Mask

Chapter 01

The nurse looked down at her charge for a long time, taking in his proud features and massive frame, then checked his vitals and marked them on her diagnostic sheet. He was doing fine—weak, but fine despite the numerous cuts, bruises, and broken bones his fact sheet proclaimed him to have. Even after a long time wondering, she still couldn't decide whether the purplish mark on his forehead was a birth mark, a wound, or a tattoo.

The nurse—not for the first time—asked herself where he had come from.

Just then, the nurse in charge of the floor poked her head in the door. "You're still here, Jenny?" the older woman asked, gray hair escaping in wisps from beneath her cap.

Jenny shrugged. "It's quiet tonight."

The older nurse moved into the shadowy room, darting professional looks at the machines surrounding the sleeping man. "I'm assuming you heard who this man is?" she asked, looking sideways at Jenny as she checked the sleeping man's pulse.

Jenny shook her head, hoping against all hope that she would soon find out. "All I know is that he was brought in by private helicopter and that his work-up was paid in full." She tried not to look too interested. "Do you know anything else, Lyn?"

'Lyn' snorted. "Of course I do. I'm in charge here, aren't I?"

Jenny—having dealt with Lyn enough to know that pressing her would never help matters—stayed quiet until Lyn felt ready to begin her gossip.

"We had to ask about the nature of his wounds, of course," Lyn began, "and when they told us 'car accident', we knew they were lying. Everything's too severe!" Her thin lips twisted into a leer. "So we pressed the courier for the truth. He caved and told us that this one is a professional fighter who had lost a match in the most vicious martial arts tournament in the world."

Jenny wasn't stupid. "So I suppose the one paying for the tests and things is this fighter's sponsor, or something like that?"

Sniffing, Lyn shot Jenny a sour look. She didn't like having her thunder stolen. "Yes, exactly." She snatched the clipboard from Jenny.

"What's his name?" Jenny asked, trailing Lyn out into the hall.

"Who, the fighter or the sponsor?"

"Both, I guess."

The Lyn frowned as they walked down the hall to the nurses' station. "That's the strange thing—we have a first names for both, but not lasts."

"What are the ones we have?"

Picking up the room assignment sheet, she located the mysterious fighter's room and read aloud: "The sponsor calls himself 'Sakyo,' and the patient's name is 'Bui.' No last name, just… 'Bui.'"

"Foreign? 'Sakyo' sounds Asian, I think."

"I suppose," Lyn answered. "The names aren't like anything I've ever heard." She turned to one of the three computers at the station and said: "I have to enter this data into the system. Get back to work."

Jenny nodded, but her mind was elsewhere. Walking to one of the empty PCs, she opened up a search engine and hesitantly typed in the word 'bui.'

She shot a surreptitious glance at Lyn as she waited for the page to load, but she needn't have worried: Lyn was quite busy tapping the information into the computer one key at a time.

When Jenny looked back at the screen, she had her results—an acronym for 'boating under the influence' spelled 'bui,' but there were no hits concerning the man in the hospital bed. Feeling crestfallen, she typed 'Sakyo' into the engine and waited.

"If you're trying to look him up," Lyn said suddenly, scaring Jenny out of her wits, "there's nothing. I already checked."

Jenny blushed and exited the screen without looking at it. Sakyo could wait. "I'm going to go make my rounds," she said as she stood up. "Page me if he" –there was no need to specify who 'he' was—"wakes up."

Lyn shook her head. "That one's not waking up for days. Head trauma."

Jenny frowned. "You mean that purple mark on his face?"

"Yup."

"I thought it looked like an old wound."

Lyn tapped her brow with a finger. "The purple part is an old wound, but there's a new one on it, too—blends in so you can't see it, but it's there, all right." She cupped her hands around her mouth to make it look like she was attempting to keep a secret. "If you ask me, the new wound looks like it was made from somebody's knuckles!"

Jenny didn't say anything to that as she walked off. There were six other patients on the floor, but as she made her midnight rounds she realized that her motions were mechanical, automatic—all she could think of was Bui, and it was something of a relief to go back to his room to check on him.

Studying him, she could not help but suppress a smile. He was so tall that they had had to put an extra bed at the foot of another so he wouldn't fall off—how tall had they measured him? Somewhere around nine feet?

With a build like that, no wonder he was a fighter.

Dragging over a chair, Jenny sat down next to Bui and put a tentative hand over his colossal one. His skin was cool and slightly rough, and her hand looked like a child's compared to his.

"Hello, Bui," she said, tracing the blue veins hiding beneath his skin. "My name's Jenny. We're taking good care of you."

She studied his face for a reaction—a twitch of the lips, eyes moving under closed lids—but saw nothing. She sighed, but decided to keep talking to him. He hadn't had any visitors; maybe speaking to him would help him recover faster. It would be lonely to have no family visit. Or did he even have any family?

"I heard you lost a fight," Jenny said. "The one to beat you must have been a real monster—you look strong." But was he, really? After checking to make sure Lyn was no where nearby, Jenny lifted the blanket off of Bui and peeked underneath his hospital gown. She gasped. He had muscles galore stretched taut beneath his skin, but what had made her gasp was the abundance of scars that marred his body. Some stretched as long as her arm and looked as old as the world.

"Who could have done this to you?" she whispered, replacing the blanket and smock. "I'm so sorry—Lyn and I will do our best to keep you healthy, don't worry." She smoother the hair from Bui's forehead—it was silver and rougher than she had anticipated. Not for the first time, she studied his face and absorbed his features. He had a classic, understated handsomeness one would see only after a little concentration: a strong nose, a pronounced jaw, high cheeks, eyes rimmed with lashes. She wondered at their color, hoping it was a pale one to complement his hair and contrast his tan skin.

Realizing just how attached she was becoming to the silver-haired man, Jenny stood up and said: "Well, good bye, Bui. I'll see you later."

She walked out the door, intending to not go back to see him until absolutely necessary, but something stopped her. A low moan drifted out of the room, as did a rustle and a harsh intake of breath.

Jenny bolted back to Bui's side, elated to find him stirring at last. His lips were pressed together in a firm line, and sweat rolled off his forehead in waves.

Jenny shouted Lyn's name as she checked Bui's pulse; it beat erratically beneath his skin. "It's okay!" Jenny said, smoothing his hair and wiping the sweat from his brow. "It's okay, you're safe, Bui!"

His eyes cracked open, and Jenny was caught in a sliver of icy blue. "It's okay—" she said again, but Bui's hand had curled around her own and tightened. Jenny gasped and tried to pull him off of her, but he was too strong. Bones splintered beneath his grip, and as he pulverized her hand Jenny let out a bone-chilling scream.

Lyn entered, then, and her face turned white as she saw the blood leaking from between Bui's fingers. "Let her go!" the old woman shrieked as she wrapped her arms around Jenny's waist to tug her away.

Bui obeyed and let go, but a single slash from his hand sent Lyn's head rolling across the tile floor. Jenny and Lyn slumped to the floor in unison, Lyn dead and Jenny quickly dying from loss of blood.

Bui, heedless to the destruction he had wrought, stumbled from his bed and made his way to the room's large window. A punch sent glass shards flying. He fell out of the second-story window and into the dark night with nary a pause.

The ground rushed up to meet him, and embraced him with concrete arms.

Well, at least I've left Bui with a few vestiges of his former ferocity. No softie-Bui for this fic, no sir. And no, he's not dead. Far from it. You'll see why he was so weird when he woke up next chapter.

So there are only four listed fics on this site with Bui in them. Since I think Bui is absolutely wonderful, I'm going to fix this in my own small way. I'm here to write a story about an unjustly overlooked demon, and to do a reasonably good job with him.

Give Bui a chance. He's cooler than most.

This fic will be a character study. Lots of Bui, lots of interaction with the main OC, lots of… well, character development. So, it's a romance? I don't know.

For those who want to know, the OC Bui is paired with will be appearing next chapter.