Send me an RIP and I will write how my muse is going to do.
((This one took way too long than intended, I’m so sorry. Considering this is a RIP drabble, there’s going to some trigger warnings in this, mainly mercy killing and war descriptions. Also has an OC stand-in.))
He was agnostic about violence.
Sensei always had others to do it for him.
“–are you listening to me, my boy?”
He was always ever-so-stubborn. His head was held high, his rigid back was as straight and narrow as his mind, but the look in his eyes was defiant yet solemn, like a crane that bides its time in the rice field. He was a man who had made up his mind.
In front of him was a young man sitting on the tatami on his folded legs - his dear remaining friend, who was shaking like a leaf at the words thrown at him.
“Y-y-yes! I’m so sorry, S-Sensei, but I can’t do this!”
He could barely remember his name. A man from the military force, soft around the edges and fresh as a daisy. A bottom feeder with barely two months of experience from the looks of it. He had a gun to his side, a fully loaded one, but Sensei could see this one growing chubby behind the counter that he would never even use it.
“Why not? It is only a simple favor.”
“Yes, Sensei! I am devoted to you, Sensei, and so are all the officers in Yokohama! We are indebted to your wisdom and …and I a-admire you and I look up to you!” The man’s voice was high-pitched and nervous. He would have broken his spine from all that repeated bowing to the older man, if he had any. “…but why me? Sensei, why me?”
Devotion is a… strange word, he must admit.
The man in front of him was a dime a dozen. He knew the type, one of those boys who wanted a home with wife and kids to call his own, who wanted to protect the remaining shambles of what was left of his home, and who has yet to look at the face of death right in the eye and sneer because death had long evaded him instead.
Sensei was never sure what devotion meant, but he knew it binds him, like he was a puppet with strings.
“You are young. You understand the price of freedom, but you have never felt loss.” He said, as if he was trying to soothe the other. “I have taught you my lessons, my boy. I do not care that you have never held a gun to a man’s head. I ask you to honor my wish. I am a humble man, my boy, and I am only one man of many. I have taught you my final lesson and it is time for you prove yourself.”
…and with that, the young man’s expression softened. His furrowed eyebrows relaxed, yet his eyes were grim and distant. His shoulders felt tense, like there was this dreadful weight forced upon them, and his hands grasped at his knees like he was holding back tears.
“I have nothing to offer but silence. All I ask is for your help. Is that not what you are devoted to do?”
“Sensei, don’t say that! You have served our country! You have given us our city, you have given us our rights, our freedom. But you’re asking me to–”
“–I am asking you a favor. As a friend, of course.” Sensei bowed his head to him. He kept his eyes downcast like he was pleading. “This may seem a lot to ask from you, but trust me when I say that you are the only one left who is able to do this.”
He has seen people come and go.
He has seen people come and go without him.
Ushigome, after all the firestorm and decay, had been turned into this massive slaughterhouse. It had been one of those districts that was sacrificed during the war, one of those crater-sized cemeteries with severed arms stretched out from under the rubble and lifeless eyes staring from burned faces that once gasped for help. The only building that remained intact was the one they were staying in, a small residence by the river, right by the dead crops and piles of carcass and there was nothing left to do but to suffocate themselves with ashes and bear witness to the horrors of war.
It was not until later when the young man had proven his worth, when the single shot rang through his ears, when he looked around the walls to see the portraits hanging on the wall that the young man realized this used to be Sensei’s home.
Yokohama survived, safe and sound and forever grateful, but Ushigome and the others had slipped through their fingers. Sensei had lost his family, his friends, the ones he dearly loved, and he had been keeping his silence sealed under the words of wisdom and his self-sacrifice under the pledge of loyalty.
He was agnostic to violence, to the act of killing, because he believed in the phrase ‘there is value to the experience of loss’.
Was this Sensei’s final lesson? 'Loss’ is the price of freedom?
The young man, who would later be adorned in his silver badges in the promising future, stared at the open field and watched the cranes stare back at him. He would never back down - his eyes are now defiant, solemn, like someone who has experienced loss.
He still remembered what Sensei asked of him many years ago. He felt strangely bound to it, and many years later he would pass down Sensei’s lessons to his subordinates.
He wanted them to understand the price of freedom.
'I want you to pull out your gun. I want it right between my eyes.’
…He was devoted to Yokohama.
“We’re going to blow my fucking brains out.’
