Silence.
Silence is the song of Totality.
It is the first,
it is the last,
and before the beginning,
and after the end,
it is the only.
The sound of one hand clapping is the limit of the moments before the clap does not. The hand moving through air disturbs the fabric of the sleeve. Slow down. The surface of the hand brushes against air. Slow down. Subaurally, but still in the realm of sound, the slow fires of metabolism burn as a frozen heartbeat roars. Slow down. Finally, on the transcendent precipice of the realm that we call noise, the fine pattering of the photon sleet.
Slow down.
As the moment before nothing approaches, find the limit of time, the moment before the unmoment, the event that marks the beginning of the nonevent.
Find that and listen beneath the planck time, to the subatomic roar of the sea of chaos beneath all space, at the bottom of all scales.
Oh, it is fury.
But it has no sound.
For this is a fury which always and forever cancels itself out. Particle to antiparticle. Principle to antiprinciple. The wheel of dharma spins at all levels of the universe.
Now advance, and behold.
That titanic wall of bound force that a titan calls a hand
an ocean marching through an ocean
violence beyond the imagining of all the minds of humanity hidden in the peace of an utterly fruitless attempt.
what is the sound of one hand clapping
And behold, the silence of the world.
This is my best attempt to describe what it was like, to grasp the pattern of the Art of the Darkness as the Sun created by the Yamanaka, shared with the Nara, and a few others.
It does not capture one ten thousandth of the experience.
To this day, I do not understand how they created it.
But perhaps—just perhaps—that's only the limit of a foreigner speaking a foreign tongue, compared to the inborn grace of a native.
Some questions have no answers.
Too many.
But when all the antecedents are gone, tell me: do they even matter?
Five Weeks Prior
Sometimes when I wake up, I have trouble remembering who I am.
...I'm sorry. That was out of sequence.
Shio was the sort of person, and one of the few, to whom the term crippling intelligence could honestly be applied. Nine times out of ten, she acted and talked like an adult who happened to possess the body of a six year old. The other time, you'd be reminded of her age by the appearance of youthful naiveté, conceit, or honesty in the middle of a brutally complicated subject, flaring up and dying down like the moment-long collapse of an electroweak star.
Like me, she fit nowhere.
But for all of her intelligence, for all of that simple, innate brilliance, for all of that, trying to explain the functioning of Resian Math to her was like trying to elucidate Shakespeare to a tape recorder. She could repeat the algorithms every time, but there was just... no understanding. At all.
This at last confirmed something I had suspected in the first days after my encounter with the other Breaker: The only reason that I could understand any of this world's logic was because, as the Shinigami had put it, I had accreted one of this world's souls.
When I gave up trying to explain only three days in, I didn't know which one of us was more relieved. Shio accepted my excuse—the lack of a common basis—with some grace, and our sessions turned to learning the language of this world.
This did not progress evenly.
As for the Art, the scroll I had been given was at best mystical, and at worst a thing that strode the screaming edge of agnosia. Having asked Shio for a clearer explanation of what it actually meant, her reply followed:
"I can't, Akino-san."
I opened my eyes, and discarded even the pretence of meditation. "Can't? Is it a clan secret, or...?"
Shio shook her head. "Nothing like that. Just... while I could explain what I would do, it wouldn't be the same as what you need to do. It might work, it might not, but it would never be as good, and once you learnt it, you wouldn't be able to find the right way to reapportion your chakra."
I stared down at the tiny scroll in my hand. So. Instead of instructions, it was a map. Instead of directions, it was a description of all possible paths. A phase space.
"Interesting," was all I said, as I closed my eyes and focused anew.
It was some days later that I began to understand the periphery of what the Art discussed. I was still very far from the gnosis of it; however, and since it was beginning to look like I was—to my eternal shame—not going to effortlessly master it like the supergenius I wasn't (and more importantly, since it looked like I was probably going to end up taking longer than Shio had) we began to talk about what exactly the requirements for getting into the Elite string were.
"I'm almost certain its some kind of specific event," I said, "Some way of testing the specific attributes they look for in people destined for actual shinobi work and not simple fighting capacity. A crucible. More diffuse testing doesn't make sense, because the content of the classes..."
I trailed off. How was I suppose to say that nothing that we did would have remotely prepared us for actual wetwork?
Shio seemed to guess at what I was leading towards, in any case. "I agree," she said, as she leant against one of Training Ground 27's trees, and drew abstractions in the dirt with what I assumed was an extension of chakra out of her feet. Somehow, she managed to look at both the diagram and me at the same time. "Nothing that we've done so far even touches on that sort of thing. You can't find talent without an audition."
I considered ignoring the word choice at the end there, out of place as it was coming from the mouth of a clan child, and sighed internally.
Konoha, if it could be likened to anything in Terra Res, was like Sparta. The arts existed, but they were considered an amusing indignity. Whatever else was true, Shio casually using a bit of playacting-related terminology was weird.
And of course, I had to ask the question, because I couldn't even guess at the answer.
"Audition?" I lifted a single brow.
A small puff of dust from the foot drawing the diagrams accompanied the inquiry, and Shio blushed furiously, lost focus, and hid her face all in the same moment. She mumbled something that was absolutely incoherent.
I could drop it. It would be appropriate.
...nah. We used Japanese language and followed some of the cultural mores, but sophisticated circumspection wasn't a typical civilian trait, and whatever else was true, I was supposed to be an orphan raised in that culture.
Beside which, and more importantly, I was curious.
"I'm sorry?" I said, keeping my expression innocent.
"...I like Kabuki, all right?"
Error; insufficient excuse. "I... don't really follow," I said.
"Acting."
Ah. The abstract representation of Yamanaka Shio in my mind shifted, slightly. Kabuki was male only. And where that taboo might have stopped other[lesser] people in and of itself...
The question was, how—? I understood.
"Henge?" I asked. Shio nodded, face still scarlet. I considered for a moment, then nodded. "Cool."
She looked up, hands lowering, her eyes wide, but steady. "You don't care?"
This was venturing into territory that seemed dangerously like bonding.
"Did King Leopold the Fourteenth care when Anaximenes invaded Turkmenistan?" The correct answer to that question was Mu, which was also the correct answer to Shio's question.
As the admixture of hope and mortification gracing Shio's face transformed into confusion, I all but subvocalized a slightly less correct answer. "No, I don't care. Of course I don't care."
Seeing people walk an other path than that expected for them; that was beauty. To condemn it was to praise stagnation for the source of all that was good in the world. Madness.
Blatantly, I tore the conversation back onto the original topic. "Anyway, yeah. Given that I"—by which I meant Kazu—"haven't heard anything at all about some kind of blatant test in my own investigation, I think it's safe to say it's likely a hidden aspect of some other training exercise. It's probably held multiple times, too, so nobody with potential is missed. Actually..." I trailed off, as I assessed an idea that had just occurred to me.
It wasn't crazy.
"Actually," I continued, "I'd bet that even someone who succeeds too late to become an elite manages to make it there once they enter active duty. You know of any members of the main forces getting crosspromoted into an elite group?"
"I thought of that, too," Shio replied, a light blush still colouring her cheeks, but otherwise recovered. "And yes. One of my cousins in another branch house might've. But... he's dead."
Damn, I thought. "Sorry," I said.
Shio made a dismissive gesture.
"I never knew him, and it was a good death. Nothing to be sorry about."
A good death. Hah. I smiled, tightly. The cultural gap between this place and Terra Res was so wide, it was morbidly refreshing. But still, the things we could've learned...
Irrelevant, I thought.
Well, unless I figured out how to summon the dead. Shinigami had all but implied that something of the deceased lived on.
No way that was in the Academy library, though.
"Well," I said, finally, "That's basically the limits of my knowledge. Yours?"
Shio shrugged. "I haven't found anything else. The main house won't answer any of our questions—they don't want any branch members actually being exposed to higher-risk missions."
"But they're okay with the heir?" I asked.
Shio shook her head. "I can't talk about it."
I raised my hands, "All right, no problem. I don't want to step on anything sensitive."
Shio nodded, looking slightly worried, then closed her eyes, smoothed her features, and continued. "I've wanted to get into the academy archives to find out who the transfer students are discreetly, but I didn't have anyone who could act as a lookout." She paused for a moment, then added, "Qualifier: Nobody I trusted to."
If that wasn't a clear invitation... "When I get back in," I said, "I'd be happy to help."
I'd be a fool not to be.
But of course I was a fool already. Who manipulates should take care, lest they be manipulated in turn.
To wit. Shared. Confidences.
As a rule, Yamanaka were good at psychology. And its application.
Later that day, after I had lost the ability to be still enough to meditate, I walked back to the orphanage as the sun set. Alone, fortunately. Street vendors milled about, smiling and hawking their wares to the thinning flow of civilians. The faint scent of cooking meat spilled out of an alley. Glancing down it, I saw an enthusiastic crowd, most of whom were holding what looked like very small shish-kebabs.
Yakitori.
My, I thought, but this brings back memories. I had five ryō, which was ridiculously little money, and was the result of about two months of errantly picking up the things for no real reason at all. They were far rarer than currency of similar value had been in real life, when Resian society still used money, but given how far this world was from postscarcity, it was only to be expected.
I hoped it would be enough.
Walking down the alley provoked sense-memories of a certain street in Yokosuka, where, in an alley like this one, the same food had been sold.
How delightfully absurd that people still converged on the same concepts even in universes so far removed. Same species, different physics; same taste, different worlds.
Ducking my way through the crowd, I came to a stop, glancing up at the handwritten sign. 2 ryō per.
Fuck it. If I wasn't going to enjoy anything, I might as well be dead.
Grabbing two skewers, I deposited the price in the collection box as the proprietor watched me carefully. Grudgingly—did I really look that shabby?—he nodded, and turned his attention to others in the crowd as I navigated my way out of the tightly-packed throng and got back on to the main street.
As I ate, entrusting the fine art of not bumping into anyone to a process that was more than unconscious and less than aware, my thoughts turned from the world that had been to the world that was, and in particular, to one Yamanaka Shio—and the matter of how to properly betray her.
When everything was done, I needed her to feel enough antipathy towards me to not want anything to do with me, but at the same time, not enough to cause her to seek me out from hate, or to damage any necessary cooperation. This was optimal. It reduced her to part of the background noise that most other people were in my life. There, she would be in no more danger from the Breaker than anyone else.
If she was an ordinary child, this would have been easy. But she was smarter than anyone I had cared to associate with, in my first life. Simple patterns would not work.
What complicated matters even further, though, was that she was part of a clan—and ultimately, it was the clan that was helping me. Indirectly, to be certain, and the Art of Darkness as the Sun was actively shared with the Nara and other associates—but I had to be careful. I had to choose not only the means, but the moment. An excuse. Something that Shio, and only Shio would take personally, and that would exonerate me in the eyes of others. Especially the Yamanaka clan.
I took another bite of the meat as I drew to a halt, staring into nowhere.
This was going to be substantially more complex than I first thought. Subtlety wasn't something I did. My planning style, such as it was, was to sow as much confusion as possible and to do to unthinkable blatantly, trusting in that fact that my actions made no sense to hide my motives or responsibility. Subtly implicating myself was not one of my strengths.
...It was at that point that I noticed I had finished the first skewer in its entirety without even noticing the flavour. Words cannot express the sheer existential horror I felt up learning this, but I—I'll try to write this down.
Mild disappointment.
"Damn it," I muttered in english, and channeled some of my broken chakra into my hand with not too much difficulty. The empty skewer disintegrated into glittering black dust that rapidly became far too small for the eye to see.
I started walking again, slowly pathing my way back to the orphanage, and for the moment, banishing all thought about the tears I needed to make this end in. For the moment, I just didn't have enough information to even begin to plan—only enough to estimate the scope of what I needed to accomplish.
A work of art.
The second skewer was delicious.
Sleep didn't come easily.
But eventually it comes for us all.
As always, I dreamed.
A ziggurat presiding over a field of wheat. Tortured amber skies. It was sunset, the sun yet unset. In the distance, the mirage of a forest composed of the same tree repeated two to the aleph-zero times marched to the limits of eternity. Across it all, and in silence the wind drew patterns, sourceless and without meaning.
A hand held a cup of wine, and didn't. I turned my back on the scene, and looked into the ziggurat as I looked out of it. I beheld a man in white clothes sitting on a clay throne, and saw the callow girl staring at me from beyond the rectangle that cut the inside of this domain from the outer world.
"Who—" I questioned the man on the throne.
"— are you?" I finished, asking this question of the girl.
Understanding came from both paradigms at once, and we screamed—
I woke up, and for a moment, didn't know who I was—which one was real. I recognised nothing, I couldn't remember anything, I was—I was—
And then the confusion subsided, and I recognised where this was.
"Oh." Voice cracked, hands shaking.
The orphanage in Konohagakure no Sato.
I was being Akino Kaede.
I was Akino Kaede.
I held one trembling hand to my face, covered my eyes, and sighed.
They will never forgive you, a part of me said.
Error: Null Referent, the larger part replied.
I rolled out of my bunk, and landed on the floor, absorbing the shock fluidly. Nobody else was left in the dorm. They were working, or begging, or in the academy, then. How long had I slept?
I considered going through the motions of my daily ablutions, but... frankly, bizarrely, for once, I wanted to actually be around other people. So, I turned in another direction and walked downstairs.
It was silent.
When I arrived at the first floor landing, that quietude increased, and... there was nothing. No sound, no incidental noises. Nothing sending in from the streets. None of the aural camouflage of creaking floorboards and inefficient movements that Kazu would have kept up to sell himself as a civilian.
He was gone, then.
That was... Odd.
It didn't fit the established patterns of his behaviour. Something was wrong, and—
Wood groaned behind me. I turned.
And saw the last person I wanted to see in the world. I didn't scream, or shout, I just turned, took two steps of the beginning of a dead sprint—and ran right into the person that had formerly been right behind me.
"You know—" he said, tone conversational, as the seal on my back screamed to life in a language of bloodlust and imperative. I fought not to lunge for him. "—running away is, well, I appreciate the gesture. But it's pretty pointless. How are you, Kaede?"
"Alive," I replied through grit teeth, as I slowly mastered the seal's urge.
"Really?" He said, tone interested and face utterly blank. "Fascinating. Care to tell me why you've dropped out to become a nobody? If this is your way of trying to accelerate things, well," He laughed, or, no. Calling it a laugh would be a lie.
He made a sound that replicated every detail and quality of laughter, and only made that sound. Neither his face or body moved at all, beyond the barest amount necessitated by that facsimile, by the air pushed through his lungs, the bellows, and the vibrating reed that informed the pattern of voice. And not one epsilon more.
"It isn't going to work. You need to get your head in the game. I want a challenge. Or, well, as much of one as you can provide. Otherwise—"
He made a slashing gesture, and the air parted to reveal somewhere else—and someone I knew from an earlier life.
Snow in Prague.
A conversation.
Heartbreak, but not mine.
Involuntarily, I whispered, "Annaliese—"
Then, he pointed a finger at her and—
—
—
—on my knees, sobbing, an acrid, sour taste in my mouth, vomit on the floor.
A pair of leather shoes filled the upper quadrant of my vision, and I heard that leather subtly creak, the only sound as the other Breaker crouched down.
"You see." He said. It was not a question. "My path. Or no path. Do what I want. Understand." None of those statements were questions.
To that, to all of this, I could only say one thing. Perhaps it was because of my resolution, weeks ago, to break myself in the destruction of this thing shaped like a man. Perhaps it was because of what I had just been shown—painful, too painful, gods and fire why—pushing me far beyond the edge of reason, or sanity. Perhaps there was no real reason at all, and this was merely what the person called Akino Kaede had to say to remain herself.
Regardless, it was said: "Disgusting."
The Breaker twitched. "Excuse me?" His voice was quiet, calm, and utterly level.
"Absolutely," I said, forcing myself to enunciate the word and focus on nothing of what had come just moment before. "Disgusting. Unnecessary bullshit trash unaesthetic hack I swear to goddamn from thus I will end you—"
"What—" The Breaker began again—but I wasn't done.
"Hadn't given up you incompetent piece of shite. Paid any real attention at all you would know that I was working on fixing a problem that prevented me from becoming Shinobi."
I stood up, furiously wiped the tears from my eyes and looked the faceless man in his own. They were... empty. Broadcasting. Transmitting the idea of here is the window to my soul, and utterly bereft of anything like one.
"So to be entirely honest," I said in English, "I am going to destroy you. So said, thus is it inevitable. Now please, tear off my limbs again, begin torturing me, or whatever the fuck. One day, you'll make a mistake, and I will burn you out of the world."
I waited.
And absolutely nothing happened.
The Samsara Breaker stared into my eyes, with a stillness so cold it was inhuman. It was not the stillness of a living thing. It was not the stillness of stone. It was the stillness of a machine that had drawn down, finally, and for the last time.
That moment bled across what seemed like hours, and then reality stuttered, and Kazu dropped a frying pan, swearing loudly.
"Kaede, what the hell!?"
I looked down.
The vomit was gone. Mutatis mutandis, all the other traces, too.
"...remember that karmic demon I told you about?"
"Yeah?" He said, the implied question being, and what does this have to do with you appearing from thin air?
"It was just here."
So saying, I walked out of the building, leaving a pale-faced spy behind me.
⎝SNI⎞
Lexicon
Resian
Adjective. Def. Of or pertaining to the world which contains the Earth of Kaede's origin.
Mu
An answer given to certain questions some eastern philosophical traditions, mostly Buddhist. Not being anything more than a casual observer of said, I can't give a full translation, but the core meaning is that the question is so fundamentally flawed that it should be redacted/unasked.
2^ℵ0
ℵ1. (Conjectured.) These are numbers used to measure the cardinality of infinite sets. ℵ0 denotes a set for which a specified algorithm can iterate all members. The set of all non-negative integers is an example of such a set, and the algoithm is simply:
n = 0. Add n as a member of the set. Add 1 to n. Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4.
Aleph-One is a larger form of infinity, for which there is no algorithm that can enumerate all members of the set.
I've taken some liberties in this entry in the interest of not writing thousands of words.
Notes.
Enbi beta'd this chapter, and you'd better believe that any errors left are mine.