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It’s a clear afternoon in spring, the first break from the rain in quite a few days. She narrows her eyes at the half finished walls. There is a bug, light yellow, winged, slender. It is perfectly still. It’s one of many to appear in the past week or so. She plucks it off, the thing flying away in a chaotic frenzy.
“What’s with all the mayflies? It’s still April.”
Tsukihiko’s chuckle sounds from nearby. It’s a sound she’s heard quite a lot.
“I wonder if they’re trying to see more of the world, since their lives are so short,” He says, smile still in his voice. “They’re a bit like cicadas, in that way. Sort of annoying, but ephemeral.”
“Cicadas,” She echoes back, thinking of dead shells, and how the forest sounded when she was born.
—----
The haze is far more oppressive than any real summer she has experienced. The serpents, larger than any she had seen during any time period, slip and constrict around her, and Azami, of all people, is not the type to squirm around snakes, but this utter choke is testing her. It has been testing her, for many, many years. She is no longer sure how many.
The Snake of Clearing Eyes laughs, with a voice distorted and not dissimilar to her own, to his creator’s.
“Oh, Little Master, you’re pitiful, really. It would almost be unbearable to watch, if it wasn’t so delightful.”
Even if the Queen Snake were with her, she wouldn’t try to escape. This was what she deserved, after all. She doesn’t know why she bothered.
—----
The first time Tsukihiko offers her half of his loaf of bread, she squints at him judgmentally.
“You fool,” she mutters. ”I don’t need to eat.”
He tilts his head. “I’ve seen you drink water, though.”
“It was just to cool off. Why bother? You’re doing work, don’t you need it more?” She stares down at the bread, briefly considering that it might be poisoned.
He rubs the back of his head. “I can’t leave you in the dust like that!”
She feels her conviction weaken. “Alright. But only if you bring enough for us both next time.”
Tsukihiko smiles, the soft pink of his eyes just barely peeking out from where his eyes have been forced into crescents, reminiscent of the moon he is named for. This is not what she had anticipated. She can’t—
“Only because it would be an inconvenience if you passed out,” she tries. It is weak. She is weak.
—----
Her sense of identity is broken, fractured like ice on a lake. Her form can shift and change as easily as the world seems to around her, in moments where she gets lost in thought. Her eyes can deceive anyone, and she is not exempt from that. She knows she wishes for purpose, that much is certain, but, is having no purpose outside of wishing for one really existing?
She knows she is not human. Does she want to be? Some days, she doesn't feel that different from them. Her mind goes tender around the thought, fresh in the same way that wounds are, and creatures as old as her are not.
These thoughts quietly peter out, as she remains cushioned on the bed. Her hair is down from its usual ribbon, writhes slightly in the absence of all sound except for the susurrus of leaves. It must be getting into Tsukihiko's side of the bed, but he doesn't seem to mind.
—----
Ayano likes the color red, sentai manga, and origami. She likes the dango they sell at the school festival, even if she doesn’t really like school. She likes seeing Shintaro there, though, and the uniform. A part of her wishes she could freeze time, be fourteen forever. Everything is so happy right now. Of course, it’s not perfect. Maybe she should wish to be thirteen, instead, and have Mom be alive with her. Most importantly, Ayano likes her little siblings. Ayano loves her little siblings. Tsubomi and Kousuke are still so quiet, Shuuya is still so solitary, but it is enough. It’s more than enough, actually. She wonders if she has earned it.
—----
At times, The Monster would wish she could stop her continued existence. She found it curious, then, that living creatures fear death so fervently.
In her time as an amorphous consciousness, she had witnessed it countless times. Rabbits and birds would skitter in all directions at the slightest sound. Prey would run from predators until the very limit of their stamina.
For a moment, in a dark cave full of snakes, long ago, she had thought she had understood. The burn of fire was not the most pleasant first sensation she could’ve experienced. However, it, as did most of her paper thin illusion of understanding, melted away through the years. Countless events had taught her she was incapable of death. Pain might have been unpleasant, but the fear was dulled, now.
They all lived such short, brutal lives. The constant grind of the search for food, the constant grind of the cyclical seasons, until an unceremonious death.
Humans were the worst of all. No other species she had witnessed so insistently fought, and yet no other species she had witnessed so insistently lived.
She watched as a child was carefully nursed back to health from sickness, only to drown the next season. How foolish, she thought, not recognizing what the distant feeling in the back of her mind was.
—----
She is not entirely sure she could have a child. What would be the purpose, anyways, of bringing another being like herself into the world? She imagines that human child. She imagines herself, so, so very long ago.
The Monster would be a terrible mother, she is sure. She adds this to the small list of things she knows about herself. She is in best company around flowers, not living creatures. If she doesn’t know quite how to tell a thistle in the woods how she loves it, how could she manage a person?
She picks up a broken egg shell, and wonders if it was a bird.
—----
Of all the humans the Daze has absorbed, Tateyama Ayano might be some of the best company. Save for Shion, of course, but she was in and out of consciousness, had been dragged nearly into the center of Azami’s prison, into the heart of bitter regret.
The way the Daze adjusts itself for everyone is like that, of course, but Ayano is more aware than the others. She had done her research. She walks freer than most, despite how empty school hallways always follow the soft steps of her penny loafers.
Some days, Azami is within a house, and not within the serpents. This is a prison too, just as much of a continual echo of all her regrets as the serpents and their window to the outside. It is a constant reminder of Tsukihiko and Shion, of how she left them, of how she was doomed to from the beginning.
When she is in the house, sometimes, Ayano will come sit at the table. The view outside turns from oppressive blackness to an upside down sunset, and she does not say much, just folds paper cranes out of pages of storybooks, so many of them, white, delicate little things. You can’t miss them.
Rarely, though, she will prod for information, careful and nervous. Often the questions have to do with how the snakes work, as if Azami herself understands the specifics.
Eventually, Azami gets sick of the tenuous air, and asks about her, for a change. Asks about why she stays here, in a place designed to create a personal hell for all who enter it, when one of Azami’s final snakes remains curled around her heart, around her life, so close and warm it’s almost like Azami could reach out and use it again, pull on the power and feel her eyes heat up. Asks about why her hell is so stiflingly quiet, so uninteresting, so barren of all but warm light, desks, and the moment before “death”. It’s not like she enjoys it here. That much is clear to Azami, even without Stealing Eyes a blink away. Sometimes, Ayano’s sobs are filtered through the distortion inherent to this place until they sound like cicada’s cries.
“It’s worth it,” She breathes, softly spoken but with a steely conviction just underneath the surface, with a desperation in her eyes. “For my friends, family… it’s all worth it.”
Azami winces, because it almost reminds her of Tsukihiko.
—----
At least, The Monster thinks, Ayano sealed herself away because she thought it would help. It’s not the same as what she did, it was not a penance.
It’s not the same, she internally repeats. It sounds less convincing each time she says it. Summer skies are very reflective surfaces, after all.
—----
The summers here in the place she has chosen are utterly oppressive in their heat, it’s ridiculous.
They’ve decided to take a dip in the river, not too far away, to take the edge off of it. Tsukihiko spins Shion around in the water, only for her to come back up, excitedly asking for it ‘ Again! Again! ”. She’s going to exhaust them both, at this point. Azami hums contentedly from where she floats on her back. It is infinitely better than the tumultuous swim through open ocean she experienced so many years ago.
The splashes draw closer as Shion paddles her way over, puts her weight on Azami’s chest, nearly sinking them both.
“Mama, the air all the way over there looks like it’s wavy! That’s because it’s hot, right?” She points at the edge of the water.
“Very good, Shion. That distortion you’re seeing is called the kagerou .” She remembers it, from one of the many books Tsukihiko had taken back before he stopped revisiting the village, the kanji for shadow, followed by the kanji for heat, but with an irregular reading.
“ Kage-rou ,” Shion tests out. “Isn’t that a bug?”
“Mayflies. It’s a different word, just like how candy and rain sound the same. Mayflies are those thin, yellow bugs you see in the Spring.”
—----
Another foolish human points some kind of makeshift blade at The Monster, a mix of fear in disgust in their eyes as the snakes in her hair hiss. Something in her snaps—to call it her temper doesn’t feel right, and to call it her patience feels too gentle.
The human lay dead at her feet shortly thereafter.
She looks at the red on her hands, like the red in her eyes, and wonders “ is this who I am? ”.
In a place where no voices reach, she calls up the guilt. It is there, but diminished, for the time being.
—----
She remembers the moment while writing in her diary. She knows how to read and write, of course, the humans who had worshiped her had taught her. It was perhaps the only useful thing they had done for her, other than teach her that even positive attention could make her want to crawl out of her skin. Her pen falters, spilling ink. It doesn’t really matter. She wonders why the moment is even worth remembering, and for a second, she wonders why she is writing at all.
Many of her memories are far from pleasant, but it’s not like preserving the good ones will overwrite that. She shakes the thoughts away. It’s best not to dwell. Dinner is ready, she is sure, as she hears Tsukihiko spoon out the soup.
She eats it without a second thought.
—----
Tsukihiko gives and gives and gives. It didn’t bother her at first, and the house was certainly convenient, but it’s starting to wear on her. She wonders what she has done to earn such unflinching devotion, and answers her own question.
It’s not like Azami doesn’t get it. She doesn’t intend to spend much time with anyone but Tsukihiko, and to say that he’s changed her life would be an understatement. She doesn’t have that same impulse, though. She would almost think it silly, if she couldn’t empathize, that he would still care about proving himself as someone with worth. He’d said himself that he resented the villagers for all they’d done.
However, Azami understands the pursuit of a purpose. She understands it to her very core. Come to think of it, that hasn’t really been on her mind recently. Tsukihiko has mellowed out over the years, too. Yet, when she reaches for it, she can’t find the purpose that would have sated such a desire.
—----
“ You hold more power than you seem to know. If they are all flames, you are one that burns much brighter. You are one that cannot be stamped out ,” The Snake mutters in her ears, fangs dripping with honey. This conversation, this train of thought, this entire night is making her feel stirred up, like silt on the riverbed. She stands up and walks to the kitchen without much purpose.
“ Like a phoenix, reborn without the need for a womb ,” He continues.
“I’m not a bird,” She counters quietly, and begins to cut up an apple, just to have something to do with her hands.
“ I’m sure you could have wings, if you wanted. You know that too. Is another world really so far out of the realm of possibility ?” The apple makes a sound like a cracking egg shell as she splits it down the middle, splits her life and the world.
She cuts it again, this time into fourths, considers her options as she does it. She doesn't feel like a burning flame. She feels like the cutting board. She is made to withstand the knife, and yet—
“Some things are beyond even me. You told me yourself that I can't bring people back from the dead,” She says, and wonders why she bothers to doubt. The Snake is, fundamentally, one of her powers. He should know this very well. This feels like a token protest, like assuming the loaf of bread, the apple, is poisoned. It feels like assuming there is cyanide somewhere other than the seeds. She cuts it into eighths, but one comes out a little too big, so she makes it nine.
“ I think you already know that you can do it.”
“I could do it,” She quietly seals her fate, and takes a bite.
—----
She curses herself. She curses that her chest still hurts to think about it. That pain, she is acutely aware, is not from the burning shame at her own folly. That’s present too, the fact that she had trusted a human again despite having it proven to her ad nauseam that that would be stupid. That’s not the main agony, though. It’s the betrayal. It’s the betrayal and the loneliness.
Maybe he just died , she thinks, and then feels worse. She thinks of little Shion, maybe all by herself, and feels even worse. She doesn’t feel like using Focusing Eyes to check, and the slide of scales around her isn’t soothingly cool and familiar like it should be. It’s so hot. Everything is so hot. It’s like perpetual summer. It’s like eternity.
The Monster will sit here, sit with this, with these thoughts, for eternity.
Perhaps eternity is far crueler than any death.
She knew this. She knew this, at some point, some point far away, and slipping through her fingers, despite her sharp memory. When did she forget?
—----
Marry ( Shion’s daughter, her granddaughter, her darling Marry, the one who made it out fully and truly alive that August ) stands in front of her, is all around her, and in some ways, is her. It’s apparent that Azami’s very being was her snakes, her wishes, because she has formed once more, somehow intact, despite being chipped off into little pieces for so many years. She’s not sure how to feel about it. Slowly fading like that isn't quite a release, like it will be this time. She's not really disappointed to be here, though, either.
“It can’t end like this,” Marry says, and unlike before, she doesn’t look scared. She looks sure of herself, if sad.
Azami is momentarily jealous. It is brief, foolish, and she only barely recognizes it for what it is. The feeling disappears and the shame sets in, but the thought lingers, clear as moonlight on a cloudless night. Marry is able to hope. Marry has not given up. She is doing what Azami has failed to do, time and time again, too crushed by her reality and mind. It’s not that she resents her, quite the opposite. She is… wistful, though.
“Then don’t let it end like this,” She states, and hopes that she will be chipped apart again, so that those children can live. It’s a secondhand desire, sure, but one she feels no less strongly.
Marry's eyes raise, and the look in them is like Ayano's.
“Bring it on, Kagerou Daze!”
Azami is, objectively, as doomed as she was before, as she has always has been. To call this catharsis would be an overstatement. It is… a resolution, though, of some kind, and maybe that is enough. The flame still burns bright in children.
She suddenly understands, clearly and consciously, the desire to save something that will eventually die anyways.
—----
There are some things that no amount of drift, no matter how strong, can account for. Some possibilities that have never turned up, no matter how many times the world is reset, because they would ruin the story too thoroughly, wreck the pages, and the binding, and smear the ink, even when it has long since dried.
So something like this never would have happened, not really.
However, somewhere out there, in some alternate universe, in a place where voices reach, a girl named after a flower of the prettiest purple lies on her bedroom floor after her childhood friend moved away, solidifying their already present drift. A piano ballad spills from her CD player, from a disc with a design of black headphones on the front. It is the twelfth track.
The music cuts as the CD runs out of tracks to play, and it does not loop. A cold front blows in outside the window, the first signs of Autumn. It will probably be okay.