Chapter Text
‘You were certainly the most peculiar student of mine, Fusakin.’
“Once more.”
Fusakin drifted forward, thread slackening as he centered himself. The wooden sword, light as a promise, which rose, turned, and fell. The movement was clean, with no wobble and no fear.
‘To think you have come so far, merely with the body of a balloon. Yet, your peers have all given up, but you.’
The blade stopped a hair’s breadth from a bell hung at the dojo’s heart, close enough to make it sing without touching it.
He learned balance without feet, timing without breath, and resolvement with or without blood. He learned how to let the wind pass through him and still strike true. He learned how to be mocked by crows and not falter, how to be tugged by a sudden gust and recover before the blade wavered. He had learned to forge metal despite the risk of popping then and there. He learned how to lose, and lose, and lose, until losing taught him something kinder than victory.
Years passed like this. Seasons stacked themselves as smooth as the silk chords that flowed beneath Fusakin’s balloon form.
His sensei exhaled.
“It is finished. Your training is complete.”
Fusakin came to a halt mid-air, then snapped around within an instant. The thread below him wound twice around itself. “Sensei—truly? Is what you are saying true?”
“Truly.”
The balloon’s face looked exhilarated and brightened, the way he always did when he was happy. Though, he composed himself and bobbed, forcing himself to bow again with a silent but determined expression.
“...Then,” he spoke, voice trembling, “teach me the spell. If…If you may.”
The sensei’s hand tightened on his staff.
“No,” came the answer. Immediate. Flat.
Fusakin sagged. The thread creaked. “Sensei, I beg! You promised there would be a way.”
“I promised you a blade, Fusakin,” the teacher said. “And a mind steady enough to hold it. Not a body.”
“But a body is why I trained!” the small voice cracked, before settling himself down. “It’s why…It's why I learned to stand against wind and rain. Why I learned to bleed air and not burst. I want to walk. I want to feel the ground push back when I push. I want to sit by the fire and be warmed, not lifted!”
The sensei turned away, looking out toward the pines. Dawn had begun to fall, slow and deliberate.
“Why is this not enough for you? You already have a body, helium or not.”
Fusakin shook his head repeatedly, “Not one that stays,” he claimed. “Not one that can sit and eat normally with friends. Not one that can walk beside them and leaves footprints in the snow. Not one that doesn’t drift when the wind changes its mind.”
“The spell is a cage. A clever one. Flesh grown from borrowed matter. Bones etched with runes. Blood that remembers another rhythm. It will hold you. And while it holds you, something else will grow.”
Fusakin went very still, hovering beside his teacher.
“A curse,” he continued. “Planted long ago by a demon that delights in patience. It grows as you do. It learns what you love. Your habits. Your weaknesses. When it is ripe, it will tear free. It will wear your face for a breath. And then it will kill everyone you love. All of your friends. People you cherish.”
Fusakin’s silk chords tremble, “Then, I will not cherish. Nor love.”
The teacher faced him again, “Yet, you already do.”
“Wh—”
A thought of laughter echoing off stone steps. A vision where children giggled together in the forest, and a certain balloon watched from afar. Of games played at dusk where he hovered at the edge, careful not to snag on thorns.
Birthdays where candles bent toward him and someone said, joking, “Careful, don’t pop now!”
A sniffling balloon came to thought afterwards, wiping his eyes with the tiny hands he had at the end of the strings. He had been stuck on a tree after the wind blew strongly.
He felt pathetic, he remembered. Why must it have been this way? Was he really even a numa? For what cruel God cursed him with such a form that would leave him only to yearn for something more?
Then, a pair of hands reached towards him, untangling the strings from the branch.
“You sure seem to get caught up in situations. Literally and figuratively.”
The other numa took Fusakin’s little string in hand, guiding him as they stared down at their phone.
“I’m not something fragile, y’know!” Fusakin glanced away in annoyance, “You don’t have to baby me like this.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he replied, “You’re just light, not fragile. Just let me take you back to the temple, yeah? Don’t fight me on this.”
Why Marikin was the first person he thought of? He didn’t know. But, the numa saw him—if not the first—for who he was. He would save him a seat, even if Fusakin couldn’t exactly sit down. He would tie the knot when Fusakin’s ribbon frayed.
But being seen by one was not the same as belonging to all, and he knew he was selfish for thinking of so. Yet, that was something he could not help either.
“For how long?” he whispered.
His sensei did not answer at first.
“Years,” he spoke at last. “Maybe decades. Long enough for you to forget the promise you’ll make today.”
“I won’t!” Fusakin narrowed his eyes.
“You will. Everyone does.”
Fusakin floated closer, until his round form brushed his teacher’s sleeve. He bowed to the ground. “Sensei,” he said, softer. “I have no hands, no feet. I don’t feel as if I have reached my full potential with this body of mine. I’m not strong enough yet, and I am always vulnerable! And I’ve…I’ve never held another without a string between us. Please, let me choose the shape of my end. Even if I am doomed to die.”
The sensei glanced away once more.
Fusakin hesitated for a second, but then spoke, “I vow this,” the words coming sharp and bright. “When the time comes…when I feel it stir, when I see the shadow in my reflection, I will take up my sword. I will slice off my own head before it breaks free. I will die clean. No one else will.”
The sensei’s jaw worked. For a long moment there was only the hush of wind through trees and the faint creak of thread.
“You would swear that?” the teacher asked. “On everything you will come to love?”
“Yes.”
“On the friends you have not met yet?”
“Yes.”
“On the body you desire so dearly?”
“Yes.”
Fusakin's teacher turned back, with age having folded itself deeper into the lines around his eyes.
“Follow.”
He moved to a stone table and spread a long sheet of parchment across it. With charcoal, he began to draw. Fusakin floated closer as lines appeared: the outline of a human form, then layers beneath: bones, channels, markings that curved like written prayers.
At the center of the chest, he drew a dense, dark shape.
“This is Maidonium,” he pointed. “A substance that binds soul to matter. It remembers who it was made for. Without it, the body cannot hold you. Where you shall get it is not my concern.”
Fusakin nodded his head as he watched his sensei look up at him.
“You will not survive the ending. You are aware of this?”
“I know. This is what I want, sensei.”
The teacher studied him for a long time, then shook his head. Fusakin faltered in his sensei’s disappointment, but firmly floated there.
Finally, he rolled up the parchment and placed it in Fusakin’s care.
“Do what you must, Fusakin,” he walked towards the mausoleum’s exit, facing the setting sun. “If I shall see you again, I hope.”
The door slid shut, leaving a small Fusakin in the dark, tightening his strings around the rolled-up parchment paper.