'Nishimon called you Nisegami Youma'.
Nishimon called me Nisegami Youma.
While I was unconscious, supposedly –
While I watched that same unconscious body break Nishimon, supposedly –
I was referred to as Youma.
That day, a Wednesday, dawned warm and rainless. The curtain of the oriental night was pulled down over the day, and the air became black and I could feel the sea breeze again.
Youma appeared.
"You'd better get inside," he said. "Or the salt will get in your hair."
For I was sitting on my balcony, and the calibre of the wind was not enough to drive me back in.
"I can't sleep," I replied. "And I've got nothing else to do."
Youma came opposite me, still standing, hands akimbo. "You're lying," he said. "You're brooding. That's what you're doing."
I did not acknowledge him, and in this instant he knew.
"Shinobu's…" he started, not looking my way. "Shinobu's mad. The bird's mad. Don't listen to what they say."
I don't know what you're talking about, I would have said, but Youma read me and put a hand between my mouth and his ears.
"'During the fight, Nishimon called you Nisegami Youma'," he repeated. "That's what I mean. That's what's keeping you so occupied, huh?"
"…But I didn't ask for her to tell me. Really," I brought up.
"I know, I know. But now she has, and so there's a snake of doubt nipping inside your skull. You can't help it. Rather… I'd say… just let it go," Youma replied.
My answer was astute:
"But why not just tell me no?"
Youma's eyes became bigger and he sized me up. "How? It's not necessarily a yes/no question."
"You're supposed to be around me all times. And when Nishimon knocked me out, you wouldn't have missed what happened onwards. You should've seen the fight."
"And if I was away?" Youma asked.
"You wouldn't be away. So, did Nishimon say it? Yes, or no?" I tried to be forceful.
"…Go to sleep, Giyuu. See if you'll ask these questions when you've gotten rest."
"But I still will, Youma!" And nobody would have dared to believe that it was I who raised my voice against him, but it was.
"Okay. Okay." Youma's now-tightened hands flapped down and he sat in front of me. "You got me, got me."
"Is it true?" I said again.
"Yes. It's true. I heard Nishimon say it."
"Why didn't you say so?"
"'Cause I thought you would never have to know. But you do."
Cue a moment of tranquility, and I continued.
"I don't remember anything from the fight," I said. "But I had this one dream… where I think… I saw myself, like, in the third person, battling it out with Nishimon."
"A symptom," he said. "Of possession."
"Huh?"
"Being basically a 'part' of you, and being a demon, it's possible for me to possess you. Take control of your body. Though only of mind. Your appearance… won't convert to mine. And during this we switch places. I become part of the physical world… you go to the metaphysical. Psychic things, and all that."
"You've never told me about this," I said.
"No, not yet. But it was inevitable, either way. It made no difference to your knowing in the end."
"So that means it wasn't a dream?"
"Yeah. You took my place as a bystander while I took your place in the living. You watched me fight Nishimon."
"And my hand," I went on, and looked at my palms. "I remember so vaguely that my hand was cut off. My right hand. But here it is again. And Shinobu pointed it out yesterday how this one was so much bigger than my other. Is that… because of you, too?"
"It is. When I possess you, you get the healing ability of a demon. But as a side effect, whatever is healed on you is taken from my body. Not exchanged, just taken from. Hence… why that hand's so big."
"Possession…" My hands came up to my head as a pain started to buzz in my skull. "Then my Tsuguko position really is undeserved."
Youma did not reply. I knew he knew I was right, but that he did not have the heart to confirm it. And there was no roundabout way left to comfort me, either. Only truth.
"Then that means –" I suddenly said, realising something. "Tengenmon. He told me not to kill his brother. I didn't agree, but I didn't disagree, either. In-between. But you took control of me and killed him anyway. It was you – who killed him. You were…"
"…Lying to you yesterday. Yes. I'm sorry, Giyuu. But it had to be done. You heard this phrase, 'it's survival of the fittest'? It's survival of the fittest. Nishimon was going to kill you. Even by the time your arm cut severed your life was hanging by a half-thread. Maybe…" – he jumbled his words – "…I got into your body just to heal that arm, not to combat. But Nishimon started attacking me, or you, and I had to fight back. And since I'm stronger than him, he lost. He died, in place of you. What was I supposed to do?"
"Let him live, at least–"
"Don't you understand!?" Youma boomed and gripped my arms and squeezed me. "It was him or you! And what do I care about him? It's good to be kind, yes, but never too much. He was our enemy. He would have never showed you the same compassion, should you have changed places. He gave you the chance to walk away and we, we, squandered it. Not only you."
"Say, Youma, why'd you care for me so much?" I asked, and what a dastardly question it was. He sank into a brutal expression, and I knew the one reason why he did not explode: because of the magnitude of snapping at me; because of the image of my sister that restrained him.
"Go," he ordered, and I did not refuse him. That night, I slept on a chest that swelled with a burning hatred for myself.
I arrived first in the laundry field the next day, and Miyamoto soon after. She came with no air of belligerence, and when she saw my drained face her own became pitying and she was empathetic.
"Sleep well?" she asked.
"Slept… no, not well," I replied.
"Me neither."
She crooked a finger at me.
"So we don't fight today. Follow." And we went.
A time later we're bent over the railings of one of Hiroshima's numerous piers, a tatami-sized distance between us, the sea and thirsty day all around. The sun seemed to float in the heat, and there was nothing but desolation in this part of town save for a band of three playing a lively tune under a lonely palm tree, and dust which went alive with the wind. Miyamoto spoke.
"You like this place, Giyuu?" she asked.
I was honest with her. "Here, not really."
"Me too. And Shinobu and Kanae neither."
She turned round on her back and reclined towards the ocean.
"I've known them since they were here for the first time. Because Tsubone and my Hashira are close. And… they've been lovable. Since childhood. But I blink and now they're both teens. And I'm eighteen. Age gap matters less when getting older, and they're catching up."
I copied her motion, and conjured up the image of the sisters before me.
"I've been told they've known you for many years," Miyamoto continued, and suddenly I was in the picture too. Then I tried to imagine what she looked like when she was young, and she was there also.
"…They have," I replied.
"Well? How'd you meet?"
Then red brutality ensued in my portrait, brutality I shan't describe, and I shut it down promptly.
"It's… maybe they wouldn't want me to tell you," I said.
"Hmm? Okay." Miyamoto frowned, but it wasn't genuine. "But what do you think of them?"
"What to think of them?"
"Like, are you fond, proud, disgusted by, whatever?" Miyamoto persisted.
"…They're acquaintances."
"So not like siblings?"
Why would they be, I would've thrown back, but then I reckoned Miyamoto was coming from a sensible place, because now that I was due to presumably spend a good part of my demon slaying career living with the sisters we were going to become close, uncontrollably. But to answer her question: no, not like siblings. And I wasn't sure if it was a matter of 'when' I'd view them so, rather than 'if ever'.
"To me they are," she said, and only because it was Miyamoto did I not question it. "But maybe… your reluctance… is because you had siblings before? Do you have siblings?"
Why did I pause to say it? "Had a sister… and a…"
"And a what?"
"Just a sister."
"But you were going to say something else."
"There's someone like a brother. But it's actually just a sister. Really, nothing." I tried to remove her interest by stoking her interest, and for a loophole it worked.
"And this sister…" – Miyamoto's gotten closer to me – "…I'm guessing you became a demon slayer to take revenge for her?"
"I did." That was one thing definite.
"But you don't seem the avenging type."
My reply was quick:
"Because I'm not."
We're near enough that we've subconsciously taken to almost whispering, but it's befitting of the nature of our conversation. The clandestine nature. Such is the treacherous nature of humanity that we descend into hypocrisy; and yet it was due to my being a contrarian that we were quiet so.
My hypocrisy –
My hypocrisy against the mantra that had guided and shaped and moulded and crafted my life until then. Denial of my raison d'être, so to speak. And there was one phrase that mandated it.
I remember only vaguely what I imparted in her ear that day. Though it has stuck with me through all these years as a symbol of resolve whatnot, or lack thereof, it halfway escapes me now. But I'll recall it soon.
That's right.
I said to her:
"Miyamoto –
in truth –
I –
have no want –
no want at all –
to avenge Tsutako Tomioka, my sister."
And I hated myself for it. I hated that this mouth could ever give way to such words. I wanted to take a needle and sow it together and hope nothing of the like could ever come out of it again. I wanted to be decreed mad and taken to a hospital to make this head right. I imagined Youma in the one corner preparing to scald me, my younger self in the other ready to do the same. But nothing would have hoped to relight the flame in my heart to fight. Nothing could have spurred me to battle for a woman who was but a name to me. Inside, there was only darkness. Yet halfway down the road back, Miyamoto spoke again.
"But if you don't go through with it you'll regret it in the end," she said. "Though I don't know why you've lost your motivation, revenge is a travesty. I'd say, rather do it for yourself."
Something began to stir in me.
"Do it," she continued. "So that you can have something to look back on, and say 'that's what all those years amounted to'."
…For it was as Miyamoto said. Revenge is a travesty. But I had no path left to go up except that, and the backwards way that led down to the cesspit of my youth. In the middle, in the limbo, I stood. I looked forward and looked back and the latter caught my eye and then the former. A travesty of revenge – and indecisiveness.
"I don't even know if I'll be alive long enough to say that." I tried to counter her.
"Yes, you don't know." Miyamoto's soft face became like granite and it was for this that I listened more than ever. "You could die a year from now, or a thousand years from now. In the next hour, or by the next day. But the one thing you can do…
is resist –
until the end."
And her speech was magnetic so that perhaps, it was the one reason why I once again began to lumber slowly forward, up this path set for me, the path of travesty.
That day, I gave the hardest fight against Miyamoto yet.
Though I still lost.
But the time of decision was drawing near, I could feel, for Tsubone to pick to keep me as a Tsuguko. Although there was no such thing – I had already been chosen and could not be un-chosen – I had made it a mission for myself to beat Miyamoto in these next few days, otherwise… no, I hadn't decided on an otherwise, but as one reason, lest the shards of my pride be melted. And I was getting impatient, too.
So with fortitude, I went to Shinobu.
"Do A.A.E. on me," I said to her, in the office.
She sunk into her chair and stared me up a moment. "What's that?"
"What you told me about the day-before-yesterday. Artificial… something expansion. Where you make me breathe better."
"Oh, oh, that." She remembered it suddenly. "But won't, like, Miyamoto wonder why you got stronger so suddenly?"
"I don't care." I told it to her true and straight.
"…And it's a dangerous process. And I've only been through it once."
"Don't care!" I reiterated, and she relented then.
"Fine." She bent a finger at me and I followed her through the long corridors of the Medical Faculty, till bright oak wood halls had turned oily and dark and dusty, and we'd arrived at a non-distinct door which led into a non-distinct room that was as miscellaneous as it was hidden. At the far corner, a cabinet.
Shinobu went to it and dug inside and dragged out an imposing iron pump, with a silicon tube running out of it. There was a big red dial on the top of it, supposed to quantify air pressure, or something. She pointed out a lounger behind me and I sat in it and she lugged the canister over to my side.
"A long time ago… maybe, before we were born, Tsubone used this as a makeshift way to treat someone with Polio," she explained while fiddling with the valve. "I think he still died, but at least this kept him alive a little longer by forcing him to breathe. Something to do with the air pressure in his lungs. But now we'll be manipulating this machine to pump air in there. Open your mouth."
"Wha–"
She shoved the duct between my teeth and began forcing it down. Instinctively my throat tightened up, and I tried to pull her out of there, but at the present time she was in control of my body to the extent such that action was futile. A mechanical blowing sound began to rise – I took it as the point of no return being marked – and I closed my eyes and took a final breath and hoped that there would not be too much pain. But nothing.
"Shit, sorry," Shinobu swore. She took a small plastic disc and inserted it at the roof of my mouth. "This is to stop the air from going up into your head, and… bursting the vessels there. Again, sorry."
At once she resumed. I felt my chest begin to rise, my insides start to gurgle, and the pain set in soon after. The tears flooded my eyes. I gripped the leather armrests with all my strength and tried to stay still as my torso surged and flattened, warped and un-warped. Through the tears I heard Shinobu saying vaguely "tap me when you've reached the limit". Finally, my lungs would have no more. Just as they were to crush my ribs I gripped Shinobu, and it was done. I fell to the floor coughing and sweating, but my breath came back to me quickly. My tears dried as another sensation took its place: power. On the ground, I saw my reflection in the milled surface of the canister. I was anew.
Miyamoto Shō was there in the evening. Though the summer heat had died to the extent that a coolness could be felt, she had already taken off her jacket and rolled up her sleeves and loosened her collar and I was there, too uptight to do the same.
"There's this voice in my ear, telling me, that this'll be the last time," Miyamoto said. "And that's why I'm here."
"Whose voice?" I asked.
"Dunno. But I take to thinking it's yours."
"Then the voice is right." I staunched myself. "This will be the last time."
And immediately she flew. She came to my feet and swept forwards and the tips of her toes grazed my shin, but it wasn't enough. Still I stood. It wasn't long, though, before I lapsed again into retreating. I teetered half my focus on keeping balance and half on evading Miyamoto, and I was midway backwards through the field when I made the connection that this is what I had been doing all this time. Every time – to end in loss. Then I recounted Miyamoto's words of two days before; that I was too stale, that I only ran away, and that is why I would never win.
So I would do as she said and resist until the end!
Miyamoto threw a too-wide punch and by magic of newfound power and heaven above, I parried her. I parried and threw her back. Obviously, she's startled by this. Suddenly her pose became all crouch-like and it wasn't significant enough that she'd 'went on the defence' per se, but the offense had been stopped. I went alight with the adrenaline of pushing her back, and truly could feel the difference the oxygen made. From then on, slowly I began to tip the balance towards me. Such is the penumbra of combat that I can't fully recall why the fight would go the way it did. But the chase became inverted and Miyamoto would never be on the advance again. Though, she still had superiority in technical power, and she knew it. That is why I resolved the one way to beat her was to use her confidence as a weapon. She would get cocky – and I would bring her down with my composure.
And after enough pursuing, reverse pursuing, and pursing again, the moment came. An epic exchange of a single move and one million undertones.
Miyamoto made one kick too daring, and I caught her.
I caught her, summoned every bit of emotion in me, and pulled.
The finale of a week spent meandering in the dark:
Miyamoto Shō had been toppled.
And on the ground like that, she clapped, and gave me a beautiful smile.
Tsubone was there, congratulating me too, and it was slower though similarly genuine applause. It occurred to me, then, that I hadn't seen her once since my induction as apprentice, but the immediate impression I received from her lukewarm greeting was that this was something I was not going to pay any mind to in the future.
"Evening…" I said. I kept my head down. "…Ma'am."
"Ma'am?" Her thin eyebrow went crooked. "If I'm a ma'am then you're a sir. And you're not a sir. So I'm not a ma'am. Just say Tsubone."
"Tsubone."
"Good. I see…" – she inspected Miyamoto laying under me, who hastily got up – "…you've won finally. That's another good thing. By God, today has been wonderful."
"What's up, Tsubone?" Miyamoto said.
"A mission's up. Due for Giyuu… and another for you."
Tsubone tossed an envelope to Miyamoto. She opened it, muttered something indecipherable, said bye to me, and went off. Now, Tsubone and I were alone. In retrospect I can't help but wonder if that was her intent.
"Did you notice the handicap she had on herself?" she said.
"What?"
"Using only her right arm and leg. The handicap. I noticed it very soon."
"There was such a thing…?" Gloom slammed on me. "Then, that means…"
"It means little. Miyamoto's always been very kind. She took advantage of your inexperience and gave you headway to win. Maybe… I would've done the same. But it means little. Come."
"Come where?" I asked.
"I'm accompanying you on your first mission as Tsuguko," she replied, smiling. "It is tradition. Best to not refuse."
A while later the two of us standing before a very old shack that had somewhat of a demented air around it. We're at the outskirts of Hiroshima – outskirts further from the ones we knew – and here the moon shone less and the night seemed darker. Besides that and the dusty parallel road on which we stood, there was nothing.
Tsubone spoke.
"We got the message about twenty minutes ago. A demon takes longer than that to finish their meal. So, it should still be inside."
"And if it isn't?"
"Then this'll be a goose chase. I'd have had the ochre wool pulled over my eyes, by you."
…Deciding to ignore the abrasiveness of her comment, I went forward and took initiative to bust in and end this promptly, with my newly-returned sword. But I was stopped. Tsubone stepped up and did it instead. She creaked the door open, and we went inside.
At the end of the room was a duo of them: one demon, bent over one human. The demon had its mouth full with a manner of gore and yellow fat, and the unmoving human had half his body gouged from him, to become a string with some off bits left on it. A crook of moonlight from the open door landed on the two, and the demon noticed us immediately and spat the blood out and, likely recognising that it had been outnumbered and outpowered, kept itself low and prostrated as it slowly backed away from the body.
"You notice what he's doing, Giyuu?" Tsubone said. Her expression had become long and taut.
"Bowing," I replied.
"Besides that. The panting."
Only then did I notice the feverous breathing; the relentless expansion and de-expansion of its chest. But it was noted only because it was pointed out to me. It was normal for demons to breathe, right?
"Demons cannot breathe. Or rather, they don't need oxygen to sustain themselves. In their first week after transformation they learn this and gradually drop the habit, until it's gone entirely. Though their lungs still remain," Tsubone explained. "But if ever they happen upon a human threat, their mind regresses back to that state, in the hope that this will help them be spared. And the way they best remember how to emulate that – the behaviour they associate most with humans – is to breathe. That is why he pants. Pants as much as he can to appease us more, in addition to the bowing. Sad, isn't it?"
For the first time the face that was like a fortress waned, and there was soft sorrow.
"How badly he wants to be human. You can see it. You can see the difference between demons who volunteered to be turned and those who were forced. Nevertheless, we must be impartial."
As swiftly as her iron composure ebbed she flicked her sword – when did she take it out? – and the demon's head was off. The rest of it crumbled into white sand, and there was no resistance as it did so. The deed was done, and calmness returned.
"There're demons out there who claim to be able to breathe, but this isn't true," Tsubone said. "Demons like, for example, former demon slayers, who want to carry the legacy of their human lives forward as a weapon to facilitate their new. But this is only for show. Only for the sake of sentimentality. It does nothing. Let's go."
"Wait," I stopped her in the doorway. "Why didn't you let me kill it?"
Her reply was stalwart:
"The young don't need to have things on their conscience."
"What do you plan on doing, now?" Tsubone asked me on the way back. I didn't have an answer for her, or myself, and I told her that I was still thinking about it.
"But that's no good. That means it'll take time. A time where you'll be stagnant. Ice and not water. Wasted time."
"…Who says?" I replied.
"I say so. When you're young you think the world is yours and that you have infinite time. But who's to say tomorrow everything won't get turned inside-out? This you should give thought, and not to dawdle."
"…But I have to think about it," I said. "Otherwise I won't know." To this, Tsubone finally relented. Though there was something else left.
We were walking along the bay when we came to a jetty, and Tsubone pulled over and told me to follow and we went to the crux of it. The platform was rubble-ridden, and I could've sworn being here was a scene I'd played out before, but there was no certainty. At the end of the pier, Tsubone pointed over the ocean, and made me do the same. With firmness, she told me this:
"Let's start by going over there."
Over there, to the other side of the world.
The land of the great nation and the meager nation; of the dignified and the infidel.
Let's start by going over there –
Back to where we came, back to the beginning of this path of travesty.
I had arrived home and was halfway in bed when Youma appeared by my side for the first time since our nightly bickering. Like someone else, he came with no air of belligerence and an empathetic expression, but I was immediately wary, because I had yet to reconcile with him and with myself and I knew that he knew this and it was never good to be too transparent. To friend, or foe, and whichever he occupied right now.
"Do you remember? This is how I first appeared to you in this form. The morning after Final Selection."
He was staring the other way. "I remember," I replied, and he turned to look at me.
"I…" Youma started. He twitched. "For yesterday, I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" I tried.
"You know what. And it ain't your fault," he went on. "On the path of revenging anybody's bound to lose steam. But Miyamoto's right. You've gotta resist until the end. Resist the urge for adequateness."
"And if I don't want to?"
"Then you don't want to. Anything good and fruitful in the long run that takes time to cultivate demands a laborious journey to get there. It is natural. But both adequateness and revenge are travesties in their own right. It is up to you to decide which is less so, and embark on it."
Revenge, a travesty of fighting.
Adequateness, a travesty of staleness.
This is the choice he presented me.
The choice that would dictate the course of a lifetime.
But is that what it was?
Just the two of them?
Why couldn't I carve out my own path?
For I was young, and free, and the world…
The world –
…That's right.
I still have that.
That one dream.
Not my own, but...
Resonant, as if it was.
"Did you know, Youma?" I began. "On the other side of the ocean is the world. And what a huge world it is."
He raised his eyebrows.
"To the east of here… is America. The land of the great plains and the thirteen colonies and glitzy California and the Iroquois. To the north of here is Russia. Huge, and wide, and cold and hot, and so different from one end to another. To the west of here is China. The central country. Where one-thousand dynasties rose and died and where both the greatest tool of knowledge, paper, came from, and the greatest tool of warfare came from, gunpowder. And beyond that is everywhere else. If you think about it, Japan's boring as sin. What do we have here? Sushi? Me?"
In a burst of newfound energy, I ran to the balcony, and took Youma with me. I was ecstatic. I was mad. I was the same boy I was two years ago, peaking over the railings of the Final Selection house to the world below me, grieving Sabito, but I was also different. I came to the edge and saw the land rising and falling before me, and then the sea with the midnight sun half-immersed in it, and perhaps even what was beyond that sea. I launched my right hand forward, and pointed. Youma watched. Then I took his, and made him do the same. Like this, side-by-side with the greener half of my enemy and of myself and of God and of everyone else and of the subjective and of the objective, who I'd forgiven long before the apology was proposed, who I'd never wish to reject again, I spoke:
"Let's start by going over there, because the world is ours!"
Intermission, end
