"Tch." It honestly annoyed Suzume that he kept asking her about her tendrils, about the Earth Grudge Fear.
"I was a naive moron who trusted the wrong person, is that what you want to hear about?" she replied, glaring at Kotaru for a moment before looking away as she shook her head. Her eyes darted to a couple different points on the wall as she thought about those moments that day.
"His name was Asura. Some disgusting crazed criminal obsessed with flesh and deformities. Toukai Asura I think? One of a few names I actually try not to remember." Suzume seemed to exhale sharply out of her nose, as if some foul stench was associated with the name that she just couldn't get out of her nose fast enough. If she still had a stomach, it might have churned at the memory even.
"He was always raving about his god of flesh. Talking about mutations and changes. I guess I had listened to him too much. I was used to madmen at the time. Between my father, Nehan, and a few others I just got used to hearing sense in their ravings. I trusted madness like it made some kind of weird sense." She sighed and shook her head.
"He told me I would be born anew, bathed in the power of K'thnguh!" She spared a single, wary glance at Kotaru before her eyes returned to the wall.
"That was the name of his god you see. K'thnguh. I'd seen him mutate and kill entire villages under that name but I had always thought it was intentional. So when he talked about blessing me with some kind of power, raved of how beautiful I would be when he was done..." She looked down at one of her hands for a moment as the stitching pulled apart from her fingers down to her elbow and a mass of half a dozen tendrils was revealed in a swirling mass. She swallowed hard, and if she could cry, she certainly would have.
"I never knew I'd become this disgusting heap of a monster." she practically spit the words out.
She shook her head and looked down at the tendrils still, just watching them move as if they moved on their own.
"I was studying one of my father's old scrolls, one that he had used to earn the Earth Grudge Fear himself years ago. I put it away before Asura performed his ritual. All I could think about was my mother, how they called her 'The Lady Fae', and how beautiful everyone said she was. It was on my mind so much I could swear I heard her voice."
Suzume swallowed hard again as she watched the tendrils come together as if wrapping together and so the flesh stitched up into the form of a hand again and she looked away.
"Hiraku is forever." she whispered, shaking her head.
"I'm afraid that's probably a very boring story to you too. Just a naive girl who trusted the wrong criminal. Happens all the time out here, I should count myself lucky I wasn't killed or something." Though as she spoke it was clear she didn't count herself lucky, her voice was cold and a monotone.