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Shinobu had to admit, this was a new low. She drew her knees up to her chest as she sat on the cliffside of Mount Narukami. Night had fallen, and from here she could see the lights of Inazuma City and beyond that, a faint glimmer on the horizon, the lights of Liyue Harbor. Her heart ached to see it, and yet she came out here every night to see it.
It was one of the few moments she could steal away, now that she was forced to go back home and work as a shrine maiden again.
How the uniform seemed to cling to her like quicksand, a reminder of everything she had fought to escape. Everything that had been struck down by the Almighty Shogun.
She bitterly laughed out loud at the horrifying irony of it all. She’d been given her Vision for her escape from Mount Narukami, to Liyue Harbor where she’d studied law and made a life for herself. At the time, she’d thought it to be a blessing from the Almighty Shogun herself, a certification of approval for her taking control of her own life.
Then it was the Shogun’s orders that recalled all citizens of Inazuma into the nation’s borders. Then it was the Shogun who prevented all from leaving again. And then it was the Shogun who had confiscated the Visions of every single allogene in the nation. And now it was the Shogun who she was forced to worship, to work in devotion for every day that she remained on this Archons-forsaken mountain.
If she breathed in too deeply, she was sure she would choke on the electricity crackling in the air, that surrounded her and threatened to immolate her in a final blaze, a divine claim on behalf of the Shogun.
She’d tried to fight it.
First the order to come home, until her family had written to her, threatening to tell the Tenryou commission where she was if she didn’t come back home. So she had done so, had visited them briefly to assure them that she had returned to be within their reach.
Then she’d escaped to join the Arataki Gang just down the mountain. For the first few months, they made a name for themselves as helpers, as odd-job doers with Shinobu at the helm.
But then the Vision Hunt Decree came. And Shinobu knew then that the Almighty Shogun could not have been the one behind her Vision after all, that the legend was a lie. It was said that her Vision was a symbol of all her dreams and ambitions—and to lose it would be a horror, a fate worse than death. She’d seen the first citizens in Hannamizaka who had willingly given up their Visions, what they had become.
Shells of themselves, walking ghosts.
Who did that to their own people?
Naturally, the Arataki Gang wouldn’t let that kind of tyranny stand. Even Itto, as idiotic as he could be, could understand that what was happening was wrong. Before they even made it to ally with the Resistance, however, Kujou Sara and her troops had caught them.
They didn’t go down without a fight, Shinobu herself included. Like a thunderstorm on the high seas, she would remember that last glorious fight when she still had her Vision forever, despite the moment being as fleeting as the lightning’s glow.
But that was how she’d ended up separated from the Arataki Gang, back in her family’s clutches. They had paid her bail and taken her home, and she didn’t have the will to fight it.
It was hard to care about anything anymore. Idly, a part of her knew that she could still leave, that she could still practice law or do something—anything.
But it all felt pointless. Her chest felt hollow, and that spark that had driven her to escape, to fight, to burn brightly—it was gone. Only the dark remained. She knew that part of her was once there, had been her very essence—but it was gone. Out of reach.
She wished her parents had let her stay in the Tenryou Commission’s jails. Then at least she would be with people who were in the same boat as her. But they would never understand what they had taken from her.
Instead, her mother was pleased that her daughter was the compliant doll she’d always wanted.
“I do wish you’d smile more, though,” she’d add, as an afterthought.
Shinobu would try to school her features, but she could never maintain it for longer than it took for her mother to turn around.
She tried to avoid looking at Inazuma City, at that gods-awful statue that loomed over all else and glimmered with the stolen Visions. It made her sick to think that hers was one of the violet lights that she could see from here.
Shinobu knew she should get up, that someone would be asking where she was about now, why she wasn’t busy. But her legs wouldn’t obey, instead overcome with the sense of ennui.
“I knew I’d find you here.”
She looked up in time to see Shikanoin Heizou approach, wearing his official doushin hat. He took it off as he sat down beside her.
She couldn’t help but stare at the Vision on his hip, and feel her own heart in her throat. Resentment and envy that he was whole and she was left broken by everything she once believed in clawed its way to the surface.
She had to turn her head and look away before she said something she’d regret.
“I see they’re letting the Shogun’s people keep their Visions.”
“For now,” he replied evenly. “Once we’ve rounded up everyone else’s, we’ll be expected to turn ours in too.”
“What do you want, Heizou?” Shinobu huffed out. “Do you want something, or are you just here to gloat?”
Heizou frowned. “What do you think I’m gloating about?”
Shinobu looked to him, incredulous. “You won. You have your Vision, and your freedom, and everything!”
She realized she was crying. It had been so long since she had done that, she wasn’t even sure if she remembered how to anymore, after the loss of her Vision.
He reached for her face, and gently flicked his thumb over her tears. “Tell me what’s wrong, Shinobu, maybe I can help.”
“You can’t.” She did not pull away, in spite of every instinct in her body telling her to do so. Maybe it was because, once upon a time, she’d wanted him to touch her like this. But that was a long time ago, when they were both fourteen and dreaming of ways off the mountain.
The tears renewed, and it was getting harder to breathe. “No one can help. No one ever has.”
That was the truth, wasn’t it? No one ever listened to what she had wanted, so she’d run away. She’d tried to save herself, but everyone had dragged her back in, and now forced her to kneel before a god who wanted only mindless devotion and obedience.
“Let me help you, Shinobu.” Heizou’s voice cracked as he cradled her face with one hand, and reached for her shoulder with the other. “Please.”
She shook her head, finally able to pull away. “They broke me, Heizou. A part of me is gone. There’s a hollow in my chest, and I can see the girl I used to be, but I can’t reach her anymore. And no one cares—my parents even prefer me this way.”
She swiped furiously at her own tears as she felt her cheeks go warm. It was embarrassing to break down like this, a further humiliation in a conga line.
“I’m sure everyone prefers me this way,” she added, more of a musing out loud. “But I feel like I died when they took my Vision away. And now I’m just left to walk around and pretend to be alive and no one cares.”
Heizou shook his head, and took her hands into his.
“I care,” he insisted, staring at her with those perceptive mint-green eyes. She did not turn to face him, but she could feel his eyes upon her all the same. “And I don’t like to see you this way, Shinobu. That’s why I came to see you.”
“Two months later?” She snapped, turning back around. “I needed you! I needed you and you didn’t come!”
“And I’m so sorry.” He did genuinely look reticent. He let go of one of her hands, and lifted the other, still entwined with his, over her heart. “I was on a case on Yashiori Island. But you’re right, I should have come sooner. I’m sorry.”
Shinobu trembled. She hated feeling so open, so vulnerable, so weak with her confessions.
“What do you want, Heizou?” She repeated, more softly this time. Her voice warbled with her tears.
“I came to do what every hard-boiled detective hopes to do,” he admitted, a light note of teasing to it in spite of the whole atmosphere of the conversation. “I came to save the girl.”
She let go of his hand and shook her head. “The girl can’t be saved, Heizou. She couldn’t even save herself.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Kuki Shinobu I know.”
“They broke the Kuki Shinobu you knew,” she reminded him. “They stole her heart and clipped her wings so she could never leave her cage again.”
She wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt at comfort. The wind had picked up on the mountain’s peak. She had remembered one of those cold, miserable nights when she had picked leaves from the vine because they were supposed to relieve the cold. But they hadn’t, the tradition had been another lie.
“Oh, Shinobu.” She heard Heizou sigh as he shifted to be on his knees, rather than sitting down. He gently wrapped his hand around hers again. With the other, he tilted her chin up toward him.
His expression was so soft, but his eyes so intense, that she had difficulty maintaining the eye contact. But she did so all the same. Because that was who she was, who she always had been—the girl who faced the eye of the storm and became it.
That girl had seemed so far away, these past two months that felt like their own little eternity.
But Heizou had a way of waking her up again, pulling her out from under a burial of sakura blossoms.
“I can’t return your Vision to you,” he admitted. “But I can take you away from here.”
She blinked. “You can’t, they’ll make me come back, just like they did before.”
“No, they won’t,” he assured her. “I won’t let them.”
He gently pried her hand off of her shoulder and he held it up to his lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner to save you, sweetheart. But I’m here now.”
A part of her wanted to resist this, to push back, to insist she’d take care of herself, as she always had.
No one can help. No one ever has.
I needed you and you didn’t come!
Let me help you.
She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out all of the doubts that pinned her down, trapped her in the cage on the mountain-top. She didn’t have to be reliant on herself all the time.
Maybe it would be nice, just once, to be the girl who could be saved.
She opened her eyes and met Heinous eyes. “You promise you won’t let them take me back home?”
“On my honor as a doushin of the Tenryou Commission.” With that, he kissed her hand.
An old-fashioned gesture, learned from the noir detective light-novels that were a trend approximately forty years ago at the Yae Publishing House. But charming all the same.
“Then take me home, Heizou,” she whispered.
He nodded, and he helped her to her feet. The night no longer seemed so cold, the darkness so oppressive.
A more mischievous glint appeared in his eyes.
Shinobu raised her eyebrows. “No. Don’t you dare. You’re not—“
Before she could raise any further objection, he let go of her hand, instead sliding one arm around her back, the other under her knees and sweeping her off her feet. Literally.
In spite of herself, she was laughing, for the first time in ages. “Heizou!”
“You have an objection, Shinobu?” He smirked.
“You ass.” She shook her head and clasped her arms around his neck all the same.
The shrieking laughter of the lovers drew attention from others on Mount Narukami. But for once, Shinobu didn’t care. They could look all they wanted. For once, since she’d returned to Inazuma, she was happy.
She was coming home.