I'll kill them all.

All those monsters.

All those –

Who took her away from me.


Sometime, somewhere in the wide world.


I awoke from my nap in a field of white chrysanthemum with a startle, and there was the sound of wind whirring, grass rushing, a butterfly ambling. A cold, cutting vertical noise rose up in my skull, and I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, then strained them and saw it: the azure pupils, the braided hair, the dignified beauty of the sister who attended to me every day and who draped around her figure the red kimono that I'd come to associate with her so dearly.

"Nu…machi? Numachi?"

"Numachi?" the sister repeated. "Who's Numachi?"

Tsutako Tomioka, twenty-unto-twenty-one-years-old, had just been mistaken for someone she did not know.

"Huh? Tsutako?"

Though, the illusion did not last.

"Giyuu…" she started. "You… were saying something in your sleep. Something about 'killing them all' and 'all those who took her away'. Were you… talking about me?"

Was I? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Whatever the case, I could not remember.

"No," I replied. "Was just a dream. I've forgotten it now."

"Then, let's head back."


February 1912
Matsuyama, Japan


Giyuu's POV

What was it, sixty years ago, that the country had first been opened up to the world? The way those old enough to remember it spoke of the time as a magnanimous one. Way back when Tokugawa and posse were still in control an American named Commodore Matthew Perry and his crew barged in the city-port of Uraga and wrest open the closed Japanese system along with it, after which industrialisation became general over the country and thus began a rapid period of getting rich. At twelve years old I didn't – couldn't – have formulated a real opinion about something so complex, but the way I saw it, and the way adult Tsutako saw it…

"Look. It's a radio. They say with one of these things you can talk with people thousands of kilometres away. Even across countries and continents. How cool's that?"

We'd descended from the flower field and weaved our way into town, stopping at some tech exhibition along the way. Tsutako pointed at a square looking thing, fashioned out of wood and metal mesh with lots of dials and buttons and gauges that did things like change 'volume' and adjust 'frequency', whatever those meant. A rapping salesman attached to the radio and who attended a bulging crowd of the interested announced its price: 500 yen. "Duty-free!" he added. "Invented by the Italians, perfected by the Americans!"

"It's cool…" I replied Tsutako, still onlooking. "But we don't know anyone in other countries."

So we left before the salesman could hawk us down, meandering down a street that took us somewhere and nowhere at all. That day news of revolution in China had crossed the ocean and stirred up the spirits of demagogues everywhere, and they had come out onto the street to give their speeches and appeal to the average man. Did you know? The leader of that revolution spent a good part of his sixteen-year exile in Japan. To most it was a topic of urgent, and enduring interest, but as for Tsutako and I we were only slightly unsure of that faraway country's future, and gave no part in thinking of the role Japan would eventually play in it.

It was busy that day, so busy, that in addition to the rampant populations of people that had spilled out onto the roads, self-propelling wheeled boxes called cars had also come to roam them. Back then they were expensive, unreliable contraptions, catering to a rich demographic who were too afraid to drive them anyway, so to see so many on a given day bewildered me. A driver in one of these such cars noticed us, braked, and leaned out of his open-roof seat:

"Need a ride, pretty miss?"

Referring to Tsutako, who politely declined.

"Then need a date, pretty miss?"

It took a moment for it to set in what he'd just asked. It was a constant everyplace we went, that constant being my sister's beauty and the attention this beauty wrought. Not a day in town went by without a date request, a postal code request, and on some beguiling occasions, a straight-up marriage request. She was the apple of the eyes of people, not only men, everywhere: I say this with pride, and no amount of jealousy, because while she loved the attention, I would have not. I was a shy boy, get?

"No, no," Tsutako replied the man. "I have a fiancé."

And she held up her one finger and revealed a silver ring to let it glimmer. Fiancé? I never knew about this. The guy skulked off, and we continued on our way, to wherever that was. We passed a few more flower fields and radios and cars until I popped the question: "Who's your fiancé?"

Tsutako stopped, and looked at me like I'd said something beyond preposterous. "Who's my fiancé? Are you messing with me, Giyuu?"

I said that I really didn't know, because I didn't. It was strange to me too, really, such a gaping hole in my memory. I almost felt ashamed for it.

"You've gone square," Tsutako said. "Maybe this Numachi girl is jacking with your mind."

"I never said it was a girl."

"You said it in your sleep."

"I didn't. You're the one that's square."

"My fiancé, huh?" Tsutako muttered, ignoring me. "Well, since you've… 'forgotten him', well, what to say?" – she eyed me up and down, as if to find words for her mouth, then froze – "Oh, your hair! That's right. The reason you grew out your hair was 'cause you wanted to copy him. You never told anyone, but I know that's why. So you're pretty close, aha?"

My hair? No way. I've had long hair for as far as I can recall. You're lying, Tsutako. I said this to her and she said this to me:

"Well, you'll find he too has been with you far as you can remember… when you do remember."

"By the way," I asked. "When's the ceremony?"

"Tomorrow."

Her answer was so deadpan and stark and monotone it shocked me so that I almost didn't notice that it wasn't deadpan, stark, nor monotone; Tsutako said it with a great big girly smile that creased her cheeks, giggling a little.

"We came to town to buy things for the wedding, remember?" she finalised. "So, let's go."

After that Tsutako refused to answer any more, and we lingered in town for a while, phasing in and out of markets and shops and embroiderers, strangely, until we'd bought all we needed and were set on our way home. Our feet took us to a road that trailed the coastline, on the other end of which lay our house. It was a spindly path carved out of a cliffside, all too rocky and uphill for my and Tsutako's tastes, so we took a break and slid out of our sandals and dangled off the edge to let the wind cool our heels. I pat the sweat off my face with my shirt and looked out to sea. By then the impending evening had dragged the sun halfway down the horizon, rendering the sky wine-coloured, and the waveless water orange. This late in the day, the hue of the ocean always scared me, like if I jumped in the opaque skin of the water wouldn't let me out, but today was strange because I was unusually fearless, unusually museful, unusually focused on the horizon and what it entailed.

What the horizon entailed?

Splayed off that cliffside as I was, I thought about the dream I had, or supposedly had, and I wrung my memory and dripping from that in shards and pieces was the gradually-forming image of a horizon. A seaside horizon, much like the one I saw, except it was broad midday and cliff had been replaced with beach and I was standing on this beach, gazing off into the far distance, at nothing. Then I looked down and saw on that same shore-bank another person – back towards me, silver hair fluttering in the wind – and for the first time I realised the truth between past and future.

Tsutako was already back on her feet, quite-a-ways down the road, when she called me over. When I did not budge, she approached me, and set her hand on my shoulder. "What's wrong?" she asked, and though I didn't reply I raised my arm and straightened my one finger and pointed out across the sea, at the setting sun.

"Numachi…" I said. "This Numachi person I saw in my dream…"

"You saw Numachi?"

"Numachi… was pointing over the ocean, just like this, and… Numachi…"

I gulped down the salty air.

"…Numachi was crying."


There, on the other side…

Are monsters.

But if those monsters are both there, before us, and here, behind us –

Where can we go to have the world to ourselves?


"We'll build our own country!"

Seated with her shins against the floor, Tsutako held up a book and traced its gold-embossed title with a finger: quite literally, 'We'll build our own country'.

"It's about this disfigured guy who's shunned by everyone, and eventually this shunning gets worse and worse until they start throwing stones at him and stuff, but then he finds some other people just like him and they band together and promise to make a place where they can be free from discrimination. Sounds interesting, right?"

We were back home now, sat in the living-room that also was our bedroom, storage-room, kitchen, loft, among other things, and Tsutako'd rummaged through one of our cupboards and pulled out that book. By then night had already come and swept away the day, and holding the cover near the lamp we'd lit up, I studied the silver-ladened jacket for a moment, and then looked back up at her.

"I've already read it," I said.

"Well…" – I wondered, knowing full well that I'd already read it, why she'd dug out that book in the first place – "what else to get your mind off things?"

"Get my mind off what?"

"You started crying while talking about Numachi. Not really sobbing, but there were tears, and you didn't even realise until I pointed it out. Have you… forgotten?"

Only then did I notice the tissues strewn across the floor, the prickling dryness around my eyes, the liquid pooling from my nose. Instinctively I tried to wipe it with my sleeve, but Tsutako swats my hand away and magically produces another serviette to clean it, because in her eyes I was forever the child, forever the junior, forever the little one. I didn't know why I was crying, and was too shy to ask my sister

"Why was I crying?" I asked, trying to hide my face.

"Who knows. I can't read you."

How long had it been like this, just her and I, two siblings left to face the wide world? From the time I took my first uncertain steps she was there, always watching, always was the one to catch me when I fell. I often claimed that I could remember things seen at the time of my own birth, and that this thing was her. When I opened my eyes and saw through my own wails the naïve face of the little girl who held me, I recall that I fell silent then. Perhaps I saw in her a mother, and this what was cooed me. As a matter of fact I never knew my parents. Neither did I ever feel that I needed to. By the time I came to my father was already dead, and when I turned a week old complications from childbirth pushed my mother to the same fate. So it was just me and my sister, along with a basket of other relatives who had no cause to take in another's children and thus kept their distance with a weekly allowance sent to us that stoked the gap. The years passed, and when I was old enough to waddle around on my own Tsutako was already a teen, and when I was old enough to fall in love for the first time she was already the recipient of many such others. Since I wasn't enrolled in any kind of schooling we were free to spend day in and day out with each other, and that was what we did. For when I did remember, those days spent in town doing everything that can be considered nothing are among the fondest memories of my life, and perhaps in every girl I've ever loved I have looked for a reflection of my sister. So when my ninth birthday came and went, and the tall man with square shoulders, long hair, and a nice jawline with whom she would eventually be betrothed came in the door, I wondered, who did she see in him? And I wondered, too, in this state of dis-memory and gummy remembrance –

Who did I see in him?


"By the way, where is your fiancé?"

"Out of town on business, but he'll be back tomorrow for the wedding. So, goodnight, Giyuu."

"What if he doesn't come?"

"I heard that if you stick a pair of feathers on your back before you sleep, the next morning, you'll be able to fly. So you'll fly, and find him for me."


Usually we slept side by side, in our simple futons, but that night I opened my eyes and knew that my sister was not there. It was not only that I didn't hear her soft, whirring snore (it sounded a bit like a pinwheel spinning), or even that there was a glaring lack of filling under her blanket. It was a feeling of dreadful solitude, like there was a statue-shaped gap of air in the house where she should have been. A folding screen divided where we slept from the rest of the cabin, and from under it the flickering light of a candle shimmied across the floorboards. But there was no-one on the other side. Now I knew Tsutako was gone, and in a worried guilty way, I took to looking for her.

I put out the candle and tug an overcoat over my pyjamas. Our house, a single-roomed, skinny wooden construction, was set on a hill surrounded by rice paddies. Normally crawling with the hunched movements of farmers picking stalks of the beady brown staple, now, in the middle of the night, it was empty. No sign of my sister anywhere. Had she gone to deliver a letter? Next to the candle I saw a pen, an inkwell, but no paper. I descended the hill and made off towards the post-office, thinking to find her there.

I'd left the house wrapped in silence, but now the cold seeped in through my hastily thrown-on outfit and sand tore at my feet. Perhaps I thought I would be back quickly, and that was why I hadn't worn shoes. But now I regretted it and wished I hadn't left in such a hurry, because after a while of ambling gravel turned to grass and familiar country-scape turned to forest and I realised I was lost.

Here the land was blue, and freezing. The forest was a dense and low one, with trees that were thick like brushes which scraped the top of my head as I walked under. Then I stopped, when I saw through the prickly marsh a light, then two, then five, then ten, then countless. Fireflies, maybe? But fireflies don't come out in winter. I came closer and saw that they were moving, and even closer I saw that it was in a rigid direction. Sidewinding through the landscape, marching across the valley fields, was a column of men. They wagged torches above their heads and chanted something – something with an unequal, unsettling rhythm – and I reckoned that if they saw me they'd attack me and set me on fire. I had come upon a break in the forest, ending in a stark cliff, and below me stretched the formation of faceless soldiers. But I had hidden myself well here, and this thought along with the assumption of what they'd do to me if I was found thrilled me.

They slithered along the valley, and I followed them in the cliffs. Then they stopped, and I stopped, then they looked up and I looked up.

And atop the hill parallel to me, stood a man.

Now there was nothing distinct about this man save for his bent shoulders and grey hair, and I might not have noticed him if not for everyone else simultaneously perking in his direction. Akin to a ghost or scarecrow, he stood there, just stood there on the rock spur, so still that he was almost aloof-looking, as if he was unaware of where he was. To me, he appeared a phantom. To the crowd, he must've been a martyr of sorts. The old man clearly didn't want to be there, and when he paced back a few the ground erupted in jeering and mad dancing, with all manners of slurs thrown around, the magnitude of which pulled him back to the edge. When the insults died, a chant rose up in its place. Through the bush I hid in I focused my ears and tried to make out the lyrics through my own panting and the buzzing of the forest:

"–ump. Jump. Jump. You're old and useless and nothing but baggage. Perform the oyasute; jump, jump, jump..."

Now another man with a stick prodded him from behind, and only his heels remained on the cliff. Though suicide was by then still a foreign notion to me, I got wind of what was going on, and thought to myself that I'd ought to jump out of cover and tell that man to defy the world, and live another day. But I could not muster up the courage to do it. The way those people screamed… the way they danced… in wasted patterns of nonsensical, repetitive motion, like they were all strung up to each other, made to move by some god above. It frightened me; yet I was struck in place. Even if I could not come forward to confront the crowd, neither could I pull myself back, despite being perfectly able to escape, still somewhat able to go home and convince myself it was all a dream.

So when the man jumped, and the man fell, and the man crumpled, I screamed.


"…you'll fly, and find him for me, Giyuu."

"What if I jump, and the wings don't work?"

"Then you'll fall… and either I'll catch you or the ocean will. But what if they do work? Think about that. You'll be able to go anywhere. The world is yours!"


…I screamed, the world went still, and then I was noticed.

There were torches thrown, though their flames were only barely able to lick me as I darted back into the wood. I ran fast as all hell, fast as I could in pyjamas and with no shoes and with torn feet, tripping a few, until all around me and in the distance dots of light appeared, and I realised I was surrounded. Akin to fever, my breathing was jagged, body cold yet head burning. The pressure caved in on me… the pressure that I was going to be found, and that if I didn't escape they'd burn me or break me or throw me too off a cliff, and that no matter what it was it would've been a painful, eventual death. The thought of Numachi inexplicably crossed my mind then. Right here and now, I was surrounded by enemies. Or maybe to them it was like an enemy had just been found in their midst, and it shocked them so that their first and immediate instinct was to be rid of it. When they'd drawn closer that their faces were palpable and I could not decide on either I came to the ultimatum that I was going to die. And then this conclusion was subverted for if I died my sister would gain a husband but lose a brother, and that I'd never get to see who this husband was. I'm shivering like a wet dog now, and perhaps crying too, and I start feeling sorry for myself and wondered why I came here in the first place.

Then a shadow comes over me and I feel myself lifted by the waist and the world narrows when I rise above it.


Say, looking back now, I remember a scene just like this.

It was about thirty, forty years ago, and I was with a sibling, my only sibling, or one of many, can't recall which.

There, in the ruins of a fallen nation, we excavated them:

A child named Numachi, who wanted to see the world.


I rose above the earth, buoyant as a flag in east wind, departing the enemies which if I'd left just a second later would've skewered me with their stakes, and I knew then what it felt like to fly.

But what made me fly?

For sure it was not I who propelled myself up, but when I saw the man who held me, and saw that he was wingless, I wondered if he did either. Then when we'd reached the threshold of how far gravity would let us go, and began our nosedived descent, I questioned whether we were flying at all. But the latent adrenaline in me would not let me think, and I wouldn't have my answer until we were back on land, dusting ourselves off, musing to ourselves what had just happened.

"You're a fool, you know? Screaming like that."

In the open lawn we'd landed in, the man's turned away from me, half bequeathed by the moonlight, and to me he looked almost deific. Despite his words the tone of them wasn't all that harsh, though I still felt the innate need to apologise.

"Sorry? Don't say sorry. People will think you're weak if you say sorry too much. Rather say thank you."

"…Thank you."

What was it about the man that struck me? He had a voice that peculiarly brought to mind the texture of silk, and hair the colour of pale gold. And that outfit of his – what was that outfit? – I'd never seen anything like it; a red-unto-black-soaked turtleneck, tucked into wacky striped hakama. Although for a broad, vertical figure such as his, I will say it suit him. Indeed he was admirably tall and lean, and I say admirably because the brain of the typical twelve-year-old boy – and I was quite typical – is wired in such a way as to idolise the strongest men, the biggest men, with more regards to surface than substance.

So when he turned around, and I saw the ladylike, iridescent eyes of all colours, rainbow-coloured, the eyebrows that were like arrows and the powdered complexion, it shocked me. Objectively, and maybe subjectively speaking –

He was beautiful.

"How'd you do that?" I asked. "How'd you fly? You've got no wings."

"Fly? That wasn't flying," he replied. "I just jump real high, that's all."

"But no human can do that!"

"Human, huh?"

He watched me, doubtfully.

"But thank you," I said again, "They were gonna kill me, swear."

"No problem," he replied, impassively. "Back there was a cult that hangs out some-a-ways from here. You heard what they were saying? Perform the oyasute. A practice of killing the elderly once they can't fend for themselves no more. They do it all the time. Not my cult, though. Just this time I happened to be in the area, and it seems you too…"

Then he produced a cloth from his sleeve and tossed it to me.

"Wipe yourself. You're… all teared up. You're gonna cry again, later, but… clean them for now."

He circled round me, and tapped my shoulder and turned me the other way. Behind me – or in front of me now – dropped from the sky and onto the field, was a lake. A very picturesque lake, like one in those illustrations you'd see accompanying nursery rhymes. There were reeds trailing all around it, the only break in them being on a patch of shore that was parallel to us, almost as if inviting us to come and sit. So sit we did. Side-by-side like that, a pang of déjà vu took my heart, and I wondered if it was my and Tsutako's evening seaside break that triggered it, or something else. I side-eyed the man to my left and went a bit flushed when I saw he too was looking at me. Because, and I repeat this, I was a shy boy, get?

"You… your future's all muddled," he said, maybe talking to himself. "What're you doing out so late? It's, like, two in the morning."

No reason, I muttered.

"That's a lie. You're looking for someone."

I gave in then, and remembered why I'd come out at all.

"Woah! How'd you know that?"

"…I sense it innately. It's my job to sense things in people, I guess."

"Her–" I started without thinking. "Have you seen her? My sister, I mean."

"Maybe. But let's first sit here and talk a while."

Despite his precedence for conversation, it was a while before our dialogue picked up again.

"Look," the man said. "I hear the fashion nowadays is for girls to put butterfly-shaped clips in their hair. Pretty niche."

"Not my sister," I said. "She ain't a trend-follower."

"Your sister…" the man recounted. "You love her?"

What a senseless question. Of course I loved her!

"And… does anyone love her?" he asked. "That other kind of love, I mean."

"She has a fiancé, but…"

He encouraged me to finish. Go on.

"I don't know who he is. I should know, but I don't. That's what she tells me."

"So you don't remember him," the man concluded. "That's the sign. I see. Listen, Giyuu…"

Giyuu? I didn't recall telling him my name, but I didn't recall a lot of things today, so I didn't press him for it.


"…have you ever heard," he said, "of the phenomena of the demon race?"


I did not understand, but his tone was dark.

"Demons," he said again. "Anti-humans. Disfigured humans. Sounds scary, right?"

Not really, I replied.

"Of course. Everyone says that. Everyone's confident in their compassion in theory."

He said this looking into me with his big eyes, full of undertones. He continued.

"And these demons – they are a hated race. Despised by humanity. Shunned."

He returns to eyeing up the lake.

"Some demons don't look any different from humans. Some do. Nevertheless, the true nature does not change. They've spread across the world, but deep down, they're all the same. They're all hated. Some try to hide what they are so that they're not, but what kind of life is that?"

He's staring at something, but I don't know what.

"Why're they hated though?" I asked.

"A lot of reasons. Maybe it's just human nature. Humans don't like seeing anything 'sub-human' reach the same level as them. Some humans even think other humans are below them. And there's another gory reason. But it's not good for a kid to know."

I paid no heed to the masterful reply, because I was being increasingly shaken by the realisation that I was here, talking to an unknown man with unknown ramblings of an unknown race, while my sister could've been anywhere out there in the wide world, in danger or not. Neither did I pay any heed to what followed. But I should have.

"There are those who strive to liberate the demon race. Demagogues, the lot of them. With ulterior motives. Very little do it for sheer patriotism."

Because when a people are oppressed they'll latch on to anything some new, fantastic-looking leader comes and says. And there are also those who are already powerful but choose to sit and wallow in their position. Like…"

His lips pursed into a mu sound, but he didn't finish. Still staring into me, he said this:

"But let it be known, that I am not one of those leaders."

His gaze finally falters, then his eyes turn into himself, and looking at his hands, watching introspectively, a sudden change of his tone.

"Giyuu, you… may not have had the easiest life until now. I know. And it's only gonna get worse from here. But, maybe if I make you forget her, and give him back to you… the pain'll be stemmed somehow."

"What?"

"Just listen. You don't need to understand. Everything'll make sense in due time. I'm…"


"I'm sorry, Giyuu."


With brutal pathos he repeated it. So, so, sorry.

But sorry for what?

Wasn't he the one who told me not to apologise too much?

That made him a hypocrite, now.

But if I were to feign complete innocence, right now –

Then that'd make me a hypocrite, too.


You'll know eventually, he said, when I asked what he apologised for. And I would know eventually. It was an omen to the next ten years of my life, when he pointed across the lake, and said this to me:

"Your sister's on the other side. She's waiting for you. Don't dwell on how I know. I… just do. I was the one who brought her there, after all."

Then came the answer to my midnight ordeal, and he stood from the sand and pulled me up with him. Go, he said, motioning me off. Go before she's gone. I thanked him again, trying to shake his hand, but he wouldn't let me, and quarter-way around the circumference of the lake, I called out to him:

"You know my name!" I said. "But what's yours?"

A silence, an eager silence, then –


"Douma," he cried. "Nisegami Douma!"


So I tumbled from the reeds, skipped across the lawns, looking back a few to see if Douma was still there, like if I didn't find Tsutako and if he was also gone I wouldn't be able to make my way home again, and for the second time déjà vu washed over me. This field was the same field of white chrysanthemum I'd napped in this afternoon, and running through it, there was the sound of wind whirring, grass rushing, a butterfly ambling, and I'm feeling the most ecstatic I've ever felt in what seemed my whole life. Then I stopped when I reached the head of the field, and I rubbed the final tears from my eyes, then strained them and saw it: the azure pupils, the braided hair, the dignified beauty of the sister who attended to me every day and who draped around her figure the red kimono that I'd come to associate with her so dearly. The sister – who was now dead.