Even in the stride of her reluctance, Harumi couldn't help, but yelp as the burning sensation erupted across her punctured skin.
And that, was just what Takamoto had been counting on.
His free hand grasped the scissors in a single flourish and swiftly brought the twin blades down to bear against the cord binding Harumi's wrists. He snapped erratically, the rest of his body entirely still as his scissor wielding hand savaged the fraying rope. The cord snapped open on the fourth slap of metal.
The last thing Mei saw before Takamoto slipped back into character for the final time was him mouth something inaudible to Harumi. She barely nodded, but it was never clear if he saw her acknowledgement as he fell to the floor; his face screwed up in an expression of pure horror as he finally began to shout. ''Help! I no know she no restrained.'' He directed his plea straight to Arata, thrusting his hand in front of his face as he called out in pure desperation to the bewildered man. '' You help I!''
Arata froze. Mei could see the sheer horror trickling into his narrow features as he acknowledged the length of severed cord hanging from the table. He made to step forward, Takmoto's dark eyes still on his, the rope swaying disturbingly in the harsh light; and as if by premonition, Arata jerked to a sudden stop in his action. He drew back, deep thought curving his fine brow as he looked from the table and to the man standing at the back of the room, legs still spread, by the open door. ''Matsuda.'' Mei saw the distant silhouette shift at the sudden scrutiny, '' did you use two cords like I said?''
The man was still for a moment, then with certitude, nodded. Mei shot her vision back to the table. She felt her heart drop from her throat as sure enough a darker rope still secured Harumi's sweat streaked arms to the table, the pastel red of the severed one still swinging lazily below. Takamoto still didn't turn his attention from Arata. ''You help I. Please. Now!'' Mei saw his arm tense, a vein popping in his exposed wrist as Takamoto slipped entirely out of his crouch and crawled backwards across the floor, the intensity of his hysterics peaking by several decibels.
The rat snarled in disbelief. ''Just move away from her!''
Takamoto did no such thing, and Mei understood as he raised his hand to his ears indicating he couldn't understand Arata's Japanese, that he was adamant to draw the rat over to him. Mei marvelled at Takamoto's foresight as she saw a vein finally pop in Arata's temple in unison, his initial snarl evolving to a phlegm ridden growl. '' Matsuda, just retie the second rope already and shut this fucking old crone up!'' The doorman didn't move immediately; Mei saw his doughy face swivel to regard Arata's, palpable apprehension dampening his hulking form.
Mei didn't know what expression that rat then fixed him with as she heard his first steel toe-capped footfall contact the ground, but whatever it was, it got him moving.
Mei flicked her vision back down. Takamoto still had his upturned hand over his eyes, clutching the medical bag beneath his arm tight to his person as he writhed to back away from Harumi.
Matsuda was close now, his granite face framed by uncertainty. Mei felt each lumbering step beat in pace with her pounding heart. And suddenly, she found herself begging for something. She felt an ugly kernel swell in her throat as it dawned on her what that something was, Matsuda's broad form now finally coming to a stop before her chair. His brown eyes glared down from his doughy face as he regarded the remaining rope still strung about Harumi's reddened wrists. And at that moment, Mei's doubts diminished with certainty. To hell with it, morality doesn't exist down here. It's you or us.
As if he heard her thoughts, Mei felt her heart skip a beat as his brown eyes fell on hers. She stiffened, but it was too late. She'd already looked down. The dough reeled back around his eyes as he followed her gaze, spotting the glimmer of iron that still poked from beneath the boot sole Mei had clamped to the floor in a last-ditch effort to conceal the scissors. She felt her legs go weak as his thick lips opened in step with his round eyes, his chunky neck lining with creases as he turned enthusiastically to bark his findings to his master.
But, he never got that far.
The bullet slit through his bottom jaw bone and ascended through his brain cavity effortlessly. Mei couldn't help the scream that slit across her throat in tandem even though she had played the exact event in her mind three separate times.
His face was still paralysed in a contortion of warning as the bullet ripped through the crown of his skull in a thick gout of blood. A spattering of brain and skull fragments followed the red jet as Matsuda's great form went limp in the legs, his hefty torso only speeding up the process of toppling his gigantic frame. Mei stared dumbly at the blood speckling the tubular ceiling lamps as she barely heard his muscular body make a beefy smack against the concrete floor. She looked down as the cloud of dust spumed up about Matsuda's dead body, her understanding ringing ruthlessly with the merciless shot of a gun fired in an enclosed space.
Takamoto didn't spend so much time ogling the aftermath of his work. By the time Mei had fixed her dizzied vision on him he'd already swivelled onto his stomach, the revealed handgun nestled neatly between his clasped hands and trained on the torso of the remaining man.
Even in the confounding contrast of the artificial light, Mei saw the lines of shock cut into Arata's stretched skin as the first bullet struck him in the stomach. The shot threw him staggering backwards with its momentum rendering him utterly incapable of dodging the next two shots that followed it. All three struck him in the stomach, the fourth coming to strike at his navel for good measure.
A great clattering of cascading metal followed his dramatic tumble over his torture shrine as the last shot threw him against the glass wall. He adhered dumbly to the glass for a moment like a spider does when it knows it's going to die. He stared at the room, which stared back as him; then finally, he slipped. There was a skittering of chipping mortar as his body scuffed down the brick base of the wall before finally coming to rest on the concrete floor in a warm crumple.
Mei never heard his ferret form hit the floor. Her eardrums rang violently; the relentless pounding threatened to bring up her vomit more than the two dead bodies that had just manifested in the room with her. She blinked twice, partially successful in clearing some of the spots from her hazy vision.
Takamoto was standing again now. He stretched, his spine giving a soft pop she never heard as he drew himself back into his usual proud stance. His eyes were closed as he steadied his breaths, his chest rising and falling with mounting calm. He looked to Mei as he had one morning when she happened to glance out of the boat window upon waking; his face serene and peaceful as he bathed it in the first caress of the morning sun, every line cut into it relaxed and no vestige of strain to be found on his relaxed shoulders or back. It was the stance and face a lion takes as he looks over his vast savanna, a face that reflects nothing of the two murders he has just committed and nothing of those lives he knows he'll take thereafter.
It was then that Mei came to appreciate the truth of the man who was gradually manifesting from her sun-spotted vision; a truth she held no right to either like or dislike, but a truth she could only accept.
Eventually, he raised his light eyelids and turned to Mei. She looked back into his two dark eyes and felt her body relax. It was as though in the fix of his soft gaze, she could siphon some of the eternal calm that slid through his veins. She revelled in the sensation, allowing the cooling waters to in turn wash away all vestige of strain from her ailing person; the erratic breathing, the invariable tremor of her body, the half-assed smile sitting on her trembling jaw, all washed away in the smoothing of serenity. She exhaled.
Her ears were still ringing as Takamoto took the first step forward, her mind suddenly racing through the calm with the stark thought that they would be okay. His lips were moving. Mei squinted the last spots from her eyes as she tried to make sense of the words she couldn't hear. Gratitude trickled into her chest, the rich emotion filling the cavity with the words she tried to pass through her throat. She couldn't even hear her own voice inside her head, but felt sure, as she felt the buzz of her vocal cords against her throat, that Takamoto could at least hear her thanking him.
In unison with the thought, his lined face drew into a sincere smile. Mei returned her own trembling smile as she understood; he had heard.
But, he was speaking again now. Mei focused as the ringing became a distant ache, her vision not so disorienting as she watched his moving lips right down to the end of the six words that were too good to be true.
Mei felt her mouth tighten, her gut churn as she read and reread them in her mind. She had to look again, just to be sure her mind wasn't playing possum.
Takamoto's eyes were bright, his ruddy face still wearing a generous smile as she saw his brow furrow in high definition at her strange response. Finally understanding she may not have heard him, he enunciated his speech with such clarity that Mei even heard the peaks and troughs as he repeated the beatific words.
Don't thank me. Thank your sister.
And, that was the last thing he ever said.
The bullet must have contacted the back of his skull by the time he was forming his last syllable because, at the close of the word sister, the cloud of blood had already erupted from his forehead.
Mei stared blankly at the bloody hole, born perfectly round through his flesh with no emotion; she just didn't understand. His face still bore the same beatific expression as the cloud, strangely exotic and beautiful in its expansion, filtered out into nothingness. Mei gained the distinct impression of the curvaceous smoke of Yuzu's incense as the cloud finally exploded. Even from over six feet away, Mei felt the blood droplets smatter her face; they were warm with life.
Then, just like Matsuda, Takamoto went weak in the legs, his smile ebbed and then, he fell.
He hit the ground almost gracefully, even in death; his legs landing neatly atop one another and his arms coming to drape gently over his body as his heart slipped gently from orbit.
And with another beat of Mei's still pumping heart, he was gone.
The communication between Mei's brain and sensory perception drifted as lazily from her grip as Takamoto's life. She watched the next scene playout with what could only be described as a blank enthusiasm.
The black handgun jutted awkwardly from Arata's clasped hands. He stood with his legs spread, two feet from Takamoto's lifeless body and sporting a rampant thrill across his bony face that spoke only of a man who couldn't quite believe what he had just done.
He didn't even turn to regard Yuzu's hand as it sailed towards his exposed neck, the ten-saw-tooth combat knife clasped ruthlessly in her slim grip. It only took him the effort of a mere sidestep to the right to dodge her, his nearest elbow coming to bury itself mercilessly into the crook of her ribcage. Yuzu lost a glob of saliva, her eyes thrown wide as the sudden burning sensation erupted between her ribs. She plummeted to the ground as Arata's jutting elbow crammed itself into her ribcage a second time, a howl of pain escaping her lips as she hit the cold concrete.
Mei watched from the daze of her haze as the rat's thrilled eyes flicked upon her sister's suffering form, a new kind of demonic excitement tricking across the black. He kicked her in her elbowed ribs, causing a delayed scream from the agonising woman as her brain attempted to comprehend how any additional pain could assault her already burning flank. She pulled away erratically as his dark eyes followed her. '' And you.''
Her eyes remained thrown wide in her scramble across the floor, her body determined to avoid any more physical abuse as she clapped eyes on his quivering face. She froze, much against the protest of her logical brain, as she glared at the face above her. His revolting grin, additionally soured by a line of perfect teeth sung in unison with his adrenalised eyes. '' Don't think I didn't know about you.''
Mei's mind was still frolicking in the land beyond the wardrobe, but even her unplugged brain was well enough to register the fear that flooded her sister's eyes at the remark. Whatever childish hope Mei had gained from Takamoto's brief appearance on stage plummeted to destruction as sure as a meteor shower as she regarded those frightened emerald eyes. And sure as the wind howling outside, her sister's fear became her own.
Yuzu threw herself backwards, unable to bring her body to stand, but instead managing the motion of dragging herself towards the forsaken objects of the torture shrine. Mei looked from her sister's trembling frame and back to the rat. He took a step towards Yuzu, speaking words Mei's haze and distance couldn't comprehend as they tricked across his tight lips.
But just like when watching a foreign movie, Mei didn't need to comprehend the words to understand the expression. And to that end, she realised, strapped to the cruel wood of her straight-backed cinema chair, she had just paid for a front-row ticket to the witness of her sister's death.
Arata turned up the corner of his lip in a smirk, his eyes closed in meditative trance as he whispered, ''I thought it'd be fun to let you finish playing it out babe, but Jesus, your little old man friend was more ruthless than I thought. I didn't expect Matsuda to get shot in the face. Fuck me. I liked that guy. What happened to old-timers sticking to crosswords and bingo?''
Yuzu spat pain-ridden saliva mid back-crawl, ''I don't know what the hell you're talking about.''
Arata looked to the knife that had slipped from Yuzu's grip and back to her poker face with an absolute expression of 'are you bullshitting me right now?'
''You can curb the act now, honey. Your little performances aren't quite as seamless your ego might have you believe.''
Her straight face slipped as another jolt of pain bit through her right side. ''Let me just make this simple for you,'' Arata said as he took another step forward, prompting Yuzu to redouble the speed of her backpedal. ''Let's start with the night our dearest Sakura bit a chunk out of Ishikaya's cock three and half years ago. Sure, I got a pretty bad rap for it, '' Arata stopped still for a moment to gesticulate the grandeur of the inconvenience,'' but like any good old fool, Ishikaya got over it.''
Yuzu froze. ''What the hell are you talking about, Arata?''
''Oh great, you've decided to stop playing dumb. In that case, maybe now's a good time to tell me about the little contract sitting in your bottom desk drawer?''
Yuzu opened her mouth, her brow drawing straight again in immediate protest. She shut her mouth with a definitive pop as he pulled the key out of his trouser pocket. Ansoniko's handmade twin hung off the end of the slim metal keyring, the teddy bear looking ridiculously innocent as it swung from the inch of metal that had just sealed her fate.
He grinned, physically thrilled at Yuzu's reaction as he threw the keys to the concrete; they clattered to the ground and landed errantly between her bent legs. '' Or perhaps I should just tell myself, less bullshit that way.''
''You've been smuggling those miserable fucks out of here from the first minute. You used my feud with Ishikaya to your advantage, gaining a powerful ally by promising him my neck at the end of your little shitshow and few healthy bonuses in between. But, you didn't have enough to pay Ishikaya what he wanted in return for taking me out completely did you? So you had to settle for this, more discreet method, until you could come up with the extra cash. I bet you were more than a little put out when you found out mere revenge wasn't enough incentive for the man to fork out for a full-scale assassination and teardown operation. All the money trickling out of the account, mere startup flaws you called them, the hiccups of any up and coming business. What a load of shit!''
He stamped down on the ground in a dramatic end to his sentence, resulting in a sticky crunching underfoot. He looked down to the vacant floor, briefly wondering what the heck that was. His eyes snapped to Matsuda's dead body resulting in an inward groan as he realised he'd have to do the cleaning up himself after this was over. He flicked his eyes back on Yuzu with a fresh drizzling of irritation, despite the excitement that still pounded through his veins. '' You paid him whatever you could steal from me to get those out early who you were too impatient to leave to the finale. And didn't I know it? In total, our feud only lasted about five months, and so, as I expected; his appetite for women in just to ravenous y' see, even with a chunk of his cock gone AWOL he can still do quite the job on them.''
Yuzu, still unmoving, looked as though she was about to be sick. '' Yeah that's right, honey; Ishikaya's been buried in my pocket for over three years now, feeding me all the deals and information you supplied him. The day I found the photo of your sister was just an extra dash of luck to pipe an already exceptional plan; in other words, my opportunity to draw you out with a bang instead of a whimper.
''A quick bit of research and I was soon wise to the fortune she was sitting on. I knew as soon as I made you aware she was in my sights you'd start to panic, realise you didn't have quite as much time as you thought to make a final deal with Ishikaya and wipe me out.'' He bared his perfect teeth behind a revolting smile. '' And I knew then, with all that set it up, it was only a matter of time before my plan became yours.''
''N-no, w-''
''Yes, way! I knew with your sister's neck already on the table it wouldn't take you long to come to the conclusion of ransoming the husband. I know you too well babe, you would have done anything to keep her out of it directly and if it was between saving the day and inconveniencing some white-collar prick, I just knew you'd do it.''
Yuzu was looking at the ground between her knees now; her eyes closed in disbelief. "And just like that," he snapped his fingers excitedly," Ishikaya's trust in me was not only redoubled but fine-lined by the promise of the huge cash sum Mrs Honda over there was sat on. And you did all the work for me, honey," he jerked up his cotton shirt revealing the black bulletproof material of the vest that lay beneath and brandished his handgun. "The man knows how to show his gratitude too, top quality, so thanks a lot, babe."
Yuzu glared at the black fabric concealing the multiple layers of kevlar that had so effortlessly thrown off the assault of four perfectly aimed bullets, her expression written into a look of this is not happening as her pasty features slipped a shade whiter. "That said I didn't see this little chestnut coming; the husband dead and the rich wife on the run, tut, tut. Lucky for me that she came running straight into your lap, eh? The plan still worked out and what's more, I think this way's even better; after all, I got some fresh meat out of it."
Yuzu's eyes snapped from his chest and to his eyes as he spoke of her sister. He grinned down at her festering expression, not breaking eye contact and prompting her back into a slow crawl as he took another step forward. "It's been brilliant to watch it all go by on your face every day. Yuzu, the tragic hero, making so many sacrifices, throwing herself under the bus at every avenue just to help everyone and anyone else. What a dear."
Yuzu jerked her palm off the ground suddenly as the first of the cold steel instruments met the path of her backpedal. Arata continued to talk, seemingly oblivious as he approached the silent woman. "My favourite part was definitely that last one, though. I just knew, while you were so damn close, you wouldn't dare give up the contents of that drawer. Yuzu's hand clasped about the rubber handle of the clip point knife, she thrust it out in front of her, brandishing it with weak menace. He just raised his brow as though he was about to laugh. "The look on your face when that first finger snapped. God, it was just classic."
"You bastard!" She screamed, the weakness in her face snapping at the remark. She hurled the knife in his direction where it struck him point-blank in the chest. The point adhered dumbly to his body for a moment, the blade's length entirely horizontal as it enjoyed its brief flight before it tipped and whistled quietly to the floor. The clatter of concrete and steel was underwhelming.
Yuzu glared with despair at the redundancy of her anger. Arata just spread the pandemic of his smile as he stepped over the knife, brandishing the warm handgun in Yuzu's direction. She yelped at the ashy muzzle; her triggered survival instinct sending her clambering over the strewn instruments with her delicate palms. "God Yuzu, you could have gotten out years ago. Yet you stayed right on getting screwed over because you thought you could make a difference."
She cried out as a scalpel-like blade slipped into her downturned palm bringing forth a sudden spurting of fresh blood. She scooped up the instrument of her pain and hurled it blindly behind her as she once more failed to get to her feet.
The slim blade never contacted Arata's person, much less anything vital as it skittered to a still by his boots. "Oh and I thought I should let you know," he said, dodging another well driven but inaccurately aimed knife. Yuzu flipped back onto her backside, glaring in pain at her utter failure to inflict a blow on the man that now stood a mere foot and a half from her. "A little something about all those you smuggled out."
She suddenly stopped at the words, her hand tensed about the quillon handle of the two-foot bolo machete as Arata continued." Ishikaya handled most of them, but I partook a few times, especially with the ones I thought deserved a little extra. But either way -"
She listened silently, even as her mind told her exactly what atrocity was about to slip forth from behind his line of grinning teeth." - I personally made sure every last one of them," the handle slipped snuggly into her white-knuckled grip as the final sentence stung at her vibrating eardrums, "ended up at the bottom of the Mogami River."
Her fear fled her, and a sheer flood of hatred took its place in an instant. Yuzu felt her hand crunch around the cold wood of the machete handle, her grip shuddering as she bared her saliva streaked teeth at the demon who now towered above her.
"You fucking monster!" She screamed and Arata, too relaxed in his overwhelming dominance, failed to move in time to outwit the point-blank blow. The eighteen-inch blade sunk into his thigh with a gorgeous squelch of tearing muscle. His scream was murder.
Yuzu's hand slipped from the handle as the back of his caught her about the jaw. She threw herself backwards, already halfway into the dodge as his backhand contacted her face with glancing force. Even in her state of adrenaline, she could make out the hatred reflected in his arched brow as his resulting blow struck her with only a diminished impact.
Her hand hit the concrete behind her as she fell, the index and middle fingers coming to settle on the forsaken blade of one of the twin survival knives. She tensed her hand, adrenaline pounding through her system as she wrapped together a plot to land another blow on the still screaming man.
It wasn't another half-second before she was the one screaming in his stead. The heavy steel toe capped boot sole came to stamp on her thin wrist without mercy as she gripped the rubber knife handle. She dropped the weapon with earnest, crying out and writhing as she attempted to free herself from the agonising clamp of his boot. He didn't move his foot. She threw her gaze up to meet his; what met her eyes made her stomach convulse.
His black eyes writhed with a pain throttled excitement, the emotion within their folds too diabolical and intense to regard with a settled stomach. Yuzu attempted again to wriggle from beneath his foot's grip. He pushed down on her bruised wrist harder in response, prompting her instant regret as the sensation threatened to make her wretch.
His sallow skin wound and tightened over his taut jaws, beads of perspiration dotting his anaemic forehead as Yuzu begged with her eyes for him to stop, sure at any second he would increase his step and break her fragile wrist. But, he didn't move his foot an inch more. Instead, to Yuzu's eye widened bewilderment, his hand was the next thing to move.
Arata Takahashi's black gaze roared with insanity, the blown-out pupils wild and untamed as he swallowed her reaction whole.
Yuzu couldn't watch anymore as he started to do it; she turned her body and face away despite the pain in her wrist.
Mei brought the scissor blades she had spent the last minute foot-nudging up her chair leg through the last of her bondages at the exact moment Arata's horrified yet somehow sickeningly thrilled scream shuddered across the room.
Apparently pulling a half-buried machete out of one's leg was a more painful sensation than he had initially been led to believe. Yuzu glared at him in disbelief as he brandished all eighteen inches of the swollen blade in her direction. His viscous blood decorated the razor rims of the small holes cut into the steel, saliva running off his coated jaws in tandem as he spat. "Bitch. I am going to disfigure you so bad; even your own mother won't look at you again."
Mei was running two seconds after she'd registered the starkly fed fact she had made a mistake in turning to Harumi's aid first. The iron scissors lay forsaken at her desk; the frayed rope Mei had taken a mere two snips a distant memory in her mind as she hauled herself over to the image of the machete raised above her sister's rat-blood smattered face.
She saw her sister throw up her hands in final defence, her fragile palms a hilarious matchup in contest with the machete's atrocious blade.
Mei could only open her mouth to scream in the dawn of her tardiness; she was going to be too late.
The sound that followed her muted cry perhaps stunned her the least out of everyone who had shown up to join the day's festivities inside the fishbowl. Arata stopped so fast in his lunge for Yuzu's face; it was like he had been slapped in his own with a freight train. He knew that sound, better than anyone.
The booming bark took up reverberating across the room again, reasserting its infernal presence to all that had the audacity to initially doubt it. Mei stared stupidly at the violently shuddering glass knowing full well it was the result of the wind yet accepting without question that the hair-raising sound was undeniably the result.
The intense wind picked up howling through the holey roof; it's lethal cry rapidly baying and screaming all around. It ripped at the rafters of the groaning building, the glass pulsing in an out violently like a great, beating heart, the suspended lamps shuddering and jingling like cascading riches forsaken by all those wealthy souls upon their banishment to the pits of hell.
The glass reflected the room's flickering images through beating eternity, again and again, the spiked picture of the stooping beast thrown across the surrounding panes repeatedly as the nightmarish sound that came from its throat yowled alongside the wind in a cry so bloodcurdling Arata was hard-pressed not to let the knife slip from his wet grip right then and there.
Everyone in that room turned to the vain rectangle of light to reveal the final two actors on tonight's stage. But he saw them first; he saw that beast before anyone, and he screamed.
He screamed with all the vigour of a man who had seen the monster that had divested him of a finger, a beast that intended to do more; much more. An animal whose yellowed fangs were bared, the saliva webbing them spilling to the floor in bounteous rivulets; the spitballs cascaded about the room, flecking the glass in a sloppy spray as the animal yammered with another nerve crushing howl.
The bloodlust that emanated from Shinobu's muscular frame as he limped into the room's harsh light was thick and invasive. His black nostrils flared; he smelled Harumi's pain, and he howled bloody hell.
Arata screamed as though his scrotum had already been torn away, as though his entrails had already littered the sour floor of his torture house in thick rolls. Mei felt her boot sole contact the floor as she witnessed the full return transformation of the animal she had come to trust as he reverted back into the demon she had acquainted two weeks ago - a blind predator who wanted nothing more than warm flesh between his razor teeth.
But even in awe of his rage, not understanding how the dog was there, utterly uncaring and finally certain in her gutting knowledge as she watched the rat raise his other hand; Mei swallowed the fact that Shinobu, his chest wound barely healed and starting to seep, wouldn't make it across the expanse of that five metres of concrete before Arata had pulled the trigger that still occupied his left hand.
Mei thrust her fingers wide as she lunged towards the toppled shrine of metal torture. The first weapon brushed beneath her trembling fingertips just as Arata locked his gun-wielding arm. Mei choked with lethal understanding, her blindly chosen instrument slipping beneath the thumb of her grip; Arata had no intention of raising the gun to Shinobu, he had already given up on his life the minute the beast had reentered it, and lowering the tedious machete, it was clear he only intended to take one person with him.
Mei found herself dazzled as she blindly clamped down on the familiar wood of the hilt, the lustre thrown off by the polished metal winking in her peripheral.
She felt a sudden giddiness as the scene approached in slow motion. Yuzu's back met the wall, her clear eyes welling with final realisation as she glared up into the rolling eyes of the man now straddling her. As though the cold brick of the wall was the only thing that could cut through the restraint and belief telling her she could still win; Mei watched helplessly as the hope fled her sister's emerald eyes, the cycle complete and understanding finally met that she had just given her life for her cause.
Mei knew as her boot sole contacted the five-foot mark that emotions such as regret and embarrassment would never have time to manifest in the brain that fed life to those blown out eyes; in that last moment all her sister would register would be dumb fear. Mei drew her attention back to her own person as the ashy muzzle of the gun met Yuzu's forehead.
Mei recognised the weight of the object in her hand. Arata screamed the beast advancing on him to all eternal hell as he took one last look at Yuzu's paralysed features. Mei slipped her thumb across the familiar walnut wood as she watched Arata attempt to pull the trigger only to fail against hesitation's influence. Her head felt light as her sister's time skipped on, the artificial light of the room suddenly fantastical as Mei watched him tense his hand a second time around the black grip.
Caught inside the fairy tale haze, Mei accepted there were only two possible outcomes to the next three seconds of her life. She could hear Harumi screaming something now, but still, she didn't turn from her course as she raised the beast of a shotgun. The slaps of her bootsoles on the floor were vivid and present inside her head as she concluded she could only live with one of those two outcomes.
Mei saw the wiry muscles in Arata's arm tense through the tight cotton, saw her sister's bloodless face, her crystal clear eyes, her golden tresses reddened with splattered blood, even smell the scent of citrus against the all-consuming funk of the sour cave. All the colours were so furious and intense, the scents so distinct and rich like country hills made lush and fragrant after the brief fall of rain.
Yuzu screamed as his finger twitched. Mei smiled, everything looked so beautiful then, like childhood.
The last image Arata Takahashi saw was Yuzu's face. Even as his brain shifted an inch to the right under the impact of his inwardly crumpling skull, the question that came to mind wasn't why he hadn't just put down a little extra for the gun with the hair-trigger, nor why he hadn't turned as he heard the other one running towards him, but only, in that last moment, how he had never realised hers was the most gorgeous face he had ever seen.
Mei didn't let up even as his legs crumpled and his torso hit the ground with a fleshy whump. She raised the supremely polished metal again, the gun and knife slipping from Arata's spasming fingers, and brought it down on his gaping face.
His jaw cracked with unbelievable force; two molars exploded from his open mouth as the bone splintered. The teeth made a musical skittering as they raced across the concrete floor, leaving slim red trails in their wake. Even then, Arata's brain distantly recognised them as his own, his short attention quickly followed by the recognition of a woman's scream as the shotgun fell into his pulped eye line for the third time.
Mei watched her hands shudder with the next impact as the walnut hilt of the upended gun lacerated the ridge of his left eye. The purple flesh finally split like tenderised meat, the warm smack bringing forth a gout of thick blood which brought the first acidic tang of vomit into her throat. But still, she knew she couldn't stop.
The lactic acid bit at her shuddering arms as she brought the shotgun to peak above her head. Mei fed a strangled cry, the scream an animal creates when it knows if it doesn't kill it'll be killed.
She looked into the eyes of her victim; a mistake she immediately came to regret, because then she saw; him.
The cool hazel of her husband's eyes stared out from the seeping pulp below her. Mei's body fastened itself to immobility. The still fully formed right eye swivelled in the mutilated face to regard her. She tried to move then, the huge gun above her head threatening to slip from her two sweaty hands if she didn't, but still unable as she glared back at the single eye that regarded her with some sickly distant recognition.
Her body shook as she begged it to move. It didn't obey. Her person only giving slight spasms as she tried again, her whole frame shaking violently as though she were trying to dry swallow a tablet. Mei could hear the scream in her head that came out into reality as only a weak gurgling at the blood mottled hand started to grasp fitfully at the air, the monstrous creature's muscles somehow still spurred on by its dying heart. The creature's whole body spasmed once as the hand lowered, its bleeding brain somehow still functioning as it drew a sticky hand towards the gun forsaken on the blood-soaked concrete.
Mei glared as the fingers touched the grip of the gun, the sticky vomit trail trickling down her chin the only other sensation registered by her brain beyond the relentless shuddering of her raised arms. All she had to do was bring the hilt down to the end of the abomination scraping its way across the floor. She tried again, but still, she couldn't.
Her husband had returned to punish her, the globular lumps of flesh strewn through his black hair slipping off of the strands of his reincarnation in viscous globs. Mei recognised the back of that head; it was the head she had stared at through a film of a thousand tears on the first night of her honeymoon. Even as she told herself it was only the head of a rat, she still couldn't bring herself to open its contents; his bony fingers finally wrapped around the grip of the handgun.
But, she had to, she always knew it'd have to be her who did it; her body had already begun to lose its stiffness. She knew she would never be able to sleep soundly again as she pulled her body back into the perfection before the fatal lunge. She knew she would never be free of the image that would remain, at the close of the next two seconds, burned eternally beneath her eyelids as she writhed through every hour of the decades of nightmares to come. And yet, even against all that, Mei felt her body slip from its final vestige of paralysis as she finally registered; she was doing it.
The upended shotgun muzzle met the eye line of her vision as the second she heard her name manifest softly yet urgently to her right.
"Mei."
Mei stopped. She turned to Harumi just as the woman lowered Takamoto's gun. Mei never heard the words, but she saw them form across Harumi's gentle lips.
"You can stop now."
She pulled the trigger.
There was a crack of skull as the bullet casing bore its way into the dying brain of Arata Takahashi. Mei's ringing ears never registered the shuddering report of Takamoto's far more powerful gun, but even so, she understood the meaning of its single word.
The man that was no longer a man spasmed for a few seconds after that, but it was clear, as the gunshot finished reverberating off the glass of the hollow room, that no man existed anymore inside the mutilated lump of flesh on the floor.
The shotgun slipped from the slick sweat of Mei's palms. It narrowly missed the dent of her own skull as it sailed past her spotted vision, nudged the tip of her nose and then finally contacted the concrete floor in the resounding finality of a heavy clang.
It was over.
Mei felt her legs give out from under her before she'd ever even grasped ahold of Harumi's damp shirt. She never saw Eiji step out from the doorway clutching Shinobu's unfastened leash as she dragged the other woman down to the floor as she fell, the paralysis of shock already stiffening her body; her eyes had already screwed shut in the immediate instance after she caught the thin shimmering of metal that poked from the second pool of red edging her vision. It was all just too hilariously nostalgic.
With the last motion of her fingers, Mei pulled Harumi's body as close to hers as she physically could, encasing herself within the nest between the woman's throat and breast as her own throat and mind finally gave out.
Mei could feel the plum strands caressing her hands, feel the hot skin of the person to whom she clung, sense the sticky sensation of her own vomit on the skin of that woman; but she was only dimly aware of her reality at that point.
The last coherent memory Mei would have of what happened in that room in the day's thereafter would be Harumi's wet lips as they gently came to press against the cup of her left ear.
Despite the temporary loss of the bulk of her hearing, the woman holding her close would whisper honeyed comfort, and Mei, she would lean in close against those lips and fall into the sensation tickling along her right ear as they buzzed sweet nothingness into her reality; a reality to which she gripped blankly for the next hour.
Her mind an empty meadow, the honeysuckle soft and cloying once again as she embraced the meaning of the six words that kept her velvet cord bound tightest to sanity's fountain, Mei would hold on tightly as she rode out the nauseous dance of the next sixty minutes.
And, for the second time that day, somewhere between the split of the fifth and sixth minute, she would find she wouldn't be able to bring her trembling jaw to smile. But again, she would anyway; as she accepted the one truth that she had held most feared and most desired over the course of her long, long journey.
It was over. It was done.
/
