Beep! Beep! Beep!
The sound of an alarm rouses me from slumber.
I jolt awake, clutching the wound on my chest- which isn't there.
I blink once, twice, trying to understand - and then the dream is gone, like always. I don't really remember going to bed, but this is my room. I must have been sleeping.
There was something else, but it's already slipped away, just like the memories of yesterday. Just like the memories of tomorrow. There is only today; an eternal, reoccurring 'now'.
Slowly I get my bearings, remembering… right, today is a school day. As much as I want to skip, I'm scared I'll become someone dangerously useless if I give up my attendance record. So, putting on my uniform, I hurry downstairs - past where Papa is sipping his coffee, and I slip out the door before anyone can talk to me.
The walk to the train station is a familiar one, and soon enough I'm huddling to myself in a crowded train car.
The crowded train. It's like this every morning and every evening. Not so bad that I have to worry about getting truly pushed around, but bad enough that I won't find a seat. From here it's like this until Kichijoji, and that's where the real sardine can experience will begin.
(But somehow, this experience is more reassuring than… more reassuring than…)
I blink, and the crowd melts away into red squirming lines as the train slows down.
I made a mistake. Leaving Souya is forbidden. I forgot. But now it's too late. The world will restart.
Slowly, I feel myself sinking into nothing. This is the end of the world. This is death. This is a tengu with three faces.
And, as I fall towards him-
"Our next stop is Kisaragi Station. Kisaragi station."
-I stumble out onto the platform, against my own will.
Kisaragi station - a pretty famous urban legend. I've never looked that much into it myself, but supposedly the twist is that the word 'Oni' can also be read as 'Kisaragi'. In other words, I've stepped off in hell, or something like that.
It's a commonplace open air station, without distinguishing features apart from the obviously supernatural element. All around, through a thin layer of mist, I can see those same red squiggles - the boundary of this world, the places I'm forbidden to go. And waiting, at every one of these dead ends-
The three-faced Tengu - drops his sword on the ground. His body seizes up, as I stare at him from the other end of this deserted station, and then, with the sound of tearing flesh, he falls forwards, a large hole in his back. A muscular arm, gripping his still-beating heart, retreats into the mist, and I hear something crunching and slurping.
I take a step back, raising my fists, glancing at the swirling red abyss surrounding the platform. If I throw myself off, I'll go back to the start, right-?
A man steps forward from the fog - someone I've never seen before. Muscular, wearing a black martial artist's outfit, black footwraps, and gloves. His hair is black and messy, bangs coming down to cover his left eye, while the right stares at me with overwhelming intensity. Mechanically, as if it was nothing, he wipes a trickle of blood from his lips.
I don't understand. I don't understand any of what has been happening. If the tengu's dead, that's good, but-!
"This is a dream," the man says, and I blink. "It's a cheap trick, to prolong your life - so long as your mind and soul are entangled within that Dream Demon's ability, they can't pass away from your body - in other words, it's a niche use case that prevents brain death. But neither that familiar nor her master know her limits properly; this place is already crumbling at the seams. I suppose they were imitating something she did before, without paying attention to the differing circumstances - at this rate, the familiar will die soon."
"What… so I haven't been spirited away-?" I ask, still trying to understand. I don't get it at all! "No, in the first place, who-?"
"Death. This skin is the concept of death envisioned by a previous resident of this world," The man replies. "Much as that Tengu was to you - but as this skin was in disuse, I came to wear it. This skin, Kishima Kouma - a cousin of yours, I believe - like me, he is Red."
I understood exactly none of that.
"Stop talking in circles. Who are you?" I repeat, more irritated this time.
"My name is meaningless to you. For you, I am death. I have usurped the death that was obstructing you, and now I shall obstruct you in his place," He says, and I grimace, taking up my stance. "Your will shall vanish here, Arima Miyako, and I shall make your skin my own in the waking world."
I don't understand. I still don't understand, but-
He starts to move, and I erase my presence. The technique taught to me by Panda-sensei - instinctively I know that if there was ever a time to use it, it would be now. Strike, before he can reach me-
His hair burns red. Brilliant, blazing red. The feeling of nature's wrath, condensed into a single moment. A crimson haze wafts off his body. His fist burns, brilliant vermillion.
Crimson. Red. Vermillion.
A hand like a knife tears through my chest, and in an instant, I burn to ash.
(In the distance, I hear a cat meow.)
***
Act 3, Scene 5 (Part 3)
Meili Portroute. She's a girl I always had a tricky relationship with, someone who tried to kill me - or, well, did kill me - the first two times we crossed paths. The younger sister of sorts to the Bowel Hunter, Elsa, who served as my introduction to that other world. After the second incident, we captured her, but Emilia and I didn't really feel fond of killing a thirteen year old girl, so we kept her captive for a little while, before eventually making her an ally for our trip to the Pleiades watchtower.
'And after that, we were good friends!' - is what I'd like to say, but she actually went and killed me again a couple times even after that, because she thought I might get mad at her for reading Elsa's book in the watchtower. It was a trivial reason, but Meili's a girl in the habit of seeing murder as a solution to problems.
But, you see, I can forgive that. It was just me, after all. If we're going to start holding people accountable for killing Natsuki Subaru… well, even I'm on that list, so who really cares, right?
The unforgivable thing is, this girl-
"-I don't suppose we can talk this out?" I offer, wincing as my gaze repeatedly draws itself to the the imprint of my hands on her neck. "I know how it seemed, but… it wasn't exactly me who-"
"Onii-san, rea~lly, you're not even going to accept responsibility?~" The walking corpse asks, touching the mark on her neck lightly. "I mean, you strangled me to death, right? It was pretty plain and clear, though I am a bit curious why."
"I…" I look away. "At that time, Louis Arneb, the Archbishop of Gluttony, was puppeting my body, is how it turned out, so-"
"Liar!" She shouts. "Don't just make up convenient lies!"
"...That's right. Even if I resolved it, even if it 'wasn't me', the unforgivable fact is that these hands killed you," I admit.
But, in the end, this isn't really her. It's just a delusion, conjured up by this singularity. The world where Meili Portroute died was already reset. Even those memories, the contents of the book that I read, are-
"Onii-san, I've been here the whole time, you know?"
…Ah. This is the worst.
Beyond the walking corpse mounted on that monster, there's a ghost here to torment me, too. That's pretty scummy of whoever put this all together.
I glance, and see something that looks like the living Meili Portroute standing in the shadow of a nearby building, and time seems to slow down. This was the second unforgivable act I committed - when we found Meili's book of the dead in the watchtower, the one to read it, and gain all of her memories, was me.
I didn't remember them as my own. My mindset for it was… wrong, and so I began to hallucinate. A sort of mental construct of Meili Portroute followed me for the remainder of that life, mocking my despair.
After a reset, though, she was gone - I'm not sure if I sealed those memories away in my own trauma, if the reversal of time undid the book's effect, or if Satella stripped them from me for my own good - but after one loop, when Meili returned to life, her ghost ceased to haunt me.
"Well, you know what you have to do here, right?" she asks, and I grimace. "You're surrounded, and in the next few seconds that 'me' is going to kill you. But, you have a way out, ri~ght? It's not really that difficult."
I do. If a zombie Meili is the best the tower can throw at me, I can handle it. If I just need to compound my sins to save Miyako's life, I'll do it. I'll just solve things the way you would, right?
"Tha~at's right! You really can't afford to be killed here, there's someone waaa~y more gross you have to deal with ahead."
I could die, but that would be cowardice. I haven't lost anything yet. So long as I reach Romani before Miyako loses too much blood, it'll be fine. He put me back together after Fuyuki, after all. So I can't just abandon Miyako here… alright. Holding her tightly to my side with my left arm - reinforcement, don't let me down now- I pull a small handfull of gemstones from the pouch Iori-san gave me.
I charge, and jump. Ever since I got here, as I draw closer and closer to the watchtower, I've felt… better. Stronger, faster, than I've been on Earth. The swirl of rumors, influencing my physique, turning me into who I was in that setting.
But the parkour course won't be enough. The wagpig is deceptively fast. Already, his mouth is open, and inches away from biting me in half-
[Emergency Evade] dodges it, and next thing I know, I'm dashing across the beast's head.
Something approaching fear crosses the corpse's face, and she takes a step back. Too late. You messed up this time - though it's disgusting, though in some part of my heart I wish I was dying instead - I've got the advantage here, Meili.
"She's just a delusion, onii-san? The real me wouldn't be nearly this dumb in confronting you."
Yeah. Because, after all, in this world - Natsuki Subaru is Meili Portroute's conceptual weakness.
The winged moles are coming in now, but that's fine. My tendons cry out in protest as a second [Emergency Evade] closes the gap on the Wagpig's back, and then-
"[Minya]."
Meili Portroute - someone who was something like a friend, someone who I had a responsibility to - is decapitated by a purple crystal.
And choking back tears and bile, I trample over her body, and continue my sprint for the Pleiades Watchtower, adding one more sin to my record.