少なすぎる、遅すぎる
It was a month after the first day of school, and everything had well and truly returned to peace.
At least, as normal as it got, considering that she lived in a house predominantly filled with Tengu, and her closest friend was the mortal vessel of a Kamigami Pai had actually met in person – and also happened to be engaged to the Heir of the Tengu.
Normal was relative.
She began her 'training' the weekend after she asked for it. Daichi, as her handler, was the one who trained her. It was surprisingly simple. All she did was repeat the same set of exercises, over and over again, for one hour in the morning before breakfast, and one hour before dinner in the evening.
She thought that she'd get straight into what she'd imagined – kickboxing, punching, learning to use some sort of weapon, anything thing that looked like how the Daitengu trained. But that was not the case. When she asked why she was only doing the repetitive exercises, Daichi told her that they would eventually get to the harder part.
First, though, she needed to build on her strength, and muscle. She was too 'flimsy', as he put it, just a mere slip of a girl the way she was now. If they didn't hone her body she'd never get anywhere with the more advanced training.
"You have the body of a ballerina, and not to be rude, but not a very strong one at that," Daichi had said as he pressed her head down lower. She was doing a Roman Chair, to strengthen the quadriceps muscles. Only, instead of leaning against a wall, she was relying only on her sense of balance. The calves and the back of her knees burned with the effort of remaining in position as Daichi pushed on her to go lower by pressing his hand down on her head. "You need to put on some body mass so that you don't burn through your energy reserves when you get to the harder stuff."
"You mean gain weight?" she clarified, voice trembling. She never liked to talk about how hard it was for her to gain weight, because she so often overheard other girls talk about how hard it was for them to lose it – when they really didn't even need to – and the extreme lengths they went to in furthering that goal. It made her feel like she complained over nothing, really, or like she was trying to show off that she didn't have those problems – even if that wasn't the case.
He smiled. "Kind of."
Sometimes Kaede came to watch, and give her helpful advice in pointing out what she was doing wrong. Kaede was the only one who stayed at the house more often than the others because it was difficult for him to leave, due to his Ability. When he got bored, he trained – and Kaede got bored easily. He was the one to tell her if she was in the wrong position, if her foot was angled in the wrong way, if she was putting too much pressure on one leg than the other when it should be even.
He was also usually the one to call the end of the session when he heard, with his Ability, that her heart was working too hard to pump blood to her body, and that she was too tired to continue, yet stubbornly refusing to call it a day. Kaede had a habit of rapping her on the head with the back of his hand whenever she didn't say when she was tired.
Pai, in turn, perfected the prowess of ducking and swerving to avoid it without tripping over her feet. It was proving to be effective not only with Kaede, but Haru, too, when he tried to mess her hair up, which happened distressingly often.
During the week, she focused on school, and helping out around the house. Sometimes it was with Yukiji in the kitchen, other times it was with Mizutani with the kids, playing and chasing after them when they got too rowdy. Her days were too busy to have a proper conversation with Shin again, but when she met him in the hallways of the house, she would smile at him, and he smiled back.
Pai's heart fluttered strangely when he did. Always. She reasoned it was because, before, Shin rarely smiled at anyone that wasn't his brother or Kouta. Or Haru and Kaede, and that was because it was hard not to smile at their antics.
She was glad to see that Shin looked better, too, though in a single month he'd disappeared again for another week. Normally he would go off on his own for a week every few months, she'd noticed, instead of every few weeks. Shin looked noticeably improved, and more relaxed, when he came back from his trips. Pai was glad that whatever it was he was doing, it at least seemed to help him. She still wished she knew why he had to leave in the first place, and why it was happening more frequently now.
In the mornings, she and Shiori set off for school, accompanied by Haru and Shouta until they reached the bottom of the mountain. Ryu always went to school ahead of everyone else because he had morning baseball practise every day. Everyone agreed that he was safe on his own because he didn't have the same alluring scent as his sister did, and that having someone accompany him would only attract unwanted attention to him.
Or, more like, Ryu had forced everyone to agree with him. He was much like Shiori in that he wanted to live a completely normal life while at school. Luckily, he had the excuse of actually being a completely normal human.
His sister – not so lucky.
After separating at the shrine, the girls went on ahead to the train station, with the two Daitengu not far behind. They got to school and spent most of the rest of the day sitting at their desks as the teachers came and left for each subject.
No Yamajijii appeared again.
Pai had mixed feelings about that – she knew it was a bad idea to do it, but she still couldn't get the thought of asking it about Kagetora out of her head. She couldn't very well ask Shin, or one of the other Daitengu, not after hearing about what had happened to them nine years ago.
After school ended, Shiori went off to basketball practise while she went to the astronomy clubroom with Aoi. Everyone in the club was rather relaxed and easy-going. There was only her, Aoi, Suzume Erin (the same girl who had so audaciously asked Haru if he had a girlfriend. Pai thought she was friendly enough), Motomi Shiharu (the girl with glasses in her class, and who was always reading a book when there wasn't a lesson going on), two first year boys, and three girls from the third year, one of whom was the head of the club, and two more third year boys.
Pai thought that during club meetings everyone would talk about something pertaining to astronomy. The reality was that it was more of planning where to go when there was a star shower later that month. The rest of the time, everyone simply did their own thing, which could be studying, reading a book, or talking. Though she sat with the rest of the girls from class 2, Pai found herself more likely to be staring off out the window, daydreaming or napping with her eyes barely open.
School was exhausting.
Shin often strayed into her thoughts, but she made an effort not to think about him. Every time she thought of him, she remembered what he'd said, that she'd been desperate enough to go through tsukimono. It explained why she couldn't remember anything, but she didn't want to think it was true. She didn't like the thought of it.
And anyway, what Ayakashi could she have allowed to use her body? None of the others seemed concerned about it, and Kouta hadn't said anything to her about it. Only Shin seemed to know, and he didn't look like he thought that Ayakashi would be making a reappearance.
Everything seemed...fine. She didn't know why she felt weird that nothing bad was happening.
It was the first weekend of the second month of peace. After Shiori's basketball training and Shouta's coaching ended, the four met at Sapporo Station where they waited to board a train headed back home.
Shiori declared that if she didn't get something in her stomach within the next ten minutes, she would faint right then and there, and Haru and Shouta would be left to explain to Kouta how they could have allowed their princess to collapse at the train station. She chose Haru to accompany her to one of the convenience stores a few minutes walk from the underground station to buy onigiri. Shouta remained behind with Pai.
The train station was overflowing with Yori Chiisai. Yosei zipped about the heads of people walking to and fro on the platform, pulling at some of the women's hair and tugging viciously at the men's. Other nameless blobs of colour and shape traipsed along the railway track, burrowed into people's shopping bags, jumped from the quickly-moving shoes of one person to the other and tried to trip them. Goryo floated after a few of the people in the station, screaming soundlessly into their ears as the oblivious humans chatted with one another or talked into their cell phones.
The electric lights were on, since it was already dark out. They harshly illuminated the wearied, tired faces of people as they sat or stood, waiting for the arrivals of the trains. More than a few people shot Haru and Shouta looks, mostly the women and girls, though the two Daitengu played oblivious to it all.
Pai was freezing just from the overwhelming presence of the Yori Chiisai. No matter how tight she wrapped her scarf around her neck without totally cutting off all circulation, or how she snuggled into her jacket, she couldn't escape the cold. Luckily, the Yori Chiisai kept their distance from her and Shouta, able to sense that he was Hengen.
Shouta, on the other hand, didn't spare them a glance, concentrating on the book he held in his left hand. She was envious of him in his simple sweater, coat, and trouser combo, knowing he didn't feel the cold at all and only wore the coat for appearances sake.
The automated voice of an electronic female attendant sounded overhead after a low, dull ding, startling Pai out of her light doze. "Good evening. There has been a delay with the next incoming train. It will be arriving at six fifteen PM. We are sorry for the delay. Thank you for your continued patience."
The voice clicked off, and Pai slumped back on the bench she sat on. She glanced back at the entrance of the station. Haru and Shiori were nowhere in sight yet. Pai needed to go to the bathroom – not needed, exactly, but she preferred to make the rest of the trip home without being pressed for it.
She looked back and said, "Shouta-san, I am going to the bathroom. I will be back in a bit."
Shouta nodded, eyes still on the words in the book. "Don't be too long. Shiori-hime and Haru will be back soon."
"Okay," she answered, turning and heading in the direction of the women's bathrooms.
Pushing through the crowds of people who converged at the train station for any number of reasons was difficult. Not only did she have to avoid getting shoved by bodies, prodded at by elbows, and accidentally (maybe) groped by hands, she also had to avoid touching Yori Chiisai that clung to people around her like second skins.
Pai had never been sure if being touched by them could do anything. She'd never allowed herself the chance to find out and she didn't plan to try. Even if she was a little curious, she wasn't willing to risk Shiori's safety, or hers, over an experiment that could very well backfire and have her constantly hounded by Yori Chiisai more than she already was.
Goryo were tenacious in their attempts to get someone to hear them. They clung to the shoulders of men and women. They purposefully passed through the corporeal bodies of the people at the station, who only shivered to show for it. Some Goryo merely hovered there, meandering through the multitude of people in the station, watching over the tired, drained humans they chose to stick with like the spectres of holy angels. Others tried their best to be heard – and that meant screaming.
She had her ring to obscure her aura from the Yori Chiisai, and in turn to somewhat block just how much sensory input she got when around them. As such, she wasn't able to hear the sounds of the Goryo's shrieks. She saw a few turn to her as she passed, but she studiously ignored them, focusing on her feet and walking away quickly. She'd seen them begin following people around when they'd made the unconscious mistake of staring at what they thought was just a wall, when in reality there was a Goryo floating in front of the wall.
The bathroom was devoid of human occupants when she got there. Instead, she found two Yosei sitting in one of the rounded sinks. They were tiny-bodied pink and blue sparks of colour that only glanced at her for a moment before going back to viciously spraying water at each other. Nobody else was in the bathroom.
The tap was on, spewing forth an endless stream. Water splashed everywhere around the rim. She frowned, acting as though she was a normal person who couldn't see the little busybodies, and approached the sink. The Yosei dashed away, leaping into the air and fluttering about her head angrily for a few seconds before they turned and zipped out the little open window in the wall directly opposite the door.
She rolled her eyes at their childishness and put her hands under the cold water, washing them before turning the tap off and drying her hands. Pai only gave her reflection in the mirror a cursory glance, quickly patting down a few stray hairs that had somehow gotten out of the tight braid she'd plaited down her back only two hours before. Then she turned and went into one of the vacant cubicles.
But, when she reached up after closing the door to slide the lock home, her fingers scrabbled against empty space. She looked up to see that the sliding lock was practically falling off the door, hanging on by a thin piece of metal that was still stubbornly sticking to the door.
Seriously. Why. Her lips pressed into a flat line as she tiptoed and peered through the little hole poking through the door; she could see right through it to the row of sinks ahead. She sighed heavily, going back on her feet. She stared dejectedly at the broken lock a moment longer before reaching for the door handle to go to another cubicle.
Pata. Pata.
She didn't hear. It was too faint, too quiet.
Cold.
She frowned. Reached up to rub at her upper arms. Cold. It was cold, so very cold. She looked down at her hands – the bones in her fingers were stiff when she tried to curl her fingers. It felt like her joints creaked like old pieces of metal when she pressed her fingers down to her palm.
But she hadn't noticed the cold before that thought had entered her mind. It was always chilly, and despite the discomfort brought on by the shivering, she'd gotten used to being perpetually cold. Why did the thought...what was wrong with it? Why didn't it feel like...her?
Pata-pata. Teke-teke.
She froze, muscles locking, eyes widening. Her head snapped up to stare straight at the hole of the broken lock. Ice stole over her body, settling like a coiled snake of winter in her stomach. She took a step back, further into the cubicle, every instinct in her screaming to hide. She lifted her feet, up onto the toilet so that she was squatting on the closed lid, supported from falling over with her shoulder to the cubicle wall.
She made no sound, but she still winced at the rustle of her clothes and the quiet rasp of her breath. She kept herself as still as she could, heart pounding, and squinted through the hole of the lock. Even then she felt like the beat of her heart was too loud.
Some would say she was overreacting. It was nothing. Just the wind. Just people walking outside the bathroom. Just the plumbing rumbling through the walls.
Those people couldn't see Yori Chiisai like she could. They hadn't been hunted and almost killed by an Oni.
There was the sickening sound of something wet slapping against the floor of the bathroom. She suspected what the source of it was, but she needed to see it with her own eyes – the disbelief clogging her throat threatened to choke her if she didn't. She craned her neck forward, careful not to move her weight around so that the toilet seat wouldn't creak with her movement.
Her heart froze with the pure terror that gripped it in an iron-clad fist, her blood running cold at the sight of the Yori Chiisai that crawled into the bathroom.
It was Teke Teke, a Yori Chiisai who had no lower half of its body and ran about on its arms, so fast that it could chase after speeding cars, slicing its victims in half at the waist and stealing their legs.
Black hair fell in stringy trails down the back clad in a loose white dress that was smeared and dirty with mud and the rusty blots of dried blood. Through the limited view of the hole, she saw Teke Teke lift herself up onto the bathroom counter, arms bare, pale grey, mottled with dark spots that looked meaty, although Pai was too far away to tell for sure.
In the split second before she ducked in case Teke Teke saw her hiding in the stall through the mirror, she caught the unmistakeable glint of a sickle. A putrid stench stole into the bathroom, of rotten eggs and weeks-old meat left out in the sun too long. Pai gagged at the smell.
Legend went that, in the years after World War II, an office worker in Muroran was assaulted and raped by an American soldier. That night, she jumped off a bridge onto the tracks of a railway. She was hit by an oncoming train, the impact so forceful that her body was torn in half at the waist.
She didn't die immediately.
It was winter, and the severe cold of the Hokkaido night stopped her from bleeding out quickly. Instead, she crawled all the way to a train station and was seen by an attendant, who simply covered her with a plastic tarpaulin. She died slowly and agonizingly. Daichi had told her that the woman became Yori Chiisai was because of her anger at humanity for not helping her when she needed it.
Pai was frozen with fear as she sat squat on top of the closed lid of the toilet, pressing her hands to her mouth to keep from making any sounds. Her hands were ice cold, but her breath was warm against her skin as she breathed slowly through her nose.
She flinched at the sound of the sickle she'd just barely caught a glimpse of dragging across the surface of the counter. Her nails dug into her cheeks, and she winced at the sharp pain, her breath catching in her throat. Pai froze, eyes shutting as she mentally groaned, wondering if the Teke Teke had heard her.
All was silent.
She had no idea what the Yori Chiisai was doing, here, in this bathroom. Teke Teke, male and female, was always around Muroran. The city was the source of the story that surrounded them. Daichi told her that things like Teke Teke stuck to places where their origins were, where stories of them were told. Why was Teke Teke here, in Sapporo, hundreds of kilometres away?
Slowly, she opened her eyes again, and looked up. There was no one around. She inched upward, muscles in her calves straining. She tried to peer through the hole of the broken lock again. Her heart jumped when the bathroom door banged open, loud sniffling filling the room.
Pai was able to see, through the hole, that it was a school girl who had so suddenly come into the bathroom. The girl wore the same uniform as her. She frowned at the familiarity of the shoulder-length hair, the shy hunch of the shoulders, trying to guess who it might be.
Then the girl walked in front of the mirror, and through the reflection, she saw who it was. Pai struggled to keep a gasp of surprise from escaping her.
It was Motomi Shiharu.
She was crying, hard, pushing her glasses off her head and pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. Her glasses slid down the smooth roundness of the top of her head and fell off to the ground with a loud clatter. The sound of the plastic frames striking the hard-tiled floor was astonishingly loud in the bathroom. It was like Pai's skin jumped off her bones at the sound.
Shiharu's breath came and went in shuddering gasps, her shoulders heaving. A low sound was building up from the back of Shiharu's throat, as if she was about to scream. With a choking gasp, Shiharu inhaled shakily as she leaned forward and braced her elbows on the counter as she put her head in her hands.
Pai was numb, her mind blank. She didn't know what to think, watching Shiharu's hands scrabble blindly at the tap to twist it on. She cupped her hands under the running water and splashed the water over her face, getting it all over the front of her school uniform and in her hair.
The tones of Unravel Ghoul blared out against the echoing walls of the bathroom. Pai jumped so bad at the sudden sound that she almost fell off the toilet seat. Her breathe rose sharply as she inhaled a gasp. Her feet slipped off the edge of the toilet, and she threw her hands out against the cubicle walls on either side of her to steady herself.
She froze with her breath held in her chest. Her heart was in her stomach with horror that she had been stupid enough to bring her phone to the bathroom with her and now Shiharu and Teke Teke too would –
Shiharu swore colourfully, a long string of expletives shooting out of her. Pai's brow scrunched in befuddlement; she'd never heard a mean word out of Shiharu since she'd met her.
Shiharu dug around in her school bag for her phone. Pai realized that it wasn't her phone ringing – it was Shiharu's. They just had the same ringtone. Pai wasn't even the one to set her ringtone, but Shiori. Shiori was obsessed with the song and had been listening to it on repeat for days now. Sometimes she would even call Pai's phone just to hear it, despite being right next to her.
The ringing ended abruptly, and she watched through the hole as Shiharu lifted the phone to her ear. "Hello?"
A beat. Then, "Cram school. Where else would I go?" she sniffled.
Pai saw that her face in the mirror was red with the force of her crying. Snot ran in dribbles down her nose and Shiharu wiped it away with the sleeves of her blazer. Her eyes were red-rimmed and looked raw, as if she had been wiping at them with some rough material too hard and for too long. Her cheeks were sunken in, not enough to be noticeable when she wore glasses, but still hollow. Dark shadows were smudged under her eyes. She looked like she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in weeks.
She didn't just look stressed from lack of sleep. She looks miserable.
It shocked Pai, not because of how depressed and worn-down she looked, but because of the fact that she had seen none of it in the face of the shy girl who read books in class with earphones in before the teacher came for registration. Shiharu was quiet, and didn't talk much, but – but she never looked this bad, as if she was struggling to remain upright while being crushed under the weight of the world. Pai, so used to being able to sense when something was wrong with someone, being proud that she was so perceptive to others' feelings, was stunned. How hadn't she noticed this misery in Shiharu?
Shiharu's face twisted in an expression of such bitter anger that Pai's lips parted in a soft exhale of surprise.
"Who the cares if I come or not?" Shiharu's voice was nasally, but it only added to the air of profound despair enveloping the girl. "It's not like you do. Anna matters more, right, father?"
Even from the distance away that Pai was, she could hear the shrill yelling from the speaker on the phone. Shiharu yanked the phone away from her ear and tapped the screen. She slung her arm back, the phone clenched tight in her shaking fist. She hesitated for a brief moment, tears falling freely down her cheeks again. Her face contorted in pain, and she launched the phone at the wall opposite her.
Pai didn't see it, but she heard the phone crash into the wall and splinter into pieces as it fell down to the ground. She watched Shiharu, who stood frozen in the same position, shoulders heaving as her body shook with a fresh bout of tears.
Balls of ice dropped to the bottomless pit in Pai's stomach when Teke Teke moved into her line of vision again. Teke Teke was completely silent, and she watched in rapt, appalled fascination as it reached up with one sinewy arm and grasped hold of something above its head.
Pai leaned forward a few inches, and saw that the Yori Chiisai had used its talons to poke a hole through the tiles of the ceiling. Teke Teke pulled itself up with the strength of one arm, tipping its body until it was hanging upside down, stringy hair hanging down like streamers. Her lower lip trembled as she continued to watch Teke Teke move across the ceiling to hover just above Shiharu's head. She wanted run, to scream at Shiharu to run, to hide – but all she found herself able to actually do was sit right where she was, and watch.
Nothing can happen, she tried to reassure herself. Nothing can happen, not here. Teke Teke has no power here.
Yori Chiisai could be dangerous, there was no doubt about that. But they were only ever so when in their own habitats; where they originated, where their presence was strongest. Yamajijii could only appear where they died. Ghosts of people who died at sea, Funayurei, could only be found in seas, and then it was only in the area they died in as humans. River spirits that pretended to be a crying baby – Kawa-agako – were even further limited, in that it could only appear and hound humans in or close to rivers.
Teke Teke the human had her bottom half ripped off on railway tracks, and she crawled to and died just outside a train station. Yori Chiisai couldn't harm humans in opposing locations to where they haunted – they couldn't do anything to a human inside a building when they died outdoors. Most Teke Teke coalesced around Muroran, because it was a tradition to tell the story there. There was nothing it could do in here. That's what Daichi told her, when she asked him about what Yori Chiisai she should watch out for after seeing a news story coverage on TV about a woman who fell from a tall building, and she saw some tiny, horrific creature sitting on the blurred out form of the woman's dead body.
Pai – she had to believe that. She had to. It didn't make any sense for that not to be the case.
She watched with eyes widened as the sickle Teke Teke carried in its hand swung slowly behind Shiharu's head in an arc, momentarily blocking her view of the girl. The sickle disappeared from sight as Teke Teke swung it up. Pai's heart almost stopped beating as it jumped up to her throat.
"M – "
She stopped herself from screaming out Shiharu's name in warning when, instead of the sickle reappearing as Pai thought, Teke Teke's hand dropped down instead. Shiharu leaned forward and the hand stopped moving.twisted the tap on, cupped her hands under the water, and splashed more of it over her reddened face.
A knock sounded on the door. A slither of heat coiled in Pai's stomach, and a second later Haru's muffled voice called through. "Pai-chan? You in there?"
Shiharu's lips moved in the mirrored reflection. Her voice was cracking, eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the familiarity with which Haru called Pai's name. "Nishimura-sensei? Pai-chan?"
Shiharu turned to look at the row of toilet stalls behind her. Pai ducked her head and held her breath, even as she wanted to scream, I'm here! I'm in here!
But she couldn't. If she made a sound, Teke Teke would know she was here.
She squinted through the hole and saw that Shiharu's had turned back to face the mirrors again, head turned to the door. Shiharu remained silent, not answering Haru. Teke Teke's hand, behind Shiharu's head, had stopped moving. Pai didn't know how smart Yori Chiisai were or could be, and she didn't want to risk that Teke Teke would realize Pai was hiding from her.
Because why else would a human hide in an empty bathroom if she couldn't see Yori Chiisai?
Pai kept silent and prayed that Teke Teke would leave soon so she could finally go back to Haru, and Shouta, and Shiori. They were worried by now, wondering why Pai had been gone so long. She told Shouta that she wouldn't be long. How long had it been, anyway?
She glanced at her watch and saw that it was five forty-nine. She'd left to come to the bathroom at least ten minutes ago.
The heat in her stomach slowly dissipated, and her heart sank. Haru, the source of that heat, was walking away. She pressed her wavering lips together and closed her eyes, hating herself for being so fearful of walking out and going back to the people she wanted to be next to.
She opened her eyes again to see if Shiharu would finally leave. Instead, a single pale, mottled finger with blackened fingertips traced lightly over Shiharu's cheek, gliding up from her jaw to the curve of her ear. Pai stared in horror at the reflection of Shiharu in the mirror that froze the moment Teke Teke touched her.
A blackened substance, like smoke but denser, more tangible, leaked out from the tip of Teke Teke's finger onto Shiharu's face. It crawled like a living thing over the bridge of her nose before disappearing down into her lax, open mouth. Shiharu pushed herself away from the sink, hands falling limp to her sides as her head fell to her side, like her neck had suddenly grown limp. Her eyes were empty, like a dead fish. They stared unseeingly into the mirror, through it, like she was looking at something other than her own reflection.
Like she wasn't seeing her reflection in the mirror at all.
"Worthless." The word was hissed out of Teke Teke's broken, bruised lips. A shiver crept down Pai's spine as her fingers curled into her palms. It was like snakes slithering over her body, and her flesh crawled. "Unworthy, undeserving of life. You are tainted."
"Yes..." Shiharu mumbled, her voice coming out robotic and monotonous.
Pai's mouth dropped open at the double-edged quality to it, something she only ever heard in the voices of Ayakashi – both Hengen and Yori Chiisai alike. She was certain that she had heard it in Shin's voice, back at the warehouse when he fought the Onihitokuchi.
But this was lighter, sharper, piercing. It wasn't so easy to the ears as Hengen voices were.
She looked up again at Shiharu. Was this what happened when humans were controlled by Yori Chiisai? Bile rose up at the back of her throat as she stared at the blank look in Shiharu's eyes.
It was so easy. It was so easy for Teke Teke to take over Shiharu. The girl hadn't even noticed anything happening, and now her eyes looked like there was nothing in her anymore.
"No one cares for you. You did nothing to stop it."
A tear, clear and translucent, fell down from the corner of Shiharu's eyes that maintained their dull quality. "No one cares for me." She repeated, words slow. "No one cares what he did."
A name echoed in Pai's mind, with words that strung together to send an arrow of pain lancing through her heart. She pressed a hand to her chest while keeping her other hand on the wall to hold her steady. Tears sprang up of their own accord in her eyes, stinging them. She blinked rapidly to keep the tears from falling and until they dried. Her heart was heavy in her chest, and she felt like she was drowning in a heavy black smoke that was stealing its way through her whole body.
"You deserve to die like we did."
"I deserve to die like you did." A snaky tendril of the black thing that entered her nose slithered back out. Teke Teke's hand dropped back down and stroked down the length of Shiharu's hair lovingly. The blackness slid back in. Shiharu's breath stuttered, but the girl didn't make a move. Her words were slurred and hardly comprehensible as she asked, "What do you want me to do?"
Teke Teke was silent. Pai held her breath, torn with her fear of the Yori Chiisai that held her back from interfering and her own horrid curiosity to see what the Teke Teke would say.
Nothing was going like Pai thought it should – she didn't even know that Yori Chiisai could have control over a human the way Teke Teke clearly did over Shiori. Yori Chiisai found it easier to influence the hearts of humans who carried something dark in them, some heavy burden they kept to themselves. Shiharu clearly had that, from what Pai could gather from the short phone call, but she hadn't expected it to be strong enough for Teke Teke to control her to this extent.
It was so easy.
Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the electric light overhead glint in fractured light off the gleaming surface of the sickle as it swung back into view. She bit her bottom lip to keep silent, so hard that she winced when her teeth tore at skin. Blood seeped up from her torn lip, but she ignored it.
She watched Teke Teke draw the deadly sharpened edge of the blade down Shiharu's cheek. Red beaded and collected into one drop and fell down her cheek to hover at her chin before plopping down on the white surface of the sink.
She looked like she was crying blood.
Pai stilled at the sight of it, gut churning with nausea. A single white strand fell over her forehead, and her breath fluttered at the hair, pushing it to fall on the side of her face. She stared at another bead rolling down Shiharu's cheek, another tear of grievous red falling down her pale face.
Tears of blood – tears of blood – tears of blood, I know – I feel – someone, someone, her, you cry blood, he betrayed you when he said he wouldn't and –
"Do what we did."
In a dizzying flurry, the sickle and the blotched grey hand disappeared from view. The cold that invaded her stomach whittled away, and the band of tension that kept its hold tightened over her chest eased. Pai sagged against the wall of the cubicle, the stiffness of trying to keep so very still ebbing out of her body in increments.
A quiet sigh escaped her. She closed her eyes and tipped her head to the side, resting her cheek on her outstretched arm as she tried to calm herself. She heard a clattering and looked up again through the hole.
Shiharu had bent down to retrieve her glasses. Pai saw her looking at her glasses from the mirror. Her eyes were still dull and bleak, her lips turned down. Her movements were strange and disconnected, as if she was trying to use her brain to get her body to move the way she wanted it to, instead of automatically. Pai abruptly remembered the black thing that crawled into her nose.
It hadn't come out when Teke Teke left.
Shiharu stared down at her glasses for another moment before she let them drop, tipping over her limp fingers to crash to the ground. This time the lenses in the frame cracked, splintering in two. Shiharu turned on her heel and shuffled out of the bathroom.
Pai remained rooted to where she was for a full minute after the bathroom door swung shut behind Shiharu, trying to take in what had happened, why the girl still looked like she was being controlled by Teke Teke even after the Yori Chiisai disappeared. Their hold on humans diminished with distance – why didn't Shiharu go back to normal?
Their influence lessened with distance...but did it?
Was Teke Teke really gone? Could Pai finally leave the bathroom? Her view of the outside of the stall was severely limited. She couldn't see enough of what was there to know if it was safe to come out. She looked up, but Teke Teke wasn't above her on the ceiling like some nightmarish visage she half-expected to see.
Slowly, she lowered her feet to the tiled floor of the bathroom. Her shoes squeaked, painfully loud. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for another second, but nothing happened. Pai opened her eyes again, waited a moment, and reached out. Her fingers brushed over the cold metal of the broken lock. Instead of pulling the door open, she stepped closer to it and peered through the hole.
The bathroom was empty.
I'll just – I'll run out. Daichi said Teke Teke doesn't like being around other Yori Chiisai. If I go out where all the Goryo and Yosei and others are, it won't follow me. It won't, it won't, it
Pai yanked the door open and ran out.
The door banged against the wall, and the cut on her bottom lip stung as she gritted her teeth. She turned and headed straight for the bathroom door. She saw a flash of white zip past the mirrors. Her heart was thudding hard in her chest as she pushed herself to run as fast as she could.
She didn't get far.
A rush of cold wind blew over her, settling in her stomach once again. A heavy weight slammed into her back, knocking her down. She gasped as she fell, throwing her hands out to catch herself. Something at the back of her brain screamed that she'd twist her wrist if she fell that way, and without thinking, she twisted her body to land with a jarring thud on her back, the back of her head glancing off the hard floor.
The breath was knocked out of her as she squeezed her eyes shut against the instantaneous ringing in her skull and the pain shooting through her spine. A blade whistled through the air. Her eyes snapped open again when something cold and sharp pressed against her neck.
Above her, supporting itself with its strong arms, was Teke Teke.
Panic clawed up her throat at the sight of the Yori Chiisai above her, ends of its dirty white dress trailing over the lower half of Pai's body. Its face was a bloodcurdling horror of deep gauges in its cheeks, skin grey with death, the flapping edges of the gashes blackened and cauterized with decay. Its lips looked like pieces of flesh stuck on to its face, twisted in a derisive scowl. Half its nose was cut off, the spongy meat inside glistening with the harsh illuminative light of the bathroom. The sclera of its eyes were both completely black with thin veins branching out from the centre, the irises a dead shade of red that more resembled rust than anything else. The hate in its eyes was so strong that it was like Pai was being coated in a thick layer of it.
Her skin crawled at being so close to Teke Teke, at being touched by it. She was so horribly, painfully aware of the emptiness above her legs, the emptiness above where Teke Teke's own legs were supposed to be, that she thought she was going to vomit right then and there.
The curved blade of Teke Teke's sickle was around her neck, effectively caging her in. If she tried to move too suddenly, or at all, she would slit her own throat. Teke Teke's right hand was wrapped around the handle of the weapon, using its knuckles to hold itself up with that hand while the other pressed into the end of the other side of the blade. Her eyes darted down to the side and saw that a black liquid, like tar, was sluggishly leaking out from the cracked nails on the hand that held down the blade.
A low buzzing filled her head, and it felt like her skin was breaking out in hives. Her palms were flattened out on the ground on either side of her, and she tried to press herself further into the ground. She wanted to scream, to kick at Teke Teke, to do something, but all she was could was lie there, staring up at the malevolent hatred brimming over in Teke Teke's eyes above her.
Useless. Again. Again. She was useless and trapped all over again.
Teke Teke's mouth opened, and its fetid breath washed over her. Her face twisted in disgust at the smell, and she tried to hold her breath while at the same time expel from her lungs what she had already inhaled. She'd never felt so sick in her life before.
"Do you need your legs?"
Pai's mind went blank. She stared at Teke Teke dumbly, brain and heart in sync as they scrambled around frantically trying to understand what it was Teke Teke was asking. Her response was instantaneous when she recognized the words.
A riddle. It was a riddle. This was a fucking riddle.
She was so frightened that she couldn't get her voice to steady as she stammered, "Y – ye – I need them, I need them right now."
She'd almost answered wrong, nearly forgotten about Teke Teke's mythos. When Teke Teke appeared before someone, it asked them a riddle – did they need their legs? If they answered wrong, it killed them.
But she didn't answer wrong. She knew the riddle. Just barely – just enough.
Teke Teke stared at her for one long minute with its dead red-black eyes. Pai struggled to calm herself, but she couldn't. She thought she was going to die, and it wasn't the fact that her life would end that scared her so much. If she died now, she would never be able to find her family, to see her sister and mother and father again, to never say their names and hug them, to simply spend quiet time with them.
That was what terrified her so, and had tears leaking down from the corners of her eyes. She didn't want to die yet.s
"Who told you my story?" Teke Teke finally rasped.
Who told you my story? Who told you my –
Her fear had her mind blanking again for five terrifying seconds, and she couldn't remember how to answer. If she said the wrong thing, she would die. But what was it? What was the answer to Teke Teke's question?
Kashima. Ka for mask, shi for death, and ma for demon. You should know this.
"Kashima," she gasped out immediately. "Kashima Reiko."
Teke Teke threw itself off of her as soon as the name of the woman who'd so gruesomely died were out of her mouth. Pai whimpered in relief as she scrambled away, trying to put as much distance between her and the Yori Chiisai as she could. Her back hit the wall of the bathroom and she pressed against it, frozen.
She wanted to move. She wanted to run, but she couldn't. she was just so scared that all she could do was stare with wide eyes at the creature before her.
Teke Teke was hissing threateningly, rotted teeth bared as it piloted its arms rapidly until it was pushing itself against the wall in a mimicking imitation of what Pai was doing. She stared in confusion, blood rushing through her head in a cascading roar. Teke Teke lifted its sickle and aimed it at her, mouth opening and closing for a few seconds before words broke through.
"You..." it snarled, voice scratching out of it. "You...abomination..."
The words were a strange trigger.
Pain ripped through her body in a powerful spasm that had her jerking, tipping forward as her lips pulled back over her teeth. She fell on her outstretched hands, inhaling sharply as though she had just been punched in her stomach. Her vision bled into an impenetrable haze of red, and her head twisted from side to side like she was shaking water out of her ears.
A moan built up at the back of her throat and she rocked forward, pressing her head against the cold floor as she opened her mouth to scream. Her fingers dug into the hard tiled floor and she clenched her shaking hands into fists.
She stilled, the pain lessening until it was as if it had never been. She stared at the red-tinged floor as her irises blackened. Grey smoke licked up her back and the sides of her body, dancing through white hair, electricity flickering unsteadily around her as the lights zapped between her fingers.
Leaning back on the heels of her feet, she cocked her head to the side and glared at the infernal creature cowering before her. Teke Teke raised its hands in front of its face, as if it was trying to hide itself from her gaze. Its sickle clattered to the floor, and for a brief instant she caught sight of her reflection.
It was Pai, and not Pai.
Just what they were, and what they were not.
The same cheeks, the same lips, the same dark brows under a shock of snow white hair. But her eyes were the purest black, her lips twisted in a sardonic grin that made her look psychotic. Going down the edges of her face, along her jawline and crawling up her neck, was a black, inky substance that made her skin colder and colder.
Cold as stone, cold as ice, we're stone and cold as ice.
"You would dare call us the abomination?" she repeated in a cruel, snide voice. She lifted her hand, crackling with electric light clothed in dark smoke, and aimed. Teke Teke hissed threateningly. "You would use our gift for your petty revenge against those that care not for you, that barely remember your name. So wasteful."
The smoke and electricity twined sensuously around each other, like old lovers reuniting after too long apart. The electricity seemed to merge with the blackness, feeding it, nourishing it, giving it strength as it condensed into a shape, gaining a solid form. Her gut churned nauseatingly and her hand shook as she struggled to make this work.
Pai was still weak. She hadn't gone through what she needed to, to become strong as she knew Pai could be.
But she wasn't so patient. She was tired of waiting, waiting so long to find the perfect body, waiting so long for him to come back, waiting so long to make him suffer as she had for so, so long.
She was tired of waiting.
Waiting was boring, waiting was tiresome, waiting was hard.
She hated it.
Black lightning streaked from the shrinking ball of darkening blue electricity and smoke floated above her hand. One errant bolt streaked up and smashed into one of the bulbs above. The bulb exploded, splintered pieces of glass showering over her head. One piece cut her cheek as it fell.
She flicked her tongue out, licking the thin copper-tanged dribble of blood that trickled down. The side of the bathroom she was on was engulfed in a half-light half-darkness shade. Teke Teke pressed itself further into the wall, as if seeking to hide from the darkness of the bathroom she was on.
She grinned at the thought. How amusing – a Yori Chiisai, strong in darkness, trying to run from it.
But this...this wasn't a darkness. It was hers. It belonged to her just as much as Pai did, even if she didn't know it yet. She would – soon.
Her hand closed around the handle of the black gun in her hand as the smoke dissipated in one sudden go, and fell into her hand. Teke Teke shrieked in fear at the sight of the weapon. It grabbed its sickle and pulled itself up on the sink. Her lips curled up in a sadistic smile as she tipped her head to the side. She aimed the gun, closing a single eye. She watched as Teke Teke reached up into the hole it had poked through the ceiling, pulling itself up into it and disappearing into the vents above.
Her finger twitched around the trigger. All she had to do was press, just a bit, just a little bit harder, and the bullet would shoot out and find Teke Teke. Even if the Yori Chiisai tried to run, tried to hide, the bullet would find it. Pai's training had taught the girl, and her, many things about the weapons humans used to kill each other.
Her hand tightened around the metallic handle, wanting oh so much to see blood spray all around her. Dance and laugh and bathe and draw with all the dark blood the world had to offer, that was what she wanted. She'd gone so long, so long already without seeing anything interesting. Killing and killing and killing in those three years hadn't been enough, no, not nearly enough. Pai understood her, before she forgot, understood why she needed to kill, why she wanted to kill, but she still held her back too much.
Pai only let her out to help her kill those that had a target on their backs, and even then she wouldn't let her do the final deed, be it pulling a trigger or slicing a throat or snapping a neck. Pai wanted to do it all on her own, bear the pleasure of killing on her shoulders, have the blood flow over her hands. She didn't know why Pai wouldn't let her out to do it, why Pai forced herself to go through that when it so clearly tore her apart every time she did.
Pai was lucky to have her – if she wasn't there to control the darkness in Pai, her mind would have broken a long time ago.
But maybe...it was already broken?
Yet she wanted more, so much more. She wanted it to be like the old days. Standing in a field of an ended battle, surrounded by corpses leaking blood into the ground, feeding it with their dead lives, lifting her arms up to the heavens and screaming for him to hear her, to see all she had done; to see that she kept her promise to take from him as many lives as he promised to give –
GET OUT! I DIDN'T LET YOU IN! I DIDN'T LET YOU GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT KUNIUMI GET OUT GET OUT!
Her eyes widened. Surprise flowered in her. She was torn from Pai's body a second later, so suddenly and viciously that when Pai shot back in she collapsed to the ground, curling into a shaking ball. Waves of blistering pain, like swords heated in furnaces, poked into every part of her body. Glass from the broken electric bulb overhead crunched as her body shivered over them. She whimpered and tightened her arms around her body, gasping when the pain got so bad that she couldn't keep it in.
She thought, through the haze of pain, that she was whimpering, calling for him, for him. For him to find her like he did before. But she didn't know – everything hurt, her mind too muddled to remember anything beyond the crushing electricity that arced through her insides.
She didn't know how long she remained that way, prone and unable to will herself to move through the pain rippling through her body. It could have been a minute, an hour, days. She didn't know. Her eyes were shut so tight that when she finally noticed that the pain was no longer rolling through her, she had to peel them open, prying them apart like two pieces of wood nailed together.
Her breath came out in slow, heavy pants as her body fell limp, hands curled loosely right in front of her face. Her bones creaked and her body groaned as she unfolded herself and pushed up against the wall again, drained and weakened. Her mind was slow and sluggish.
She was sleepy. She was sad. She wanted to cry, she wanted to laugh, she wanted to scream with all the strength she could summon from the gaping hole growing in her chest, growing so big that it would swallow her whole. She was tired. So tired...
Wake up. It's not safe yet.
She snapped to attention, as if she had been doused over with a bucket of ice-cold water. There was a sound above her head, and her gaze shot up, eyes growing big. That was Teke Teke – it was up there. She knew, she knew it. The cold was still in her stomach.
She didn't waste a second longer.
Pai scrambled shakily to her feet, twisted around and yanked the bathroom door open, stumbling out into the open, overcrowded train station. Almost immediately she bumped into someone, a man with glasses wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. Tiny pieces of glass still stuck to her hair and clinging to the fabric of her blazer shook itself off at the jarring thud as she ran into him. Pai would have tripped and fallen to the ground if he hadn't steadied her with a hand on her shoulder, mouth opening to ask if she was all right.
She ignored him and immediately turned around, trying to orient herself and figure out where she had left them. He would know what to do – he was Daitengu, they were strong, he was Hengen, he was stronger than her. They would know what to do – why was Teke Teke here, why, why was there a voice in her head –
We have names. Oh, so many names. Which one d'you wanna pick? We don't mind any. We like Kuniumi. We like many. Why is your name Pai?
She shook her head, shutting her eyes and pressing the back of her hands against them. Pai dragged in several calming breaths before she looked up. There, she could see him, Shouta. He was on his feet, looking around him. Shouta stood tall, a head above everyone around him. Even from this distance, she could see the worried look growing in intensity by the second on his face, brows in a frown, lips down-turned at the corners.
There was a flash of red-brown. He looked down at Shiori, who tilted her head up at him as she said something. Haru came up to his side and shook his head, lifting his shoulders in a helpless shrug. Shiori spun around on the heels of her feet, hand coming up to worriedly run through her hair as she chewed on her bottom lip. Her left eyebrow was twitching in little spasms. She narrowed her eyes, searching, identifying, and dismissing every person who passed in front of her.
Pai ran to them, uncaring of anything and anyone as she shoved her way through the throngs of people around her. Once or twice she felt the cold touch of a stray Goryo or Yosei's aura come too close to her skin, but she ignored it all. Shiori twirled around on her feet, in Pai's direction, still searching. Her eyes widened when she saw Pai running at her.
She barely had enough time to lift her hands as Pai crashed into her, her arms wrapping around her waist. It was only Shiori's surpassingly good balance that kept them both upright. Shiori automatically wound her arms around Pai's shoulders as her school bag was knocked from her shoulder at their collision.
Pai never thought it possible that it could feel so good to be held in a hug by someone else. She hated it when people touched her.
Then she remembered Shin holding her when she cried.
Her arms tightened around Shiori.
"Pai-chan?" Shiori asked, voice high with worry and surprise and shock all rolled up into one. Usually it was she who hugged Pai randomly, not the other way round, and not quite in such a manner. Not as if she'd just seen something out of her nightmares and sought solace to forget it. "What's wrong? Where were you?"
"I – " her voice broke. Shiori tightened her arms around her waist and Pai hid her face in Shiori's soft hair from the concerned looks on Haru and Shouta's faces. "I was scared, I was so scared, Shii-chan." Her breath hiccuped.
Shiori ran her hand over the back of Pai's hair soothingly and winced when something sharp stung her. She pinched it between her fingers and pulled it out of Pai's white hair, lifting it up. Her eyes widened in surprise to see it was a small, curved piece of broken glass. She looked through the transparency of the glass to Haru and Shouta. They stood side-by-side, first staring at the glass Shiori held up for them to see, at the back of Pai's head, and then at each other.
"Why?" Shiori asked as she looked away from the two Daitengu to the ground. After a long, silent moment in which she listened to the sound of Pai's breath calming, she leaned away, pushing Pai back. She grasped her shoulders and forced Pai to look right into her eyes. Her own widened at the fear she saw staring back at her. Shiori noticed the red on Pai's lip, clotted already around the cut in the corner of her bottom lip, and the faint imprint of teeth marks. "What happened, Pai-chan?"
Pai's mouth dropped open to speak, and immediately snapped shut an instant later.
What could she say? How could she tell Shiori what just happened in the bathroom? Not even that there was a Teke Teke inside the station but that something, someone, forced their way into her mind so painfully and used her body as their own, shoving her into such a far and dark and deep corner of her mind that she wanted to scream with anger and grief and –
Teke Teke. The bathroom.
The black thing crawling into Shiharu's nose. It never came out.
"Motomi-san – " she managed through the ball of wool lodged in her throat. "Have you seen her? Where's Motomi-san?"
Pai stepped back, away from Shiori, and she let her go, hands falling to her sides as she watched Pai looking around her like she wasn't even aware that Shiori was right in front of her. Shiori felt the twinge of concern in her stomach grow when she saw something flicker in the depths of Pai's eyes, something dark, something wrong, that was wholly unlike her friend.
"Pai-chan, what's going on? What happened? Why are you asking about Motomi-san?" Shiori asked instead, heart touched with unease.
For an instant, Pai looked like how she had in her subconscious, in the place filled with clouds that were solid enough to walk on yet deceptively treacherous with holes that she could fall through, down to an angry dark sea filled with nameless slithering creatures. She looked terrified, in pain, and borderline demented with something Shiori couldn't quite put a finger on.
Then the look faded away, yet the malaise remained in Shiori's stomach like an insidious snake coiled in a pit.
"Kanou-san should take a look at her," Shouta said, frowning. He watched Pai frantically searching around, and noticed that the pupils of her eyes were largely dilated, the light brown of her eyes merely golden-brown rings around the black. "She doesn't look like she's al – "
A child's scream rang out through the train station.
A woman's followed a second later.
The sound of a train whistle blew shrilly.
Men's voices, shouting, could be heard. Haru and Shouta glanced around, instantly alert and hands moving to their sides, where they kept weapons hidden in their clothes, eyes narrowed. Shiori jerked at the sudden commotion. Pai's heart dropped to her feet.
The train tracks, she thought, Teke Teke beside Shiharu's own reflection in the mirror flashing in her mind's eye. Do what I did. No, no, no
"No!"
Pai turned heel and ran.
Shiori called after her, voice pitching high as worry overtook her again, but Pai ignored her. She ran straight for where the disruption was centred. A throng of people were gathering there, and she abandoned Shiori and the Daitengu to catch up.
Her feet flew ahead of her, faster than she could stop if she tried. Her blood was freezing in her veins as a breath of ice blew across her body at the sound of a faint, maniacal laughter ringing in the walls of her mind.
Run, Bibari, run all you want. Touka ran too. All of you always run. But Touka didn't make it, and he'll destroy the world to find out why.
Shut up, shut up, shut up! I'll make it!
Running, running, running.
When she finally got there, she gasped, her mouth dropping open. She stared in dismay and slowed, body moving on automaton as she moved closer.
Shiharu was standing in the middle of the railway tracks.
The uniformed guards who stood by the yellow line on the platform were shouting at her, pointing with their walkie-talkies and batons, gesturing wildly for her to get back up to the safety of the platform. None of it had any effect on Shiharu, who remained where she was with her back to all the people calling out to her. She was standing right next to the wall rising up above her, hands outstretched as if reaching for it, though she didn't make a move.
Pai ran right up to the yellow line and one of the guards threw out his arm to stop her from going any further, grunting in surprise when she collided into him. She wanted to shirk away from his touch but instead she tried to push his arm away. It was no good.
"Ma'am, you can't go there." The guard spoke urgently. He wasn't looking right at her. He was paying attention elsewhere, to other people, making sure they didn't try to pass or climb over the barrier to reach Shiharu when they would never make it because the train was coming. "Please step back – "
"Pai-chan!" Shiori appeared at her side, gripping her arm so tight that Pai thought her hand would go limp from not lack of blood flow. "What're you doing, it's not safe – "
"Motomi-san!" she screamed, heedless of the guard trying to keep her back and Shiori at her side.
Shiharu turned to her, and Pai gasped when she saw that half of Shiharu's face was covered in that same black substance that came from the hands of Teke Teke. It was a mask, concealing the left side of her face, alive and writhing over her skin, leaving only her eye untouched. Her visible skin, from what could be seen of her cheeks and hands, was grey and looked like she was turning to stone. From her periphery she saw Shiori press a hand to her mouth as she stared, aghast, at Shiharu down on the railway tracks with that thing over her face.
Pai glanced to either side of her, where people were calling out to Shiharu. No one seemed to notice the blackness crawling over her face. No one but her and Shiori. Her lips curled, disgusted to see a few people holding up their phones. They were shooting videos and taking pictures of the scene unfolding before them.
The ground shook. Her feet rattled as she stood just on the yellow line, the safety line people weren't supposed to cross in order to remain a safe distance from the barrier and the passing trains. Pai looked to the right. There, far away but not far enough, was the blazing light of a train speeding its way down the tracks. A scream of metal on metal tore through the air as the train blew its whistle loudly again, again, again and again, the driver having already seen the shape of a human on the railway tracks.
Too little, too slow, too late.
"Motomi-san," she yelled, ignoring the voice she knew was right. She thought her heart was going to burst out of her chest. It was breaking because she knew that her voice alone wouldn't be enough. "Motomi-san, get out of there! Whatever happened, you don't have to – it made you do this, it's not, it's the – you need to get out! There's a train coming, Motomi-san!"
It was like Shiharu heard nothing at all. She just smiled, eerily. Her head listed to the side and lifted her hands out to Pai, as if beckoning her to come join her. The blackness dripped off her nose and leaked through the fabric of her school blazer. She spoke in a perfectly calm voice that doubled in a way no human's should.
"There's nothing to be scared of. Everything will be okay, now. It's so easy."
She tipped her head back and raised her hands up, like she was welcoming something from above her as Pai screamed at her –
– the train smashed into her body with a sickening, squelching thud, wheels screeching and grating on the tracks and against her ears as it tried to stop, too little, too slow, too late.
The train arrived at exactly six fifteen.