#Night Circus Jhin | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thegoldendemon-blog · 7 years

Text

INTERLUDE pt I

Note for gore, violence, murder and all that. 2.5k word beginning of a wild ride into the origins of Khada Jhin.

The gnats in his ears were dry as the lips drawn on the head that gaped for him in the ravine.

The grass below him was quiet. Fine. A bit disused, a scatterplot of indentations towards the ravine and then back in circles. Bloodless, at least on the blades: the water itself a musty shade of red. Somewhere up in the trees birds sang. It was the first time he’d heard them all day— the rest before then went to the gnats.

A man was dead.

The name of whom came with difficulty, having to traipse from one idle neuron to the next. Hiro. A colleague of his (that one came a little quicker), no more important or well received than he himself was. If he looked down— and he allowed it— there was a body smushed half in the grass and half in the ravine. It leaked.

And if he stretched out his arms— he didn’t allow that— he might’ve seen a swathe of cuts and incisions written in by his own hands.

Khada Jhin ran before he had a chance to scream.

His long legs were a mess and his hair grew naps. Scabs lined his skin, a few still bleeding, his head hanging while the rest of the troupe put a lantern close to his face and sent for both a doctor and a shaman.

From what slivers he glanced over, most were morose. Some were shocked, some fearful— though those stayed behind the first group in front of him, chittering amongst each other like some bugs he knew.

“Hiro’s dead?” Someone new asked.

“That’s what he says,” someone old answered.

“Who?”

“Jhin.”

Beat.

“He doesn’t look too good.”

“Is anyone when a demon comes?”

Silence followed long after that.

The sun had long since bent beneath the horizon, with it a cold and tired night. Troupe camp was something of a solitary blot halfway in the woods and halfway in the village: space needed for the stage, then secrecy to maintain the air of intrigue. Aside from Jhin and Hiro who went on their way to circulate flyers in the market from their dingy, years-old cart, the lot hadn’t seen rehearsal from the outside world in weeks.

Not that there was time for derision.

A frumpy silhouette pushed through the crowd orbiting Jhin, landing square next to him. White robes, red tassels, one hand on an oak stave and the other clutching a basket of charms. The soft scent of incense proliferated inside his nose. When he looked up, a woman’s stern face stared in his.

“Akana. I’m the village mystic,” she announced.

He said nothing back.

“You encountered a demon?”

This time he managed some life. “Yes,” he said in a small voice.

She swept her hand behind her, flicking the thinning expanse of people back. “I will talk to him. I only want the doctor here with me. Go to your camps.”

A shorter shadow wheezed beside her. “What is it with the circus and demons?”

Akana reserved comment, turning again to Jhin. “Did you see it?”

“See what?”

She was sterner.

Jhin’s face knelt and he averted his gaze. “I heard more than I saw,” he said.

“What did you hear?”

“Screaming. Teeth crunching. I ran as fast as I could.”

A man revealed himself, balding and coarse. “If you ran, and it went for Hiro, what of your injuries?”

Jhin’s lips trembled. He sighed and swallowed a lump. “I tripped… many times. There’s brambles in the woods. I was horrified...”

The man harrumphed. “Let Akana see your arm.”

She took his wrist and pulled the rest of him forward, tracing the length of a wound. Jhin winced.

“These markings don’t look as if done by human fingers,” she said. “He has them on his legs, too.”

“Well, we’re not the Guard. I don’t want to have to dredge the other body out on their regard.”

“Muskan. Can you close the bigger cuts?”

“Of course I can.” He headed closer to Jhin and unveiled a bevy of surgical instruments, presumably expecting far worse. By the time they were done, Jhin’s head spun and his body was aflame in swollen plumes of pain.

“If there is a demon nearby,” Akana intoned, “I don’t doubt it won’t be the last time we hear of it. I will bless the village perimeter and case this camp in incense.”

She exchanged a look with Jhin, showing sympathy through the tight lines interwoven on her expression.

“As for you: I cannot imagine the fear you must have for what happened to you and Hiro.” She put her hands on his shoulder. “If this demon returns, remember it is not your fault. They’re beasts of sin and impulse. They rarely come for a single target.”

“And recite the Divines,” Muskan said behind her, almost bored.

“And recite the Divines.” She smiled sadly. “The grace of the white one’s tail. The protective breath of the red one’s jaws.”

Jhin tried to smile back, but his eyes were dead.

When he woke up the next day, the troupe’s routine was back in full swing. Mumbling and whispers filtered in and out of the tent, the bedroll next to him barren as could be. Motion splayed out before him, hitching to and fro, heads bobbing and hands frantic to plumb through curtain fabric and costume coattails.

He felt hollow.

Not good, not bad, not fearful or remorseful. Hollow. Nothing. Ambivalent. He sat up on his roll and was surprised to see someone looming over him.

“The Matron wants to see you.”

Of course she does, he thought with a surprising hint of distaste.

“I’ll go see her,” he said calmly. “Is she in her tent?”

“Behind the stage. Ogling Emiya as she does.”

Jhin made a sucking noise, thrown from reflection into the continued trivialities of his line of work. Set the boxes, he hissed in his mind as he stood. Catch the curtains. No! Not like that— slow. Be dramatic. It hurts your arms? You’re stronger than that. He reached for the pouch beside the bedroll and balanced the weight in his palm. With his pay (and the grievance for the lack thereof), it might be years before he could afford so much as a hut on the derelict byways on the worst of Zhyun.

Somehow that thought clung to him better than the one of Hiro’s disembodied head.

Rank panes of sunlight hit Jhin’s eyes like a punch to the gut as he exited the tent, throwing the flap behind him. He squinted until his vision cleared and passed sword-swallowers and jugglers to the stage and the mess of human beings on it. It occurred to him that they were staring— it was beyond him to reciprocate.

The Matron peered from under a sheaf of backstage curtains, beckoning Jhin with an old crooked finger. He followed it and found himself in a tiny boxed crevice he assumed would house a pulley system tomorrow.

She smelled of cheap perfume and powder, her voice as gnarled as her curls.

“Jhin,” she nodded.

Idly he wondered if she washed or simply smacked herself with an extra puff and further drenched her wrinkles with aroma.

When her eyes crinkled, he remembered to bow. “Matron,” he said, twice removed from the affair.

“I’ve heard what happened to you last night,” she said. “How awful! You and Hiro were friends, weren’t you? Oh, I remember how he requested to work with you specifically for this show...” She looked crestfallen. Jhin didn’t believe it for a second.

“Tsk. I don’t know what to do with you.” Her hands clapped together. “It would be cruel of me to send you out when you look like this. Let’s… oh, I’ll let you have a few days off. To clean up.”

To clean up.

Jhin almost sneered.

The next he remembered was the soiled grin of a drunkard turned sour reproach when Jhin forced him to the ground.

He muttered something unintelligible, words slurring to the degree that he ought as well been babbling. Jhin caught something about “a fight” and “fists up”, which he ignored to focus on the man’s clothes, keeping him down with a foot on his chest. Reaching into his own obi, he slid out a slender knife whose cutting edge twinkled polished in the moonlight. The drunkard’s cheeks were blazing red, eyes glazed over and throat churning as Jhin kicked him to his side before reaching to grab his collar. The knife scissored easily through the fabric and laid him bare.

A tightness welled up in Jhin’s heart at seeing pale flesh. It caught him long and hard and left him almost breathless.

Excitement.

His open hand trailed fingers along a shoulderblade, finishing at the small of the back. He studied the unspoiled skin as one might the meat of a pig. Gradually coming to a thoughtful crease, his brows slid together and, with some tightening on the hilt, he jammed the knife center to the spine. The whole body bucked. He watched it stutter with quiet fascination until the twitching stopped, arms and legs as motionless as the torso. Then he slipped the knife at an angle and dragged it down with the same trained motion as filleting fish.

He didn’t relent except when there were four incisions done in the style of the first. Two slit from both shoulderblades. Third in the center of the spine. Fourth in the back of the skull. Careful not to get his work muddy, he left the body facing down as he butchered off every limb one by one. Jhin’s eyes flickered with steely determination as, finally, he severed the head.

His breathing raked his lungs. At last he pulled the two legs and intertwined them together on top of the torso, then paired them with arms. At the center of it all, incision facing first, the head. He circled back to view what he had done in full glory.

It smiled at him.

His focus was shattered by the sound of footfalls crunching on forest underbrush. He spun around, looking quick for where the source was. A thumping line of lantern light headed towards him and Jhin dived behind a beetle-bit ash tree, clumsily sliding a still bloody blade into its sheathe and shoving it behind the chest of his obi.

He heard mutterings but couldn’t place them over the crown of buzzing. The voices, in tune with the lamplight, came closer until they had to have been only an arm’s length apart. Chitter chitter. Bugs and bugs. He resisted the urge to scratch himself and silently bent over to crawl into a nearby bush.

Help. The bugs wanted help. The lamplight turned around and hopped away. Jhin stared until he knew it was safe. He stood up from the brush and ran, the other bugs catching on to his fleeing only when he was long gone.

Free of insects and buzzing, he threw the tent flap behind him and lied still on his mat. Beats of sweat dolled down his forehead and ended hanging limply where his cheeks met his chin.

Despite it, nothing moved. Nothing whispered. There was silence. Jhin turned over to his side and closed his eyes, feeling full and satisfied.

Khada Jhin dreamt of a darkness slathered in yellow. His sleep was steady through the night, chest occasionally rising and falling to the beat of his internal machine. Once or twice the yellow would curdle and bleed, showering black with red.

All told, he would’ve found it pleasant should he have had remembered it.

“Are you up?” Someone called out to him.

“I am now,” Jhin rumbled, wiping his eyes and sitting up.

“It’s resting day.” He placed the voice now. Qing.

“I’m aware.” He stared ahead.

“Are you going to regale us with your marvelous cooking skills tonight, Jhin? You know, me and Toshi and Ru. To get everybody’s minds off—”

“I’m saving my money.”

“We can pitch in.”

Jhin sighed and rubbed his face, momentarily wishing he could go back to sleep.

“I suppose…”

He didn’t need to see Qing to know he was lit up. “Great!” He pat Jhin’s shoulder and stood up from crouching.

“No demons to get in the way of good sushi,” Qing mused. “I like that. See you tonight, Jhin.”

Jhin’s back unfurled and he found himself spotting dirty dots on the tent liner.

It was a while before he sat up again let alone coming to a stand. He shuffled out of the tent and avoided the stage to bungle his way through carts and empty boxes to finally wheedle out of the camp and into the village. Even then he turned for the outskirts that led away into a small lake where he could wash. Scrubbing daily was a ritual Jhin invented for himself: the dizzying scent of dirt and mud that fastened itself to his contemporaries was nothing short of a myriad array of disgusting. He despised their hygiene almost as much as he despised their listless, blurry looks and glassy-eyed faces.

Taking off his clothes and slipping into the water was one of the few ways he could order himself and relax, even as he clung to the shallows for his needle-like limbs made for awkward swimming. He turned his head up and felt clumps fade from his skin and knots undoing in his hair.

Something bubbled up in the water. His eyes lowered. At first, he thought it a rock, but it was too thin for such a thing. It turned itself over. Blinking, there was a bright shine to it, almost metallic. He focused harder and noticed horns.

His stomach dropped.

It was the last time Jhin washed in that lake.

“Your wares,” Jhin said. “I’m interested in your wares.”

“That makes a fair deal better sense than my ears,” the cartman replied, laughing to an audience of one. “Which one do you want?”

The wind hissed between them, masks shaking on wooden hooks as Jhin tilted his head and looked at them all.

“Most of these are green,” he murmured to himself.

“Oh, don’t mind the lack of variety,” the cartman said, apparently guessing what Jhin had muttered. “They’re— uh— backstock. You know. From the Jade Festival.”

Jhin’s brows furrowed. “Do you have any yellow ones?”

“Yellow?”

“Yes.”

“Well…” The cartman turned away to plumb through his levy of masks, inspecting them one by one. His advanced age suggested that he didn’t know which from which unless looking at them. Jhin hoped that it wouldn’t take as long as the slow whisk of his ancient fingers implied it would be.

“Oh!” The cartman wiggled his hand into the cart and pulled out a single mask.

“This one.” He presented it proudly to Jhin. “I made this one myself years ago. The white’s uh— yellowed with age. Wood’s still good, though. I guarantee it.”

A maw of etched fangs and horns, notched with chipping paint, pointed dumb at the sky. A background of theater let Jhin recognize it easily. Hannya mask. Used primarily to symbolize evil spirits and demons on set. Rarely worn except in plays out of fear of ill omens.

He sniffed the misty air as the wind whistled in his ears.

“What do you think?”

Jhin took the mask. “I’ll buy it.”

“I’ll give you a discount for its age,” the cartman hummed. “Uhhh… four gold coins. I don’t want any silver so don’t give me that.”

Jhin presented him a small pouch before he finished. The cartman took it and nodded whilst Jhin slipped the mask into his tunic.

He remembered last of walking into a shaman’s hut.

#I was going to write it all as one post but I realized the amount of material I have would be a lot longer than 5k words.#Zzz.#Even if one person reads this I'll be satisfied.#ANOTHER PIECE TO THE LEGEND — DRABBLES #SERIES: INTERLUDE #tw: gore #tw: murder #tw: violence

6 notes · View notes