Chapter Text
Yotsuba Iguro was startled into an unusual awareness at the tender age of 5.
Overwhelmed by the deluge of foreign memories hitting her small, delicate little head, she began to cry loudly, startling her mother and the other various clanswoman who were attending to the woman and her child.
So caught up in the confusing and terrifying mess of half-baked memories and experiences that she cried her lungs out, eventually passing out in an unmoving heap that sent her mother into a panicking, blubbering mess, who started hacking out orders at the servants around her prone form.
The only coherent thought that crossed that little child’s mind before she succumbed to a temporary sleep was:
“What a shitty clan I am born into.”
From there Yotsuba Iguro began playing the role of a child starting from her 5th year up to the present. It’ll do no good for her if her mother (what a vile thing to label a woman who is part of a clan that will happily kill their children for gold-) suspects that she was anything but a crybaby, a helpless, dear child of hers lest she wants herself to die an early death either by abandonment (people here believed so strongly in stigma around mentally disabled children, what ableists-) or being sacrificed as food to that monster .
She can remember the first time she was taken alongside her mother to meet their “benefactor” in its own “temple”, for it took all the willpower she could muster from her memories as a strong, independent woman not to tremble in the presence of a vile , ugly , dangerous monster who is happily worshipped by the sycophants she could call her clan.
That monster swept its sickly, narrow-eyed gaze around the various children (lambs to be slaughtered) held by their mothers, some who are not even a month old- (the thought that she’s surrounded by women who would happily offer their children to a being like this for a few measly golds almost causes her to empty her stomach here and there-), thankfully, it’s gaze never lingered on her for too long, but she felt the same sickening unease when it fixed its gaze on the line of pregnant women that stood off to the side.
Yotsuba dared lift her gaze to see which unfortunate soul bears the weight of this monster’s gaze and her breath froze-
At first glance, there’s nothing remotely interesting about one of the many clanswoman within her rotten clan, for the woman, who looked to be in her mid-20s, has the typical fair skin, sleek black hair secured in a ponytail, fair skin, typical kimono-clad in pastel colors ( markers for those who secure the next food supply , she shudders), and the only feature that caught her eyes is-
Those blank, turquoise eyes that look to belong more in a corpse, too close to be coincidental, are the same pair of irises she could starkly remember in a story she once read Before.
It’s with grim realization that she realizes,
That woman is Ushimi Iguro.
Also the mother of Obanai Iguro, who is both the unfortunate special delicacy born into this rotten clan and the future Hebi Bashira of the Kisatsutai.
Yotsuba clenches her tiny fist within her sleeves. She only has about less than a decade to plan how she will survive beyond her clan’s grasp AND without her clan’s riches.
Call her impractical for not making use of a soon-to-be readily available stash of wealth and luxury, but her soul twists itself into knots as soon as she even thinks of using it, so she will not use the bloodstained gold that came from churning out the countless lives of innocent children sacrificed by their mothers.
In that hall full of rotten monsters, both within human skin and a literal one sitting on a throne as mockery for any deity there is, a child plans how to survive beyond the gilded walls of her clan and the horrors within while making sure the then-unborn child of significance escapes and survives.
For it’ll do her no good if the worst happens and the progenitor of Demons lives due to that damn Kisatsutai missing one of its Hashira .
Hamichi Iguro didn’t know what happened to her child.
Yotsuba is such a sweet child, always trotting after her and making cute, adorable noises toward her, (someone who didn’t deserve such innocence and love being directed at someone like her), the only good thing in this world. Her precious daughter she loved so dearly.
It happened on a sunny day, while she was conversing with her fellow clanswomen about “matters” (which is such a euphemism for what they are doing, it makes her sick.) when a piercing wail, full of such sharp agony and desperation struck their ears.
Her heart dropped when she realized it was coming into her own sweet child, poor Yotsuba-chan screaming her tiny lungs out, with such big, hiccupping tears that she could do anything but helplessly cradle her in her arms, a futile attempt as it even served to make her cry harder, breaking her own heart into pieces.
Her dear child is not the same after that, always vacantly staring into space, and when she tries to ask, and care for her child like she has always done, Yotsuba hesitates from her touch, further breaking her heart.
Even when her child seems to return to her normal, happy self, Hamichi Iguro knows without a doubt that her Yotsuba is never the same, and that sends her slowly to despair.
This is not the first time she wished that her daughter be born to a better family, with better parents, and better relatives, not this rotten farce of a clan filled with nothing but sick, merciless women who would sacrifice their flesh and blood for what? A wagon of expensive silk? Ingots of gold? Heaps and piles of jewelry? It sickens her.
And nothing terrifies her more than her daughter turns out to be the same.