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Sunlight filtered through the thin canopy of mountain trees in long, slanting beams, catching on drifting dust and a faint curl of mist that clung stubbornly to the morning air.
There was a quiet, early chill at this altitude; wind moving softly through the branches above, stirring leaves in a low, continuous rustle that whispered overhead.
Maki stood at the edge of a narrow rural road; her figure cut cleanly against the pale gray stretch of asphalt that wound its way down the mountainside. The Kyoto Jujutsu High campus lay somewhere behind her, hidden by distance and terrain, and the place she’d just left—after saying a final goodbye that felt like poison—sat further, marked now only by memory, and a patch of disturbed earth that would settle in time.
She hadn’t looked back when she walked away, out of a fear that seeing Mai’s grave after the act would kill her resolve.
Maki exhaled—wincing at the feedback the motion gave her. There was a dull, pervasive ache that threaded through each of her limbs; and the sharper, more insistent throb in her ribs and abdomen, a reminder of how close she’d come to dying the previous day.
She tried to open her right eye, but each attempt brought a severe jolt of pain buzzing through the socket. She wasn’t entirely sure just how damaged her eye had been by Ogi’s sword, but evidently enough, one night’s rest wasn’t sufficient to mend the sensitive organ.
Despite that—her depth perception hardly suffered. The real bother was how much the cut over her face stung.
It would’ve been easier to focus on that. The pain. To let it take precedence, to justify stopping, resting, waiting for something, or someone else to step in.
Except, the thought just didn’t hold.
Mai was dead.
That grief had settled into her chest like a weight that did not shift no matter how she breathed, pressing down insistently with an unrelenting pressure that made standing still feel like effort.
Yes, Mai was dead, and Maki was…
Her jaw clenched as she cut the thought off before it could finish.
There wasn’t time to sink into the horror of her existence. That path led somewhere she could not afford to go, not now, not when she was standing here with the morning stretching out in front of her, and something that needed to be done.
Momo’s voice echoed faintly in her memory, “Sendai’s roughly eight hundred kilometers away. If you’re in a hurry, you’ll need to go now.”
There was eight hundred kilometers to Sendai.
Her gaze dropped briefly to the road at her feet, tracing the faint cracks in the asphalt, the subtle curve as it disappeared into the trees ahead. There was no visible endpoint, no marker to indicate where the road would lead, or how long it’d take to get there.
Just a direction.
...She had less than three days.
Maki inhaled, then exhaled slowly, the breath leaving her in a thin mist in the cold morning air. Her hand moved automatically, adjusting the position of the Soul Split Katana attached to her waist, ensuring the weight of it sat where it wouldn’t interfere with her stride.
Her other hand reached for the cloak draped loosely behind her neck, lifting it and settling it over her shoulders in a flourish. The fabric shifted with the movement, whipping in a brief battle with the wind, before falling into place as though it belonged there.
For a moment, Maki remained still, her mind briefly replaying the slaughter that’d taken place the day prior.
Fighting. She wasn’t very good at it. She’d only survived that battle by the skin of her teeth—and against a clan full of, narratively speaking, fodder.
That was why she needed to tell Yuta everything. She wasn’t equipped, nor experienced, nor prepared to fix anything herself.
So she stepped forward; the motion sending a faint jolt through her abdomen, the injury protesting the shift in weight, but she did not slow. Her boot met the road with a heavy clack, and then the next followed, and the next after that, each step falling into a steady rhythm that would carry her forward whether she allowed herself to think about it or not.
She didn’t know what would happen after she told Yuta—really. She didn’t know if he’d believe her, whether he’d accept the information she gave, or whether he’d realise she wasn’t the real Maki and—
—her breathing hitched, but her stride did not slow.
…This was what she owed. To Mai. To the life she’d taken the place of. To the version of Maki that no longer existed to carry this will herself.
Her grip tightened briefly at her side, fingers curling into her palm as the weight of that knowledge settled in once more, heavier with each step she took.
The road stretched out ahead; unbroken, quiet, indifferent.
It was eight hundred kilometers to Sendai.
So, Maki kept walking.
