There was a gradual, immense surge of energy coming from the back of my head. Strangely, even though it was supposed to be something I've never come in contact with before, there was a strange sense of familiarity.
"Yuuji, you can trust in me."
I can't not recognize the voice speaking; it was literally my own voice. Yet, at the same time, I can't be sure if it's an internal monologue or a separate entity. Whatever it was, I felt entirely familiar with it.
"I know I can, though I still don't know who you are," I answered aloud.
The beret girl seemed to stop for a moment, thinking I was talking to her.
"Now's your chance, Yuuji! Feint a strong, decisive jab to the temple, unsettle her defence, then go for her upper chestbone with a straight kick."
I could not doubt that voice in my head, because it seemed like it was my only ticket out of this mess. Approaching her furious direct offense, the only way to cure it did seem to be a counter-offensive; I should've remembered all that, except I had panicked when the girl started attacking me with unfathomable speed.
True enough, the counter-offensive worked like a charm. The somewhat-predictable stroke patterns – characteristic of taijiquan are the strokes that were not supposed to be as vigorous as the beret girl had been throwing about – lent me some space as I somehow managed to avoid her attack and raised a feint near her temple, which she used her left arm to deflect. As she wrangled away and tried for the roundhouse kick, however, I was able to retract my jabbing arm sufficiently, and I then threw all my weight onto the tip of my straight-kicking right foot. The satisfying feeling of crashing my feet into the girl's chestbone, however, was soon met by an even more ferocious counter as she started pulling on my right ankle the instant the foot connected with the chest.
That, normally and rationally speaking, is an inhumane feat.
"Twist out and feint a face-kick!"
As I yelped and allowed her to pull myself forward, I twisted along with motion, and feinted a kick to her face. Thankfully I did; I noticed a raised fist which was about to connect with my procreation tool, in the moment I saw her trying to smack me down hard. Instead, she covered her face with her right shoulder, allowing me time to twist my right ankle out of her grasp and somersault away from her.
"Turn around, and run into the Forest!"
"Huh?"
That seemed like an order to escape from this piece of chaos. Just as I was deliberating on the decision, I noticed that the beret girl, who must've been furious with rage, had completely lost her marbles; she began to sprint towards me, howling and screeching like a maniac.
"RUN FOR IT, DAMMIT YUUJI!"
Given that it took me a lot just to get away from her, I decided to take the voice in my head for real, and started a frantic sprint towards the forest without looking back.
I don't wanna die young!
***
"Man, how long can I keep this up?" I asked myself as I ran deeper and deeper into the depths of the Forest. With nobody I knew in sight and civilization becoming more and more a distant memory, a chill struck me.
For the first time in my twenty years of life, I felt truly, despairingly, and hopelessly alone. The scary thought of being in a place I have never known of, and with no reasonable means to request for help (gawd, even language is a barrier now that I'm stuck in the Far East, the Orient), it all became too much. Still, I somehow found an inner resolve to keep my nerves steady.
As long as I am alive, there's still something I could do.
It was when I had finally found some inner resolve to do something about myself that I felt a heavy, excruciatingly painful slam into my chest. I hadn't even realized that until I saw a green, hairy creature attempt to headbutt me, but by the time I realized I was a heap of mess sprawled on the forest floor, cicadas ringing in my head and making it all the more painful.
"Oh, look, it's a human."
"Looks kinda cute, he's an outsider human perhaps? Seems like eating him's a waste."
"I'm famished. I couldn't be bothered. Let's just stew him and eat him up, what'd you say?"
Clasping my stomach in pain, I couldn't tell anything but the pain, but I willed myself to break out of the pain and stand up. As I stood up, I tried to rationalize my own options, but was confident that none would work out the way I wanted them to. In a short period of time I assessed my conditions; a pack of three little monsters with the ability to quickly fly and headbutt their targets, which would be easy to avoid if in a wide-open area, but given their camouflaging abilities in the midst of an equally green forest, it was hard to tell if they want to spring out of a bush, a tree, or a rock.
I'm near totally screwed.
"Yuuji, I will act as your look out."
The voice, again, whatever it is this voice has become, quite literally, my voice of reason.
"Careful of these blood forest elves, Yuuji. They are capable of far more than mere headbutts, their talon fingers are very sharp and can act like claws.
I could only rely on my reflexes, then.
A gut instinct told me they had already begun to move; indeed, where they were just moments ago was now an empty spot of grass.
"Yuuji, to your right! More to your back!"
As I turned around, the elf was within striking distance, lurching himself to head level as he raised a swift, miniature figure towards me. I feinted a left kick towards its face, and quickly swerved aside and launched my right leg high and looped it around its back. My swerving motion was quick enough to avoid two other elves as I heard a slicing sound, and of them squealing away in pain.
"Lucky you, Yuuji, they headbutted each other and plunged their claws into themselves."
Ah, now I see. With the three elves stricken by the combined efforts of myself and the voice in my head, I scrambled away before they could recover their senses enough to spot my escape.
Though, for some odd reason, as the hours went by I ended up running deeper and deeper into the forest.
***
It was when the night sky turned dangerously crimson that I had no choice but to force myself to stop. I could barely see the forest road ahead of me, but I had to keep walking. I realized that the less I looked lost and helpless, the more chances I would have at getting out of this mess alive.
"Yuuji, I hear something."
You did? By now, I'd completely considered this voice as a second guiding voice, though I still have no freaking idea how it was possible that I could quite literally think to myself and still get a feasible response.
"Pretty close. I can sense it around us."
Then a chilling thought struck upon me that I might be becoming blind, as the forest road ahead suddenly turned dark. Shit, what the hell happened?
"Night blindness, Yuuji, but the Konpaku are not naturally night-blind."
Yea, well, tell me why not?!
"Because you have me, and all Konpaku people have a double. If your physical body can't see, you still have me as guidance."
Handy. Well, guide me outta this – hm? At that moment, I heard a rustling within the woods, and then I felt a hand grabbing on my wrist. Almost as if the hand was guiding me somewhere in the total darkness before me.
Hey, man, is this totally all right?
"I don't know. Whoever had your hand seems to mean no harm. I'll ask you to scoot away at the first sign of trouble."
Great suggestion, had it not been for the fact that I'm night blind...
***
"Here ye--- I've got a little statement to make, as a little sparrow;
I'm not just a little bird, I'm a bird without a care in the world;
I lead men to the right path, o the right path;
the right path that don't lead birds to tables---"
Will she stop singing already, god dammit?!
As it turns out, I was eventually led to a little roadside stall of sorts that sells some grilled stuff; seems like chicken meat, but it tasted squishier and chewier than chicken meat. I felt kind of hungry, and realizing that since mobile phones meant little to nothing to people in this world, there was no point in keeping it with me (I know I will regret this later), so I bartered with the cook – apparently also the stall-owner – for about fifteen large sticks worth of those grilled stuff. I haven't eaten since I started running away, which meant I totally skipped lunch.
How I managed to get that bartered was a surprise to myself – I don't actually know what she tried to speak, since apparently not everyone knows the so-called "devil's tongue", so all I did was flail my arms helplessly with gestures.
"Yuuji, you seem to have some trouble speaking in the local tongue?"
Thanks, mate, I've had that problem since I came here. That does remind me about something, though. Exactly what are you?
"I am you, Yuuji. And you are me. We are related."
Then how the hell was it ever possible that I never knew of your existence until today?!
"I don't claim to know, either. All I know is, what you know becomes what I know, and what I know is a little more than you because I've been left behind by you since young."
I left you behind since… we were young?
"Until Myon shows up, I doubt we can get this cleared up too soon. But perhaps you can try learning some of the basics to get by until we go to Miss Yagakoro's residence."
I looked around myself, and not surprisingly I couldn't understand everyone else. I could really use that.
"Repeat after me, Yuuji. Hello, my name is Konpaku Yuuji."
Uhh, can't we do something a little simpler? And I can feel it, so stop calling me Yuuji because that's a name I'm so unfamiliar with!
"… Hello, my name is Pasonia."
"H…hello, my… my name is Pa…Pasonia."
"Oh, hi there mister!" The shop-owner responded as though she was chirping, much like a bird. "My name's Mystia, Mystia Lorelei! How'd you do?"
"…now I know why YOU went blind. This is the night-blind mischief sparrow, Mystia Lorelei-san! I should've gotten that figured out earlier, god dammit…"
Dammit, you, I need more to follow up. Try "do you know where is the nearest civilization" will ya?
"Sure… this is going to be a long night, I swear…"
Ditto.
***
After a long, tiring and dreary conversation that involved a lot of Miss Lorelei's rage at grilled birds (apparently it was a local delicacy) I finally got the information I wanted – turns out, a certain Human Village is a mere half-a-kilo from here – though I sense Miss Lorelei might be a bit guarded in the way she spoke. When at last I walked away from her stall on the second day without any more night blindness shtick, I realized that the effect wore off from me much faster than that on other people because of my heritage as a Konpaku… whatever that meant. It means a lot when I clearly saw people still stumbling out of the stalls until Miss Lorelei waved her hand, upon which the people gradually stopped stumbling out.
"She's at it quite a number of times. I remember Myon telling me she and Youmu were frustrated by Lorelei on a certain night of emergency several years ago, and proceeded to smack the bird out of their way before she could even chirp about it."
Likely she's just trying to get business. I woe for my mobile phone.
"Don't worry, she won't be able to use it anyway. At most it ends up at the Kourindou, and then you can try to get it back."
Likely if it weren't for the fact that I ran out without anything on me at all. Say, if I'd been away from you, how'd you know me?
"The ghost half is always attached to the living half. Even if you didn't come in through the Hakurei Border and end up coming in from the Sanzu River, I know I can still find you within a week given that the border between the Netherworld and Gensokyo is rather thin. I found you the night you and Ibuki-sama were looking for Mima-sama, but I didn't have the chance to get into you until you came under a state of emergency."
No shittin' me, eh. If it weren't for you, I'd be dead.
"If you're dead, then we'll become one singular entity. But that's not how a Konpaku should end up."
Word. Any suggestions for now… uhh, what's your name?
"By default, I am you."
That sure as heck won't do, that'll be like calling myself. Tell you what, you call me Pasonia, and I call you Yuuji. That makes things a lot clearer. Since we share a body, we can be referred by either name.
"That works for me… uhh.. Pasonya…"
Too much focus on the "ia". Whatever works for you. Since you've been here for long, teach me the language. I will really need the help I can get.
"I think you call the language Japanese, right? I didn't know the common tongue had a name."
Likely because of whatever border that nearly got me killed. Say, you have any idea who the Ghost Princess is?
"Yuyuko-sama? Certainly I know her. In fact, she was the one who told me to get to you as soon as possible. She had important matters for us, apparently, but when I asked she said nothing more about it."
That's the friggin' same thing everyone tells me.
Before long, my 'dialogue' ended as the outlines of a village became clearer and clearer. Road signs indicated some characters I didn't understand initially, but later on it became clearer to my eyes.
"Whoa. What the… I can roughly read the words now."
The Humans' Village, uhh… 4 something… what the hell is that word beside the number?
"A cho… this is approximately the distance from the large gate thing that is the torii, to the back of the Hakurei Shrine."
This means we're not far away, huh. Let's hurry it up.
***
The village was what it says it is – a village, nothing more, but nothing less either. It was definitely larger than the Hakurei Shrine, and certainly looks more the busy for that. In fact, were it not for the fact that it looked much different from one of those traditional streets of Japan that I saw in that brochure, I would most certainly have mistaken myself as being back in the mainland.
"Sir, a penny for your thoughts?"
I turned around and nearly bolted when I saw two horns – Suika!
"Whoa! How'd you manage to track me down?"
Suika pointed to a rather familiar person behind me – the shop-owner from earlier, Miss Lorelei! Apparently the stall-owner looked a lot for the worse with frazzled hair and such.
"You manhandled her," I deadpanned.
"I spent quite a while tracking you. You really did piss Meiling off, I guess, plus you managed to defeat three blood elves in the Forest of Magic. You really don't need that much hand-holding anymore, eh?"
"How the heck did you know all that, Miss Ibuki?!"
Suika just smiled. "Well, while you ran Alice saw you heading down into the Forest to the south. When I got there I saw the blood elves, two concussed and one injured. Any further down and it'll be this little bird's roadside stall. Her chirping caused me a tad of annoyance so, you know, I just accosted her a little."
A little… indeed. That sure didn't looked like a little scuffle, given the torn clothing and the scratches on her face.
"Indeed."
"In any case, since we've found you, you're going all the way back to the Shrine."
"You're not for real!" I protested. It took me a full day to get to the roadside stall and then to this village. There was no way I was going to walk all the damn way back!
"I didn't ask you to walk back. We can all fly back to it now."
"Say what?" I didn't remember I could fly, unless she regarded the sprint down the forest as flight. But that was a situation of fight or flight, and that doesn't count as flying!
"She may be making sense though. We can try flying."
Not you too. What on earth is making everyone think I can fly?
"Pasonya, start running now. I believe we should be able to fly now that we're together!"
Huh? Run?
It wasn't like I could resist it, but I started sprinting down the village road at an inhumane speed involuntarily – Usain Bolt, here I come! – and then, out of sheer instinct I found an elevation point which was actually some poor folk's roadside stall canopy, and in one leap I hopped right onto it. Carrying that momentum I flung my body upwards, hoping for the worst as I felt gravity's sharp pull. Then, just as sudden as I felt gravity, the feeling was all gone and I found myself in the same leaping position I was in earlier.
Only thing was, the leap was grossly mistimed; there was a large signboard right in front of me before I knew it, and---
SLAM!!!
I smacked the large wooden signboard with all four limbs spread out.
Now I can fully understand how that fly at my home felt when I finally nailed it with the swat. It must hurt.
"Ouch."
Ouch.
"Ouch."
"Yeouch."
"Damned ouch."
***
"Oh jeez, how did this turn out like a comedy?" I groaned, still pretty dazed by the wall-smack. I sported a comically large bruise to my left cheek, the result of turning my head sideways during impact.
"Looks like you're a natural sucker," giggled Suika. "I haven't seen someone in-flight slam their body into something with such force, ever since Cirno the Ice Fairy smacked full force into the leg of the grandpappy of all frogs. The villagers are considering if they want to turn that damaged signboard into some kind of tourist attraction, last I heard."
If it actually helps their economy… I don't mind at all.
"In any case, this run down the forest was not without reward," I remarked. "As incredible as it sounds, I now have a twin in my head."
"Way to go, Pasonya!"
It's Pasonia... without the weird stress on the last syllable.
"A twin in your head? Sounds like a Konpaku thing for sure," blurted Suika amidst gurgles of sake from that same old gourd. "I was about to look for you to tell you that we're on our way to look for Eirin."
"Eirin… uhh, refresh my memory again." I seem to remember that this name popped up at the Kourindou store, that store with my all-time favorite Sennheisers.
"Miss Eirin Yagakoro, the Miracle Healer. We're to go there to cure your language problem."
Cure a language problem? That sounds good. "When do we set off to her place, then?"
"It was supposed to be today, until I heard Meiling scream her ass off about getting beaten in a martial art contest with a human. Looks like we all gotta wait two more days for our next chance, then. In the meanwhile, you might consider going back to school for a day or something; the principal of the human village school apparently teaches everything at the school, including the devil's tongue.
"One heck of a busy principal," I mused. "Where is she?"
To be continued...