Kanjuro stood by the bed, looking down at Matsumoto Sayuri's body, which he had forcibly pulled back from the brink of life and death. He extended a finger, a wisp of imperceptible black mist swirling around the tip, and lightly tapped her brow.
Like a stone cast into a still lake, an invisible ripple spread out from Sayuri's brow. Beneath her paper-pale skin, a faint glow seemed to flow as her long-stagnant life force was crudely reignited and driven by the power of the dark bible.
Her long eyelashes fluttered like butterfly wings, and Matsumoto Sayuri slowly and with great difficulty opened her eyes.
Those eyes, once gentle and moving, were now clouded with a lingering confusion and exhaustion, as if she had just struggled awake from an incredibly long and painful nightmare. Her gaze was somewhat scattered, eventually focusing bit by bit on the handsome face of the youth by the bed, who wore his familiar wicked smile.
Memories surged like a broken tide, violently crashing against her newly awakened consciousness—the despairing reunion at the bridal shop, the resolute choice to die on the street, the long and suffocating 'ecstasy' in the hotel, and finally, the complete mental collapse before her consciousness sank into the boundless darkness... All the images eventually froze on the face before her.
There was no cry, no scream of terror, not even the joy of surviving a disaster. Matsumoto Sayuri just looked at him quietly, her gaze as complex as a bottomless lake, churning with pain, humiliation, bewilderment, and a... nearly resigned calm that even she herself could not understand.
Kanjuro watched the entire process of her awakening at his leisure, enjoying the shifting emotions in her eyes. He leaned down slightly, closing in on her, locking her gaze with his deep eyes that seemed capable of swallowing everything. His voice was low, carrying a hint of playful inquiry:
"After several days and nights..." He paused deliberately, his fingertips tracing ambiguously over her warming cheek, the implication clear, "How are your 'feelings' for me... now?"
He asked bluntly and cruelly, as if assessing the state of an object after 'use.'
Matsumoto Sayuri's body trembled almost imperceptibly. The memories forcibly branded into every corner of her soul and flesh made her instinctively shudder. But she did not dodge or cry; she only gazed at Kanjuro with even more complexity.
After a long time, she finally spoke in a voice carrying endless exhaustion and a strange sense of relief:
"Brother Kanjuro..." This familiar address now carried a completely different weight. "I know... I've always known... You've always been this kind of person. Selfish, cold, controlling everything, treating others like playthings..."
Her tone was as calm as if she were stating an objective fact, without resentment or accusation.
"From the moment you engineered that 'hero saving the beauty' in the sixth grade, I should have understood. What you gave me was never warm love, but... suffocating possession."
She took a slight breath, as if having made a decision, and met Kanjuro's playful gaze directly:
"But... strangely enough, I don't hate you."
Saying this felt absurd even to her, but she continued anyway, her voice soft but exceptionally clear:
"Perhaps it's because... I've long since grown used to your existence; it's carved into my life like a brand. Perhaps it's because... after even death was easily overturned by you, I no longer know what is left to resist."
She paused, a nearly pious, twisted light of despair flashing in her eyes:
"So, whatever else you want to do to me, just do it. I won't... have any more complaints against you."
She completely gave up struggling, gave up thinking, and gave up herself. Like a vessel thoroughly tamed and polished smooth by its master, she waited quietly for the next use or collection. This complete, desperate submission manifested Kanjuro's chilling control more than any violent resistance ever could.
Listening to her words and seeing the dead yet strangely dependent embers in her eyes, the wicked smile on Kanjuro's lips gradually widened, finally forming a satisfied and joyful curve.
He reached out and gently stroked her soft long hair, his movements carrying the intimacy of a master toward a pet.
"Very good." He whispered, his voice filled with the satisfaction of total control. "This is how my Sayuri should be."
He didn't need her love; he only needed her absolute, unreserved belonging. And at this moment, Matsumoto Sayuri, in both body and spirit, had truly become his perfect 'possession.'
This 'taming,' with death and resurrection as its nodes, finally reached a twisted conclusion. Matsumoto Sayuri's future would forever be shrouded in Kanjuro's shadow, becoming an exquisite flower in his dark garden that could never leave the soil, only blooming and withering for him.
Kanjuro's words about the 'final test' hung over her like a final judgment. Matsumoto Sayuri looked at him—this man she had loved, hated, and feared, but for whom she now felt only bewilderment and complex emotions. She didn't directly answer whether she accepted; instead, she asked the question that had been circling in her mind for a long time, and perhaps the common question of many drawn into Kanjuro's dark vortex:
"I am willing... but Brother Kanjuro," her voice was soft, carrying a weary insight, "what is it that you are actually pursuing? Is it the pleasure of conquest? The power to control everything? Or..." She paused, summoning the courage to look him in the eye, "are you still, even now, doubting... my 'love' for you? Do you need to use this endless torture to repeatedly verify it?"
This question seemed to touch the most primitive, blood-drenched scar deep within Kanjuro's heart.
The laziness and playfulness on his face vanished instantly, replaced by a nearly hideous ferocity. His eyes filled with a terrifying blood-red at a visible speed, as if lava were churning and burning within them! The already cold aura around him became like a Siberian wind, causing the temperature in the room to plummet.
"Doubt? Verify?" Kanjuro's voice became hoarse and sharp, carrying a deep-seated, unforgettable hatred accumulated over unknown years. "You ask me what I pursue? You ask why I became like this?!"
He suddenly leaned close to Sayuri, his blood-red eyes staring intently at her, as if trying to see through her pupils to another distant soul that caused him agonizing pain.
"Because I once..." His throat bobbed slightly, his voice carrying a suppressed roar that seemed to come from the depths of hell, "I also once, like a dog, loved a woman unreservedly and humbly! She also once swore she loved me and was willing to give up everything for me!"
His words were like opening Pandora's box, releasing endless malice and darkness.
"But the result?! Just because of her damn parents! Her pedantic family! Just because they looked down on me and didn't agree to us being together!" Kanjuro's voice rose sharply, filled with endless mockery and rage. "That woman! She backed down! She compromised! She threw me away like a piece of trash!! Just for those ridiculous worldly views, for those pitiful family interests!!"
He suddenly straightened up and spread his arms, as if declaring to the world he hated:
"That was a matter of a past life! But I have held that grudge until now! Every minute! Every second! I remember it clearly!!" His voice was like the wail of a wounded beast, yet filled with the madness of destroying everything. "I hate! I hate all women who are as weak and hypocritical as she was! Claiming to love, yet unable to manage even the most basic resistance and sacrifice!"
"I loathe all worldly conventions! All rules! All shackles that hinder pure possession and absolute loyalty!!"
His blood-red eyes fixed back onto Matsumoto Sayuri, who was beyond shocked by his confession. Each word was like a poisoned icicle, stabbing down hard:
"So, whether it's you or any other woman! If I see even a shred of hesitation, feel even the slightest wavering because of family, parents, or interests..."
A smile of extreme cruelty curled at the corners of his mouth.
"I am going to take that so-called heart of 'love' of yours and personally! Violently! Tear it into pieces!! I want you to know the price of betraying pure emotion! I want you all to become the bloody specimens beneath my feet that prove my set of truths!"
This earth-shattering confession revealed the root of all of Kanjuro's twisted behaviors—it was a mad and paranoid revenge against the entire female population and societal rules, triggered by a failed love from the distant past due to societal interference, lasting for an unknown number of years! He had infinitely magnified that pain of betrayal, twisting it into the foundation and code of conduct for his dark life.
Matsumoto Sayuri stared blankly at this man who seemed to have crawled out of a pool of blood in hell, looking at the fire of hatred in his eyes that had burned for who knows how many years, enough to incinerate everything. She finally understood that all the torture she endured did not stem solely from Kanjuro's personal cruelty, but from an ancient vengeful spirit's indiscriminate, hysterical punishment of all women in similar situations.
She looked at him, and in his blood-red eyes, besides hatred, there seemed to be a trace of... a pained soul eternally imprisoned in past trauma, which even he himself had not noticed.
After a long time, the last flicker of light in Matsumoto Sayuri's eyes went out, replaced by a thorough, despairing realization and... a strange calmness.
Slowly and with great difficulty, she propped up her still weak and powerless body. Then, under Kanjuro's mad and dangerous gaze, she slowly knelt at his feet, as if completing a sacred and desperate ritual.
She reached out her trembling hands, gently cupped his cold hand, and humbly pressed her forehead against the back of it.
Exerting all her strength, she let out a voice that was barely audible yet crystal clear:
"I... understand. Lord Kanjuro."
She no longer called him "Brother."
"If... this is your 'Dao'... if tearing my heart apart can appease even one ten-thousandth of your pain..."
She looked up, her face covered in tears, yet wearing a twisted, devout smile almost like that of a martyr.
"Then, please do it... I... am willing."
Kanjuro gripped Matsumoto Sayuri's slender wrist. The force wasn't great, but it carried a finality that brooked no escape as he dragged her toward the basement that symbolized ultimate darkness and despair. The cold stone steps extended downward like an entrance to hell. The humidity and the faint smell of blood permeating the air made Sayuri's body tremble involuntarily.
Tears fell silently from the corners of her eyes, dripping onto the cold floor and spreading into small, fleeting dark stains.
Kanjuro felt the moisture on his wrist. Without stopping, he turned his head, his blood-red eyes squinting at her, his tone carrying a trace of impatient inquiry: "Why are you crying? Fear? Or do you regret that declaration of being 'willing' just now?"
Matsumoto Sayuri shook her head, letting the tears flow, her voice choked with sobs yet exceptionally clear: "No... it's not fear, and it's not regret." She raised her tearful eyes to look at Kanjuro's cold, hard profile, "I was just... thinking about your past, Brother Kanjuro."
Her gaze seemed to pierce through time and space, seeing the young soul in the distant past who was similarly heartbroken by the betrayal of love and ultimately consumed and twisted by hatred.
"Now... I seem to understand a little. That pain must have been... very deep, right? Deep enough to distort time and shape the you of today."
She paused for a moment, as if gathering immense courage, her voice light yet carrying a firm strength:
"So, Brother Kanjuro... I cry because I feel what you feel. And I... I hope... I can change you."
"Change me?" Kanjuro let out a sneer as if he had heard the most ridiculous joke in the world, yet his pace involuntarily slowed slightly. A trace of extremely complex emotion flashed in his blood-red eyes—mockery, disdain, and perhaps a hint of... being touched that even he hadn't noticed?
"Stupid. Change is useless. Human nature is like a rock; once it is set, it is difficult to change even in a million years. Especially for me?" His tone carried a cold certainty that seemed to have seen through the world, "Trying to change me is like a mantis trying to stop a chariot; you will only end up crushed to pieces."
However, Sayuri was not repelled by his coldness. The tear stains on her face were not yet dry, but she suddenly broke into an extremely weak smile that carried a certain insight into everything, almost like compassion.
"Is that... really so?" she asked softly, her gaze burning as she looked into Kanjuro's still blood-red eyes. "If change is truly useless, if you, Brother Kanjuro, are truly as absolutely cold and inhuman as you say..."
Her voice rose slightly, carrying a sharpness that pointed straight to the core:
"Then why is it that, time and again, you are unwilling to truly kill me? Why, after my 'death,' do you still use your incredible power to resurrect me?"
"Doesn't this precisely prove... that you aren't completely without feeling for me? Even if that feeling is a twisted possessiveness or a paranoid control, it does exist!"
She stared intently into his eyes, as if trying to see into the deepest depths behind the blood-red: "Or... is it that in the deepest part of your heart, Brother Kanjuro, there actually... still remains a trace of 'humanity' that even you are unwilling to admit?"
These words were like a most precise surgical scalpel, peeling away the layers of Kanjuro's shell built of hatred and coldness, touching the soft core that perhaps even he had deliberately ignored.
Kanjuro's footsteps came to a complete halt.
He stood on the last few steps leading to the basement, his back to the faint light source above, his face shrouded in deep shadow. Only those blood-red eyes flickered like ghost fires burning in the dark.
There was a long silence, so long that Sayuri almost thought he would explode in rage and immediately drag her into the basement to inflict even more cruel punishments.
However, Kanjuro spoke, but his voice was no longer full of violence; instead, it carried a strange, almost philosophical calmness and indifference:
"Humanity?" He repeated the word, his tone carrying a faint hint of mockery, but it wasn't directed at Sayuri; it was more like he was mocking the concept itself.
"Who told you that humanity... is consistent from beginning to end? Who dictated that things... must be judged by simple binary oppositions like 'is' or 'is not,' 'has' or 'has not' to determine their essence?"
He slowly turned around, his blood-red eyes watching Sayuri in the shadows. That gaze seemed capable of piercing through her skin to look directly at the essence of her soul.
"Just like light and dark, good and evil, they are not absolute opposites but are interdependent and entangled with each other. I resurrected you; perhaps for a moment it stemmed from some kind of 'reluctance' as you understand it, but in the next moment, I could just as easily push you back into the abyss without hesitation."
"Does this prove I 'have humanity'? Or does it prove I 'lack humanity'?"
The corner of his mouth curled into a cold, almost nihilistic arc:
"Things are not absolute. Emotions are even more chaotic. My 'not killing' you and the 'love' you hope for might be two completely different things. How can you use your simple set of binary standards to define me?"
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