"Please don't do it, Raiyu chan.."
"Mizuki san... you shouldn't be here.."
Raiyu, the master of this bloody domain, looks away ashamed.
"please.. go back home.."
"you don't have to do this Raiyu chan, leave Daisuke kun out of this"
Raiyu looks away, trying her best to avoid eye contact.
But Mizuki's next sentence turn Raiyu's head back to her.
"I saw what the villagers did"
"You... saw..?"
"I saw what they did to your father, to your mother..."
Mizuki hesitated before finishing her sentence,
"and to you..."
The Chiikikou noticeably looks more alert after she said that.
"but hurting Daisuke kun won't bring them back to life Raiyu chan.."
Tears run down her cheeks, trying their best to not impede her speech.
"..nothing you do now will change what happened but.. but you can stop another cycle from happening!"
"You have the choice to be better, Raiyu chan!"
"This has nothing to do with you, Mizuki san!"
Raiyu fires off a warning Reihado.
Mizuki shields herself, covering her head with her defenseless arm. It wasn't even a match, she could never stand up to the Chiikikou.
Though despite her cold front, Raiyu peeks to see the direction of the Reihado she just launched.
"please... don't come any closer.."
However, after a hesitated second, Mizuki takes a step forward.
Raiyu's arm halted briefly, before taking a swing and launching a barrage of Reihado in Mizuki's general direction.
"I'm warning you, Mizuki san!"
But despite multiple feint, each time flying closer and closer to Mizuki, she remains steadfast in her pace.
"You're strong Raiyu chan... you've survived unimaginable pain... but"
"Nobody should ever have to go through such pain again! Don't you think?"
"STOP!!"
Raiyu unleashes a second torrent of Reihado. Way more than the first one, and way more intense. This time some of them even caught Mizuki's left shoulder and and calves. Noticing that, Raiyu turns away, hoping that helps to stop the girl. And for a while the bloodied battleground goes quiet.
'I don't mind being the demon child, to keep this place-'
Sounds of Mizuki's persistent footstep breaks the momentary silence, Raiyu glances at Mizuki and her thought immediately blanks. Pupils dilate, lips trembling.
"N-no... don't.."
Tears pools in the bottom of her eye socket.
"Please don't..." Raiyu begs.
"don't look at me.. with those eyes.."
Raiyu's voice cracks
"Why are you... looking at me with those gentle eyes?"
Fully expecting Mizuki to hate her, or even fear her, the normal response she's used to. But what she did not anticipate,
"It's been tough... hasn't it?"
was sympathy.
"you've been a- a tough girl, Raiyu chan.."
With uneven and hitched breath Mizuki tries to reach out to Raiyu. The frail girl suffering cuts and bruises from the earlier barrage, holds out her shaky hand to reach for Raiyu.
"you don't have to hurt other people anymore..
"Don't ... don't come any closer.."
Tears well up in her eyes, Raiyu's vision starts to blur.
"Why...? Why are you coming here..?"
This time the Chiikikou's hand is the one trembling. The kama fell off her grip as it loosens,
"I won't... go easy on you... Mizuki san-
Before the threatening executioner realizes it Mizuki is already within arm's reach. Wasting no second, Mizuki immediately jumps in, wrapping her arms around Raiyu.
"It's okay... it's okay... you don't have to do this alone anymore..
"That's-"
Daisuke about to charge in held back his step, stunned by that turn of events.
Though her steps are less precise than Daisuke's earlier, though her movements are telegraphed miles away before they reach, the great Chiikikou could not react to Mizuki's 'ambush'. Perhaps because, as her fingers hesitantly lands on Mizuki's back, she knows deep inside, this was what she had wanted all along. The mind resist but the heart could not.
With arms still awkwardly placed, and her chest still keeping distance, Raiyu reciprocates the embrace
soon after, the hug tightens.
That cautious eye finally shuts close. Her foolproof warrior's vigilance finally relaxes.
"you don't have to go through this pain anymore..
With eyes still glistening from tears, Mizuki pulls out an item from her sleeves.
Raiyu who has been holding in her breath to not let out her cries finally burst out with a gasp, not from
swelling of emotions, but from a prickling sensation close to her spine.
Mizuki had lodged in a dagger wrapped in scrolls in Raiyu's back. The same dagger Daisuke had given her back then.
"you can rest now, Raiyu chan"
Her legs give out, Raiyu fall to her knees as Mizuki still clings to her, in tears, in affection. The inscription on the daggers starts to crawl into Raiyu's body. They slither around her arm, her waist, even creeping up her face and buries themselves into her skin like a tattoo. As they do, cracks spread out, almost like her skin is made of glass.
Daisuke who had only been observing from the distant finally dashes into them. "Get away from her-"
Snatching Mizuki with one arm and jumping away from the destabilized Chiikikou, Daisuke forms a seal with his other hand and pulls Mizuki in closer. A spherical barrier of SP envelopes both of them while the twisted dimension warps and folds into itself as it began to collapse.
As the ceiling of the sky falls down, the sunlight from the real world pierces through the fabric of that made up reality. The ground shakes and roars as it sinks into itself, revealing the untainted soil from the cracks, a peek into the outside world.
Raiyu's eyes wide open in disbelief, but not for long, slowly she shuts it close. Her lips that was just distorted with pain, faintly traces a smile at the end. In peace.
Soon enough the entire Kyokan dissolves into a white canvas before disintegrating into nothing, revealing the mountains from which both of them were originally heading before this all happened.
After getting some considerable distance from the collapsing donation, Daisuke put Mizuki down and stands by her side without a word. She's collapsed on the ground, back into her human form but unable to stand up. The rattle of metal against rocks is audible as she holds the dagger tightly. The instrument of her sin.
Even without peeking he can hear her shaking.
"Are you oka-?"
"I'm fine"
Mizuki cuts him off. A faint crack in her voice tells him what he need to know.
"J-just give me a minute..."
Occasional sniveling and hiccup breaks the silence every now and then, but he utters not a word. Even his occasional sigh is restrained.
A few minutes later, she wipes her face with her sleeve, struggling to stand straight. Her legs wobble, her posture unstable. A pause later, still grounded, she turns to him with reddened glassy eyes.
"Can you take me home, Daisuke kun?"
A forced smile accompanies that request.
Seeing that, he can't help but breaks a bitter smile.
"Good grief, this girl.."
He mutters under his breath,
"as you wish, milady"
"What's up with that?"
She retorts, still trying to hide the crack in her voice.
Though feeling her quivering hands on his shoulder, he finally addresses it.
"I've told you before, didn't I?"
as he lifts her up, he somberly adds
"You don't have to hold yourself back in front of me"
And immediately in a muffled whimper, she pressed her face against his back. Teardrops glisten as they slides down her flushed cheeks. Her walls falter as soon as he points out the chink in her armor.
He walks forward steadily while the girl releases all that emotion on his back.
And the dust settles.
As they reach the neighborhood, the sight of students walking back home from school feels almost nostalgic. As she's calmed down now, Mizuki finally speaks,
"Wh-what time is it now..?"
"Oh you're finally awake?"
Daisuke lifts his head
"I didn't pass out this time!"
She retorts.
But he pays it no mind.
"
"Considering what time we left school back then and how long we were trapped, now should be about the time curricular activities ended,"
He flicks on her phone and shows her the time
"5:30 PM, same day"
He seems not too cheerful, not too gloomy, just as usual. But the information he presented couldn't be further from the mundane. What felt like an entire week inside the twisted domain, in real time was in fact merely,
"3 hours?"
Mizuki tries to confirms,
"yeah around that range"
Casually he replies.
"But how? We've been there for several days!"
Mizuki questions,
"No wait.. the last time we entered that Ghost Realm was also like that"
As she tries to recall that memory and rationalize what's going on he only stands. there smiling in silence.
"P-put me down already!"
The girl thrash around in mild frustration.
"What's going on here, Daisuke kun?"
"Well as you might've realized-"
He puts up his finger
"time flows differently in the Ghost Realm"
"Is that what that dimension was? But it didn't felt like that last time"
"That hunch is correct, because it is kinda not!"
He points to her face.
"Stop beating around the bush and tell me properly!"
Frustrated, she starts strangling him and shaking him back and forth.
"well well it's a little more complicated than that, to be more precise-"
He grins,
"It's a Kyokan"
"What..? what do you mean"
"Though not exactly like the one we've been using, I suspect she'd tampered with it"
But he then corrects himself,
"No, maybe she even come up with her own original design based on it"
"Come to think of it, when I first wake up inside the space-"
Mizuki pinches her chin recalling that experience,
"There were lots of ghosts passing by before I actually reach the town.."
"Ghosts?"
He shoots an inquisitive look
"You mean those faceless people?"
"Ahh no no, I mean actual ghosts. Like when we first entered the Ghost Realm."
Mizuki corrects him,
"Only after that did I meet the faceless thingy..."
"I see.."
He pulls on his nonexistent beard,
"An Evil Eye that sends people back in time, and a Kyokan that leaks some Ghost Realm inside, huh?"
"Not to mention-"
He holds his thought when he notice Mizuki's gloomy face.
"Hmm? What's wrong?"
She hesitated for a split second, but then starts talking
"Actually Daisuke kun.. there is something else I saw there..."