Less

We are all fighters. And we all must sacrifice. We may take different paths in life but we have one obligation to it. We must move ourselves to violence from time to time. We must do our best to secure our happiness, after all. We owe life. For what is happiness?

Passion.

That is…what shakes the human heart.

What makes the human heart decide.

Prologue- Beloved

There is nothing to gain and nothing to lose. For us, we have already achieved what is wanted, because we have already suffered and lost. We endured to know that we exist through the other.

We are beloved.

What was wrong with everyone? The neighbors clung to their gates, blunt nails on chalky metal. They watched for him coming out of the house in the morning to go to school, even when they should be looking after their own children.

"Ritsuka-chan, Ritsuka-chan, why don't you have some of these cookies I made?"

"Don't you have a thicker jacket than that? It's so cold out. You can borrow Yuki-chan's."

"Why, Ritsuka, it looks like your mother forgot to make you a bento today. I expect she was just too busy. I was so silly I accidentally made a few onigiri with crab, and Yuki-chan won't eat those. Would you like them?"

They are so nice Ritsuka always tries to grin in appreciation.

They are so different from his mother that it's too hard.

It hurts to know the difference. Even though they are being kind, Ritsuka's mind immediately goes on ahead, making excuses for his mother, who is not.

The housewives from next door are plump, with small friendly crinkles pinching their eyes as they smile at him. Their busts are like loaves of bread over the ties of their aprons and their hairstyles are rolled short and have discolored bits in them.

Ritsuka's mother is very beautiful; she's the prettiest wife and mother on the block. Her face is smooth like a child's and she has long black hair that flows all the way to her small waist. She's slim and willowy like a high school girl. When she walks she is graceful and brisk, so she always looks so light on her feet when she crosses the room to backhand her child. Misaki does not smile, but at least there are no cracks running from her cheeks into the corners of her mouth when she frowns or cries.

If Ritsuka can't think he has a loving mother, he can at least think he has a beautiful one.

Before he ever gets a chance to say anything back to the women offering surrogate motherhood, Seimei comes out behind him, his backpack slung limply over one broad shoulder and Ritsuka's messenger bag dangling on the heel of his palm like it weighs nothing. Ritsuka devours books. He hauls a fresh supply in his bag from the school library every week—they drag down his side so he has to limp back and forth. But Seimei has all six of them, hardback novels, tucked neatly and casually under an arm.

"Ritsuka, why did you run out of the house so fast?" He calls out pleasantly. "You didn't take any of your things."

He leans close to Ritsuka's ear, ignoring the neighbors who for some reason take on an expression of surprise, as if they didn't think someone handsome, sunny, lithe like the boys' sulky mother, could ever come out of that house. He keeps his voice down, so whispery soft that Ritsuka has to tilt his papery cat ear onto his lip to catch his words.

"Ritsuka, you shouldn't have tried to talk back and then stayed to pick up your books. From now own, just run out if she's like that in the morning. I'll bring out your things for you."

He pauses to sympathetically touch the faint new redness on Ritsuka's neck, which hasn't had a chance to bruise. His fingers are gentle and his voice is low.

"And we'll stop by the drug store on our way to school. If we ice it and then put on some medicine, it should be okay. Don't worry about being late to school, I'll go in with you and talk to your teacher."

Seimei was going to lie. Ritsuka notices he lies a lot, over Ritsuka's tardiness or missing curfew or not being in his bed in the morning. About a cat stuck in a tree or a car accident or someone dropping down dead on the street. But that's fine. He always does it and everyone seems charmed into believing him.

And Seimei would never lie to hurt someone else.

Ritsuka feels crunching in his hand. He looks down and it's Seimei pressing a thousand-yen bill into his small fist.

"S-Seimei!"

"Sh. Mom didn't cook anything for you to take with you and you didn't even get a chance to finish your breakfast before she started shouting. We'll get you some snacks, but buy a school lunch today."

He loves Seimei. He loves the way Seimei looks just like him, only older, so when he peers into his face it's like he's glimpsing a future where he's confident and strong and can make adult decisions like lying to help someone who loves him and he loves in turn. He loves how Seimei can take a matter-of-fact tone with their mother, never raising his voice at her, never crying when she screams that he's hateful and stupid for taking Ritsuka's side.

He loves Seimei so much their mother is just a pesky interloper whose screaming fits get drowned out by their chatter as soon as they are walking alone together to school, their fingers interlocked.

Like he doesn't even need a replacement for her. Like those neighbors can't fill any void that doesn't exist.

"A…ah, Seimei-chan!" they cry out anxiously, unnerved by this warm, beautiful young man who barged in on their gestures that might not be so desperately needed after all. "My, you're getting big…Why don't you and Ritsuka-chan stop by after school for dinner? I know your mother gets too tired to cook sometimes…"

Seimei reaches out and rubs Ritsuka's dark hair, chunky in the front and sleek in the back, something he inherited from their mother.

"Please, call us 'Aoyagi'." he answers. A cold reply delivered with a warm voice. He turns away from them and pushes Ritsuka's face away from them with his hand still on his head.

The message is clear and familiar: don't be so personal with us.

Because we don't need your pity. We are not pitiful. We are not loveless. It should be obvious.

"Let's go, Ritsuka."

"Ok…" Ritsuka agrees. Seimei drops his almost empty messenger bag around him, then adjusts it to drape the right way on his body. Ritsuka puts a hand out for his books but Seimei holds them out of his reach.

"I'll carry them, they're heavy. You can take them when we get to your school."

"Ok. Thank you, Seimei."

Seimei doesn't wait even until they're out of their walkway and the stares of the neighbors. He bends down on one knee, like he's making a promise, and kisses Ritsuka on the forehead. Ritsuka reaches out to take the hand he knows is there.

For we are beloved.

- - -

Anyone who does not know he is loved doesn't deserve it.

"Soubi?"

Seimei nonchalantly breaks off their kiss.

"Yes?"

"Kill them."

And he does. The team they were battling are now lying on their sides, the grass around them glistening, sprinkled with blood and vomit. They look dead. Seimei has never made him battle so viciously before, and it shows in their enemies' young battered faces and limbs akimbo. Soubi almost wants to go over and check their pulses. But Seimei beckons him and Soubi follows.

When they battle, Seimei kisses casually, innocently, passionless even when his tongue slips out of his mouth to gently caress Soubi's lips. The quiet after simmers, heavy, until he gives the inevitable command.

Revoke their existence. Negate them.

And today: Kill them.

It's alright. Soubi knows his own strength. He knows he didn't kill them. And the area they chose is quite popular for weekend shoppers, they would be arriving as soon as the sun rose. The other team would get the help they needed. But meanwhile Seimei is tugging on the front of his shirt and pushing their mouths together again.

Chastely.

"Thank you, Soubi. I wasn't sure you'd do it."

"I'd do anything you asked." Soubi smiles. It's like any normal conversation. Seimei tells Soubi he'd glad Soubi obeys him, Soubi says he's glad to obey Seimei. But today, something feels…off…

Soubi watches the back of Seimei's neck, unblemished and pale in the darkness. Of course. Seimei hasn't been restricted in ages.

Seimei is an uncommonly good mood. He's paranoid, constantly wiping his hands and jerking away from people who move too close to him too quickly. But he's actually got a skip to his step and humming as if he doesn't mind that his mother will launch herself into him as soon as he walks through the door.

"Soubi."

"Yes?"

Seimei's eyes over his unmarked shoulder, playful and lazy, are frightening.

"How did you lose your ears?"

Soubi stops dead in his tracks. Seimei halts with him, the subtle twist of his body turning him around to face his fighter.

Seimei plays these games sometimes. Not the right kind, the ones they always play. The ones that make things feel off, something that Seimei knows. Soubi knows he does it on purpose, and…he doesn't know why.

"Don't be so quiet. You said you'd do anything for me, right?" Seimei steps up to him. He's tall, but not as tall as Soubi, and the way he tilts his chin up makes it feel like a stare-down. "I want you to tell me."

Soubi says nothing.

Seimei slides up to him, clasping his hands together at Soubi's lower back, holding his waist.

"So there really is something you won't do for me."

Still nothing.

"Then…I want you to take my ears from me."

"Seimei!"

Seimei laughs, letting him go and resuming walking.

"I'm kidding," he says calmly. "I like having my ears. People who lose them…it's like they're always showing off a half-exposed secret that makes you want to be nosy and ask questions. It's just not cute."

"Seimei…"

Seimei doesn't even look back.

"What does it matter if we both aren't cute?" he says out loud, clear and echoing in the empty streets. "I still love you and you still love me. We're 'Beloved'."

Soubi loves Seimei, and Seimei loves him. That's the truth. That's the rule between a sacrifice and his fighter. There is no point doubting certainty, doubting a law. Seimei locked with him from the moment they met.

Soubi deciphers the secrets encrypted in Seimei's heart, their strength. The force of it was enough to bring Seimei to his knees the first few times. But afterwards, when Soubi helped him up again, Seimei would pull him close and whisper how happy he was. Giving a little of himself up, knowing the person who would keep it and never lose it—that made him so happy. As if, even though he hadn't been lonely before, he now knows he never will be.

Soubi is what defines me, he'd murmured. I like that.

Their had name appeared at the same time. Soubi's is on his neck, the scars scoring his breastbone into the crude likeness of a beautiful word, "beloved". He'd opened his shirt to show Seimei and Seimei had placed his fingertips to it, as if claiming Soubi, as if blessing what allowed him to claim Soubi.The barbed-wire vines warp around like they're strangling him, but Soubi and Seimei both know it's more like a collar. Telling you where and to whom you belonged.

But Seimei has never showed him where his name is. It doesn't show anywhere obvious, and it doesn't match Soubi's, at least in where it is. And Soubi has never felt that it's right to ask him, something that important. Seimei is the sacrifice. It's supposed to be Soubi's power, all fighters' power, to comprehend his sacrifice. He doubts that there was ever a fighter who had to question his sacrifice's intentions. No, he hasn't even thought about Seimei's motives once. Fighters do not wonder about their sacrifice's motives because that is irrelevant.

There is only one intention of the sacrifice that fighters have to be concerned with, and it's an intention they can be sure of. It is that their sacrifice loves them. A fighter that suspects anything else isn't a fighter at all.

Seimei loves him, that is Soubi's one and only reality.

It has to be.

"Soubi, I was kidding before, but you really must never disobey my orders. Not even when I'm dead."

But sometimes…sometimes things don't feel right.

I am…your beloved, aren't I?

- - -

Author's Notes:

The top is an excerpt from "Earthian," the other Yun Kouga series that was translated into English. It's quite good after the first book, I highly recommend it.

Even before Ritsuka and Soubi met each other, their central relationships were both focused on Seimei. And so they are indirectly related through him. "Beloved" is the first mentioned name, so I used it to describe prior to when they meet and are both still fixated on Seimei. I tried to use two scenarios that epitomized the interactions each had with Seimei; Ritsuka finding meaning in life outside of abuse, and Soubi fulfilling his sense of identity by battle with his partner. Because of Seimei, both felt "Beloved". And by the official start of this fic, Chapter 1, he will have left them both "Loveless".