Chapter Text
You foolish girl...
Your trembling fingers trace your parched lips, and a burning sensation floods your veins, scorching through you like venomous fire.
It was not supposed to happen this way, and maybe it was indeed all your fault. You’d been weak, tried to show him you didn’t care what he was or what form he took, no matter how divorced from reality it appeared. You only wanted to show him that... that you wanted.
And what precisely did you want? You gaze up at the sky, where the night is cloudless, yet there is no moon or stars: as if they, too, fled the aftermath of his fury.
Once, you claimed you felt no fear, standing steadfast as an unmovable pillar before the suffocating dread that drained the life from all around him. Ignorance was a shield, and you wore it gladly.
“We should never have crossed paths,” you tell the nothingness outside. You wish he could hear it. Then you’d have your dignity back, and maybe he’d be satisfied knowing he was right.
A spring evening. It was early April, the air drunk on the bloom of cherry blossoms. You were returning from the festival, feeling too warm even in your thin yukata, strands of hair sticking to your temples. It was the herald of a mercilessly hot summer.
Alone, you took the streets towards home, yearning for your refuge after the day’s agitation. You felt safe in your small town and thought nothing of the steps echoing behind, until it was too late.
You offered them whatever money you had, but that was not their intent. Terror paralyzed you, choked you so you couldn’t even yell for aid. You tore at their faces, kicked and thrashed. You’d never known true hatred, but as you cried in despair, you wished the grisliest death upon them.
“...how pitiful.”
Words like a hollow wind, words you’d never forget until your years were spent and the spark of life faded from your body. The grip on your arms froze, and in your own heart, fear unending spread like rot.
There was nothing there when you looked, though, only a shadow in the shape of a man.
“Humans have not changed. You all remain disgusting… and weak.”
A deep voice, cold like a winter moon, resonated within you like the shuddering vibrations of an earthquake. A speech strange and antiquated, the tone laced with contempt, and through the blur of tears you couldn’t see his face.
“Even to your kind, preying on others seems to be the norm.”
They... there were two of them, both of which had simply forgotten all about you and turned to run.
You must’ve cried, you must’ve screamed. Your mind couldn’t comprehend what your eyes showed you. You could not even move.
But where two men stood a moment before, now were merely two widening pools of blood, flowing into one another.
The Shadow was still there, turned away from you.
You retreated back on your hands and legs, your back hitting the nearest wooden hedge. You tried to speak, but what would you even say?
“W-Will you kill me?”
He looked over his shoulder at you. A flickering night lamp shivered over long, shining dark hair, tied back. He wore a kimono and hakama. Was that a blade fastened at his waist? His features were still muddled, or perhaps it was your fear toying with perception, but try as you did, you couldn’t discern them.
The stranger—the murderer—turned back ahead, saying nothing.
For a mere moment, the paralysis in your limbs eased, and you took the chance: you scrambled up and ran, as fast as your legs could take you, never looking back.
An early summer evening falls. You sit alone on your bench, wiping your forehead. It's been another hard day of labor, but you are pleased: the garden now looks as you’d wanted it to, and that brings a sense of peace. Your sight lingers on the slice of the moon, a silver brooch in a velvet sky.
The sensation of being watched is sudden, causing your skin to prickle.
Your surprise is great when you snap your head back to your surroundings, staring ahead and seeing—
The Shadow. A familiar frost briefly encircles your heart, and the world has become eerily still as even cicadas stopped their endless chirping music.
Beyond reason, you stand. That night, that gruesome, surreal experience still lingers in your memory, no matter how many times you tried to forget. And now, it’s here: a living nightmare having taken two lives that you know of, while saving you from your fate in the process. Somehow, you doubt that was his intent, but the result was the same regardless. And your curiosity about all things unexplainable is innate, though detrimental; thus, instead of fear, you find a voice to speak. “Have you... Have you come to take your due from me?”
What does one even ask a revenant? Is this presence such an entity? You’d never been deeply spiritual or religious, but now, this feels like a haunting.
He is not looking at you, as though he’d not heard your question. He appears taken with the small pool mirroring the golden light from several hanging lamps. Like trapped stars, they illuminate the blue night, highlighting the crimson tips of his hair.
You try again. “Am I being haunted?”
No answer comes. He is as still as the stones in your garden.
“Did you make this arrangement… yourself?” he asks.
You recall that timbre and odd fluctuations, soft and umbrous. His archaic speech, as from another Age; his voice, akin to an ill omen. But within, you feel no threat or peril, not this time. Might as well humor him. Or it. “I did,” you answer. You are surely mad… surely, you think, even as your feet drag your body closer until you stand at his side.
His long locks hide most of his features, but despite that, you can tell they are youthful, those of someone in their prime. He feels very present, for a ghost.
You watch the water in silence, the sickle moon reflected in the small, shallow pond. On its dark surface, you, too, look like a shadow next to him, another being inhabiting an ephemeral, reflected universe. A single leaf falls, causing a ripple that breaks the vision.
“I did not thank you, sir. For... that time.”
No answer.
When you look to your side, you are alone. “Wait!” You call, glancing everywhere, turning to and fro, and finding not a wisp of him.
“Well, then,” you murmur, exerted. Your ears again fill with the night song of cicadas. As if the world resumed its turning in space and time. You ought to feel relief, you ought to tremble in suspicious fear because he found you, but all you can conjure is bemusement. You wipe your forehead, staring up at the silent sky. “Gods... It seems I am being haunted, after all?”
At first, it is morbid curiosity. You go, night after night, sitting in the same place, waiting. The wraith does not show itself again, but still, you go.
One night, you play the flute—an old thing your late father used to entertain you with once upon a time, until you begged and insisted you wanted to be taught too. You’d use the pastime to fill the empty spaces in your day, and it became a habit. It reminded you of him.
An intriguing meld of thrill and fear unfurls in your chest, and you know.
This time, he is seated on the same bench, back straight, posture dignified. His sheathed blade rests over his knees. He never looks at you, your haunting spirit. But he’s returned, and this time, you don’t speak at all, you ask no questions. You keep playing, and he listens, and a peculiar, ancient contentment fills you to the brim.
You play the flute often after that. Sometimes, you also sing, your voice reaching the loneliest corners of your garden. When the moon is full, he stays longer. Now he speaks more than before, though his words are measured and at times even curt. Some questions he never answers, such as his name and his origin.
Once you asked who he’d been in life.
“Different.” Not quite an answer, but the most you’d gotten on the topic.
You slowly set down the flute. “Do you play?”
A hand twitches nervously on his knee: the most human reaction you’ve seen from him to date. It charms you, that same meld of unease and thrill flowering through your body. Wordlessly, you extend your hand, offering him the instrument.
The shock is great: for the brief moment in which his fingers brush yours, there is no other sensation but that of calloused human skin touching skin. He feels as solid as any other man. And this, now this gives you pause.
Your fingers close around his without thought, and you gaze upward, finding...
Him, staring back at you, lips parted, revealing...
Fangs?
His features are indeed young, but like a veil torn from your sight, you see him: three pairs of eyes stare back at you, at first in surprise, then narrowing.
The next moment, he is on his feet, the flute fallen on the ground between you.
“You... You are no wraith.” What are you, then?
He turns around faster than you can see.
You’re shaking, you remember the deaths, his manner, and now the inhuman, impossible make of his physiognomy. Are you hallucinating? You must be. Perhaps loneliness has sickened your spirit, perhaps the effect of his presence instills madness in minds. But you’re boldly pulling at the sleeve of his patterned garment, rounding and facing him.
“Upper Rank… One,” you read in his eyes. He is still as Death, the void of silence surrounding him stronger than ever before. “Is that your name?”
You stare, fascinated. Your body cries flee but as in a spell, you lean closer, balancing on your tiptoes. He is tall, taller than any man you’d seen or known; what are you doing? Your arm wraps around his neck and finds hot iron beneath silk.
The rumble of a growl bursts through his chest, and suddenly, you can't breathe; air refuses to enter your lungs, and you struggle with a shallow inhale.
“You foolish girl...”
He stands a distance away, veined hands balled into fists. You couldn't even register when he'd moved. His icy voice hurts your ears, the raw hatred in it so scathing that your legs fail you as though severed, and you fall to your knees.
“How dare you... I could crush you like a fallen petal.” That same voice, dripping malice, withering the life around you. The crimson in his eyes is aflame. “Perhaps, I will...”
Something strange, unknowable yet inevitable, shears your reason. In it, you find cold, bitter courage. And that bitterness cuts through your chilling fear. “Yes, I’m human, and flawed, and I overstepped! But you... You don't even have the courage to say what you are. Why? Why do you keep coming here?”
He stares you down, silent, cruelty twisting his mouth.
“Please, tell me. At least tell me, and then do what you will. Why?”
Please… tell me why.
His expression morphs from fierceness to utter horror, yellow pupils blown so wide they nearly swallow the red. His entire presence, disrupting the world around you, now seeps... regret? You feel it deep in your bones, confusing and wretched.
Why? Why must you leave ?
He raises a hand, as if reaching for something in empty space, then retreats a step, bringing the hand to his head instead. A feverish whisper reaches you, an odd tremble to his deep voice. “You... your face...”
Michikatsu, please...
He backs away another step, head lowering, those unnerving, glowing, monstrous eyes staring blankly ahead.
We are a family... are you not happy? Are you not...
You slowly rise, against all reason, trying to reach him again.
“Begone!”
With that one word, you find yourself alone, unscathed. Holding nothing.
The ever-present song of cicadas revives the night. Your chest hurts, your head spins, your heart feels bruised and broken behind your ribs. An overflow of emotion wells in your eyes, from depths you cannot fathom and cannot reach.
I will never see him again.
A voice within, your own and not your own. But you wish... You wish it were his fingers playing through your hair instead of the empty wind. Something inside you shatters, like an ancient wall crumbling in a cataclysm.
The sickle moon above is blood-red, partly hidden beneath a cloud. The flute lies at your feet, abandoned by the bench.