Wood Demon - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Deep Talk

The following night, the oppressive routine of the Spider House was shattered by an unexpected deviation. Instead of the hulking, spider-faced ‘Father’ being summoned for whatever grim task Rui had in mind, the Lower Moon’s cold, crimson-flecked eyes settled on Jack.

“Older brother,” Rui stated, his voice flat, devoid of its usual undercurrent of barely suppressed cruelty, “you will accompany me tonight.”

Jack, who had been mentally cataloging the various species of bioluminescent fungi he planned to experiment with later, felt a jolt of alarm. This was new. This was… not good, probably. “Uh, sure thing, little brother,” he managed, trying to keep his tone light, casual, utterly at odds with the sudden clenching in his gut. “Any particular reason I’m getting the call-up? Did Father pull a demonic hamstring? Or are we just due for some quality, albeit terrifying, sibling bonding time?”

Rui didn’t respond, merely turned and glided towards the dilapidated doorway. Jack caught a fleeting glimpse of the other ‘family’ members. Father looked confused, his multiple eyes blinking slowly, pincers clicking softly. Mother flinched, her already terrified expression deepening. Saya, however, met his gaze for a split second, her dark eyes wide with a silent, worried question before she quickly looked away. Jack offered her the smallest, almost imperceptible nod, a gesture he hoped conveyed a reassurance he didn’t feel.

The journey through the web-choked, moon-dappled forest of Mount Natagumo was unnervingly silent. Rui moved with his usual spectral grace, a small, pale shadow flitting through the trees. Jack followed a few paces behind, his demonic senses on high alert, trying to decipher the reason for this impromptu excursion. Was it a test? A punishment? Or just another one of Rui’s incomprehensible whims? He resisted the urge to fill the silence with his usual nervous chatter, sensing that this was not the time for ill-placed jokes. The air between them was thick with unspoken things, with a tension that was different from the usual overt menace.

“Nice night for a… whatever this is,” Jack eventually ventured, his voice carefully neutral. The forest was indeed beautiful in its own dark, gothic way, the moonlight filtering through the dense canopy, casting long, dancing shadows. “Lots of… ominous rustling. Very atmospheric. Good for brooding, I imagine.” Rui remained silent, his pace unwavering. Jack sighed internally. So much for breaking the ice.

They climbed higher up the mountain than Jack had ever ventured before, the path becoming steeper, more treacherous. Finally, they emerged onto a windswept, rocky outcrop near the summit. The view was breathtaking, in a desolate, intimidating kind of way. The endless, dark sea of the forest stretched out below them, a light mist coiling like a slumbering dragon in the valleys. Far in the distance, the faint, scattered lights of human villages twinkled like fallen stars, fragile and oblivious.

Rui stood at the very edge of the precipice, his small form silhouetted against the moonlit panorama, looking out over the vast expanse. Jack kept a respectful distance, unsure of his role in this strange, silent tableau. Was he supposed to offer insightful commentary on the strategic advantages of high ground? Admire the villainous lair potential?

After a long, drawn-out silence that stretched Jack’s nerves taut, Rui spoke, his voice surprisingly soft, almost lost in the sigh of the wind.

“Thank you.”

Jack blinked, genuinely startled. “Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Did you, Rui, Lower Moon Five, master of menacing silences and creative thread-based torture, just say… thank you?” He couldn’t keep the incredulity entirely out of his voice. “What for? Not accidentally tripping you on the way up? Or is it for my stunning contributions to the family’s overall morale with my sparkling personality?”

Rui didn’t turn, his gaze still fixed on the distant lights. “Because of you,” he said, his voice still quiet, but with a new, strange inflection, “the family… it has some liveliness now. It was… so boring before. So stagnant.”

Jack was floored. Liveliness? Was that what his barely concealed terror, his sarcastic internal monologues that sometimes slipped out, and his desperate attempts to connect with Saya amounted to? “Liveliness,” he repeated slowly. “Right. Glad I could… liven things up. My specialty is usually awkward silences and inappropriate jokes at funerals, but I guess ‘bringing a spark to a dysfunctional demonic spider cult’ can be added to the résumé.”

He saw Rui’s shoulders hitch, a subtle movement. The cold, unyielding facade of the Lower Moon seemed to crack, just a little. There was a weariness in his posture now, a vulnerability that Jack had never seen before. This wasn’t the all-powerful demon who terrorized his ‘family’; this was something… else.

“Family,” Rui murmured, the word tasting like ash. He finally turned, his crimson-flecked eyes, usually so cold and empty, now holding a strange, turbulent light. “It should be… a bond. A true bond.” He looked at Jack, a flicker of something akin to confusion, or perhaps even appeal, in his gaze. “This family… the one I made… it’s not right. They fear me. They obey. But it’s not… real.”

Jack remained silent, listening intently. This was a dangerous, uncharted territory. He sensed that Rui was on the verge of revealing something, something personal, something that might explain the twisted, obsessive cruelty he displayed. His usual urge to make a quip, to deflect the tension with humor, was consciously suppressed. This moment felt… fragile. Important.

Rui’s gaze drifted back to the distant, twinkling lights. “My real family…” he began, his voice barely a whisper now, raw with an emotion Jack couldn’t quite identify. Pain? Yes. But something else too. Longing.

And then, the story spilled out of him, a torrent of words after centuries of silence, each one painting a picture of heartbreaking tragedy.

“I was born human,” Rui said, his voice small, almost childlike, a stark contrast to the power he wielded. “But my body… it was weak. So frail. Even walking… even breathing… it was a struggle.” He wrapped his arms around himself, as if feeling a phantom chill. “I spent most of my life inside, in my room. My mother and father… they cared for me. They were kind. They… they loved me. Even though I was so… broken.”

Jack listened, his own cynical defenses slowly lowering. He could almost picture it: a small, sickly child, confined and cherished, yearning for a life he couldn’t have.

“Then, one night,” Rui continued, his voice growing tighter, “he came. Demon King. He told me he could ‘save’ me. He offered me a strong body, a life without pain.” His hands clenched into fists. “He turned me into… this.”

He looked down at his own pale hands, a tremor running through his small frame. “And it was… wonderful, at first. I could run. I could jump. I could breathe without it hurting. For the first time in my life, I felt… alive. Strong.” A fleeting, almost joyful expression crossed his face, quickly extinguished by a wave of remembered horror. “But then… the hunger came. I needed to eat. Humans.”

His voice cracked. “I… I killed a man. In our home. There was so much blood.” He shuddered. “My parents… they found me. They saw what I’d done. The look on their faces…” He trailed off, his breath catching in a sob. “They were horrified. Terrified. Of me. Their own son.”

The silence on the mountaintop was broken only by Rui’s ragged breathing and the mournful sigh of the wind. Jack waited, a cold knot forming in his stomach. He knew, from the fragmented pieces of lore he’d picked up, that demon transformations rarely ended well for human families.

“Later that night,” Rui whispered, his voice thick with unshed tears, “I woke up. My father… he was standing over me. He had a knife.” Rui’s composure finally shattered. Tears began to stream down his pale cheeks, genuine tears of anguish, a shocking, human display from the usually implacable Lower Moon. “He was going to kill me. My own father. And my mother… she just stood there, by the door… sobbing. She didn’t try to stop him.”

He turned to Jack then, his small face contorted with centuries of pain, confusion, and betrayal. “How?” he choked out, the question a raw, bleeding wound. “How could he? How could a father… try to kill his own son?” He covered his face with his hands, his small body wracked with sobs, the sound utterly desolate in the vast emptiness of the night.

In that moment, watching the Lower Moon Five break down into a weeping, traumatized child, everything clicked into place for Jack. The obsessive desire for family, the twisted understanding of bonds, the cruel enforcement of roles, the desperate need for control – it all stemmed from this single, catastrophic moment of perceived betrayal, from a pain so profound it had warped him into the monster he had become. This wasn’t just a powerful demon; this was a deeply broken, eternally grieving little boy.

Jack’s usual defenses, his sarcasm, his flippancy, his dark humor – they all dissolved. There was no room for them here. This wasn’t a situation to be deflected or mocked. This was a wound that needed… something else. Something he wasn’t sure he possessed, but something he knew he had to try to offer. This was a moment for the ‘older brother’ Rui so desperately, twistedly craved.

He took a slow breath, choosing his words with a care he rarely afforded anything. “Rui,” he began, his voice quiet, gentle, devoid of any judgment. “Humans… we’re complicated creatures. Messy. We don’t always make sense, even to ourselves.”

He moved a little closer, not threateningly, just… present. “Parents… they love their children. It’s one of the deepest, strongest bonds there is. Your parents… the ones who cared for you when you were sick, who cherished you… they loved you, Rui. The you who was their frail, precious son.”

Rui’s sobs quieted slightly, though his shoulders still shook. He peeked at Jack through his fingers, his eyes red-rimmed and raw.

“When you became a demon,” Jack continued softly, “when you… when you killed that man… they wouldn’t have understood. They would have been terrified. Not just of what you’d become, but probably for you too. They would have seen a monster, a creature from their worst nightmares, where their beloved, sickly son used to be. They wouldn’t have known about Demon, about the hunger, about the lack of choice.”

He paused, letting the words sink in. “What your father tried to do… raising that knife… I can’t imagine the agony he was in. It wasn’t because he stopped loving you, Rui. I don’t think a parent’s love ever truly stops like that.” Jack remembered the stories, the lore. “He was lost. He was terrified. He probably thought… maybe he thought it was the only way. The only way to stop the ‘monster’ he thought you’d become, to prevent more killing. Maybe,” Jack added, his voice even softer, “he was planning to follow you. To take his own life after… after doing what he thought he had to do. To atone, to be with you and your mother again, even in death. That’s a kind of desperate, broken love too, Rui. A terrible, tragic choice made by a man who saw no other way out.”

“And your mother… her just standing there, sobbing… she was probably paralyzed by grief, by horror, by the impossible choice her husband was making. Torn between the son she loved and the monster she feared.”

Jack looked Rui directly in the eyes, his own gaze earnest, sincere. “It doesn’t mean the love was gone, Rui. It was just… buried. Crushed under so much fear, so much pain, so much confusion that they couldn’t see straight. Sometimes people do terrible, unthinkable things, things they believe are necessary in moments of utter desperation, even when their hearts are breaking into a million pieces. They loved you. I’m sure of it. And they probably never stopped loving the memory of their son, even in that last, horrible moment.”

Rui stared at him, his tear-streaked face a mask of raw, dawning comprehension. The idea that his parents might have still loved him, even as his father held that knife, was a concept so alien, so contrary to the narrative of betrayal he had clung to for centuries, that it seemed to shatter something deep within him.

Then, with a strangled cry that was purely that of a lost child, Rui did something utterly uncharacteristic, something that defied every expectation Jack had of a Lower Moon demon. He lunged forward, not with threads, not with demonic power, but with a desperate, human need, and wrapped his arms around Jack’s waist, burying his face in Jack’s chest. He clung to him, his small body shaking with violent, racking sobs, centuries of pent-up grief, loneliness, and misunderstood pain pouring out of him in an uncontrollable torrent.

Jack froze for a split second, stunned by the physical contact, by the sheer, raw vulnerability of this immensely powerful demon. Then, awkwardly, hesitantly, he brought his own arms up, patting Rui’s trembling back, holding the sobbing child-demon as the wind howled around them on the lonely mountaintop. It was an incredibly strange, profoundly surreal, and deeply uncomfortable moment. He, Jack, the reluctant demon, the sarcastic observer, was holding a weeping Lower Moon Kizuki, offering what little comfort he could.

The future was still a terrifying, uncertain landscape. Rui was still a dangerous, unpredictable creature. But here, now, under the cold light of the moon, something had undeniably shifted. A fragile, unexpected, and profoundly human connection had been forged in the crucible of shared darkness and remembered pain. And Jack, for perhaps the first time since his own transformation, felt the weight of a responsibility that went beyond his own survival.