THIS PAGE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR A FEW EPISODES OF GENSOMADEN SAIYUKI. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE SPOILED, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER.
TO REITERATE THE FACT...
THAT WAS MEANT TO BE A BIG-ASS WARNING.


Er... scroll down to read on, if ya want to.



















Like the Rain

Hakkai and Gojyo did not always have as close a bond as they do now. Actually, their lives were set to take two very different courses. But because of a fateful event for just one man, it ended up to their two lives intertwining together...

Three years before the beginning of Saiyuki, a man known as Cho Gonou -- a good-natured and demure young teacher -- was living with his lover, a woman named Kanan, and enjoying a very peaceful, happy life. This would have been the idealistic family life, had the unthinkable not happened.

One day, while Gonou was playing with his students, a band of demons stole into his home and destroyed his peaceful life, kidnapping Kanan and taking away what could have been...

Enraged with this, Gonou went -- in a word -- insane. Taking only a dagger with him, he trekked off to find his lover, in the process killing one-thousand demons... a single man, driven by revenge and selfishness, with only a dagger had become a demon...

However, before he struck his hand through the chest of the thousandth, he found Kanan, discovered she had been raped and impregnated... and witnessed her suicide. Rage took hold once more, giving him the strength to kill that last demon, the very son of Hyakugan-mao, Chin Iisou.

Which made him a wanted man.

Sha Gojyo was also living a peaceful life, having a peaceful existance in a tiny shack, gambling just enough to pay the rent and keep food on the table. On occasion, he would use his charm to find a companion for a night...

But he was bored with all of this. The "same old routine" had very quickly become dull to him. He wanted something else in his life, but like most people, he neglected to realize that when you wish for something like that, you get it... ten-fold.

That same night, a night when the rain was falling heavily and the streets were paved with mud, he found a man laying on his face, blood staining the ground beneath him. At first, Gojyo thought he was dead, but on inspection, he found this man was not. In Gojyo's words...

"It was like... he looked at me and... smiled..."

Gojyo thought nothing of picking the man up and carrying him home, despite a gaping wound ripped on this stranger's stomach and the blood that soaked his clothes for it. He thought nothing of spending a week nursing him back to health, giving up his bed to a man he had never seen before in his life.

He spent the next month learning and living, playing cards with his new tenant and helping him regain the strength he had lost due to his injuries. Never once did he think of asking his name.

At the end of the month they had spent together, the man was about to leave when a knock at the door brought with it a whole new affair... behind the eyes of a high-ranking Buddhist priest named Genjo Sanzo. He had been sent to find a mass murderer by the name of Cho Gonou. Gojyo suspected he knew... so he lied to attempt to keep his friend safe. Why, he was unsure. This was a man he barely knew...

In the end, the stranger -- Gonou -- stole Sanzo's gun after a skirmish with Son Goku and ran. Sanzo and Goku were quick to follow, and Gojyo opted to tag along.

After an encounter with a demon out for Gonou's blood and a meeting of the four, the group headed to Hyakugan-mao's castle so that Gonou could bury Kanan's remains, only to find it had burned to the ground, leaving nothing behind...

Sanzo took Gonou back to the temple, and later returned to tell Gojyo that Cho Gonou was dead. Frustrated at himself and at his loss, he cut off his hair (earlier, Gonou had made the comment to him: "Your hair and eyes... looked like blood to me. That same crimson that stains my hands is the only thing binding me here when I try to leave this reality. Your hair and eyes are my reminder.").

A few days later, while looking at apples in the market, he was approached by a young man with dark hair and a monocle, and an ever-familiar smile...

Cho Gonou had given up his old life and was now Cho Hakkai. Cho Gonou was, in a sense, dead. Upon learning this, the two decided to live together. This they did for three years, until the beginning of Saiyuki.

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