Chapter 2: Auferstehung
Shinku lied quietly in her box, contemplating.
There is another way to become Alice...
There is more than one way to become Alice...
There is a new way to become Alice...
Yet to be discovered...
The lid of the box burst open, and she and Holie exited swiftly. The two lifeless dolls, Hinaichigo and Souseiseki, stood in their display stands wearing dreamy expressions. Shinku took Hinaichigo's Rosa Mystica, with which she had been trying to sleep, and placed it on the shelf beside the sleeping doll.
Amazingly, it began to rattle, inching slowly toward Hinaichigo.
Shinku watched, mesmerized. The Rosa Mystica approached Hinaichigo and feebly rose into the air. As it neared the center of her chest, Shinku ran toward Suiseiseki's trunk, stumbling over her own high heels.
She rapped urgently on the lid of the trunk.
As if she had been expecting the wake-up call, the other doll immediately opened it and rose, setting her twin's Rosa Mystica down beside her as she lifted herself.
Shinku gestured urgently at the shelf, where Hinaichigo's Rosa Mystica had almost reached its destination. Suiseiseki's mismatched eyes grew wide.
Slower than time, the glowing crystal sank into the doll's chest, and the two dolls watched in silence for several moments. Nothing further happened.
"Well," Suiseiseki commented, "that was anticlimactic, desu."
Shinku frowned. "Souseiseki's Rosa Mystica..."
Suiseiseki cast a sideways glance at Shinku, then plucked the Rosa Mystica out of her case. She approached the shelf and pressed the Rosa Mystica into her twin's chest, where it was immediately absorbed. The long-haired Gardener drew her hand back; the crystal burned furiously as it entered the doll's body.
Shinku retrieved her cane and approached Jun's bedside. She hooked the cane over Jun's wrist and tugged on it sharply. Jun was jolted awake.
"Jun, you are to wind Hinaichigo and Souseiseki."
Jun grumbled, rubbing his eyes. "What time is it? Stupid doll... Why do I have to wind the dolls? They're, ah... they're gone..."
Shinku whacked his wrist with her cane. "Just do it."
"This is ridiculous," Jun protested, but he dragged himself out of bed and fetched the two dolls' boxes from his closet. From Hinaichigo's case, he took the key, and gently removed the heavy doll from her stand.
In the darkness, he misaimed several times before finding Hina's keyhole. He inserted the key and wound it. When the doll jerked once, he stopped, his mouth hanging open.
He set the doll in front of him in a sitting position. Gears and springs creaked within the doll's body, and slowly, her eyes shuddered open.
Hinaichigo looked to her left, then to her right. "Na no..."
Jun continued to stare.
"Jun?" Hina asked. "Where's Tomoe? I..."
Suiseiseki immediately latched on to Jun's arm.
"WIND SOUSEISEKI, DESU! WIND HER! WIND HER! WIND-"
Jun shook Suiseiseki off of his arm and reached for the other Gardener doll. He set her down on the floor, then got up to turn on the lights. The glare of the light hit his eyes; he winced.
Slowly, he picked up the doll's key and pushed it into the hole. He turned it in deliberate rotations. Gradually, the doll's body bent into an angle, and he set her down beside Hina, who was rubbing her head and looking around confusedly.
The instant a tiny sliver of Souseiseki's eyes was visible, Suiseiseki embraced her.
"SOUSEISEKI!" she exclaimed.
Souseiseki seemed to be coming to her senses faster than Hinaichigo, and rubbed her eyes before speaking.
"So, how exactly did this happen?" she wondered aloud.
"SOUSEISEKI!" Suiseiseki repeated, clenching her sister even more tightly. Souseiseki's expression was somewhere between a smile and a grimace.
Shinku regarded the two newly-awakened dolls solemnly.
"So you seem to be back in the Game..." she pondered.
"Indeed," laughed a strangely familiar voice.
Suiseiseki peered over her twin's shoulder. "Kirakishou!"
"Yes..."
Shinku walked swiftly to the door, but as she did, loud, heavy footsteps could be heard fleeing into the mirror room. By the time Shinku reached the room, the portal in the mirror was just rippling out of existence.
Suiseiseki, Souseiseki, and Jun caught up with Shinku a moment later; Hina slowly toddled up behind them.
"What the hell was that?" Jun asked.
There was a long silence before Shinku answered.
"Kirakishou, who claims to be the seventh doll of the Rozen Maiden series."
"Those weren't doll footsteps!" Jun argued. But Shinku had already turned, heading back toward the bedroom.
Kanaria awoke to a sharp rapping on the lid of her box. Grumpily, she opened it to find Shinku standing there with her cane, the Gardener twins and Hinaichigo standing behind her.
She placed her hand over her mouth. "Souseiseki and Hinaichigo? What are they doing here, kashira?"
"They came back to life, desu!" Suiseiseki exclaimed happily.
"Indeed." Shinku solemnly nodded her head. "I suspect that the start of the new Alice Game requires them to be alive." She gestured at them with her cane. "They are getting another chance."
Kanaria looked down and sighed. "We're really expected to fight again... after everything that happened last time..."
"Perhaps," Shinku suggested, "we won't have to fight. After all, Father said... Father said there is another way to become Alice."
Suiseiseki folded her arms. "I'm not fighting any of you. No matter what, desu."
"Either way... It's my guess that the Alice Game will involve some kind of sacrifice." Souseiseki tilted her head.
"What a stupid game, desu!" Suiseiseki yelled. Kanaria placed a finger over the other doll's mouth.
"Micchan is still asleep, kashira."
"When are we gonna go see Tomoe, na no?" Hinaichigo complained.
"Soon enough," Shinku reassured her. "First, we have to find Suigintou."
Shinku peered through the screen of the pulse monitor. The black-haired girl was no longer occupying the bed; for now, it was empty.
"Strange... I was sure I felt a trace of Suigintou in this place..."
Giving up, she returned to the Sakurada residence.
Which is where she found what she was looking for.
When she entered Jun's bedroom, she found him sitting on his bed, wearing a resigned expression. A familiar black-winged doll was dragging her trunk into position beside the other four. When she noticed them standing there, she hurriedly looked down, then released a heavy sigh.
Shinku frowned. "So quick to move in alongside us? I wouldn't expect that..."
"The human there agreed to it, so..." Suigintou continued to look down.
"Jun?" Shinku over at him.
He responded sullenly. "Be nice to her, eh? Her medium, uh..."
"Died," Suigintou said coldly. "I couldn't save her like I wanted to, and I couldn't kill her like she wanted me to. And what does that make me?"
She stared into Shinku's eyes. "That word we both love so much... J... U..."
"Stop," Shinku warned.
"So afraid to say it now? Junk. Junk, junk, junk..." Tears formed in the first Maiden's eyes, and she hurriedly opened her case and sat down in it, giving Shinku a long look. "And we're sisters, right?"
In these few moments, Suigintou had ceased to be the vicious, hostile doll that Shinku had known, and scenes from years past began to play over and over in the fifth doll's head.
The doll without an abdomen.
The feeble doll stumbling awkwardly across the lavishly decorated room, clutching Shinku's hands for support.
Suigintou.
Killed and brought back to life countless times, initially abandoned by Father, struggling her hardest to become Alice and yet never managing to succeed, and now, for the first time, experiencing the loss of a human loved one.
Shinku nodded, and the corners of her doll-sized mouth turned up just a tiny bit. "Always sisters." She wasn't sure if she said this to the doll in front of her, but she was definitely saying it to the doll she had helped learn to walk. And, surely, this was the winged doll closing the lid of her trunk.
Hinaichigo, standing in the back, was growing impatient.
"Tomoe..."
The little doll gathered up her energy and scampered off toward the mirror room. Shinku grumbled, and then turned to the others.
"Well, you're not all planning to let her run off on her own, are you?"
Souseiseki shrugged. "She seems to have enough energy."
"But... come on, it's Hina." Shinku put her palm to her face. The others exchanged several glances among themselves, then turned to the hallway.