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War’s burned down many villages and this one’s nothing new. The fire died a long time ago, but Taksugi can spot the red dots blooming all over the lifeless houses. They say higanbana’s the flower of death, and yet Takasugi’s still breathing as he walks past them. He paused midway, seeing the path of red going to the vastness beyond the wreck. There’s nothing he’d want to find waiting at the end of it than hell, but he knows it’d be a laughable hope.
Reaching a house that looks the least destroyed, he kicks the door open and steps in. The inside is dark, the silence is cold. The floor is dusty and broken, some of the wooden panes are shaken out of their place, exposing the nails and the ragged edges. The world around him had collapsed, just like this pathetic hideout, and Takasugi doesn’t give it a second damn.
He looks up, peering at his reflection in a blurry mirror. There are cracks all over its surface, and dust covers most of the monster staring back at him from the other side of the glass, leaving but a pair of golden piercing eyes. Its gaze shoots into his soul, with reminders from a memory fragment to reality, from the gentleness of a time long gone to the harsh grip of the present.
He looks away, but the monster’s eyes still burn the back of his head. It’s a reflection of his past, a reverberation of the redemption he once thought his world's given him, only to be snatched away the moment he almost put his heartbroken scream to rest.
It may have something to say, but its word slips into the dusty darkness.
The place’s tattered, filled with burned corpses and chipped wood. It’s mid-autumn and the higanbana’s flaring through the broken floors. Their red petals curl back to the sepal, letting the stamen reach out, making the whole flowers look like claws that fit well with Takasugi’s golden-eyed monster.
Takasugi thought he was at the remains of somebody’s house, but as he probes deeper into the premise, he changes his mind. There are corpses of an adult and a large group of children seemingly of the same age, too many, too different, and too similar in size to be siblings of a family. It was more likely a teacher and their students. A school.
Civilians. It’s always the innocents that suffer the toughest consequences of war, and this time the effect even hits harder, knowing they're simply a small school whose worst harm possible is perhaps an overwhelming amount of homework. The fire destroyed most of them, but Takasugi guesses if he looked hard enough into it, he may have found some paper lying around. Books of any kind.
It reminds him of Shouka Sonjuku, the time he wished to relive and unlive at the same time. It was a good time, but good times are how his heart knows feelings, and feelings drag along the incurable pain that rips his heart apart. Takasugi had a teacher he adored, and that same man’s head rolled on the ground to the cry of his anguished soul. He had friends he swore to protect, and now they’re all broken, scattered around this whole universe like pieces of glass that can never mend.
He turns around, in time to peer at his reflection in a broken window. And he sighs, with a quiet smile. The world around him collapsed and so did every good thing, but he guesses it tolerates him enough to leave him this monster. Its golden eyes merge into Takasugi’s gaze, unflattering, unuttered, voiceless, but not soundless. There’s something it’s trying to convey, and Takasugi has yet to get it figured out.
The rain’s been around for the whole week, but it’s gone as soon as Takasugi decides that drenching himself can be a justified effort to mimic the tears he couldn’t cry. Water’s everywhere – the leaden sky, the soaking ground, the no longer burning wreck – but where it needs to be, leaving Takasugi standing like an utter idiot among the ruined schoolyard, peering into the hollow of what used to be a classroom, now a pile of unliving ash decorated with the uncanny crimson higanbana.
“My less favored legend says it's the mark of martyrdom,” Sensei’s voice hits him out of nowhere, like a memory fragment with dagger-like edges cutting through his thoughts. Ever since he found the remains of the unfortunate school, he’s received many visits from his childhood recalls. This is nothing new, and yet it makes his skin jump.
“The higanbana, I mean,” Takasugi finds himself repeating Sensei's words, then his past self’s dumb question. “Why do you not like it, Sensei?”
“The higanbana comes in many colors,” Sensei replies with a gentle smile. “It's silly to only associate it with blood.”
“What’s your favorite legend, then?”
“The one which says that the higanbana only blooms on your path if you never meet someone again.”
Then a fire flares up, raging over the piece of memory with its ruthless anger. Sensei’s face melts away, and his head falls off his neck, rolling on the muddy ground, from inside Takasugi’s mind to the existing world. He blinks, and the head disappears, but the blood remains, resembling the higanbana bursting through the ash. Then even the fire that burned his memory dies down, turning itself into a pair of golden irises staring at him from his reflection in a puddle.
Takasugi smirks. The human mind never fails to impress him in terms of messing up reality and imagination. He looks at the monster’s eyes, listening to his heart being filled with a cacophony of emotions. Yearning is one. Guilt and agony are the regular. Numbness is his old friend who's aged so gently, so comfortably. But this time curiosity festers over them all, throbbing like an unattended open-mouthed lesion.
It’s somewhere between day and night. The light draping over him has a sinister color, somewhere in the spectrum between orange and red, fitting well with either ante or post meridiem. It doesn’t matter. Dusk or dawn is just a name for the overlapping of light and darkness, and Takasugi’s got a good portion of the same vague shit for his deranged life.
The higanbana’s road mingles with his view, the flowers gently jiggling as the autumn wind caresses them with its crispy fingers. They’re waving for him, it seems, with an alluring call to put an end to all of his painful existence, once and for all. Ashes and broken wood aside, the route seems clear. He walks ahead, feeling his past fleeting away as he charges into the welcome of the flowers.
There’s a cliff waiting at the end of the road, marking the sudden halt of higanbana and the start of nothing underneath. A one-way gate to the vastness beyond life, a fulfilling period of the existence he’s been more than desperate to end, what he needs is there in his sight, a few steps away. And yet, Takasugi stops. He was interrupted.
Through the corner of his eyes, he can see something moving faster, running ahead of him. A monster with eyes hidden behind its shadowy face but he always knows they’re golden and burning like fire, the one that’s been following him in every reflection. It was an imagination-made-real, an echo of the happiness plucked away from his hands, and it’s now embodied with a human figure.
Takasugi’s caught off guard as the once-monster-now-even-harder-to-label horror gains its form and stops in front of him, blocking his way to his hellish relief. The turquoise falls into sight, overwriting the crimson flowers, the golden irises pierce into his soul, and thousands of inaudible words come in waves, overlapping, making an invisible force shield sending Takasugi back.
“Step away,” he can feel his lips moving, knowing even it’d be an effort in vain.
The monster, once a manslayer, is a thing with its mind, alive or dead, real or merely a forlorn recall of the withered better days. It – he – was famous for many wicked things, but the best of which was to never do as Takasugi said. Takasugi knows he’s losing, but he persists, wanting to see how long he can stand this failing ground.
“Why?” He asks, hearing his question flung into thin air. No answer, as expected. The monster stays still, his threatening figure overlapping with the haphazard sunlight, and yet there’s no shadow on the road under him.
And then his eyes move. Not much, just a glimpse in a second, the golden irises leave Takasugi’s face, panning through his shoulders. Takasugi follows his gaze, squinting at the forsaken wreck he’s left behind. He knows what’s there – a village that’s no longer relevant to the world of the living, a frayed hideout that barely offers any comfort, a bunch of burned corpses that keep bringing back unwanted memories, and several higanbana that feast on their decomposing ashes.
But he also knows that the monster doesn’t want him to stop at this depressing site. Knowing him, like the back of his hand or an unyielding shriek locked and treasured inside his heart, Takasugi understands that his monster means far beyond that.
The world can’t afford to lose you just yet.
He said so, on that fateful day when the ceiling fell over their head. He said so and believed so, that’s why he stayed behind, wielding his sword and shamisen like a try-too-hard attempt to stall their enemies. That wicked monster and his stubbornness, probably until the last breath of his life, went all in on Takasugi without regret.
And now whatever’s left of him is trying his best to make sure that the bet won’t be a mistake.
Like a surge of realization that’s finally found its way to break through Takasugi’s sturdy thoughts – a combination of his natural obstinacy and warworn trauma – the unvoiced words that the monster always tried to convince him via their every single eye contact through the reflection start piecing themselves together. Takasugi feels like an idiot for not realizing it sooner, but he’s glad that it’s here.
The world can't afford to lose you just yet. Takasugi recalls, hearing his soul shattering. His monster sacrifices, so he can thrive. They’ve both lost faith in the world, and yet, in the worst dire situation and on the verge of death, the world suddenly matters.
The world matters because they’re a part of it. The world matters because that damnable hellhole was where their paths crossed and their fates entangled. The world was also where they walked into each other’s darkest, most hidden corners, secured under layers of feigned apathy, and refused to leave. The world has Takasugi and Bansai as two different persons, and the world has them as Takasugi and Bansai. Now the world matters, and the world can’t afford to lose Takasugi, Takasugi’s life matters.
He stops looking, letting his imagination fill in the blank of whatever lies further than the wrecked village. Names keep coming in waves. His friends are scattered all around the universe, like pieces of a smashed glass pane, unfixable, irredeemable. But they’re also a part of the world that can’t afford to lose Takasugi. They’re in a war, and they need him by their side.
Takasugi turns around, seeing Bansai still in his spot. He knows, from the depth of his heart, Bansai knows that he understands. The monster – the man – keeps his stark posture, but his face softens. He gives Takasugi a gentle nod.
Run. I’ll follow suit. Just like the promise he never kept.
“Don’t,” Takasugi murmurs, hoping that it can be the only command from him that Bansai follows. He wants Bansai to wait for him at the end of the higanbana road, standing between his choices of the excruciating life and the relieving passing. He will give the world what’s worth, but he also wants a way back to relief.
He wants Bansai to be there when he returns to the higanbana, carefree, no longer a key component, someone important, or relevant to the world, when Bansai’s sacrifice is worthy and everyone no longer needs another perishing soul to save their ass. Then, and only then, does he hope that he can return to the end of the higanbana route with Bansai’s waiting. Then, and only then, can they jump off the cliff, fingers intertwined, lips smirking, shoulders freed from burdens, heads freed of minds, and hearts filled with hard-earned happiness nothing can snatch from them.
Then, and only then, can he be together with his Bansai again, forever, until the end of eternity.
- fin -