Funeral For A Friend, Part 2
BANG BANG BANG.
"Are you sure this is the place?"
"Yeah," I told Fumiko. "Why?"
"Looks fancy. His budget was more 'park bench' the last time I checked."
"You'd think so, right..."
"Maybe it belongs to a friend?"
"Itsuki-san has other friends?"
Madoka gasped, playfully scandalized. "Dawn! That's rude!"
Dawn just looked more confused, tilting her head. "Why?"
I ignored them and pounded my fist against the reinforced steel door again.
BANG BANG BANG.
The soft pad of footsteps from inside stops me from a fourth hit.
The door swung open.
Itsuki stood there, a faint cloud of steam trailing from the bathroom behind him. He was drying his damp, white hair with a plain grey towel, wearing a faded grey t-shirt and sweatpants. He looked... clean. Rested.
Of course, I punched him. Drove my fist right into his gut, a solid, familiar thump that made him let out a small noise and bend slightly, though the towel never left his hair.
"Surprise!" Madoka chirped, beaming, holding up her box.
I jabbed a finger past him, into the apartment. "When you said you found a place," I growled, "you forgot to mention it looked like this!"
The space behind him was all clean lines and soft, neutral light. Beside him, an actual genkan—
With a shoe storage! That led into a main room with polished wooden floors, not tatami. One wall was dominated by large windows overlooking a quiet, tree-lined street, and I could see the corner of a modern, low-profile kitchen counter. It was upper-middle-class bland, the kind of place salarymen lived.
This was miles better than my place. Hell, it was better than Fumiko's place!
He straightened up, draping the towel around his neck. "You didn't ask for a description, Boss..."
"We were in the middle of a turf war with Rodionova's thugs! Of course I wouldn't stop and talk about interior decor!"
I hefted the plastic bags in my hand, shoving at his chest with the other. "Whatever. We're coming in. Housewarming party. Be there or be square."
A flicker of something touched his features, and he stepped aside, holding the door open wider.
His pale eyes traveled over our little group.
Fumiko had brought a spare toolbox because in her words, "You can never trust whatever hack job the last guy did."
Madoka had brought pastries and décor in the form of several cutesy anime and idol posters. I couldn't help but laugh when we put them in his bedroom. I wonder if he ever took them down.
Dawn had bought a brand new Nintendo 64, along with a stack of games. By the end of the day, we ended up sprawled on his bare floor, passing controllers, shouting at the chaos of Mario Kart.
Itsuki was... surprisingly good at it.
As for me... well, I couldn't afford anything cool like them. I gave him a potted plant and a large, lacquered bento box from me and Granny.
Mostly Granny.
We'd packed it stupid full. Perfect, crescent-shaped gyoza with crisp bottoms. Salt-grilled salmon, sturdy and lasting. Bright pink pickled ginger and orderly rows of edamame for color. White rice, pressed into a perfect mound and dotted with a single black sesame seed.
At the time, I knew this clean, quiet box wouldn't hold him. He'd still be a ghost in the city, chasing his revenge. But maybe, if there was another living thing in here that needed water, needed light... maybe he'd come back to tend to it. Maybe he'd stay a little longer. Maybe it wouldn't be abandoned...
In the end, it was. Through no fault of his own.
It's on the same windowsill, in the same cheap pot. The fern is a dry, brittle sculpture of brown and grey, a few desperate green fronds clinging to life at its heart.
The sound of the apartment door clicking shut behind me is too loud in the dusty silence. Dawn steps into the genkan after me.
"Close it," I tell her, and the lock soon engages.
My eyes roam over the living room. The polished floors are filmed with a fine layer of dust. The windows are streaked with grime, muting the afternoon light. There's no smell of steam or new plastic, just the stale, closed-in scent of neglect. Nothing is out of place. No furniture overturned, no signs of a struggle.
Kusanagi's call had been a rasp of confused fear. Trying to collect his son's things. Seeing a coffee mug float across the room. Then a stinging pain in his forehead, and waking up dizzy on the hallway floor outside the locked apartment. He couldn't explain it. Of course he couldn't. He's not [Awakened]. His mind would try to sand the jagged edges off the impossible, leaving only a headache and a superstitious dread.
I take a step toward the kitchen, my boots whispering against the dusty floor.
"It is in the bedroom."
I stop. Dawn hasn't moved from the genkan. Her eyes are closed, head tilted slightly, as if listening to a frequency only she can hear.
"Details," I demand, pivoting toward the hallway.
"A girl. With purple hair."
Could be an [Apparition].
Could be a human-shaped [Idea].
Could be a... No. A [Rogue Awakened] would have sensed our presence by now, and entered fight or flight.
And a [Nightmare] wouldn't let Kusanagi leave unscathed.
If it's not any of these two, then we can keep going. Without a [Bleeding Zone] to fuel them, threats from the other world won't be immediately deadly.
I step in front of her, putting my body between hers and the hallway. [Kagutsuchi Masamune] is a familiar weight in my left hand.
"Cover me."
We stalk down the short hallway.
Something cold touches the back of my neck.
"..."
Just a draft.
I press on.
THUMP.
My foot thunders down the hallway, sending shivers up through my bones and rattling my teeth. I brace against a wall to stop my knees from following.
It's heavy. An invisible weight, vast and patient, settling on my shoulders, bending my spine, trying to keep me down.
I tense my muscles, forcing my posture straight.
Press on. One step. Two steps. Three steps.
"Hahh..."
My breath fogs in the air, even though the apartment is warm with stale heat. Cold seeps through my jacket, fingering its way down my collar.
Dawn gasps beside me. I try to turn to her... but I can't.
If I stop focusing on moving forward, I will surely fall.
Four steps. I try to draw a full breath and a ragged, wheezing sound escapes me. The air is a suffocating blanket, stealing the warmth from my lungs before I can even inhale.
Something collides with my side. Her face is tinged with a terrifying shade of blue. Her lips part, fighting for air that refuses to comply.
I wrap an arm around her waist, holding her up, trying to share a heat I don't have.
My vision starts to speckle at the edges with static.
No air. Can't strengthen myself with Qi. Can't reach for my phone with these trembling hands. Can't even scream out.
Whatever is on the other side hasn't even met us yet. This is passive, instinctual. It won't let up even when we're knocked out cold.
We're going to die, right here, in this silent, dusty hallway, and our opponent may not even realize it.
The light goes before us.
The wan afternoon glow from the living room windows is pulled taut, then violently drawn past us, into the deepening gloom of the hallway ahead.
The shadows by the bedroom door feed on this light, on our heat, congealing, becoming hungrier.
They scowl at me.
I scowl back.
"Hahh..."
Still can't breathe. The air is too thick, too cold. My body wades through the deep, freezing water, and a trembling claw reaches for the handle.
It's still too far. Two more steps... or is it three?
I can't tell. This isn't my home, I don't belong here, I should get out, I should leave her alone, why did he leave her alone, why did he leave her here—
Heavy, greasy resentment. Sharp, stinging anger. Emotions that could belong to me scream against the inside of my skull. My own guilt and grief resonate with them, amplifying into a feedback loop of despair.
The door creeps closer. I can't tell if I'm the one approaching it anymore.
One step back. Just one, so I could catch my breath. But the door is one step away too...
Two more steps.
Or was it one?
It doesn't matter. Onward.
I want to refuse on principle, even though I'm so close. But it's so heavy. So cold. Dawn is trembling against me. Can't let her die, can't let her leave me like Itsuki, but I can't move—
"Boss..."
With the last of her breath, she pants against my shoulder.
A trembling, ice-cold finger lifts into the air. Its tip is purple with cold.
She points it down the hallway, at the hateful, shadow-cloaked door.
Keep moving.
With a roar that goes soundless in the stale air, I heave us forward. The handle freezes my hand in place. The silent screaming in my head reaches a crescendo.
LEAVE.
My clawed fingers close around the icy metal of the doorknob. I twist and shove.
The door flies inward.
Something blurs from the darkness within.
It impacts my forehead with a sickening, wet crack. Stars, white and violent, explode across my vision. The world tilts. I taste copper. My grip on Dawn tightens instinctively, a frantic attempt to pull her behind me, to shield her with my body. She's struggling against me, a weak, desperate twist, trying to disengage, to not be dead weight.
We collapse, hitting the dusty floor of the bedroom in a tangle of limbs and pained gasps. I land on top of her, and our gazes fly past each other, locked onto the same point at the center of the room.
It's... a shinai. It hovers in the air, tilted at a precise, aggressive angle, held by an invisible, expert swordsmaster. Pitch black, as if charred to cinders, yet refusing to let go of its form and purpose.
From the [Irate Object]'s length, tendrils of deep purple smoke seep and coil into the air.
Unlike the cold, unyielding air of the hallway, the smoke invades my nostrils, my sinuses, a chemical burn that sears a path straight into my lungs.
Still, I can breathe again. And as long as I can breathe, I can move.
Gagging, fighting the convulsive urge to vomit, I force my will inward. The cursed smoke, the vile energy it carries, I drag it down my meridians, mixing it with the simmering, demonic heat of [Aramasa]'s gift.
My blood screams in protest, but a spark ignites in my core.
I wobble to my feet, fingers finding my bokken again.
"Dawn—"
The [Irate Object] disappears.
It simply exists in one point and then the next.
A flick of its tip—
THWACK!
My wrist bones shatter. My fingers go numb. Before I can recover my grip or raise my blade, it reverses.
CRACK
Pain smashes into my forehead again. The spots are back, darker now, swimming with flashes of purple.
It wasn't enough. I'm still too weak after a single breath.
My opponent does not care.
THWACK!
CRACK!
SMACK!
Wrist. Shoulder. Forehead. Each strike is cold, then searing hot as my demonic blood flares in protest.
Then, it stops.
Through the blur of tears, blood, and swimming darkness, I see it. The shinai pivots in the air, its tip now pointing past me, toward the floor... toward Dawn.
"No!"
I push off the wall, my body a column of screaming pain, and lunge. With her trembling weight above me, I run out of the bedroom, out of the hallway.
I crash through the first door I spot, spinning and kicking it shut with my heel.
The room is a cramped, windowless cell, smelling of old detergent and damp concrete. I lower Dawn to the floor as gently as my trembling arms allow, then slump beside her, my back against a washing machine.
Outside, a lamp shatters. Wood splinters.
CRASH. BANG. THUD.
It's searching. It's going to find us soon. It's going to kill us.
"Dawn," I rasp, jostling her shoulder. Her eyes are half-lidded, her chest barely moving. Even in this tiny room, the air is still cold, still thick.
I haul her closer, until we're pressed together in the narrow space between the machines. I lean my face close to hers, my forehead smearing blood against hers. I take the deepest, most controlled breath my burning lungs can manage, forcing my cycled Qi to the surface.
Then, I exhale directly over her nose and mouth.
Dawn's nostrils flare. She takes my exhale.
Her eyelids flutter. A weak, thready pulse thrums against my side where I hold her.
CRASH!
The wall to our right shakes with a shriek of tortured drywall. We're thrown together violently. My forehead smashes into hers with a dull crack. Stars. Again. A pained whimper escapes her, and the faint light that had returned to her eyes clouds over, dazed and fading once more.
"No, no, no!" I snarl, pulling her limp form tighter against me. My mouth is next to her ear. "Listen! Breathe with me!"
I exhale a shuddering cloud of warm Qi. Her chest hitches, and she draws it in. As I inhale the cold, dead air, she wheezes out her used breath.
Outside, something glass explodes.
If it finds us in here... in this cramped laundry... there will be no room to dodge or run. We'll die.
Kusanagi was spared. It recognized him as a family member. We are intruders. Violators. We'll be carved into pieces.
But if we burst out now, weak, gasping, half-blind... it will be a slaughter anyway.
How many of these breaths do we have left? Which one will be the last?
The furnace inside me spreads to the room. Sweat and blood mingle on my skin, steaming.
Dawn's face loses its deathly blue tinge, replaced by a feverish flush.
"... twelve seconds," she murmurs, her lips brushing my jaw. "We have twelve... ten seconds. It is enough. I can rip open a [Bleeding Zone] to raise our odds."
"No," I gasp into the next cycle. "If it's this strong here… in a Zone, our [Idolons] won't be enough."
THUD.
The blow lands on the laundry room door itself. The thin wood splinters inwards, a spiderweb of cracks around the handle.
Time's up. Next hit, it comes through.
I release Dawn, pushing her gently back against the dryer.
The world tilts. I ignore it, reaching for my bokken. As I close my fingers, white-hot agony erupts from my shattered wrist. The bokken slips from my numb grasp and clatters to the floor.
Then, slowly, I pick up the bokken, with my left hand this time.
"Boss..."
"Back me up," I croak, not looking at her. "Whatever you can. When you can."
I take one final, scorching breath, and kick what's left of the door open.
It moves.
I swing my left-handed guard up. The impact judders up my arm. I deflect one strike, spin clumsily to avoid a second lunge, then stumble over the debris of Itsuki's life.
It doesn't tire. It doesn't breathe. It just presses, and presses, and presses, driving me back toward the ruined living room.
Dawn flows in, a silent, pale ghost between the shinai's furious strikes. In her hands is Fumiko's toolbox, emptied, wielded as a makeshift ofuda. She tries to intercept, to trap, to seal.
It's useless.
The shinai is unfettered to a body. There is no pivot on a hip or telegraph with a shoulder.
It reverses in mid-air. It strikes from angles that would shatter a human skeleton. A blistering men strike from below, a vicious kote lash from behind my guard. Each impact is a burst of cold, followed by the volcanic roar of my own demonic blood.
I dive, my body scraping across the splintered floor and slamming against the cabinets, behind the partial cover of the kitchen counter.
Dawn rolls in beside me, her eyes wide with fear.
"... ... ..."
I can't hear her. My vision is swimming, tunneling. The world is smearing at the edges into a grey static. Blood, hot and sticky, drips from a dozen weeping bruises onto the dusty floor.
I welcome the unconsciousness for the third step.
The shinai comes for me, a streak of final darkness.
Our weapons meet.
The sound doesn't echo. It's swallowed. The dusty apartment, Dawn's worried face, the dying fern, all of it dissolves into a silent, sterile white void.
I am standing on nothing. The shinai is still pressed against my bokken. But now, slender, pale fingers grip its hilt.
Purple hair, long and straight as a funeral veil, frames a face of stern, porcelain beauty. Her eyes are pools of polished sapphire, reflecting nothing.
She wears Higan's uniform. Her expression is stern, etched with a bottomless, quiet sorrow.
I don't recognize her. How could I? She died before I had the chance.
Yet I know who she is. Ever since Dawn mentioned the girl, ever since I saw the shinai, it could not be anyone else.
"Koharu," I croak, the word raw in the void's silence. "Quit it. We're his friends... we're here for his things..."
Blank eyes regard me. Her voice, when it comes, is not a sound, but a vibration in the marrow of my bones, a memory of a whisper.
He's dead, isn't he?
It isn't a question.
Her hair begins to stir, lifting as if in a underwater current, floating around her head in a dark, ominous halo.
"He promised... he promised he would let go. That he would live. If he is not here... then he broke his promise."
"It's not like that—!"
She breaks the deadlock with effortless, terrifying strength. The shinai whips back and then forward again, a perfect, killing thrust aimed for my heart.
"If you were truly his friends, you wouldn't have let it come to this!"
The white void shatters.
Reality bleeds back in a nauseating swirl of color and sound, but it's wrong. The air in the apartment is now thick, soupy, tinged a sickly lavender.
CLANG
Dawn, in the full, dark-armored glory of her [Idolon], blocks the soul-rending strike in a shower of lilac sparks.
A bubble of distorted, slowed time shimmers around her, trying to trap the furious weapon.
But Koharu is here now.
Fed by the [Bleeding Zone], she manifests from the weeping shadows beside the hovering sword, more solid, more terrible.
Her purple hair bleaches to a stark, ghostly white. The ashy, burnt shinai in her grip sheds its shadow, transforming into a gleaming, deadly katana. A single, perfect tear of blood wells in the corner of her eye and traces a crimson path down her pale cheek.
She doesn't even look at Dawn. She just pushes.
The bubble of slowed around her shatters like glass.
"[Simply Red]!"
Her blade deflects the greatsword with a contemptuous flick, reverses, and slams its hilt into [Dawn]'s armored chest.
There's a deafening crunch. Dawn lets out a choked cry as she's launched backwards, crashing through a window.
"ORA!"
The Oni erupts to my left, her kanabou already in a downward arc to smash the spectre apart.
The blade vanishes from its point and reappears in a rising uppercut, catching my Idolon under her chin.
The world upends. There is a screaming of wind, a shattering of glass. My back explodes with pain. I'm weightless, and then there is only the cold, swallowing embrace of empty air and the distant, rushing pavement below.
The static vanishes. [Simply Red] becomes no more than a ghost. I brace myself for the impact alone. Gravel tears at my clothes as I roll to a stop, one hand braced against the cold asphalt.
Beside me, Dawn does the same, gasping. She's untransformed, a pale, shaken girl in rumpled clothes.
I whip my head around, toward the apartment building. The third-floor window is a jagged, dark mouth. Around it, the air shimmers faintly, a barely-visible haze of distortion that glows with a sickly, static-purple light.
There's no sign of her pursuing us. She's content. She's guarding her grounds.... his grounds.
I push myself to my feet, my body screaming in protest, and stalk over to Dawn. I don't give her a chance to stand. I grab the front of her shirt and haul her up, my claws snagging on the fabric.
"Why?" My voice is a low, dangerous rasp. "I gave you an order. I told you not to open a Zone."
She flinches, avoiding my gaze. Oh no, don't go silent on me now.
"That thing," I snarl, shaking her slightly, "is an [Irate Object] born from an already cursed object! It can make the Zone stable with its own negative emotions. How many [Awakened] do you think it'll take to go in there and put it down? How long until we assemble all of them? Days? Weeks?! How many more enemies will spawn in there? And what if it spreads? What if every photo, every belonging, every piece of Itsuki it touches becomes another anchor for that corruption?"
She's not answering. Of course she's not answering. And I should be forming a plan right now, should be doing anything but ranting at her, but I can't stop. I need to know. I need to hear what excuse she has.
"What the hell were you thinking, Dawn?!"
Dawn's eyes, which had been defiant, well up. She looks down, her shoulders slumping in my grip.
"I…just wanted to help, Boss."
Her sniffle drains the fight out of me. My grip loosens, and I let her go, my hand falling to my side. She stumbles back a step, wiping at her face.
"Every battle... [Fushihara]... [Gang Violence]... those [Awakened] in the tunnels... Itsuki-san... no matter what I do, it feels like we can't win. All we do is mitigate losses, like Madoka's mark."
Another tear traces a clean path through the dust on her cheek.
"I knew... I saw this outcome when I opened the Zone. But the other plan... of watching as it beat you, throwing things in its way to slow it down... I couldn't... I couldn't do it, Boss. Even if it was the right move. Even if I made a mess of things. This power... I want to help my friends with it..."
Ah...
I get it. This helplessness... this hopelessness she speaks of... I've been feeling it, too.
And it's all my fault. I'm her leader. I'm supposed to set the tone, to bring her victory, to bring her hope. And instead I keep barreling into fights with half-formed plans and expect everyone else to keep up with my instinct.
I had a plan back there. A stupid, desperate plan to use the third step, the resonance of violence, to reach that white void and speak to Koharu directly.
But Dawn didn't know that. How could she? I never explained it to her.
I charged again. And when one clash wasn't enough, she had to disobey a direct order because she saw no other way to save me from my own inadequacy.
"... I'm sorry," I say, the words foreign and clumsy on my tongue. "For snapping. I've… been feeling it too. The hopelessness. But if anyone's the weak link here…" I meet her damp eyes, forcing myself to hold the gaze. "It's me. As your Boss. I'm not giving you what you need to keep up. I'm just… running ahead and expecting you to keep up."
What of it? The weak cling to the strong. Those who cannot match your stride are left in the dust. That is the natural order. If she feels worthless, it is because she is. All the armor in the other world cannot change the feeble flesh beneath.
Dawn looks up at me. "What... should we do, Boss?" she whispers. "To make these feelings stop?"
Grow stronger. Win.
"Win."
The answer comes from my core.
In the end, [Aramasa] and I are truly similar. The only difference... is that I think Dawn is already strong.
"Only victory can wash away the taste of defeat. Anything else only numbs it until it's manageable."
Her gaze shifts from me to the shimmering, corrupted window three stories up. The static-purple glow seems to pulse like a diseased heart. She does the calculations in her head; I can almost see the numbers flickering behind her eyes.
I don't need her math. I already know.
Our best move right now is to retreat.
Call in Madoka. [Kukurihime] could help destabilize the Zone's spiritual architecture. Get Kanae. One of her rituals could sever the connection between the shinai and Itsuki's lingering emotions. Maybe even Alyona for her firepower, and to heal us. Even then, it'd be a brutal, ugly fight with the odds against us. But waiting would be worse. Every second that thing sits in there, stewing in Itsuki's absence and Koharu's fury, it grows stronger. More defined. Letting it fester to gather a bigger team might be giving it time to become unstoppable.
A quick strike with the right team is the correct, tactical response.
But I can't bring myself to care about any of that. Not when I look at her face, pale and determined beneath the tear-tracks. The way her hands are clenched, not in fear, but in a desperate need to do something.
Fuck the odds. Right now, the best move is what makes the girl beside me happy.
I hold out my left hand to her, my good hand, palm open.
"Dawn. Do you still trust me?"
She goes utterly still. Her eyes lock on my outstretched hand, then dart to my face.
The silence stretches.
... asking was a mistake. I've done nothing to earn this ask except the bare minimum of an apology.
I should apologize again, and accept my failure—
"I..."
Her small, cold hand slides into mine. She lets me pull her to her feet, offering my discarded bokken with her other hand.
"... I never stopped trusting you, Boss. I lost trust in my own ability to follow you."
... honestly, what did I ever do to deserve this?
No, it doesn't matter. Itsuki deserves to have his belongings seen to. Dawn deserves to feel like her power means something. And if I don't deserve this loyalty...
"In that case..."
I'll become someone who does.
"Let me lead you," I ask of her, my voice dropping, gaining a gravity I don't entirely feel but desperately want to embody. I step forward, closing the distance between us, putting my arm around her slender shoulders and turning us both to face the building.
"Right here. Right now. Follow me again."
Dawn looks up at me, eyes wide. She wipes at her eyes again, and gives me a small nod.
"I... I will."
That's all I need.
We march forward, crossing the boundary back into the [Bleeding Zone].
Light, cool and silver, wraps around Dawn. It flows and hardens into the sleek, dark plates of her knightly armor. Her sword materializes from my bokken in a soft shing of spectral metal. She fixes her posture, the embodiment of resolve, and steps smoothly in front of me, becoming my shield.
She half-turns, voice now layered with the echo of her Idolon. "Your orders?"
"You charge," I say, my eyes locked on the flickering purple light at the end of the hall. "Draw in as much power as you can. Don't stop until I say, or until it feels like you'll break. [Simply Red] will—"
The Oni manifests on my other side, hefting her massive kanabou, flowing soundlessly around the apartment's perimeter.
"—scout."
Dawn raises her sword, holding it vertically before her face. A soft, silver light begins to emanate from the blade, gentle at first, like moonlight on water. It pulses in time with some rhythm only she can sense, slowly growing brighter.
I keep laying things out as her power builds.
"Our enemy is an [Irate Object], but it's controlling a shinai that was already cursed."
I'm not sure if it became cursed when it was burned, or if it was one of these Muramasa blades kept in Higan, but that was no regular shinai.
"It's currently taking the form of Itsuki's... deceased loved one, Koharu. So we're not going to destroy it. We'll convince her spirit to pass on peacefully, and we're only gathering strength because she's not in the mood to listen. That's where you come in. Your control over time will hold her in place long enough for our words to reach her."
Dawn gives the slightest nod, the silver light around her intensifying, beginning to warp the air, making the dust motes in the Bleeding Zone hang suspended.
"Any questions?"
"The worst-case scenario. What happens if the Irate Object becomes hostile before the charge is complete?"
"We switch Plan B," I say, even though I'm making it up right now.
"You... focus all that power not on stopping time, but weakening it. Then... since it's coming for us at the edge of the Zone, we try to drag it out of it, and defend ourselves from inside."
Her knightly form stiffens. The voice that comes out is not her usual deadpan.
"Such tactics… feel underhanded. To lure the enemy is not your way, Boss. You need not discard your honor to make me feel—!"
"If I cared about that, I would send you away and duel the sword by myself. But I've already said it, didn't I? That [Irate Object] isn't an enemy. It cares for Itsuki, too."
I let out a small sigh.
"Yeah, it sucks to duck away from the apartment and charge a sneak attack. But our job... our duty isn't to battle. It's to help his loved ones. That's how we'll win."
"... I understand."
The chivalrous obsession fades, replaced by the cool, calculating focus of the girl I know.
A whisper of wind, and [Simply Red] is back. She holds up a clawed hand, giving me a quick, two-fingered salute.
All-clear.
I look back at Dawn. The silver light emanating from her sword is no longer soft. It's a brilliant, focused column, illuminating the distorted hallway in stark monochrome. The air crackles with pent-up energy.
Time trickles down.
[Irate Objects] are bound to their purpose. The shinai's purpose is clear. To fight.
Then why did Koharu seem angry at the idea of Itsuki pursuing his revenge?
Is the blade an extension of his new resolve? The one he found after leaving me, to protect, not to destroy?
Or is it something darker? Is it furious he didn't use it? That he went to his crusade without his weapon?
The first… we could work with. Tell her he left this world as a better man. That might bring peace.
The second...
Well, I can only hope it's not it.
I glance at [Dawn]. The light from her sword is no longer contained to the blade. It's a nimbus around her entire armored form, so bright it bleaches the color from the world, casting long, stark shadows.
"ORA!"
A blur of crimson, [Simply Red] leaps not toward the apartment's heart, but upward, her kanabou swinging in a brutal arc. It connects with a shambling, ink-blot shape that had begun to coalesce from the weeping wall. The [Nightmare Foundling] dissolves into a splatter of black ooze that bubbles on the pavement.
"Time's up."
Either the [Irate Object] is growing in negativity, or Dawn's massive energy build-up is acting as a beacon.
Dawn nods, aiming her swords at the apartment, ready.
[Simply Red] doesn't need the order. A miniature cyclone kicks up at her feet, lifting her. She rides it up and around the exterior of the distorted apartment.
Find. Grab. Bring.
From behind the apartment, where the bedroom would be, a flash of crimson light.
Glass shatters. [Simply Red] lands in a torrent of wind, her arms locked around a struggling, furious mass of amethyst smoke and darkness. The spectral form of Koharu, the cursed shinai gripped in her ghostly hand.
[Simply Red] shoves the specter forward and leaps back.
The [Irate Object] stumbles, form flickering with outrage. She raises the shinai, her mouth opening in a silent scream.
The purple smoke halts in mid-coil. The motes of dust hang like fixed stars. The shinai, raised for a killing blow, is frozen in the air.
Kohaku's body is caught in frozen time. And yet...
Her torso...
It's turning.
Slowly. So slowly it's barely perceptible. Like the hour hand on a clock.
Even this much isn't enough to completely stop her. She's going to break out.
"Koharu! Stop! Just listen!"
Her head shifts slightly. Blank eyes meet mine.
"He didn't die for his revenge! He let it go... he was trying to protect people. To be better."
The blankness fractures. A flicker of… something. Confusion? Hope? It's gone as quickly as it came, replaced by a deeper, more probing intensity. Her lips part.
"How… did he… die… then?"
The words that come out are stretched and low, dragged through the molasses of frozen time, but I understand them.
"Who… did… the deed?"
My mouth goes dry.
"I... I don't know."
"Who… would… know?"
I open my mouth, but she's already speaking again, her words gaining speed, fighting against the silver hold of [Dawn]'s power with terrifying will.
"No... you … are here. After the father. You are… one of the closest." Each word is a chip of ice hurled at me. "If you… do not know… then no one… knows. He died… alone. No one… in his corner."
The accusation hangs there.
To confirm it is like letting him down all over again. But to deny it without proof is just another lie.
My silence is all the answer Koharu needs.
Her foot shifts.
[Simply Red] is a red blur, placing herself in front of me, kanabou held low and ready. Dawn raises her glowing sword.
"Wait," I say, the word quiet but firm. I push past [Simply Red], ignoring her warning growl, and place a hand on [Dawn]'s armored shoulder. After a moment, she lowers her blade a fraction.
I look straight at Koharu, at the grief twisting her slowly-moving features. "No," I say, my voice gaining strength. "You're wrong. He had people. His killer was a coward. It attacked him while he was in seclusion, training in the woods. It waited until his father was gone for a day."
Koharu halts.
"When..." she asks, the word clearer now, less stretched. "When is... the funeral?"
"It's... it's already done," I murmur. "Days ago."
A tremor runs through her. No, the entire Bleeding Zone shudders. The air itself wavers in a haze of turbulent emotions. The ground beneath my feet feels insubstantial, like standing on a roiling sea.
The frozen dust motes begin to vibrate. She takes one more, shuddering step forward.
I sigh, letting my allies step past me once again.
Then... she stops.
Her head drops, white hair falling over her features.
The red streak on her pale face glistens with another bloody tear.
It swells, detaches, and hangs in the frozen air before her chin.
I take a careful step forward, closing the distance. My voice drops to something meant only for her.
"You couldn't be there when it happened. You couldn't stand by his grave. And I know it hurts. But there is something you can still do. Something only you can do for him."
Slowly, so slowly, Koharu looks up. Her white hair falls like a curtain, obscuring most of her face. But a single, crimson eye is visible, burning with an inner light that isn't spectral.
It's painfully, knowingly alive.
"Let go. Pass on. Keep him company, wherever he is."
It stares into me, through me, for what feels like an age, measuring the truth of my words.
Her lips, pale and almost translucent, part.
"No."
The word is a soft exhalation of frost.
"I am not Koharu. His Koharu."
Her voice has changed. The rage is gone, replaced by a profound, aching weariness. For a moment, she's just a girl again. A pretty high school girl with kind, sad eyes. The fearsome blade in her hand reverts to its original state. A simple shinai, burnt to ashes.
"That Koharu... passed on a long time ago. She is... probably with him already. In whatever comes after. I am a memory. His memory. The best parts of her, and the worst of his guilt."
She looks down at the shinai in her hands, a tool of practice, not murder.
"The sword... it was already cursed. It fed on me. I have no soul to pass on. No afterlife to find him in. To ask me to let go... is to ask me to cease existing. To unmake a memory."
She takes a step forward. Her hair, from the roots out, bleaches to a stark, ghostly white. The ashen shinai in her hand shivers, darkens, and sharpens, the wood grain hardening into a wicked, single-edged katana.
"There is something else I can do."
Another step. This close, I can feel it. The silver field around her is thinning, straining. Time is starting to trickle back into the world.
"I can find the one who separated us. Who took my wielder from me. I can ensure they never harm anyone again."
Another step. The air around her is so cold it burns, sapping the heat from my skin, leaching the oxygen from my lungs. All I can breathe is the acrid, cursed smoke coiling from her blade.
"But," she continues, her form flickering. Schoolgirl, warrior, schoolgirl. An unstable echo of love and violence.
"My power is bound here. To this place of his last life. To fulfill my duty... to honor his memory... I need a hand to hold me. A will to direct me."
She is nose to nose with me now. Her crimson eye is the only thing in the world. The cold is inside me, in my chest, in my throat.
The tsuba is intricate iron, shaped like a flower and engraved with cherry blossoms.
"Wield me," she whispers from everywhere. "Let me die not as a discarded blade in an empty room... but as your blade. Let us hunt together. Let us make it right."
A tamed [Irate Object]. A weapon of immense, focused spiritual power, born from profound [Love] and inconsolable grief, unlike [Aramasa]'s tainted [Violence].
With her by my side... the [Rogue Awakened], the [Yokai], the encroaching [Idea World]... we could cut through it all.
But this... it isn't the first time I'm making this choice.
"You're the same as him. Blinding yourself with vengeance. I enabled that once."
My hand does not reach for the offered hilt.
"... I won't..."
An eternity passes.
It's not a figure of speech. In that suspended space between her offer and my refusal, the cold from her presence seeps past my skin, into my marrow, the synaptic gaps between my thoughts.
"... let it..."
I become a statue of ice, locked in her crimson gaze.
Time loses meaning.
And yet...!
"... happen again...!"
The heat of my stubborn conviction ignites in my core.
The cold recedes.
Not all at once, but like a tide pulling back from frozen shore. It retreats from my bones, leaving a deep, aching chill in its wake. The pressure in the air lessens.
Koharu... smiles. It's small, sad, and heartbreaking.
"You are correct," she whispers, the warrior's echo gone from her voice. "I apologize."
She looks down at the cursed katana in her hand, her expression one of deep regret.
"If you will not let me become like the old Itsuki... consumed by a single shadow... then allow me this. Let me try to be like the new one. Let my purpose be to fight the wicked, not a single perpetrator. To protect the present, not chase a past I can never change."
Her eyes lift, meeting mine again, pleading now, not demanding. "Please."
I reach out and close my fingers around the offered hilt of the cursed katana.
But Koharu shakes her head. "No. Not this one. This is a Muramasa. It will only ever carry grudges. To protect... I need a new vessel. A clean one."
Her free hand drifts down, not toward the katana, but toward me. Her spectral fingers brush against the fabric of my skirt, right above the hidden inseam pocket where [Tsuzumi Masamune] lays.
I reach for it with my right hand. My fingers fumble, clumsy and weak. A bolt of white-hot agony lances up from my shattered wrist, and my grip fails. I can't grasp it.
A shadow falls beside me. Wordlessly, Dawn reverses her grip on her blade and offers it to Koharu, holding it flat across her armored palms.
Koharu looks from the offering, to Dawn's resolute face, to me.
I give a tight, grateful nod.
As Dawn releases her blade, it shimmers, dissolving into a cascade of silver-blue light. The light condenses, reforms, and resettles into the shape of my other bokken. The one I didn't take back from her.
Koharu takes it. Her fingers, now almost completely solid, wrap around the hilt. She brings it close, reading the kanji I engraved upon it.
A soft, genuine chuckle escapes her. "[Kagutsuchi Masamune]... the burning god. Yes, I suppose it fits."
With the [Blessed Bokken] in her left hand, she finally allows me to take the [Cursed Shinai] from her right. The moment my fingers fully close around the Muramasa's hilt, a shudder runs through it.
"Thank you," Koharu says, her voice clear and quiet, looking at both of us. "For accommodating this selfish request."
She closes her eyes. Her form glows with a soft, pearlescent white light. The light flows from her heart, down her arm, and into the bokken she holds, leaving only a shimmering outline.
At the same time, the cursed katana in my left hand grows lighter. I watch as the solid shadow of the blade crumbles at the edges, turning to fine, grey ash. The process accelerates, racing from tip to hilt. The intricate iron tsuba dissolves. The cold handle turns to dust in my grip.
In seconds, it's over. Koharu is gone. The bokken in pulses once, warmly, and falls still.
Gravity reclaims it.
I drop into a crouch, my movements sharp with instinct. My fingers close around the warm wood of the hilt before it hits the pavement. Nauseating, vision-swimming agony erupts from my wrist, shooting up my arm.
I ignore it. I hold on.
The soft glow emanating from the bokken fades, not vanishing, but sinking into the material. As it does, the wood... changes. It darkens further, to the color of aged heartwood, but gains a subtle, deep sheen. The shape elongates, refines. The rounded practice edge sharpens into a pristine, lethal curve. The simple bamboo guard transforms into an elegant, iron tsuba, shaped like a flower, engraved with the blossoms. The hilt wraps itself in new, dark blue silk.
Reverently, I turn the katana.
She is perfectly balanced, humming with a gentle, comforting warmth that soothes the screaming pain in my wrist. Alive, like a sleeping heartbeat.
[Kagutsuchi Masamune] is gone.This is something new.
Takemikazuchi. The sword god born from the fire god. A blade of righteous storm after the purifying flame.
Yes. You shall be... "[Takemikazuchi Masamune]."
"Are you going to wipe my name off just like that?"
The voice is clear, a whisper directly inside my skull. I blink. And I see her. The schoolgirl Koharu, standing a few feet away, arms crossed, a delicate pout on her lips. I glance at Dawn, who is looking at me with concern, but her gaze doesn't flicker to where Koharu stands. She doesn't see her.
"Hey~ Look at me when I'm talking."
Koharu steps right into my personal space, so close I could touch her if she were solid. She wags a spectral finger in my face.
"I'm only a memory. The least you can do is not wield me with the name of some sword god... even if it does sound cooler."
"Hahh... fine..."
I lift the katana slightly, holding it parallel to the ground. I speak the name softly, giving it to the steel.
"[Koharu Masamune]."
A warmth, different from before, pulses from the hilt into my palm.
"Better."
She drifts back a step, her form already beginning to fade again, blending with the dissipating light of the breaking [Bleeding Zone].
"What are the kanji for it...? So I can engrave them later..."
"To yearn eternally."
... how romantic.
"Got it," I whisper.
She gives one last, faint smile and dissolves.
But I know she's not gone. She's in the warmth of the hilt. In her new home.
I push myself up, my body protesting every movement.
Dawn leans back as I rise to my feet, careful of the katana.
She looks from my new sword to my ash-filled hand to my face, her expression a mixture of exhaustion, and likely confusion at me talking to myself.
"Boss... is it over?"
With Koharu's rage pacified and given new purpose, the Bleeding Zone has nothing to sustain it. The deep colors bleach back to normal. The elongated shadows snap back to their proper lengths. The static hum fades into the mundane sounds of a city. The damage to Itsuki's apartment fixes itself.
In my right hand, held in a grip that defies pain, is [Koharu Masamune]. In my left, clenched in a tight fist, is a handful of cold, gritty ash, all that remains of the [Irate Object].
She wasn't all he left behind, but...
"Yeah. We won."
I can't help but feel like that helplessness, that hopelessness... it's fading away. That if she could grow past it, then so can we.
The corners of Dawn's mouth lift, spreading into a rare grin.