Published at 4th of December 2019 1:57 am

Volume 2, Part IV: A Hallow - A Hallow - I

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That which is discordant. That which is hated. That which is intolerable. Accept these things and all others, and never know pain.

That which is harmonious. That which is desired. That which is permitted. Reject these things and all others, and know nothing but pain.

One affirms, one denies. Between two hearts lies the hollow. Between two minds lies emptiness. Between two souls, I reside.

“Hey, you’ve heard about the patient on the private room on the third floor, right?”

“Oh, who hasn’t at this point? The world’s been passed on from mouth to mouth since yesterday, and even that poker faced neurosurgeon Dr. Ashika had to show at least some surprise at that girl’s sudden recovery. I couldn’t believe it myself.”

“No, no, I mean the story after that. What do you think the patient did after she woke up from her coma? Promise me you won’t freak out or anything, okay, but she tried to crush her own eyes!”

“Come on, that’s not true!”

“It is! Dr. Ashika’s trying his best to keep it a secret, but I heard the story from one of his interns, so it has to be real. Apparently, she used her palm to put pressure on her eyes in like, the three seconds that Dr. Ashika wasn’t looking. What a horror show.”

“But with that girl in a coma for two years, she really shouldn’t be able to move, right?”

“Yeah, but we basically exercised her limbs everyday to prevent the disuse atrophy. Her family even paid the hospital a mountain of cash just to make sure we do it. Still, it obviously can’t completely stop it, and her body still has trouble moving. Probably why her attempt to destroy her eyes failed.”

“Still, it’s a rarity for a person in bed rest for two years to even move, let alone poke out her own eyes.”

“That’s why Dr. Ashika was surprised. Wait a minute; what do you call it when the blood vessels in the eye bleed?”

“Subconjunctival hemorrhage, was it? Don’t tell me the girl got that too?”

“You know it. It’s really supposed to heal by itself, but since the ocular trauma was so hard, she’s temporarily blind on top of that. The intern told me that the patient just wanted her eyes bandaged, so that’s what they did.”

“What a shame. Even now that she’s awake she still can’t see anything. Makes my heart tighten a little.”

“It does, doesn’t it? And there’s still the question of her aphasia. Seems she still can’t speak, the poor thing. And since Dr. Alaya left last month we haven’t had a therapist to handle her. But I hear Dr. Ashika’s calling in someone he knows. Until she’s regained some of her mental faculties we’re keeping her on a strict ‘no visitors’ policy. Even the parents are only getting a little time to spend with her.”

“I see. That’s too bad for our little boy.” “What? Which little boy?”

“Oh, you don’t know! There’s this little kid, right? Well, I guess we can’t really call him a kid anymore, with his age and all. He’s the one who brought that girl over here in the first place, and he still comes to visit every Saturday. I’m really rooting for him to meet her again.”

“Oh, you mean that kid. The one everyone was giving nicknames to. I never realized he was still coming. Hard to find that level of sincerity these days, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, he’s the only one that’s been coming to visit her these past two years. He even beat out her parents. Even I’m inclined to believe that part of that girl’s miraculous recovery is because of him.”

“I never thought you were that sentimental.” “That’s alright. Neither did I.”

Beyond and below lay only darkness. This void, lifeless place could only mean one thing: I was dead.

Without anything to even clothe me, I, Shiki Ryōgi, floated, and then sank slowly into the fathomless, lightless sea. There was no end in sight. There was nothing in sight, neither light, and yes, perhaps even darkness. This place was only a hollow, where all meaning ceased to be. A stygian abyss that could not be put into words, and without words it shall remain: a cypher called, simply, “ ”.

I fell deeper into the “ ”, and my naked body slowly acquired the pallor of the grave, and it made me want to look away. In my mind, I knew that everything in this place comes to be the same way.

“Is this death?” I whispered, though it came out so faint, I doubted if it was even real.

Though time too had no meaning inside “ ”, I observed it. Like a stream tracing out into the infinite, like the process of decay, I mark it. It was an eternity. I plunged ever deeper, and cast my eyes farther, and in that eternity, this place was still empty, devoid of anything except me. And yet, it was all so calm and serene. It feels as if, in this place without meaning, the fact that I existed at all fits me. Here lay entropy, the end of all things, a place the living may never observe, but only the dead may enter.

I died. And yet I am still alive. I felt my mind about to lose its grip.

Two years. An instant, stretched out to an eternity. Both are accurate measures of my time spent in this “ ”. Here, I touched death. Here, I fought for my life. Here, I awakened.

The light breeze through the window and the sound of boisterous activity outside my room stirs my mind to wake. I can hear nurses and patients alike scurrying in the corridor outside. The sound of their footsteps and the soft whispers of their conversations build to a low background hum, always present at a hospital in the early morning hours. Compared to how silent last night was, this sounded like some sort of convention, and a noisy one, as far as I was concerned. I liked my waking hours silent. Thankfully, in the secluded space of my private room, I’m sheltered from the worst of the noise.

It didn’t take long for a doctor to arrive and check up on me. “How are we feeling today, Miss Ryōgi?”

Silence. It stumps him, and for a moment, we are both quiet.

“I see. At Least You’ve seemed to calm down since last night. Unfortunately, since we didn’t get the chance to do it last time, I’m going to have to explain your situation to you. Feel free to talk if you feel something’s not right.”

I didn’t really have any interest in paying attention to him, but since it seems like he mistook my lack of a response for consent, it looks like I don’t really have a choice in the matter.

“Then I’ll tell you straight out: today is the fourteenth of June 1998. Two years ago, on the fifth of March, you were involved in a traffic accident, hit by a car in a pedestrian crossing at night. Then you were brought here, to this hospital. Do you remember anything that I’m saying?”

Silence from me again. The last thing I can remember is someone—a classmate, maybe?—standing stock still in the rain. As for the accident, nothing is coming to mind.

“Oh, don’t worry if you can’t remember it. When the accident occurred, it’s likely you noticed the car and tried to jump out of the way. That’s why there isn’t any serious damage on your body. On the other hand, you did receive a strong hit on your head. You were already comatose when they brought you here, but it seems there’s no brain damage. But your mental faculties might still be recovering from your two year coma. I can’t say for sure if your memories will return, but it’s looking that way, since last night’s EEG detected no abnormalities in your brain activity. Anyway, the fact that you woke up from your coma is a miracle in itself. There’s very little possibility of that after two years, you see.”

Even though he makes a point to emphasize the length of my coma, it

still isn’t hitting home for me. For me, yesterday is still that rain soaked night, followed by a vast hollow of emptiness.

“And if you’re about to ask,” the doctor continues, “your eyes are mostly fine. It’s just a blunt injury, which rarely damages the eyes in a permanent way. We’re lucky there wasn’t anything sharp nearby last night. Another week or so, and we’ll be able to take off the bandages so you can finally enjoy the nice scenery.”

I detect a tiny hint of rebuke in his words this time. I suppose he’s a bit frustrated with my little attempt to destroy my eyes. He was pretty persistent last night in asking me why I did it, but I couldn’t answer then as well. They’d think I was crazy.

“You’re locked into physical therapy sessions, one in the morning, and another in the afternoon. As for visiting hours, I’m afraid we’re restricting it until your body and mind are back to normal: an hour a day. Bear with it for a while. Once you’re done, you’re out of here.”

Well, that’s a mood ruiner if there ever was one. Not having the heart to voice my cynicism so early in the morning, I instead try to test my right hand’s responsiveness by moving it, and find that there is no change. Trying to kickstart it into action takes me a few seconds, and I can feel the joints and muscles straining as I make the most minute, yet painful movements. It almost feels like it isn’t my own hand. I suppose it’s what I should expect after two years of disuse.

“Well, that’s it for this morning. Since you’ve seemed to calm down, I won’t have a nurse watch over you all day today. If you need anything at all—water, a book—just press the button next to your pillow. The nurse’s station is right down the hall,” the doctor says in the gentle, practiced words designed to put a patient at ease. Were I able to see, I’d probably see him with a similarly rehearsed smile, one he probably practiced in the bathroom mirror all night. I hear him start to open the door, but stops to say one last thing. “Oh, yes, I almost forgot. You’ll have another doctor starting tomorrow, for your speech condition. She’s a bit closer to your age, so try to be less…stoic…around her. From what I see, you’re going to need the expertise.”

And so, after he left, I was alone again. I lie flat on the bed, arms over my eyes that I myself asked to be bandaged shut.

“My name is—”, I whisper with dry lips still unused to speech, “Shiki Ryōgi.” The same Shiki as before? Maybe not. Maybe she was killed, in those two years of emptiness. All of the memories of someone named ShikiRyōgi are all there in my head, all ready for me to draw out. But what of it? What use are they to me, who died once and awoke? I feel so…disconnected to my past self. There’s no mistaking I’m me, but the memories in my head don’t feel like they are. It’s like I’m watching a biopic. Main character: ShikiRyōgi. Weird ghost image caught in some of the frames: me.

I bite my lips until I’m sure I’m still awake. It’s all I have to make sure I’m still here. I’m a puzzle with a missing piece close to my chest, and the hole makes my insides feel as hollow as a cave with wind howling through it. I’m missing my reason for living.

“And so? What the fuck does it matter?” I mutter to myself with as much conviction as I can muster. And once I’ve said that, I feel less troubled by it. Strangely, this feeling of disquiet and irritation that scratches and pulls at my chest is sort of refreshing, in its own way. There’s anxiety. There’s pain. But those are feelings that the sixteen-year old Shiki still held on to. Me? I’m unimpressed. I don’t know why I’m still alive but I have no inten-

tion of looking a gift horse in the mouth. Not like I feel alive in the first place anyway. I’m just here, now; nursing an existence of being adrift on the wind.

Morning turns to night turns to morning again, and a new day comes, whether or not I can see the sunlight. I am strangely relieved that even without sight, I can feel the slow rise of morning. However, the reason for this relief remains a mystery, since the nurse that took my morning examination came and interrupted my thoughts. Before I knew it, she had finished, and left me alone again, but that wasn’t the end of my day.

My mother and brother came to talk. They felt like strangers, and I couldn’t come to grips with the reality that they were my relatives. Left with no alternative, I managed to mumble little words to them, in the manner that my memories told me Shiki would. It made my mother happy at least, and my brother seemed pleased. It all had the air of some comical farce, and we all played our parts to the letter.

Sometime past noon, I hear the door opening and a person step inside my room. As soon as I hear the clicking heels, I immediately know that it isn’t anyone familiar. I remember that I was going to get a new doctor starting today, but before I could ask, the newcomer starts to speak.

“Hel—lo! Doing fine today?” says the newcomer, drawing out her hello in an attempt at familiarity. A woman, judging from her voice. “Well, I must say, I expected someone that looked more ghastly, but look at you! Your skin is quite pretty. You’re just the kind of girl I can talk to, I think. Now aren’t I lucky?” Her voice is young, maybe somewhere in her 20’s, and has the kind of lilting, up-and-down quality of someone who is too cheerful for her own good. I hear her make her way to the chair beside my bed and sit herself down.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she continues. “I’m not a doctor from here so I don’t come with an ID. Still, with your eyes covered and all, I don’t think it’ll be much of a problem. I’m a speech therapist. You know, for your aphasia and—”

“Aphasia? Who, me? I’m sorry; you must have me confused with someone else.” And so I finally speak. She seems like a person worth messing with, so I cut her off mid sentence. It doesn’t seem to faze her however, since she responds with an “Mmhmm”, with what must have been an accompanying nod of the head.

“Now, normally I’d be angry, but since I already know that your aphasia is a misdiagnosis, I’ll let it slide. That Ashika is such a by-the-books doctor;

he can’t handle special cases like yours. But hey, it’s not like you can’t share the blame for that. Obviously you’re going to raise some suspicion if you keep your mouth shut like you’ve been doing.” She makes a friendly, amused chuckle. For some reason, I’m imagining her wearing glasses. She just seems like the type.

“So they think I have aphasia?”

“Yep. After all, you did hurt your brain some in the accident, so they must have thought that the part of your brain that puts words in your mouth was damaged. But it’s not that isn’t it? You’re just a stubborn young girl with some issues. That having been said, it’s beginning to look like I’m not needed, but I don’t want to get fired a minute into the job. And since my other job isn’t exactly overflowing with customers, I think I’ll keep you company.”

Well, a minute into her job and she’s already proved herself to be an annoyance I can hardly stomach. I reach a hand out for the button to call a nurse, but the doctor is faster. I feel her hand reach it first and she deftly maneuvers the wire from my reach.

“What the hell, lady?” I utter in indignation.

“Whew, that was close. If you tell Ashika now, the gig is up. Come on, let’s cut a deal here. You pretend to have aphasia and I won’t ask you any stupid questions, they won’t call in a new doctor, and I get to earn some money on the side. That way we both benefit. How about it?”

Well, I have to admit, that sounds like a nice proposition, but definitely illegal on some level. Still, I have to wonder what kind of person this woman is when she can just belt out something like that without hesitation. I turn my bandaged eyes to where her voice is coming from, hoping I am looking straight at her.

“You’re not a real doctor, are you?” I ask.

“Right on the first try. I make a living as a…magician, of sorts.” Oh, brother. This just took a turn for the crazy.

“Don’t have a need for a con artist.”

She replies with a chuckle. “I suppose not. A magician can’t fill the hollow in your soul, after all. Only a regular person can do that.”

“W—wait a minute, what did you just say?”

“Oh, you must have noticed it. See, you’re all alone now.” The lilt in her voice that I first perceived as cheerful now grants a menacing air to her speech. I hear her stifle the urge for one last chuckle, and then standing up and walking across the room towards the door. “Doesn’t look like you’re in the mood to talk today, so let’s leave it at that for now. We’ll try again tomorrow. By—e.”

By the time she said goodbye, the cheerfulness had returned to her voice. The sound of the door opening and closing signal her sudden departure, as abruptly as she’d arrived.

With difficulty, I put my right hand on my lips. I was speechless at what she’d said.

All alone. A hollow in the soul. It is those words that make me remember. Oh no. Oh, dear God no. How could I forget him?

I can’t find him. In my mind, I call out, over and over, and he, the other me, doesn’t answer. Shiki Ryōgi is gone. He’s gone.

Shiki was once one of those people who suffered another personality, sleeping and residing within her. The reason for it was simple. It was a trait, passed down through generations in the bloodline of the Ryōgi. The legends tell vaguely of some long past flirtation with the occult and arcane, but I don’t know if that can be believed. This trait, which in a normal family would have been cursed, was instead celebrated and honed, an indication of a state of grace. Those born with it are treated as the heirs to the dynasty.

And so it was with Shiki, who was made the heir even over her older brother. She was an aberrant case. The alternate personality will always be a different gender than the actual person. Among the male Yang and the female Yin, the male personality usually emerges as the dominant. In those who carried the trait, all have been born male, but carried a female personality within them. Shiki was the first female born. Inside her was another, the man named Shiki.

For the most part, the one that controlled the body was still Shiki—me, in other words. Shiki represented all of my more base aspects and all of the thoughts I struggled to repress. Shiki lived only by continually stifling and killing the darkness within herself called Shiki, over and over, until it was the only way she knew how to act normally. Not that Shiki had a problem with that. He seemed quite content to lie dormant the majority of the time, while I call him out in times where I needed his particular brand of aggressiveness, such as in sword sparring. Always, he would come to surface, glad to have the chance to be out, but at the same time bored and resigned to his role.

At first it might seem like a relationship between a master and a servant, but the truth was much more complicated. In the end, Shiki and Shiki were one person. Whatever Shiki did, Shiki also desired, and when Shiki’s desires were suppressed, it was done entirely through his own volition. Which was fortunate, since Shiki had what might be called… homicidal tendencies. Now, as far as I knew, he didn’t actually commit any murder…maybe. But what’s true is that he continually dreamed of the act of murdering his fellow man. Shiki expressly forbade it, and tried her best to ignore it. But even as they ignored each other, they would never be separated. Isolated as Shiki was from the normalcy of the outside world, she was never lonely, thanks to Shiki.

But the time finally came when the cracks in that connection began to show. It was two years ago, Shiki’ first year of high school. Shiki had never shown any desire to use the body, but it was the first time he had wanted to surface and take control. From then onwards, Shiki suffered from gaps in her memory, spaces where she couldn’t remember what happened and what she was doing.

As for me, the memories from my freshman year up until the accident are gone. I can only recall fragments, lost without context: me standing in the scene of a homicide, throat dry, staring at the dark red blood.

One other series of images stands out: The memory of a classroom bathed in sunset, giving it the same vivid red hue that dominates both recollections, the classmate who destroyed Shiki, the one Shiki wanted to kill, and the one last piece of an ideal, normal life that Shiki wanted so much to protect. And since waking up from the coma, the name of that classmate has remained out of reach, no matter how hard I try.

The hospital has its own rhythm, its own sort of respiration. The raucous noise of the morning eventually dims slowly into the almost absolute silence of the night. Occasionally, the sound of slippers echoing in the corridor breaks the placidity, and is my only reminder that I am still awake. The black shroud that blinds me now serves only to highlight how alone I am, an entirely foreign sensation that Shiki never had. She was never alone. But now Shiki is gone, and his loss is keenly felt. In fact, the only way I know I am me and not him right now is because I can’t feel his presence. “Probably the worst way to know your identity: identifying yourself because of what you lost, because of what you aren’t. “ I take a shot at some good, old-fashioned self-loathing, but it isn’t helping. I wish I was just a little sad. That at least would be a change from the hollow soul that the “doctor” said I had. Like the husk of some old ship, it's worth nothing without anything inside it. If so, what goes inside?

I’d…go inside.

A whispering, coming from somewhere in the room. I can feel air rush in from the corridor outside, can hear the almost inaudible creak of the door

opening. I try to tell myself I’m imagining it, but I turn to the direction of the sound all the same.

A flickering, almost numinous white haze. I shouldn’t be able to see it, but it makes a mockery of that statement. Amidst the complete darkness, it’s the only thing I can see. It stands, vaguely like a human, but without bones to hold it up, in a state of being somewhere in between liquid and gas. It travels towards me, flowing and spreading at the same time in a disgusting motion. I am helpless, unable to move my body, so I can do nothing but wait for it.

At least it has a form I can comprehend. Things without form are the truly frightening things. At least, with a shape, your mind can understand it. I don’t sense any hostile intent from this spirit, if that is even what it is. It’s even strangely comforting. For how different are we really, this thing that doesn’t live, and me who has no reason to live?

The spirit caresses me in the cheek, at which point my entire body freezes, the sensation feeling like someone pouring ice water on my spine. It hurts, but I can’t move. I can’t even scream. I can only witness it. We stay that way, unmoving, from midnight until the sun starts to come up. At the crack of early morning, I feel it melting away, like a desiccated slug. As soon as I feel the icy grip loosening, I fall into deep sleep.

Several days have passed since I first woke from the coma, but the doctors have seen fit to keep my eyes bandaged for now. In a marked shift from the noise which I had come to think was standard hospital policy, this particular morning is so peaceful I lose myself taking in the little motions of the day. I can hear the birds chirping outside my window, feel the daylight shining through it, and I allow my lungs to be filled with the crisp air.

Yes, compared to the world I was in for two years, this world is truly a sight to behold. But with each morning that I wake up to the sprawling life of the world, I think: this world is only as happy as people are alone. The safest way to live is to be alone, but why can’t people think that that’s enough?

Once, I had a perfect setup. I didn’t need anyone else. But the circumstances have conspired to make me wait for the part that I seem to lack, and if current trends are any indication, I might have to wait forever.

But what, or who, exactly am I waiting for?

My conversations with the “speech therapist-slash-magician”, such as she was, became a daily affair. In a hospital life full of batteries of tests and therapy sessions, it’s become something to look forward to; a welcome respite from the day-to-day banality. Now, as always, our conversation takes a turn back to my past, and as always, she is positioned in the chair by my bed, talking in her own carefree manner.

“Mmm, now I see. So it’s not that Shiki couldn’t control the body, just that he showed no desire to do it. You—well, both of you—are proving to be quite the amusing couple.”

She had come suspiciously armed with some very extensive knowledge of my background, some of which I know for a fact only a few people know. She knew the curse behind the Ryōgi dynasty, the most tightly kept secret of the family. She knew of my limited involvement in the serial killing that wracked the city two years ago; details which I would normally be much more secretive about, but I’ve long since resigned myself to the outcome and consequences, though the crime and perpetrator remain ambiguous, even inside my head. I find not having to think about it has made for a less stressful thinking environment.

“There’s nothing amusing about having a dual personality,” I impulsively interject.

She clicks her teeth in disappointment. “A cute label, but not accurate, I’d say. Both of you exist simultaneously, each of you having your own will: a recipe for dissociation. And yet, you both perform the same actions. It’s complicated, and the label ‘dual personality’ doesn’t do it justice. Something like ‘composite independent personality’ seems more fitting.”

“Hey, tack on a ‘republic’ in the end there and it’ll sound like some new Balkan country.”

“Ah, well, I never said I was good with names. Still, I do find it weird that, according to you, Shiki always slept, even though he didn’t need to.”

A matter only I could probably answer. It had always been that way. Shiki had always liked to dream, to be off in some astral adventure some-

where in his own imagining, an act that Shiki had never shown any interest in.

“So, is he still sleeping now?” she prods playfully, but I find that I can’t answer her. “Then he really is dead, isn’t he? He took your place as the consciousness that died during the accident, and the memories that he took in became lost to oblivion. Explains the gaps in your memories, at least. And without those memories, the knowledge of how involved you were to the serial killing two years ago might be lost forever.”

“So I’m assuming the suspect is still at large?”

“Indeed, but you know how this city plays. We say ‘oh, dear’ at a serial murder we see on TV, and then go back to eating our dinner. To most of the city in the last two years, it’s become some sort of bad joke. The rest have just forgotten.” She laughs, leaving in doubt how much of her statement she actually believed. “Shiki still puzzles me, though. If he hadn’t done anything, it would have been the Shiki consciousness that died. What reason would he have for taking your place like he did?”

“To be honest, it’s still something I’m thinking about,” I say with hesitation. “But enough about him. Did you bring the scissors I asked for?”

“Sorry, but Ashika and the rest of his minions didn’t allow it. You have, um…well, a history with your eyes, so they’re not allowing anything sharp.” Well, I can’t say I didn’t expect anything less. I’ve been doing pretty well with my physical therapy, and I’ve even been able to move my body. They said it’s the first time they saw someone recover so fast with just two PT sessions every day. As a sort of celebration, I asked for a pair of scissors

from the good doctor.

“What were you going to use the scissors for anyway? Flower arrangement on your bedside table?”

“Hell no. I just wanted to cut my hair, that’s all.” The hair problem has been bothering me ever since I woke up from my coma. It’s become quite

long in the span of two years. Every time I move my head it keeps tickling my neck and back, and is probably the strongest proof I have of how infuriatingly burdening long hair is.

“You should have just said so, then! It’s easy enough for me to call in a hairdresser if you don’t want to talk.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. Can’t stand ‘em. I will not be held responsible for what I do when someone other than me does things to my hair.”

“Oh, I totally know what you mean. We women do have to take care of our hair. You know, I really am jealous of you that your hair growing longer seems to be the only indication that you’ve aged.” I hear the sound of her standing up. “So! Since I couldn’t bring you scissors, let me just leave you with another thing. It’s not much, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s a stone with some rune inscriptions on it. Think of it as a protective charm. I’ll put it over the door, so it’s important that you not let anyone take it off.”

Now I hear the sound of her dragging the chair to the door, after which she must be using it to put the rune in place. Then, she opens the door.

“Well, guess that’s it for now. Someone else might be coming tomorrow, so do be a good girl until then.” She departs then, leaving me only with those strange words and the rune.

Night has fallen, and midnight has past, but my usual visitor hasn’t revealed himself yet.

Each midnight, without fail, the hazy spirit comes. Tonight proves to be the exception. Each night, as with the first, it had always given me a loving caress, always on the cheek. It was painful, and perhaps even dangerous, but I couldn’t care less even if he did choose to eventually kill me. It’d probably be a much simpler affair.

In the dark, I brush the bandages wrapped around my eyes lightly with a finger. It won’t be long now until my eyesight recovers. There remains one thing to do before that happens, however: to destroy my eyes; this time, with no room for error.

Without sight, I cannot see them, but it’s only a matter of time before they are revealed again. If having sight means to keep seeing those…things that must not be seen, then the choice is obvious. It’s much, much more preferable to never see the world than to ever see those things again. Still, maybe there is some other way. It’s the last resort until I can find some other means to live.

Man, I am pathetic.

The Shiki of the past would have destroyed her eyes without a single word or thought to the contrary. I, on the other hand, am hesitating. Not enough will to live, but not enough to die either. If that spirit ever gets it in its head to kill me for some reason, I probably won’t cheer it on, but I probably won’t raise a hand in defiance either.

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