Alpha/Omega
A Tsukihime fanfiction by Shinova
Tsukihime and Kara no Kyoukai are creations of Kinoko Nasu and Typemoon
All other works belong to their respective owners
Chapter 2: Under the Night Air
He knew. The person knew. That nod, that smile... It was more likely than not that this person was the same one Shiki had glimpsed walking away from the school this morning. Could it be that Shiki's original suspicion was not a simple figment of imagination but cold truth; that the person could see those dreadful lines, and had sliced across them, causing that wall to fall apart this morning, in a fashion so disturbingly similar to the school hallway Shiki himself had disassembled instantly with his knife, during the whole conflict with Roa?
The person knew that Shiki suspected. He had seemed almost amused at Shiki's suspicions. And that was all without taking into account the disturbing reality that he and Shiki appeared almost exactly alike in appearance. And that wasn't all. When that person had walked past him, Shiki had felt something strange, as if he and the other were somehow connected... No, not connected, but there was still something there. Shiki couldn't pinpoint the feeling exactly. Words failed to describe it. Thoughts could not perceive it. It was as if it were simply being...something beyond words or thought.
Shiki had been walking mindlessly toward the mansion and had almost passed it by before noticing that he was home. He opened the gate and approached the front door. Judging by the time, he was only slightly late for dinner, so Akiha shouldn't be that angry, he figured.
He unlocked and opened the door, stepping in and closing the door behind himself. "I'm home," he called out.
"Nii-san!" the voice of an enraged Akiha reminded Shiki that he had failed to take into account the accident at school. He was immediately confronted by Akiha and the maids.
"I heard about what had happened at school, and it's late evening and you deigned it somehow unnecessary to contact us even once?" Akiha shouted.
Oh boy, Shiki thought, realizing his (perhaps fatal) mistake.
"Ah, about that..." he tried to say, scratching the back of his head nervously.
"No excuses! Do you have any idea how much you've had us all worried? We were almost about to report you missing! Do you have any idea how much trouble you could've caused us?"
Shiki tried to placate his sister. "Akiha, I'm sorry that I didn't contact you, I know I should've but...well at least I'm unharmed and here I am, so..."
"Don't dare think that you being alright will make the situation any better! Really, to think nothing of your own family like that in such a crisis..."
"Really, Shiki-sama!" Kohaku spoke up in a firm voice. "That's truly cruel, even for you! You almost made Akiha-sama cry!"
"Eh? I did?"
"Ah, that is, well, enough of this!" Akiha interrupted suddenly. "Since you are indeed unharmed and well, all is forgiven, I suppose." She discreetly glared at Kohaku, who merely smiled in return.
There was a long silence, where neither party could find the proper words to say. Hisui finally broke the tense silence, "Supper is waiting, Shiki-sama."
"That's right!" Kohaku added. "Since Shiki-sama is safely home, we shouldn't be fighting like this and should enjoy supper together instead."
"Oh well, I suppose so, if that's the case," Akiha
I have been saved, thank you Kohaku-san, Shiki thought, relieved that he had been granted the chance to live for a little longer.
"Ah, Nii-san, Hisui says she thought she saw you walking down the street a few hours ago. Well?" Akiha suddenly asked.
Shiki's eyes narrowed slightly. So he really was real, and truly not a figment of Shiki's imagination. "No, I didn't. Maybe it was someone who looked like me," he said.
"I must have been seeing things. I apologize, Shiki-sama," Hisui said, bowing deeply.
"It's alright Hisui, it happens to all of us sometimes," Shiki assured Hisui, while his thoughts strayed to that person he had seen during his way to the mansion. As the household made their way to the dining room, Shiki mentally decided that he had to go see that person himself, and get some questions answered.
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While the Tohno household enjoyed their supper, a group of schoolgirls were walking home from a night out in a different part of town. There were five of them, and they knew well the reputation their town had received over the past years as being very dangerous to walk around in at night, especially in dark, empty streets like the one they were in at the moment. Most people tended to close shop or go home early during the evening, thus the city streets were devoid of people at these hours. Most of the girls in this group were starting to feel they should've followed that example.
"This is really getting creepy, you know!"
"I've been through here before so don't worry about it."
"But still!"
"Come'on, it's the five of us, not just you alone!"
The confident one was Yui. She had been through this part of town several times, once by herself during the night. That had been several years ago, however, but that hadn't stopped her from taking her friends for a night out and then walking the way back home.
"Like I said, I know my way around here and it's the five of us so there's really nothing to worry about," Yui assured her friends.
"You sure?"
Yui, exasperated, spun around to face her friends. "For the last time, trust me. Nothing's going to happen. So don't worry!"
"She's right, you know," an unknown voice spoke out, freezing the girls in their steps. Before any of them could raise their voices, there was a sudden blur of movement, followed by the sound of something slicing through the air.
"Wh-What's going on?" Yui stammered, turning to her friends for an answer.
Her friends stood strangely silent. They then exploded, almost literally, their bodies coming apart in smooth chunks, the blood splashing out to stain Yui's clothes---some of it getting on her face.
Yui couldn't move. She couldn't speak, nor could she think. She could only watch with wide eyes the disassembled bodies of her friends collapse onto the pavement and drench it with their blood, slowly forming a puddle at Yui's feet. Her body trembled, and her hands raised themselves to her lips as if to try to cover her mouth in shock, but they trembled too much to do so.
"Yes, you were right to not worry, since you weren't going to be the one getting disassembled," the voice spoke again. A young man...a boy, more like...stepped out of nowhere from off to the side and moved his face in front of Yui's and gazed at hers from up close. Yui stared back. The stranger wore a warm smile that seemed so out of place with the almost white eyes that bore directly into Yui's, as if stabbing at her soul.
"It's a nice weather out. Enjoy the night," the stranger spoke again, then walked away out of view, disappearing into the night.
Yui stared at the bodies of her friends with trembling eyes and sunk to her knees. She bent over, clutching her head, and rocked back and forth, her throat making whimpering noises. She would stay that way for most of the night before finally collapsing into the pool of blood out of exhaustion.
Nearby, atop a lamppost out of view, Ciel watched what transpired below. She gazed at the black-clad figure walking away calmly, further up the street ahead. Her eyes narrowed, and she gripped her blades tightly. She then leapt off of the lamppost and into the air.
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Dinner was long finished, and most of the household were probably getting ready to sleep at this hour. Shiki had excused himself to go to bed early. It took some time convincing Akiha that he was tired and wanted to sleep early, but soon he was alone in his room, under the pretense of going to sleep. Instead, he put on his jacket, grabbed his knife, and left his room through the window for the first time in over a year. He landed softly in the front yard and discreetly made his way to the front gate, opening it and locking it behind himself as quietly as possible. He then jogged his way down the street.
Shiki was going to find that person he had seen at school and in that street. He was going to find him, and get some answers. Who was he? Why was he here? Why did he collapse that wall at school?
...Does he see the lines?
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The stranger strolled casually through the street under the night air. The streets were silent; no human or animal could be heard. Even the insects seemed quiet at this time, or perhaps there just weren't any in this part of town. The person suddenly stopped, smiling softly as if knowing what was coming.
A black figure jumped down from above and landed in front of him. It was a girl, garbed in a robe of some sort. The person gazed at the girl in front of him with his white eyes.
"Why?" the newcomer asked.
"Sheer curiosity, to be honest. To see how one would act in the future if the most prominent thing she saw as her friends were chopped to pieces was a warm smile." The stranger answered. "The Vatican's Burial Agency. Ciel?"
"That is correct. So you know," Ciel replied, staring at the other with narrowed eyes.
"I know things like that, among other things. I was under the impression that the Burial Agency's purpose was the extermination of vampires and other such underwordly creatures, not people."
"That too is correct. Normally I would leave a mere murder like this in the hands of the city's police, but due to the...unusual nature of this, I am obligated to 'investigate.'"
"Unusual, you say?"
"Yes. I have my suspicions about certain things. For example, you have the Eyes of Death Perception, am I correct?"
The stranger laughed. "'Eyes of Death Perception?' What an incredibly crude way of calling it. Whoever coined that term knows nothing," the stranger scoffed.
"Who are you?" Ciel asked firmly.
"Hypnosis is a trick, and a highly faulty one at that, nothing more," the stranger said, pointing out Ciel's failed attempt. "But who I am...you probably already know."
Ciel merely frowned. The stranger shrugged. He then looked to the side, down the street.
"He is coming, you know," he said.
"He?"
"Yes. You know who. I have things to talk over with him. As for you," the stranger turned to face Ciel, "I have no purpose for, at least not now. The weather's brilliantly comforting tonight. Enjoy it." He then walked on, past Ciel. He made no more than ten steps past before a blade embedded itself into the pavement beside his feet.
"Stop right there," Ciel spoke out, holding a set of Black Keys in each hand.
The stranger turned around to face Ciel, a smirk on the former's face.
"I have no obligations regarding you, but for my own reasons I will be taking the liberty of executing you tonight," Ciel stated.
"I see. If that's how you want it," the stranger replied, taking his right hand out of his pocket and extending it to his side. He made a motion and a black metal bar sprang out with a click from the inside of his sleeve. His hand caught the object, spun it in a quick semicircle with his fingers then grasped it. A blade sprang out from the end, revealing the object to be a switchblade. He held it to his right and slightly behind himself, the blade pointing backwards, as he dropped into a stance.
"Eyes of Death Perception?" the stranger said, smiling. "I'll show you the true meaning behind that ridiculous phrase."
Ciel spared no moment and leapt into action. The stranger swung his knife and blocked the Keys as they raked through the air in front of him. To a casual observer, Ciel would appear to disappear and then reappear behind the stranger. She stabbed at the stranger, his body shifting out of the way, his knife knocking the blades aside. This went on. Ciel zipped back and forth across the ground, off of walls, relentlessly pressing the stranger with her attacks. The stranger casually blocked or dodged each attack, moving his body only a minimal amount, letting his hand and arm do most of the work.
Ciel finally threw one set of Keys, dashed to another angle and threw her other set. The stranger leapt backwards and into the air as the Keys flew from different angles past where he had been less than a split second ago. Ciel took the opportunity and leapt straight for the stranger, another Black Key in hand. The stranger saw Ciel fly towards him like a speeding bullet. He twisted in midair and the knife flashed, turning aside the Key. The stranger's other hand became a fist and smacked Ciel in the jaw.
The two flew away from each other and landed. Ciel massaged her jaw while the stranger flipped his knife in his hand.
"The Vatican trains the Burial Agency well. No wonder, since they do the Vatican's dirty work for it," the stranger said.
Ciel said nothing, pulling out a new set of Black Keys for each hand, then diving at the stranger. The two clashed, knife and blades flashing. The stranger moved in quick, lazy curves across the ground punctuated by periodic lateral dashes, meeting each of Ciel's dashes with a knife block or a dodge.
Ciel rushed at the stranger with the intention of impaling him. The stranger jumped up and over Ciel, using one hand to handspring off of her head to give himself a little extra boost, seeming to orbit Ciel in an almost perfect circle. The other spun around and slashed at the stranger, who blocked the Keys, then spun in midair and landed a heel against Ciel's solar plexus, sending her reeling. She landed on the ground and quickly flipped to her feet and threw a Black Key at the stranger.
The stranger saw the key approaching his face and twisted his head out of its way. As it flew by, he ran his knife through it once. The Black Key spontaneously shattered into pieces and crashed to the ground.
Ciel knew then that the stranger really did posses the Eyes. She ran toward him, then suddenly dashed off towards the wall to the right, bounced off of it and onto the other side of the street, then finally dashed straight for the stranger, who could see Ciel approaching him from the right and also knew about the pair of Keys flying at him from the left---the wall Ciel had dashed off of first.
The stranger dove left, towards the incoming Keys. He spun clockwise in midair, knocking aside one with the knife and grabbing the other with his free hand. Ciel slashed at him with the Keys in her hand, which the stranger knocked aside with his knife. When his feet found purchase on the ground once more, he dashed straight at Ciel, the two crashing into each other as if in a tight hug, propelling them both forward. He then reached around her back and drove the Black Key in his hand into her left shoulder from behind, then used the Key embedded in her shoulder as a pivot to spin himself around Ciel's body until he was behind her and lashed out with a kick, hitting her spine, causing her to violently change direction and smash into the wall in front of her.
The stranger watched as Ciel slid down from the small crater she had made against the wall and stand up unsteadily, clutching her shoulder.
"Let me guess...85 centimeters?" the stranger remarked, rubbing his chin, an amused expression on his face.
Ciel glared at him in return. The stranger chuckled.
"Now," the stranger said, raising his knife, Ciel tensing in response. "Let me show you something really cool."
The stranger slashed at the air in front of him. Ciel's eyes widened as the person simply vanished, the space where he had been standing seeming to distort, taking her by surprise. So taken by surprise that she did not notice him appear into thin air right next to her the same instant.
The knife flew twice. The bone in her right leg snapped in three. The Black Key in her left shoulder shattered, sending fragments twisting into the rest of the shoulder. And finally, the stranger's knee shot out and jammed itself into Ciel's back, sending her forward and sprawling onto the ground.
Ciel grimaced, swallowing down the screaming pain in her shoulder, and turned around to see the stranger walk calmly towards her.
"And now, another cool thing," he said, reaching for her head with his free hand.
Ciel expected the stranger to grab her scalp. Instead, the hand passed through and into her head, incredibly. The stranger grabbed something and touched it with a fingernail.
Ciel gasped, eyes widening, as memories, emotions, desires, and urges started pouring into her mind like water flowing out of a broken dam. Her hand flew to her head, clutching her face, her lips trembling. The stranger retracted his hand out of Ciel's head.
"Just like how a knife can pass through flesh without harm and strike poison coursing through one's body," the stranger spoke, "a hand too can pass through unimpeded. What I just touched is all that is keeping you from reverting back to your other self---that possessed vampiric butcher who made a town run red with the blood of its people, some hundred and fifty or so years ago. Elesia, correct?"
"H-How..." Ciel gasped, breathing heavily, eyes wide and hand gripping her head.
"Now you know why the term 'Eyes of Death Perception' does no justice to the real meaning behind these eyes. I will be going now. Tohno Shiki will no doubt find me. As for you, enjoy the night... And do take care of that head of yours. Its contents are more fragile than you might think," the stranger said before leaping away into the distance, leaving Ciel to struggle with the memories of her past.
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Shiki walked cautiously through the city's streets. He had been out for at least half an hour and was beginning to wonder how exactly he was going to find that person. He had thought about using that feeling he had felt before as a guide, but so far he had been getting nothing, and such a feeling would be useless anyway if Shiki himself was going nowhere near the person in mind. He turned the next corner and gasped when he saw Ciel sitting in the middle of the street, clutching her shoulder in pain.
"Sempai!" he yelled as he ran to Ciel. "What happened?"
"A little trouble...nothing that bad," Ciel replied through gritted teeth.
"Who did this to you?" he asked, wondering what kind of opponent could have given Ciel this much trouble.
Ciel tried to stand up but Shiki stopped her. "You shouldn't be moving around! We need to get you to a hospital."
"I'll be fine, Tohno-kun... I'll heal over time."
"Sempai, it's not like back then when Roa was still alive! If you leave your injuries like that, they'll become permanent---you told me that yourself, remember!... Sempai?"
Ciel was holding her head, shaking it as if in disbelief.
"Sempai? What happened?" Shiki asked, holding her good shoulder.
"He almost made my...other self come out...I still don't understand...how..." Ciel murmured, almost inaudibly.
"He? Who's he? Tell me, Sempai! Tell me!"
Ciel took a deep breath, her eyes shut, before finally answering.
"Remember this morning when you told me about that guy you said you saw walking away from school? He looks just like you...and he sees the lines..."
Shiki recoiled in shock. He could see the lines. That person...that bastard who collapsed the school wall and did this to Ciel... The guy could see the lines too. Shiki had to see him. Find out who he was and why he was here. And maybe give him some serious payback for Shiki's fellow students and Sempai.
Ciel's wellbeing came first, however.
"Sempai, we need to get you some help," Shiki firmly insisted once again.
Ciel sighed heavily, then said, "Get me to a phone and I can contact the Church and have them send someone to extract me. I'll be in safe hands then."
Shiki nodded and helped Ciel up on her good leg, then hoisted her good arm over his shoulder and helped her to a nearby phone booth. He was truly glad he had brought his wallet that night. Ciel made her call, spoke with the person on the other end for about a minute, then hung up.
"They'll be here in a couple of hours. I'll be fine until then," Ciel said.
Shiki nodded and helped Ciel sit down in a comfortable position against the phone booth. He then stood up, adjusted his glasses and patted his pocket to make sure the knife was there. He then turned around and started walking down the street.
"Where are you going?" Ciel asked with narrowed eyes.
"To see him. To find out some things," Shiki replied without turning around.
"Tohno-kun! The Church'll have reinforcements here and they can clean up this matter---you don't have to go!"
"I do, Sempai. He's just like me, isn't he?" Shiki turned around to look at Ciel. "I don't know if I'll accomplish anything, but I have to face him...at least talk to him for a bit."
Shiki thought back to the time when Sensei had found him on that grassy field and saved him from his eyes... Saved him and allowed him to lead a normal life---not a saint, but as a normal human being as best as he could. Somehow, Shiki felt that this other guy had not met such a sensei in his life.
Ciel sighed, and nodded slowly. Shiki turned around and continued walking down the street. Ciel watched Shiki disappear out of view and whispered, "Please be alright, Tohno-kun."
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Shiki didn't know how, but somehow he had found that person. In the middle of an isolated, lonely street, there he was, the black-clad boy who looked just like Shiki, standing in the light of the bright moon that had just emerged from behind some clouds. The stranger smiled upon Shiki's arrival.
"I suppose this is our first real time meeting each other," the person said. Shiki noted that his voice sounded exactly like Shiki's own. He walked towards the stranger and stopped a few meters from the other.
"Nothing to say?" the stranger asked. Shiki replied nothing. "That's alright," the stranger continued. "The night here is really great. I must've been saying that for the entire night but I just can't say enough just how---"
"Who are you? What do you want, and why'd you destroy that wall at school?" Shiki interrupted, gazing at the other with angry eyes, hands balled into fists.
The other glanced at Shiki, as if musing over the question, then answered, "Like you, I am Shiki. It might interest you to know that there are actually many Shikis...all of them with the same important qualities. As to why I collapsed that school wall, that was mainly to gain your attention."
"Did the concept of just walking up to me and talking ever occur to you?" Shiki interrupted.
"It did, but for the sake of impact and my overall purpose, I decided along this route."
"Overall purpose?..."
"Yes." The other Shiki raised a finger to his eye. "They call it Eyes of Death Perception. Everything in life has its death already predetermined, and these eyes are able to perceive that in the form of lines and dots. It's easy to understand how it might seem that way, but in reality it is far deeper than that." He put his finger back down and gazed up at the moon. "The Source, the Origin, the Root of all things...some call it Akasha. Whatever you call it, it is all synonymous with the beginning and end of all things. When a thing comes into being, whatever it is, whether a living thing, or non-living, or even just a concept, that is its beginning. Where it came from is the Source. And when that thing finally dies, or ceases to be or have meaning, it goes back to where it came from---it returns to the Source. The Source is the beginning and the end of all things.
"Now where do we come in, you might ask. That is easy to answer. Tohno Shiki, have you ever died?"
Shiki immediately remembered the dark, lonely void he had found himself in the middle of, right after the incident with the real Tohno Shiki. He had died, but had been revived when Akiha took his life into herself and sustained it in there.
Shiki nodded at the other Shiki, who nodded in return. "That is what sets the two of us apart, and is the answer," he continued. "You see, when anything 'dies' it returns to the Source. We did the same. We finished our cycle of being and return to the beginning and end of all things. That was how it was supposed to be---but..."
"But that cycle was broken," Shiki added.
"Sort of," the other replied. "An outside force---someone or something---brought us back, pulled us back out of the Source and into being once again. But not completely. We retain some connection to the Source---you can say that the experience of having been one with the Source has left an imprint on us, no matter how brief the experience. Thus, it's not so much 'Eyes of Death Perception' as it is a 'connection' to the Source, or the Origin, or whatever. You can almost say that we're like the 'hand' of Akasha. Almost like celestial judges sent back down to Earth from heaven to exact divine justice on the guilty...but that's really just merely a fun thought to have."
"So that's why we can see the end of things, cause we're connected to it."
"Not just the end...the beginning too. We---or at least I---can sometimes see things before they happen. You must've had at least one kind of experience like that."
"I think so."
"The beginning and end of living and non-living things, but it doesn't end there. Concepts, thoughts, all of these come from the Source. For example, concept of the mathematical zero in this universe. That is a concept. Imagine what would happen if I stabbed its dot. Modern civilization would suddenly grind or crash to a halt. Or this..."
The other Shiki whipped out his knife once again. Shiki started to pull out his own knife, but before he could finished, the other slashed at the air. The other Shiki disappeared into thin air and reappeared just as suddenly in front of Shiki, who jumped backwards away from the other who had suddenly appeared out of thin air.
"That was my 'killing' the distance between you and me," the other Shiki said, putting his knife back into his sleeve holster. "Of course, it's not distance, universally, as that would mean that I would be forever stuck with you until we do something about it, since there'd be no distance between the two of us. That's something to be careful about."
The other gazed up at the moon once more, admiring it. Shiki stared at the other, and asked the question that was foremost in his mind.
"How could you stand it?"
"What?"
"How could you stand seeing those lines? Knowing that whatever you touch, touch the wrong way and it could fall apart? As if the ground underneath you would disappear at any second, or the sky would suddenly fall on you at any moment," Shiki elaborated.
The other Shiki smiled a bit. "I couldn't. At least for a while. I could remember the first thing I cut apart in that fashion. A bedside table I had gotten too curious with. Seeing those lines streaking across yourself, your belongings, the earth, animals, your friends...
"No, I couldn't stand it. All I could do to deal with it was sleep as often as I could to shut it all out, or sit by myself out on this hill beside our house. Of course, she would always come over and keep trying to cheer me up. It helped a bit, but didn't really make a difference."
"She?"
The other Shiki chuckled a bit. "Just some friend."
Shiki felt his glasses with his hand, thinking back to the grassy field. He looked up at the other Shiki and asked, "So what happened."
"Eventually I couldn't take it anymore. Did I snap, you may ask, and go on a rampage and kill my loved ones? Nah. I somehow had enough strength to know better. Instead, I looked harder."
The other Shiki stared at Shiki as if to emphasize his words. "I looked harder at everything around me," he continued. "I kept thinking, 'there's got to be something more than this death perception. Is there anything else?'
"And then I saw it... Threads...connections... I could see things linked to one another, such as how some beings or things have innate connections to some other things, or connections between concepts, and everything linked to something. One something that everything I could look at...they were all connected to it. That's the Source, of course."
The other Shiki looked up into the sky and reached out with a hand, as if to try to grab something infinitely far away. "I wanted to see it," he said. "The Source, I wanted to see it with my own eyes, touch it, feel it, hear it, whatever. I was curious, I wanted to know. The beginning and end of all things, the absolute truth. The answer to all questions asked and unasked, the solution to all problems, the finish to everything. One, all-encompassing truth. I wanted to see it."
He turned to look at Shiki. "Don't you want to see it? The ultimate truth? The answer to all your questions? Like what compelled you to chase after a complete stranger and murder her in her apartment?"
Shiki's eyes widened. "How do you..." he muttered.
"The Source, Shiki," the other replied. "I see everything. Eventually over time, colors, light, faces, shapes...the world, essentially, disappeared from my sight. All I see now are lines, dots, threads and connections. I see lines through the ground, the buildings and air around me, through the words people speak, their bodies, their faces... People's thoughts and memories, these are things to, they too came from and will end in the Source. In an essence, I can see your memories, and can see what happened. It's all lines and dots, but over time your connection lets you know what everything is."
The other Shiki now faced Shiki directly. Shiki braced himself for whatever might come.
"Now, as to why I came here in the first place," the other Shiki began, "the reason why I wanted your attention, why I'm telling you all this. I'll be direct: I want your help."
"My help?" Shiki asked, a little bit incredulous.
"Yes. Everything has a connection with the Source to begin with and is, therefore, in an essence, a part of the Source. There's the saying: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I don't want to sum the parts, I want to return it to the one and make it whole. I want to return everything there was, is, and will be to the Source. Once whole, the Source will become...well...whole. I want to see that."
"You mean to kill everything that exists just so you can see that?" Shiki exclaimed, outraged at the thought.
"Yes. It's a lot of sacrifices," the other Shiki replied. "But think of it as creating the closest thing to a real God there ever was. And I---and you, if you accept--- will be in the front seats to watch this magnificent truth come to being. Don't you think it's worth the price? One absolute truth and answer to everything, in its whole, in all its intended glory?"
"No," Shiki answered firmly, glaring at the other. "I have friends, family, all the people around me. One all-knowing truth isn't worth their lives. So my decision is no. It's what I believe is the right thing, and I'm sticking to it. No, I won't help you. In fact..." Shiki pulled out his knife and flipped it open, "...I'm going to stop you, right here, right now."
The doppleganger watched Shiki prepare to kill the former. He sighed, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "Those glasses block out the connection, don't they?" he said, opening his eyes and pointing. "In that case, let me help enlighten you a bit, so to speak."
The doppleganger whipped out his own knife and slashed at the air, disappearing. Shiki was only beginning to tense in preparation when the other reappeared in front of him and slashed at his eyes.
With a loud shatter, the lenses disintegrated and the glasses fell off of Shiki's nose and crashed onto the ground. Shiki froze in shock as he stared at the broken glasses.
"Look deeper. See the truth. Then come back to me when you've made up your mind," the other said. He slashed once more at the air and disappeared into nothingness.
Shiki dropped to his knees, reaching down and scooping up a few of the broken pieces. He brought them up to his eyes and looked through them.
No, the glasses, and whatever magic they once had, were dead...killed by that other Shiki. They were gone, and with them, Shiki's salvation from a world where death was all too much in plain view every single day. He grasped the shards tightly, paying no heed to the blood seeping from his palms. Tears welled up in his eyes as he choked back the sobs that were coming.
"I'm sorry, Sensei..."