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Winteria.
Not the most creative planet name I’d seen, but that went for a lot of them. Desert planet? Name it Sirocco. Planet that holds all the life energy in the universe? Name it Vitae. Absolute shit hole of a world full of space pirates that smell like Satan’s left armpit?
Name it Rakuyou.
The name was more than a little bittersweet on my tongue, but I ignored it and the memories it brought. I pretended I never met that man when he came to Earth and that I never hit him with a shovel when he interrupted my gardening. I pretended we never had a duel that bathed the forest in blood. I pretended I never took him home with me to bandage his wounds. I pretended I didn’t share my roof with him for years. I pretended we never laughed together and that we didn’t share a single memory.
I pretended I never asked him to marry me.
I opened the door of the ship and stepped out, clutching the Altana crystal that hung around my neck. It wasn’t a gift from him. He didn’t find this for me. We hadn’t been planning to take a space voyage together. Why would we?
I hated space pirates.
The ship’s door closed behind me, and I stepped onto the scorching ground of Winteria. That’s right. Scorching ground, boiling with heat and blistering with magma where snowbanks and a carpet of elegant white powder should have been.
It was my job to undo this.
To save this world and the world after it.
To finish what he started.
No. He didn’t start this. This was my mission.
He wasn’t real.
I shoved away the memory of him as I’d done countless times, though it was never effective, and turned my eyes to the city in the glacier-carved valley below me. The glaciers were a distant memory, and smoke and steam billowed into the sky, carrying sparks and glowing coals with them. Waves of heat rippled through the air and sweat poured off my face and dripped down my back. My hair stuck to my neck and my heavy cloak threatened to suffocate me.
Despite the log entry about Winteria’s current state, I’d been expecting cold weather. I hadn’t dressed appropriately for these conditions at all, especially now. I couldn’t stand here and enjoy the view anymore.
The culprit was here.
I turned to face him as he emerged over one of the flaming hills, a staff in his hand. He was a hulking ape-like Amanto with flame-colored hair, a feature that gave the illusion his body was on fire. Even from here, I could see his sharp teeth gleaming as he offered me a broad smile.
I approached him as he began to approach me, ignoring the burning coals under my feet. I threw my cloak on the ground behind me and ripped off my shirt, and the planet exhaled its brittle, hellish breath onto my skin. So much for cooling off.
I drew both of my swords, and the Amanto’s smile grew as he laughed, the sound cloaked in false friendliness.
“I assure you, there is no need for violence, Mr. Samurai,” he said. He then squinted at the bandages on my chest and added, “Or Miss Samurai…?”
“There’s gonna be violence if you don’t answer me,” I said as I pointed one of my swords at him. “Where’s the machine?”
“You’re looking right at it,” the Amanto said, gesturing to himself, a movement full of pride. “Though I prefer the name Inferno.”
“I think Dead Monkey suits you better,” I said.
I was behind him a heartbeat later, driving my sword into his back and through his chest. Blood sizzled onto the ground, and Inferno’s corpse slumped into the cloud of steam it left behind.
There.
Done.
The mission was complete.
“Not so fast,” a voice said from above me, nearly drowned out by the roar of my ship’s engine.
I looked up to see an Amanto that looked exactly like Inferno standing on the exit ramp. His smile was back, gleaming through the mist of smoke and ash, and his body was free of wounds.
Shit.
“Did you think I was unaware of who you are?” Inferno said. “Do not take me for a fool, Gaia.”
Countless Amanto of the same species emerged from the coals and behind the fiery mounds of earth, holding staffs and spears and axes. It was an army of apes as far as the eye could see, and I cursed under my breath.
Of course.
“Gaia,” I said. “Haven’t heard that name in a while.”
Bullets from the ship peppered the ground where I stood, and I started running, raising my swords to slice through the apes. The Altana-powered guns at the front of the ship screeched as they pulled in the planet’s energy, and I had ten seconds before they were fully charged. That was more than enough time to take out some of Inferno’s army.
Their corpses littered the ground, and as their blood dripped from my swords, I said to Inferno, “I lost the need for a name a long time ago.”
The guns on the ship fired at me, and I leaped away from the blast of foreign Altana, the only thing in the universe that could kill me.
Besides time, ironically.
Eventually the Altana crystal from Earth would run out of energy, and unless I returned to Earth, I would be mortal, subject to old age and the death it brought with it. But that wasn’t something to think about right now. I had to fix the damage Inferno had done.
“Now, monkey,” I said as the guns recharged and more of his army rushed at me, “face the wrath of a nameless samurai.”
Amanto corpses crashed to the ground in crimson pools, some sliced cleanly in half and others decapitated. The second blast from the guns threw them into a fiery hillside, and flames erupted into the air as the fire consumed the bodies. After that, there were no more apes, and I leaped onto the ship.
Inferno looked at me in bewilderment, not expecting me to be able to jump that high, and I slashed his arm off. It fell to the floor with a loud thump, and he eyed the wound with something like admiration.
“You are powerful indeed, nameless samurai,” he said. “However, if I may, this fight is not fair.”
“You think I care about fairness?” I said as I circled him. “Go to hell.”
“We are on your ship,” Inferno continued, “and who knows how many advantages that gives you.”
“There are no rules in war,” I said.
“What a shame,” Inferno said. “I was told you are the most valorous and honorable samurai. I was under the impression you would only want the victory if you fought me at my strongest.”
“What do you think I am, an anime protagonist?” I said. “I know the planet will return to normal if you’re dead. My mission is to restore the planet at any cost.”
His mission.
It was his mission.
No.
It wasn’t.
He wasn’t real.
The Yato outcast, the God Hunter, the space pirate and bounty hunter I’d loved with all my heart wasn’t real.
I had to pretend.
No, I wasn’t pretending. He’d never existed. None of the memories we shared had ever happened.
Go forward, his words echoed, and forget me. It’ll make everything so much easier.
“Is something wrong, nameless samurai?” Inferno said. “You seem to have faltered.”
No. I didn’t. Why would I? I had nothing to think about. Nothing to remember. No one to think about. No one to remember.
Forget me…
I did.
I’d forgotten him a long time ago.
But I hadn’t.
I hadn’t forgotten him for a minute.
I refused to look at how my sword was trembling as I pointed it at Inferno’s throat, holding the other sword at my side. “I’m going to kill you and restore this planet.”
“Is that really your mission?” Inferno said. “Or are you fighting for someone else? Someone you’re not supposed to remember?”
“I fight,” I said, forcing the sword to steady itself, “for myself.”
“Do you?” Inferno said. “Or do you fight to fulfill the dreams of a dead man?”
The blade trembled again. “I fight for myself.”
“Do you?” Inferno said again. “Or do you fight to finish the war against suffering he started?”
I gripped the sword harder. “I fight for myself.”
“Do you?” Inferno’s eyes bored into mine. “Or do you fight because you can’t let him go?”
“I fight to get rid of bastards like you!” I plunged the sword into his chest, and he staggered back, spilling blood onto the ship. I swung around the other sword and sliced off his head, sending it bouncing down the ramp and falling to the sizzling ground below. Inferno’s corpse slid down after it, and an explosion of sparks flew into the air when it made impact.
He was dead.
I landed the ship.
I stepped onto the coals again. They’d long since burned through my sandals. I didn’t notice the pain, if it was there at all.
On the scorching wind that stirred the embers and ashes, Inferno’s voice whispered, crawling around the hills and into the ashen city in the valley below. It soared across the skies and weaved into the clouds, refusing to be ignored.
You can’t let him go.
You can’t…
Let him go…
I found Inferno’s head.
I stabbed both of my swords through his skull.
The voice fell silent.
***
I calculated how much time I had before I started to die.
Twenty-five years.
Twenty-five years of this empty existence.
It felt like two hundred years.
Where time was concerned, the greatest mountains were pebbles compared to me. The vastest oceans were nothing but puddles. The oldest bloodlines were mere flickers of light in memory. The book of human history was a single word. I had lived a thousand eternities already.
Yet none of those eternities were empty, and until a few years ago, I always had someone at my side. Human friends were born and then died, but I always managed to find one. Now everyone was gone. The love of my life was dead, my best friend disappeared, the closest thing to a mother I ever had would have died of old age by now, and Kotaro couldn’t have possibly made it on his own. I raised him strong, but in Edo, no one could ever be strong enough.
This eternity would be empty.
I looked at the clouds gathering in the sky and let the soft rain drizzle onto my skin. That soft rain turned into a merciless downpour, a torrent of heavenly tears that wouldn’t stop for even a moment. It was all the tears I never cried, all the tears I couldn’t cry, even though now I wanted to cry more than ever.
The rain turned to ice, and the ice turned to snow, and the ground began to turn white again as the wind caressed me with its wintry chill. I felt nothing. The planet’s touch wasn’t there.
Everything was empty.