Published at 4th of December 2019 9:51 am

Volume 2, Part IV: A Hallow - III

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

The miracle of Shiki’s recovery happened only a scant few days after that. According to the new hire, Shiki’s parents had not even been allowed to talk to her for some reason, which meant that visits from him would be decidedly impossible. Because of this, the boy seemed to dive into the paperwork a little more readily, a little more fervently than Tōko had yet seen, perhaps as some means to distract himself.

“It really is far too dark in this office,” Tōko mentions, to break the silence they had kept since the start of the day.

“Well, I could get a light for you, if you want, ma’am,” he replies, mono- tone, without sparing even a glance to Tōko. She got the sense that he was thinking of something with the kind of anal diligence that were allowed only to absurd thoughts; half-baked ideas that one leaves to linger in the mind long enough to entertain the notion that they might actually be half- way sane. With this in mind, Tōko finally spoke to him frankly.

“You’re free to stop looking so glum about it anytime, you know. Shiki, I mean. And don’t even think about sneaking in there at night just to see her.”

“I’m not thinking anything of the sort, ma’am. Besides, there’re far too many guards around that place: a pair in the front door, and a handful patrolling the grounds.”

Mercy me, thinks Tōko, incredulous, he’s already counted the guards and patrol routes. I just took him under my wing, so far be it from me to allow him to be a criminal overnight. With a shrug of resignation, Tōko spoke. “I was going to play this one close to the chest, but you’re leaving me without much choice here. I’ve pulled what strings and favors I can to get hired as a temp therapist in the hospital where your friend is. You hear that? I’m going to find out about Shiki Ryōgi for you, so don’t you go running off doing something that’ll get you arrested. It’s the least I could do after hearing you tell that story when you didn’t want to in the first place.”

She sighed in what might have been an attempt to place a last bit of indifference to the whole situation. The boy, however, stood up, walked towards Tōko, and grasping each of her hands with one of his, he shook them up and down. Not realizing this was his way of expressing his gratitude, she gave him an awkward look, saying, “Right—weird. Gotcha.”

“This is so surprising, Miss Tōko! I didn’t think you’d have it in you to possess the compassion of the average person, ma’am!”

“Now see, you could’ve taken this in quiet celebration. But instead, you had to go and destroy your chances of ever having a raise.”

“Oh, sorry, slip of the tongue,” he says quickly, trying to gloss over it as fast as possible. “So that’s why you’re wearing a fancy suit today. Yes, quite stylish. It looks so good, I almost don’t recognize you.”

“Um, well I always dress this way, but fine, feel free to keep up the compliments. Lord knows I don’t get enough of them.” Sensing that the boy would barrel right on through whatever she said, Tōko quickly tried to get back on track. “So, with that business out of the way, I expect you not to do anything as stupid as your age might imply. Something’s not right with that hospital, and I’m not sure what, but you don’t need to get involved in it. You just stay here and do some crosswords or something while I’m out.”

Those last sentences put a damper on the boy’s otherwise infectious enthusiasm, and when he finally calmed down, he asked, “What do you mean something’s not right?”

“I can feel the resonance of magic there, a ward maybe, put up by a mage other than me. Whoever it is, his or her objective probably isn’t Shiki, or they wouldn’t have waited so courteously for two years for me to pop into the picture.” A lie and Tōko knew it. The machinations of mages were often marked by their forethought and patience, and there wouldn’t have been a reason for any mage to act before Shiki awakened, but now she has. The boy need not know all of that, and fortunately, it seemed that Tōko bluffed it well enough for him to be satisfied.

“Um, ma’am, when you say a ‘ward’, you mean something like what you’ve set up on this building, right?”

“You got the gist of it. Wards are nifty little spells centering around controlling a slice of space. Some mages like to conjure up actual physical walls, but others are a bit more subtle, veiling a place to induce a mental urging on anyone that doesn’t know or have business with the mage to go away. Best part? People never notice it. To them, it’s just some gut feeling that they should stay away. The perfect spell to hide the fact that this place is the sanctum of the best mage this side of Tokyo,” she said with a flutter of her hand, the boy reading no irony into what she said. “Of course, you managed to get through and find me and I didn’t even know you. But hey, that’s why I hired you, didn’t I?”

“Then is the ward in the hospital a dangerous spell or something?” “Read between the lines, friend. Wards are rather benign as spells go—by themselves anyway. It’s always been used to protect hallowed ground from the prying eyes of the outside world. It originated from Buddhist thought, as far as I know, but now it refers to spells that act as an occultation to the mage, making him or her extremely difficult to find. Good ones don’t get noticed. The best ones just go out-and-out creating a small demarcated space that’s removed from all normal perceptions of ‘space’, essentially a small, temporary—yet functioning—pocket universe. But that’s some straight up high-level thaumaturgy, done only by archmages; though as far as I know, there’s only one such individual in Japan.”

Now that Tōko was talking about the Art, a subject she rarely tackled in the presence of the boy, she took on a pointed countenance that looked even more serious than her usual expression. Being a mage was her other job—her real job, if one could even call it that. She continued:

“Still, while it may not have been that extreme, that ward in the hospital is still very well woven, whatever effects it may have. I almost didn’t notice it at first. I knew someone once that could have worked something like it, but it really could have been anyone deft enough in that aspect of the Art. I guess it fits their specialty, but mages who specialize in wards do tend to distance themselves from most outside affairs, so I can’t imagine someone like that meddling in this.”

That ward in the hospital wasn’t just some cheap spell from an amateur, though, thought Tōko. It was different, pointed inward maybe. Maybe to veil the hospital from any unwanted attention? The mental urging telling those inside to ignore anything abnormal, so someone could operate with free rein?

Tōko told none of this to the boy. He still needed to be kept out of any unnecessary meddling from things beyond his ken. She mentioned only enough to be polite, and make it clear to him that this was a matter far above him. Tōko took one glance at the wall clock and stood up.

“Well, guess it’s about time I showed my face over there,” she said, and started to walk towards the door.

“Miss Tōko, please just take care of Shiki for me,” the boy says behind her. Without turning to look at him, she gave him a grunt of acknowledgement and waved a hand in goodbye, but a last question from the boy gave her reason to hold her steps for a moment. “Oh, just a trivial question, ma’am, but who was that expert in wards that you knew?”

She dug into her memory for a moment, then looked over her shoulder and answered.

“Oh, just an old friend. A monk. There’s really no need to worry about him. The last time we met was on long-past times, in different continents.”

It has been six days since Tōko first filled in as a speech therapist for Shiki’s case. She had just come back to the office from the hospital, and she was about ready to just sit down and relax until the day ran out. She looked out the window, the setting sun outside baking the walls of her unlit office into a crisp red, forcing her to slacken her orange necktie; a sign of the coming summer heat.

Each evening she returned to the office with an update on Shiki’s progress, an act the boy learned to be thankful for.

“She does PT two times a day, and a battery of brain examinations after that, and both leave her pretty spent. You don’t need to be troubling her further by going there, so have the patience to wait a little longer and you’ll be able to see her then.”

“Will she be fine with just two physical therapy sessions a day? I mean, she was in a coma for two years after all.”

“I’ve heard that they exercised her joints everyday while she was in a coma. These are trained professionals, friend. Trust them to do their job. Hers is a ‘rehabilitation’ in more than one sense, as she needs to realign herself with society as well. How she recovers physically is only a question of time.” Tōko paused to produce a cigarette, promptly putting it into her mouth and lighting it. Shiki Ryōgi, was, to her, an enigma, a puzzle to relish the formulation of a solution. And every time she talked to Shiki, every time she came back to the office to tell the boy, she found herself pondering the greatest puzzle of all: Shiki’s identity.

“Her mind, however…well, that’s an entirely different story. She’s drifting farther apart from her previous self each day, I suspect.”

“It’s the amnesia, isn’t it?” the boy said hesitantly, but also with conviction, as if he’d been preparing himself for this revelation for the past two years.

“I’m not entirely convinced it is. I don’t see anything wrong with her personality. It’s just that...well, I don’t know how you’ll react to this so—” “Don’t worry, ma’am. I think you’ve inured me to these things by now.

Please, spare no detail on my account. What exactly is wrong with her?” Ironic, then, that sparing details was exactly what she had been doing in the last few days. But, she thought, perhaps it’s best that he know now.

“Her other half that you told me about, the other personality known as Shiki she kept inside her, has vanished. She probably can’t even be sure herself whether she’s Shiki or Shiki. When she awoke, Shiki was already gone. And maybe, that’s why her soul now feels empty, like a sinkhole. We mages know better than most the consequences of the soul, and the hollow she feels now is a hell of a burden, inexpressible but keenly felt.”

“But, why did Shiki disappear?” he inquired calmly. All told, he’s taking this quite well, thought Tōko. Maybe he really has steeled himself for it.

“I’m only speculating here, but if you’ll entertain it: Two years ago in that accident, the girl you know as Shiki Ryōgi died. But Shiki took her place

and died in her stead. ‘Reborn’, such as it was, in her mind was a wholly new individual, molded by her memories and experience but unable to truly feel them. She still probably spends her nights there in her dilemma, unable to grasp the sensation that she is someone that is more than the sum of her parts.”

“If she’s a different individual like you said, does that mean she can’t remember anything that happened before?”

“No, no, she remembers just fine, with the exception of the memories that Shiki himself made. She suffered what might be called a ‘death of the mind’. Think of it as her taking a little trip and gaining new experiences. She’s still the Shiki you know, but changed somehow by the journey of her soul. I suspect that’s why her growth stopped when she slipped into the coma, as she entered a liminal state of being alive and dead, due to the dual existences of Shiki and Shiki: a paradox that reality couldn’t resolve. Her memories will be a source of continued anxiety, I assure you, as she will be unable to remember many of what made her dual existence unique, and what she does remember she can’t process as her own. Her personality is one of synthesis, of the past and the present mixed together.”

I make it sound like it happened involuntarily, Tōko thought, but it prob- ably wasn’t; to compensate for the one she lost, as a way to retain her identity as a Ryōgi, she changes herself. If that’s true, then she’s a fool. She needs companionship, not mimesis, to fill the hollow that Shiki left behind, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

Tōko let this remain unsaid, and continued. “But even if we hypothesize that she’s a different person, the truth is that she’s still Shiki Ryōgi, even if she can’t feel the same way. Time will pass, and with time, her soul’s wounds will heal, and she’ll eventually recognize that fact. A rose by any other name and all that jazz. See, a rose doesn’t change just because you put it on different soil or water it another way. So don’t start slashing your wrists in the bathroom because of it.” She added in a whisper, “In the end, a hole has to be filled with something. For her, the memories won’t do. She needs to make new memories, new experiences; a new hallow for her soul that she herself can create.” Tōko looked squarely at the boy, ensuring there was no mistaking who she was referring to. “And it’s your job to get her there. You just go do your thing, make contact and conversation. It’s the thing she needs the most after she gets out of the hospital, which should be soon.”

She chucks the cigarette she had been smoking violently out the window, and then raised her arms to stretch her back, the bones producing a satisfying cracking sound.

“I really shouldn’t have bought a brand of smokes I don’t know. That was a horrible smoke right there,” she said to no one in particular. The boy couldn’t figure out if the long sigh she made afterwards was caused by her hatred of the cigarette or of the difficulty of her job, and decided that it was perhaps best not to ask.

As my usual morning examination comes to its usual boring close, I glance at the desk calendar beside my bed and realize it’s the 20th of June. That makes the duration of my stay here a mere seven days, counting tomorrow when I get out of the hospital. With the gradual recovery of my body, they saw fit to finally cut me loose. And that includes the bandages on my eyes, which will come off early tomorrow morning.

It’s amazing how little of importance you can gain, and how much you can lose in as short as a week’s time. Akitaka and my parents probably haven’t changed a bit, but they feel like strangers. But it’s me that’s changed, and with it, everything. I can only lie here and watch as it happens. I let my hand brush lightly over the bandages covering my eyes. For all that I lost, this is the only thing I gained.

Death: Maybe it’s a time and a place. But it’s also a concept, formless and shapeless. I lived through it, and now I can literally see it. When I opened my eyes for the first time in two years, the first thing I took notice of wasn’t the nurse who rushed to my side in astonishment. It was a line, running across her throat. It only took a moment for me to see the rest: a line in every person, in every wall, even in the air itself, all of them across everything I could see. They were never still, always flowing and slithering in accursed serenity. Then I realized that these weren’t just lines. They were cracks and fissures to that oblivion of nothingness I had been in. I was filled with an irrational fear then, a fear of the possibility of that outer darkness pouring into the world I had just returned to. The nurse talked to me, but I couldn’t hear the words, only seeing the lines, and the things they were attached to crumbling and dying, breaking apart piece by piece.

It was that vision that provided the impetus for me to try destroying my eyes. My arms moved, half through my own volition, half through instinctual fear, and every muscle hurt like hell. I was still weak, and because of that the doctor was able to stop me from crushing my own eyes. Jury’s still out on whether that was a good thing or not. They never seriously asked me why I did it, chalking it up to the fact that my mind was still recovering, and all sorts of involuntary impulses could happen then.

But now my eyes are almost good again, a fact that I couldn’t deny any longer. I’d do anything not to see a world like that a second time. Neither the world I’m in now, or the world of “ ” in my sleep, a place more disgusting and repulsive than any place I’d ever seen. I still can’t bear the thought of ever returning there, though I’ve since consigned it to a bad dream.

Yet these eyes tied to that oblivion are proof enough of how real it was. I point my fingertips at my eyes. They’re only inches away from each other now. All that’s left for me to do now is make a fast, clean stab, like I always did in sword practice—

“Hold that thought, friend. Never been told to look before you leap? Whoops, poor choice of words.” From the door comes a woman’s voice. I turn my head towards it. I didn’t have time to remember who she is exactly but whoever she is, I can hear her voice coming closer. I don’t seem to hear any accompanying footfalls, however. The person stops right beside my bed.

“Arcane Eyes of Death Perception, huh? Destroying that’d be a huge waste, Shiki. In the first place, even if you destroy it, reality will still make you see what you were meant to see. Curses come home to roost too.”

“Who the hell are you?” I ask. I hear the sound of her trying to stifle laughter at my angered inquiry, and a rough click, like a lighter spitting out flame.

“A mage. One you’d do well to listen to. Those Eyes are a tool, and like any tool, you need someone to teach you how to use it.” As she speaks, I slowly recognize her voice. The tone is altered somewhat, but it is definitely that speech therapist, here for our daily sessions.

“How to use—”

“Damn right. Better than not knowing anything and fucking everything up right? You have eyes capable of manifesting death, Arcane power the likes of which the Celtic god Balor held.”

What. The. Hell. I have absolutely no idea what this woman is saying. “Arcane Eyes usually only become permanent through a ritual performed on the eyes, but you, you’ve had them ever since, didn’t you? Your little brush with death was just the kind of thing that would have awakened it. From what I hear from reliable sources, it was always your nature.”

I know what she’s saying, and my memories say the same thing. Shiki was always one to look past appearances, and always read a person’s character, though she never truly intended to do so. I couldn’t possibly begin to speculate as to how she could have known about that, but she continues to talk like she knows every bit about me.

“That was the way Shiki rolled, and I suggest you start doing it more often too. Understand that everything has a flaw, a fundamental lie. Then, understand that everything is driven to entropy, to be pulled into chaos and break down. You’ve been brushing that boundary of death for so long that you’ve been able to comprehend it, your eyes allowing you to observe these flaws like a microscope would, seeing lines no one else can see. What

you’re seeing is a thing’s death, its end, and you can touch and mold it with your will. Practically speaking, there’s not much difference between you and old Balor now, is there? If you really feel like putting extra finger- shaped holes in your Eyes, then you can sell them to me instead, and I’ll happily extract them from you for study.”

“Well, you said I’ll still see them even if I do, so I don’t see why I should hand them ove—“

“Then you do listen to people after all. Then hear this: the mundane life? Ain’t gonna happen. And quit your bitching already. End of the line for your dream. Wake up! Open your eyes to my world, the secret world. You were meant to be here. The happiness of the everyday isn’t for you.”

Her declaration carries a confidence that rides with finality, and it’s a sudden and unexpected conclusion that my mind still refuses to accept.

“But…I don’t even have the will to live anymore.” I manage to utter. A weak reply, but it’s all I can bring to fore.

“Oh, let me guess, because your soul is hollow?” she says in a mocking tone. “And yet you don’t want to die. You know why? Because you’ve seen that supernal realm that no third-rate Kabbalist can even begin to conceive of, you ungrateful little brat. Look, I’ll break down your existential crisis for you. You were inseparable once, but now that’s no longer true. Shiki’s gone. Big whoop. You’re a different person now. You mutter that you don’t have the will to live while you entertain the thought of not dying. You say you have no reason to be alive, yet you’re scared of death. You’re a regular Neville Chamberlain aren’t you, sitting on that boundary. Is it still a wonder why your soul is so hollow?”

“How dare you even talk about me like you know me! I don’t—” When I finally find the strength to protest, I am cut off again, not by her, but by me…seeing her silhouette through the bandages…as well as the lines she spoke of. Death itself twines around my fingers.

“Guessing you saw the lines again, judging from your reaction. You let your guard down too easily, is why. The stray wraiths in this hospital are happy to have you. You don’t get your shit together soon, they’ll have a comfortable new home in your body.” She must be talking about the white haze. But I haven’t seen it around lately. “Oh, they’re going to get friendly with you. They’re ghosts, you know, parts of the soul fettered to this side, something keeping them from passing on. They aren’t sentient, least not like us, but they’re instinctual things driven to return to corporeality. This hospital has a lot of them. Practitioners of the spiritual Arts usually protect themselves from being possessed when dealing with ghosts, but to some- one with as hollow insides such as yours, it’s as easy as stealing a car.”

She says it with such contempt that she almost seems to be enjoying the entire affair. If all of that was true, why did it not possess me in the past? I’d never offered any resistance, after all.

“You’re pathetic, and make a mockery of the rune ward I put extra effort into casting here to protect you. I guess we’re not seeing eye to eye here. All right, you can go do…whatever it is you do from now on for all I care.” After she spits out those words, I hear her stand up and make for the door, but before she closes it to leave, she leaves me one last question. “But are you really going to waste what Shiki sacrificed himself for, Shiki Ryōgi?”

As it has become with the questions she liked to bring up about my past, I could not produce an answer, and my evasion only makes me feel like there was something I missed, something I still couldn’t find the reason for.

Night has fallen and darkness has crept into my room. This evening, no footsteps can be heard in the corridor outside, and the silence is kept as dutifully as in a deep mountain. In my head, I keep replaying my conversation with the therapist, specifically her parting words.

Why did you take Shiki’ place, Shiki? The question echoes in my head, but Shiki isn’t there to answer. Why did you disappear? What could you have possibly gained in return? You always liked to dream, always liked to sleep, and yet, on that rain-soaked night, you threw that away and died. You’re the me I can never meet, who I never could meet.

I slowly fall into sleep, racking my mind for a memory, any single scene that could explain why he did what he did. As always, no luck.

The door to my room makes a low creak: someone is opening it. Slow, heavy-set footsteps draw closer. The nurse maybe? No, it’s already past midnight. A visitor? But who could possibly come at this late an—

A hand wraps itself lovingly around my neck, cold to the touch. In an instant, strength enters it, squeezing, choking, and my neck begins to be crushed, little by little.

With a moment’s pressure, Shiki breathes a single moment’s pained gasp. She can feel the air in her throat slowly being cut off as the fingers tighten their caress. Shiki can only wryly observe.

At the rate this guy is going, my neck’s gonna be crushed before I have the air wrung out of me.

Though unable to see, Shiki attempts to offer her attacker a solid look directly to the face, so close that she can smell the scent of…it. Whatever this thing is, it isn’t something that is still alive, judging by the smell. Shiki can feel it now, the corpse looming above her, its grip not slacking for even a second. She grasps both arms, attempting to ward them off, but to no avail—the difference in strength was clear.

But wait, thinks Shiki, isn’t this what I’d wanted all along?

She stops resisting, and halts her breathing. If I’m going to choose to die, might as well make it as fast as humanly possible. After all, existing without really “living” is the worst thing you can do to anyone. It’s only right for me to disappear.

Her strength ebbs as she surrenders herself. Though only a few seconds have passed, to Shiki, times seems to be stretching itself out painfully. Cold, wooden hands dig into her skin. The flesh tears, and warm blood seeps forth as proof of life.

I’m going to die, just like Shiki.

And I’m just going to throw that life away, like trash.

The thought makes Shiki pause.

Did Shiki really want to die? I never thought about that. Of course he never wanted to die! But—he had to. To protect something. And he wouldn’t have wanted me to die too. After all, death is such a lonely, fruitless thing; dark, ominous, and more worthy of fear than anything else.

“No!” Shiki manages to cough. In a moment, she resumes her resistance, grabbing hold of both arms as before, and puts a foot on her attacker’s belly. “Anything but to fall into that place again!”

And with all the strength she could manage on that one leg, she kicks the corpse upwards and away. The blood and skin on Shiki’s throat make a wet sound as the hands that held her slip away. Immediately, she stands up and gets herself away from the bed as fast as her feet could carry her, but the corpse is close behind. Its hands struggle in the unlit room, trying to find solid purchase on Shiki’s body as he tries to grapple her again.

From what Shiki can tell, the corpse’s body is that of an adult man, two heads higher than her. She fumbles as best as her blindness can allow, but she is hard pressed to resist, her hands being as busy trying to feel herself around the room as warding off the corpse’s attacks. She retreats, and retreats once more, until she leads herself back-first into a wall.

The light bump on her back reassures her: it is a hard rap on the glass window. The corpse approaches, and Shiki hears the sound of its arms cutting through the air, which Shiki manages to intercept with her own, stopping them at least for a while. With the window at her back and the corpse in place, all was according to her hastily thought up plan. There is one last consideration that gives her a moment’s hesitation—what floor is this on?

“Don’t hesitate!” she tells herself, and releases the arms of the corpse as hard as she could manage. Immediately, they gun for her throat again, but Shiki is faster. Using her now free hands, she opens the window. With the force of the corpse’s grapple and approach, they both fall out of the window, entangled with each other.

In an instant, me and the corpse are out of the window and in open air. In the next instant, I grab it by the shoulder and force it downwards, reversing our positions. With him below me to soften my fall, we descend together. A second or two later, it hits the ground, and I feel the force of the impact sharply but without lasting pain. I jump away from it, the hands and feet that support my landing scattering some dirt in the hospital’s yard.

Judging from the sound of foliage just before the fall, the corpse had fallen on some sort of flower bed a meter or so away.

That was an amazing landing, if I do say so myself. So amazing in fact, that my body is frozen in place, likely still catching up at having just fallen three floors. The smell on the wind is that of fresh leaves and trees in the courtyard. In contrast to the excitement of the last few seconds, the night is deathly silent. Unmoving, I feel only the throbbing pain in my throat. It tells me that I’m still alive.

As for the corpse…well, whatever it is, it isn’t done yet. If I don’t want to die, then I know what I need to do.

Kill. Before it kills me.

With that thought, the cavernous emptiness that had until moments ago gripped my heart fades away. All my doubts, all my worries, disappear all at once.

“That’s all?” I whisper. It’s only then that I awaken, for real this time. How stupid and foolish I was, to brood as I did, when all along the answer was so fine and simple.

“Catty in more than one sense, aren’t we?” says a voice from behind Shiki, a voice she recognizes as the therapist’s. Shiki does not turn to meet her, still shocked from the fall.

“You again? Kind of late for therapy, don’t you think?” Shiki asks.

“I’ll have you know I was standing guard,” answered the self-styled mage nonchalantly. “It all had to come to a head tonight, before you got out, one way or the other. These ghosts wanted your body but couldn’t get it, so they possess a dead body to take care of that problem.”

“Please don’t tell me this is all because of that weird stone you left in the room.”

“Oh ho, so she remembers. No, it’s not the rune’s fault, but I will admit this is a mistake I did not foresee. I erected a ward that should have kept ghosts out, but then they get themselves a corporeal body to circumvent that. They usually aren’t that smart, neither with the body, or their dogged determination to have you specifically. I smell strings behind this.” The mage chuckles, as if this was all some grand game she was playing with another of her kind, and she had just made a small tactical mistake.

“Well, now’s your chance to rectify that. Why not show me some of the magic up your sleeve, mage?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” With that, the mage snaps a finger. In the air, her hand moves as if to conduct a mudra, manipulating the cigarette she holds to describe a symbol made out of straight lines in the air, which finds itself suddenly projected onto the still-staggered corpse. It is rune script, her conduit to arcane power, and through it she sets fire to the rotting body, putting flame to it from afar. “The Ansuz I have is too weak for this,” she grumbles, seemingly disappointed. The reason soon becomes clear.

The flames embrace the corpse, but it only starts to stand up, unmindful of its current state. The bones on its leg are clearly broken, and yet once it stands it continues to advance, shuffling and dragging itself towards Shiki. It is not long before the flames extinguish themselves, the power animating it expiring.

“Are you telling me he’s still standing? Are you a real mage or are we in the part where you try selling me bridges?”

“I think I preferred you more docile. This is difficult, and definitely not my area of expertise. If it was a regular human, bam, end of story. But since it’s a corpse, it doesn’t really mind if it loses an arm or a head. You’d need an incinerator to stop him, or maybe a particularly devout monk could—” “Let’s make this quick, shall we? Long story short, you can’t do it.” The mage shoots Shiki an annoyed glance at what she just said, her pride forced to submit to her inability.

“Don’t think your newfound talents are going to save you from that thing for long, too. It’s already dead. While you can kill people, you’re a long way away from unmaking the death-touched. We’ll fall back for now.” The mage retreats a step. Shiki, however, remains unmoving, though not through any injury from the fall. She is only smiling, as if this ridicule in itself was enough to stop the approaching enemy.

“Dead or whatever you wanna call it, that body is moving, still ‘living’, right? Then—” Shiki finally lifts herself up, standing now with back bent in the manner of some ancient predator. She puts a finger to her neck, feels the texture of her torn skin, and of the life blood flowing out of it, the traces of strangulation still left. And yet, here I stand, alive. The sensation of it is almost orgasmic. “—whatever it is, I’ll kill it,” she finishes.

The bandages that blinded Shiki come loose and drift away on the wind, at last revealing in the midst of the black night her spellbound Eyes. In an instant, she puts energy into her legs, breaking into a run, every kick of her legs scattering the soil beneath her feet.

She sees everything now. She sees the corpse and how it raises a hand to strike her as she approaches. Shiki is only barely able to duck under it. Most especially now, she sees the lines, no longer as threatening as before, but inviting, throbbing and pulsating to an invisible rhythm. She sees the lines on the corpse, and with one hand traces one of their number, stretch- ing from right shoulder to left hip. Though her hand seems to slip easily into the line, the attack costs her a broken finger, a minor inconvenience compared to the injury dealt to Shiki’s enemy, who is now cut in half.

Like a puppet being cut from its strings, the thing collapses in a heap, its one arm the only part of it still able to move, grasping Shiki’s leg like a writhing insect. Without mercy, Shiki quickly stomps on it with her foot.

“What a useless piece of death you are,” she spits out, more indignant than she has ever been. “Begone from my sight!” She laughs a silent laugh and thinks, I’m alive! All that worry and trouble, gone like bad lies, and the only truth is that I live.

“Shiki!” calls out the mage from the distance. She throws a thin, silvery object at the ground near Shiki, and before it lands it catches a glint of the moonlight. A knife, plain and unadorned. She retrieves it from the ground and sets about its first task. She looks down at the persistent half-body clinging to her for a moment before bringing the knife down on its throat. The corpse stops moving almost instantly, but the mage calls out again.

“You idiot! Stab it right in the heart!” But it is already too late. Faster than her rebuke comes the white haze that Shiki once knew, floating back into ethereal existence the moment Shiki brought down the knife. At once, it beats a hasty retreat…not away, but into Shiki’s body. She falls to her knees as if in a trance. In the moment that Shiki lost herself to the ecstasy of murder, it is then that they make their move to possess her, when the sense of self is weakened.

The mage draws closer to Shiki. “She didn’t finish it, the damned fool.” It seems, however, that Shiki still maintains some tenuous control, as she holds out an outstretched arm towards the mage. Don’t come closer, it seems to say, and the mage finds herself complying. Now with both hands, Shiki grasps the knife, fingers clinging to it like the symbol of life itself, and positions it point-downwards above her own chest.

Determination returns to her hollow eyes. Her lips are still as she grits her teeth and brings the knife slowly downwards until the tip touches lightly upon the skin of her breast. She tells herself in her mind that neither her body nor the hallow of her soul have not yet been plundered by any foolish ghost.

“Now there’s nowhere for you to run,” she speaks to no one but herself. Shiki directs the spellbound sight of her Arcane Eyes inward to see the death of the spectral thing that plagued her, willing and weaving her magic to kill it and only it. Believing only that she won’t be injured from what she was about to do, she gathers her strength.

“I’ll kill the weak part of me. And you will never have Shiki Ryōgi ever again.”

She presses the knife downwards, the blade sliding smoothly through flesh.

The few seconds that pass before she moves again carry the air of a ritual, and when she does move, she withdraws the knife from her chest. No blood runs from her breast, nor are there any traces of it on the blade. But she feels the phantom pain of that knife all the same. She takes a swing at the air, violently, as if to remove the invisible taint of the spirits on the blade, and then speaks to the mage.

“I remember what you said. You said that you’d teach me how to use these Eyes.” Her voice, once so quivering and unsure, now settles into a confidence. The mage, seemingly satisfied, nods her assent.

“Make no mistake, friend. This is a transaction. You’ll learn to focus your talent, but in return you’ll help me with my work. I recently lost my familiar, so I need another pair of helping hands.”

“Right,” Shiki says without even turning to look at her benefactor. “Does that mean I get to kill people?” The question makes even the mage shiver in spite of herself, but she tries to remove her reservation in her answer. “Obviously.”

“Then you have me. Do whatever you want with me. After all, it’s not as if I have any direction in my life.” And with that, she falls unconscious, tired from the fighting, and from the pain on her chest, a look of melancholy on her face just before she collapsed.

The mage lifts her up in her arms, staring for a long time at Shiki’s sleeping face. In contrast to her countenance only moments ago, her face is now tranquil, enough to create the illusion that no life ever flowed through those cheeks. Before long, the mage offers her own words, not caring whether Shiki hears her or not.

“No direction, huh? Unfortunately, you’re wrong again.” She begins to detest the peace on Shiki’s face. “Because a hollowed soul means you can put as much as you can back into it. Where else can you find better prospects, you lucky bastard?”

She clicks her tongue in annoyance, for these are words that she thought she’d forgotten how to say.

Share