Deconstructing Gender in X/1999, or at least S/S.
.
Title: Stated
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon, X/1999
Wordcount: 3000
Rating: R. Still with the Yuri.
This is the continuation of Silent.
-
Stated
x/1999
Mithrigil Galtirglin
still Lucent and Puel’s fault
On her eighteenth birthday, Subaru woke up with plaits. When she’d gone to bed the night before, her hair-still not long enough, thin, with ends just beginning to split-had been loose.
So it turned out that Seishibana hadn’t outgrown her after all.
-
Subaru’s one fundamental, devouring wish is rooted in the past, in a proportionate combination of things which never were and things which shouldn’t be but are. That wish has changed; it’s one of the many things about her that has, since 1991. The changes were sudden at first, then tapered off in frequency to a kind of acceptant gradualness.
In those years Subaru’s height and build had settled into an unpleasant frailty, too brittle to be lithe and too short to be compared with any kind of absolving tree. She wondered what Seishibana thought of it-not what she would think, oh no, even if she obviously didn’t feel anything she had to think something, and Subaru knew she knew.
When she burned all the dresses that Hokuto had made her, and most of the ones he “hadn’t but could have”, she didn’t have a state to revert to. She knew what other girls wore; she didn’t want to be like other girls. Other girls were dolls, even when they weren’t. Most were the kind who accepted that about themselves, clothed themselves in concealer and consent, claimed that dressing up was fun and advantageous. The girls who weren’t like that still defined themselves by going against it, defiantly dressing themselves in this-is-what-I’m-not. There was no way to just ignore the definition altogether.
Were men dolls too?
There was no way to be free of expectations, just like there was no way to be free of Seishibana. So when Subaru woke up that morning-19 February, 1992-with her hair in even black braids that she hadn’t done herself, she took it to mean just that. Seishibana wasn’t just out there, she was watching Subaru; Tokyo wasn’t just out there, it was in here. Subaru couldn’t erase either.
The plaits weren’t tight, and the bands that held them closed were plain black. Subaru undid them, showered, and brushed her hair for an hour solid.
-
The Dragons of Heaven approached her when she was working-two of them, the foundling boy of Ise and Kouyasan’s Bhikkhuni. They told Subaru that time was short, that if the Sakurazukamori was a Dragon of Earth, then surely the Sumeragi must be for humanity.
Subaru declined to say that she wasn’t “for humanity” at all.
Her work continued; it had been a haunting, concentrated sakanagi resulting from the forbidden preservation of a lover’s ghost. The father had called Subaru, had explained what his son had done to preserve his fiancée, their happiness. Since then, the young man had lived in a blissful dream with the apparition of his beloved, and the waking world crumbled and lashed out at all who would separate them. The spell inflicted visions on Subaru, faces around corners, vacant-eyed dolls, the corpse of her brother rattling in Seishibana’s arms, the beads of the shikifuku forty-one vacant eyes spattered with blood.
The visions persisted even after the spirit had been dispelled. Subaru assured the grieving young man that he would never stop being haunted by his lover.
-
Shirou Kamui looked nothing like a magical girl. She was tiny, yes, a hundred and forty centimeters tall at most-but tiny and hard like a scorpion. The hospital gown plastered to her like armor, the bandages like scales. Even with her unconscious Subaru could feel the violence in her, the layers of power shredded over and around her and packed brittle and tight against her skin. Within, she’d be the same.
But despite the protests around her-the other Seals, Imonoyama-Subaru sat on the bed beside this minsicule creature and began to chant. And when it became clear that laying on her hands would be insufficient, Subaru bowed her head over Kamui’s and blacked out the sun with the curtain of her hair.
Within Kamui, it was that same black-the black of the iron-shrouded sky the night before. The black of the acid blood pouring out of the boy on the cross, around the shinken thrust through him. The black of the sweat-soaked shadow caked over Kamui’s eyes and the young woman who cast it-also small, and also hard, but more like bone than chiton. The young woman-Fuuka, some part of Subaru’s memory supplied-jabbed glass into Kamui’s hands, pinned her to a cliff with that and with her body-Subaru shivered at the sight of their matched school uniforms, plastered together with red, mixing with the blue and turning, yes, black.
And then there was Kamui-the consciousness and the child, even smaller, watching this display over and over through helpless white tears.
Subaru pleaded with her, to let her near-Kamui’s tears turned to shrapnel and tore at Subaru’s skin. That was something different at last, Subaru remembers thinking-when she herself had gone Within, she had not wanted to stay, she’d put up no defenses other than the passive desolation. Kamui held her ground, cried and shrieked and begged to be allowed to wither and die, here, in her own mind.
In hindsight, Subaru probably should have let her.
She did not; she revealed her own truths, superimposed her memories over Kamui’s, watched one set of dolls replace the others in the puppet-theater. Yatori became Hokuto, Fuuka became Seishibana (did the ka in Fuuka mean what Subaru thought it meant?) and the shinken, the fatherborne-sword, became a bare flat-nailed hand.
Whether it was because of shock or empathy, it worked.
Subaru slept for two days solid, reliving it, replaying it, realizing that on some level she had a doll of her own now. She woke up in a sticking cold sweat, with her hair in dozens of long, tight braids. When she undid them the kinks still showed; when she brushed those out, they became brittle waves.
And at Yatori’s funeral, Kamui wore pants and Imonoyama’s cream-colored overcoat.
-
“It’s incongruous,” Seishibana said. “The fact that you smoke is amusing. But when you actually do, you’re so much less cute.” All in black, in daylight, in person her lips seemed redder. “You were a moment ago, weren’t you, Subaru-chan. I can smell it.”
Subaru is shocked into silence, into letting the lighter fall from her hand.
“And pants,” Seishibana sighed, trailing her cigarette-fingers down Subaru’s side to the front of her leg. “Pants, dear. The line suits you, but the color not at all.” She pursed her lips; her thumb slid into Subaru’s belt-loop and all Subaru could think-all she remembers thinking, looking back-was that she should say something, anything.
She didn’t.
Seishibana’s other hand slid low, pulled the loose jeans higher on Subaru’s waist and-and laid her palm flat against Subaru’s crotch, tapping with two fingers. “A doll, truly. Are you anatomically correct, Subaru-chan?”
The belt-loop ripped clean off when Subaru tore herself away.
They fought-ofuda flew and tore the sky into patterns of birds, Subaru’s doves-turned-raptors splattering into blood against Seishibana’s fire-carved shield. Her sunglasses glowed-her coat flared like a banner-she chanted, and smiled, and Subaru wanted to tear it off her face just to make sure there was something underneath.
But she didn’t want it enough, apparently.
She did burn those jeans, though. More because of the blood than anything else, or so she told herself.
-
Fuuka had a voice like white chocolate and a face like Seishibana’s.
That’s what Subaru remembers. The rest of the encounter was a blur, an explosion-she didn’t know what she was fighting, then, and doesn’t now. She doesn’t remember what spells she cast, what devastation was wrought, what her kekkai did and didn’t salvage. She doesn’t even remember the extent of her injuries, save the one she wished for.
Fuuka was shorter than Subaru but broader, stronger, able to hold Subaru up by the knotted collars of her sweater and coat. The voice was wrong but the visage-it hurt, everything hurt, and that’s all Subaru remembers.
The hand that stabbed out Subaru’s eye had rhinestone-tipped fingernails, painted blue and green. There had been something incorrect about that.
-
Kamui said nothing, just held Subaru’s hand in both of hers, tightening as Subaru woke. Her eyes, though, spoke for her.
Subaru remembers embracing her, assuring her, telling her not to blame herself, that she got exactly what she wished for, exactly what she deserved. Not all of it, but part of it, enough to say what she meant. She went back to sleep when Kamui left her at last-no errands to the chocolate shop, no requests but some peace-and slept, again, reliving that moment how she’d wished it to be.
But when she woke, her hair was still undone.
-
It was an indulgence, but one night Subaru asked her, or the dream of her; tell me something about who you are. Please.
“I killed my father,” Seishibana had answered. The words themselves trickled down Subaru’s bare skin along the same lines of touch from minutes earlier.
That isn’t who you are, Subaru thought then, that’s what you’ve done.
But if that had been all the explanation Seishibana gave, Subaru would have let it slide. It was not. Seishibana hoisted herself up over Subaru’s body, their legs entangled-Subaru remembers Seishibana rolling her neck so that all her hair was over the same shoulder, held in place with sweat-baring her blind eye.
“He was Sakurazukamori before me,” she said, and the burns on Subaru’s hands swelled in acknowledgement. “He made me. The student infallibly surpasses the teacher, and when I did, I killed him.” Her fingers were cold, trailing down between Subaru’s breasts, slow walking strokes that suggested her flat nails without applying them, that insinuated the same solid chill of her teeth. “Almost same way I killed Hokuto-kun, if that means anything at all to you.”
Subaru didn’t ask what the difference was.
Seishibana answered anyway. “They both asked for it, they both knew it was time and how it would be done-but Hokuto-kun didn’t seem to want a kiss before he died. Father did. Such a demanding man,” she almost seemed to-to sigh, “even in death. I suppose it was pleasant, for him to be so consistent. Right up until the end, he went on about loving me.”
Shivering, Subaru asked-
“Of course I didn’t,” Seishibana answered. “But he was very beautiful. Not cute like you, Subaru-chan-but beautiful nonetheless.”
-
And now 1999 is almost over, and the world is ending, and Subaru really doesn’t care. She’s standing on the wrong side of the north pedestrian walkway on Rainbow Bridge, trying futilely to light a cigarette and cursing herself for forgetting, physics, air pressure is lower over water so it creates wind. And cursing herself for wearing a skirt, for the first time since 1991. And cursing herself for her hair being loose and her coat being loose and her bandages being loose, for the sounds they make, for having to hold them up out of the way of the fire while at the same time trying to keep the fire alive.
She’s cursing herself for being in her own way.
Finally, she gets the thing lit, drowns her memories in the first steady inhalation, and stares out over the bay. She’s sick of reliving-sick of living with any prefix, really, any clause, any elaboration.
A hand folds itself over hers-two more fingers tighten around her cigarette-the scars there burn and open and bleed. Subaru turns around to look, on her one side that still sees at all, the only person it could be. Subaru’s hair is tangling with hers, with the smoke that crosses both their faces. The ashes are going to fall on Seishibana’s hand. Subaru tells her so.
“You’re still so kind as to care about such things?” she muses, making a kissing-gesture with her jaw. “So very cute.”
I have changed, Subaru doesn’t say, and then corrects, to herself: I have been changed. By you.
Blood drips off Seishibana’s left hand-her wrong hand-trailing up Subaru’s thigh, leaving a thick tight seam in her stockings and a red-on-black print on her skirt. She hums approvingly and takes the cigarette out of Subaru’s hand, wrist nuzzling the cuff of her jacket. Had she killed someone here? Some other ritual?
It doesn’t matter.
Chanting, Subaru raises her kekkai-to protect this place, she thinks, to protect them both within it-and puts herself on display.
It’s different now, somehow, fighting-easier, freer. It’s as if the loss of sight has unleashed another kind of clarity-as if something has opened. Of course Seishibana is impervious to anything Subaru lets fly but nothing’s touching Subaru either, not a shiki and not a shard. And that’s not-not because Seishibana’s aim is in any way off, but because Subaru is moving, flying, not wasting a second or a scrap of paper. The damp ozone of the kekkai burns around her, sends her coat and skirt whipping every which way and plastering to her skin-shrapnel falls-Seishibana stands straight and implacable as the concrete beneath Subaru snaps and shatters, shuddering as it begins to fall.
It’s hard to tell how far away she is-and it still doesn’t matter.
Vines, lashing probing vines-they wrap around Subaru’s arms, waist, thighs-flowers bloom suddenly (bloodless white), press against her skin.
Enough, Subaru decides, and bites her lower lip, drawing blood.
As the vines dissipate and let her slip, she paints the blood around her mouth with her tongue. And once that’s done, she tells Seishibana precisely what she thinks of those illusions. The bandages are coming undone, the wind’s even stronger than before, but Subaru lets that happen, lets the trail fly into Seishibana’s grasp. She touches it, kisses it, leers at Subaru over the rims of her glasses with so much implication-
“Kamui of Earth-Fuuka,” she corrects, and the difference between their voices rings in Subaru’s ears, “told me that only I can grant your most precious wish.” She takes off her glasses, bares her eye-smiles as if she knows that Subaru will be forced to do the same but that it’s not a reflection, it’s a transposition. “But she said that you’re wishing for something that’s not what I think it is. Come now, Subaru-chan-don’t you just want to kill me?”
No.
There is a distance to close between them, but neither can perceive it.
-
Subaru will remember this; she can’t not. Will remember how her fingers shivered, rubbing Seishibana’s blood between them until it was a part of her. Will remember her stockings tearing on the jagged concrete, the sound that makes, how much softer the sounds of Seishibana’s coat and skirt are, even on the same ground. Will remember the weight, how even their hair seemed straighter, heavier, longer. The words, the exchange-the price Hokuto paid, so that this would never happen-that it happened because of things that Subaru never said.
“I thought you wanted a doll who would play with you back,” Subaru whimpers, ragged, tears violating the corners of her mouth.
Seishibana laughs, rattling, dying. Her answer, “You did,” pours out of her lips with her blood. And then she says the rest.
---
-
.
Title: Stated
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon, X/1999
Wordcount: 3000
Rating: R. Still with the Yuri.
This is the continuation of Silent.
-
Stated
x/1999
Mithrigil Galtirglin
still Lucent and Puel’s fault
On her eighteenth birthday, Subaru woke up with plaits. When she’d gone to bed the night before, her hair-still not long enough, thin, with ends just beginning to split-had been loose.
So it turned out that Seishibana hadn’t outgrown her after all.
-
Subaru’s one fundamental, devouring wish is rooted in the past, in a proportionate combination of things which never were and things which shouldn’t be but are. That wish has changed; it’s one of the many things about her that has, since 1991. The changes were sudden at first, then tapered off in frequency to a kind of acceptant gradualness.
In those years Subaru’s height and build had settled into an unpleasant frailty, too brittle to be lithe and too short to be compared with any kind of absolving tree. She wondered what Seishibana thought of it-not what she would think, oh no, even if she obviously didn’t feel anything she had to think something, and Subaru knew she knew.
When she burned all the dresses that Hokuto had made her, and most of the ones he “hadn’t but could have”, she didn’t have a state to revert to. She knew what other girls wore; she didn’t want to be like other girls. Other girls were dolls, even when they weren’t. Most were the kind who accepted that about themselves, clothed themselves in concealer and consent, claimed that dressing up was fun and advantageous. The girls who weren’t like that still defined themselves by going against it, defiantly dressing themselves in this-is-what-I’m-not. There was no way to just ignore the definition altogether.
Were men dolls too?
There was no way to be free of expectations, just like there was no way to be free of Seishibana. So when Subaru woke up that morning-19 February, 1992-with her hair in even black braids that she hadn’t done herself, she took it to mean just that. Seishibana wasn’t just out there, she was watching Subaru; Tokyo wasn’t just out there, it was in here. Subaru couldn’t erase either.
The plaits weren’t tight, and the bands that held them closed were plain black. Subaru undid them, showered, and brushed her hair for an hour solid.
-
The Dragons of Heaven approached her when she was working-two of them, the foundling boy of Ise and Kouyasan’s Bhikkhuni. They told Subaru that time was short, that if the Sakurazukamori was a Dragon of Earth, then surely the Sumeragi must be for humanity.
Subaru declined to say that she wasn’t “for humanity” at all.
Her work continued; it had been a haunting, concentrated sakanagi resulting from the forbidden preservation of a lover’s ghost. The father had called Subaru, had explained what his son had done to preserve his fiancée, their happiness. Since then, the young man had lived in a blissful dream with the apparition of his beloved, and the waking world crumbled and lashed out at all who would separate them. The spell inflicted visions on Subaru, faces around corners, vacant-eyed dolls, the corpse of her brother rattling in Seishibana’s arms, the beads of the shikifuku forty-one vacant eyes spattered with blood.
The visions persisted even after the spirit had been dispelled. Subaru assured the grieving young man that he would never stop being haunted by his lover.
-
Shirou Kamui looked nothing like a magical girl. She was tiny, yes, a hundred and forty centimeters tall at most-but tiny and hard like a scorpion. The hospital gown plastered to her like armor, the bandages like scales. Even with her unconscious Subaru could feel the violence in her, the layers of power shredded over and around her and packed brittle and tight against her skin. Within, she’d be the same.
But despite the protests around her-the other Seals, Imonoyama-Subaru sat on the bed beside this minsicule creature and began to chant. And when it became clear that laying on her hands would be insufficient, Subaru bowed her head over Kamui’s and blacked out the sun with the curtain of her hair.
Within Kamui, it was that same black-the black of the iron-shrouded sky the night before. The black of the acid blood pouring out of the boy on the cross, around the shinken thrust through him. The black of the sweat-soaked shadow caked over Kamui’s eyes and the young woman who cast it-also small, and also hard, but more like bone than chiton. The young woman-Fuuka, some part of Subaru’s memory supplied-jabbed glass into Kamui’s hands, pinned her to a cliff with that and with her body-Subaru shivered at the sight of their matched school uniforms, plastered together with red, mixing with the blue and turning, yes, black.
And then there was Kamui-the consciousness and the child, even smaller, watching this display over and over through helpless white tears.
Subaru pleaded with her, to let her near-Kamui’s tears turned to shrapnel and tore at Subaru’s skin. That was something different at last, Subaru remembers thinking-when she herself had gone Within, she had not wanted to stay, she’d put up no defenses other than the passive desolation. Kamui held her ground, cried and shrieked and begged to be allowed to wither and die, here, in her own mind.
In hindsight, Subaru probably should have let her.
She did not; she revealed her own truths, superimposed her memories over Kamui’s, watched one set of dolls replace the others in the puppet-theater. Yatori became Hokuto, Fuuka became Seishibana (did the ka in Fuuka mean what Subaru thought it meant?) and the shinken, the fatherborne-sword, became a bare flat-nailed hand.
Whether it was because of shock or empathy, it worked.
Subaru slept for two days solid, reliving it, replaying it, realizing that on some level she had a doll of her own now. She woke up in a sticking cold sweat, with her hair in dozens of long, tight braids. When she undid them the kinks still showed; when she brushed those out, they became brittle waves.
And at Yatori’s funeral, Kamui wore pants and Imonoyama’s cream-colored overcoat.
-
“It’s incongruous,” Seishibana said. “The fact that you smoke is amusing. But when you actually do, you’re so much less cute.” All in black, in daylight, in person her lips seemed redder. “You were a moment ago, weren’t you, Subaru-chan. I can smell it.”
Subaru is shocked into silence, into letting the lighter fall from her hand.
“And pants,” Seishibana sighed, trailing her cigarette-fingers down Subaru’s side to the front of her leg. “Pants, dear. The line suits you, but the color not at all.” She pursed her lips; her thumb slid into Subaru’s belt-loop and all Subaru could think-all she remembers thinking, looking back-was that she should say something, anything.
She didn’t.
Seishibana’s other hand slid low, pulled the loose jeans higher on Subaru’s waist and-and laid her palm flat against Subaru’s crotch, tapping with two fingers. “A doll, truly. Are you anatomically correct, Subaru-chan?”
The belt-loop ripped clean off when Subaru tore herself away.
They fought-ofuda flew and tore the sky into patterns of birds, Subaru’s doves-turned-raptors splattering into blood against Seishibana’s fire-carved shield. Her sunglasses glowed-her coat flared like a banner-she chanted, and smiled, and Subaru wanted to tear it off her face just to make sure there was something underneath.
But she didn’t want it enough, apparently.
She did burn those jeans, though. More because of the blood than anything else, or so she told herself.
-
Fuuka had a voice like white chocolate and a face like Seishibana’s.
That’s what Subaru remembers. The rest of the encounter was a blur, an explosion-she didn’t know what she was fighting, then, and doesn’t now. She doesn’t remember what spells she cast, what devastation was wrought, what her kekkai did and didn’t salvage. She doesn’t even remember the extent of her injuries, save the one she wished for.
Fuuka was shorter than Subaru but broader, stronger, able to hold Subaru up by the knotted collars of her sweater and coat. The voice was wrong but the visage-it hurt, everything hurt, and that’s all Subaru remembers.
The hand that stabbed out Subaru’s eye had rhinestone-tipped fingernails, painted blue and green. There had been something incorrect about that.
-
Kamui said nothing, just held Subaru’s hand in both of hers, tightening as Subaru woke. Her eyes, though, spoke for her.
Subaru remembers embracing her, assuring her, telling her not to blame herself, that she got exactly what she wished for, exactly what she deserved. Not all of it, but part of it, enough to say what she meant. She went back to sleep when Kamui left her at last-no errands to the chocolate shop, no requests but some peace-and slept, again, reliving that moment how she’d wished it to be.
But when she woke, her hair was still undone.
-
It was an indulgence, but one night Subaru asked her, or the dream of her; tell me something about who you are. Please.
“I killed my father,” Seishibana had answered. The words themselves trickled down Subaru’s bare skin along the same lines of touch from minutes earlier.
That isn’t who you are, Subaru thought then, that’s what you’ve done.
But if that had been all the explanation Seishibana gave, Subaru would have let it slide. It was not. Seishibana hoisted herself up over Subaru’s body, their legs entangled-Subaru remembers Seishibana rolling her neck so that all her hair was over the same shoulder, held in place with sweat-baring her blind eye.
“He was Sakurazukamori before me,” she said, and the burns on Subaru’s hands swelled in acknowledgement. “He made me. The student infallibly surpasses the teacher, and when I did, I killed him.” Her fingers were cold, trailing down between Subaru’s breasts, slow walking strokes that suggested her flat nails without applying them, that insinuated the same solid chill of her teeth. “Almost same way I killed Hokuto-kun, if that means anything at all to you.”
Subaru didn’t ask what the difference was.
Seishibana answered anyway. “They both asked for it, they both knew it was time and how it would be done-but Hokuto-kun didn’t seem to want a kiss before he died. Father did. Such a demanding man,” she almost seemed to-to sigh, “even in death. I suppose it was pleasant, for him to be so consistent. Right up until the end, he went on about loving me.”
Shivering, Subaru asked-
“Of course I didn’t,” Seishibana answered. “But he was very beautiful. Not cute like you, Subaru-chan-but beautiful nonetheless.”
-
And now 1999 is almost over, and the world is ending, and Subaru really doesn’t care. She’s standing on the wrong side of the north pedestrian walkway on Rainbow Bridge, trying futilely to light a cigarette and cursing herself for forgetting, physics, air pressure is lower over water so it creates wind. And cursing herself for wearing a skirt, for the first time since 1991. And cursing herself for her hair being loose and her coat being loose and her bandages being loose, for the sounds they make, for having to hold them up out of the way of the fire while at the same time trying to keep the fire alive.
She’s cursing herself for being in her own way.
Finally, she gets the thing lit, drowns her memories in the first steady inhalation, and stares out over the bay. She’s sick of reliving-sick of living with any prefix, really, any clause, any elaboration.
A hand folds itself over hers-two more fingers tighten around her cigarette-the scars there burn and open and bleed. Subaru turns around to look, on her one side that still sees at all, the only person it could be. Subaru’s hair is tangling with hers, with the smoke that crosses both their faces. The ashes are going to fall on Seishibana’s hand. Subaru tells her so.
“You’re still so kind as to care about such things?” she muses, making a kissing-gesture with her jaw. “So very cute.”
I have changed, Subaru doesn’t say, and then corrects, to herself: I have been changed. By you.
Blood drips off Seishibana’s left hand-her wrong hand-trailing up Subaru’s thigh, leaving a thick tight seam in her stockings and a red-on-black print on her skirt. She hums approvingly and takes the cigarette out of Subaru’s hand, wrist nuzzling the cuff of her jacket. Had she killed someone here? Some other ritual?
It doesn’t matter.
Chanting, Subaru raises her kekkai-to protect this place, she thinks, to protect them both within it-and puts herself on display.
It’s different now, somehow, fighting-easier, freer. It’s as if the loss of sight has unleashed another kind of clarity-as if something has opened. Of course Seishibana is impervious to anything Subaru lets fly but nothing’s touching Subaru either, not a shiki and not a shard. And that’s not-not because Seishibana’s aim is in any way off, but because Subaru is moving, flying, not wasting a second or a scrap of paper. The damp ozone of the kekkai burns around her, sends her coat and skirt whipping every which way and plastering to her skin-shrapnel falls-Seishibana stands straight and implacable as the concrete beneath Subaru snaps and shatters, shuddering as it begins to fall.
It’s hard to tell how far away she is-and it still doesn’t matter.
Vines, lashing probing vines-they wrap around Subaru’s arms, waist, thighs-flowers bloom suddenly (bloodless white), press against her skin.
Enough, Subaru decides, and bites her lower lip, drawing blood.
As the vines dissipate and let her slip, she paints the blood around her mouth with her tongue. And once that’s done, she tells Seishibana precisely what she thinks of those illusions. The bandages are coming undone, the wind’s even stronger than before, but Subaru lets that happen, lets the trail fly into Seishibana’s grasp. She touches it, kisses it, leers at Subaru over the rims of her glasses with so much implication-
“Kamui of Earth-Fuuka,” she corrects, and the difference between their voices rings in Subaru’s ears, “told me that only I can grant your most precious wish.” She takes off her glasses, bares her eye-smiles as if she knows that Subaru will be forced to do the same but that it’s not a reflection, it’s a transposition. “But she said that you’re wishing for something that’s not what I think it is. Come now, Subaru-chan-don’t you just want to kill me?”
No.
There is a distance to close between them, but neither can perceive it.
-
Subaru will remember this; she can’t not. Will remember how her fingers shivered, rubbing Seishibana’s blood between them until it was a part of her. Will remember her stockings tearing on the jagged concrete, the sound that makes, how much softer the sounds of Seishibana’s coat and skirt are, even on the same ground. Will remember the weight, how even their hair seemed straighter, heavier, longer. The words, the exchange-the price Hokuto paid, so that this would never happen-that it happened because of things that Subaru never said.
“I thought you wanted a doll who would play with you back,” Subaru whimpers, ragged, tears violating the corners of her mouth.
Seishibana laughs, rattling, dying. Her answer, “You did,” pours out of her lips with her blood. And then she says the rest.
---
-
.