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What does it truly mean to be remembered?
Perhaps, the little moments shared with those you care about, or the heritage you carry with pride along the firm steps you plant on the ground. Or perhaps the fear and infamy that burns itself into your enemies heads, or the grief the loss of your presence that would haunt into the memories within your dearest ones.
Or maybe it’s none. Maybe it’s the lack of such — of which makes only a hollow, pathetic and helpless shell of a man — that truly makes one remembered.
Kurapika thought as he stared into the void that is the interior of a yellowed bathtub hosting the stains of many past tears, sat aimlessly, cradled carefully by the bathtub base.
The crappy showertub was the remaining semblance of any sort of structure or framework keeping Kurapika together. It looked disgusting, bleak and empty to one’s sane eye — but the sad and aged corner served as Kurapika’s sanctuary of comfort and reminder. It had become the host of many of his darkest thoughts, the witness to his lowest of lows, and an entertainer to his episodes of screaming, sobbing, choking, vomiting and cutting.
And despite its constant company, it hadn’t seemed to absorb any warmth from his dripping scarlet blood, nor did it reflect any radiating from Kurapika’s body. Despite all those nights spent, it only seemed to grow colder and colder by each visit, like the growing icicles outside one’s window — keeping them solitary and miserably isolated from the harsh window outside.
It served as a cruel protector, guardian perhaps, from Kurapika’s greatest fears : Loss.
His path of revenge brought him to many undesirable places. As the young successor of the Nostrade family — one would think that such a ruthless man was well accustomed to the natural process of killing, death and decay.
Every day he held the gun with certainty, aiming it at those who oppose the esteemed mafia family, at those who threaten the cobalt-haired young fortune teller he was tasked to lay his life for, at those who dare interfere with his goals.
And yet, his death may only serve as a temporary shock to the vast world of crime. Or perhaps, his death may mark a celebration for any enemy he may have. Or perhaps the removal of one single digit in the wider numerical population of the world.
He may be forgotten. Like the golden boy who lost his spark. Heck, perhaps even that singular golden strand of his hair that washed down the drain — sunk by merely a couple drops of water from the hovering tap.
He’s nothing but a vengeful ghost roaming the vast earth — Kurapika believed.
What was he beyond revenge? Beyond his anger that delved deeper than the depth of hell itself. What is he if he was not the scarlet-eyed avenger of his clan thirsting over subjecting judgement upon those cruel spiders?
His world was nothing more than that swiveling rage, that volatile fury, and that deep, profound shame eating him alive. And all of this, confined in the nights he spent sinking in the dry and hollow bathtub — in the emptiness that drowned him amongst his screams and wails of agony and anger as red streaks bloomed along his pale thighs and arms like roses amongst a neat garden.
And yet… And yet…!
The memory of the hostage exchange in Yorknew haunted him. The expression of sheer joy and relief on his dearest friends made him cower into this cold corner. The smallest, little moments he shared with them seemed to look over his shoulder like a blade ready to be released.
That… That all made him sickeningly important. Sickeningly treasured, and most notably — sickeningly remembered.
He doesn’t deserve this, he never did! He disgraced his clan, leaving them all to rot and bleed scarlet — scarlet! As bright as their scarlet eyes could glow!
He left them all! He left them all to die! He left them, he left them, he left them, he left them…!!
“I left them…!!”
Riiii….iiip
Ironic is it so, he left them! He left them all because of that damned book! He left them all because of his naiveity! He left them all because of his god forsaken friendship!
So naive — so… “GODDAMN NAIVE…!!”
Slash, slash, slash
So naive! To believe that he could find a doctor in the first place, to believe that his wrongdoings could be salvaged if Pairo were to have his eyes and legs healed.
He pushed him over the cliff, yes, he pushed him over the cliff — he was a sinner from the day he was born!
The blade he held dug further into his fair skin, clawing at the scabs, raised skin, and freshly bloomed wounds on his thin thighs.
The old bathtub simply listened, hosting Kurapika’s blood that ran like a scarlet waterfall down his legs, as if it was an open stream looking for the ocean. It seemed like the arctic almost, with its blood red waters tainted by millions of bacteria. Tainted, that’s what he was.
Specks of blood scattered between his fingers and the smooth, yellowed walls — warm, yet quick to cool upon contact with the aged marble and his own malnourished skin.
He wishes to perish from existence, like cremated dust. Those skipped meals only served to support his cause, to slowly break him down until he was a heap of skin and bones — to deny him of any carbohydrates to fuel his body, and to rob him of any proteins to heal his mortal husk. Yet he must not— he must not die yet! He’s bound, bound by the chains of a self-inflicted hell, to play King Yama on those heinous criminals, those disgusting low-lives that is the Phantom Troupe!
Hellish, demonic child. Oh what a sad, sad, hellish, demonic child. Marginalised at an early age, persecuted for his scarlet eyes, had his family robbed by the desire for those scarlet eyes, and now driven to an inevitable death by those scarlet eyes!
Scarlet! His existance is scarlet! Everything around him is tainted scarlet! The carnage, the violence, the blood that set the young naive boy down a grim path!
His self-inflicted wounds cease to bloom, left to disappear almost too quickly as Kurapika feels his stomach churning sickeningly.
The sensation is disgusting, burbling and gurgling, almost as if it’s alive and about to tear his stomach and intestines apart.
Karma, he supposed, for avoiding the meals Leorio had prepared for him each night he locked himself in the bathroom.
Oh Leorio, sweet, sweet Leorio. He'd stop him from perishing would he? He would forever remember him as the boy walking down a tragic tale, as the boy absent from history books to tell the tale of the Kurta.
Gon, Killua and Melody too. Yes, they were his treasured friends. It’s evident that they wanted him to stop going down such a path of vengeance.
But he’s played this cruel game before. Pairo… Pairo! He was robbed, robbed away for being friends with a sinner, saved and embraced in a far heaven.
He can’t stop himself from that journey of gore — whether it’d be mental or physical. He’s chained, bound, destined to bring back the honour of his clan. He’s destined to carry the pride of his heritage that he carries with pride along the firm steps he planted on the ground
They’re still here to preserve him like a precious porcelain doll to carry that same pride, to tell the tale of the Kurta who lived, to keep him away from descending into the madness of a murderer.
He knows this, he knows this all too well! He’ll morph into a cold-hearted murderer, a boy who’s only known to be a spider-killing machine. After all, collecting his ancestors' eyes would suffice would it not? He could die peacefully, nestled within the comfort of those glaring scarlet eyes in cold jars staring at him uncomfortably while the sight of his feeble, dying form burns into those blood red irises.
But he must not quell his burning rage, setting him on flames upon the stake that is his self-inflicted execution — it burns, it burns brightly, from the tips of his toes, to the churning within his acidic digestive organs, before engulfing his heart and mind to crisp.
He leans forward on the bathtub, exhausting the little contents he has swirling inside him.
He feels the truckload of weight and bloatedness pouring out of his tight throat as streams of transparent liquid slips off of his tongue, splashing, slushing and pooling on the tinted bathtub base.
Expecting a deluge of plain water and perhaps some of the sleep drugs he’d consumed — or perhaps thick sludges of caffeine down the drain — he was instead greeted by the foul, bitter smell of bile rushing up into his nostrils, completely dominating his sense of smell.
The bile mixed with his own blood, creating a semi-transparent red solution that flooded and clung onto his feeble form.
He breathed, gasping even — unable to bear the pain of the air rushing into his empty, shrunk lungs. His beating heart didn’t help any further, beating too abnormally fast for the chains wrapping around it to contain it’s agony — for the little dagger barely stuck onto the flesh of his heart to pierce him and truly erase him for good.
If that truly happened, would he be remembered? Would he be known as the boy with a tragic tale? Or the lone survivor of the Kurta massacre? Or perhaps simply a friend, a friend that a small number of people cherished as their own? Would he be washed like the remains of bile and blood he washed down into the bathtub’s drain?
He would never know. His hair shined brightly like a halo under the bathroom’s fluorescent lights, like the fallen angel drowning in his own sin — in mankind’s sin.
Tragic… and yet, a sinner, nevertheless.