| Chapter 13.5 |
By early morning, Watanuki's guests are gone. Kurogane and Fai have cleaned up all evidence of their quiet drinking party the night before, and Kurogane and Fai woke Kochoushu up just enough to give them her home address, and escorted her home.
Once home, Kochoushu slept well into the next day and got up around midnight, heavy and disoriented but too awake to sleep again. It was a nice night. A cool clear sky with a bright moon she could see from her bedroom window. Kochoushu slipped out of bed and took a quick survey of the house—her mother and father were already sound asleep. On an impluse, Kochoushu fetched the house keys and a light sweater, walked to the front door, and crept outside, and found the place where she had last parted from Subaru after magic lessons.
It didn't take long before she found what she was looking for: traces of the Blood Sakura...and a fainter and sorrow-tinged aura, that of Subaru's. Of course she had not heard from Subaru since she had found the note he had spelled to find her locker the day before—or was it two days before?—but she wanted to speak to him. Subaru would have forbidden her to look for the Sakura. He wouldn't approve, but perhaps her news was important enough to risk an encounter. And something about the aura... Her heart began to beat. The emotions she was picking up from it, churning and dreamlike, awash with some kind of suppressed stress, told her that something was very, very wrong. Her brain was cautious. Her heart told her it was not a possibility, but a certainty.
Her feet carried her clattering down the road, following the direction of the aura, and before long she began to lean forward in anticipation. She skidded to a halt as the Sakura loomed suddenly before her. The feeling of all that was dead and wrong blossomed in her heart, and she knew with certainty that Subaru was not all right.
"Subaru-san!" she yells, frantically searching for him in the clearing, and at the same time scrambling frantically backwards from the towering cherry tree, whose limbs had begun to agitate. He's not there. But he must be... "Suuuubaru-san!" She paces at the edges, watching the Blood Tree warily, ready to run if it reached for her.
"Kochoushu..." She hears his sigh. It comes from higher up than she expected, and she squints, looking up through the sakura flowers, peering through her fingers. He's up there, all right, high in the tree, among a tangle of thick branches; she can just barely see his head.
"It's me, Subaru-san! Kochoushu! Are you all right?" she shouts, pacing the ground below him.
"I..." Subaru groans, and the wood also groans, cracking open and splintering at the edges. Pieces of bark fall to the ground. Subaru's torso emerges with a sharp jerk, hanging limply upside down. "You're not...supposed to be here..." And he was supposed to protect her, the thought came, and that jolted him awake, sick with muddled horror and a dread in his stomach.
Kochoushu doesn't answer, for Subaru looks as if he is about to fall at any moment, and she is busy spot-checking him from the ground.
Subaru, the tree rustles, whispers, so soft no one else can hear, mine hunter, and it pulls away its slender branches, thins its vines and releases its petals. Subaru begins to slip, and to panic. Yours...on your...mark...her...yours...to mark
The green embrace snaps, but it's the words that terrify him more than his utter powerlessness to prevent uncontrollable descent. Subaru falls through the thinning foliage, his raw scream cutting through the scattering shower of pale pink flowers. Down on the ground, Kochoushu grits her teeth and instinctively shoves at the air and wind until Subaru slows down, it's not enough — but the tree has other ideas, and it uses its own magic to rapidly grow new branches and dispose of them, guiding Subaru's descent and catching him out of free fall until at last it lowers him to the ground. As quickly as she dares, Kouchoushu drags him to his feet and shoves him roughly to sit on the sidewalk, away from the branches, looking over her shoulder the whole time. It wasn't anything she had done that had freed him: the tree itself had chosen to let him go, doubtless for its own purposes. But for now it doesn't seem to matter. The Blood Tree vanishes as quickly as it came.
"Subaru-san! What happened?" She crouches over him, worried.
Subaru stares at her. "What were you—?"
"Looking for you! I can feel it, I know you've been stuck in that tree since you sent me that note about Watanuki, haven't you?" Kochoushu says, upset. "That's why you didn't come yourself. What happened?"
"I got too involved." Subaru forces himself to sit up, and regrets it. His stomach wants to revolt...
"According to who? Ugh, Subaru-san, your skin and clothes are covered in sap..." Kochoushu wipes her hands on the rough asphalt, grimacing.
"According to the Blood Sakura." Not one to know when to quit, Subaru staggers to his feet, and almost immediately trips and stumbles to the side of the road. Falling to his knees, he vomits in the gutter. The vomit is unnatural-looking, a thin but foamy mix of sickly yellow-pink and dark amber churned together. It doesn't look like human consumption. It can't be good for Subaru's gut.
Kochoushu says, "I don't understand."
"So it decided to 'take care of me' for a while." Subaru wipes spit from the corners of his mouth. "Because I'd become — overwrought. Then you come along." He coughs. "Shit..." He feels like it. The Sakura long ago honed its sap and its nectar into a human drug; weaned from it prematurely, of course he would be feeling its nasty aftereffects. Having been through this before, he knows the really nasty ones will kick in after another three hours. "You shouldn't have been there." Speaking of which, what happened to the wards he erected against her? He touches his shoulder, and feels a pang. He must have fallen on it.
"Why not? You said you would tell me if you went hunting," Kochoushu says. "You didn't say."
"I wasn't...hunting. You shouldn't be near the Sakura at all," Subaru rasps. "Especially now."
"You're repeating yourself." Kochoushu frowns. "If I hadn't come, the Sakura would still be stealing life from you." Probably. It wasn't like she had done anything to make the Sakura drop him, which puzzles her.
"That's not..." Subaru is about to explain, but doesn't, for the truth is a paradox. The Sakura gives life only in order to take life later on, and it will take his own life sooner or later, so Kochoushu is right enough. "I don't want the tree to take an interest in you," he lies—too late, the tree already has, if its whispers about marks mean anything. But if Kochoushu knows, she won't hesitate to take worse risks, thinking she has nothing to lose. "It's dangerous." He's dangerous. But he's not in love with Kochoushu, will never be in love with Kochoushu: surely he should not be compelled to mark her... "I'm sorry," he says, thinking as furiously as his befuddled brain will allow him to, and talk at the same time; "I suppose I should be thanking you."
Kochoushu shrugs. "I thought the risk was worth it."
No, that's not... "Promise me you won't go back there again, Kochoushu," Subaru pleads, and he doesn't mean it to sound condescending, but as soon as the words come out of his mouth it really does.
Subaru looks shocked at himself and Kochoushu actually laughs. "Are you kidding me? No! Of course I won't go back on a whim, or if you are on the hunt, but if you're in danger it can't be helped. I won't make a promise I am only going to break."
"I wasn't in danger." Physically he could hardly have been safer, though his mind had surely been succumbing, dying bit by bit to mad dreams. It wouldn't be permanent. He had suffered them before.
Kochoushu folds her arms. "Subaru-san, I really don't believe you."
Subaru pushes himself to his feet, reflecting that he's never been a good liar, and heads for the silver benches by the bus stop, where he sits, and Kochoushu follows him. Subaru doesn't know what to say to make her obey him. She's a sensible girl with a good head on her shoulders, with her own way of assessing risk. Without more information, information that he doesn't feel ready to give, she can hardly take him seriously.
He opens his mouth, and shuts it. "Tell me what was so urgent that it brought you here to find me in the middle of the night, then. At least, I assume it's the middle of the night." He looks up at the moon.
"The re-anchoring of the wishing shop was successful," Kochoushu reports.
"I would assume so...?" Subaru looks at her dubiously.
"It almost didn't work. It was—a day ago, I think. I spent most of today asleep." Kochoushu presses her lips together, waiting for his reaction. "I came to find you as soon as I awoke."
The blood drains from Subaru's face. So Watanuki's endeavor really had gone that badly. He almost couldn't believe it.
Kochoushu squeezes her hands together and gulps. "Subaru, I have to tell you something."
"Tell me," he says immediately, turning to her with his full attention.
She closes her eyes briefly, and opens them again, and forces herself to speak. "I think there's...another person...inside my mind," she tells him, getting the words out with effort. "I think they've been locked away since I was a small child, but only recently I began to realize that something was missing, like a piece of myself that wasn't myself, wasn't actualized yet. Like a future self. But I realized today, that was wrong. That person...is someone else entirely, with their own will and intentions, their own past memories and experiences, someone very close, very similar to me." She lightly touches the tips of her trembling fingers together, and looks up, momentarily breathless with anxiety.
"What happened? What caused you to realize?" Subaru asks her, intent.
"When W-watanuki failed," says Kochoushu, "I had to help him re-anchor it. He hadn't realized that the structure of the shop itself had changed."
Subaru finds himself clenching his fists. "Go on."
"The wards wouldn't take until the structural changes could take shape. I did that." Kochoushu takes a deep breath and flicks her fingers. "Or rather, the person inside me did, and I allowed her to take over, because I didn't know what to do and suddenly she was awake, she was present, she was there. I summoned a single shiki that morning, you remember; she summoned an entire swarm."
"And in that instant you knew you would never be alone again," Subaru says slowly.
"Ye-es," says Kochoushu, controlling herself very tightly. "I don't think I can be un-aware of her now. But I don't even know who she is—I—you don't think I'm—"
"Kochoushu." Subaru takes her lightly by the shoulders. "I can tell you right now, you're not crazy, and you're not possessed." She relaxes, and he lets go, with a nod. "What do you want to know? You have a right to know."
"What do you mean?" Kochoushu asks, still frightened.
"I had reason to suspect you were a reincarnation," Subaru tells her quietly. "And what you have told me just now tells me I wasn't wrong. That is what you have described to me."
Her heart beats strongly in her chest.
"I'm sure you have questions about her," Subaru says heavily. "And I may have the answers you seek. But before you ask, you should think about whether you want to find out the answers for yourself."
Kochoushu swallows, almost in relief. "Yes. That's what I want."
"Good. It is wise." Subaru smiles at her, though his expression is weary. "I can guide you on how to find out, but I think that would be better left for another time."
"Thank you."
"You must tell me more," Subaru says at last, "But we must part. I need to recover from the tree's toxins, and you should sleep. When we meet again, we can talk. Is it enough for now? Can you walk home safely?" He stands up, reeling just a little.
"Yes." Kochoushu twists her hands together. It is a relief. "It's not far, only a block or two away."
"Then I will take my leave here, today," he replies, and presses a hand to a suddenly aching forehead. He still has the detox period to undergo. "Where is the nearest bus or train station?"
Kochoushu points him in the right direction and talks him through the way back. They part, and Kochoushu walks home. Once in bed she tries, only semi-successfully, to sleep. She tosses and turns, and when she sleeps, her dreams are unsettled.
Time and time again, the visage of a woman with long dark hair and a pale, ghostly face floats in and out of the murky reeds of darkness behind her eyelids, but she does not know it. She feels like she should recognize it, with the disconcerting perception that this other face is only reflecting her own, if she doesn't know it, then she does not really know herself. But it is not her, this other face, for surely it is not tethered to her body at all...