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The ship is quiet when Kafka is away—or, rather, it’s empty. The absence of one person on a sleek, spacious craft such as theirs shouldn’t make such a difference (whether they’re five or six, they take up very little space), but it’s always Kafka insisting on spending time together: watching her expansive collection of movies, posing for photos in games of childish play-pretend, the severely unwise decision of cooking or baking. It’s Kafka, and only Kafka, who sweet-talks them out of their rooms and into the theater, or the kitchen, or the ballroom. It’s tragic that all of these marvelous rooms just sit here and collect dust—what did we even steal this for, mmm? Though he complains, frequently, in truth Blade doesn’t mind going along with her; he has nothing else to do, and he can only throw himself around the practice room so many times before the monster inside him grows restless, irritated, and threatens, rash-like, to break out.
Kafka’s presence is its balm, its antidote, and when she is away for too long, it begins to think it can get away with things.
This is rarely a problem.
Rarely.
The monster has him. And the ship is empty.
Kafka’s gone somewhere, he knows, but that knowledge is a faint candle-flicker to his desert-drought bonfire of pain and need. Every heaved breath is a heart attack, every slight sensation a lance through his skin. There’s a room he needs to find, to lock himself in—he’s forgotten where it is. Not important, he decides, because Kafka won’t be there. Where is she? Why has she left him? Why—
That’s it—that’s her! That’s her perfume! Kafka! He turns a corner, throws himself in her direction, howling after her—and she vanishes into smoke. He paces, frantic, shivering, but it’s hopeless. He’s lost her.
It’s too dark. It’s too bright. It hurts too much.
He can’t see.
Light?
He follows it.
The shine looks down at him, poured like breadcrumbs through the smoke and fog. His steps grow lighter, steadier, and he emerges from his nightmare into thousand-hued light. Under its radiance, cast magnanimous from above, his surroundings are revealed. He is wading in a lake, countless memoria bubbles puddled in clusters across its surface. Sunbeams scatter off the water, lending the world a shimmering, dreamlike quality. The sky, pale blue and transparent, is dotted with white birds. Far away, where he cannot reach her, a girl is singing.
“Do you sincerely repent and vow to change your ways?” The voice descends as a single drop of water, sending an undulation of ripples across the lake’s still surface. As they brush against Blade’s calves, he finds himself in deeper water. This is a good thing, he understands, faintly. He passed.
“Have you examined your soul and confessed all your sins?” Another wave of ripples emerges, stronger this time, and his head is drawn underwater. He breathes, silent and airless, cradled in the lake’s sweet hands. Its fathomless depths look back at him, heavy with care.
“Are you willing to accept the process of atonement?”
He drowns.
And his eyes snap open.
At first, it’s too bright, but a few pained blinks bring his surroundings into focus. He’s collapsed in the hallway, the back of his head throbbing from where it presumably hit against the wall. Grimacing, Blade sits himself upright. He’ll stay here until the pain leaves him.
A crack echoes off the floor as Sunday collapses to his knees.
White-pale and trembling, but seemingly oblivious to the pain, he meets Blade’s eyes with an intense clarity. His expression, though, is strange: not fear, not anger, not pity. It’s as if he’s seeing Blade for the first time. One hand floats, almost absently, around his neck, where an angry ring of bruises has begun to take form.
They look at each other, breathless, the wounds of failed godhood festering under their skins.
“You seemed to be suffering.”