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She wakes up.
She can still remember the last time she was here. It feels like an eternity has passed, feels like it hasn’t been long enough. The hollowed out space in her chest aches as if it were carved out yesterday.
The dull, overcast sky hovering on the edge of a storm that never comes, the endless push and pull of the waves, the flat of her back pressed against the sand. It all feels the same as the last time. It overwhelms her senses and sends her mind back to unpleasant memories.
Maki searches for something, anything to ground her, to stave off the panic before it can fully settle.
Why is she here again?
“Ah, I died."
She can’t remember exactly how it happened, can’t remember who or what killed her, but it doesn’t matter. It never mattered.
She fulfilled Mai’s wish, spilled blood in her name until the very end. Destroyed everything.
Now she finds herself once again on that same haunting beach—except, this time, there is no one here.
It was foolish to think Mai would wait.
She gets up.
Among the shells and branches washed up by the sea, she finds her sword stuck in the shoreline. At least her most precious treasure had somehow made it to not-quite-afterlife.
Maki reaches to pull the sword out of the wet sand but it feels off, feels wrong.
She frowns.
It is the same casual motion as pulling it out of a dead curse or some curse user’s body, the same weight and grip she grew accustomed to after discarding most of her other tools. Everything feels the same.
Yet, the comfort of Mai’s cursed energy never comes.
Maki’s grip begins to shake when a sharp noise startles her out of her thoughts. Several cracks form at the blade and spread towards the edge until the sword fully shatters in her hands, turning into a fine dust.
The wind carries its remains towards the endless ocean and Maki’s soul aches.
There’s no point in delaying it now.
She sighs and makes her way into the water.
It doesn’t feel cold like the last time, it doesn’t soak her clothes or throw her off balance. She walks in silence as the wild geese fly above her.
Forward and forward, the water gradually submerges her ankles, her thighs, her waist. It offers no resistance, flows right through her body. She wonders if Mai had felt the same back then.
The beach has long vanished from behind her at this point, and Maki notices that this strange ocean won’t go any deeper than waist level no matter how far she goes.
The clouds shift in the sky and the water dries out. The sand underneath parts to reveal a cobblestone path. Her surroundings fill up with trees and paper walls, a familiar set of interconnected buildings now standing before her.
Maki is back in the Zenin compound. Before she destroyed it, before she even left. The bittersweet memory of a childhood home eternally stuck in time as if trapped in amber. The place where she grew up alongside Mai.
She frowns, keeps walking.
It is deathly quiet in a way it never was before. The Zenin grounds were ancient enough for Maki to expect to find a ghost even before she died, but they still had servants running errands from building to building, still had shitty old men loitering near the gardens.
It’s almost beautiful to see it empty.
In a kinder world, she would have started over with Mai from here. Would have laid waste to this place and built it back up as many times as Mai wished, would have painted the walls with the blood of this rotten clan to see her smile.
After passing through the main courtyard, Maki halts when she realizes she is no longer alone.
A little girl with choppy dark hair stands at the steps that connect the path from the main house to the training grounds, terrified of a low grade curse a few paces away. Maki immediately recognizes her.
“Mai!”
Mai doesn’t react, can’t see her.
Before she can do anything else, her younger self finds Mai and the fond memory of that day unfolds the same as it did years ago.
“Onee-chan, don’t let go!”
Maki’s heart no longer beats, but it still breaks.
The small twins fade into the distance, hand in hand, and Maki has no choice but to keep walking.
She sees the old tool shed their father used to throw them in whenever they (or Maki) misbehaved. Back when he only meant to punish and not to kill.
Mai had suffered the most, being the only one able to see the curses that would sometimes crawl inside. Maki would hold her the entire time, would bash her own fists and head against the door until they gave up trying to repair it.
When she gets to the training grounds, Maki sees herself again. Not much younger than she is now (or was), wearing the Kukuru squad uniform. Round glasses, long hair, unscarred skin, stubbornly naive.
This time, the scene doesn’t play out exactly as she remembers.
She recalls tending to her own wounds after getting beat up in training, recalls the scolding she got from Nobuaki for talking back, but there is one thing Maki does not remember seeing that day.
Mai watching her, hidden behind a wall.
Women were not allowed in the training grounds, but Mai had been there.
Mai who would bow down and follow orders without question, Mai who would never disobey on her own, not without Maki to spur her on.
Maki clenches her fists.
The memory fades. She keeps walking.
Another Mai shows up.
This one is sitting with knees to her chest on the veranda next to the clan head’s study, under a shadow cast by the roof.
She has that look on her face. The one Maki has come to hate since the first time she saw it during the exchange event. The one that makes Mai seem so, so alone.
Maki hates it because she knows it is her fault.
It is her fault that Mai had to suffer alone, had to face ugly and scary things, and go through so much pain. It is her fault for allowing Mai to believe she had ever let go.
“I’m sorry.”
Maki reaches to stroke Mai’s hair, to soothe, to comfort. To do everything she had failed to do when they were together and alive.
Her hand goes right through Mai.
It doesn’t surprise Maki in the slightest.
This is nothing but a shadow puppet reenacting their memories and she knows. She knows but still can’t help feeling disappointed, can’t help looking back as she leaves another echo of Mai behind.
The scenery changes again, again, again.
It takes Maki to Kyoto, where she sees Mai with her friends for the first time, sees Mai genuinely smile around other people. Where Mai grew without her.
It goes back to Tokyo, to the exchange event where they fought (physically) for the first time, when Maki first learned about her sister’s technique.
To Shibuya, where Maki had almost died and never got to see Mai’s expertise with a sniper rifle (until now), where Mai had once again shed tears because of her.
Maki walks, walks, walks. She doesn’t get tired, can’t get tired. So she lets the ocean take her through all of Mai’s memories, her grief, her love.
The view shifts one last time to the punishment room.
Her jaw tightens when she sees Mai again, kneeling at the bottom of the large staircase. She is covered in blood and sweat, pulling an unconscious Maki to her lap.
Maki still remembers, has never been able to forget.
The curses come out of hiding one after another and creep in closer to stalk their prey.
She bites back the urge to scream, to call out for Mai, to crush these curses with her bare hands and take her sister to safety. She knows it’s pointless, knows it’s not a real threat, knows it is already too late.
Maki can’t change the past and Mai cannot hear her, is already gone.
“You’re tough… As always.”
Mai, this empty, soulless copy of Mai that still manages to pull at her heartstrings, bends down to kiss the Maki lying on her lap. Their first and last kiss had been shared on the brink of death.
There is a noticeable glow of cursed energy coming from Mai’s hand, the one that rests under the other Maki’s palm while the free hand cups her cheek. The sudden, strong output is enough to keep the curses from approaching them.
Maki furrows her brows as she listens to Mai’s strained breathing, struggling to harness a power much greater than what she is used to.
The cursed energy pours out of their joined hands and begins to take the shape of a blade.
Maki knows what comes next.
The blade buzzes with energy, now fully formed, and Mai collapses to the side with one last breath.
Maki can’t look away, can’t bother to hold in the tears streaming down her face all over again as she recalls the feeling of those cold (too cold) hands on her face when she woke up. When she lost everything.
The stone walls fade back into sky and clouds, back to the flying geese, to the endless expanse of ocean.
This time, Maki is not alone.
In the distance, surrounded by murky water, Maki finds the person she has been chasing after ever since that day. The memory she was never able to let go, her missing half.
Mai has her back turned and stands unmoving like she has always belonged there, like she has always been there, waiting for Maki to catch up. Her windswept hair looks the same as when they last said goodbye.
Maki wants to believe this one is not empty, wants to trust this feeling that tugs her whole heart and soul.
“Mai!”
She cries out and a sudden gust of wind blows as if trying to keep her voice from being heard.
She tries again and again. Calls for Mai until her throat is sore.
It is useless.
She rushes to close the endless distance between them and the ocean, which had offered no resistance before, now begins to drag her backwards with ice-cold waves.
Maki refuses to give up after getting this far, so she lifts an arm up to shield her face from another gust and pushes forward.
Mai remains still as a ghost as Maki struggles against the wind, the water, everything that tries to keep them apart.
At this point Maki doesn’t care if all she’s seeing is another hollow image of Mai. She lets her strength and sheer stubbornness carry her closer and closer until there are dents in the sand, until she is close enough to touch.
“Mai…!” She tries one last time.
The waves quiet down and the wind returns to a breeze.
Mai finally turns around.
“Maki?”
And that scowl, that familiar scowl and rise in pitch when Mai is annoyed but not really mad at her are enough to make Maki’s soul cry in relief. This is Mai. Her Mai.
Mai who was waiting, has always been waiting.
Maki’s useless heart beats for the first time after death.
She wants to hold her in undeserving arms, to kiss her with undeserving lips, to apologize and make up for all the mistakes.
And so she does.
She hugs Mai with arms tight around her body, buries her face in Mai’s neck, takes in her scent, her warmth, the feeling of her other half pressed close. Clings to her like they’re two puzzle pieces fit together to form one single image.
They stay in each other's arms for god knows how long. Soul against soul, stripped bare of physical bodies.
Until Maki muffles a pathetic sob.
And of course Mai notices.
“…Are you crying?”
“I’m not—”
“Hmm,” she can hear the smirk in Mai’s voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry.”
“Shut up.”
Mai sighs in defeat, running her fingers through Maki’s hair and Maki melts. She hasn’t felt this touch in so, so long, never thought she would ever feel it again.
After they finally pull back, Maki remembers what she wanted to tell Mai. What she dreamed of telling Mai but never did until it was too late, until it didn’t matter anymore.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”
For leaving you, for hurting you, for not protecting you, for keeping you waiting.
The words die on her lips before she is able to voice them but Mai looks at her like she understands , like she is able to reach the unseen corners of Maki’s soul and pull the words right out of it, see them for what they are.
And Mai kisses her.
She kisses her and it is fierce, demanding in a way Mai never was (never allowed herself to be). Maki doesn’t react immediately, too caught between a mix of surprise and reverence as Mai’s tongue moves to take what Maki had always meant to give her, what has always been hers. She tangles a hand in Maki’s hair and Maki isn’t sure whose tears she is tasting when she traces a tongue across soft lips.
Breathing is no longer necessary but Mai withdraws first and rests her forehead against Maki’s.
“Idiot,” she says, even when the flush all over her face betrays her frown. “You weren’t supposed to die yet—”
“I wanted to see you.”
Mai blinks once, twice, taken aback by the open honesty in Maki’s eyes.
“And I killed them for you.”
A pause.
“Even dad?”
Maki nods and Mai arches an eyebrow.
“Jinichi?”
“Easy,” she gives a cocky shrug. “Threw his head in the lake.”
Mai chuckles and the sound is enough to fill Maki’s heart until it threatens to spill over in the ocean water. “You’re welcome.”
Maki doesn’t reply and keeps looking at Mai instead.
She is beautiful, has always been beautiful, but right now Maki can’t find the will to tear her gaze away from Mai. From the way her hair curls around her face, with a few strands sticking out after being tousled by the wind, to the way the corners of her eyes arch when she smiles.
“What?” Mai frowns, and Maki loves that too.
“I missed you.”
It is a tender kiss this time. Maki closes the distance to take her lips at a slow, languid pace and Mai invites her in, pulling their bodies so close that their hearts beat as one. Maki drinks in her taste like she wants to lose and find herself in Mai, wants Mai to fill up the vacant space left in her chest.
They part as the waves crash around them, washing away the blood and regret that carried their lives all the way to the end.
Maki tucks a few loose hair strands behind Mai’s ear and they share one last look before moving forward to cross the remaining distance together.
Hands joined in a silent vow to find each other in the next life.