Cold, so—so cold.
Sora hung over the edge of the boat, his fingers trembling as they barely gripped the rim. He heaved. Once. Twice. But nothing came up—no bile, no food, not even water. Just air. Dry, shaking gasps that burned his throat. His stomach twisted into knots, clenching hard and useless, over and over.
The river's water crawled across the wooden slats of the deck, sloshing up to the edge of the boat. It was early spring, but the meltwater still carried the breath of winter. Cold enough to numb skin in minutes. Cold enough to make him wish he couldn't feel at all.
And yet… everything was too loud.
And too quiet.
A high-pitched, deafening tone rang in his ears—constant and piercing, like a warning siren that never shut off. The only other sounds were distorted and distant. A murmur. A rumble. Muffled voices, but nothing concrete. Like he was underwater, or like the world was happening in a room next door.
He blinked slowly. He hadn't realized his eyes were stinging. Tears? River water? Blood?
Was it even his?
His throat felt raw, but he didn't remember screaming. His arms ached, but he didn't remember lifting them. Everything felt wrong, not just because this was her body—because he had done something he couldn't take back.
Her body.
He had done it.
He couldn't even remember the exact moment. It was a blur of heat and desperation, the weight of the kogatana in his fingers, the crack of sandals against wet wood, and then—
The fisher's breath.
His eyes.
That sound.
Sora shuddered.
He didn't mean to. He didn't mean for anything to happen. He just—
His legs buckled slightly. He steadied himself against the edge of the boat.
He couldn't look behind him. Couldn't turn his head to see the others.
Akiko's long, brown hair stuck to his—her—face. Slick and clinging. Cold as the wind that whipped along the riverbank. Her robes were soaked, dragging down his movements, heavy and stiff with damp fabric and the thick smell of iron. The blood was warm earlier. It wasn't now. Now it was just… sticky. Cold. It didn't belong to him. None of it did.
But it was on his skin.
Yasuhiro stepped up behind him quietly. He said something—Sora couldn't make it out. Maybe his name. Maybe Akiko's. Maybe just a sound.
Then the weight of cloth fell across his back. A robe, one of Akiko's noble garments—rich silk dulled by mud, threadbare where it had once been delicate. The smell of charcoal and sweat clung to it. Yasuhiro had probably taken it from the bundle they kept with them from the back of the boat, on top of one of the boxes. It didn't make Sora warmer. Just heavier.
Something slipped from the folds as it settled on his shoulders.
A small, crinkled square of parchment.
A note.
It fluttered downward like a falling leaf, light as a breath. It touched the surface of the water and the ink bled instantly, words becoming tendrils, curling into pale blue nothing. The river took it before Sora could blink. Dragged it away like it meant nothing.
He watched it drift.
It was gone.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His tongue felt thick. Swollen. Like he had bitten it without noticing.
The kogatana—it had pierced straight into the man's chest. He remembered now.
There was resistance. And then there wasn't.
The fisher had gasped.
The air had left him in a stuttered, horrible noise.
Not a scream. Not a cry. Just… air. Escaping.
His arms had flailed—grabbing at nothing—at Sora—then at the blade, then back at the air again.
Then blood. So much blood.
The man had collapsed into him, into Akiko's body, the weight sending both of them crashing to the deck. The boat rocked violently beneath them. Water surged up over the sides. Cold and fast. It mixed with the blood, swirling around them in blooming clouds of diluted crimson. It wasn't even that much—not really—but in the water, it looked like oceans.
The fisher had thrashed once more. Then he'd gone still.
His eyes.
That was what stayed with him.
The glassy, vacant look as the light faded out.
It didn't look like sleep. It looked like nothing.
Like the soul had unhooked itself and vanished into the fog.
Sora blinked again.
His hands were shaking.
Were they always shaking?
He looked down. They didn't feel like hands. Not his.
They were hers—but now they were his, and they were soaked in red.
Under his nails. In the creases of her palms. On the hem of her sleeve.
He stared at them.
And stared.
And stared.
The boat slammed against the riverbank with a heavy crunch, scraping and groaning as it dragged across stones hidden just beneath the surface. Wood scraped rock. Water slapped against the sides. Sora didn't flinch.
He saw it all. He felt it all.
But he couldn't move.
The sky above was just bright blue— but it gave no warmth. No comfort. Somewhere, birds chirped. Far away. Too far away. He wasn't even sure they were real.
Then—arms.
Strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him upright in one smooth motion. His legs didn't respond. His arms dangled. It felt like his body was a puppet someone had dropped and Tsukasa had simply gathered up the strings.
He didn't struggle. Couldn't.
The motion made his head loll forward limply over Tsukasa's shoulder. Sora's vision swam for a moment, focusing in and out like an old camera lens trying to find clarity.
Water.
More water.
Rocks.
The earth shifting below as Tsukasa walked.
He could feel Tsukasa's muscles tense and release with every step. The man was carrying him like it was nothing—like Sora was just another sack of rice to throw over his shoulder. Probably is for someone like him, Sora thought, somewhere in the background of his mind. Detached. Hollow.
His body bounced lightly with each step. It made his stomach twist again, but still, he couldn't vomit. Couldn't even lift a hand to shield his eyes from the sun breaking faintly through the trees.
Behind them, Sora heard the dull splash and scrape of Yasuhiro retrieving something heavy from the boat—boxes? Wood? Supplies? It didn't matter. He couldn't care. His mind took note of the movement like a reporter documenting someone else's life. His eyes barely blinked.
Tsukasa stepped through the river mud, boots squelching, and pushed past the curtain of pine and cedar branches. The forest swallowed them quickly. It was cooler here. Quieter. The world smelled like pine resin and wet bark.
Then Sora was lowered—gently, so gently—down against the base of a tree. His back hit the bark, rough but stable, and his legs were folded in front of him like a broken mannequin. He leaned slightly to the side, unable to keep himself upright. His head lolled.
One of the bags was set beside him. Then another. Then a third.
Tsukasa moved with mechanical focus, like he'd done this before. Maybe he had. Sora didn't ask. Couldn't.
Yasuhiro appeared next, his arms full—boxes, the ones that had been hidden at the bottom of the boat. The arrow boxes. Black wood, sealed with rope. Old, but well kept. One being slightly open, showing the arrows that belonged to the Fujiwara.
Sora stared at them. Not at them, really—through them.
Everything came into focus and fell apart at the same time.
If I'd seen them one second later…
He swallowed, but his throat was dry.
If I'd seen them one second later, Tsukasa would have been dead.
The realization barely landed. It just echoed. A hollow, empty bell ringing in some far-off tower.
Behind him, the sounds of grunting and dragging picked up. The boat was being pulled up the bank, past the rocks, and into the trees—hidden from the river. Tsukasa and Yasuhiro working in tandem. Sora could hear their feet digging into the dirt, the groan of wet wood being wrestled over roots and moss.
But he couldn't turn his head to watch.
His body still refused to move. His arms rested limp in his lap. The blood was still there. Wet, mixed with the cold river water, his hands starting to turn blue. Cracked along the lines of his knuckles. Trapped under fingernails. On the hem of Akiko's robe.
He had killed someone.
He had killed someone.
A man had died—because of him—his lungs torn open, gasping like a fish on land. His eyes going still. His hands falling limp.
Sora felt his chest clench. A new wave of nausea surged through him—but again, nothing came.
His body didn't even have the energy to vomit anymore.
He was just a kid from Tokyo.
Just a seventeen-year-old kid who spent more time watching anime and browsing Reddit than going outside. Someone who took trains to school, who skipped gym class when he could get away with it. Who knew violence from history books and samurai films, not real life.
He'd never even punched anyone before. Never seen a dead body.
Now he had killed a man and held him as he died.
The silence of the forest pressed in.
His breath hitched. A soft, shaking sob clawed its way up his throat—but he swallowed it back down like glass shards. He didn't want to cry. Not in front of them.
He stared forward. Past the bags. Past the trees. Past everything.
And waited for something—anything—to feel real again.
Black spots bloomed at the edges of his vision.
They spread like ink in water—slow at first, then suddenly swallowing everything.
His body felt distant. He couldn't tell where his hands were anymore. His legs were shaking, though he wasn't sure if they were cold or just remembering something.
A hallway.
Too white. Too quiet.
A voice saying his name, gently. Too gently.
That same emptiness clawed at his chest now, the one that had left him sitting in silence for hours back then. A weight that hadn't left. Just dulled over time.
Not now, he begged something—himself, the world, he didn't know. Please, not now.
His knees gave out first.
And then his thoughts.
Somewhere, not far off, a voice called out. Sharp. Familiar. Maybe Yasuhiro. He didn't catch the words—just the tone, clipped and urgent, cutting through trees.
Don't yell at her…
The thought came from nowhere, slow and drifting. She didn't mean to…
Kadunk.
His shoulder slammed into the earth. The pine tree that had propped him up scraped across his back as he slid away from it like a marionette with cut strings. His body tipped sideways, robes bunching under him as his face hit the forest floor. Damp needles and dirt clung to his skin.
The bags Tsukasa had stacked beside him toppled. One burst open—a scattering of dried rice skittering across the ground like seeds in the wind.
He didn't see it.
Didn't feel the bruises forming.
Didn't notice how cold it was anymore.
The forest went on breathing around him, wind weaving softly through the pine branches.
And Sora—Sora slipped out of the world with it, falling into the quiet, weightless dark.
Ripples flowed through the water, perfect circles spreading into eternity, only to be broken again by movement—his movement?
Sora stared at his hands.
Calloused. Narrow. Fingers that had drawn charcoal maps. Not his. Not Sora's.
But then the sleeves slid back, and he saw his own arm—bare, modern, unmistakable.
He blinked, and the cloth returned. Blue-gray robes clinging wetly to skin he didn't recognize anymore.
Am I Akiko? Or am I Sora?
He tried to speak, but his voice cracked somewhere between registers. The syllables didn't feel like his own. Or hers. Just breath echoing against something hollow. The world—if you could call it that—was ankle-deep water and nothing else. A great void stretching out above and below. And yet he could see, somehow. See too much.
He looked down and gasped. His reflection stared back. But it wasn't just him.
It shifted.
One blink: Sora, in high school uniform soaked in river water.
Another: Akiko, her long hair plastered to her cheeks, expression unreadable, skin pale in moonlight.
Then both. Then neither. Then faces melting into each other, fragmenting like glass submerged too long in water.
"I'm…" he whispered. But the name—his name—caught in his throat like blood.
Which name?
He stepped forward, and the water trembled beneath his feet in slow, exaggerated ripples. The steps felt wrong. Off. He could hear the wooden soles of geta echoing on the hull of a fishing boat, feel the cold splash up against his calves—but he was barefoot here. And yet the cold stayed. Lived in him.
With every breath, he remembered the weight of the knife—her knife—slipping into the folds of the robe, nestling against his waist.
No—not his. Hers.
No… his.
He remembered the moment. The contact. The way his hand moved—his?—without thought.
The resistance.
The sound.
The warmth.
The man's face.
The blood in the water.
So much blood.
And yet here, the water was clear again. So calm it could be glass.
Sora knelt, watching the surface warp as he moved. The reflection stayed still. Watching him back.
"I didn't want to—"
But the reflection was gone.
Now Akiko knelt before him. Her robes like ink, her face unreadable. And in a blink, she was gone, and he knelt across from himself. Pale. Hollow-eyed.
No accusation.
No forgiveness.
Just presence.
Was this me? Before?
Or is this who I am now?
He touched the water—and felt nothing.
No cold. No warmth. No boundary. Like his hand had passed through his own mind.
He closed his eyes, but the images didn't stop. The boat. The fisherman gasping, arms flailing like a broken puppet. Blood curling in the freezing river. The moment the blade pushed through flesh—and how it didn't feel like he thought it would. It wasn't dramatic. It was… quiet.
Soft.
That was the worst part.
And the sound the man made—trying to breathe. Not quite a scream. Not quite a gurgle. Just something stuck between life and death.
Sora pressed his hands against his ears but heard it anyway. Not in sound, but in muscle memory. In the phantom weight of a life ended.
He curled forward, forehead against the water's surface—and it held him, didn't break, didn't ripple.
Who am I now?
No answer came. Just the slow shifting of the void around him. A breathless stillness. A world without time.
The air thickened. Or maybe his chest tightened. It was hard to tell.
And for a moment, just a single second, he could've sworn he felt someone else behind his eyes—someone watching through them, not with them.
Then it was gone.
He remained alone.
But not quite alone.
Not anymore.