Four Quarters

East

He was hungry. He was hungry and tired and Sanzou'd sent him out alone hours ago to scout this part of the forest and he was starving now and Sanzou hadn't said anything about food and he had to see if he could find any youkai here before he went back to the jeep where the food was but if he went back before he found the youkai Sanzou'd be mad and hit him, but he was starving, how could a starving guy find any youkai anyway let alone fight them, and even if he did find them they'd beat him for sure cause he was so weak. And if the youkai killed him then Sanzou'd be sorry he'd been so mean to him, yeah you bet, unless he died of starvation first and then how would Sanzou feel when he came across Gokuu's thin carcass lying in the forest like a fallen leaf, huh? Sanzou would be sorry then, Sanzou would hold Gokuu's poor thin body with its ribs sticking out and feel sad, Sanzou would be so sad he'd give up the world and become a monk, except of course he already was a monk- well, Sanzou would become more of a monk then because he'd be so sorry. Yeah. Gokuu thought about that for a while with satisfaction- Sanzou all alone with no Gokuu beside him any more and Hakkai and Gojou looking at Sanzou sadly and reprovingly for having let Gokuu die and Sanzou saying "It's his own damn fault for letting himself starve to death, the stupid ape. Good riddance to him." Gokuu felt indignant. It was not either his fault, it was Sanzou's fault for letting him starve to death, so obviously he couldn't starve to death because he had to be alive to tell Sanzou it was Sanzou's fault for letting him starve to death except he was starving to death so how was he going to be able to tell Sanzou it was Sanzou's own fault and not his? Gokuu gave a little moan. There was nothing but trees and trees and more trees and no nuts on them or anything and the faint washy moonlight making it hard to see his way and the cold dank air all around him making him feel even more alone than he already was, and he hated being alone and he hated being alone in the night and he didn't want to remember all those nights alone in the cold on the mountain he wouldn't remember them he'd think instead about how he was starving here alone in the woods with nothing around him but trees and moonlight and the smell of roasting chestnuts

Gokuu's head came up. Through the trees, infinitely far away, the flicker of a fire and the smell of food. With renewed energy he followed his nose and his senses quickly quickly towards that marvellous wonderful enchanting smell, and burst into the small clearing where a small fire burned with a small person next to it fishing the chestnuts out of the coals with a stick.

"Food!!" Gokuu wailed, throwing himself on the heap of rescued chestnuts, and then "OW!!!" as his fingers burned.

"They're hot, dork-face," the small person said. "And they're mine. Keep your monkey paws offa them."

"Unh--" Gokuu sucked his fingers, looking down into seriously annoyed cat-eyes under sulfur-coloured hair with two tiger-stripe markings on the right cheek. "Lirin?!"

"That's me." Lirin scowled at him.

"You're the youkai in these woods?"

"I'm a youkai and I'm in the woods. That good enough for you?"

"I mean- you're the youkai the people in the town were talking about?"

"Nope. We came to find the youkai the people in the town were talking about. But I don't think they're here. *I* haven't seen anything, whatever. So I'm just having a snack till the others get finished and then we'll go home." She peeled a chestnut with her long claws, easy as peeling a tangerine, and popped it in her mouth. Gokuu looked at her piteously.

"I'm starving," he said.

"Tough cheese."

He sat down across from her. "I'm starving," he insisted.

"Good. Starve. You're the enemy."

She couldn't really mean she'd just sit there and feed her face while he starved to death? "I'll fight you for them," he offered.

"Not interested." She ate another chestnut. The pile was getting smaller. Gokuu moaned again. Her eyes slewed over to look at him. She took a bite, very delicately, chewed carefully, swallowed slowly, licked her lips. A tear ran down Gokuu's face. She took another bite.

"Your brother would give me some," Gokuu said.

She stopped in mid bite. Her face went dark. Then she picked up the pile of chestnuts and threw them at him.

"Alright, eat them then. Eat them all. And I hope you choke!" She humped around, back turned to him. Gokuu shelled three nuts and ate them one two three like that. They warmed his stomach. He started to peel his fourth. Looked at Lirin's hunched back.

"What's the matter?" he asked as he took the skin off.

"Nothing." She sounded totally furious.

"Then why are you mad?"

"Who's mad?"

"You are."

"Am not."

Gokuu was going to say "Are too," but thought better of it. People who wouldn't say straight out how they felt were a pain, but they existed. Like- well, like Sanzou. Only with Sanzou he always knew how Sanzou felt anyway so Sanzou didn't have to say. But he didn't know word one about Lirin.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he said. "It's just, I'm so hungry, I had to get something to eat." She didn't answer. He picked up the remaining chestnuts and put them down next to her. "Here you are. I've had enough now--" which wasn't true, but at least he wasn't going to faint from hunger. "Thank you." Silence. "Uhh- well, be seeing you."

"Baka," Lirin said ferociously. She turned around, picked up a chestnut, and began pulling its casing off as if she was skinning an animal.

"Uhh- yeah. I am. Sanzou keeps telling me."

She snorted. "He's baka too."

"No he's not," Gokuu protested. "Why are you saying that?"

"Because he is," Lirin said scowling.

Gokuu looked at her in perplexity. "What's the matter?" he asked again.

"Nothing's the matter," she said. "Everything's just fine. Madame-my-mother wants you people stopped and so Nii-san has to go out and stop you whether he wants to or not. And he could do it in a minute if he really wanted to but he's too nice to really want to, is why you're still alive and still getting in the way. And then you've got the nerve to say 'How come you're not as nice to me as your brother is, you should be nice to me like he is so I can go on getting in the way.' You're baka and Sanzou's baka and Nii-san's baka and I'm sick of being surrounded by stupid bakas all the time!" She shoved the chestnut into her mouth.

Gokuu thought about that for a minute. "Kougaiji isn't like that," he said finally. "He fights flat out. Does with me anyway."

"No he doesn't. If he did you'd be dead by now."

No point in saying that maybe he was just stronger than Kou. "If he holds back, well, he's the one decided to. He doesn't have to fight us if he doesn't want to."

"Yes he does," Lirin said.

"No he doesn't."

"Yes he does. Cause if he doesn't, his mother stays turned to stone inside a pillar for good."

"How come she's inside a pillar?" Gokuu asked, confused.

Lirin hunched her shoulders. "Madame-my-mother put her there. And she won't let her out until Nii-san stops you."

"Ahhh--" Gokuu tried to figure that one out. "Well, that's simple, isn't it? All Kougaiji has to do is go after your mother instead of us and make her let his mother go. Uh- so why doesn't he?" he wondered.

"Stupid monkey," Lirin said scowling. "You don't understand anything. I bet you don't even have a mother, or a brother, or any family at all, do you? "

"What if I don't?" Gokuu asked defensively. "What difference does it make?"

"Oh, no difference at all, baka. It's OK for you. You can do anything you like. You don't have to worry about how anybody else feels."

"Yes I do," Gokuu said.

"Who? Sanzou? Hah. He doesn't have feelings. You couldn't hurt him if you tried."

"I wouldn't want to hurt Sanzou," he said defensively. "So it's a good thing I can't."

"Yeah well," she humphed, "that's fine for you and Sanzou. But other people are different. You just don't know what it's like to have someone--" She stopped.

"What?"

She frowned at the fire. "To have someone that you don't want to hurt. Cause you might lose them if you did, and you don't want to lose them."

"Yes I do," he said indignantly. "I do know what it's like. I can't remember who they were, but--"

"Can't remember? They must have been really important."

"They were," Gokuu said. His shoulders hunched and he stared at the fire. That memory of someone, just on the edges of consciousness, never ever getting clearer- that feel of somebody like the sun, warm and golden and life-giving and more precious than anyone else in the world. "Whoever they were, I did something really terrible, cause I didn't want to lose them. They put me in chains on top of a mountain for it, and they wouldn't even let me remember what it was I did, was how terrible it was."

"You're free now," she pointed out.

"Yeah. Sanzou... When he came along, I was free. But before that- I was there for ages. Five hundred years, Sanzou says."

"Oh." Lirin poked at the fire, dropped another chestnut onto it. "Like Nii-san."

"Hm?"

"He was chained inside the castle too. In this one room he couldn't leave. I used to come to the bars and talk to him."

"How'd he get out?"

"Madame-my-mother and her scientists- they managed something. Science works better than magic sometimes."

"Oh. Well. That's good, isn't it?" Even if having Sanzou stretching out a hand to you was better...

"Yeah." She pulled a couple more chestnuts out of the fire and flipped one at him. He threw it around in the air to cool it and then started pulling the skin off.

"You don't sound like you're sure about that."

"Of course I'm sure. It's great to have Nii-san out and be able to go places with him, even if it's just to fight you guys. He's happy when he's out. I just wish he'd smile more. Bet he would if- if my mother wasn't around."

"How come?"

"Cause then he wouldn't have to do what Madame-my-mother says. And he wouldn't be- be worrying about his own mother all the time." She brooded. "It must be nice not having a mother."

"I suppose. I don't know what it's like having one." He thought about it. "Gojou's the only one of us had a mother, and she tried to kill him."

"Kill him?! Why?!"

"Cause- well, she was a youkai and he's a half-youkai and he was- her husband had a human lover and-- I dunno. Hakkai tried to explain it to me but I don't get it. She couldn't stand being reminded, I think. That her husband loved somebody better than her. Or something."

"Yeah..." Lirin said. "I guess." She peeled another chestnut. After a bit she said, as if picking up the conversation a couple more stops down the line, "But *I* wouldn't try to kill somebody just because- because somebody I loved loved them better than me. At least- I don't think I would..."

"No," Gokuu said. "I mean, it's not fun, but- you don't go killing people, just 'cause- cause someone likes being with them more than with you..."

"And anyway, she's not even here," Lirin said, as if that made any kind of sense. "She's not here and he still can't think of anyone but her." Lirin drooped.

"Hakkai said sometimes you think more about the people who aren't there than you do about the ones who are," he said, answering the bit he understood. "Cause if they're just there, day to day, you don't have to think about them specially. But if they're gone, you can miss them so much you just can't stop thinking about them."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It's true, though. Up on that mountain- I never saw the sun. It was always behind me. It got light in the morning and the shadows moved left to right and then it got dark, but I never saw the sun, not for years and years. And it was so cold... All I could think of was how much I wanted to-- to see--" He stopped, clamping his mind shut on the memory. "Ah well," he said, grinning, "I'm out now. Everything's fine."

"Oh- yeah," she said, smiling too. "And Nii-san's out too and soon we'll send you guys packing back to the east and then Madame-my-mother will let his mother go and then..." The smile disappeared. She bent her knees and put her arms on top of them and her face behind her arms so he couldn't see how she looked.

"And then?"

"Then they'll leave, I suppose. With Doku nii-san and Yaone-san. And I'll have to stay with Madame-my-mother and her women and- and His-Majesty-my-father when they wake him up... No I won't," she said fiercely. "I won't stay in that horrible castle. I'll go with them. Even if they don't- d-don't want me a-along..." She started crying, little catface screwed up in fury and large tears rolling down her cheeks. Gokuu suddenly discovered what Gojou meant about not being able to take it when women cried.

"Hey," he said hastily, moving over to sit next to her. He put an arm around her shoulder. "Hey, it's OK. Of course they'll want you. C'mon, that's Kougaiji you're talking about. Your own brother. He's not gonna just drop you."

"Yeah- but-" she sniffed. "It's his mother he loves. He's doing it all for her. He loves her more than me."

"Well-- yeah. I mean, she's his mother," Gokuu said reasonably. "You're his sister. It's not- not that he loves her more. Just- you know- different."

"Different," she said bleakly.

"Yeah. It's like- Sanzou, you know, and Gojou. Sanzou- he goes off with Gojou, they go off together to be alone a lot, and he doesn't want me coming along. And Gojou just laughs at me when I say I'm going with them. He calls me a kid and- other stuff. 'N I was really mad about it, but Hakkai said-- he said, when Sanzou's with me he has to act like an older brother and be grown-up and all. But sometimes he wants to be like a younger brother and not have to be uhh what's that thing-responsible, yeah- and when he's with Gojou he can do that. He said Sanzou doesn't like Gojou better than me, just different."

"That's no help," Lirin said. "I don't want him feeling different. I want him to like me the same."

"Yeah but-- I mean, it's always different, the way you like people," Gokuu told her seriously. "Like, Hakkai said, I like him and I like Sanzou but do I like them both the same way? And when he put it that way, I saw what he meant. Like, I can't feel about Hakkai the way I do about Sanzou, or about Sanzou the way I do about Hakkai, cause they're different people. And I mean- would you want Kougaiji to love you like you were his mother?"

"Oh," she said, as if this point hadn't occurred to her. "No. Not at all. But-"

"Mh?"

"I'd like somebody to love me better than anybody else. And nobody does. Doku Nii-san and Yaone-san, they love my brother. And Nii-san- he loves his mother. And Madame-my-mother-" She gave a little laugh. "She doesn't love anybody."

"Yeah well- somebody will some day. Sure to."

"You think?" She brooded.

"Of course," he said firmly though he couldn't imagine who. Somebody with a taste for spoiled kittens. But lots of people liked kittens. "Lots of people like- uhh, girls like you."

"Oh." Amazingly she blushed. And at once looked annoyed that she'd blushed. "So- what about you? You got anyone special? Besides that person you don't remember?"

"Sure. Sanzou."

"Baka. I mean, is there anyone you love?"

"Mhmm-- I don't know." He'd never even thought about it. "Sanzou- he needs me, and Hakkai and I get along good, but that's different. I don't know if I want to love anyone. It sounds kinda weird, you know? All this love and sex stuff- it makes people-- weird. Like Gojou." Gokuu frowned. "You should see him when he gets near a woman. It's like he turns into someone else. He goes all sweet and soft and he smiles this funny way and he doesn't seem to see anything else. Betcha I could come right up and kick his shin and he wouldn't even notice. It's scary. People shouldn't change that much just 'cause..." His voice trailed off.

"Yeah. I'm not gonna be like that, for sure," Lirin agreed. "It's silly."

"Mnh." Gokuu ate another chestnut. "You think we'll have a choice?" he asked at last.

"Sure," she said, looking surprised. "Why not?"

"Just--" He didn't know how to say it. "Gojou- I mean, it's like he can't help himself. Sanzou calls him a cock-driven dweeb. And--"

"Yeah well, that's him. But nobody else is like that. Nii-san doesn't go funny when he's near women."

"Yeah but--" Gokuu sighed, trying to get the words. "Hakkai, right? He's always so calm and nice to people, right? But he killed a thousand youkai because they took his girlfriend away from him and she died. And I mean, if that could happen to Hakkai..." Behind that was another thought he wasn't going to look at too close because it was too scary to remember, the little of it that he could remember. The thing that had happened when he'd seen Sanzou fall bleeding with Rikudou's staff through him-- the blankness in his head, the rage and despair at seeing Sanzou hurt that had seemed to rip him apart, and with him the whole world... And I don't love Sanzou even. What would it be like with someone I did? He shuddered. "Maybe it's something that happens when you start- you know- having sex and all. You know- like animals go funny when they get old enough to mate."

"Oh nonsense," Lirin said obstinately. "Sex is just, you know, what people do. It's not like they go into heat or anything..." She checked. Thought a minute, frowning. "Well, maybe it makes some people weird. But not me."

"You don't know that."

"Sure I do. If I say I'm not going funny, then I'm not."

"Are you even old enough to know?"

"What do these look like?" She flipped a thumb at her chest. "A ten year old?" Gokuu blushed.

"So-- you ever done it?'

"No, of course not. Who'd I have to do it with?"

"Unhh- I dunno. Dokugaku?"

"Hunh?? He's old. He's gotta be thirty at least. No way."

"So you don't know. First time it happens to you, you might- you might stop being you completely."

"Baka."

"Don't laugh. It happens."

"To you?"

"Yeah. I mean- not cause of that. But yeah, it's happened." He hunched his shoulders.

"Really?" Her eyes were wide in amazement. "You turned into someone else?"

"People said. I don't remember."

"But why'd it happen? You have a controller or something that came off?"

Gokuu felt his face go red. She was getting too close. "It just did," he said doggedly. He didn't want to try explaining about Sanzou, especially when he didn't understand it himself. And he sure didn't want to encourage that deeply interested look of hers.

"Do it now."

"I can't. It just happened. I- I couldn't stop it happening."

"Ohh." He could almost see the wheels turning in her head. "I see."

"What do you see?" he asked defensively.

"Oh, nothing." She shrugged a little. Gokuu looked at her mistrustingly.

"Whatever you think it is, you're wrong, you know."

"Yeah, yeah." She looked at him with a smile. "Hey, you wanna kiss me?"

Whaat? "No."

"Aw come on."

"Don't be stupid. Why would I want to kiss you?"

"Well- cause. It's nice. People do it a lot."

"Sounds yuck to me. People's spit all over your mouth."

"Oh come on. Spoilsport. What're we gonna do for the next little bit, just sit here and wait till it's time to go back?"

"We can play jan-ken for the rest of the nuts."

"I don't want any more nuts."

"I'll eat them then." He reached and grabbed a handful. Lirin's eyes went to slits.

"I know," she said. "Let's play jan-ken, and the loser has to take something off."

"Off?"

"A piece of clothing. You win when the other guy has no more clothes."

"Heyy! That's funny." He grinned. Then he thought about it. "You wanna? I'm wearing more than you."

"Well-" she thought about it. "Take your cloak off, and if we say earrings count, then we're about even."

"OK. Oh- but--" Shit, his diadem. "I can't take this off. I- it's- something they put on me way back when--"

"Oh- OK. Let's say that doesn't count then. And maybe we should make the fire bigger."

"Yeah, good." They got up and foraged for tree branches. After a few minutes the campfire had become something closer to a bonfire and Gokuu was starting to sweat.

"Wouldn't mind losing a few clothes now," he said. They settled, facing each other.

"Jan ken pon!"

"I win!" Lirin cried. Gokuu pulled off his tunic.

"Jan ken pon!" Gokuu lost his shirt.

"Jan ken pon!"

"Yay!" Gokuu yelled, and Lirin took off her jacket.

"Not your earring?" Gokuu asked.

"'M supposed to keep them in. They got spells on them."

"Oh. What happens you take them out?"

"I don't know. I'll find out when I do."

"Jan ken pon!"

Lirin took off a boot.

"Jan ken pon!"

She took off the other boot, face going still with annoyance.

"Tell you what," Gokuu said. "Someone loses three times, the other guy can put something back on instead. Make it last longer." He picked up his shirt.

"OK," Lirin said, "but I'm putting my boot back on then."

"Fine."

"Jan ken pon! Ai kou deshou! Ai kou deshou!"

"Shit," Lirin said, and took off a sock. Gokuu always led scissors, apparently, but after that it was up in the air.

"Jan ken pon! Ai kou deshou! Ai kou deshou! Ai kou deshou! YEAHH!!" she yelled, and Gokuu took off his boot. Boot, dammit. Well- both boots and the socks and the shirt and trousers- does he wear underwear? that's five more times I gotta win at least. With determination she set to jankenning in earnest.

MJJ Jan-Feb 2001