Katsuya's Secret

Created: 02-11-2010

"Ne, Katsuya~!" Hiroshi called out, waving at me to get my attention. "Wanna go grab a smoothie and drop by the arcades? I heard there's a new game up in the stands."

"Nah, not today," I replied. "I have to go pick up my sister for tuition class."

"You sure dote on your sister a lot, na no da," Makoto commented as I walked past the group with a nonchalant smile on my face.

"Of course," Kyoko said, mirroring my response. "He singlehandedly raised her since birth, after all."

"Didn't think you had it in ya, Katsu-chan," Miki, my self-proclaimed girlfriend commented with a grin. "Being you are a bit of a juvenile delinquent and all."

"Give him a break, guys," Hiroshi defended me as he ushered me out of class. "He's not all that bad. Give him some credit there. You run along now, Katsuya. Catch ya later."

"Sure thing," I replied as I left my friends to their devices. Like I said, the arcades can wait. Manami needs me.

Heaven and hell knows, I need her too.

Without her, my life would be the utmost uncertainty and emptiness, a void that can never be filled no matter I, or anyone else, tried.

If only they knew what truth lies behind my juvenile delinquencies and misdemeanor as well as my sorry state of an attitude, along with my most undying affection and love for Manami, they would never look at or think about me the same way again.

But of course, it is a secret I'll bring to my grave.

As I made my way to Manami's class to wait for her outside, I began to remember things that I wished I forgot. I remember it was roughly around this time when it happened, when I was in 3rd grade. I have yet to come across Hiroshi, Makoto or Miki, but I definitely was in the same class with Kyoko at the time. It was right there, at the school playground when it happened. I was approached by a man who was dressed in a black suit and was about roughly 10 feet tall, with long limbs and only had a grinning mouth on his faceless features, like that of a Cheshire Cat I used to see in the Alice in Wonderland storybooks when I was younger. He was standing there, almost hidden behind the tall trees, his arms extended, his fingers curling in and out in a beckoning motion, calling me over wordlessly. I tried to tell others about his presence, but they looked at me like I was dreaming. I couldn't understand at the time why is it that I was the only one who was able to see him, but I did.

Common sense told me I should make a run for it, but curiosity and adventure got the better of me as I answered his beckoning call. Somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I know I shouldn't be going towards the weird man, that I should turn back and run to the nearest adult I can find, but my body was not listening to me, as if the other part of my mind, the more dominant one, was telling me that it was alright, that the man wouldn't hurt me, that he will just show me something interesting and be on his way.

Once I was in the man's embrace, I soon learnt the hard way that my common sense was right all along. By the time I realized it, I found myself in a dark room adorned with candles everywhere. The canopy bed I was sitting on was blood red in colour, as were everything else in the room, with a hint of black in between. It was like being brought from the bright, colourful world I came from into a world that existed in the Twilight Zone. The worst part was that I found myself naked and my right ankle chained to the foot of the bed. It was long enough for me to reach the bathroom or walk about the room, but only just.

The door of the room I was in was constantly locked, and no matter how I screamed and banged and pull and tugged at the door knob, it would not open. Whoever was outside fell on deaf ears upon my cries to be released. It only opened whenever it was meal times and I was fed with the richest food any kid wished they had the money to buy. Every day and night I was served of my meals by the man in black suit, but he would not tell me where I was or what I was doing here. All my questions were only answered by a wide grin on his face that would probably rival the famous kuchisake-onna and a comforting embrace that I couldn't help relaxing into, no matter how much I resisted. Up close, I realize that I was right about his faceless features: he really didn't have any other facial organs other than his mouth; bald, no eyes, no nose, no ears and only one huge grinning mouth that displayed razor-sharp jagged teeth, it was a wonder he was even able to breathe, let alone able to see and navigate at all. I named him 'Kuro' because of his black suit, and he didn't seem to mind the nickname I gave him. There was something about this man that I feared so much, yet also adore and admire at the same time. It was a very conflicting emotion for me at that age, but I continued to cling on that emotion in the hopes that I will still retain my sanity and get out of this place alive.

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, months turned to years. By then, I had almost forgotten how people looked like anymore. Kuro was my only regular visitor, and sometimes he would bring me things from my world so that I would still be in touch with it and not feel so homesick. He brought most of my things from home, including my favourite cap that I always wore—a gift from my father when my parents finally had the time from their hectic work schedule to take me out to celebrate my 6th birthday—and he also brought a photo frame containing a family photo of us. I think he did that so that I will have someone to remember by, though he never said it. He would bring me clothes as well, but mostly just huge T-shirts and underwear supplies, and he also would bring me toys and books to read—the biggest toy being a trampoline in which I would leap and jump on it for about a couple of hours just to keep myself in shape from all the rich food I've been eating—and sometimes let me have some stationeries to write and draw on to pass the time, and on my birthday, he would bring in a small cake with candles along with my meals, which was how I kept track of time other than the worn off calendar at my bedside.

Aside from the usual meals, once a week, Kuro would take me outside to catch some sun, in which he would blindfold me and carry me up what felt like a long flight of stairs up to the top, put me down, undid my blindfold and held onto the chain on my anklet and let me roam around the area, never letting me go any further. The first time I came here, I was terrified at the sight that was before me. I found out that I was in some sort of lighthouse tower that overlooked the horizon, and beneath us were fields of red and black, with patches of fire and hills of volcanoes here and there, as if I was in the pits of the 7 Gates of Hell itself. There were beings flying about in the sky that looked like gargoyles I've read in comic books, but much more demonic-looking than that. The reality of me no longer in the human world dawned to me and hit me like a ton of bricks and brought back my age-old fear and my desire to escape, but with me being at Kuro's mercy, it was a futile attempt. There have been a few times when I tried, but I always ended up being at the short end of the leash and being embraced by Kuro again into submission.

Probably the day I finally accepted Kuro as someone who was more than my captor was during one of our outdoor sessions. I was looking up at the sky at the gargoyle-like demons, thinking of my family and friends and trying to formulate another way to try and escape from this place when one of them actually caught me staring. Whatever I was doing must've either offended him or made him thought I was tasty, because in a split second, he was swooping down towards me and tried to attack me, but Kuro jumped in the way and, with a swipe of his hand, stabbing the demon through and through before hugging me close to his chest and brought me back to my room, locking me in. I could hear sounds of blood-curdling screeching and crashing and the loud bangs of body crashing, fist punching and things breaking, like all hell had broken loose. By the time he returned, he was covered with wounds and his suit was torn and tattered from the fight, but still maintained his Cheshire Cat grin. I didn't know what came over me at the time, but I immediately fell into his arms and cried, apologizing profusely over and over again, and I could've sworn Kuro was stroking my hair and back, trying to calm me down before I fell asleep in his embrace.

Since that day, as I helped tend to his wounds to the best of my abilities, my need to leave decreased bit by bit until I no longer thought about escaping. I slowly began to get used to this routine of receiving my meals in my room and going out for sun once a week and I got used to my one-sided conversation with Kuro as he continued to pamper and care for me in his own weird, mysterious ways. My heart had resigned to the fate that I would never—to be more exact, would never want to—leave this place.

This was my home now, among these four red walls and the lighthouse tower, and this was where I would stay for the rest of my life.

Then one fateful day, when I was 18 years old, Kuro came to my room for my usual outdoor sun, but as I was blindfolded and carried (it was a wonder he still had the strength to carry me) out of my room, I felt that the route he was taking was different than our usual route. Years of experience with Kuro told me that we were not going upwards, but downwards, and the deeper we went down, the more my heart was pounding, and by the time Kuro had stopped, I was already in tears, begging Kuro to take me back upstairs and back to my room. Unfortunately, Kuro fell deaf to my pleas and set me down the floor despite my resistance and undid my blindfold, although I could feel from his touches that he seemed reluctant to do so.

What stood before me was the biggest and tallest gargoyle-like creature I have ever seen. From the books that Kuro brought me to read, one of them being about the creatures of the world I was kidnapped into, they were something of a distant cousin of the incubus/succubus clan that were cast down from the youkai realm because of their bloodlust tendencies and their habit of sucking the life force of their own kind in addition to the human life force, like an incubus/succubus version of cannibals. The one before me looked like he could probably be the head honcho of the clan and one look at his feral eyes and I knew I was in for a world of hurt, maybe death.

He towered over me like a giant, but he couldn't be more than a few inches taller than Kuro. He was fully nude and his member was fully erected, dripping with pre-cum, and I wasn't that naïve to not know his intentions. I tried to run away, tried to go back up the stairs and call Kuro for help, but the creature overpowered me as he grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me towards him, dragging me across the rough rocky floor. I kicked and screamed and shouted and struggled to no avail as the monster…had his way with me, tearing off my clothes into ribbons and entering me with such force and size that he was almost going to split me in half, and his hands and tongue that roamed around me made me feel so much dirtier than any common whore on the streets. I screamed Kuro's name again and again, begging him to save me and I cried until my voice was hoarse at the creature to stop what he was doing, but my cries fell into deaf ears and Kuro didn't come to rescue like he did during the day at the tower.

I didn't know how long time has passed, but by the time the monster was done with me, I was covered with his essence inside and out and I passed out from sheer trauma. When I came to, Kuro was right beside me with medication for my sores. I wanted to scream at him and hit out at him for allowing all this to happen and not come to my rescue, to tell him that he was a bastard for letting that monster rape me and to tell him to get the hell out and not to show his face ever, but the pain that coursed throughout my whole body was holding me back from my intentions.

But that wasn't why I did not lash out at him.

It was because as I glared at him, he wasn't sporting his usual Cheshire Cat grin. In fact, it was the biggest, saddest frown I've ever seen from him. He never frowned, not once, and there he was, his upside-down smile showing whatever sadness, guilt and remorse he could ever portray that the rest of his face could not.

That night was probably the longest I've cried in his arms, because by the next time I woke up, I no longer have the urge to blame Kuro.

I understood then that Kuro was something of a slave or servant to the huge creature and he was just following orders, whether he wanted it or not. But it still didn't make the next few times the creature needed to satisfy his lust on me any better.

The moment I had my first signs of morning sickness, I realized the whole purpose of me being here. Kuro, out of all the little children he had surveyed and kidnapped, chose me out of forced obligation and servitude towards the creature to become the creature's breeding mate. Kuro had decided that somehow my physiology was compatible with the creature to carry his spawn and was force to allow him to impregnate me. From what I understand from Kuro's attempted teachings, the creature was one in a few generations that was able to impregnate a person regardless the gender and had the sick sense of humour to choose human males to do it. The moment I conceived, an artificial womb and a temporary birth canal had formed within me to allow my body to carry the spawn to term. I was horrified at first and wanted nothing more than to get that child out of me, but Kuro stopped quite many of my attempts until I understood the fact that if I were to do anything to the spawn, not only it wouldn't solve the problem, because the creature would rape me all over again, but it would get my best and only friend in trouble.

But it didn't mean I gave Kuro a bit of hell just to make myself feel better, and I have a feeling that Kuro didn't mind, as long as I didn't do anything stupid.

Apparently the gestation period was roughly 6 months, because during my usual outdoor session, I was suddenly hit with birth pangs so strong, I could've sworn I was being hit by a freight train. Kuro carried me all the way to my room and helped me with the birth as much as he wordlessly could. I was bloody hell clueless as to what I was supposed to do, but my body seemed to take over somehow, as if it knew what to do as the urge to push came quite naturally. Painfully, but naturally. Whenever I pushed down as hard as I could, Kuro would use the back of his bloody palm to stroke my thigh and calf as his way of encouraging me to keep going. At the back of my mind, I have come to fully understand how pregnant women—especially my mother—had to go through as I cursed, swore and cried throughout the entire birth, pushing down like never before. My heart leapt with joy and relief as I could feel the spawn—my child—moving down and popping its head out of my birth canal despite the excruciating pain, and by the time I felt the shoulders coming out, I was pushing and pushing, not stopping until it slid out of me and started wailing as it took its first gulps of air.

To my utmost relief, Kuro revealed to me that the baby was a very beautiful human girl. She had the blackest hair and the brightest green eyes I've ever seen, and whatever reservations I had for this child while she was still in me were out of the window as I took her in my arms and kissed her over and over again, crying happy tears. As I held her close, I could hear footsteps closing in towards my room, and my sinking heart was telling me that the father of my child has probably heard wind of my birth and was coming down to see his spawn. I didn't know what it was, but something deep down inside me was burning painfully in my chest, a very bad omen, telling me that the creature would not like what he sees and will kill her. I couldn't allow that to happen! I couldn't! Never mind how this child came to being, she is my daughter, my flesh and blood, my child! I could not allow him to kill my child I've carried inside for the past 6 months! I could tell from the slight downward curl of Kuro's face that our thoughts were mutual.

"Help me…please…" I begged Kuro, and the last thing I saw was Kuro nodding slightly before embracing me.

When I came to, I found myself in my own room of the apartment I was born and raised in the human world, fully clothed in my jammies and laying on the futon on the tatami floor. My body ached a bit from the birth but it didn't deter me from trying to get up. My little girl was nowhere to be seen, and I searched frantically for her, worried that the creature had gotten to her, that Kuro couldn't save us in time and the creature had returned me home after being done with me. I didn't care that I was screaming the whole apartment down; I just wanted to find my baby.

"Hey, hey, easy there, Katsuya," I heard my mother's voice in the midst of my rambling. "Did you have a nightmare or something?"

"My baby! Where's my baby? I want my baby! Have you seen my baby?" I was getting hysterical.

"Baby? What are you talking about?" my mother's tone sounded ludicrous, then let out an amused chuckle. "You're only 3 and you're already thinking of having kids? Silly boy. If you mean your sister, she's at the nursery. Have you forgotten? You tucked her in yourself."

I looked at my mother like she had just announced that the end of the world was coming. It was then I realized when I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror that I was no longer 18 years old, but as a 3-year-old. It was as if I had just been given some sort of shrinking serum and got sent back through time where I never left home and that whatever happened to me was just a dream.

"Th…That's impossible! I…I was kidnapped by…by this man in black suit…I named him Kuro! I was gone for years! And…And then I was raped by a youkai and I had a child…a little girl…!"

"Wait, wait, wait, have you been watching those porno horror flicks again?" my mother stopped me and glared towards the direction of the master bedroom. "I told your father to put those away, but does he listen? No~! He had to corrupt his only son!" she reached over to hold me close, "It's alright, darling. Everything's fine. You just had a very weird nightmare, that's all. That's it, I'm telling your father to burn those trash. No more of those porno horror flicks for you, young man."

As she tucked me in and kissed me goodnight, I stole a look at the digital clock beside me. The date showed the day I was kidnapped by Kuro, and the time showed that it was a little towards midnight. The day I was kidnapped by Kuro was roughly midday, and I was in 3rd grade—9 years old at the time—and now I'm back home, in my own bed, in my own home and years younger than I should. It was as if those years with Kuro had never happened and whatever I had experienced in that youkai world was all just a dream.

But I knew, from the dull pain between my legs and my aching joints, that this was not a dream.

I got up slowly and made my way to the nursery. Sure enough, in the baby cot, was my little girl. I'd recognize her anywhere. Her black hair, her green eyes as she fluttered them open a little while before going back to sleep and her tiny frame, and the familiar feeling when I carried her in my arms told me she was there, she was real, and she was my daughter.

Except now, due to whatever Kuro had done to save me, she was now my sister.

I'm sure by now, you'd understand where I'm going.

That night, as the clock struck 12, I whispered into my little girl's ear her name. A name that did her beauty justice. A name that immediately came to being the moment I uttered it.

"Manami. Manami Kimura. My daughter."

I never knew what happened to Kuro after that incident, but I knew that whatever he did, he did it to save me. My parents never knew the truth, and it seemed that their memories and thoughts were altered to believe that Manami was their little girl and had always been there since the day she was "born" into this family. As for me, I am now a 26-year-old trapped in a body of a growing 11-year-old. Before I went to grade school (again), everyone thought I was mature beyond my years and that I would grow up to be a genius, now everyone saw me as a troubled juvenile delinquent who would break rules just for the fun and satisfaction of it, but they did not, and would not, understand that I did it because I was entitled to, that I was doing whatever I had missed out so much throughout my actual childhood. My grades were crappy because I couldn't care less about them. In all truth, I'm not supposed to be in school anymore, but I am. At my real age right now, I should be in college, or a salaryman at the very least, but I never had a decent education when I was in the youkai world despite being able to read much better and more than anyone else in my class, so I probably would qualify for neither. They said I was perverted because I am only interested in buxom girls, but the truth is I never had a single girlfriend in my life, my real life, and I've always wondered how it feels like to be in the arms of a real woman instead of being reminded all the time that I was raped by a youkai, and a man at that. I wanted to break free, explore, have fun, experience the thrill and danger of the human world that I never had the chance to do when I was in captivity, and if it means breaking a few rules, so be it. Kyoko had caught me smoking and boozing once behind the school backyard, and I got in trouble for it, but technically I was old enough to do all those things. I am pretty much an adult after all.

The only person that kept me grounded was Manami.

As I watched her grow up, from a nursing baby to a tottering toddler to a bouncy kindergartener to finally a cute, innocent 2nd grader, I knew that I had to do everything in my power to make her safe and happy. My workaholic parents served as an advantage, more or less, to me because I could raise her with my own hands, and love her like a mother should, though my size as a child had its disadvantages. My heart would sometimes ache when I hear her call me "Oni-chan" instead of "Oka-san". I really wished she would call me that, but it was wishful thinking.

Besides, who would ever believe that an 11-year-old boy is actually a mother to an 8-year-old girl?

I see Kuro sometimes, like I am seeing him now as I continued to wait for Manami to finish her class. I can see him there, hiding behind the trees in plain sight, surrounded by oblivious people and sporting that same old Cheshire Cat grin on his face. The first time I saw him again was on Manami's 1st birthday, and he had a huge scar that ran across his face, and it was one of those gouging scars that would not heal even through time. He was there to give me back my cap, and he gave Manami a set of hair ribbons that she wore on her two pigtails even till now. He never told me why he shrunken me into an age I was not supposed to be and why did he take me back through time and brainwash my parents into thinking Manami was theirs all along, but it didn't matter anymore. Manami was with me, and she was safe from the creature who sired her, and that's all I could ask for. Kuro would visit me from time to time, but always watching from afar, never coming close anymore since the day he gave me back my cap. Sometimes he was there to serve as a warning that someone from the youkai world I was kidnapped into was sent to find me and Manami, so I often managed to escape unscathed and luckily never have to cross paths with them. My friends, however, were not so lucky. I have a feeling that some of the supernatural encounters that my friends had were originally directed to me, but thanks to Kuro, they had to suffer my sins.

I feel bad for them, really, but I cannot allow that creature to take away my Manami.

"Oni-chan~!"

I smiled as I approached the door of the classroom. I turned back for a moment to see that Kuro was gone. Manami came out in all smiles as she quickly hugged me and took my hand.

"How was class today?" I asked.

"Boring as usual," she replied. "But I'll get over it. You are a sight for sore eyes."

"You know you have tuition later, right?"

"Aww~ Can't we just play hookie? Just this once?"

"Manami…" I warned, but I was beaten to it by Manami's puppy eyes.

"Please~? Oni-chan, please~?"

Those eyes. Those sparkling green eyes. How could I resist?

"Alright, just this once. But don't tell Mom and Dad though. You know how they feel about your education."

"I won't tell if you won't."

"Deal. So, where shall we go then?"

"I want a sundae~!"

"Hai, hai, sundae it is then."

If Nube, the all-seeing spiritual teacher, couldn't even see through my façade and discover the real me, even with his oni-no-te, no one could ever will.

The world may not, and will never know, that Manami is my daughter.