Published at 4th of December 2019 11:20 am

Volume 2, Part V: Chapter 19

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Only the moonlight shining above seems alive in this green fakery of a lawn. Here, Shiki lies, fallen and unconscious, while a fair distance away is the mage in the black greatcoat who has lost both arms. Stepping out of the shadow of the shadow of trees and foliage is another mage, walking collectedly with the air of one heading home after a simple stroll.

“So this, too, ends in failure, Alaya,” says Tōko. Alaya provides her no reply. “A cruel state you find yourself in. You began your chronicle of death, created your own twisted world, carried the weight of anguish that all the people in it experienced. And for what? Why did you have to be so obsessed? Why do you seek the spiral of origin so selflessly? Did you dream, as you once did, of saving this race of men?” Her voice is pitying, almost sad in her own way.

A pause. A beat. Then, “The reason is long lost to memory.” He retreats within himself, to remember.

In a long forgotten time, he realized that he could not save anyone. As long as there is life, there will be no real justice. Joy will not be realized for all men. What of the individuals who cannot find their salvation? Is there no answer to them? The dice game played by God did not seem to bring justice to the right individuals, and when he realized this, he realized that salvation does not come naturally to this world.

And so he decided to chronicle deaths. Make a record of all until their end, and until this material world expires. Through it, he can sift through the patterns and discern what real happiness is. If he could see the streams tracing out into the infinite, observe all those whose lives lacked for justice and deliverance, then perhaps he could arrive at something that could be called true joy. Perhaps he could give meaning to all the meaningless deaths. If the world and everyone in it reached their end, then he could observe the true worth of mankind. And even in the simplicity of that observation, there was value. That was the only common salvation he could find for him and man.

At the scratching sound of Tōko lighting up a cigarette with a lighter, Alaya’s reverie is broken.

“Lost to memory, huh? I wonder, then, what to make of you,” Tōko says. “I was never capable of anything grand. I only ever desired a definitive conclusion. If the sole matter that these mortals could ever leave to history is the ugliness of their existence, then at the very least I can declare that that is their worth. If I could observe that a lifetime of injustice is their legacy, then I have at least observed it, and it would have been enough,” Alaya says, without looking at Tōko directly. Tōko does the same, staring up with disdain and a frown at the night sky.

“Which is why you had to reach the spiral of origin. Yes, I see it now. Because there lies the record of everything, from beginning to end, and there you could observe it. You wanted everyone to die to observe the worth of humanity from your little perch high above everyone.”

“Only a few steps remained to be taken, but again reality had to have its way. It taunts me by presenting me with the vessel to open the path, only to have it hinder my progress. Truly an unstoppable force. Though I took pains so that no one would know it, so that no one would trigger the paradox that would scour this pocket realm from the pattern of reality; Even when I was prepared, I was stopped. This force that ensures the continued existence of the world was my true enemy.” Alaya’s words come out in rasps and rough bursts of stuttered words. He is already starting to ebb away.

Tōko sighs deeply. “Reality? No, Alaya. This time it wasn’t the Deterrent that stopped you. You did what you could do perfectly, and the Deterrent did not act. Believe it or not, you were—indirectly at least—done in by Tomoe Enjō and the simple affection he still held for his family.”

But Alaya refuses to believe that he was defeated by such a simple thing; he, who had deceived reality and made it his enemy. “Even if that were true, it must have been the Deterrent that empowered him so; made him make the decisions and courses of action that would lead him to my defeat. He did not act out of love for his family. Humans act only out of survival, and hide it with such pithy decorations as affection.” The hatred in his voice is thick, but Tōko only shrugs it off.

For she understands that Alaya views himself not as a man now, but as the carrier of an ideal. A man driven so much and for so long as to become a symbol is no longer human as she knows it. Tōko remembers the time when she was a neophyte, when Alaya had made what once thought was a simple observation, but ultimately became his most profound: the enemy of all mages is my enemy. My enemy is consensus. Though she knows it is futile in these final moments to tell him, she continues her parting words to the friend and man she once knew.

“There’s one last thing I should tell you, Alaya. It’s pretty good. I don’t know if you know him, but a famous psychiatrist once had this idea of a collective unconscious. It’s the idea of a big mental pool where all the archetypes of humanity’s collective history and ideas reside. It should sound familiar to a Buddhist concept you already know. This is not the Gaia theory, but similar to the consensus of collective humankind. Buddhists call it the alaya-shiki.”

“Wh—what?” Alaya says, the word coming out haltingly. Tōko ignores him.

“Don’t you find it strange, Sōren Alaya? You were born with a name that tied you always toward your objective, and you never knew it. As if reality itself snared you from the beginning. You wrought many paradoxes today, but it was you who were the grandest paradox of them all.” Tōko’s words bury themselves deep in Alaya’s mind, encroaching on his thoughts to shake the foundations of what he stood for. Though he doesn’t answer her, the intensity of his eyes start to fade. But his burdened expression still stands. Until the end, probably, Tōko thinks.

Without acknowledging Tōko’s words, Alaya speaks. “This body has reached its end.”

“And you’ll start again from scratch, I presume. For what must be the nth time. You really are obstinate, you know that?” That life, Tōko knew, was also a spiral. Finally turning her frown to Alaya, she throws the cigarette on the ground and puts it out, never actually putting it in her mouth. She never really hated the man. Because she realizes quite seriously that if she had made just one mistake…or perhaps had not made a mistake, she would have become quite like him: someone not truly human, but just the avatar of an idea, devoted wholly to a single theory.

Alaya coughs violently, and blood comes out of his mouth yet again. Though delayed by the sheer weight of his years of life, Shiki’s Eyes finally work their craft slowly but surely on Alaya’s body, reducing it to a gray ash of decay starting from his left shoulder.

“I have no other vessel with which to ferry my soul. But the wheel turns, and when the cycle presses me back into the material world, it will be hundreds of years hence.”

“At which point there will be no more mages, or the Art, or sorcery. The consensus is winning. And you are, as you always will be, alone. But I know you still wouldn’t stop.”

“Of course. I am not defeated.”

Tōko closes her eyes, the years of their separation and their scant hours of catching up now both concluded. Eyes closed, Tōko Aozaki asks her last questions of Sōren Alaya.

“What do you seek, Alaya?”

“True wisdom.” His arm fades into nothingness. “Where do you seek it, Alaya?”

“Nowhere else but within me.” As his left half turns to ash and dances in the wind, the black greatcoat falls away. In Alaya’s last moments, Tōko opens her eyes to see him through to the end.

“Where do your struggles lead you, Alaya?”

But before he can answer, the last of Sōren Alaya wastes away. Tōko feels, though, that she knows what he would have answered.

Beyond this spiraling material world of paradox.

Tōko casts her eyes away from the gray ash riding on the wind and takes another cigarette from her pocket and lights it. The smoke dances to and fro like an impossible, unreal illusion.

Though I can’t seem to recall the how and why, I find myself walking through the city. The weather is pleasant, and the sky above is blue as far as the eye can see. Though there isn’t a cloud in the sky to cover the sun, the white, dream-like sunlight is warm but not truly bothersome. But it does cast the city and the main avenue in the faint haze of a mirage, bathing it in the atmosphere of some vast desert. Since November came around, it’s always been cloudy day after cloudy day, but today, in my dark red kimono, it feels like a day right out of summer.

Eventually, I enter a café that I’ve been visiting a lot lately. The café, Ahnenerbe, seems much moodier than it usually is. Maybe it’s because the quality of today’s sunlight—the lack of electric light making sunlight from the windows its only method of lighting—only serves to make the shadowed parts much more pronounced. It’s probably what the customers want anyway.

I see an unoccupied table, its surface plain and simple, beside an open window, being bathed by a stream of white sunlight. Right behind it is another table, where the light doesn’t reach and is cast in dry darkness. This contrast that drapes an air of churchly solemnity about the entire thing is what makes the place popular among a certain crowd. Today, I’m part of that crowd.

The two tables I saw are the only ones that aren’t taken, and I take a seat on the table by the window. By chance, I sit at the same time as another guy, a teenager who takes the other empty table. And so I wait, and the teenager waits as well, sitting with our backs to each other.

The silence is almost a miracle unto itself. I keep my peace like the rest of the people around me, and my normally short fuse doesn’t manifest as I wait without complaint. While contemplating the reason for my rare silence, I find satisfaction in the fact that the person sitting behind me seems to be waiting in vain like I am. The fact that I have a kindred spirit somehow makes me feel at ease.

After a long time, the idiot I’m waiting for finally shows up, visible outside the window waving a hand at me. It looks like he ran to get here, seeing as he’s out of breath. I wonder if he’s okay. After all, he’s the one that chooses to wear a black getup in such a fine, sunny day like this. He’s going to have to change that sooner or later. I look again, and there is someone else outside the window: a woman in a white dress.

I stand up, and at the same time, the guy behind me stands up as well.

I feel some relief, as it seems the woman in the white dress is the person this guy was waiting for. With a sigh, I head for the café’s exit. Strangely enough, the establishment has two exits on opposite ends, one on its east and another on its west side. As I walk toward the west exit, the guy walks similarly toward the east exit. Before I exit the café, I look over my shoulder once, only to see the guy looking over his shoulder as well. The fellow is red-haired, with a thin frame. When our eyes meet, he turns away and raises a hand. I too, turn away, and raise a hand. A greeting. And yet, though I hear no voice, I could almost imagine him saying goodbye. Voiceless, I too say goodbye, and make my way out of the café.

Outside, the atmosphere is still bathed in an oppressive white haze. The heat must have gotten stronger, as I feel like I could sweat in a matter of minutes. Under this intense sunlight, I walk toward the man waving his hand at me. For reasons I can’t discern, I feel relieved and pained at the same time. Though I try to block out the sunlight with my hand, it is still strong enough to hide the man’s face.

I pray to some God that the red-haired guy was also walking like this, to a place where he could meet that someone he was waiting for. The solemn air of a church inside Ahnenerbe must have really gotten to me if even I can catch myself praying. When I turn around to look back at it, the café is gone, replaced instead by a level plain stretching far away to the horizon. Nothing is left. Somehow, though, I knew it.

I once thought that to live was to leave nothing behind. But I remember what someone once said to me: that life is when you try to leave nothing behind, but instead leave everything.

Somewhere, a doorbell chime rings out. When I hear it, I realize that I am in a whimsical dream. Leaving behind the beautiful city of the desert, I slowly wake up.

The doorbell rings for a second time, and I push my body up from the bed. The clock beside the bed says that it’s only around nine o’ clock or so. Seeing as I went out last night for my usual stroll and slept at five in the morning, nine o’ clock is hardly a perfect time to wake up.

The doorbell rings for a third time. Naturally, the only one who would be persistent enough to keep ringing like that would be someone who knows I’m here, and that someone is probably Mikiya. My mind is still swimming as I sit on top of the bed, recovering from a strange dream. All the more reason to ignore Mikiya right now. Let him think I’m asleep. I snatch the pillow from the head of the bed, hold it close, and lie back down again.

The ringing stops. “Hah. I knew he’d give up,” I whisper as I pull my blanket back up and try to fall back to sleep.

Suddenly I hear the sound of the lock opening by key, and the door opens. I open my eyes in surprise and start to get up, but he’s already in.

“Ah, so you were awake, Shiki,” Mikiya says. He has in one hand a plastic bag from a convenience store. The thought of where on Earth he got a key to my apartment occupies me, and I don’t manage to catch myself glaring at him fairly sternly.

“Don’t think you get to have any of this,” he suddenly sputters out as he hides the plastic bag behind him. “I need to eat my breakfast too.” There is a second or two before I get what he’s talking about, since I’m thinking of something completely different.

“Trespassing. That’s what this is,” I declare. “And me? Eat that cheap trash? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Oh, thank god, I get to have a breakfast at your place without you pinching food from my plate for once. Maybe you’ve beaten the habit.” Mikiya starts to take out the food from the plastic bag and line them up on the floor. I pass a good minute just looking at him like this.

It’s been two weeks since the business in the Ōgawa Apartments. Mikiya had to go to the hospital for his leg injury. My own injuries, which were far more serious, took only a week and a few days to heal, which the doctor attributed to my health. Mikiya still has to go to the hospital for checkups. He can walk, and even run, but the doctor said to avoid the latter until he was completely fine. I remember Mikiya laughing, then saying to the doctor that he tries to avoid running even without an injury.

We haven’t talked about the Ōgawa Apartment once since. We didn’t feel the need to. In the past two weeks, though, I can sometimes see Mikiya’s face becoming more serious for what seems to be no reason, and you’d actually have to touch him for him to snap back to reality and hear you. It’s those times that I know that he’s thinking back on it. For my part, my mind keeps going back to the erstwhile roommate of one month that brought an unexpected change in my life, and it frustrates me.

“Um, you know,” Mikiya suddenly says with hesitation. He’s splitting his chopsticks with his back turned to me.

“What?” I ask dryly, already sensing what he would talk about.

“I heard from Miss Tōko that it’s slated for demolition. The apartment, I mean.”

“Is that so? But what about the residents? And the stuff there? All those things…” My voice trails off.

“Miss Tōko said not to worry about that. She said that ‘mages take care of mage business,’ and that some guys from the Ordo came and handled all that. They made the fictional families disappear, putting them as ‘moved’ in the records. They even destroyed everything under the building. They’re a pretty powerful bunch, if they can do all of that.” He gulps. “They’re going to demolish the building this noon, I hear.”

So he came here to tell me that. I know I’m not going to see it; nor, I felt, would Mikiya. Still, he told me because he thought I should know.

“It’s too soon,” I murmur vaguely.

“It is, isn’t it?” Mikiya says. And with those statements, it feels as though we ourselves consigned the Ōgawa Apartments to the past. “But at least all the reasons for these incidents centered on you must be over now. I know I’ve been an outsider to most of them, but this should be the end of them.” He pauses, then, “You should go back to school regularly. If you don’t get that high school diploma and graduate, you’re gonna make Akitaka sad.”

“What? Me going to school has nothing to do with the weird shit. First off, didn’t these incidents only start to pop up after you got associated with Tōko? And second, remove the log from your own eye first before you start messing with splinters. How do you think you can get off lecturing me on going back to school when you’ve stopped going to college yourself?”

“Ouch, sucker punch to the gut right there,” he mutters before smiling and sighing. Hah, that line never fails to shut him up.

And so we spend the morning together. Though it’s both our days off, Mikiya decides to stay in my room instead of going out, while I lie in bed, badly needing sleep but staying awake just to keep the guy company. Mikiya is seated on the floor, his back resting on my bed behind him. A month ago, the scene was somewhat different.

My mind wanders back to the other man, seated where Mikiya is now. He’s gone now, and this room has returned to the way it was before he was here. That he had to die makes me feel a pang of regret, a hollow in the soul. Though I tell myself it’s only a small hole, it envelops me in a sensation as disquieting as what I had five months ago, when I recovered from the coma.

And then, a thought comes to mind unbidden. If him dying unsettles me this much, how much more so if the guy sitting beside my bed right now disappears? He’s a part of both the ShikiRyōgi of the past, and the new memories that started in June to the five months from then until now. It’s a period of time filled with a lot of honestly trifling things, but even so, the memories deserve better than to just be thrown away. And so I keep them tucked away like little treasures in my soul.

I still have parts of my memory that I can’t rightly remember. Hollows in the soul, Tōko called it. I still remember her telling me in her best important-sounding voice: a hollow has to be filled with something. It’s still as true now.

So, I wonder, when in these five months of personal episodes great and small did I find the time to decide that Mikiya would be that something?

“Say, Kokutō.” I really hate the sound of that name, but I say it anyway. I’ve grown to see my past as an entirely different person, and started to dislike mimicking my past self. Still, the name, its sound and tone, is my last connection to the past I still can’t let go completely. Mikiya obviously doesn’t see the same significance in it as I do, since he doesn’t turn to look at me. In one of the rare times I have something important to say, he’s lost in one of his paperback literature classics. Typical.

I just say what I need to say anyway: “The key.” That gets his attention. “Hmm?”

I turn my face away from him and hold a hand out to him, a hand still marked with gashes by the sword hilt I held two weeks ago. This is just some impromptu thing I thought about, but I say it.

“I don’t have a key to your room. That’s not so fair.”

I know I’m blushing like a kid as I ask for such a little thing, but I can’t seem to stop it. I’ll chalk it up to the weird dream I had before I woke up.

And so I let this normal, spiraling day pass like any other, keeping company with a person so peaceful he could never have damaged the serenity of the day.

The season is winter, and a rare snow falls upon the city, the first of its kind it has seen in four years.

Like the night Shiki Ryōgi and Mikiya Kokutō first met, the snow on the ground will in time be drenched with a vivid red.

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