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-40°, no matter where you ask, is always the same. Only there– hardly 0° and 23°, or else -18° and 0°– can anyone find a quiet understanding with someone who is not like them. Communication breaks down in all places, save the cold. Perhaps it's beautiful, that strange overlap.
If he had the mind to think about it, he would call it a shame. Nobody's happy at -40°. Nobody's at -40°. So, nobody can ever talk to each other in a way that matters. That is simply the way things are, and so there is no point in imagining anything else.
(Yae Miko looks at him. Tenshukaku stretches out behind them, imposing and monolithic. They have both been trying to see his mother).
Understanding can only be found when everything is equal, and things are only equal when they are nothing. If you want to know someone, have someone know you, then the only thing to be done about it is to become nothing.
(Her eyes are wild and sad. He thinks she has been crying. He only has the presence of mind to notice these things in hindsight).
That is what he wants. That is why he's here. It is not enough to die– that would accomplish nothing. He, foolishly, hypocritically, wants more. He wishes that he had always been nothing, that he had never been born at all.
(Yae puts her hands on his shoulders and calls him little one, golden feather clasped in her fingers. He scoffs at her pity because already he had become hardened enough that he absolutely could not accept it).
Nothing is the absence of everything. Everything includes the pain and suffering he is responsible for. Suffering nessicates destruction, and destruction nessicates suffering. To live is to be trapped in a vicious cycle, a cruel game, and the only way to win is not to play.
The answer is absence. That is his answer. Only in absence is there peace.
(His mother looks at her copy, and tells her she's her answer. It is 400 years before anyone sees her again).
…She had already long abandoned him, by then. It doesn't hurt him anymore. It doesn't hurt him right now.
Right now, he's in everything. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, (his whole body burns in blistering pain as his heart is torn out of his chest), 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, (a woman who looks like his mother faces the sun with a soft smile), 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, (a sneering astrologist calls him a scumbag when he tells her the truth), 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811… everything stretches out to infinity. That's how things are here. That's how things are everywhere, actually, but only inside irminsul can he see it.
("You're one of us," says Niwa).
Infinity stretching into nothing. The more you say something, the less it means, and the more true it becomes. It's a fine balance, in all cases except this.
("You're as human as anyone.")
But he is not human. He was never human. That was something that should not have been said in the first place. He could, will, grind that foolish statement into dust and each minute particle will add up to be nothing. He will burn himself and destroy even the ashes until he cannot be put back together again.
1 into 12 into 5280. Some things are defined, unarguable, and they are that way because they're recorded here. He still retains some aspects of divinity, apparently, because he still knows how to take advantage of that.
On every inch of every foot of every mile of every root of irminsul he engraves the same message: sometimes I wish I'd never been born at all.
It means nothing. And so it means everything. If he says it here, says it enough, it will be true. It will have always been true. His fingers begin to bleed. They have always been bleeding.
(Dottore cuts him open and it hurts. He says nothing).
He does not think he exists anymore. Not physically, anyways. He is everywhere, and so he is nowhere. He wishes he had never been born. He hears a baby crying. He hears every baby crying. He hears himself crying, and cannot pick that one sound out from the cacophony.
He is not here to look for anything. He is here to make it so that he is not anywhere.
(His mother looks at him, and turns away. He watches her blankly, unable to ask her to stay).
Sometimes I wish I'd never been born at all, he says. (His mother looks at someone else and tells them she left him because she did not wish to control him). 0°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 90°. (His mother looks at him, and turns away). 180°, 210°, 225°, 240°, 270°. He grasps onto himself and slips through his fingers.
Mama, he calls. Mama, come back. I do not know what to do and I need you to mother me. Please, Mama.
She doesn't come back. He does not remember who he was calling for. It is cold here. His fingers are bleeding.
("Why are you hurting me?" Someone with his voice asks).
He grasps the memory with mechanical strength and pulls it away from the rest like cotton candy, leaving whispy little strings behind. He does not remember why this memory is in his hands, who the doctor in it is. He lets it go. It is not his to keep.
There are 3 feet in a yard, 1.09361 yards in a meter, and he wishes he had never been born. These are all things that are true.
(A child makes a promise they can't keep).
(A kitsune looks into the distance, her gaze determined. Clutched in her hands is a small golden feather).
It is cold here. Maybe -41°, maybe -40.5°. It is a wonder that a change so small can be magnified into a misunderstanding so big, how anyone can become so attached to a number that they choose it over the ability to connect. It would be cruel, to ask them to give it up. The answer is to have never been born at all.
(A boy doodles on the corner of his classwork as a faceless teacher lectures about the importance of signs. All of his work is impeccably done, and the doodle proves itself to be a blueprint. There is a spot of red at the corner of the boy's mouth).
He moves on. He is not here. There is nothing for him here. This scene will not change when he is never born.
His fingers, skin cold but coated in warm red blood, scream. He ignores them. 98.6°. 310. 37°. He assumes he must sit at about that, the actual number of course depending on who you ask. Life is an impossible nightmare, and he is happy he will not have to deal with it for much longer.
Branches are just untethered roots. He moves into their embrace, his wish not yet fulfilled. His work is not yet over.
(His mother cradles her image in her arms. She is crying).
("I can be your family," says a small boy. He likes the child, he thinks. "Make sure to come back." Someone promises the boy something, not him, who has never seen this child before in his life).
There are 26 letters in this alphabet, and countless characters in his native tongue. To turn such nonsense into words requires its own kind of manipulation. Words are arbitrary, just like the truth, and the only reason why anything is spelled the way it is is because people agree that's how things are. To further turn words into sentences a little more complex, but still not anymore difficult than what he is doing now. He can manipulate anything from irminsul. He can make himself not exist. Writing a great novel would be as easy as breathing.
He wants to leave. It is cold here, and his fingers hurt terribly. But he still has fingers, and still recognizes himself, so his work is not yet over.
(A woman puts her hands on his shoulders and calls him little one, golden feather clasped in her fingers).
He thinks he has seen her before. He considers it for a moment. She is the Lady Guuji, he thinks he remembers. 2.71828 is equal to 3.14159, more or less. He's always hated that humanity has an unparalleled ability to create ambiguity where there never was any before. He has never met Lady Yae. He wonders what she's like.
(He feels the satisfying snap of a fruit being plucked off the vine. His hands have spots of dirt on them, but are otherwise unmaimed. There are a few lavender melons in his arms, pressed up next to the golden feather he has pinned to his chest. He is picking them for himself. A small boy curls into himself on the floor of his family home. A small puppet curls into himself on the floor of the pavilion in which he was abandoned. He weeps).
(The taste of something metallic in his mouth. The shriek of a blade being quenched. There is blood on his hands. There is a heart in his hands. There is nothing in his hands).
There are 180° in a triangle. Take it apart and you're left with a line going nowhere, a straight angle with no purpose but, some would say, limitless potential. He is not one such person.
(A small puppet steps outside his home for the first time. He clutches his only possession, a small golden feather, close to his chest. It was a gift from someone).
The branches of Irminsul stretch out before him. He does not remember how he got here. He does not remember how long he's been here. An instant, a lifetime, 2π. On every inch of every foot of every mile of every visible surface is engraved the same message. It's not true. Not yet.
He exists as himself, the maker. He begins to exist as something else. He does not want this. He wants to be unmade. He does not remember why, but this is his purpose and what he will do.
Zero is complete absence. It is impossible for anyone to imagine. It is why some scholar once decided that that's where their temperature scale would start, and now their followers pour all their energy into trying to remove all their energy, just to reach that dream of absolute zero. Humans are funny creatures. He refuses to believe he is just like them.
His fingers are raw and bloody. There are memories caught under his nails, a doctor and a god and a bladesmith. He scrapes them off with his teeth. They taste like blackberries and brimstone. He screams for
~
He blinks himself awake. He really ought to get out of the nasty habit of sleeping out in the open like this, but then again he supposes that a wanderer like himself hardly has better options. He pulls himself up, carefully setting his hat on his head.
The sun glints off the golden feather on his chest, the only connection he has to his origin. For all his wanderings, he has always been reticent to chase that lead for reasons he cannot fully explain.
Well, it is no matter. He's in Sumeru, now, this nation his oyster. He can do anything, be anything, here.
"Maybe today," he muses to himself. "Maybe today I'll find out why I was born."