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miracle. let me hold you
Being allergic to fur sucks. Big time.
Rounded cheeks painted red under a river of tears, screams that her grandmother used to say were reminiscent of a banshee, and the taste of salty snot on her upper lip. She just wanted a Labrador or a Rottweiler like every other kid her age in the early 90s.
Yuki was robbed of the wholesome childhood photos, sharing Christmas presents, and sleeping in her bed with a big-ass dog instead of a hypoallergenic stuffed toy. She had a plan. Regardless of the breed and as a good Star Wars fan, she would have named it Chewbacca, and together, they would have been the coolest duo on the block and the entire galaxy.
But these stupid allergies ruined everything.
When Garuda stumbled into her life, she was eleven. Her allergies still had her questioning ‘why’ while facing the sky, hoping God or the aliens would listen and send some help for the planet’s coolest earthling.
Nothing happened, but things sucked a little less with an invisible being in everyone’s eyes but hers. Whenever she talked about it with her parents, they just said she was too old for imaginary friends.
The rules, responsibilities, and every other annoyance were less with such a creature.
It was great. Dope, in fact.
Until it wasn’t.
Yuki used to curl against its serpent-esque body every night, even if by morning, she was covered in purple bruises that she blamed on her lack of self-restraint at the jungle gym. But one day, she was spotted talking to something a group of grown-ups could actually see, contrary to others.
A shikigami, they called it. A special-grade sorcerer, they eventually named her. But, at the end of the day, they were and still are a pair of brats.
Yuki’s biggest problems went from being unable to learn the capitals of all the countries in the world and her allergies to being aware of how fragile humans can be and how feelings can transcend reality, turning into creatures that forfeit someone else’s life and cut short their destiny.
Many years after that night, Yuki, who has always hated rules, the status quo, and everything else that makes life complicated, has ended up in this mess.
Despite her reluctance, she remains seated at the kotatsu as Tengen discusses the many complications and shares what little they know about the Culling Game. In front of her, Choso sits perfectly upright, his confusion subtly marked by the furrow of his brows. In contrast, his concern over his brother’s well-being is evident in the way he clenches his fists.
Every second Yuki spends here reminds her why she always chooses to run away. Sometimes, a path leads to nothing but a dead-end, and that’s precisely what she found on the wrecked, bloodied streets of Shibuya on October 31st.
As her anxiety rises, Garuda’s head grows heavier on her lap. It serves as a reminder that, since that day in her childhood, she has never been, nor will she ever be alone again.
“Tsukumo.” Tengen’s voice is probably among the most irritating sounds she’s ever heard. “Tsukumo, are you alright?”
The bastard even dares to ask.
Yuki has never been fond of enclosed spaces, even less when it’s somewhere many, many women have met their end. She could have been one of them. A sorcerer is valuable, but only if it serves a purpose in this game of chess where they all stand as pawns. She was blessed with a vast amount of cursed energy and a powerful cursed technique, but that was the only difference between her and the other girls.
It’s just a dumb conversation. However, her animosity is barely disguised under a veil of mundanity flavoured with jasmine tea. Yuki can’t help but wonder if they both can tell how there’s always a voice whispering to her ear to let the anger rise and try to finish Tengen’s life.
Garuda goes for a slight rumble, one almost akin to the purr of a cat, to ground her to this very moment.
“Yeah. It’s fucking great.” Tengen takes that as their cue to leave. Still, Yuki finds herself smiling as Choso nods quietly, seemingly not discerning the sarcasm that follows her tone.
She’s never been one to grow soft over teammates, but it’s hard not to like him. Choso is… well, it’s hard to find the words to describe how much the Death Painting intrigues her.
His participation in conversations may be minimal, yet his presence is profoundly comforting. He’s more of an active listener, but on the very rare occasions he dares to break the silence, Yuki is drawn into bouts of genuine laughter because, despite all his seriousness, Choso is nothing short of sweet, silly, and caring.
Sure, he is undeniably attractive, and his technique has brought to life the most insidiously lecherous part of her mind. Still, Yuki wouldn’t go so far as to call the spark of interest a crush. Not only is she a little too old for something as youthful as infatuation, but there is no time for feelings when they are in the middle of war.
“Can I?” Choso finally speaks, voice rough from lack of use, as he extends a hand towards her deflated body on top of the table. Yuki’s pout, matched with furrowed brows, propels him to leave his position on the kotatsu and crawl slowly in her direction, sitting beside her.
With every passing day in their confinement, Yuki has come to find familiarity in a stranger.
The first time he started humming ‘Ara Ara Arale-chan’ because he was bored made Yuki teach him the lyrics and got her talking about how she would always pretend she didn’t have homework to watch Dr. Slump with her shikigami curled around her. His scent reminds her of the small park she used to attend, the one where Garuda helped her figure out how to turn upside down on the monkey bars and where she cried until she got tired because no one was there to catch her when she fell from her bike and tore open the skin of her knees and palms.
“Tsukumo, can I?” He tries again, but he’s already reaching for the creature’s bony head before she can answer. Garuda recoils but, to her surprise, doesn’t go for an attack as it usually does when it comes to being touched by anyone other than her.
To most sorcerers or curse users, a shikigami only exists as an aid in combat. For Yuki, it’s always been more than that. Growing lonely made her seek company from anyone or anything that would as much as give her an ounce of attention until a being she named after a deity came to hug the loneliness away.
Gakuganji once said that naming a shikigami is a bad omen, but Yuki was never one to believe in legends. Garuda is not only a tool in a fight or a witness to her abilities as a sorcerer; it is as much a part of her as her voice or the characters of her name.
“Look at you, you little brat!” She starts, eyeing how Garuda closes its eyes and shifts her attention to how the veins, muscles, and bones on Choso’s big, pale hands become more and then less pronounced with each light caress on Garuda’s head. “You are having a blast, aren’t ya?”
Choso agrees with a small smile as he moves his other hand to cradle its face and goes for a slight shake, which causes Garuda to bite him in retaliation enough to hurt but not to break skin. Before Yuki can check on him, he simply uses the other hand to slowly caress the beak until it lets go. “You didn’t like that, did you? I’m sorry.”
It physically pains her to witness how someone who’s only known the cruel side of the world can be so ever gentle. Choso may have never been hugged or caressed like this, but that doesn’t stop him from picking apart the vessel’s memories, trying to differentiate a touch that hurts from one that comforts.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I just wanted to try something Yuuji always does with Fushiguro’s divine dog.”
As Choso continues caressing Garuda’s head with the faintest smile and utmost interest at every reaction, Yuki indulges in the ache that tugs at the corners of her lips in a tight-lipped grin.
If she had to pinpoint the precise moment that made her realize that no matter how much she belittled it, her attraction was growing into something far more complicated, this would be the one. And Garuda is no help, curling its tail against his hips to drag him closer to her.
“Oh, I’m–”
“Garuda. Stop it. Now,” she orders as the shikigami twists its body around them, screeching in delight at the awkwardness that drowns them.
Yuki continues to chastise the creature, doing so with a hint of annoyance and deliberately avoiding eye contact with the man whose hands are squeezed in the middle of her inner thighs. She could use her Mass to break free but knowing that it might harm Choso or Garuda holds her back.
She knows her face is painted red. Her temple throbs with angry embarrassment, and her palms sweat because of how warm Choso is. But if there’s one thing she knows, it is that Garuda has absorbed the most essential points of her personality. The more she fights back, the tighter its hold will be because they both are that stubborn.
She takes a deep breath and stops fidgeting altogether. Yuki lets her body fall limp against the tatami and drags Choso down with her with a huff and a loud thud as the shikigami’s curves and edges paint new bruises on her skin at the impact.
“Well, this is awkward,” she begins, masking the uneasiness with a chuckle. Choso doesn’t utter a sound, not even those tiny uninterested rumbles nor the clicked tch noises he lets out whenever a word fails to describe his thoughts.
Instead of letting go, Garuda squeezes tighter, flushing their chests and forcing Yuki to bite down her tongue to prevent a whimper from escaping her mouth at the sensation of his arms pressed tightly against her pelvic bone.
She’s going to murder this cheeky bastard she calls her most loyal friend.
For someone with a lot of romantic experience, she feels helplessly foolish. Her exhale comes out in a staccato, and her fists tighten against the white fabric of his robes. That is when she realizes that the thundering heartbeat against her ribcage isn’t only hers and that the heat on her neck has more to do with the face brushing under her jaw.
“Can you make it stop?” Choso whispers, clearly flustered and with the quietest voice she has heard in the deep rumble of his tone. Yuki can’t help but turn the annoyance into worry over how small he sounds.
She tries to crane her neck to catch a glimpse of his face but only manages to notice his cheeks painted a deep cherry red under the marking splitting over his eyelids. Yuki lets out a noise that is as much as a muted giggle as it is a gasp at the realization that what’s poking her hipbone may or may not be Garuda’s sharp tail.
“Okay, Garuda. That’s enough,” a tiny chirping vibrates throughout the shikigami’s entire body. It may not speak with words, but its actions and the noises it lets out are enough for her to understand. She rolls her eyes before saying: “Pretty please.”
It sets them free, but not before forcing Yuki’s body on top of the half-curse man marred with an achingly human embarrassment. A breathy laughter echoes in her throat after being let go, melting in the warmth of the body under hers.
“Is everything alright, onii-chan?” Yuki resists the temptation of letting her hands take his and set them on the curve of her spine rather than between them. “You look like you are on the verge of a heart attack. I’m just wondering if it is because my shikigami asphyxiated you or because I can feel your boner.”
Choso turns around, letting her fall to the ground in a laughing mess as he stomps out of the room produced by Tengen’s cursed technique. He swears he’s going on watch duty. However, the way his ears are the same colour as the two small orbs of condensed blood that circle furiously around him proves to Yuki that the only thing he’ll be looking out for will be his thoughts, dissecting the reactions of this very, very human body.
For the longest time, Yuki convinced herself that the desperate need for the company she never received, at least embodied in a pet, made Garuda appear one morning curled between her body and the wall of pillows and hypoallergenic plushies. Her shikigami waltzed into her life as a cure for loneliness, but at the cost of having her future written down on paper by everyone’s hands but hers.
However, Yuki is an expert in finding blessings in a world of curses.
Sure, with Garuda, she lost her freedom, but she never felt lonely again. And yes, destiny may have found her guarding the ancient sorcerer who once asked for her life in exchange for a supposed way to keep protecting everyone and everything, even if she bore witness to hundreds of deaths before and after the offer.
But, at night, when she comes back from the entrance of the Tombs of the Star Corridor to find Choso lying down in his futon with Garuda nestled in his arms, eyes closed peacefully but not quite asleep, she feels something simmer within her chest that makes her feel like a teenager all over again.
They barely get any sleep that night. Choso, who tends to be more fond of silence, asks her a thousand questions about shikigamis, their nature, abilities, and how they are born and die, among many other inquiries. She doesn’t have an answer to some of the things that plague his mind with curiosity, but that’s okay. Being human means accepting that life has an expiration date and that all the knowledge that is out there is beyond their grasp.
Later in the night, the conversation shifts from shikigamis to what happened earlier. Yuki finds herself explaining his body’s reaction, even if she suspects he is playing dumb in a failed attempt to exit the confrontation after it’s made evident she is not the only one attracted to her fellow watchkeeper.
Right before letting sleep win, she slowly kisses his lips, promising to teach him more about intimacy and human connection when they make it out of here.
* * * * *
disaster. surrender long before defeat
The skin of his fingertips is nearly torn due to the hardship of climbing the sharp-edged rubble. His breath is laboured. His blood pumps furiously down his veins, out of his control. But it’s not because of the effort. He is terrified.
Tsukumo was —–no, she is full of life. She is loud, obnoxious, and kind despite how insistent she can be whenever she sets her mind to something. Choso may have never cared much about beauty because it is a fleeting thing that amounts to nothing in a fight, but Tsukumo Yuki is beautiful and full of life, and she just can’t die like this. She can’t.
Choso can barely breathe because the last thing he saw on Tsukumo’s face was the muted acceptance of her demise before the ground shattered under him and the world turned black, followed by an orchestra of chaos.
There's not much to see when he makes it to the top. The stairs are gone, and so are the small house-like buildings. Even the old black pine tree has been torn from its roots. An abyss stands on all the figments that, from now on, will only live in his memory.
His knees fail to keep him on his feet, just like the hyperventilation cannot provide enough air into his lungs. Choso feels a mix of blood and bile rise to his mouth and empties his stomach on the blend of wood, gravel, and dust that dresses the ground. The retching sounds and the impacts of his fists on the floor echo against the emptiness of the corridor.
He tries to focus and make out the sensation of his brothers calling for him. The faint pleads for help prompt him to scream in a mix of anger, sadness, and muted relief. The tears running down the raw, bruised skin of his cheeks serve as an anchor to reality. Even if everything’s gone to shit, at least there’s a small beacon of hope. If they are okay, that means the back of the Prison Realm also made it out unscathed.
That’s good news, but not enough. Where is Master Tengen? Where is Tsukumo?
“Tsukumo!?” He stands up and uses what little is left of his cursed energy to activate Flowing Red Scale: Stack, moving the heavy bits of walls and ceilings in search of her.
He may not know much about her except the fact that she’s strength personified. However, the last thing he saw was a life-threatening injury on her body. Every second he wastes could further draw the line between life and death.
Please be okay. Please, please, please be okay.
He refuses to refer to her in past tense when all he could think about mere hours ago was a future with her in it… She will be okay. She promised. She fucking promised.
Eso, Kechizu, his mom, Tsukumo. What’s the use of living as a human if he always fails to protect those he loves?
“YUKI!?” He screams again, voice cracking at the last syllable as he trips with a railing that drips blood on the wrecked structure. It isn’t until he gets up that he recalls that metal cannot bleed, let alone this deep shade of red.
Relief washes over his heart for the briefest second. It’s not her warm smile, her golden locks, nor the dark magenta eyes that looked at him with a kindness he wasn’t aware could come in the shape or form of anyone other than his brothers.
“Garuda!” He holds the cracked head with the same gentleness he’s seen on Tsukumo’s hands. The shikigami is barely responsive, but a small screeching sound still emanates from it. Choso sobs loudly in solace, bringing the creature’s limp body to his chest in a hug, even if the wings cut his forearms in the process.
Garuda is here, which can only mean one thing: she is alive. Tsukumo lives, and so do his brothers. Even if he should be worried beyond words because he can feel Kenjaku made it out of the fight and Master Tengen is nowhere to be seen, he will savour this small victory.
“Garuda, please. I need your help,” he begs, gently rocking its head to get it to at least open its ochre eyes and stare back at him. “Garuda, where–where is she? Where’s Tsu-… where’s Yuki?”
Silence. Its tail curls against his leg, but the pressure, regardless of its faintness, is still there. However, the small smile that was starting to be drawn on his bloodied lips vanishes as he glimpses at the long, heavy body grow lighter on his arms, its flesh nearly translucent.
It’s not a comforting embrace. Garuda is hugging him goodbye.
No! No, no, no. Please no.
But if no one hears human prayers, what luck there is for a half-curse like him?
Garuda’s body disappears before his hands. Even the blood that bathed his chest is gone, and Choso has never felt more helpless and useless in his life.
In the aftermath of Eso and Kechizu’s deaths, Choso was fueled with a seething rage that dwarfed the sadness away, blood boiling with an incommensurable thirst for revenge. It wasn’t until he was faced with their lifeless bodies stiff with rigour mortis that the tears finally fell, matching the dry trail that remained imprinted on the dirt marrying Eso’s cheeks.
When Choso’s hand hovered with a finishing blow to extinguish the life of the one who had slain his brothers, ignorant of the blood ties that bound their lives together, a profound sense of dread and confusion engulfed him. He couldn’t even scream. It was not a mere confrontation with mortality but a revelation of how his own acrimony had ensnared him, blinding him to the point that he was unable to discern what had always been evident.
The emotions that surge through him now, however, are unparalleled. Choso had lived under the conviction that life was only worth living to protect his nine brothers; their joy would be the only thing he treasured, and, should fate decree, their passings would be the only ones he would mourn.
But he’s always been a fool.
She mattered so much her absence left his soul hollow and he never even got to say that what he felt was something more than simple attraction.
Tsukumo’s cursed technique made her a star in his eyes: powerful, captivating, intricate, and precious. Her touch was both a scorching flame and a salvific gift. Choso didn’t know much about being human but, for Yuuji, for her, he yearned to grasp what it meant.
As the star he admired every day and night collapsed, birthing a black hole from its own demise, Choso came to the stark realization of two traits he had overlooked of the celestial being who paused her divinity to teach a curse about love: Tsukumo Yuki, much like the stars that decorate the night sky, was transient and forever beyond his reach.