Chapter Text
“This remark provides a key to the question, to what extent solipsism is a truth.
In fact what solipsism means, is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but it shows itself.
That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which I understand) mean the limits of my world. ”
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
Limiting Subject: Mamiya Takuji
I should have never been afforded the bane of consciousness ever again. I had made certain of it. Everything in my life—Every pathetic aspect of my being, every wasteful act I had ever carried out, every sin I had pushed upon this world—was all in servitude to that moment. We would all return to the sky, and what awaited there was not something that the confines of “thinking” could properly contain. Nevertheless, I felt a true stirring, my body rolling over, feeling a familiar mattress beneath me. Only, it didn’t sag like it should have. I felt warmth, but I had no blankets. I wondered, for a stupid, awful moment, if I had survived the fall. Had I, the Savior, failed to return to the sky?
My eyes flickered open, vision fading in as my retinas strained against the harsh white lights of this little room. There was again a familiarity of this place, but the events of everything had made this mundane room seem totally alien for a brief moment… Ah, it’s my hideout’s room, isn’t it? Rows of manga rimmed the shelf of this makeshift bedroom, which was surrounded by those draping curtains dusted with gravel and dirt to make them look like stone walls. Fitting, that my hideout should be caged in by those filthy rags.
For a moment, the monumentality of this room overwhelmed me. Just how many manga did I have? Ah, I had gotten this one from last year’s Comiket, right? And this one’s signed by the mangaka! Oh, that one’s a little worse for wear… If I had devoted all the time I spent to reading these to other works, I could surely be a great scholar of some obscure field, maybe a Latin expert or a mighty anthropologist. Hah! As if any of that mattered. All of it was equally deplorable. The stained edges of some of my disgusting doujins were just as vile as the musty pages of old academic textbooks. Besides that, there were cases of anime, some snacks strewn about, and… odd substances placed haphazardly about the place. Bags of powder and crystals and thin needles and… Ah, the elixir. I remember now. The divine source of my miracles. Left here like used tissues. A jar of something that resembled orange marmalade sat on one of the shelves, and seemed almost ethereal compared to all the worldly things around.
I glanced past my closed laptop, thinking of all the filthy games and shows I used to consume down here… When my eyes glanced back at the bookshelf. Right, it wasn’t just manga… Those awful, difficult works my mother had made me read were lined up there. The memories of some of these books nearly made me hurl. On Learned Ignorance. Critique of Pure Reason. Man and His Symbols. Some of these I could hardly even pronounce: Cyrano de Bergerac. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. A simmering rage boiled within me… All of it was so USELESS! What was the point of any of this garbage!? I should just light this whole shelf up! Wouldn’t that make all this crusty old fucks twist and groan in their graves?! Having their masterpieces go up in flames among shitty manga with schoolboy romcoms and magical girls?!
I felt a sudden pang of shame, alongside deep disgust at my anger. Many of these books had been chosen by my mother, right? …I don’t think she picked out all of them—I can’t think of why she’d want me to read old French plays or some thesis on logic from World War II, but many of the books… were about God. The White Lotus Foundation’s greatest influence was Buddhism, but there was quite a lot of Christian influence, too. The Savior figure, which I would fulfill the role of, resembled the Messiah of Christianity more than the Maitreya of the original White Lotus faith. My mother… wanted me to truly be the Savior. So she got me all these books, so I could understand what it meant… to save. And I had wasted it all away, eyes barely skimming the pages before I’d just crack open some manga instead. Still, my heart felt no regret for that simple hedonism. My head treated those hours of pouring over manga and anime and games as equally valuable as understanding my role as Savior. Why can’t I be ashamed?! Oh, mother, please forgive me! Was I the Savior you wanted?! Was I?!
Stepping over a bag filled with some icy, white “Elixir,” I reached out to the shelf, extending my fingers and trailing my fingers towards the spine of Critique of Pure Reason. Whether this place was the “Sky” or someplace worse, maybe these books could really help me figure out the truth.
My fingers clasped down on the minty green spine, and pulled the sizable book out.
That’s what should have happened.
My hand phased right through the book.
My hand shook, violently groping at the book, trying to desperately wrench it from its shelf. It was like pawing at the air, trying to twist the winds around your finger like a string. Utterly fruitless. Why couldn’t I grab it?! My feet were on the ground, right? And I’m sure I was on the bed just a moment ago! I had a body! I could see my thin arms and splayed hands, my wrinkled white shirt and loose black trousers. I could feel my skin, my veins, I even pressed down on my wrist and felt a thrumming heartbeat! I frantically grabbed at other random books—The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, The Black Swan, The Analects. Nothing, nothing, nothing would grace me with so much as a page crinkle! Hahahahahahahaha, of course! I would never even have the chance to burn this stupid room down, would I?! I bet I couldn’t even strike a match!
Was this the sky I was meant to return to? Had I somehow survived my return, and was now dreaming? Had I… failed my return, and plummeted to the ground?! No… that’s just impossible! If not even the Savior could return… All of my devout followers, and Kimika… OooooOOOOOOOOOOGGHHHHHH—NO! I WON’T ACCEPT IT!
I thrashed about in a frenzy, screaming at the top of my lungs, shouting for help, hoping some teacher would notice all the ruckus and maybe come find me. Who am I kidding?! No teacher would dare get involved after everything I’ve done, when they wouldn’t even face bullies with a firm resolve before! I had indirectly caused Sengawa-sensei to commit suicide (though, maybe it really was Zakuro…), and the things I made Kiyokawa do to show her devotion would make anyone’s blood turn to ice. And all of my followers were gone! I was spinning in a storm, alone in this little room beneath Building C! My hysterical breakdown earned no physical repercussions—Of course not! Everything just passed through me like fog! I swirled and twisted and thrashed about, just as I had wanted those old author fucks to in their graves!
Then suddenly, as my hand passed by it, the copy of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus slipped right out of the two texts it was sandwiched between.
I yelped, stopping and scrambling to grab the book by its pure-white spine. Just a second more, and it would have plummeted to the ground. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been damaged, but… this was something I could actually touch. It somehow felt sacred to me. It had a beautiful, intricate, floral pattern on its front cover, mostly white and black but with a touch of red, as if the symbol had some blood-stained wing. This thesis was immaculate in my hand. At that moment, it was on the same level of the Holy Bible.
I hesitantly held the book up, and cracked it open, aloofly flipping through the pages and skimming the text. It was a relatively short work, all things considered, but the words were… almost incomprehensible. Well, that isn’t fair. Many of the things were stated plainly and simply, but the way it was all woven together felt like some dense labyrinth. The writer wasn’t trying to trick me—He was stating things as they were or as he thought, but the individual meanings of everything seemed up to interpretation. It was a beautiful basket-weave of axioms, each page a list of numbered propositions where logic was treated with clinical mathematism. Even just glancing at it, reading it was almost like a game, coming up with your own interpretations to formulate what the author wrote into something you could understand.
It disgusted me.
This was the one thing I was allowed to read? Why does this thing matter anymore than the rest of this shelf?! The quality of it doesn’t matter, this was all just pseudo-intellectual schlock trying to distract me! Yes, I truly understood now! These books were a test from my mother! To see if I would stray from my path! And now, after my return to the Sky, this single demonic grimoire was still taunting me, tempting me to fall into its wordsmith’s honey! With a great roar, and heaved back, and hurled the book against the shelf. It didn’t so much as shutter, but the Tractatus bounced off with a sickening sound, clattering to the ground with its pages splayed to some random propositions. I nearly stomped on it, but managed to stop myself. Even focusing my anger on this thing was giving in to the temptation. My journey obviously wasn’t over, and I had to be vigilant about everything.
I sighed, still not able to understand why this was the one book I could touch. Still, I couldn’t linger on it. I couldn’t just stay in this familiar room and resign myself to rot away until this world revealed its truth to me. Perhaps it did not yield to the Savior’s authority. The thought made me scowl, but it was a certain possibility. I had to explore. I had to find the truth of this new world. Leaving behind the comfort of my hideout, I reached out, and flung the gravel-crusted curtains aside.
The expanse of the underground area was dimly lit, as I had left the generator running just in-case something went south, before we all climbed up to the roof of Building C. Right… This was my “Ark.” The metal beams of that ark still stretched on and on. I could see the edges of this place, but it still almost seemed to go on forever. That such a place would exist underneath a simple school building… further solidified my thought that this was the destined Ark, and that Building C should be our final stand. The Ark also woke up further from my recent sleep. I had spent so much time in my hideout that I was noseblind to it, which was… convenient, considering some of the things I left in it. But the smell of damp air and the exhaust from the rumbling generator was still not totally familiar to me. I remembered the few days where my followers lived here… It was awful, frankly. The stench of a bunch of high schoolers, some of which were sick fucks who never bathed, suffocated the place, and they were always so noisy. If I was Noah on the Ark, with animals squealing and whining and smelling of shit, I think I would have snapped and sunk the whole thing to the bottom of the sea. Still, the absence of my devout followers was… unnerving, considering the bustle that once inhabited this place.
I glanced over at some area that was covered in scarlet. Oh… That’s where I had put Kagami after she was dismembered. Her body was gone, and not even her snipped-off limbs were visible anywhere. Her resting place was bathed in smears of red and dried black, blood painting it like a canvas. But there was also some sort of… soft, fuzzy substance littering the ground. Were those her guts? No, organs don’t look like that…
Bile rose in the back of my throat. Why was I reacting to this? I had killed her. I had ordered my followers to do all those horrific things to her, because I thought she deserved it, right? That was my duty as the Savior, right? She was taunting me—I had always hated her! And I made her sister, Tsukasa, watch too, so even she would suffer! That, too, was my duty as the Savior! Make the wicked suffer! Send the swine to their deaths! So why…
Why did I want Kagami back?
Why did I want to take back what I had done?
Why did I want Tsukasa to smile innocently again?
A deep buzzing, like some distorted, demonic form of tinnitus, thrummed in my head. It tore its way up through my brain, running along my skull, pulsing underneath my skin. I held my head to steady it, but it felt like it was going to burst open like a failing dam. Visions flashed before me, and the scene I looked upon rapidly changed its form. The fuzz changed to split-open intestines, but then it shifted to white, soiled trails of cotton, and back and forth. Those twisting forms of innards and cotton fought with each other, wrangling each other like snakes, eating their tails and spewing blood and white fibers all over the ground. I heard Tsukasa’s pleading sobs in my head as the two serpents—organic and polyester—strangled each other, and why… Why did I see some little girl in her place?!
I screamed, shattering the visions before me and reverting the scene to splatters of blood and fuzz. I raced towards the ladder to the rooftop, the echoes of my screams and pounding footsteps swirling around me as they bounced off the Ark’s walls. I had to get out of this place. My hands locked around the rungs of the narrow, metal ladder, and I raced up it, climbing like a rabid animal clawing a tree to reach its prey. I’m not even quite sure I was climbing. It felt more like I was simply gliding up the ladder, like an elevator to the heavens, lifting me up out of this deserted hell. I never looked down, but I could feel the Ark, which should have fulfilled its only purpose, disappearing below me. Soon enough, my hands and feet had guided me to the roof. I threw open the door, and stumbled through the tip of Building C.
The cool night air melted away my panic like butter sizzling in a wok. How many days had I spent holed up in that Ark, letting myself choke with the smog of my vices and the debauchery of my followers? This place, the closest place in this school to the sky… Was truly a heavenly place. When I came up here to meet Riruru’s father, when I was confronted by Yuuki, when I prepared for our return to the End-Sky—This common sky had never chastised me. No matter my situation, this sky was unchanging, bathing me in its soft winds and looking down on me with its solemn, yet comforting, gaze. The sky was like a true father. Its ‘love’ is unconditional. The sky would never abandon you and turn inside out, creating a black hole which sucked the whole world in. The sky was the sky. There was no way to turn the sky into something that wasn’t the sky.
As I basked in this stupid rumination, my eyes caught on a figure standing near the railings, where the fence poles had been broken over and over, so it now looked like a row of jagged, metal teeth. The figure’s face was obscured by the night’s darkness, but their school uniform adorned with the pleated skirt shone like a milky beacon in the nightfall. Not even the full moon’s pale, shadowy light could surpass it. Broken fence… Schoolgirl outfit… Was it really…?
The figure gently turned her head before I could fully process it.
The darkness cast around her face seemed to be washed away in an instant by the moonlight. Light brown hair done up in a spiky bun. Glimmering teal eyes which glanced back at me. A small smile which seemed even a slight turn could make it mischievous. That signature Kita High red necktie, emblazoned with a crucifix, which now seemed like a truly holy presence. My mind pieced every part of her together. Her form seemed almost ghostly, but eventually, it would be impossible for me not to recognize her.
“Ki…Kimika?” I slowly sputtered out. She gave me a deep, radiant grin.
“Wow! I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Taku-...Savior-sama.” Her correction would have pleased me before, but now it almost made me sad. “Did we do it!? Did we make our return, Savior-sama?!”
My fists clenched. Kimika seemed so casual. It made sense, honestly. At the end, it seemed like Kimika had even more faith in our mission than I did. In another life… Kimika would have made a truly great savior. This moment felt so monumental to me—Seeing another human in this messed-up world, and having it be Kimika. To her, it was inevitable. Of course she would be reunited with the Savior. With everyone. Despite all this, I allowed a bitter smile to pass across my face.
“Please, Kimika… Takuji is fine to use here.”
Kimika's eyes widened. She put a finger to her chin, and trailed it up to her bottom lip. “Really? But this is the Sky, right? The Sky we returned to? Shouldn’t I still respect you as our Savior? …My Savior?”
I thought quickly. Even up to our final moments, Kimika had called me Savior-sama… But I didn’t want that anymore. Would the Savior—Her Savior—be so fickle? So I improvised. “Ah, well… Hmm! This is the… threshold between that impure earth and the Sky! We are on our way to our true return, but we must go through this transfiguration first. You see, in this world, all souls are purified, and thus are made briefly equal… So technically, as of now, the souls of savior and follower are in balance! You can call me that again once we truly return, but for now, Takuji only makes sense.”
I wholeheartedly believed we would return to the Sky instantly upon our ritual’s completion. Still, if I had to falsify this one thing for Kimika to call me Takuji… Well, some priests have been known to make up or twist religious myths to fit smaller cultural needs, right? As long as the bigger picture is preserved, everything’s fair. Either way, Kimika seemed to swallow my reasoning with a smile. At least, she wanted me to think so.
“Ahh! Alright, Takuji it is! I haven’t gotten to use it much, but it’s a really nice name, you know… Thanks a bunch for letting me use it!” She beamed again while muttering “Taku-Taku, Ji-Ji!” over and over. Does anyone get this excited over saying someone’s name?
“Well, your name’s good too, Kimika… But, anyways, where did you wake up, when you came to this world?” I wanted to switch the subject before things got too sappy. That seemed to break Kimika out of her Ta-ku-ji mantra curse.
“Ah! I woke up just where I’m standing now, actually! Well, it was more like ‘Came to consciousness.’ I was already standing when I woke up. Staring out into the sky, the expanse of Suginomiya. A stray cloud was covering up the moon before… But right before you came, beams of moonlight began to appear again, overpowering all the artificial lights of this city.” She pouted. “Dang it! I miss when we went to space with the cows! We could see the stars so clearly, but now the lights block it all out. Why the hell would more light make other light less visible?!”
Takuji considered explaining light pollution, but assumed she was either being rhetorical, or more hopefully, joking.
“So you were up here… Hm, I ‘woke up’ down in my hideout room, within the Ark. Wonder what causes us to wake up in different places.” I pursed my lips.
“Maybe it’s the connection we have to them? That secret base was basically your home, right? You would head home to sleep, but even then, you’d take so many naps in that room you might as well have used it for your 8 hours… And you used it for one of your first miracles, right? With Nishimura’s wound.” She gave a misplaced smirk. “Well, I can’t feel too bad that your blessing stopped working for him.”
Takuji kept himself from looking directly at it this time, but he could still vividly imagine Nishimura’s half-dressed corpse, slumped against the ground, in a dried puddle of blood. The one earthly sinner left onboard as the Ark sunk into the sea.
“But then, what about your connection to this roof?” I knew of a few reasons, but for her to have the same connection to this place I had to my base…
Kimika turned, looking out once again across the artificially-lit city. “A lot of things have happened up here for me… Senagawa fell to her death from here after the curse messages were sent. I had that amazing, cosmic experience with you on this roof, where I broke all the fence polls and we saw the stars and cows. I gave that crazy speech on this roof to your followers, giving hammers to everyone to smash up everything they could, before we flew to the Sky.” Kimika then turned again, neither facing me nor the expanse of the city. She was frowning, deeply. “Zakuro fell for the first time from this roof, and it was my fault she got hurt. Now that I think about it, how many hours had I spent on this roof, with those bastards Megu and Satoko, watching them abuse Zakuro, joining in so I wouldn’t be the target.” The edges of her lips stretched out in her grimace, her throat bobbing as if swallowing some truth she despised.
Zakuro…
That girl was… the genesis of my current existence. Her coming to my base, and then her death—They seemed so close together, and yet they were like opposite ends of a spectrum for me. To me, it was like Zakuro was born on that day she happened, and she died so soon. No, she chose her death. Did those other two girls choose it, too? Or did Zakuro choose it for them? Do I thank Zakuro for shifting my life towards a new purpose, even if it cost her life? Do I curse that her life had to be cut short before we could return to the Sky together? Had she even returned? …I once had feelings for Zakuro, but did I really love her? Did I love her the same way I loved a movie or a game? And not one truly special to me… Anything that made me happy for even the briefest of moments?
I stepped to the side of Kimika, standing right next to her, looking out over the city. They were scant, but I saw cars driving and faint, moonlit silhouettes walking down the streets. Like ants and spiders beneath the towering grass of Suginomiya’s buildings. So this world was not just a world of the returned. This world is still truly melded to the living world… The world has not ended. The mind of my Savior self would not yet reconcile this.
“Kimika… I’m sorry, but can I just ask you what Zakuro was like? I only knew her for a brief time, and I don’t really think I… loved her like I said I did. I loved my own little made-up idea of Zakuro. What was the real Zakuro really like?”
I expected Kimika to grimace, or sneer, or just look at me with a raised brow. However, she just gave me a small, pleasant expression. Something fulfilled yet gratified.
“Zakuro was a wonderful girl. I can see how all her traits got her bullied so much… Since even I participated to try and get others off my back. But all of those things were beautiful to me. Soft-spoken, kind, a little timid, but being around her always lifted my spirits. She loved to read way more than she let on. She asked me for recommendations a lot, but I could never give her many… I’m not a bookworm, and the few things I read outside of class are all action and thrillers! Still, she’d sometimes tell me all about something she read the other day, and I felt like I was getting as lost in the story as she did. She… also gave me this cute little rabbit doll, but I…” Kimika’s lips twisted in a frown, and she almost looked like she was about to choke.
“There’s no reason to focus on what you did… It’s all over now. I don’t think Zakuro’s decision had anything to do with you.” I tried my best to console her, before tears would sprout to her eyes.
“No, no… I need to tell someone else. When Zakuro came to school, I was the one being bullied by Megu and Satoko and all of their bitch friends. So when Zakuro came, and joined our group…” Kimika’s frown quivered. “I became just like them. No, I didn’t become anything, I was just like them. I tormented Zakuro. Messed with her things, twisted her words, made her say things she didn’t mean, let Megu and Satoko bully her all they wanted, did anything to shift their demonic torture towards Zakuro instead of me. I…” A strangled sound came from her throat. “I might have really killed Zakuro myself.”
My head snapped to the side, glowering. “It wasn’t your fault. That was the fate she chose. The Spiral Matai—She had that ritual’s name written out on her desk.”
“She didn’t choose it all by herself!” Kimika snapped, eyes watering. “Nobody just ups and chooses to die, Takuji! It wasn’t just me… Satoko, Megu, and then Tsubasa, Numata, and Nishimura… Dear god, you don’t have any idea what they did to Zakuro! Death? Death?! If you knew, you could really see that without that all, she would have definitely chosen to live! After everything, her only choice was to die! But I was the catalyst… Even if I tried so hard to save her at the end, I should have been saving Zakuro from the start! I’m a coward! A coward who could only take action once she had her Savior to keep her safe!” Kimika wailed into the night air, balling her fists and shuddering in despair.
Moving with instinct, I wrapped my arms around Kimika. I remembered this feeling… When we were to return to the Sky, I wouldn’t let her go before me. So I leaped after her, and held on tight. We returned together… Right? I wouldn’t let her feel this despair alone either, so I embraced her, and whispered to her. “Kimika… Kimika! There’s nothing you can do now. How can you expect yourself to fully know why Zakuro chose her fate?! Would she have wanted you to writhe in agony because of what you couldn’t do?” Kimilka’s breath hitched, and I could barely see her watery eyes. “Would she not have targeted you with the same curse that she intended for Megu and Satoko? She would want you to… to…” I tried to elaborate, but no matter how I searched, I couldn’t find the words. Live? Whether we had returned to the Sky or plunged to the ground, we weren’t really alive anymore. Remember her? Who couldn’t remember Zakuro after what happened… What did she want Kimika to do?
Unable to complete my sentence, I held Kimika closer, resigning myself to the hope that she might, deep down, understand Zakuro’s desire than I could.
“...I may have an idea, Takuji.” Kimika mewled. She now clung to me in turn, but blinked away her small tears, and slipped into a smile once again.
“Hm? What is it?”
“Well, actually, it’s a bit of a surprise.” Kimika snickered. “You’ll just have to trust me on it, but… If my intuition is correct, we might be able to find out the source of some of our questions. I’m not sure if it’s true, but… would you be up to try it?”
“Of course I am.” I was a little perplexed by her mysterious knowledge, but even back in ‘life,’ she knew a lot that I couldn’t quite grasp. “But what do we have to do?”
“Eheh, um…” Kimika glanced out over the roof. “...We’ll have to jump off again.”
My heart skipped a couple beats.
I stared dumbly at Kimika for a moment, before I made some shrill, startled noise, suddenly breaking away from Kimika.
“Whah?! N-Nononononono, Kimika! We-We can’t! That’s, um, that’s not how the ritual works! You can’t just return to the Sky a second time! There aren’t any do-overs, we’re in the boundary between the earth and Sky! S-So, if we jump off, we’ll really get hurt!”
Falling with Kimika back then probably gave me some new, repressed fear of heights.
“W-Wait, Takuji!” Kimika sputtered, ready to defend herself. “You have to trust me on this! We’re not really, um, returning to the Sky! Well, I mean… kind of? But it’s not the Sky, it’s just a sky, you know? Ah, it’s kind of like when we took the elixir! But the roof won’t come with us or anything, and there’ll probably be no cows… Anyways, you’ll have to believe! If you don’t think that we’ll be okay, then we probably… will fall… But even if we do, I bet it won’t hurt much!” Kimika’s smile faltered.
“Uwawawawagh, Kimika, you’re asking too much of me!” I sputtered. “I-Will we fall if I even doubt for a second?”
“You’re the Savior, Takuji! Why should your resolve waver even a bit! Damn it, come on, we’re just going! I’m giving you ‘til count of three!” Kimika seized my hand, bending her knees and preparing to jump.
“Ack! Kimika, wait, maybe five more minutes?!” I pleaded, trembling.
“You’ve gotta take action more, Takuji! Three…” She began. I looked out into the city’s expanse. The field of artificial lights dotted the landscape like stars, and the few cars whizzing down the streets almost seemed like darkened comets.
“Two…” There was a reason I was planning to fall backwards whenever I returned to the Sky! Am I going to have to look down? Either way, I refused to look directly below us… I won’t allow myself to see whether a heap of corpses or a pristine courtyard has settled there now.
“One ! To the sky!”
I couldn’t quite tell whether I jumped off with her, or whether she just pulled me right along. It was such a swift motion, the two would have been indistinguishable.
I didn’t brace myself to fall. I didn’t even scream. I fully believed that we would be fine. How so? Why did it matter? I’m the Savior, and she’s my second-in-command! Something like this couldn’t possibly stop us! Maybe valkyries would swoop down and catch us in their arms. Or the world would flip upside down and we’d land on a cloud! Is Riruru-chan around? She can definitely save us! But… where was that thing that would save us?
As I spent moments thinking about that, I realized that we were… floating? The world hadn’t flipped on its side, and no angels had come to save us, so… We were flying?! Oh my god, we were!
The chilly wind of the night beat against my face, my hair fluttering in a storm of brown. My hand was still clasped in Kimika’s. She was looking ahead with resolute determination. In fact, her hair was barely whizzing around at all, almost as if her resolve was preventing the wind from sweeping her up. She was piercing through the wind, soaring to the skies, and just dragging me along with her like dead weight! Savior or not, I can’t let her just pull me along!
I squeezed my eyes shut, and focused with all my might! We were already flying, right? Just accept the truth that you’re dancing in the air! Don’t try to reject it, you’ll weigh yourself and Kimika down! Know it… believe it…
I felt my body gradually get lighter. As it did, I slowly opened my eyes. They were met with a mist of low-landing clouds, which spread around us like a rush of ocean waves. If our joined hands were like a scale, before, I was definitely on the heavier side… But now, Kimika and I were in equilibrium! Neither weight was heavier than the other!
For—heft them—pound for pound
And they will differ—if they do
As syllable from sound
Only through this belief could we achieve the aerodynamics needed to bloom these shining wings in the endless night!
Soon enough, Kimika and I had swooped above the clouds, and then, the clouds themselves disappeared… Leaving only the luminous expanse of Suginomiya. Those artificial stars flitted past like dust particles through a spotlight. The people out at night were like bacteria under a microscope. Buildings and highways and trains and railings all blended together in a beautiful, alien geometry. If I could frame this scene and hang it in an art gallery, architects and painters alike would marvel at it! Kimika and I were sandwiched between two skies—That false, but beautiful, night sky of the ground… Filled with stars and planetary shapes and comets and that same unknowable beauty that eluded humanity for thousands of years. And the one above… was the progenitor of the below.
“Holy shit! Kimika!” I cried out into the night.
I heard Kimika let out a cackle, and the wind seemed to laugh along with her. “I know right?! I wasn’t even sure if it would work, but you believed, so it did! It’s just like the night we had the elixir! But the End-Sky isn’t looming over us… It doesn’t matter what sky this is! We’re sure to return soon, so we’ll just enjoy this existence however we can, right? World and God, sound and music! The difference is more obvious than ever!”
The brain is just the weight of God
The brain is wider than the Sky.
“I’m gonna have a fucking heart attack!” I screamed.
Kimika squeezed my hand tenderly. “Do that and I’ll break your shins! No way you’re dying on me before we get there! And no asking ‘Are we there yet?’ When I have kids, I’m never answering that question. It ruins the surprise!”
We soared. We weren’t like two pigeons flapping through the air. We were the twin wings of a radiant dove, billowing in the winds of the heavens. I looked up to the sky above us. The stars were brilliant, dotting the blackness like jewels thrown into a dark lake. I swore two shooting stars crossed paths, creating a dazzling crucifix in the sky. I took my ragged breath right away. Hahaha! If I was Christ, and that was the cross I was to bear… I’d die upon it with a grin on my face!
It must have been only minutes we were in that spiral of flight, but it felt like days and nights to me. The shimmer of the stars mimicked the sun, lighting up the world in a blazing glow. Then, they would disappear. A great cloud would come along, and this Sky would be plunged into that inky darkness once again. I could spend an eternity here with Kimika, hands joined, flitting around all of Tokyo. Would people think we were shooting stars? Would we rocket past a festival during the Tanabata? Ack, when did the mind of the Savior become like this!
Eventually, though, Kimika’s head dipped slightly. “We’re almost there, Takuji! Just hang on a little while longer!” She shouted.
“Hang on? I could go like this forever!” I beamed back.
Kimika cackled again. “Our faith can’t support us that long, Takuji! We’ll have to rest a little bit! But once we’re there… I think you’ll be more focused on other things than flying.”
I raised my brow at that, but didn’t press further. I just enjoyed the rest of our little skybound voyage, bracing myself for wherever Kimika was leading me. Then, I saw it… And I knew immediately where she was taking us.
In the distance—That nameless apartment building.
My body was stirring with heat as we flew through this chilly night, but now, my skin felt horribly cold.
“You don’t mean…” I muttered.
“Shhh, shhh, don’t even say your guess! Gotta wait until we get there!” Kimika chastised.
Our flight slowed down gradually, moving from our grand soaring to a light, almost jovial gliding. We drifted through the air, our hands still joined, maybe around some invisible, elegant parasol. Heh, I bet Yuuki would laugh at me… If he saw me with some girly umbrella.
Yuuki…
I felt a stab of pain flicker through my scalp, and bit down on my lip to suppress a yelp. Kimika didn’t notice it. Good. I shouldn’t be thinking about those things right now… Yuuki’s gone. I’m glad he’s gone! That’s why I did it! Don’t let these filthy thoughts ruin this wonderful thing!
Kimika glanced towards me, her teal eyes thoughtful. “Hey, Takuji… If you’re nervous, just look down near the roof. You can get the surprise a little early! Heh, it’ll be a bit of a surprise for me, too, so I’m also treating myself…” She gave a cheery smile. I needed that reassurance, and thanked her in my heart. It was almost as if she read my mind.
I glanced out towards the roof of that mysterious apartment building. The wind tickled my ears, and it kept blowing my bangs back into my eyes. It was silly, straining my eyes to just get a peek at the figure that was down there… But once I made it out, my heart’s wings beat furiously.
She was standing on the roof’s edge, overlooking the street and building far below her. The tips of her shoes were hanging off the edge, but her posture was so steady, it seemed impossible she would fall. Even if you pushed her, she’d be as rigid as a pillar. A river of black hair spilled down her back. An angelic white school uniform, adorned with that Kita High crucifix. Her curious eyes were some mix of black and blue, as dark and cool as the farthest reaches of the ocean. Her hands were clasped delicately around her heart. The faintest traces of her lips were turned up in a smile.
Kimika and I gasped out her name, one after the other.
“Takashima…”
“Zakuro…”
We coasted down to that roof. Nothing announced our presence, but Zakuro’s eyes turned up at us. As her eyes passed us, her face broke out into a wide smile that beamed with the radiance of 1,000 angels.
For all the things I’ve said about her, at that moment, she really was something divine.
“The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world. ”
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus