I: Guilt

"...Definitely a plot device." Takara deadpans.

Andō Takara - though nobody calls her by that name anymore, not that they ever did - stares at a strange tree with something like annoyance admixed with... well, something. She would almost say it is guilt, except it couldn't be.

She's not one for random bouts of compassion, mind, nor one who has a very vocal conscience at all. Compassion seems more of a joke to her than something to emulate, and she'd be the first to say that her blood runs a couple of degrees colder than zero Kelvin. Guilt is, needless to say, as foreign to her as a deep sea anglerfish would be on Mt. Everest, and the last time she felt the faintest stirrings of guilt was when she indirectly caused the deaths of - well, it doesn't matter.

She has no particular inability to feel emotions so much as a violent aversion to anything that can lead to angst or grief or any emotional bullshit. Life is quite simple: to avoid guilt, don't do anything that might make you feel guilty. To avoid heartbreak, don't set yourself up for that relationshit - only toddlers need the emotional reassurance of "unconditional love," after all. To avoid anger, stay the fuck away from the retarded sheeple that might piss you off.

To avoid death, don't go into that dark alley alone to investigate a strange noise in the middle of the night, idiot.

ooOoo

In a museum, there is a garden. It is as much a part of its showcased art as the numerous paintings and ancient love poems and samurai armour housed within its halls. In that garden, right in the middle of it and separated from the rest of the world by glass walls, is a centuries-old tree. And on that tree is a carving depicting treachery. The very sight of it is said to induce guilt in the coldest of hearts.

Which is bullshit.

Seriously, it's such bullshit! Guilty because of a tree? What the fuck, that is the dumbest thing she has ever heard, Takara isnt into sappy tree-hugging nekomimi bullshit. She didn't visit 4chan nearly enough Before for that!

But emotions never made any sense.

...Which is quite frankly irritating as fuck, because when she made that wish on that damned rock to just please quit with its magical manga plot dickery and for it to cease to exist, pretty please with John Stamos on top, Takara didn't expect to suddenly remember that due to her plot hack, a certain foul-mouthed hanyō would most probably maybe definitely still be stuck to a tree (and has been for, like, more than five centuries, holy shit!). She most definitely didn't expect her chest to start butchering itself with guilt and pity.

She didn't do this, didn't shoot that stupid arrow (what lousy marksmanship - guy's got a mop of silver hair, how hard is it to shoot the very much noticeable head?). She shouldn't feel guilty, really.

It's bullshit.

"I wonder who carved it like this," Higurashi Sōta murmurs from behind her, stationed by the handlebars of her wheelchair. Takara is only on day 3 post-op, and still wheelchair-bound because her stitches are on high-tension skin and on muscles that are used for remaining upright while walking. That wishing rock was so fucking huge - more like a wishing boulder - making its corresponding extraction site big enough to look like someone ran her through with a chainsaw (or conversely, like someone stabbed her with a certain inu hanyō's fang-sword murderstick). She was quite glad to wish away the Jewel of Manga Dickery THAT CAN GRANT ANY WISH JESUS CHRIST IT'S GONE WHY DID SHE GET RID OF IT?!

Oh, well. She'd choose not having to fight for her life anytime over The One Rock (that can grant wishes).

Yeah, she totally would.

Maybe.

Sōta - bless his pasty prepubescent ass - was such a sweetheart and insisted he help push her wheelchair. Takara - figuring she has just saved the world from so much manga plot-ish suffering and pain, and is therefore very much deserving of such pampering - has absolutely zero qualms accepting his offer (carting yourself around on a wheelchair is murder on your armpits, swear to God).

"Probably a bunch of old farts who believed in demons or whatever," she murmurs in reply, quite pointedly not looking at said "sculpture." As if she would invite unnecessary drama like that, like some two-bit baka. For all she knows, she might unravel the spell keeping the hanyō in suspended animation just with the made up shit power of her "miko gaze."

Jesus Christ.

But then, the tree isn't supposed to look like that though, is it? It isn't supposed to look like a wooden carving of an inu hanyō looking so lost even with his eyes wide open.

...Probably some kitsune illusion magic at work there, not that she's willing to test it. She shrugs, the motion nearly having her wince in pain as it lightly tugs on her stitches, and turns to Sōta. "Can you wheel me to the hall with the koto we just passed by earlier? I'm having the urge to sketch it."

"It looks so lifelike though," Sōta replies, completely ignoring Takara because he's just that much of a dick. His eyes are very much still glued to Inuya-... the tree-sculpture-thing. "Look at his eyes, nee-chan. They look like the eyes of someone who was betrayed. Like-"

Creepy foreboding voice aside, Sōta is beginning to sound like the melodramatic manga narrator nonsense that Takara never had the patience for, so she interrupts him. "All I see is a block of wood not worth shōjo manga heroine-ing over. Seriously, Sōta, take me to the koto? I'd wheel myself if you don't."

He seems to snap out of a trance, his demeanour suddenly sheepish. "Sorry, nee-chan."

As he pushes her wheelchair away from the tree, Takara couldn't help but sag in relief. That tree-induced guilt thing was starting to get a bit weird. Without a visual representation of how badly she must have fucked things up for at least one person, the weight on her chest she didnt even know was there lightens up a bit.

The guilt stays with her for weeks, though.