Chapter 07: The Wayward Receipt
Clacking smoothly beneath his feet, Sesshoumaru could feel the steel centipede race along its fixed track. Trapped in the husk of its segmented body, he held onto the bar overhead with one hand, letting the beast take him where it pleased, and hoping that they somehow agreed. Souta had called it an elevated train. He looked down at the boy sitting in the plastic seat beside him. A locomotion of man.
It reeked of them at the very least. Sweat mostly, but there were a host of other odors as well, and none of them were flattering. Still, it was the nature of the summer, even when they hovered upon the cusp of fall.
“Isn’t that heavy?” a young woman asked from the seat across from them. She gestured to the stack of lumber he held on his shoulder. Pungent as she spoke, he could smell her sickly sweet breath. It reminded him of mint. ‘Strange.’
“He’s fine,” Souta snapped.
Taken aback by the sharpness of his reply, she looked up at the daiyoukai, and then back at the boy. They both stared at her in silence.
“Oh.” Confused and unexpectedly embarrassed, she pulled a magazine from her purse, and turned away.
Looking around the train, Souta caught several surreptitious glances their way. A few passengers whispered, and he growled when one pointed a finger. Crossing his arms against his chest, he leaned back and sighed.
“People are stupid. Don’t they realize that they’re staring at us and how rude that is? It’s so annoying.”
“It has always been this way,” Sesshoumaru replied. “In three hundred years, nothing has changed.”
The boy nodded.
“The only improvement is that they do not do anything that requires me to kill them now. I cannot melt them with poison, but I can toss them off of the centipede for their transgressions.”
In shock, Souta looked up at him.
The demon looked back; his expression was both blank and honest.
“You can’t kill anyone.”
“Why?”
“You just can’t. It’s wrong.”
Sesshoumaru shrugged. “I find that to be a remarkably insufficient reason. Humans are more prevalent now than ever. A little population control might be a benefit.”
His mouth dropped. “You can’t. It’s wrong. Taking a life is wrong.”
“Why?”
Pressing his brain, Souta scrambled to think of a better reason. Shouldn’t wrong be good enough? Then he smiled in triumph. “Because it’s against the law.”
“Law?”
“The government made it against the law.”
He nodded. “The government. That was mentioned in those books that Kagome retrieved for me. Instead of lands divided by feudal lords, the islands of Japan are united under one government. They were ruled under an emperor at one point, but now a group of men are elected into office by the common people, though I find it odd that they would permit the peasants to decide over such important affairs. Human are such unfathomable creatures.”
“Anyhow,” Souta went on, “In order for our government to protect its people, it enforces laws. One of them makes murder illegal.”
“Hm.”
“If anyone violates the law, they get arrested by the police. Eventually, they get tried in court, and if they’re guilty, they get punished.”
“Are they then killed?”
“Only if they’ve done something really bad, like murder. Usually they just go to jail for a very long time.”
“That seems to be a considerable amount of unnecessary effort. Why not stab them and be done with it?”
“What if they aren’t guilty? What if the wrong person was caught?”
“An unlikely occurrence.”
“It’s happened before.”
“The accidental death of one human is hardly a tragedy. Many innocent ones die from illnesses and injuries every year. They did nothing to deserve it.”
“But you can’t compare people getting hurt or sick to purposefully killing someone for a crime they didn’t commit. People can’t help dying from car accidents or heart attacks. It’s just bad luck. Besides, the government and the police are supposed to protect the innocent, not make us live in fear. That’s what the laws are for. What good is it to have rules, if the people in charge can break them whenever they want?”
A long silence passed as Sesshoumaru mulled over the boy’s reasoning.
“Laws, you say?”
Souta nodded.
“Demanding order from this chaotic city, these laws appeal to me.”
He let out a sigh of relief.
Letting out a whistling whine, the train began to brake. With a pin-pon, the intercom turned on, and a friendly woman announced their arrival at the upcoming station.
“That’s our stop,” Souta said as he turned around in his seat to look out the oversized window.
“Good,” Sesshoumaru replied, and shrugged to adjust the stack of wood until it was comfortable.
Built with sterile gray concrete and trimmed in a sharp blue, the station platform appeared as their train glided up beside it. From business suits to school uniforms, a few dozen people stood out on the platform, each waiting behind the red line that ran parallel with the track.
Coming to a smooth stop, the train idled for a moment. Then there was a mechanical hiss, and the doors slid open. Normally impatient, the other passengers hung back, wary of the strange man and the boy near the exit. Taking the opportunity, Sesshoumaru and Souta stepped off the train first. Making their way across the platform, they wove through the milling people waiting to get on. They soon found the exit gate, and they took the short flight of stairs down to the sidewalk below. Wedged between a traffic-clogged street and a dizzying array of storefronts, they began the final leg of their journey home.
“What are we building today?” the boy asked. The novelty of the mystery had finally given way to his pressing curiosity.
Sesshoumaru snorted, noting the ‘we’ he used so loosely.
“The sliding door is new, and the stairs don’t creak anymore. After ripping it out a while ago, we finished laying the new upstairs floor last week. All of the cabinets have new hinges, and are repainted. I know that Mama said it would be nice to have a new table in the family room, especially after we spilled glue all over the old one. Maybe we can just sand it and repaint it too.” He laughed. “Wouldn’t it be funny if she thought it was new?”
“A new table for the family room may be a fine addition at another time.”
“Oh,” Souta murmured, puzzled. “Then what’s this wood for? It’s a type used in furniture, isn’t it? Aren’t we making a table?”
“We are crafting a table, but not one for the house.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I am not the sole pupil in this new way of the warrior, so why should I be the only one who has a table on which to work?”
The meaning behind his cryptic remark sank in, and Souta’s eyes lit up. “We’re making me a worktable?!”
The daiyoukai nodded.
“All right!” he half-yelled, unable contain his excitement. “My own workbench!”
He smirked, amused and pleased by the boy’s exuberance.
“So what did we buy exactly?” he said as he opened the plastic bag he carried. His interest, which had been somewhat mild at the hardware store, suddenly erupted, and now he wanted to examine everything. “Let me see if I can figure out what it’s gonna look like. This is so awesome!”
The afternoon breeze picked up, and a flimsy slip of paper hardly worth noticing was swept up out of the bag.
“Crap! The receipt!” Souta yelled, watching it as it fluttered and flew out past between two parked cars. “Mama’s gonna kill me!” His mind awhirl with new tables and his mother’s measured wrath, he was hopelessly distracted from the danger as he dove out into the street after the insignificant piece of paper. Had it been any other day, he never would have done it.
As he stumbled out onto the hot asphalt, he realized his mistake, but by then it was too late. The cool shadow of the delivery truck was already upon him. There was no time to brake.
The whine of twisting metal tore the air. The sour stink of coolant sprayed, followed by the heady pungency of gasoline and oil. Some of it splattered on his face, and it burned.
Though his eyes were pinched shut, Souta felt something strong wrapped around him, protecting him from the scattering chunks of metal and the shards of glass that showered from the sky. A terrifying eternity passed for him in that fraction of a second that when the eerie silence finally came, he could hardly believe it.
Shouts began to pepper the quiet.
His vision blurry at first, the boy opened his eyes to pieces of truck strewn about the street. Warm and secure against him, he noticed the powerful arms of the daiyoukai around him. Swelling at cuts along the surface of his skin, red began to trickle and drip.
“Sesshoumaru! Sesshoumaru!”
“I’m here,” he answered softly.
Hearing his deep voice, Souta shook as he was overwhelmed with hard sobs. “Are-are you… Are you all right?!”
“I’m fine.”
The boy twisted around, and buried his face into the demon’s chest as he hugged him tightly. He could feel beneath his torn shirt. His back was sticky with blood. “You’re hurt, Sesshoumaru! I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did it. I was so stupid. And now you’re hurt, and it’s all my fault. I’m so sorry.”
“Do not concern yourself. The wounds are shallow and not even worth mentioning.”
“B-but…”
The daiyoukai pulled Souta back so that he could look him in the eye. “Not worth mentioning. We must go now.”
Sniffing and hiccupping, he stifled his sobs and bit his tongue, afraid that if he said anything more that he’d start crying again. Sesshoumaru was going to be all right. Inhaling deep through his nose, he nodded instead.
“Good.” With bits of glass and debris spilling from him, Sesshoumaru stood up. They then took a few steps away, and looked back at the demon-shaped hole in the truck’s engine.
On the sidewalk, a crowd of people stared in wordless disbelief. Then one began to clap. And then another. Soon a rush of applause surrounded them, accented with cheers and high-pitched whistles.
“What are they doing?” Sesshoumaru asked.
“You’re a hero.”
“A hero?”
He nodded, and rubbed his wet eyes with the back of his hand before looking up at the daiyoukai. “You’re a hero.”
A siren wailed in the distance. Trapped behind a wall of stopped motorists, flashing lights spun, but when Souta spotted them, he tugged on the tail of Sesshoumaru’s shirt. “It’s the police. We have to go.”
“Are they not allies? Enforcers of your laws?”
“Now wouldn’t be the best time for an introduction. Not too many people can stop trucks with their bodies, and only get a few scratches. They’re gonna ask questions that are probably best left unanswered.”
The youkai nodded. Even as he was perplexed over the need for secrecy, he accepted that it wasn’t his culture. It wasn’t wise to debate when he had very limited knowledge on the subject.
Together, they abandoned the lumber, the plastic bag and the wayward receipt. They slipped through the flocks of onlookers until no one recognized them anymore. Soon, Souta was leading them down side streets and alleys until they saw the familiar trees lining the shrine.
Still echoing in his ears as they climbed the steps, Sesshoumaru remembered the crowd’s applause. ‘You’re a hero.’
One by ladybattousai