Half a Soul (Whole)
Summary: Rikuo has no soulmate, for curse spoken by dying breath is binding, so Nurarihyon’s grandson is a whole soul.
The boy is three parts human, one part yokai, but he does just fine until his father’s blood splashes onto his cheeks, and he watches the Winter die in his eyes.
(A whole soul splitting himself into two when he cannot bear being one)
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Disclaimer: I don’t own Nurarihyon no Mago
Spring came and Lord Pandemonium saw the flower buds bloom and fell in love with the first blossom of the season- Yohime, with healing hands like glowing beacons in the dark night he haunted.
(He was aflame with passion- so hot inside he knew what this must be. It ripped at his sanity when all other things had not- so this must be it. Love).
Hagoromo Gitsune rips his heart out of his chest (takes his bride, from under his nose, his clever, but young love) but he snatches it back with vengeance, for no one takes what’s his.
The demon fox is slain and she spits words of venom, words of hatred, words of power, for she calls his name and speaks them with her last breath. A curse spoken in the face of death is binding, and no true love’s kiss can break it.
‘’I curse you, Nurarihyon! That your yokai bloodline may die out, and that you may suffer the pain of knowing!’’
Once upon a time, Lord Pandemonium did not care, because he had his soulmate, and if she were human, then what would it matter if his yokai line would die out? He got Yohime, Yohime got her child, and all three of them got happiness.
Pink petals fall into the pond and the water ripples. Blossoms are short-lived, do not survive beyond Spring, and Yohime dies like grass in the glaring summer sun.
His son remains unchanging, frozen in time as he is, illuminated by the very sun that bled the lifeblood from his mother’s veins. He is the lazy afternoon warmth, the carefree children splashing in the water, he’s the sand too hot to walk on and the unforgiving summer storm breaking loose over their heads, unleashing thunder and lightning in the downpour that runs not cold but hot. He’s beautiful and leads their clan into a new era, his lovely wife at his side.
They are marked for each other, Yamabuki Otome and Rihan Nura, but curses spoken by dying breath cannot be broken by true love’s kiss- not even if the participants form a soul together. One of them hanyou, the other yokai, and they want a child so, so badly.
And Nurarihyon, who sits next to the cherry blossom tree he planted upon his wife’s death, curses himself as Summer turns into Fall and the water ripples again.
Yamabuki is a tree that may bear a thousand blossoms, but never a single fruit. She blames herself for a curse not hers and leaves the Nura family grove with heavy, heavy feet. Her husband only finds out after the fact, running after her and stumbling upon her body, withered as the leaves from the trees, a woman bereft of life in heartbreak.
Half of Rihan’s soul is missing and it hurts. He does not laugh. He does not smile. He forgets to move, to eat, to breathe and wilts. Wilts like he died alongside her.
‘’I curse you, Nurarihyon! That your yokai bloodline may die out, and that you may suffer the pain of knowing!’’
Sometimes, when the light shines just so through the canopy, during the intake of breath before the twilight, Nurarihyon fears that she meant the pain of losing a child.
It haunts him more than anything.
Rihan meets Wakana and she wakes him up like a snowball to the face in the middle of Winter. She’s cheerful, silly in her antics, and he cannot help but love her.
‘’But don’t you have a soulmate?’’
She laughs. ‘’Don’t you?’’
Her smile dies, and she takes his hand. ‘’Mine too. In the womb.’’
‘’How do you know if it happened that early?’’
She shrugs. ‘’I just do,’’ and bends over to make another snowball.
Later, when they’re sprawled out in front of the fireplace, changed out of their soaked clothes and exhausted from all the running, she raises her hand to the ceiling like she’s trying to read stars they cannot see.
‘’If he’s up there now, then I’m half a soul. But if I’m half a soul, then that must mean that we’re puzzle pieces, and there’s only one that fits perfectly. But you know what? I don’t have the patience for puzzles, especially not for the ones with missing pieces. I just jam them into place and see what happens. It might not fit perfectly, but it fits, and no puzzle piece is lonely.’’
‘’Brute violence,’’ he chuckles, but tangles his fingers with her, because he can see that, see them fitting, two damaged puzzle pieces, hanging on by sheer stubbornness and strength of will. It suits them, this strange pairing. Puzzle pieces jammed together, a patchwork blanket made of two.
Lying on his back next to Wakana, Rihan can see the sky through the roof, cloudless in the cold winter night, stars shining brightly.
Perhaps, this can be home.
Rikuo is born and Spring encroaches once again, but for Spring to come, Winter must die, and so Rihan goes under while his son is young.
And Rikuo… Rikuo has no soulmate, for curse spoken by dying breath is binding, so Nurarihyon’s grandson is a whole soul.
The boy is three parts human, one part yokai, but he does just fine until his father’s blood splashes onto his cheeks, and he watches the Winter die in his eyes.
And the murderer, in the image of the girl he called his sister, gets away.
The grief tears the boy apart, and Nurarihyon wants to embrace the child, to take him away from all the hurt and the pain, but Rikuo flinches away and whispers: ‘’Yokai are evil.’’
It’s something he heard at school, apparently, and Nurarihyon can’t entirely say he’s wrong.
The clouds pass by, and Rikuo comes down from his perch in the cherry tree. He embraces his grandfather once again, and loves the clan with all his heart. But the lightning strike of his father’s death has done its damage, and he has rejected his yokai side completely.
It splits the boy into two halves, a whole soul making himself two when he cannot bear being one. The clan flinches away, wide eyes at the abomination the young master has become, but the boy is young and cheerful, and they cannot deny him for long. Tsurara latches on to the child, and that’s that. Spring is protected, though he grows strangely, the sakura tree his refuge.
(Blossoms are fleeting, and Nurarihyon fears)
The season changes, but the situation does not.
Rikuo does not want to be the Third Heir, but his calling it is, and he must answer. (‘’No, grandfather,’’ he whispers during the nights when the clan feasts, leaning against his mother, tired as he watches his grandfather drown the next cup of sake.
‘’A calling- what is that even? I answer to our people- I cannot turn away the helpless. Do not demean their cries for help and any genuine answer that may be given to it.’’
Nurarihyon cannot help but grin- but the boy falls asleep, eyelids sakura-fragile, veins clearly visible. Human. Human. Human. It buzzes in his ears.
What to do, when summer ripens?)
Rikuo is crowned Summer King regardless. He answers cries of help everywhere- yokai and human alike.
He grows and he grows and he grows- towards himself.
‘’Hello,’’ he whispers, on Mount Nejireme, ‘’Hello, brother soul, I am you.’’
And his other half laughs and says: ‘’Let me handle this.’’
(they wield the blade as one)
Autumn comes, but the Sakura tree keeps blooming, and its charges begin to become one again. Slowly, slowly, Nura Rikuo begins to love himself again- and what comes from this, is terrifying.
Yokai and Human melt into one, and the music rises, the sea parts, the crowd cheers and the gods bow.
A curse spoken in the face of death is binding, and no true love’s kiss can break it.
Rikuo Nura has no soulmate. None, none at all. The cherry tree embraces him, and he tears himself apart, but he is gentle and kind and ruthlessly vicious, protecting their clan with violence never mindless, yet sometimes… needless.
He’s a bit of a beast, you see. All yokai are. Even the human ones.
Rikuo Nura is his own soulmate, and nobody can stop him.
(‘’That you may suffer the pain of knowing,’’ Hagoromo Gitsune said.
Nurarihyon knows his grandson will never sire a child- and yet, somehow, the idea that this will make his life less than grand, that it stops will stop him from being happy as a person… It is laughable.
Rikuo is his grandson, the third master of the Nura clan, and he will live his life to the fullest regardless of any curse)
The seasons come and go, but the Sakura tree blooms on.
