落ちるまで- ℳ𝒆𝓶𝒆𝓷𝓽𝓸 ℳ𝓸𝓻𝓲

ix.再び
"Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of the teetering in the unknown."

"Please don't go!"

I turned my head towards the pleading goddess, and I could see the tears that had started to form in the corner of her eyes, and how she slightly trembled—most probably forcing herself not to but failing at it.

Eight centuries is still considered as a few years for the non-human beings. As long as someone out there continuously believes in them, they will relentlessly exist.

But I was different. My journey is never-ending—perpetual. Even if nobody believes in me, even if nobody knows what I am truly, I will remain alive.

"I'm sorry, Inehaki-sama. That request alone, is something I could never fulfill." I offered her a genuine gentle smile, my long brown hair billowing against the west wind that swept across the grounds of the shrine.

"T-then please…" She halted, looking at the ground, and then back at me, her clear azure eyes glinting in desperation, "Please tell me at least what you are! I really want to know!"

I lightly chuckled, placing an open palm in my chest, my smile stretching more until it became a grin that reflected a fourth of the darkness that rested in my soul, "I am something that transcended the human race."

Inehaki-sama sharply gasped, her eyes wide as saucers, beads of sweat forming on her forehead as it descended in a rapid yet slow manner. Teu, being protective of his master, appeared in front of her while facing me, body reared in an offensive stance, sharp eyes trying to tear me into pieces, "So you do admit that you were once a human. When? When did you stop becoming one?"

"A far past. Much farther than when I met both of you. A past where there was nothing but survival and subjugation." I then broke out into a sheepish smile, as they then blinked, surprised, and looking stupid at the same time, "Well, you asked and there's my answer."

I bowed at the fox goddess, "I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart, Inehaki-sama. I thought at first that you would doubt my words or that, even if you did believe, you would be enraged." When I lifted my gaze to look at her, I felt relief fiercely bubbling inside me, "Thank you for believing in me."

She was crying, but the large smile that spilled out from her lips was a positive indication. The shikigami beside her straightened his form, his hand rubbing the back of his head as he hopelessly smiled, "Really now?"

" Thank you for telling me. You're welcome to come back here again. I mean, I insist that you come back here again!"

I nodded at silver fox goddess, and then proceeded on the next phase of my endless journey.

x.運命
"We don't meet people by accident. They are meant to cross our paths for a reason."

It has been roughly three months since I enrolled in high-school again.

I blended with the students well, getting along with almost every one of them, specifically with a long haired girl named Michiru, and another girl with pigtails named Keiko. They liked ghost stories, and I, being a part of the supernatural itself, was able to convey a few out of the hundreds that I was able to gather by the passing years.

A tell-tale of ghost stories is absolutely a norm with high school students, especially with their curiousness about something that they could not comprehend—and possibly never will. However, I admit, that it may not be the first time that I was included in groups that were interested in such, it was the first time that I was thoroughly interested with what they had to say, since most of the time, I have already heard of the ghost stories that were told to me and had to pretend that I have never so I wouldn't crush the fun. The last time I did, there were dire casualties with friendship that I had to deal with.

Let's just say that Michiru and Keiko's paranormal tales are quite fresh in my ears.

"It's cursed!" Michiru's voice broke me out of my trance. She, Keiko, and I are in the AV room with lights closed. The only thing that could let us see each other was a pathetic tiny stick light.

"In that old school building, students died." Michiru started, "There was even a teacher who committed suicide. While they were demolishing the west wall, the roof collapsed. And then…" She trailed and Keiko gulped, already catching up to what she was implying. "So the construction stopped. The demolition was restarted last year to rebuild the gym. But that time, a truck went out of control, and drove through the field during class, killing some students."

Her last phrase was given an instantaneous response of a grimace from Keiko and I (not that it wasn't on purpose at all). "I heard from an upperclassman, that if you go by the old school building at night…"

The air was tense, and I knew that it was time for the stories to end.

"Here I go. 1." Michiru.

"2." Keiko.

"3." Me.

"4."

It took a second before the fourth voice sent us into panicked disarray and the lights that were shut came back shining once more. Out of breath because of my friend with pig tails choking the air out of me, I couldn't focus my attention to the newcomer's voice.

"Excuse me. The lights were out so I thought nobody was here when I heard voices, so I just…" It was a man with raven hair and dark indigo hues that flashed something akin to… arrogance.

I could hear my two friends starting to squeal, since the man was undeniably handsome, I must say. I stared at him, not because I was smitten by his appearance, but because he was eerily familiar. I couldn't put a finger as to where and when did I meet him, but I was definite that I have seen him somewhere.

"Um.. Mind telling us your name?" My long-haired friend asked, her hands clasped together, and an apparent tinge of pink spread across her cheeks.

"Shibuya. Shibuya Kazuya." The man replied, and I narrowed my eyes. 'His eyes… aren't smiling at all.'

It took me exactly 5 hours and a half after school to pinpoint where I have last seen him. It was at the party, where my status was a daughter(adopted) of a noble. I saw a man that I have met when he was still but a little child—Koujo Lin—and there were two boys –twins —standing beside him.

I thought that the man in the AV room was the one with the kind smile who told me that I wasn't human. But there was something different about the aura. After two minutes of pondering, I concluded that it was the standoffish scowling one who was ready to commit homicide because he didn't want to be in the party.

xi.驚き
"One of the mankind's greatest failings, lies in its inability; to put itself in its brother's shoes."

I could feel my eyes twitch as I stared at the group of people that has gathered in the room. Starting from Shibuya Kazuya – I nicknamed him Naru-chan (derived from the word "Narcissist") because he views himself as someone so high and mighty—,a red-haired priestess named "Matsuzaki Ayako", a blonde monk called "Takigawa Houshou", a girl with pitch-black hair named "Hara Masako", and a blonde priest from Australia called "John Brown".

Honestly speaking, I was about to rip all the strands of my hair apart from my skull because I recognize all of them. Fate seems to work like a Domino effect, and I was the one who initiated it by slumbering at Inehaki-sama's shrine.

My thousands of years of effort to not meet someone who I acquainted myself with even for just a few minutes crumbled away to dust and was carried down by the unforgiving wind.

I let out a shaky breath. I had been on edge ever since I met Koujo Lin for the third time in my life time. I witnessed no recognition in his eyes at that time, so it was possible that he wasn't able to remember me. Or that's what I wished to believe.

The morning after the night that I found out who Shibuya Kazuya was (a twin of Eugene Davis), I steeled myself to never get myself involved with him ever again. But then, there was a camera in the middle of the deserted old school building. I deeply exhaled in agony.

But still, seeing them again after a few years was something similar to being a flabbergasted proud parent that saw his son or daughter descend from a battle ship that returned from a horrible war.

Hara Masako apparently heeded my words, as she turned her weakness into her weapon. Now, she's a famous spirit medium that appears in the television. I don't know much about Takigawa Houshou, but by looking at him right now, I could pretty much guess that his profession isn't by being a monk alone. John Brown's eloquence in Kansai dialect is frighteningly humorous, however. I partly regretted teaching him Japanese in Kyoto's dialect. Matsuzaki Ayako gained superfluous amount of confidence, and truth to be told, I would prefer the overly shy one who was blindly searching for tree spirits in the forest than the current one any time.

"Have I met you somewhere before?"

I glanced at Masako who was currently scrutinizing Naru. And I then turned my attention back to Naru. "No, this is the first time we've met." He clarified.

"Is that so."

If Masako would have questioned me with the same sentence, I might have answered the exact same sentence that Naru provided.

xii. 虚ろ
"When you open the door to the other side, you might find a new world of possibilities that you never knew existed."

I rose from the tatami mat where I was ungracefully sprawled out, tilting my head to inspect the room where I found myself at. 'Where Am I?'

In the hot summer of July, the SPR received another request from a client that consisted of exorcising a house. The client was Morishita Noriko, who was currently living with her sister-in-law Kana, and niece Ayami. We found ourselves struggling about how to deal with it, since the spirits that prowled inside the house were extremely violent. One mistake and everything goes downhill.

My fists clenched and I furrowed my brows. In front of me, an unfurled scroll hung into a wall, the character "寿" was written in a beautiful calligraphy. The silence was unnerving, and I think I might have gone colorblind because I see nothing but sepia.

I raised my gaze and noticed the sliding door ajar, a silhouette of a little girl bouncing a ball could be seen. 'She looks like a tiny Masako or Asuka.' And I then pinched the bridge of my nose. Everyone with pitch black hair, black eyes and wearing a kimono is now considered to be a Masako or Asuka wanna-be.

I sighed in despondence. Despite of my hair not turning into gray or white, I can still feel that the senility has claimed me.

"But still…" I placed a hand on my chin, trying to make out of the scene in front of me with critical eyes. "That's not Ayami-chan. whose child is she?"

Another silhouette appeared out of the blue. This time, it was of a man wearing a coat and a hat. The man outstretched his hand to the girl, and my chocolate orbs narrows. "Is this, by chance…?"

The silhouettes moved farther and farther away, and I was scrambling from my position to go after them. My intuition was telling me that chasing after them would be futile, and I was proven correct when they completely vanished in thin air.

A few meters in front of me, a woman materialized, and I instantly stopped on my tracks. The woman's back was facing me, and even without looking at her expression, I know that she was frantic and fearful, screaming "Tomiko" over and over again, as she ran searching for her lost child. When she suddenly stood still, I peered over her shoulder, and my eyes widened a fraction.

Afloat the lake was the ball of the child. The woman then screamed, and I frowned.

The scene then shifted, and this time, the woman was leaning against the end of a well. A single tear slid down her cheek, and the entirety of her torso was now hovering over the gape of the sunken shaft.

"Tragic, is it not?"

I turned my head towards the one who spoke, and wasn't surprised when I found Eugene Davis standing right behind me. His countenance was downcast, and I suppose that my expression is a reflection of his. I nodded curtly, "Yes." I breathed with a heavy heart, "Yes, it is."

"I guess, that's how it works." He continued, "Holding someone dear to you to the point that you can't bear them gone happens to few people."

"Alive but not living, hm?" I started to walk away from him, and I could tell that he was still watching me. I noted that a bright light was shining in a distance, and I inferred that it was like a gate to consciousness.

When the soft and warm luminescence started to spread over my features and devoured me from the astral plane that I liked to call my dream world, I glimpsed at Eugene for a moment before fully turning my awareness towards the light, "Was that perhaps the case with you and Naru?"

"Perhaps." He answered with a cryptic smile, and I didn't pry any longer.

xiii.内部
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

My iron clutch towards the edge of the manhole lessened when I heard Naru hastily weaving his way from the tall grasses to reach me. The pull beneath my lower half was unexpectedly strong, but was something that I could deal with. I could, unless I had a spectator. Naru, at the moment, perfectly filled in for that part.

I gritted my teeth, partly wishing for the creepy ghost to kindly unleash me because your sardonic grin isn't healthy for my memory and mostly for Naru to please go somewhere else where you can't see me back flipping my way out of the manhole with the ghost in tow. I cussed in latin. It was because of my curiosity again.

We received multiple cases coming from the students and teacher of the Yuasa Private High, on a Sunday of November. There were many things involved and we were able to narrow it down to a wooden human doll when it was discovered under the desk and in the track and field's clubroom.

We were finding said wooden human dolls when I saw a crying child in the middle of the field. I knew it wasn't human, but still. It was crying. I groaned in frustration as the only finger that supported me slipped, and I shrieked because I saw Naru extended his arm when all I wanted to do was to somersault so I could get out of the mess.

His hand gripped my wrist, and he must have misunderstood my frustrated expression as a terrified one, because his eyes softened, "Hold on tightly. There's a ladder there—can you climb your way up?"

I situated a foot there and it snapped. The force of the snap made me lose balance, and Naru was dragged forward.

I should really tell him sometime to leave me alone when he sees me in danger.

xiv.低下
"There is no such thing as a hopeless situation. Every single circumstance of your life can change."

Naru accused Ubusuna Kei, the Yuasa Private High's biology teacher to be the one who was doing the hexing. The woman kept her voice and actions calm, but by the tenseness of her shoulder and by her rigid jaws, it was as clear as the sky that she, indeed, was the culprit.

Naru, on the other hand, was absolutely confident that she was the one who did it. Remembering that time in the sewer, there were fresh rubbles that crumbled—no, forcefully torn. A human cannot tear concrete so easily, and I didn't remember touching or even doing anything to cushion our fall. The spoon bending was fake. The coin handling was a trick. But what he did when we fell wasn't.

I internally scoffed, 'Psychokinesis, of course.' Must have I been too idiotic not to realize that he has psychic abilities when his twin brother was entirely capable of it?

The case officially ended when Ubusuna Kei slipped her pleasant mask off and went on an outburst and finally claiming her wrongdoings. I held back a morose smile. 'That's right. This is the nature of humans.'

After I exited Naru's room, and bid him a good day, I went straight at the apartment that I was staying. 'Ah, my stomach is churning from the revoltingness of it all.' I went over to the bathroom sink and practically coughed my ribs out. I was restraining my cough when I was in Naru's room because it would be rude. I did expect it to be a fit, but not this hard.

It was getting harder to breathe, and my line of sight became blurry from the tears that accumulated from every cough that I produced. After a good five minutes of nothing but coughing, I resorted to shut my eyes and force all the things that were seemingly stuck in my throat. No. It wasn't from my throat. It was somewhere from my stomach.

When the coughs subsided, I prompted to open my eyes, and decided to simply roll on my bed and call it a day afterwards.

"What the hell." I caught myself off-guard, as I stared at the thick red liquid that coated the sink in ugly drops and puddles.

I looked at myself at the square mirror that was suspended just above the faucet, and saw a very pale face staring back, blood dribbling out from the lips.

"Shit." This wasn't good.

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