I did save you, yes... but from an assassination neither of us could have countered quickly enough. An assassination targeting you. I felt it coming, and I got in its way."
He gives that a beat to soak in a little before continuing.
"I suspect I was meant to stand by and watch. Muichimotsu, and all. And then I'd have been free to spend all of my time with my very possessive, entitled stalker of nine years. The youkai were scapegoats, sent for me to mow down while you died. Plausible deniability, and another move in the chess game for us to both slyly allude to later the way we did most things in our little dance."
Koumyou sits back a little and sighs, looking less serene and more tired.
"Or perhaps I would be angry enough to finally attack him. Either way would have been a win in his book. I expect he was very angry with you for daring to be more important to me than he ever was. For being someone whose life I chose over the future he had planned for me. He's never been a gracious loser, that one."
Ukoku had been a spoiled brat from start to finish.
"You could have been ten times stronger than me and I would have done nothing differently that night. I regret what it did to you; it's haunted me ever since. But I don't regret saving you, just like from the river. It's what a father should do, isn't it? If there had been another way, I would have taken it. If we both could have lived, I would have done that instead.
"But I just wasn't strong enough to watch you die. So I abandoned muichimotsu, and you had to see... that. I know what that's like, seeing something like that happen to someone important to you. I watched the very same spell do the same thing to my last living friend, when you were four, and then I was ordered to travel with and train his killer for a year. Goudai's killer, wearing his sutra and crown. I think after that is when I stopped listening to orders from above.
"I'm the one who named him Ukoku, you know? Because a single raven cried out the moment he killed Goudai."