Chapter 15: The Only Way Out Is Through (I)
It took Hannah a few seconds to realize she was alone, staring widely down a dark, never ending tunnel. Its viscera walls seemed full of anticipation and threat as though she had accidentally unlocked the door to a vast, incomprehensible room of horrors. She couldn't make heads or tails of it. One moment her husband was there, standing in front of her and then like a fleeting, desert mirage, he wasn't. He had vanished, leaving her utterly vulnerable. The gravity of the situation struck her like a doomsday meteor pummeling to the earth.
She could see it so clearly: Fr. O'Malloy dressed in black, leading the congregation in the following prayer. "Friends, we are gathered here today to remember the short life of a young, forgettable orphan who failed to save innocent lives and died without so much as au revoir — Oh, and now we'll never be able to find Sukuna's fingers, so may God have mercy on her soul and good luck to the rest of you. Amen." It wouldn't be a funeral Mass. They'd have to find volunteers to do the readings. There would be no casket because there would be no body, nor could she picture her uncle giving a eulogy. It made her wonder. Would her tombstone be on the Wasserton estate next to her mother, or would they chisel one here in Japan? And what would Satoru think? What would…
"You don't have the right."
The guilt condensed in her stomach like sludge at the bottom of a lake. And what bothered her more was the knowledge she had been the instigator for all of it. She shouldn't have scolded him like that. Yes, he confessed to watching her bath and that was bad, but hadn't he said the act was involuntary? She should have been more understanding. Give him a chance to recuse himself, if necessary because that's what she would've wanted had it been the other way around, guilty or not. Maybe then they wouldn't have become separated.
Find him, you bloody idiot. Worry about who's fault it is later. Yes, find him. There would be time for apologies afterwards. She needed to find her way back to Satoru. He was her best chance at survival. She wasn't dead yet. And more likely than not, neither was he. So don't cast blame on anyone, she rattled on in her head. You've shed enough tears for one night. You always do. Surviving. Focus on surviving.
Hannah took deep breaths and forced herself to calm down. The fear was insurmountable but the adrenaline increased her awareness. Tightening her grip on Stinging Nettle, she trudged cautiously down the membrane covered tunnels, murky and desolate, her heels sinking into the ground like meat hooks. They kept getting stuck. More than once she had to stop walking and yank her leg free. Part of her wanted to tear the bloody shoes off, but the sharp, miscellaneous objects sticking out from the ground advised her not to. The hilt of Stinging Nettle had become slick with sweat and thrice she stopped moving to glance over her shoulder, convincing herself that something wasn't breathing down her neck.
She was adjusting better to the dark thanks to the adrenaline. The air held a sour taste. It was silent as a tomb. Cold too. Her feet were numb from getting stuck into the cold slimy ground. She felt the goosebumps raise over her skin and bit down a shiver. And as she walked, Hannah envisioned Satoru desperately trying to reach her. That he was trudging up and down this flesh invested jungle just as much as she was. She thought of his warm embrace. How tenderly he held her not long before, how comforting the rumble of his voice sounded. She clung to that precious memory like hope.
Something made a noise.
Hannah turned around to look, but saw nothing, and yet she couldn't shake the disturbing feeling that she was being watched. She listened, hard; and then heard it again, faint and draggy, a little weird. And then came something like a voice.
"I KNOW YOU'RE THERE."
That was not in her head. She froze as did the hair on her arms, skin prickling with new heightened terror. Her tongue rose to the roof of her mouth. She tried swallowing the click in her throat, but couldn't. Stinging Nettle held in both hands, the human woman found the nearest indent she could find and pressed herself firmly against the oozing wall as though she were playing some intense, life or death version of hide-and-seek. Her blood throbbed painfully in her ears. Please, don't let it be what I think it is, she silently prayed. Please don't let it see me.
But Hannah should've known by then: Prayers weren't wishes.
An amorphous white shape, not recognizably human, skulked from the shadows. It was hunched on all fours, moving like a man-eating ape, canine teeth scintillating in the dark. Hannah could see its hepatitic yellow eyes, of which, there were four. The black marking slashed along its body blended with the darkness so it appeared like a skeletal marionette with no strings. The stench of rotting meat wafting from its breath made her want to gag.
"I KNOW YOU'RE THERE," it rasped again, looking side to side, sniffing the air. "I HAVE YOUR SCENT. COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE."
Hannah's hand flew to her mouth. There was no escaping it. The curse was talking. It was talking to her. She couldn't move. Her body felt gripped by paralysis and her heart pounded violently against her ribs. She was holding her breath to scream, but she mustn't. She mustn't. Under no circumstances was she to scream.
The curse snapped its head in her direction. "YOU CAN'T HIDE."
It looked right at her. She saw it lick the rim of its chops. Hannah froze. The curse had spotted her. This was the end. She was going to be eaten. She watched it slowly lurch to where her body hugged the wall. She closed her eyes tight, Stinging Nettle clenched in one hand with her other cupped over her mouth. She could feel her cold wedding ring smush against her lips, sharply contrasted by the curse's hot, rancid breath blowing on her skin like steam. It was looming directly above her now.
"WHERE ARE YOU?"
Sandwiched between the curse and the wall, Hannah couldn't muster the courage to look. Her muscles were locked into place. She couldn't move. The curse hadn't seen her yet? But how? She was right there.
She was saved by the sound of something heavy, a rock or a weaker curse, clopping loudly further aways.
"AH," purred the curse. "THERE YOU ARE." Hannah heard it give out a deranged, gleeful laugh as it bounded down the tunnel like a whisper and was heard no more.
Hannah waited there a second; three seconds; ten. Motionless as an icon.
Slowly, she cracked her eyes to catch only darkness. Her knees quivered like the ground was shaking, but she managed to pull herself to her feet. She then unlatched the buckle on her shoes, fumbling to remove the prong from the tiny hole inserts because her hands were trembling so bad. She slipped the shoes off. Placed them silently on the ground. Took a deep, ragged breath. Turned the opposite direction. And ran.
With more adrenaline than blood coursing through her, she sprinted down the membrane passages as though she were a convict on the loose, heart leaping out of her chest, breathing faster and faster. She was practically flying without the shoes and could feel her lungs start to burn from exertion. In the past, she would've fainted from running this long, but her body was in better shape. Her morning jogs with Satoru had bolstered her lung capacity and increased her endurance. But she wasn't paying attention and tripped over a gushy lump of tissue, cowflopping right into the ground with a sickening splash. She quickly got to her feet, running helter-skelter like a flimsy-winged bat that had lost its echolocation. Go, go, she ushered in her head. Keep running. For all she knew the curse would kill her at any moment. It had her scent. It would shred her to pieces, break her legs and force her to watch. She would die a slow and torturous death like all the others. Like all the other unfortunate souls she watched get murdered in her hellish dreamscapes. She would join them. It was hunting her. Even then she could hear it rasping; I KNOW YOU'RE THERE, GIRL. I SEE YOU. YOU CAN'T HIDE. But she was again halted by a pleading voice calling out from the eery darkness.
"Otouto!"
Choking on air and gasping, Hannah came to a grinding halt, so out of breath she could not speak. Alas, she was not dreaming, nor had she gone mad. There really was a child crying in front of her, a boy by the looks of it. Maybe six or seven. He was couched worriedly over another smaller boy. Hannah felt her heart sink.
The smaller boy looked dead.
…
Yamazaki Hiro very much wanted this night to be over with. Cracking open his eyes, he thought for a peaceful moment he was in his bed. Mama would be calling him down for breakfast any second, saying how he needed to get dressed and ready for school like he normally did. But then came the frightening realization he was not in his bedroom, breakfast was not ready downstairs, and he was not going to school. Nothing about this felt normal. The air was cold and fetid and the ground underneath him was wet and mushy. He couldn't see anything. Huh, what happened? he thought. Where was everybody? He sat up and discovered he was still wearing the stiff, itchy dress pants his Mama had bribed him into. She said it had been "loaned," (whatever that meant). Hiro didn't like them. She had ordered a matching suit for his little brother and made the two of them stand side-by-side in front of the living room, proud tears welling her eyes as she snapped a pic on her phone. "My little gentlemen," she cued. "So cute. I'll be sure to send this to your Bā-chan." Hiro was less than thrilled by his mother's proclamation. No six year old boy wanted to be called "cute." That was for babies, like his little brother.
Kenta was younger than Hiro by two years, but if not for the age gap, the siblings would easily be mistaken as twins; same unruly black hair, same high-dimpled cheeks. Thick as thieves, the two of them. Wherever Hiro went, Kenta followed, toddling close behind like a lost puppy. It was annoying sometimes, but it gave Hiro a tremendous sense of responsibility. He was the big brother. A big brother was tasked with the important job of looking after their little brothers and keep them in line.
The two siblings grew up in a typical upper-middle class household. Mama ran her own private dermatology practice and Papa worked as a corporate lawyer for a clothing retailer. Their occupations made them more affluent than most and so when they began earning more money, the Yamazaki's put their house of ten years up for sale, boxed all their belongings, and moved to a fancy apartment complex on the central west side of Tokyo.
And that was really when Hiro began seeing the monsters.
It had been going on for two years. He didn't know why he could see the monsters and the others couldn't. He wanted to ask his friends for their input, but worried they'd make fun of him. He was six now. Boys his age weren't supposed to have imaginary friends anymore, and if he told Mama and Papa about the monsters, Hiro was afraid he'd end up like his classmate Kimiko who kept telling everybody she could see "dead things," and then was put on some sort of medicine subsequently afterwards and was never herself again. Hiro didn't understand the ins and outs of medicine like grown ups did, but he remembered how it changed Kimiko's behavior drastically and made her tired all the time. He didn't want that. She and her family moved away last year and hadn't been seen since. He never got to ask her if she saw the monsters too.
Scared and confused, Hiro was still having great difficulty piecing together what had happened in the theater after the big scary monster showed up. Last he remembered he was holding onto Mama's hand before the stampede of terror-stricken people swept him under like an ocean current, forcing him to let go. Hiro had known all that afternoon something really, really bad was going to happen. He wanted to alert his parents and tell them to stay home, but he knew Papa's boss would get angry if they didn't go. Apparently the gala was very important and the entire company and their families had to be there. Now Papa and Mama were missing and so too was Kenta. He needed to figure out where they'd gone. He needed to find his family.
To his luck, finding his little brother didn't take long. He kept close to the grime-covered walls, carefully groping his way through the dark corridors until he stumbled upon a small fallen shape lying in the middle of the path; his brother. But as he drew closer he noticed something wasn't right. Kenta was still breathing, but he wasn't waking up. Hiro knelt and touched his forehead the way Mama did when they were sick and quickly pulled his hand away. His brother's skin was burning. Kenta began to mumble and fidget, babbling incoherently, and turning over to his side. Hiro saw something festering on the top half of his leg; a deep, weirdly-formed gash sliced along the front of his thigh. The wound was bleeding a lot and glowed a bright neon purple, like someone had dumped a bunch of hazardous chemicals into it. Hiro knew his brother was in mortal danger, but was at a loss at what to do and thus began to cry, shouting "Otouto, Otouto" over and over as though it would save him. Then the creature with the knife showed up.
He wetted himself a little when he saw it. His knees buckled and his breath became short. His instincts told him to run, but he didn't want to leave his brother, so he felt no choice but to stand between him and the knife wielding monster. His eyes, petrified white with fear, stared at it reproachfully.
"G-Get away," he blustered, trying to scare it off, but instead the thing crept forward.
"Shhh, no…don't," the creature panted, struggling to find breath. "You mustn't…shout…Otherwise it'll…find us."
He soon realized it wasn't a monster holding a knife, but a lady. The urgency in her voice threw him off guard. She didn't sound dangerous. Come to think of it, she sounded almost as scared as he was. He thought she was going to stab him as she came closer, but she didn't. He tilted his head.
"You're not a monster?" he asked.
"No," she replied, breathing better now. "I'm not. My name is Hannah. What's yours?"
Hiro hesitated to answer. He could tell by her accent that she came from someplace far, far away. Papa reminded him never to talk to strangers. If someone he didn't know began speaking to him and asked for his name he was to alert either his parents or a teacher. Yet for some reason, he felt he could trust this person. Her name was Hannah. She wasn't a monster.
"I'm Hiro," he said.
"Hiro." She repeated it as though testing the word on her lips and glanced down at Kenta, lying unconscious on the ground. "Is that your brother there?"
"Yeah," Hiro answered. "His name is Kenta."
"Kenta." She said it the same way she did his name. "Is it alright if I take a look at him, Hiro? Please?"
Hiro chose not to argue and hurriedly dashed aside for Hannah to kneel next to Kenta. She was fairly alarmed by the enormous swelling climbing up his leg. The skin around the split-opened wound was raised red and the inside was clotted with raw cursed energy. The boy must've gotten injured prior to entering the Domain. That's how the cursed energy seeped inside and infected the gash. He was also running a dangerously high fever. In hindsight, his future seemed bleak.
"Is he gonna die?" Hiro asked. Being six years old, he hadn't grasped the full aspect of dying. All he knew was that when people died they didn't come back. They were gone forever.
Hannah examined the boy's leg some more. "I'm not sure," she said, although that was a lie. She knew full well the boy was suffering from a serious curse infection. Children had weaker immune systems. If they were exposed to harmful amounts of cursed energy for long periods of time, their bodies would begin to spawn curse infections. These infections were amplified if the child was already wounded, and were largely fatal.
"That monster's still out there, isn't it?" said Hiro. "The white one who killed the singer."
Hannah bit the insides of her cheeks. Images of the opera singer being hoisted by her neck flashed across her eyes. The crackling noise of the vertebrae breaking, her body thudding to the floor.
"Yes," she whispered. "It is."
"Will it kill us too?"
There was a long drawn out pause before Hannah replied. "I don't know."
She swung her eyes to look at little Kenta's contorted face as he clung desperately to life. The infection would chew through the muscle, contaminate the bloodstream, and inevitably poison him. Her heart crumbled at that. Hannah had witnessed enough dying children to make the toughest therapist break down and weep. It happened to Nakamura Ami three months ago, her lifeless body dangling from the jaws of a beast. Twenty-six votive candles flickering inside an empty church, the relentless rain pelting down in heavy droves, rattling the roof. Hannah let the memory linger. It brought forth a range of emotions. She grit her teeth and clenched her fists.
No one had been there to save Ami and her classmates on that terrible day. Children. It was always the children who suffered the most, but Hannah vowed Ami and her classmates' deaths would not be repeated. No, not tonight. She was going to do everything in her power to keep Hiro and Kenta alive. They would not meet the same fate as the others. She swore it on her mother's grave.
With strengthened resolve, Hannah crouched over Kenta's body and rolled him flat on his back. She grabbed the knife and finished cutting the rip in his pants, fully exposing the wound. With his paling complexion, she could see the cursed energy turning his veins black. It had already entered the bloodstream. She had to act quickly.
"What are you doing?" Hiro asked, watching her work methodically.
Hannah didn't say anything, and upon finishing Kenta's pants, took Stinging Nettle and used the torn ends of her dress to clean the congealed blood off the blade like a tablecloth. She then turned to Hiro and slotted the newly cleaned knife in his hands, waiting for his tiny fingers to wrap around the leafy green hilt before letting go. There was no heft.
"I'm going to help your brother," she whispered determinedly. "But you have to be on the lookout. If you see anything, I want you to take this knife and run. Do you understand?"
Hiro blinked and nodded furiously, wiping his snotty nose into his sleeve, watchful of the knife. The tone in her voice scared him. He felt his heart ramp up. "How're you going to save him?" he said.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you," came Hannah's reply. "To be honest I don't even know if it'll work, but I'm going to try, okay?"
"Okay," Hiro squeaked.
"Alright then. I need you to stay quiet so I can concentrate. Do you remember what I told you just now?"
Hiro nodded. "If I see anything, I'm to take this knife and run."
"Yes," Hannah said. "Take the knife and run. You're not to think about me or your brother. I just want you to run as fast as you can."
"Okay."
"And you're not to turn back."
"Okay," he said again.
"Right." Hannah made a weary sigh and diverted her attention back to Kenta. The boy's body was shaking from the hyperthermia setting in, his breaths rasping and uneven. She hadn't much time left. "I'm starting now."
She stretched out her palms over the dying boy's wound and closed her eyes, meditating on happy thoughts; The first time she tried chocolate; digging for seashells along the beach; The many colors of daylilies; a crystal blue sky; her husband's unwavering smile. Her breathing slowed, and as she recollected these thoughts, a feeling of gradual warmth spread throughout her whole body. Little by little the world quietly faded away. Before long the surrounding darkness became bathed in a pale golden light.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
For this chapter's notes, please visit AO3 (Same name).
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