another time and another place

[byakkomaru]

[ Five hundred years ago, two brothers quarreled over a woman: both were in love with her, yet she loved the younger over the elder, and the elder took great offense. Brothers fought, a bitter battle, until a winner emerged, and the loser was stripped of all his rank. And five hundred years ago, the Hiiragi family fell from grace, swept away by their own branch family, crushed beneath the Ichinose's merciless heel.

But that was five hundred years ago.

And Shinya is in no position to care about ancient history.

Kneeling in his cell — glass instead of bars to better put him on display, but a cage all the same — he keeps his head down, tries to seem as unassuming as possible. They've all been washed and clothed in new uniforms, hair neatly cut and brushed clean and smooth. Prettied up, for the visiting Ichinose who's come to choose— Shinya isn't sure, what, exactly. A bride? A pet?

A sacrificial lamb?

He's not sure, either, if it would be better to be chosen or to be left here as a failure of the Hiiragi's careful selection process. All the candidates remaining have killed for the privilege of surviving this long, of being given the opportunity to be selected by an Ichinose, the highest honor imaginable for one of the disgraced main family. Will he be killed if he's not chosen?

Would that be better than being gifted away as a slave?

Footsteps pause in front of his cell, and almost despite himself, against instinct and rigid conditioning, something fights up through the years and years of being told his only purpose is to please the Ichinose. Unthinkably, Shinya lifts his eyes, looks up, just the swiftest glance, to see who holds his fate in their hands. To see what an Ichinose looks like, if he's going to be dying for one in the end.

Just for a second, but even that's too long — violet eyes look back at him, his gaze caught and held, and Shinya's breath catches in his throat. ]