And here it is! Wow, and I thought I'd fail to manage it... Sorry, a little of it may not quite make sense, as it's pasted together fairly quickly, but I shall come back to check it soon, once I've written a little more. Love you guys 3
It was a strange thing to see, what I was pretty sure by now was my own mind - fascinating, really. I was in a hedge maze, at every dead end a cabinet, statue, fountain, something. As much as I wanted to search them for long-forgotten memories, facts and tidbits of information, I knew I shouldn't.
Besides, I couldn't. An almost overpowering force pulled me towards something that I deduced must be the centre of the maze. It was pulling, almost, and coming from my chest. I stood still, silent, watchful and wary, and it tugged me again, harder than it had been before, pulling me over with its power.
On the way down, I grabbed handfuls and handfuls of the leaves in an attempt to stop my fall. I came down gasping, fighting black spots in my vision, because it hurt.
By God it hurt so much, like pins being hammered into my brain - which if my guess was right, it essentially was. I groaned slightly, patting around the floor I was slumped on, wincing, eyes half-shut, until I recoiled suddenly, unwillingly.
The floor was slimy. Damp. Moving. I resisted the urge to reach for something to help pull me up, and climbed slowly, trying to touch as little of the floor as possible.
I ran, my eyes skyward, not paying attention, the imaginary line I was attached to never ceased to tug on me, and I used it's momentum to launch myself forwards at a sprint - straightaway barreling into another wall of the arboreal maze.
This time I screamed, gutteral and choking out, sounding wrong even to me. I clamped my hands 'round my ears, as if that would stop the pain building in my head, and followed the incessant pulling at breakneck speed, this time somehow swerving every corner, only causing the barest hint of a shiver on the leaves every time I missed slightly.
It was nothing compared to the pain I was already feeling, but each time I touched the walls, it got worse, until I was convinced that each touch was destroying part of me, and that the only way to find solace was to reach the maze's heart.
Finally the tugging lessened, and I stumbled forwards - whatever had been guiding me had given up now, I suppose, and I had to find my own way to peace. Only a few more corners, I told myself, over and over. One more, one more, and I'll be there.
I was wrong. I kept wandering, sure I was going to collapse every moment until I finally saw what seemed to be a literal light at the end of the tunnel. By now I was convinced that I was trapped forever in a dream, but I blundered on towards the light, trying to keep myself quiet.
But I had nothing to fear from my own mind, did I? It was me. It was a part of me. I could face it head-on. There was nothing to be scared of inside my own head. But still I slowed, and made an effort to tread lighter than I had been, and avoid the walls, and to ignore the pain pulsing in my head still, from when I'd almost destroyed one of the bushes.
I tried not to think of what that meant for me. If each leaf was a part of my mind... How many had I torn from their branches? Would they heal?
I froze when I finally came to the clearing, bathed in eerie silver-pale-blue light. There, sat on the edge of the fountain I had no words to describe was... me. Except it couldn't be me, because I'm me and that just wouldn't make sense. Or would it? I really wasn't sure of anything anymore.
What was this place? It hadn't scared me before, not really. Not even when it hurt me. But here, seeing the me in the pool of light... I was terrified.
He was humming - something that sounded suspiciously like a particularly out-of-tune rendition of the Final Countdown. Not something I'd choose to hum, so evidently this wasn't me? I think. I'm really no longer sure. He was frowning, I noted, tapping his foot and the coiled ground - I still hadn't identified what it was, tried not to think about what I was walking on.
He suddenly looked up, and I wondered if I'd made a noise, or if he knew somehow else I was there, or whether it was just a random glance - but his almost-frown began to turn into a smirk, then finally, he laughed, his face morphing into a twisted grin.
"Took your time, Yadonushi." He said, clicking his teeth in disappointment. I made an effort not to gasp, or anything at all, really, because I knew that voice. It was him. The laughter. The one who'd cackled over that letter, years ago.
I racked my brain, unsure if I was familiar with the term he'd used - I'd been in Japan for nearly eighteen months, but I was still trying to get to grips with the language. Somewhere, off in the distance - I swear - I heard the unmistakable noise of a filing cabinet opening, and rifling paper.
I almost ignored it, but I was sure I couldn't have heard something like that. Even if filing cabinets could open themselves - I'd assumed it was just this me and the real me here, as I hadn't met anyone else in the maze in the hours I figured I'd been wandering - I shouldn't have been able to hear the sound.
That meant he'd heard me scream, didn't it? If I could hear something as quiet as the slide of a drawer on runners...
Thinking of the time I'd screamed made me realise that what I'd thought earlier was true - the second I'd reached the centre of the maze, my head had cleared, and it didn't hurt anymore. I breathed a sigh of relief, and carefully thought through what to say to my other me.
I'd meant to ask who he was, why he was in my head, but I realised they were questions based in an assumption of uncertainty. So instead, what came out was, "What is this place?".
"Are you sure you don't know, Yadonushi?" His grin faded, and for that I was glad. It was unnerving, the way he smiled, like a cat, or the Joker. Instead though, a smirk began to grace his face.
I shook my head, even more unnerved. It was strange seeing those expressions on my own face - expressions I wouldn't ever see otherwise.
"Sure?" He knew I knew. I was certain of it.
"It's my head, isn't it?" I told him, marvelling at how steady my voice was - I didn't sound scared, as far as I could tell. But the returning feral grin on the other me's face told me otherwise.
"...No." He said, slowly, drawing the single syllable out over a number of seconds, taunting with dancing eyes.
I grumbled, and almost without realising it, reached up to smooth my hair, run my fingers through it - a nervous habit I'd picked up from some of the girls in my classes - make it look okay, as I realised how ridiculous I must look, having not even bothered to clear out the twiggy dead leaves after my fall. For some reason I hated to look ridiculous in front of this other me, the mirror me.
"Funny, Yadonushi, I never took you for vain." He said, bottom lip curling up into yet another smirk.
He was like a digital signal, almost, or binary, at least where expressions were concerned. Either smirking like the cat got the cream, or grinning in that feral, demented way that scared me no end -a leer, really. Both were accented by a harsh gaze that made me shiver even in the completely perfect temperature of the maze.
"Who are you?" I asked, changing my question. His smirk grew wider, already beginning to shift to his - my, whatever he was - leer that shook me so much.
"Finally the question I expected you to ask first, Yadonushi. How very... Wrong of me to assume so." He curled his lip in distaste, and inwardly, for some reason I could not fathom, I celebrated that he'd now shown a third expression.
"But again, I must ask: are you sure you don't know?"
"You're me." I added, after a pause to think. I was almost certain of my answer this time.
"No." He snapped, eyes flashing dangerously. He slowly picked himself up off the edge of the fountain, and it was then that I should have run.
I should have run, not stared transfixed at all the minor details I'd missed that made him not quite me - shadows under his eyes, that no matter how little sleep I had never formed under my own, his hair was longer, he was taller, and though he seemed as thin as I was at first glance, I could now see that he was far more muscular than me - like he could take on a rhinocerous and win. "You disappoint me, Yadonushi." He took a few steps forward, a fourth menacing expression breaking across his face. "I overestimated you."
He lunged forwards, and I barely dodged - I noted with a half-smirk of my own that he had the courtesy to stop his pitching forwards before he hit the inner wall of the maze, and it amused me how his arms flapped slightly, trying to find something solid to balance on in the thin air around him.
Once he'd gathered his balance, he tried again - why didn't I expect that? Prepare for it? - and this time caught my shirt in one hand, and used the other to pull my head up from where I'd been pretending to be interested in my shoes to meet his eye. He towered over me.
Grasping my chin tightly, he pulled me up to my tip-toes, so that he could talk straight into my ear. Quietly, pulsing with anger.
"No, Yadonushi. You are me. Never forget." He dropped me. "First lesson."
"Second lesson," he said, as he snapped his fingers, "is that you are not to defy me." He trailed off as I faded into dreams, real dreams - not memories. Dreams.