Trigger warning this chapter, for discussions of suicide.

Tsuzuki couldn't say how long he had been lying there in the center of the room, held fast to the floor by the glowing sigil beneath him.

Already rendered effectively helpless by the poisoned blade, he could not fight back, only feebly protest as Muraki laid him out on the floorboards, and under his breath, as though to a lover, chanted the words that would activate the trap.

Tsuzuki hadn't the energy, or the sobriety through the pain licking along every nerve, to be surprised by such an underhanded move. He must have known that Muraki would resort to such tactics eventually. The events of the last several months could not have been enough to alter that man's nature from what it was before. Only render it down into a more concentrated form.

"This should feel familiar to you," the doctor said. "I believe you were in one of these traps before, albeit a little more vertical. I think you'll find this position kinder on your circulation."

Knowing Muraki, it probably enabled the poison to circulate more effectively through his blood. No matter. Tsuzuki could heal from any wound. Eventually. Though that was small consolation while he felt at every moment as though he were being attacked by stinging sea jellies and fire ants at the same time. And unable to relieve a single itch. His teeth were chattering so much from the shock to his system, and his mouth felt as though it had been numbed, so his muttering what Muraki could go do to himself sounded rather less than threatening. It was barely even intelligible.

It only earned him a chuckle. "I was going to give you a hint as to how to free yourself," Muraki said, "but in light of your ingratitude just now, I think perhaps I'll just let you figure this one out on your own. It shouldn't pose too much trouble for you. M-m, well . . . maybe when your body starts to feel like your own again, that is."

Entirely too conscious of them, Tsuzuki willed his muscles to stop their trembling. But they had a will of their own under the poison's influence, and he could not stop from trembling no matter how much he wanted to.

A moan of frustration tore itself from his throat. At least he needed no finer control for that. But it did not garner Tsuzuki any more sympathy from the doctor. He stood above Tsuzuki like a man made of ice and metal—not without feeling, but what feeling he had, cold and inhuman. Was this how he had appeared to Hisoka, as he lay on the grass, racked with pain from his curse? Had Hisoka wanted to smash in the sadistic smirk on Muraki's lips as badly as Tsuzuki did now? Had he even been able to think about revenge in his state?

It was difficult to imagine what Hisoka had been through. Though Tsuzuki felt that, if anything came close to it, surely it was this. Intense pain Tsuzuki had felt before, from wounds far more grave than any he had now. And he wasn't sure anything could come close to Sargatanas ripping his essence from Tsuzuki's soul.

This was merely a different kind of suffering. Like dying of cancer or influenza, rather than a knife wound or even grief. He felt like death itself. Like his own flesh was turning against him, from the vein outward. Heart racing out of control, burning up and racked with chills simultaneously, unable to catch his breath or focus on the dark ceiling light above him. Feeling like the whole world was spinning off its axis beneath him. In retrospect, he was glad Muraki had kept him drugged and unconscious the last time he was under the poison's spell. It would be a blessing if he just passed out.

Eventually he must have.

When he woke, it was sometime in the middle of the night. He could do nothing but lie there, alone, struggling against the intangible, if not invisible, bonds that held him fast, with what little strength was returning to him.

It did no good. Somewhere there had to be a physical setup of the pentacle that held him, but he did not know where it was, or what good knowing would even do him. Could he use his telekinesis to affect something in another room? Maybe if he knew which room that was and could envision it. And maybe if he weren't feeling intensely ill and was able to concentrate.

He tried meditating on his surroundings, but meditation had never really been Tsuzuki's strong suit. He could go for short stretches quite effectively, particularly if he was focused on some goal; but with nothing else to do but think, no end to this torment to look forward to, his mind wandered before he was even aware it was wandering.

To where he had gone wrong. How he had fucked this all up. Not to mention, let himself be captured. It was his weakness where Muraki was concerned that it always came back to. Yet, if he ever got out of this trap, could he honestly say he wouldn't hesitate to right that wrong? If Tsuzuki knew anything about himself, he knew he would probably fail at every opportunity he was granted to put an end, once and for all, to that man.

Muraki certainly took his time returning. Tsuzuki was awake to watch the sun come up. Or, more precisely, to see the light that came through the opaqued windows gradually brighten, and shift slightly throughout the morning. For a few hours, it fell across him, warming him, and must have lulled him into another nap. This one, almost restful. It was Muraki's return that woke him.

"And how are we feeling this morning?" he asked in his most innocuous bedside manner.

It made Tsuzuki want to spit in his face. He could only shift in his prison. "You know exactly how I'm feeling." His throat burned around the muttered words, but at least he had no trouble forming them.

Muraki hummed in thought. "Your body is metabolizing the poison quite nicely, I see. It would appear it's time for another dose."

Tsuzuki's panic the moment the shuriken blade reappeared spurred his body into action; but it was not enough to break the pentagram's hold, and in the end he could do nothing to stop Muraki from etching a thin cut into his forearm.

"What's the point of all this?" he hissed, knowing he didn't have long before the poison retook its hold. "You tell me you want me to escape, but I can't do it if you keep cutting me with that thing!"

"Wrong, wrong. . . ." Muraki sighed and squatted down, as if to better impart some wisdom on a more willing pupil. "You need to start thinking ahead, Tsuzuki. When I do send you back to your colleagues, do you suppose Enma is going to simply let you have the run of the place? Return to business-as-usual, just like that?"

"We've been over this already. But I can't learn to do what you want me to when you keep drugging me!"

Already Tsuzuki could feel the venom's fire start to course through his limbs, adding fuel to flames that had only started to burn themselves out. He shut his eyes tight, willing his empty stomach to calm, as a strong wave of vertigo rushed over him again. This was like a roller coaster from Hell, one he could never seem to get off of.

"Do you think I became immune to a dozen different toxic substances overnight?" Muraki was asking him, as though he really expected Tsuzuki to answer, let alone pay attention. "Of course not. I had to work at it. By taking minute doses at the start—not without their uncomfortable side effects, but far from lethal amounts. Over time, I gradually increased the dosages I was taking, sometimes over the course of many years, building up my body's tolerances a step at a time, to the point where now I can recover quite easily from what would certainly kill a lesser man."

If he was expecting congratulations, or for Tsuzuki to be impressed, he would have to wait.

But it didn't seem to matter. "I have every confidence that you can do the same with this substance. Granted, it appears to work a bit differently from the sorts of toxins I've built up tolerance to. But then, as a shinigami's body operates differently from a mortal's, it follows that what inhibits and afflicts it should operate differently as well. A toxin that slows your cells' speed of repair to a near halt can be incredibly detrimental in a fight, but its other, more minor effects, these psychological components—"

Tsuzuki couldn't help a bitter laugh at that. To have the very real pain he was experiencing passed off as no more than "psychological". . . .

"Those can be overcome," Muraki told him with a hard glare. "If one possesses the desire and will power to overcome them."

"Power through the pain, in other words," Tsuzuki muttered through his teeth.

"Yes. That is precisely what I mean. The human mind can withstand any amount of pain. I would imagine a superhuman mind, all the more so."

It seemed, however, that Muraki did not understand the absurdity of what he was asking. How could he? Enma's poison didn't work on mortals. And even if it did respond to something demonic in Muraki's nature, that same genetic material he claimed to have inherited from Tsuzuki's father, it would not affect him to the same extent. So to ask Tsuzuki to just ignore this feeling like every nerve was on fire and every muscle cramped, to just work around it, was a joke too infuriating to be funny.

The moment Tsuzuki started to laugh, it turned to a sob in his throat. And with that, tears sprang up in his eyes that he couldn't wipe away and couldn't stop. Though it shamed him to let Muraki see him like this—even though he had already seen Tsuzuki at much lower points—knowing there was absolutely nothing Tsuzuki could do about it just made the tears flow all the thicker. It was hopeless. Muraki lied just as he always had. He would never let Tsuzuki out of here, and this pain would never end.

Another day passed into night. This time, however, the pain would not let Tsuzuki sleep.

The dark light fixture in the center of the ceiling stared down at him like an eye. A single eye, a single fixed object in a room that was spinning out of control.

Even when Tsuzuki closed his eyes, he could sense it there, behind his eyelids, watching him with lascivious intent, like a voyeur. Judging him. Mocking him. At one point he even yelled at it to shut up; then, realizing he had been talking to an inanimate household item, laughed until it was himself he wished would shut up. The sound of his own laughter hurt his brain.

But the silence, when it returned—that hurt too. Unendurable in its completeness, its alone-ness. After a while, he started to invent things to hear in it. Hallucinations. They must have been. There was no one else there.

But he swore he could hear music.

A repeating melody of violins? A record playing in the distance?

Or voices talking in the hall? His own—or Muraki's?

Which Muraki?

God, but he couldn't even answer that anymore.

"The patient appears to be bent on self-destruction. We must all endeavor to protect him from himself. Stay vigilant. He's determined. He may resist you if you try to stop him. He may not be able to understand, but what we are doing is for his own good."

It was Yukitaka's voice he still heard in his head, speaking to the nurses in the other room, thinking Tsuzuki in his catatonia couldn't hear or understand him. But the words permeated his skull anyway. Even as he lay there unmoving, as if smothered under a heavy fog, his soul cried out in desperation to be allowed to die, to be allowed an end to this pain of living, but he just couldn't make them hear.

No, not the pain of living. The pain of existing. He technically no longer had a life to end. Though he didn't see what it mattered, what the difference really was. Wasn't this life all the same, just in a different body, one that had no set expiration date?

He knew it had to be just another hallucination, but he saw a butterfly flit above his face, bobbing up and down in the air as though keeping time with the beat of strummed chords of a guitar. Don't be concerned/ It will not harm you/ It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of . . . And he wanted to catch hold of it . . . With nets of wonder . . . and let it carry his soul away on a chip of broken glass, away from this clinic that protected a life he did not want. Away from the prison of this body.

But this was not Yukitaka's clinic. And he could not cut a way out from his own flesh.

He could not even move, as the butterfly dissolved into Muraki's face, lowering over his. Coming at him with that scalpel—no, that poisoned blade. "No . . . please, no more . . ." he rasped, but maybe this was an hallucination, too. He couldn't feel the cut of the blade. He couldn't feel anything.

The screaming pain drowned out everything else.

In his non-sleep he felt them visit, one by one. Come to spit on his image, to kick him when he was down, get him back for everything that he had done, if only by showing up. Showing up was all they needed to do.

Mariko. . . . Maki. . . . Mitani. . . . Tsubaki. . . . Eileen. . . . Kazusa. . . . Hisae. . . . Maria. . . .

The line snaked through the room, without end despite the walls, stretching back years, back decades. He could see them all. He remembered every name. He relived their deaths. Despite what he wanted his coworkers to think of him, he remembered every one. Some of them were his coworkers. God, he had caused them such pain. There was Hisoka—hanging back behind the crowds, knowing it would wound Tsuzuki just a little more if he kept out of reach, avoided eye contact—and a few other faces that he hadn't seen in years, faces that were no longer in the Judgment Bureau because of him. Not because they had moved on—no, they'd never got that chance—but because he had caused their total obliteration.

Even Fujisawa was there, though Tsuzuki had never exchanged a single word with him. It didn't matter what the boy had done. Tsuzuki was responsible for his death, his resurrection, the murders the boy had committed—all of it. If not for me, Focalor would never have targeted his school, and Mitani would never have become a killer. If not for me, there would have been no Muraki in the first place to bring him back.

He didn't blame any of them for their condemnation. He deserved every last bit of it. And he wallowed in it. Reveled in it, if only because it was satisfying in some way to feel justified. To feel the crushing weight of his guilt matched in their stares, and doubled. It still wasn't all that he deserved.

He could tell himself he had done his best. He could say he was ordered to end their lives. Or, if not, that he couldn't have saved them. He could try to convince himself that some of them had even wanted to die.

But in the end, what difference did it make? He was a killer. Always had been.

He could remember standing in a churchyard garden in the middle of wartime. The sky blue, the grass green, and the only reminder that somewhere out there people were in a struggle for their lives, the emptiness of the garden dirt beneath the nun's hoe. He watched her dig up dandelions and tiny, feeble yams and, because there was nothing else, put them in her basket. He could hear her labored breathing, and her gasp echoing in her empty body when she finally noticed him and his partner standing above her.

He spoke a name, a question, and watched as fear flashed across her face. It was a young face, but badly scarred by leprosy beneath her wimple. "She doesn't live here anymore," the young nun said. "She died a long time ago."

He knew that was a lie, but his sympathies went out to her. So he asked her her name. "Agrippina?" It came out as a question too, not because she was uncertain of it, but because she wasn't sure whether she should say.

"Tsuzuki," said his partner, "that's her. She's the one we came for."

And, like that, the young woman dropped her basket and ran. Tsuzuki swore and gave chase. He knew, in that brief second their eyes had met, that she knew exactly what he was, and what he was here to do. "Damn it, if she screams," his partner began, knowing the last thing they needed was to involve the local authorities. But Tsuzuki had no intention of letting that happen. "We just want to help you!" he called out to the young woman. And as she turned to look back at him, she tripped, and fell on the grass.

Help, huh? Was that what one called putting another living being out of its misery? She was the third case of starvation and malnutrition he and his partner had had to visit that week, thanks to this bloody war, and it never got any easier. Doubtless there would be another one tomorrow, or the next day. So could he be forgiven if he was a little less patient with her than he normally would have been?

No. No, there was no forgiving the way he treated her. It was clear his "help" was the very last thing she wanted.

She tried to crawl back to her feet, but he got there first. Turned her to face him, and held her tightly in place as he tried to explain to her what he was doing there, what he had to do, that she had no reason to be afraid. But she wouldn't listen. She just screamed. She tried to worm away. This was a fight for her very life. And for someone whose body was eating itself, he hadn't expected he would have to work so hard to hold her down, just to keep her from getting away from him. "Can't you shut her up? She'll bring the whole place down on our heads," said his partner as he caught up. And that was when the young woman clocked Tsuzuki good.

He had to laugh. Her strength and determination to live, while not exactly funny, nonetheless surprised him. And hurt. "Stubborn bitch," he muttered under this breath, hating himself for it the moment the words were out, but she didn't know that she was his sixth summons in as many days, and the other five combined hadn't given him a fraction of this trouble. He told his partner to hold her legs down already—he was tired of getting a knee in his ribs—while he fought her enough to straddle her body. He pinned her wrists above her head with one hand, covered her mouth with the other. Thought he felt a rib crack under his knee and felt bad for it, but it wouldn't matter for long. "For God's sake, would you just calm down and listen to us for one second!" he tried, but she only shut her eyes and screamed behind his hand. Terrified. Not wanting to die.

The two of them could not have been more different.

"Tsuzuki, we gotta take her!" his partner was saying. "I know we should try to get their consent first, but look at her. She's not gonna give it."

The young woman's eyes flew wide at those words. In the struggle, her wimple had come loose, and dark hair spilled around her face. And for a moment, he saw through the scars of her disease as though they were never there. She was just a girl. Emaciated, malnourished, but still clinging desperately to this life that couldn't possibly have given her anything but pain and loneliness during its short span. Still, those eyes burned. They didn't plead with him like he thought they would. Rather, she seemed like a small animal, that knew he could crush her in his grip, and was just waiting for him to do it, defiant until the end. Full of hate for him and everything he was and stood for, to the bottom of her soul.

Tsuzuki hated his partner at that moment, too. Not like this young woman hated him, but because he knew the man was right.

And he hated the girl, kicking feebly but kicking still, gasping for air. Because if she hadn't clung so stubbornly to life, he wouldn't be here, about to take it from her.

But more than either of them, he hated himself. For making such a mess of this. That he had to be the one to do it in the first place. That he had to be the one to end her suffering with more suffering.

And because once he allowed that cruel irony to sink in, a part of him felt like he was precisely where he was supposed to be. This was right.

Not just right, but righteous.

—to be drenched in blood.

It coats his hands, flows down over his wrists and arms like the waters of life itself. Warm. Delicious. There's something lovely about seeing it leave a body. The way there's something beautiful in watching lava, freed from the earth, create new land, new patterns, even as it destroys. He could watch it pour without end, fascinated, if his veins didn't close themselves back up.

If there's any saving grace about his own flesh, however, it's that he can repeat the process over and over again.

The boy in front of him, sadly, he can't say the same about. And maybe that's what makes him so beautiful, in his way. He has only one life to give. And now that Tsuzuki has opened him up, that life pours forth like a fountain. He can see the end fast approaching through the lad's wide, staring eyes. That's something to envy. Something to worship. Something that sets him tingling with an excitement he can barely contain—

No, Tsuzuki's mind rebelled against the memory, that wasn't me, those weren't my thoughts, my feelings, I wasn't in control! That wasn't even Hijiri—Hijiri's fine, he's O.K., he's alive! I didn't kill him!

But did that change anything?

Did that change the fact that Hisoka had died brutally under his hand, that in his final moments he had seen Tsuzuki celebrating his slaughter, lapping up his blood—had it really mattered, in that moment, that Tsuzuki had been just a passenger in his own body?

I meant for it to be Hijiri. It doesn't matter that it wasn't. I meant to kill him. I wanted to kill him. I was so elated to think that I had—

That Sargatanas thought he had.

No. That I had. It was me all along. Sargatanas might have made him swing the cleaver, but he could not have succeeded if that capacity, that instinct, hadn't already existed inside Tsuzuki. He didn't make me a killer.

He was a killer long before that.

"He wanted what everyone wants when they agree to take on the burdens of a shinigami," Chief Konoe said to the assembled. "Perhaps what every man and woman put on this Earth ever truly wants. To know that he made a difference. To have touched another soul. To have mattered, if only for a moment, for even a single individual."

Thee mood was a solemn one, each soul remaining silent out of respect for a fallen colleague. But there was not a wet eye in the office of the Summons Division. Then again, if this had been the man's first death, maybe things would have been a bit different.

If he had only been Tsuzuki's first, or second, or third partner, maybe it would have been different. But everyone listening, and trying hard not to meet his eyes, had been his partner before. At least once. And none for very long.

"That's all any of our lives are made of anyway," Konoe said in a low voice, nodding to himself, as if to reassure himself that, for some higher reason he wasn't privy to, this was how it was supposed to be: "Moments. Individuals. And he helped a lot of people. He granted them a peaceful transition into the next world. I like to think, if he had known what was going to happen, he would have said he had no regrets."

Standing at the back of the crowd of coworkers, Tsuzuki wished he could vanish through the wall behind him. Anything to make him disappear at that moment. Because he knew, even if their backs were turned to him, that he was on every single mind in the place. As they listened to Konoe's eulogy, he knew what they were all thinking: It could have been me.

Usually, when a coworker "retired," when their soul moved on, it was by choice. They had finally earned their rest. There was the rare occasion when one's service was terminated abruptly by Enma, or, even more rarely, by some supernatural foe in the field.

But murder? Could one even murder someone who was already dead?

"King Enma has reviewed the case personally," Konoe had told him in private earlier, "and determined your partner's demise to have been an accident—"

"An accident? Chief, I murdered him!"

"Technically, it was the fault of that shikigami of yours—what's his name again? Touda?"

"But it was my duty to control him, and I failed! I lost control, and because of that, one of our people is gone! How can Enma even begin to see that as a forgivable offense?" It made no sense. If Tsuzuki had been the Judge of the Dead, he would not have been so quick to overlook the evidence. He would have had the guilty party terminated, for the good of everyone else. Though perhaps that was just wishful thinking.

"His Grace has ordered you to pay a fine," Tatsumi put in, "if that's any consolation. It will be deducted from your pay."

But Tsuzuki scoffed at that. Did His Grace really think money was going to make up for his brutally slaying a coworker? Burning him into oblivion? The fact that he hadn't meant to do it just made it all the worse.

He could still see the panic on his partner's face when he realized Touda had him trapped, that there was no way out except through his flames. He could still hear his partner's voice, his screams, calling for Tsuzuki to help him, to save him. It would have been a lie to say Tsuzuki still heard them in his dreams. He heard them every waking minute of the day, too, in every gap of silence between spoken words. Even under the words themselves.

I am in Hell, he thought. This whole world is nothing more than a private hell, and I was sent here to be tortured in it.

He collapsed into the chair across from Konoe, burying his face in his hands. "He should never have brought me here, made me a shinigami. He should have just let me die for good. All I do is cause the people around me more pain." He was a god, for God's sake, Enma was. "Couldn't he foresee any of this?"

"Maybe you should have. What?" Tatsumi said to the chief's grunt of protest. "Tsuzuki should have known when he acquired a being as powerful as that snake whether he would be able to control it. Let alone, when he decided to use it in the field untested. He's absolutely right. This is all his fault. A fine is a slap in every other Summons officer's face. How are they supposed to do their job when they can't even trust they'll be safe in the same room with him?"

That's how you feel about me, isn't it, Tatsumi? That's why our partnership couldn't make it. When you cut through all the excuses, the incompatible personalities, the petty arguments over protocol—what it really comes down to is you didn't feel safe with me. You never knew when I might blow up in your face, and drag you with me down to Hell.

The chief began to tell his secretary off for making a bad situation worse, but Tsuzuki had to stop him. "It's all right, Chief. It's true, so why shouldn't I have to hear it?"

This had been his burden to bear from the beginning. This was the reason he'd tried and failed so many times to end his existence. Because deep down, he knew what the basis of that existence was. Maybe that was why he'd felt such kinship with Touda before he even properly met him. They both seemed to have been made for only one real purpose: to destroy.

Leave the rebuilding to some more capable party.

"You still think suicide is the only just death?" Tsuzuki had asked some other time, in some other place.

And Tatsumi said with a smile as forced as his answer, "I never did make a very good psychopomp, did I?"

But he never really needed to explain his reasoning to Tsuzuki. It would have been preaching to the choir.

"I know the Lords of the Dead value taking your own life as one of the worst sins one can commit. I understand they see it as squandering some precious gift. But it is the only truly democratic option. It's the only death that is a conscious choice. And death should be a choice," Tatsumi said more to himself than to Tsuzuki, as he stared out at the city in the night, "that no one else ought to have a right to make for you. No one gives you an option in being born. If you cannot decide whether or how to enter your life, you should at least be able to decide when and how to leave it. So, yes, that's still my opinion."

Somewhere below, muffled by window glass, a siren sounded. A different siren from what had stuck in their minds in the last year of the war, like a cicada song that never seemed to end. How much they had survived together, while dead. How much they never should have had to. No wonder their partnership ended. No wonder this was the only way they could remain friends.

"You might think it's a coward's way out—"

"I would never say that," Tsuzuki said, so full of certainty that Tatsumi couldn't help but turn to look at him. As if to judge how sincere Tsuzuki really was. Or whether his answer was just a test. "You know I would never say that, Tatsumi."

He would be a damnable hypocrite if he ever did. Whether or not it was true.

"It isn't cowardice," Tsuzuki insisted, not knowing whether he truly believed it or just needed to. Sure that Tatsumi, who'd had that choice taken away, felt the same. "It's knowing when you've had all you can take."

And then you just keep taking.

. . . and taking. And taking.

And taking. . . .

Christ . . . it never ends.

Why couldn't one's own death be left up to every individual? It would make him obsolete, but, honestly, he didn't mind becoming obsolete.

Because no one would ever choose to die. And the world would become crowded, and resources would quickly grow scarce and run out, bodies would wear out and become burdensome to drag around, and pretty soon the world would be miserable.

That was the logic, anyway. That was the reason they gave for their laws and regulations, for the Kiseki, for judges like Enma.

For an institution like the Summons Division, created especially for those pesky stubborn, selfish folks who loved living just a little too much. They took souls for those souls' own good. Or at very least, for the well-being of those left alive. They made the tough choices so the innocent wouldn't have to. So they could go to their rewards unburdened by the karma of that final decision.

Bullshit.

What complete and utter nonsense.

He knew reality was different. He was proof. No matter how he might try to deny it. No matter how gay the colors they tried to paint over the truth, he could see it bleeding through. An ugly, grinning skull.

That was his reality. That was the true image of his soul.

And who decided he had to be this way? The same force or universal plan that determined when and how each soul was supposed to die? Because Tsuzuki was finding it harder and harder to believe in Fate.

Not that it existed, of course. He could not deny that.

Only, maybe it didn't deserve to.

He wasn't sure whether the Muraki Kazutaka sitting calmly in a chair against the wall was real, or just another hallucination. He suspected it was the former, however, come to watch him for a while, see if he'd made any more progress in his escape.

Or in his tolerance.

Not that again. No more. God, please. I can't take any more.

He might have said some or all of that out loud. Muraki lifted his head from off the wall, looking like he'd just started to doze off.

"Do you know where you are?"

It smells like the clinic in Tokyo, in Taisho year something-or-other. Looks like that hotel room with Tatsumi, Showa twenty-five, thirty perhaps. But it can't be either one, if he's here—if he's really here—

"You were talking to yourself," Muraki says, as though that might clear things up at all. But his tone, the dim light glinting off his glasses—it's too easy to confuse him with the Tatsumi from Tsuzuki's memory. "You've been doing that a lot lately."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"You're doing it now, Tsuzuki."

"What?" No. That can't really be possible. He must be lying, trying to make me think I must be hallucinating.

But it was possible, wasn't it? He'd been seeing things, hearing things, this whole time—dreaming dreams more real than they had any right to be, and getting a lot less sleep than his brain needed. What proof did Tsuzuki have that the Muraki sitting across from him was real? Each time the man came back with the knife, he added another little cut to the one before. The build-up of poison in Tsuzuki's blood made it impossible to judge reality from fiction.

"Classic dissociation," Muraki sighed. "You can't run from your physical torments, or relieve yourself of them, so you've retreated down the only path open to you. Replaced one pain with another. Is that the solution, Tsuzuki? Do you find you can think more clearly if you focus on the sins of your past? Isn't this just another way of avoiding the real problem before you?"

Tsuzuki had to laugh, albeit bitterly. If this really was all just his imagination, some hallucinated catechism, how queer it felt, playing the role of the doctor, diagnosing himself. It was fitting, somehow. His whole existence was just one big joke, wasn't it? A tragedy, full to the brim of irony. Just one punchline after another.

See how badly he wishes to die; we will make him indestructible.

See how little he values his life; we will make him kill those who cling most strongly to their own.

See how happy he is among his friends; we will wait till just the most painful moment to rob him of them, one by one.

Like notes in a young doctor's notebook. Or chapters in a god of death's.

Enma. Muraki. Tsuzuki cursed them both. They couldn't just let him be. They couldn't just let him repent for his sins like any other soul, no, they had to make sure he relived them over and over and over . . . ad infinitum. Was there even a point when either one ever said "enough"? How many lifetimes did a soul have to suffer before it was allowed eternal rest? How long did it need to go on repeating its sins until the debt was paid?

"He'll never let you go, you know. It would be better if you just accepted that. You might even learn to appreciate it."

Tsuzuki started in horror at that sound of that voice. So disarmingly young, innocent—deceptively so. He tried to fight anew, desperate to get away from it, but he felt weak, drained, his limbs less responsive the harder he tried. "Go away, go away, you're not real," he chanted under his breath as a mantra, in his mind screaming, Christ, don't let him appear.

But of course the harder you try not to think of a thing, the clearer it forms in your mind. But, God, why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it be Hisoka? The guilt would still kill him, but at least he could hallucinate someone he actually wanted to see again.

"You can't wish me away," said a wide-eyed, ten-year-old Asato, standing beside Muraki. "I'm always here. Because you're a part of me," he said in mocking, sing-song tone, "and I love you."

A long, wailing moan escaped Tsuzuki, as if he could hope to make his younger self disappear if he could just drown out the sound of his voice. "Make him stop," he pled with Muraki, "I don't care what you have to do, just make him go away!"

Muraki turned and looked right at the boy. But he said, "Whom are you talking about, Tsuzuki?"

"You don't see him, do you? Of course you don't. . . ." He felt like sobbing in his desperation. How could he expect Muraki to do a damn thing about a figment of his imagination? When he could very well be imagined himself? Tsuzuki couldn't close his eyes and make this go away. There was no escaping himself. Nowhere left in his mind to hide.

Muraki leaned over him. At least the cold fingers prying gently at his eyelids, tilting his head one way and then the other, felt real. Though when Muraki's face, hovering above him, morphed into his own, Tsuzuki's already overworked heart hammered so painfully fast in his chest he felt as though it would surely stop. And prayed it would. Up close, the evil in that childish face was all he could see. Up close, the resemblance made itself so clear, he wondered how he never saw that child in Muraki before.

"I'll take good care of you, you'll see," the boy said in his own and Muraki's voice, though those couldn't possibly be the words that fell from the real Muraki's lips. They didn't seem to match. Still, they were all Tsuzuki heard. "Why fight it? You can't run anymore. Let's be together again, you and me. Like old times." His hand brushed the hair from Tsuzuki's fevered brow, tender as a mother's, cool as a compress. "I'll help you remember."

I'll help you remember what you are.

Do you believe in monsters, Tsuzuki? You'd better. 'Cause you are one.