Chapter Nine, Part Two: The Heavens' Heartbeat
Amidst the turbulence of these past several years, an insidious malady of thought had begun its gradual sweep across the Alolan archipelago: a rumor. From where exactly it had originated, it was impossible to say, but it was clear to those paying attention it had not been crafted in good faith.
The rumor was the Tapu liked to toy with their prey. In a revolting manner.
The children hummed haphazardly. They were the vectors from which the thought virus spread: the idea appealed to them most of all, shiny and gleaming blood-slick. It appealed to them for the same reason they had all gathered around Rian on the blacktop when he discovered he could use his thick-framed glasses to focus all the sun's wrath on a passing Caterpie. Even when the body began to emit a putrid malodor, no one had any interest in intervening.
The rumor had reached Sun two years ago. He had been in math class, sitting with his table group of him and three cliquish girls, and their chatter had shifted from mixed fractions to something more weighty. At his side, Kimmi cupped her hand around her mouth and strained over the table to whisper to Nalani:
"They say they eat people. They eat the bodies of the people who break the kapu."
"That's a horrible thing to say," Sun said, although he had not been meant to hear. "Who's been going around spreading lies like that?"
All this time later, he still recalled the slow creak of the chair as Kimmi sat back and turned to him, her eyes slits.
"Wasn't talking to you. You'd probably cry about it, anyway." She pressed her fists to the corners of her eyes and mock-rubbed them. "You need your mama to come pick you up, crybaby?"
"I wouldn't cry," Sun said, his bottom lip trembling. "I wouldn't cruh... I wouldn't..."
(Sometimes, as he stood in the pasture of dreams, one of these sorts of memories would slither by and renew his shame once more. What a terror his mind could be.)
He rushed to the restroom to wash his face, avoiding his own pink-tinged gaze in the mirror, and the restless hive of Cutiefly, yet to reach its full development at this point in time, nested itself in his brain again. None of his books, he considered, had ever given mention to what the Tapu sustained themselves on...
No. No, the Tapu would never do anything of the sort. They would never sully themselves with the flesh of the damned. They were the Tapu, and you couldn't do anything like that to be a Tapu. So it must have been a lie.
He steeled himself. Yeah, the Tapu were good. Kimmi and Nalani and all the others were being horrible just to be horrible, because they were horrible. And Kimmi and her family were Enraptoran anyway, so what would she know?
It disturbed him to this day that he had not been able to come up with a more sound refutation. And maybe, just maybe, it was because he knew he could not discount their words.
And, well, maybe it was hypocrisy, too: later, Sun would learn to play with his own shadows; to toy with the weak, tug at their marionette strings, trap stick figures in collapsing tunnels because... it was natural. There was nothing more natural. His hands moved without his notice.
Although most of the ointment had since faded from Lillie's forehead, its intoxicating pungence still clung to her. How ironic it was, Mizuki thought, that the very treatment for temptation would become a temptation in itself.
In his endless benevolence, Dad had granted her request for her and Lillie to be alone together in the recreation room, and the latter now lay atop one of the peeling couches, legs crossed, hands folded over her chest like a corpse's. She was tired, she claimed, and, no, she didn't want to play foosball with Mizuki. Not that they could have if they wanted to: when Mizuki skipped over to the table, she found all the balls gone from their holding slat. How vexing.
But it didn't really matter: they wouldn't be together here for much longer. Lillie would soon go start her first lesson of Stage Zero, and Mizuki would languish on these couches and suffer in her absence. Maybe she'd go spar again with Frostfire, although she had little doubts as to his readiness. The fact he had managed to tie Harmony in spite of his Type disadvantage was evidence enough she didn't need to risk his claws grazing her skin again.
But Mizuki did understand Lillie's fatigue, to an extent. Over the course of her stay here, she had watched the skin under Lillie's eyes darken to a sickly mauve.
She was not to let her out of her sight. Those undergoing the initial stages of learning the Truth could be volatile, and the same was true of someone recovering from the kōshin ritual. It would be quite dangerous - and unprecedented - to combine the two. But Lillie was a mature girl, wasn't she? Mature, clever girls didn't need to follow the same boilerplate rules as everyone else.
Mizuki clenched her jaw.
As soon as the ritual had ended and the audience members were permitted to drop their outer shells of concern, she had turned aside to Miki and complained:
"You know, he's never said that to me before. He's never called me mature before."
"Yeah," Miki had said in between giggles. "'Cause he doesn't tell lies."
The nerve of that bitch.
The incident had cut down Mizuki's constitution, and as she came by Lillie's side on the couch, she found she had little interest in rebuilding it. So, just this once, she would throw herself into temptation's open arms. Her mouth split into an audacious grin.
"Let me sniff," she directed.
Lillie's eyes snapped open. "Sniff? Sniff what?"
"Your forehead. Let me sniff it."
"I... what? Why?"
"The ointment smells good, and we don't get to use it too often," Mizuki said.
After a moment of consideration, Lillie let out a strained huff and closed her eyes again.
"Okay," she said. "Be quick."
"Thank you. You're a real one, Lillie."
"Just get it over with," Lillie said.
Cinnamon, cardamom, shea butter, aloe vera, oils, something else, and the most tantalizing hint of peppermint, all wrapped up in a beautiful medley to galvanize the mind. Those were the words on the bottle Mom kept in her medicine cabinet back home, and Mizuki had stolen it out enough times to have learned them by heart. But using it herself, or even pressing her nose to the cap, would be considered grounds for punishment in her parents' eyes; it was a sacred object, and difficult to import from overseas, as the Powers That Were didn't like it when ordinary people possessed extraordinary objects.
"It's piquant," Mizuki said, and jerked back before Lillie could paw her away. She chuckled, tugged her fingers through her matted hair, and clung to the high the scent had granted her.
But, wait, she'd been worrying about Lillie potentially being ill, hadn't she? She couldn't dare to risk her health now, with Ilima's trial later in the week. In her head, she recited:
May we receive all your prosperity;
Guard us from the tyranny of nature.
We venerate you, O matronly Blissey;
Keep us in good health and good spirits.
Now, these chants were not unfailing. While she may have recited the Togekiss chant before every single test she took, she did not always receive every point on the bonus questions. But faith was a powerful way-upon, an arrow in her quiver, and she notched it well.
"You know," she mused, "you're really lucky. We let you stay here and join us, and you didn't even have to pay anything."
Lillie stretched out her limbs, pushing herself upright. "Pay anything?"
"Normally there's an entrance fee, but we waived it for you."
"How kind of you," Lillie mumbled. "But... you mean, you have to pay to join your religion?"
Mizuki rolled her eyes at the skepticism in her voice. "Uh, yeah. This isn't the sort of knowledge you can give out all willy-nilly. We've gotta weed out the ones who won't take it seriously and waste all our time, and all the ones who'll use it for evil. Plus, there's so much we've got to fund! How do you think we can afford a whole farm and garden here? We've got tons of members to feed. You too, now."
"How... how much is... how much is the fee?"
"Not that much," Mizuki said. "Only like, a hundred thousand Pokedollars. It's entirely affordable." She thought further, looked back at Lillie, pursed her lips. "But that's only for Stage Zero. It's more than that if you want the whole package. Aue, quit giving me that look."
Lillie's cheeks had turned an odd shade of magenta, and her lips pulled together as if she had sucked on a Nomel Berry. At Mizuki's last sentence she curled into herself and issued a quiet apology.
Mizuki clicked her tongue: yet another display of Lillie's unfortunate lack of common sense. What else did she think the devotees would be using their money for? The Children certainly weren't going to enable whatever avaricious pursuits society had conditioned them for. The capital would be best spent facilitating the spread of Truth.
"'Money is the root of all evil'," she said. "Besides the beast, of course. That's actually the root of all evil. You'll get to learn all about it soon. But money's one of its tentacles."
It infuriated her she couldn't read Lillie's expression.
"You don't know much about this sort of thing, do you, Lillie? I think you suffer from a lack of spiritual education."
"You're right I don't know much about spirituality," Lillie admitted, "or religion. My family never practiced it. But, but..." again, she curtained her face with her hair. "We did have a lot of money."
Before she knew what she was saying, Mizuki blurted, "you look like money."
The reply ricocheted back: "What do you mean?"
Mizuki flushed. "You... you... uh, I mean, there's a lot about you that gives me the impression you used to be rich. You know, the way you look, the way you talk, the way you carry yourself..."
"But you just said it was the root of all evil," Lillie said. "Do you think...?"
Oh. Oh, no, no, no, no.
"That's not what I meant at all," Mizuki said, cursing Lillie for being such an obtuse nincompoop, and the feelings, the stupid feelings, fizzled up and out of her. "In fact, I think you're really nice and you're kind and you're gracious and you're exquisite and precious and adorable and exceptional marvelous superb excellent extraordinary pure angelic seraphic perfect and lovely and you're beautiful is what I mean. I guess you're kind of mature, too."
That word - beautiful - seemed to flip a switch in Lillie. She uncurled herself, returning to her peaceful pose from before, but her eyes went soft, then hard, then misty.
"Beautiful," she said. "Beau-ti-ful?"
Mizuki, perplexed and concerned, forced a smile. "Yeah, see? You get it. You get it, you're smart, you get it all - ?"
And then, for no reason at all, Lillie was crying.
"I don't know," she said through her sobs. "I don't know. Being here is so confusing - I feel like I'm being torn in two, there's so much..."
"Hey, what - why?"
Red alert. Red alert. The superlative bomb was meant to make her feel good - not whatever this was. Mizuki wasn't equipped to handle criers.
"I don't understand why he seemed to want to hurt me with that paper," Lillie said. "I don't even know who Ishmael is. I only picked the first name that came to mind..."
"Well, I mean, she's part of you," Mizuki said lamely. "So you should understand her most of all."
She resisted the familiar itch to defend her father. Lillie didn't need that now.
"Mizuki," Lillie said, pressing her face into one of the couch pillows, "Mizuki, Mizuki - " another sob " - did you hear about the man who died? Here?"
She hadn't heard. She hadn't heard. Nothing escaped her and if she hadn't heard of it it hadn't happened.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what's the matter with you."
What, was she afraid? Afraid the big bad incinerator would come swallow her up in the night? The Lycanroc, its gnashing jaws?
"I overheard someone talking about it, and it frightened me," Lillie said. "They said he had a heart attack, but he didn't show any signs leading up to it - none at all. It makes me woozy thinking about things like that. Death coming when you least expect it..."
"It doesn't matter," Mizuki said, putting a hand on her hip. "You know, a human dies every second. Two, actually. It's not a big deal." To prove how much of a big deal it wasn't, she flashed a grin.
"A person," Lillie said. "A person dies."
"Yeah. That's what I said."
"No, you said 'a human'. It sounds so impersonal when you say it like that, 'humans'. We're people." Lillie turned her head to stare at the arc of light slotting through the side window. It glanced off the mirror on the opposite wall, tossing a triangle of light over to Mizuki's feet. "It's disrespectful to the man who died to call him a statistic."
"Well, that's a very 'idea-listic' way of seeing it. It is a statistic, and a true one, even if it seems insensitive. Besides, he's not exactly going to be able to get mad at me, is he?" When Lillie gave her a severe look, Mizuki added, "Because he's dead."
For a moment, it seemed all the air had been sucked from the room.
"Mizuki," Lillie said, "you haven't had anyone important to you die, have you?"
Some part of her bucked; rebooted. She stood there paralyzed, seeking her comfort in self-reassurance, zero one one two three five eight... until the humming below the earth purred as an engine purrs, and whispered to her:
Tell the truth. Tell her all the truth.
"Not physically," Mizuki said.
She wasn't certain it was satisfaction that crossed Lillie's expression, but the claw wounds in Mizuki's brain matter ceased to ache.
"When I was young," Lillie said. "I don't even remember."
In her lack of elaboration, another silence spread out between them. The air remained stagnant. Lillie lay back once more, her breathing stabilizing.
The two lay on opposite sides of the couch, lost in thought. Lillie closed her eyes, but Dad had also instructed Mizuki not to let her sleep. It wasn't ideal for an initiate to sleep. Sleep could warp the brain and tie up dreams with waking; knot all their wires together like the black box behind the TV; and you could pull and pull and pull at them and they'd never come apart again. The purer the mind, the more receptive to the Truth.
Then, like a bolt of lightning out of a blue sky: Lillie spoke.
"There's one question I need an answer for. About your beliefs."
Mizuki scrambled to her feet, unprepared.
"They'll give you any answer you could ever need - "
"No. Not from them. From you."
Oh. Mizuki collapsed back onto the sofa, wetting her newly parched lips. "What is it, then?"
"I want to know," Lillie said, voice even, "where you believe people go when they die."
She didn't want a rehearsed answer planted in her by Dad and the elders. She wanted her to pour her soul - her poor, exhausted soul - out. More than a question: this was a battle of wits.
"When people die," Mizuki recited, as if giving the answer to a riddle, "they go to the real world."
"The real world?"
"To the beast living under the earth," Mizuki said. "They all fall into hIS jaws and get swallowed up. That's why volcanic eruptions happen, you know. That's why they happen so - " apropos of nothing, she slammed her fist into her open palm, and winced at her own violence "- hard. But it's not as bad as it could be, because you only have to spend a little time with hIM there before you get reincarnated. You get another chance to do better. But people are people, so most just end up there over and over."
Lillie mulled this answer over.
"I see," she said. "So you must believe people are naturally evil."
Mizuki prepared to say, well, obviously - but she understood this had not been what Lillie had wanted to hear. Was it disappointment she saw flicker in her gaze?
"Not everyone," she said, plastering on a brave face. "Not you. I don't think you are. But some people are. Even those you least expect."
"I don't know if that's the sort of principle you can start establishing exceptions for," Lillie contended.
She sounded right. But it was society's voice in her throat: society's sweet, seductive tones, come to drag her down. Evil, corruptive, corrupted society.
Well, people were naturally evil, and society corrupted them... and people, in being evil, corrupted society...
Shit, how could people be both? How was it possible for someone to be innocent and guilty all at once?
switch tracks | switch tracks | click click click click
"I just remembered something," Mizuki blurted, her face contorting. "Something that'll help aid your learning. Stay right here, okay?"
She didn't look back to check if Lillie had heard. She raced out down the hall into her room, snatched a plain pink accordion folder from beside her cot, and, with all the speed and eagerness of a Pachirisu, leafed through it for one document in particular. When her eyes caught "The Place Where" she shucked it into her grip and sprinted back out. They'd waxed the floors the previous night, and it was only by some machination of the Ariados spinning fate she didn't slip and crack her head wide open.
"It's my essay," she informed Lillie when she burst back into the rec room, lifting the paper in triumph. "I wrote it last year for a contest. And I got first prize, of course."
"Wow."
"Wow indeed. But the reason I'm showing you this is to prepare you. The council has a certain way they prefer confessionals to be done, and you need to learn what that way is to please them. You need to learn what they want from you! Now, for this contest, the prompt was, uh, give me a sec - " she flipped the paper over in her hands - "the prompt was, 'write about a time you felt afraid'. I don't know if everyone would consider this a confession, but I don't feel so comfortable talking about these kinds of subjects, so it's one to me."
Lillie scratched at her arm, seeming not to have heard. Despite this, Mizuki did not hesitate to read:
The Place Where Wings Unfurl
by Mizuki Kazakami, age 10
I have something to confess. Last night, I had a dream that I was standing at the barrier between the sky and the ocean, the precipice, just shy of falling. My whole life I've always wanted to jump - for fun, of course. I've always wanted to know how it would feel to hit the water, provided it wasn't so cold, or maybe it would be cold and then I would get to know the happiness of ice giving to heat, and my cells would start to melt and then freeze again.
I had the chance to know the feeling on a school trip this past year, when my class went to the cliffs on Route Three. We got to see little Bagon throw themselves off the edge, and our teacher told us they evolved harder shells and scales to prevent them from causing themselves serious harm. I thought at the time, why do they want to do it if it'll kill them? I still don't have an answer.
Maybe it planted some seed in my mind, because when we put our swimsuits on to take our own chance to jump into the water, I raised my hand, asking to go first. And I stood there, looking into the void, my legs paralyzed, my cold feet betraying me. Behind me, I could hear the scattered jeers and pleas of my classmates, calling me a scaredy-Meowth, pleading with me to please just jump and stop wasting everyone's time.
Everyone who knows me knows I'm brave. That's who I've always been. But those cries redefined me: I thought I was a waste, a burden, a miserable sodden blob who could never know falling or flight. I excused myself, and I went to sit in the grass off to the side, watching all of my classmates do with ease what I couldn't bear to.
But in my dream last night, I stood at that precipice again, listening to the call of the sky echo in my mind. It chewed up all my fear and doubt and spat out excitement. And though I couldn't feel them, my wings were unfurling behind my back.
And I jumped.
The blue air and the blue sea were mine, all mine. Blue as far as the eye could see. I looked at my wings and my feathers were as dark as smoke, and similarly shimmering, like a mirage. But, unlike my legs and feet that day, they didn't betray me.
I awakened before I had the chance to touch the water, but even in my bed, I was still there for a moment... until the colors rushed back in, and I realized. It hurt to realize. It hurt as if those other kids had returned, and were saying: you're still a burden after all.
Mizuki let those last words hang in the air. She quivered: the essay was a little more personal, a little more revealing, than she had remembered. But after her win, they'd printed it in the school newspaper - not that anyone ever read that rag - so it was already out there for the whole world to see.
"I'm not a water person," she explained, as if this would elucidate anything. "But I'd really like to be a water person someday."
"I think it's a good essay," Lillie said. "You really wrote it all by yourself?"
Lillie, Mizuki considered, had an odd little habit of phrasing innocent questions in the worst way possible.
"I had a little help," she admitted.
"From who? Your parents?"
"No, no, from..." (she cursed Mizune under her breath - why, oh why, had she had to leave pieces of herself, little thorny poking reminders of her, everywhere? How inconsiderate.) "From someone else. No one important."
Lillie put a finger to her lips. "A teacher, or a friend, or..."
"No one you should care about," she said, louder. She shifted tracks, and her voice wavered and cracked: "Hey, Lillie, do you know who -" she spoke the name of a famous poet - "is?"
Lillie mumbled a negative.
"He's - he was - a poet, and he wrote poems that were like confessions. It was a whole movement of poetry, actually, where people wrote confessional poems. I've done it too." These, she did not offer to share.
"How interesting," Lillie said. "I enjoy some poetry as well. It's not often I come across a poetry fan my own age..."
"I don't know," Mizuki said, a little too quickly. "I don't know. I don't know. They don't like poetry here, so don't speak about it. It's not good for you, poetry. They don't - um, you shouldn't talk about therapy, either. Have you ever been to therapy?"
"You mean to a psychologist? No, I've..."
"Good. Good. You'll get in a lot of trouble if you talk about things like that here." By reflex, she curled her lip. "Psychologists."
"Psychologists? Why?"
"'Cause they're bad for you. They want to lead you on the wrong path away from Truth." For some reason, the masses were unable to grasp this simple tenet; a few months ago, when Sun had confessed to her he had started seeing a grief counselor and she presented him with this fact, he had rolled his eyes at her. It had hurt.
It hurt to be a Child of Starlight.
Lillie sat up, and the sofa's ailing springs let out a miserable creak. "I'm starting to get the impression there are a great many things you don't want me to talk about here."
"Well, we just need to keep the peace around here. And we can't really do that if you're running your mouth about everything." Mizuki considered something else, and angled her head sideways. She didn't have it in her to meet Lillie's gaze - not that Lillie was meeting hers. "But... we also aren't really supposed to keep secrets around here. We're meant to trust each other."
/don't go this way, don't head in this direction
"I'm not really sure how to reconcile it. I'm not really sure whether I should reconcile it."
/TURN BACK TURN BACK RIGHT THIS SECOND
Lillie bit her lip. "I feel like I know what kind of environment you're talking about... and I'm all too familiar with it."
Her tone said what she didn't: familiar in the worst way.
"No!" Mizuki clutched the sides of her head as if otherwise it would fall off her neck and roll away. "No, no! I'm wrong, I'm wrong! We don't have secrets here at all! You can talk about anything you like with us!"
The attempt was brazen, and in Mizuki's opinion, not at all convincing - and despite it all, Lillie relaxed. Mizuki mirrored her, lowering her arms, clasping her hands together.
"I mean," Mizuki said, "I know it's not right to use secrets as weapons against people. It all depends on the secret and it all depends on the subject. You should feel safe with us."
Because you are.
Lillie nodded and shut her eyes.
"I have a secret," she admitted. "A really big one, and I don't know how long I can stand hiding it from everyone. But if I tell you, you have to promise you can't tell another soul."
Mizuki, still recovering from her outburst, raised one hand and pressed the other to her heart. "Of course I won't tell anyone. I'll take it to the grave. I promise."
(This was a technical loophole Mizune had devised: the reward for keeping a promise eclipsed the punishment for keeping a secret. Loopholes like these might not make Dad happy, but they did provide a modicum of plausible deniability.)
"Come on, then," Lillie said, rising to her feet. "It's in my room. In my bag."
Lillie's room was much the same as it had been this morning, and since she had first moved in. The bed was still pristine, immaculately made. The Holy Testament still flat on the desk. Mizuki thought of her own room back home, with its poster-laden walls and piles of dirty laundry and discarded snack wrappers, and voiced surprise at this. But Lillie only shook her head.
"None of this belongs to me. I'm only a temporary presence."
As Lillie crawled over to the place under the bed, to her bag's hiding spot, Mizuki ruminated on this: the girl hadn't so much as seen the sun since coming here, and in response her skin had gone almost transparent and ghostly. She had confessed her trepidation regarding the communal shower, and thus her hair had come to hang in long, straggled, oily strands. When she reached in, her sleeve rode up slightly, revealing her unfortunate habit of picking at her own flesh.
Then she reached the object of interest. Her breath tore its way out of her, and she slid back upright, bringing the barrel bag with her. When she turned back to the bemused Mizuki, her cheeks were flushed, as if the act had drained what little energy she still possessed.
"I have a Pokémon," she said. "At least I think they're a Pokémon. I call them Nebby."
She unzipped the bag, and Mizuki's heart stopped.
Star clouds, in teal and magenta - a heaven's gift, a baby star -
an aberration.
"But, but, but - " she swallowed - "that isn't - where is that one from? Not here, can't be here… it doesn't exist."
"I think they might be…" Lillie motioned for Mizuki to come in closer, cupping her hand around her mouth: "An Ultra Beast. From Ultra Space."
"An..." Mizuki shook her head, her mouth drooping open. "A what? From where?"
"A creature from beyond reality," Lillie said, without the gravitas such words deserved. "Another dimension."
Oh, oh, it was all chūnibyō bullshit. Mizuki relaxed; stammered, oh, yanno, things like that all are fantasy -
But still it gnawed at her she hadn't seen this Pokémon before. She knew them all by heart; every last one. Before her, the creature's lumpy form sparkled and swirled; clouds rippling, blue into purple into pink into blue...
"Why isn't it moving?" Or, if she looked closer - was it shivering? "Is it even alive?"
"They're alive," Lillie said. "Just..." she fidgeted - "they haven't been... they've been sick recently, I think, or weak... but they do still move once in a while, so I know they're alive."
"Does it have a heartbeat?"
When Lillie didn't respond, something called Mizuki to reach in, press her hand against what she could feel of its gaseous body -
"Ach - ! Blood and damNATION!"
She was almost terrified to look at her palm, at the scorched flesh she knew must lie there... could feel her epidermis, and below that the dermis, right down to the blood vessels, all of it: bubbling into char…
But when she did turn it over, there was nothing of the sort. Not even the slightest mark.
"Shit," she swore again. She saw Lillie's expression flutter with disapproval, and a rush of pleasure came to her. "SHI - IT, mother of..."
"That's odd," Lillie said, voice frilly with concern. "They've never done that to me before…"
"Not a friendly Pokémon, huh?"
"Huh? No, I just said they're perfectly amicable..."
Perfectly, perfectly amicable indeed, never had a problem. Or maybe it was that Lillie had never dared feel its blaze on her skin. A smarter girl than Mizuki, if that were the case.
But, Mizuki thought, she really did ought to show some gratitude towards Lillie. She'd trusted her with a secret! And one she, by all accounts, didn't really need to know. The extra mile!
So, then, it was time to corrupt the kindness with a transaction.
Mizuki sighed.
"I have a secret, too."
She looked at her palm, and for a moment, remembered the finger paint drying and cracking on her skin; remembered spit bubbling down her chin and her wrist.
"I'm… left-handed."
"That isn't a secret at all," Lillie protested. "That's like if I said I had blonde hair as my secret. It's just something about you. That's not in any way comparable to mine."
As always, Lillie missed the forest for the trees.
"Like blonde hair." Mizuki looked back at her left palm and flinched. "Is - is it that obvious?"
Lillie shook her head. "No. I mean, I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me. But it isn't anything to be ashamed of. It isn't a secret."
"It is a secret," insisted Mizuki. "You don't understand a thing, Lillie. Don't try to tell me what is or isn't my secret, because it's my secret. And besides, it's not like anyone's ever tried to make you dye your hair to hide its natural color." She looked at her palm again, thinking of the sting of the rope; her hand frozen, locked behind her back, until the blood ran still and it became nothing more than a nerve-dead impediment. You're going to give yourself a blood clot, her mother said, as if it were Mizuki's choice -
Lillie didn't reply, and Mizuki was more than happy to leave the subject in the dust, but she fidgeted with a lock of her obviously blonde hair, visibly unsatisfied. Ooh, wasn't she a glutton for secrets? Gossip was frowned upon among the Children, but Mizuki did find herself indulging in it on occasion as well. Not often - even she could understand its power, how it could distort one's perspective of their loved ones. The things people said about her family…
The things she could say about her family.
How painful it was to hold secrets - the grip around your neck, squeezing the life out of you. After you passed into the other realm and the world-dreamer placed your heart onto his scale of judgement, the secrets would turn to lead and you'd fall into the under, into the open jaws of the beast. The primordial jury would look over their noses at you as you joined with the magma bubbling in his belly. And it wouldn't matter how many promises you kept: Mizuki, despite knowing better, had discarded so many over the years.
The words welled up in her throat, ready to dissolve whatever they came into contact with. It wasn't anything Lillie needed to know. She'd be happier if she didn't know.
go right ahead, then, and weigh her down with you
"Well, I..." Mizuki grimaced. "I do have another secret. It's not really my secret to tell, though. Not even Sun and Hau know about it. But -" she pressed her finger into Lillie's forehead until her nail formed an indent - "if you ever - ever - tell another soul about this, no matter who it is, I swear I'll kill you. I'll kill you dead. You - get - it?"
Lillie correctly interpreted this as an exaggeration, but held a grave demeanor as she nodded.
"Swear it. I want to hear you swear it."
"I swear," Lillie said.
The words burned on Mizuki's tongue, tasting of ashes and sulfur, as she whispered them into Lillie's ear. Her throat ached for water to cleanse her disgust. When she came back up to face Lillie, the other girl's eyes were as wide as a Slowpoke's.
"That... that isn't... you should TELL someone -"
"No," Mizuki said. "No. No one will ever find out from me. I'd rather cut out my tongue than tell anyone else."
(How she had come across such forbidden information... a burning night, a hole in her brain. Overlapping voices, scattered cries, deadened eyes. The memory seared with the touch of a flame-tipped poker, a brand on her psyche. Stupid mind, stupid brain, stupid neuron-split psyche!)
"But, I..." Lillie's brow furrowed. "I don't know how I'm supposed to look at anyone here the same, knowing that. I'm sure you all have your reasons, but…"
There it was. Lillie was going to make her feel like a wretched fool for divulging her biggest secret, and she'd act all weird about it, and everyone would know, and their eyes would pick them both apart, and so you did live up to your nature after all. We all knew you would.
Why did Mizuki ever bother trusting anyone at all?
Lillie must have seen the dark glare in her eyes, because she softened. "I mean, I won't tell anyone," she reassured her. "I think that should be your job. Not mine."
"I'm not going to. I've already said that." Mizuki brought her knees to her chest, sighing. "I... I want to be your friend, Lillie, I really do. You're already Sun's friend, so there's no barrier to that. If you have a Pokémon, you could join us on our journey - well, if Dad lets you. Can't promise he will. But I'll put in a good word for you if you want me to."
"Nebby isn't that kind of Pokémon. And I don't want to be a Trainer."
Mizuki had a feeling she might say that, for Sun had reported Lillie's unwillingness to her beforehand, and the two had shared a good laugh about it. Nobody ever didn't want to be a Trainer. Even Mom had let her Azurill spar with Harmony when Mizuki asked her.
But what did she mean, 'not that kind of Pokemon'? She knew what Pokemon were for, right?
"But, um." With the both of them having calmed down, Lillie revisited the topic once again. "How come you never told me you had an older sister?"
"Half-sister," Mizuki corrected. "And, as you can probably guess... we don't like talking about her."
It came out too barbed. Again the air went stale.
"So, then, where does she live now, if not with you? Still in Alola?"
"She doesn't live here," Mizuki said. "Don't ask me where she does live. I just know it's not here."
Lillie rubbed her wrist, poking at her bag with the toes of her shoes. "Well, don't you think someone ought to return - "
"No," Mizuki said flatly, "I don't. I don't want to think about it at all."
Suddenly she ached for touch, and not Lillie's; without another thought she brought up her Poke Ball and summoned Frostfire; let him strut his Litten strut all around the place; felt her lungs loosen.
"To be honest," she said, "I think she had her own Ishmael with her. Not like - not in the same way as you, with the blackouts. But, near the end, she kept getting sick - I hardly saw her, in those days, they hardly let us see her..."
Lillie blinked. "Isn't that usual?" she asked, referring to the sickness.
Mizuki shifted in place. "I don't know. Could be. I don't really know too much about it."
Frostfire pushed his head into her lap, his eyes closed in pure satisfaction. She pressed her palm into the spot between his ears, kneading his skin.
"I wish I knew why bad things have to happen. I've never really gotten a good answer about it."
Because - this half-mumbled to a skeptical Sun - material things, sufferings, evil people, tyrannical nature. Evil was a certainty - certainly more interesting than Good. Good never carried that transgressive radiance of evil...
And how radiant it was, the transgression she'd commit this very moment: letting Lillie lay her head on her shoulder and give in to the demon called sleep, up to the moment Dad came to take her away.
"Sun," Professor Burnet called. "Sun."
They were sitting at the dining table, and he was staring at his hands knotted together, his jittery hands, his mind clicking and buzzing like a hive of Cutiefly.
"I don't want to die," he pleaded. "It knows, it knows, it knows WHERE I LIVE."
"Sun, the Tapu isn't going to hurt you... you're being hysterical, now, please..."
I see. But you're not normally so superstitious - you're hysterical.
"I am hysterical," Sun agreed, rocking back and forth in his seat, his eyes a madman's, wide and demented. "Hysterical FOR A REASON!"
And her face falling, revealing the true reason: she couldn't stand the nerves, couldn't stand the numbers on the blood pressure monitor going up, didn't want her little tranquil life to be disturbed… the fabric of reality was falling apart, you know, and Kukui seemed to be perfectly content to abandon that poor girl to the Lycanroc in the Children of Starlight's compound, and Munchie, the eternal glutton, had suddenly found himself without his ravenous appetite, which the nurse at the Pokemon Center had informed her was a sign of severe illness in Munchlaxes. So couldn't Sun show some goddamned courtesy and -
Ah, well, the girl would be saved, she'd make sure of that; and Munchie might feel better tomorrow, next week, next month or so, surely; and the fabric of reality would sew itself back together, somehow, even if it took many months (even if the downslide had been going on since before Sun had even been born - )
Right. Burnet smiled and leaned across the table to pat Sun's clasped hands. Everything would turn out okay.
It always did.
Mizuki hadn't had a chance to speak alone with Dad since he had first sentenced her to stay in the compound. He commuted here every day, but she often only saw him at a distance. On the stage. At the ritual, of course. At dinner, he did not sit with his family, but at the head of the table of council elders; and, as a busy man, he rarely cared to visit for the other mealtimes.
His study was located in the main wing of the compound, a few doors down from the auditorium. Mizuki had gleaned from films and novels that studies were meant to have a specific atmosphere. Cozy, brown, enveloping places, filled to bursting with books and papers and folders. Pictures of family on the walls, scattered ornaments and memorabilia. Whatever the essence of the human soul was, one was likely to find it in the study.
Dad's study did not fit any aspect of this description. It was bare of any book save for the Holy Testament of Starlight, and all his manila folders were shunted off in metal filing cabinets, perfectly alphabetized.
There were two pictures kept beside each other in small frames, quite easy to overlook. The first one was of Dad as a child of about nine or ten, decked out in a baseball uniform, bat in hand. If one had advanced knowledge, as Mizuki did, and looked closely at his subtle smile, one could see the point where the surgeon had stitched his top lip together. Underneath the photo, on a jagged red brushstroke graphic: Kazaki Tenma, #27.
The second one, taken a few years before Mizuki's birth, had him standing beside a woman Mizuki had never met: his first wife. As far as Mizuki knew, she was as ethnically Sinnohan as the rest of them, but in that time it had been in fashion to dye one's hair the same shade of blonde as the newly coronated Champion Shirona, contrasting with the natural midnight dark of her husband and daughter. A two-year-old Mizune clung to her father's leg, exhibiting an early manifestation of her camera phobia.
Stupid Mizune. Cameras never hurt anyone.
But, to their credit, they did look happy - well, the adults did, at least. They weren't. But they knew how to force it.
And the main fixture, of course: Dad in the flesh, reclining in his rolling chair, hands steepled across his chest. It was a few moments before he noticed her; his gaze was fixed down at a file on his desk. When she gave a passive hum, he twitched, looked to her, and swiveled his chair around.
"Hello, my dear," he said. At the moment, he seemed to be putting on an impression of himself in the second picture. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's..." Mizuki started, and then remembered who she was speaking to. "I need to talk to you about something important."
"Anything for my daughter."
"Dad, why did..." she trailed off, the words sticking in her throat. "Why did... at the beginning of the universe. Why did the world-dreamer create evil?"
From the sigh he gave her, she understood this was not his first time hearing the question.
"The world-dreamer is not a perfect being. It is not possible for an imperfect being to create perfection, just as it is impossible for a perfect being to create imperfection."
"But why isn't the world-dreamer perfect? If you say he's so powerful..."
"Mizuki," Dad said, "someday, it will come that you will be able to understand all the many issues with this universe. But, for now, this is my purpose. This is why I was created: to lead you, and all the others, to salvation. Leave it to me for the time being."
"But Daaad-"
"Leave it," Dad said, "all to me. This knowledge isn't something you should want."
Heavy is the head that wears the crown, she thought. How did Dad sleep at night, she thought, knowing he was the only thing standing between humanity and a deep, vast, cold, empty universe? He must have felt he was standing on the bottom of the seafloor with all the ocean bearing down on his head. The crown of the ocean, and all the universe.
She thought of something he had told them once, in a sermon:
All roads lead to me. To truth. I am truth.
He was right, wasn't he? She knew for a fact he was right. But there was something else on her mind aching - something a little more worldly.
"Dad, Stage Zero's pretty scary, right? And I don't remember any kids going through it alone. So why does Lillie have to?"
"You're certainly correct that it isn't usual," Dad said. "But Lillie isn't like other children. She's an old soul."
...An old soul? A mature girl. A good girl with a sickness that made her bad, but only sometimes, and never in any way that truly mattered. A good girl, a wise girl, the perfect daughter.
No, she couldn't be perfect. Ishmael wouldn't have taken up residence inside her if she was. Whatever her issue was, it must have evinced itself in her aura. That must have been the reason why he meant to put her through this - to clean out the most innate, deeply entrenched darkness within her. It was capable even of putting out the fires at the very bottom of the pit of hell: the ones burning since the beginning of time.
(And one more, she thought. The one that had ignited twelve years ago, when sperm met egg. And her heart broke.)
"Dad? Are you proud of me? Do I make you proud?"
("Hey, you don't really need another daughter, do you, Dad?")
"Dad, are you - are you really proud of me? Are you ashamed of me? I know it all, right? I'm good?"
For her faithfulness, her strength, her loyalty, her honesty. All those virtues she possessed and no one would ever tell her they meant anything, and she was starting to doubt they meant anything, and she was getting tired of playing pretend, the game was collapsing in on itself.
"Last time," Mizuki continued, "you never told me you were proud of me. I just want to hear it. I don't care. I don't care, I want to hear it, even if it's a useful lie."
Dad's breath hitched, and he made an odd squeaking noise... then, in a fragment of a moment, recomposed himself.
"A useful lie? What ever could you mean?"
"Nothing," Mizuki said, "nothing, nothing, nothing nothing nothing forget I ever said anything at all."
He relaxed.
"Correct," he said. "Correct. I am proud of you. You're so good at following directions."
It was similar enough to the answer Mizuki had been looking for that she didn't protest… but her shoulders slumped forward. Before she knew it, Dad had come around the desk to embrace her, propping her chin up with his fingers to force eye contact with him.
"There's one other thing I need to tell you," he said. There was a faraway look in his eyes. "It's good news. Wonderful news. We've found out the gender of your new little sibling..."
"Oh," Mizuki managed to force out. "Her?"
Dad smiled and readied the knife-words:
"Not a her. Mizuki, in three months you're going to have a new little brother by your side. Tenshida. Isn't that wonderful?"
"Isn't that wonderful?"
"Isn't that wonderful?"
Isn't that
wonderful isn't
that wo
nderful is that not
wonderful,
is it
not?
She blinked at the girl staring back at her in the mirror. The one with a bad case of acne and a worse case of bedhead. The one who looked like hell on earth. Her eyes were bloodshot from a lack of sleep and long hours spent reading those useless strategy guides, and she knew she wasn't supposed to sleep in her uniform, but Mom never punished her with any more than a resigned shrug, and her clothes were now just as wrinkled and disheveled as they had been yesterday.
When she let Frostfire out, he gave her feet a cautionary sniff and widened his jaws slightly. They weren't in her room, which she had designated as their training space, and she almost never took him out besides that, so she understood his confusion.
"This is the women's restroom," she said half-heartedly, "so you've gotta be good. You can be good, right? You're capable?"
Frostfire looked up, seeming uncertain. Or disinterested.
"You've got to be good."
With no response to give, Frostfire dashed off into one of the stalls. Mizuki would have given chase, but given the way her legs were wobbling, she felt certain doing so would cause her to topple over. She kept herself upright with her palms on the counter, the cold granite all dressed up ornate, a diseased block of maroon glimmering with shards of amber.
She tossed her thoughts of the Litten away. He was but a tool of a disappearing future.
In the olden days, in films and novels, those evergreen treachers, they placed bars of soap onto their tongues. They didn't have those here in the compound. She would have to make do with the soap bottle.
She unscrewed the top and
/this is what you deserve for telling her this is your punishment
flicked it bottoms up.
/there is nothing you could ever do to cleanse your sin it's done, it's done it's done it's done
But it was cleansing her, her tongue and her cells, burning burning burning so sweet and so acrid. She gagged and retched, trying to defy it, trying to regret it. The girl in the mirror became two, and then merged into one. In a fever she thought about becoming exponential, parabolic, and you'd need ten thousand mirrors and eighty-three thousand words to contain all of her…
/You're a dishonor to your family. You're a disease, a virus, a plague. You're just like one of them. You're going to end up just like your sister.
Maybe I always have been just like my sister.
Her spit collected at the bottom of the sink, too thick and sludgy to filter down. She stood over it with her jaw wide, watching a stream of saliva drip off her tongue. Her tongue was a pincushion.
/she'd be happy to see you like this
She wiped her mouth and spat again. Invisible mallets thumped and thumped and thumped the top of her head and she buckled over again thinking she would vomit, certain she would vomit. When she pressed her hand to her temple, she felt the thin blood vessel there, and thought of her blood cells carrying parabens and all her shame. For a moment, Mizune pressed her hand into the divot between Mizuki's ribs - painful. But when Mizuki forced her eyes open, it was only the counter. Only the counter.
The shredding of toilet paper in the stall. Her feet carried her and she smacked the door open and found Frostfire mewing in delight with the paper strewn all over the floor, his claws in the air; and all her anger fell loose.
"Frostfire! Frostfire, you can't do that, it's, it's..."
There it was. Nausea stole her words, and a second forgot to pass in the time Mizuki ran to the sink. Failed to run. The bile hit the wall, staining it the color of dead honeysuckle.
how did I let them make me like this.
how did I let him make me like this.
She stared at it, wide-eyed, planking on the ground. The smell hit her, and her face twisted, caught in some purgatorial state between recoiling and neutrality.
No one was here except for her. No one would come and see her shame. She had no one except for Frostfire, and that was almost as bad as having no one at all.
Was that relieving? Even Harmony had abandoned her. It must have been Harmony's idea to turn away, and he'd convinced poor Frostfire to stick himself to a gangly wretch like her. Who'd have guessed the little defective weapon could be so black-hearted?
Finally she allowed herself to splay out and stretch on the floor. To, shamefully, seek a little comfort in her current situation.
How had they made her like this. No, it was, beautifully, all her own fault. I am the captain of my soul, I write my own tales, I steer my own ship. I am what lies between the gaps.
And she lay there, settling into those gaps, content. Frostfire finally reached her and buried his snout into her nape, erecting his tail in curiosity; when no further sound or motion came from her, he padded off, free to immerse himself in toilet water.
Footsteps thundered in the hall outside, and she bolted to her feet, attacking the mess in a whirlwind of paper towels and soap. A blank in her memory told her she'd slept: somehow. It would be a sin to question the miracle.
With the nausea dissolved and the abomination cleansed from the wall, she could find it in herself to dwell on the needle-pricking why.
I can't believe I'm jealous of a fetus.
Last month, two, three months ago, the fifth-grade class had to learn about the body, about the hidden parts of the body, and she had forged her father's signature on the permission slip so she'd get to know. And she'd learned: her brother had started as a misshapen lump, and his cells at this very moment were splitting to make more of him, until he would be a baby-shaped lump. She thought, maybe he wouldn't stop and he'd keep splitting until he was bigger than an infant, bigger than a man, maybe he'd grow to the size of a house, a skyscraper, the whole island, the whole world.
It was only right to loathe him, and Mirai, and herself, for being clay and returning to clay. It was only right to loathe him for being him, for having one more thing in common with Dad than her, and to loathe Dad for prioritizing that thing above anything that mattered.
She would watch her brother become the Spiritual Guide.
Like that: her whole future, her whole purpose, snapped out of existence.
Once she considered it in those terms, it sounded so easy, so painless, to suffer the death change brought - as though it could ever be conceived of at all.
Lillie's light was on. Mizuki hovered out in the hall by her door, debating how worth it it would be to call for comfort. She thought she might die if she couldn't have Lillie's hand on her shoulder, to rejuvenate her graying flesh.
No, no, Lillie had indulged in enough secrets for one day, and too many secrets would rot your teeth and make you sick. She was sick enough already. Better to let her convalesce.
It was past midnight by the time Mizuki managed to rest her eyes. Her psyche resisted it, but sleep scraped down her broken will like Tapu Koko's talons down the side of 'Ale K-8 School, and she gave, and fell, and fell. And flew.
I remember when you made me like this. I remember.
I was young, and I was so happy when you came back for me at last. My stomach was rumbling, and you fed me good food. All my favorites: white rice and pickled red onions and nori and rounds of radishes and Mago berries. And when we were finished, a big bowl of konpeitō for everyone. I remember how my teeth cracked them open and ground them into sugar dust and you said, we'll all be dust someday too, so let's remember. Let's live while we're living.
Hey, when did you forget how to live?
I remember how you pressed your lips into my forehead and told me good night. I asked you for a bedtime story, but you said you didn't have one for me. Nothing I hadn't heard a thousand times before. When you said that, I wanted to cry. But I don't know how to cry, so I smiled.
I remember sleep. I slept, and it was heaven. From the clouds I watched the lava bubble up from Wela Volcano, and you were there at my side. Do you remember?
I dream of it. I dream of that perfection awaiting us past the clouds, where evil can never reach. I dream of starshine.
It might have been only a dream, but it was a good dream. It was a dream I was happy to have. I've never been happ
"Mizuki."
ier.
She was unclothed and the ground upon which she stood was slick with a thin layer of blood. She was enveloped by some sort of chapel, a cathedral they say it took eight hundred years to build, did you know?, an Enraptoran church, perhaps? If-then they'd ought to have pews, or sensical stained glass, not those squares up there - but it wasn't as if she would ever know what the inside of the eight-hundred-year-old cathedral looked like; she would never step foot in the region in which it stood, on the other side of the world.
"Mi - zu - ki."
A quick pass of the area revealed something odd: her eyes failed to focus on anything not in the center of her vision, and what they did focus on didn't make sense to her. Two parallel rows of TVs facing each other. When she glided towards one she found her own haggard reflection darkened in the dead screen.
"Mizuki!"
At the altar stood a great king bed. A figure lay upon it, nearly swallowed in its entirety by the impossible mattress, the mattress so soft you could sink into it forever. At the sound of Mizuki's slow, cautionary steps, it sat up.
She was a woman of about eighteen, raven-haired. Her face was a doll's; immaculate in its composition, as if the world-dreamer had pressed his very own fingers into her clay: somehow, this imperfect flesh held a perfect ratio. Below the collarbone, her body was a mere wisp. Translucent. Fractals in rainbow colors rippled in its place like a Finneon's wet scales, scattering luminosity.
Mizuki fell onto her knees.
"Mizune," she breathed. "Nene, I..."
She felt her sleep was a cage and she was rattling the bars, barrelling her whole self into them, but she wouldn't lose this. She wouldn't lose Mizune.
"Mizune, I'm so sorry, I told her your secret - "
"Mizuki."
Mizuki's throat closed up. This authority, this hollowness, was one she'd never heard in her sister's voice before. Here it came - the condemnation -
"Lillie is good. It's good you told her. It's best if she knows."
A wavering beam of light pressed in through the roof, and in its light her sister phosphoresced. Mizuki, astonished, inclined her head to search for its entrance point... but, just as with everything else, it escaped her. Outside the stained-glass window, the sky was the color of blood, oozing its own hazy, miasmic light into the cathedral. The ancient pagan-song of Sinnoh buried into her brain, clicking its clockwork tempo, and her breathing slowed.
Mizune motioned for her to rise, come closer. Soon her grasp enveloped Mizuki, and her pallid fingers ghosted down her little sister's jaw. Caressing her. Her fractal-body burned with all the fire of a complete one, and when Mizuki pressed her palm to the space just below where her chest should be, a low thrumming met her.
Mizune brought her lips to her ear.
"Lillie is blessèd," she said. "Soon you will understand why fate brought her to you. She is its instrument."
"Wha..."
(The myopic girl was too tangled amongst the tendrils of her own illogic to notice as a television came to life and flickered a thought:
NEVER COULD HAVE ASKED FOR ONE BETTER )
"It's, um, not really like you to joke around like that, Nene," Mizuki mumbled after a moment. The scent of the kōshin ointment blessed her nostrils, as if Nene had bathed herself in it. It was going to tug Mizuki away, she knew... she couldn't recall ever knowing scent in a dream. She cycled through a few odors ingrained in her memories: the smell of fish-food in Dad's old aquarium, the musty scent of the kitchen behind the school cafeteria, the dead-flower something else that had caused Nene's eyes to turn red after school, the lavender hand-soap in the restrooms. The recollection of the last one triggered her to recoil, rear back.
"You are correct. I am not joking. And speak louder when you're talking to me."
Mizuki, incensed by the mandate, shouted her next sentence: "That doesn't make any sense. Lillie isn't like us at all."
"That is what you believe. Don't think I summoned you here with the intent of confirming all your previously existing beliefs." There was nothing outwardly cruel about Mizune's smile, but Mizuki could tell it was not all benign. "Our father has forgotten his kindness... I know surely you have seen this, though you have pretended to turn a blind eye. You know he could have offered me grace..."
"He's kind to Lillie," Mizuki protested. "He brought her here - wants to help her - "
and you don't deserve grace, besides.
"He wants to break her, Mizuki. Can't you see it? He wants her to hate the dark parts of herself, so she'll stay with him believing he'll help her repress them. And you know what they're going to do to her. They've already got you trying to make sure she doesn't sleep, and they're going to decrease the amount of food they give her. They'll make her hungry and sick. Mizuki, you might not be able to do anything about her sleep, but you must ensure she eats. Sneak her food from the pantry."
Mizuki stepped off the mattress; shook her head. "No, no, I can't do that..."
"No. No, you can do it. It's merely that you don't want to do it. That you're afraid. Isn't that right?"
Mizuki bristled. "No, no, no! I'm not afraid of anything! There's nothing in the world that'll scare me." She sighed, forcing her breathing steady. "I'd even jump off a cliff if it would help her. You're right, you're right. I'll save her. I'll get her food. Just tell me exactly what I should do, and I'll do it."
Mizune smiled. "Good. Good. You're doing the right thing. It's your duty to cleanse this place. You need to survive to cleanse this world, and you need to start with them. You need to show our father and your mother the light. Lillie's a red blood cell: born to carry the message. You're a white one, born to fight for it. You're an agent of Truth's immune system, and you need to destroy the cancer that's grown among the Children."
No, no, no, what was she thinking? This couldn't be. Dad couldn't be... Dad was...
Dad loved her, without fail. He was love incarnate.
But, then again, so was Nene.
"I..." Mizuki demurred. "I'll think about it."
"You'll think about it!"
Nene's voice fizzled through the chamber, at one moment loud, the next quiet; but never resolving. Her teeth crashed together and produced a subtle clack.
"You'll think about it! You'll stand by and let them do wrong while they twist her and break her will! While she wastes away. You'll think about it, and once you act it'll be too late. You'll have damned her. You'll have damned her with you!"
The televisions - the fire, the molten sinners, the tide of fluid armageddon, flared up, flickered on, howling, gnashing, swirling, undulating. Mizuki clasped her hands together, forcing her back against the wall, pressing herself into the bitter chipped stone. On her back she could feel the many divots, the grooves where so many had run their hands over - the handprints of eight or eight hundred years.
"Okay! Okay! Nene, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I won't be afraid. I'll do whatever you say."
Nene relaxed. Mizuki couldn't. The televisions still buzzed in the background, spewing their orange lifeblood. It would have fascinated her if it weren't her future.
She wiped the gloop her brain had melted into from her ear canal and thought of Lillie in her bed, unsleeping due to the lumps in her mattress. She thought of her own back, aching from her own lumps and the holes and her mind leaped to the reason she'd gotten so few hand-me-downs throughout her childhood: most of Mizune's Mothim-eaten garments weren't deemed acceptable for her to wear. She'd once been ecstatic to have her parents buy her new clothes every few months, but now that she could think, and feel pity…
"It's good. See? You're good, Mizuki. You do have a mind for good."
A mind for good, but not the tongue for it: it wouldn't be able to procure her the words to apologize. Absent-mindedly she chewed at the inside of her cheek, canines and molars together suddenly displeased with their confinement.
"I wish," she said. "I wish I wish I wish."
It relieved her when Nene softened, and didn't address the root of the conflict itself.
"I know you don't intend for her to suffer. You want to know what you're getting yourself into. You remember the HERO'S Journey, remember?" (She felt a faint flicker of Mizune relaying this to her, the monomyth, how they all were the heroes of their own stories. She remembered thinking, Dad had said some of them were eyes and some were ears and some were mouths, but here was someone claiming they were all whole bodies. How disquieting.) "The Refusal of the Call? You should take that as evidence you're doing the right thing."
"I'm not a hero," Mizuki said reflexively.
"Fine, then. Go ahead and hate yourself. It won't make you happy. It won't make anyone happy except THE FORCES OF EVIL." Mizune pulled her lips into a pout.
It wasn't that she wanted to resist. She'd been split by two upbringings: one had taken the care to nourish her logic; the other, to extinguish it. It seemed time and time again a contest between her logic and her foolhardiness to see which would outlast the other.
This time, her foolhardiness won out.
"I swear I'll cleanse it," Mizuki said. "I'll show Dad the light."
The moment the words left her lips a starburst pattern bloomed on the floor: where it touched, the blood was clean, leaving the stone untouched. The light refracted through Nene: progressing through shades of blue and purple and pink.
The televisions flashed:
YOU ARE A HERO
YOU ARE A SAVIOR
THERE IS NO ONE ELSE LIKE YOU
YOU HAVE WON: 144,000 RIGHTEOUS TICKETS!
BLESSED HOLY SACRED TRUTH LOVE LOVE LOVE
YOUR NAME WILL BE REMEMBERED FOREVER.
"Oh, Mizuki," Nene gasped, "you've done it! You've won!"
"I've... won? What, is this a game show?" Mizuki craned her neck at the impossible ceiling, scanning for secret cameras. "A prank show, or something? Hey, where is this place, anyway? This must be a dream…"
Nene leaped up from her position on the bed, startling Mizuki. At the points where she stepped, the blood dissolved and cleared itself. She ran to her, and latched onto her hands, and…
Mizuki blinked, and Nene was no longer; instead, it was Lillie holding her hands, an uncharacteristic haughtiness lurking in her expression. Mizuki's nerves coiled in her abdomen like a crushed spring: Lillie's eyes were too dark; the familiar green almost obsidian...
"We'll be free soon," the not-Lillie promised her, leaning in too close. "Um, hey, uh, uh, Mizuki, Mi - Mizuki, doesn't the name 'Righteous Tickets' imply it's the tickets themselves that are righteous, and, uh, not that you earn them for being righteous?"
The impression was uncanny: almost a caricature. Lillie in a funhouse mirror. Mizuki's throat turned to ash.
"Nene? I want to talk to..."
Nene. Nene she was again, still on her wrists, flashing coffee-stained incisors.
"Um, Nene, where exactly is this place? Is this even a dream at all?" Mizuki examined the shadow of her cast onto the wall among the lights the prism cut... she didn't know whether her mind would be able to conjure up such detail, the blur of the edges, the blur of the form. "This has to be a dream."
"Only to a degree," Nene said, sounding very much like Nene.
"Yes, but, but, what sort of degree? Should I be taking any of this seriously? When I wake up, should I..."
"Mizuki, listen. You're letting your thoughts get in the way of truth."
Right. Right. How often had she heard that? The truth or the Truth, it didn't matter. Silly thoughts, silly opinions. The tightness in her chest faded.
"I'm done with you here," Nene cooed, "but you've pleased me, my little sister, you've made me so happy. I'll wake up thinking of you..."
She continued rambling, stumbling back onto the mattress; collapsing head-first. The words on the television screens blinked off, and she seized, quieting at last.
Mizuki cleared her throat.
"Hey, um... Nene? Before you send me back - " if you really must send me back - "why... why won't you call me Ketchup? Like you always used to."
Mizune whirled back towards her. New disdain clotted her narrowed eyes.
"Oh, don't be childish, Mizuki. This is an assignment for mature girls. The world needs you to be one."
At last, the blood vessels on the inside of Mizuki's cheek gave way, leaking their ferrous contents. If Mizune wanted her response, she didn't show it; she turned away again, and the dream collapsed in on itself, cocooning Mizuki in a solemn blanket of numb.
The following morning, when Mizuki got up, it was Lillie's room she skipped over to first. Not with any intentionality: the part of her brain with the capacity for such had not awakened with the rest of her.
She pushed Lillie's door open to discover an empty bed. Sheets tossed aside, pillow askew. Pressing her hand into the mattress revealed it'd been cold a while. Bathroom empty.
Still unthinking, she wandered down the east wing, the central wing; stole a glance into every exposed room, at every disordered landscape painting, the children's drawings, the children drawing in the preschool room, the whirlwind of smoky green and verdant red, the alphabet banner crossing the top of the wall; a double helix by Misao Kazakami, age 3; the sliding glass door, hazy with a thin layer of cinnamon-powder dirt.
She hadn't been expecting to find Lillie here, and the sight halted her. All the way outside on the patio, Lillie sat across from Mizuki's wonderful father on a rocking chair, hugging a decorative blue velvet pillow. Behind them, in the garden, vines growing clusters of swollen Tamato Berries snaked around a row of long wooden stakes.
"I don't know what I can do," Lillie whimpered, the glass muffling her voice. "I don't know how to make her like me. I know it's selfish, but I wish I knew how to tell her what I really thought about her..."
Mizuki, curious as to the identity of this her, pressed her ear to the door. It scalded with the heat of the morning sun, but her pain didn't outstrip the perverse pleasure of watching Lillie's composure crumble in front of her father...
"I don't want to believe she's truly evil," Lillie continued. "I don't believe in true evil, anyway... I know, not in her soh... her soh..." the end of her sentence melted into a yawn.
"Here you are, at it again," Tenshiro said as Lillie rubbed her bloodshot eyes. "'I don't', 'I don't'... you're mired in this self-defeating mindset. Lillie, you'd feel a lot more free if you just told me what you want out of life."
Lillie looked up and down; fiddled with her tag some more. "I want her to love me. That's all I've ever wanted."
"But there are so many people here who love you unconditionally... why waste your time chasing after someone you don't know even has the capacity for love? And, in any case, if she's not aware of the Truth, she'll only lead you astray..."
"But she's my mother," Lillie said. "Of course she has the capacity for love. I know for a fact she does. Everyone does."
"Love," Tenshiro said, "is a much more complex concept than it may seem. Sometimes people put it on as they would a mask. They understand how to mimic it, but are not capable of knowing it genuinely. Or their heart has lost its ability to love, as all muscles do when underused. My first wife, she..."
Lillie, her sleepless mind spiraling, could have sworn she spotted Mizuki in the glass door's reflection; when she blinked again, the girl, or the ghost of her, had gone.
"I myself am hell; / nobody's here-"
-Robert Lowell, "Skunk Hour"