White
That was the best way to describe what I was seeing.
It was like I was put into a white canvas, no other colors, no observable details. Nothing except the color white was around me.
"Looks like you also are here huh" Suddenly a voice sounded from behind me, it was familiar, no way I would forget that guy's voice.
I turned around and saw him, Kuroda. He wasn't in his rubik's like body, he was in the human form I once saw him in.
"Woah, no reason to be so mad, we are both dead we should be bonding over a hard fought battle."
"Hard fought? binding vow merchant" I muttered under my breath. Since I'm dead I might as well say what I want to say.
"Binding vow merchant? What does that mean?" Kuroda asked, well to a normal person someone as lobotomized as me must sound crazy.
"It means you are reliant on binding vows? Otherwise you would have lost against me" I explained
"Oh really, and how did you survive my final attack? That must have been a binding vow right?"
"Actually, what even was your cursed technique, at first I thought it was the ability to cancel out other people's technique. Then you copied my ability to rotate and teleport, so I assumed you had some type of mix between copying and cancelling" Kuroda asked, he doesn't seem nearly as bitter as he was in the beginning of the fight.
Is it because of the black flash of enlightenment?
Or is it because he is no longer a vengeful cursed spirit?
"My cursed technique is Chirality, specifically Chiral Manipulation." I decided to respond, if we really are dead, there is no reason to hide it.
"… was that supposed to help me understand? Explain it in human terms."
"... Chiral Manipulation works by creating mirrored versions of phenomena/objects with cursed energy. The mirrored copies I create cancel out the original phenomena when they interact"
"So thats how you survived my maximum technique huh, you mirrored it and negated the attack, then did the attack again to kill me"
"No … if I tried to mirror your maximum technique, it would have started at the first phase of compression. It wouldn't have managed to reach the second stage(shockwave) and negate your shockwaves before they killed me."
"So then how did you survive?"
"Well I said that I could mirror phenomena and objects related to cursed energy. As of recently I had been thinking, why can I not mirror myself."
"It seems that there's something stopping me from just creating a mirrored version/copy of myself, so as of recently I began thinking about how my cursed technique works as a whole"
"In my innate domain there was a figure made of shadows, a version of myself I came to believe was my mirrored self. When I landed my black flash I came to understand that trying to just create a copy of myself wouldn't work with my cursed technique. But there was a way to apply my technique on myself"
"Instead of creating a copy of myself, I would allow my mirrored version into existence, but since both of us couldn't exist at once I would enter that chiral plane and he would come out, essential swapping place"
"This mirrored version was essentially me, but it wasn't me. It didn't actually exist on this plane, thus was invisible to most people, but more importantly intangible."
"Once I swapped versions with that version of myself, it survived your maximum technique due to its intangibility, then I swapped back after your maximum technique was finished and used a copy of your maximum to kill you. It seems that with all my injuries, that final attack killed me too."
"Well that was quite the ramble, and when you say black flash, I am assuming you mean the black spark of cursed energy that flashed during some of our attacks." Kuroda responded, did he actually not know?
"Do you not even know what a black flash is? Anyway I'm done talking to you, I just want to wait and enter the cycle of reincarnation in silence"
"Aren't you interested in my technique?"
"Not really, you pretty much said everything there was about it already" I'll admit I am a little interested, but if I give him the slightest acknowledgement he won't shut up.
"My cursed technique…" Ignoring my response he started to go on a tangent about rubik's cubes and the math behind them, how to optimally solve them, etc.
"Didn't I say I'm not interested"
"Yeah and that's why I started explaining it"
This guy is really annoying. Why can't he just be quiet?
"Hey kid, speaking of which I never caught your name what is it"
"None of your business"
"Come on, we are both dead. I should at least know the name of the guy who killed me. Tell you what, tell me your name and I'll tell you my name"
"You already told me your name remember, the first time we met, you proclaimed it before declaring you would kill me" I responded "Also unlike you I'm not interested in being friendly with the guy who killed me, my chance at life is over because of you"
"... I do apologize for that, still I don't regret trying to kill all of the Kamo. You people took what was precious from me, so I would take what was precious to you, your lives."
"It all began—"
"Yeah I don't really care"
"... Hey kid your way to antisocial, how will you ever make any friends like that"
"If you understand that I'm antisocial and don't like talking to you, why are you still bothering to talk to me"
"Because it clearly ticks you off"
Before I could respond to his snarky remark my body suddenly started to fade, and the white surrounding began to blur
Suddenly I was gone from the afterlife
"... so was he dead or not? Maybe he was near death, but then how did he get brought back?"
Kuroda stood alone in the endless white.
"… guess I'm the one who lost then"
He let out a quiet breath, the tension he carried for so long finally fading.
The hatred that defined him, the vengeance that sustained him, no longer had anything to cling to.
"… maybe this is fine. I might be able to see 'her' again in a new life"
Without resistance, his body began to dissolve into the white surroundings.
This time, instead of clinging onto his life as a vengeful spirit, Kuroda truly moved on into the cycle of life.
Author Note: I really wanted to just get this chapter out then take my small break. Now that the cube is done, I can move on (get it, because that's the title of the chapter) with the plot.
I'm gonna take like 2 weeks off to catch up with classes.
Sorry for taking a 2-day break just to start a bigger break.
(When I say break, I mean like 2 chapters a week Mon/Fri for the next 2 weeks.)