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The first indication that anything is wrong is the sound of Manjiro’s ringtone echoing through the shrine rafters.
Ken looks up from where he’s scraping what appears to be ages’ worth of melted wax from where it’s accumulated on the floor behind the altar. The young priest straightens from where he leans in the doorway and removes the phone from his pocket. He sets it against his ear with the preemptory greeting of “Master?” The man’s look always appears cheerless beneath the fierce overhang of his bushy unibrow, but even so, his expression seems to darken further as a tinny, indecipherable voice lectures from the other end. “Say again,” he requests, turning away from Ken and exiting the shrine.
Ken quivers with questions, but tries to go back to focusing on his task. After the floor is cleared of debris it will need to be swept and mopped, and then waxed – which seems a tad counter-productive to Ken, given all the effort he’s putting in at the moment. And after that he will move on to whatever tedious cleaning duty Manjiro can think for him next. Or maybe the priest will have him doing headstands again. Because that had gone so well the last time.
Ken does his best to tamp down his growing annoyance. He knows it’s only been a few days, but it just seems like he should be making more progress by this point. Even Manjiro seems a little confused. He keeps mentioning how easy this had been to teach Jiji, and although Ken’s glad his best bud managed to pick up the skills so readily, it hurts his soul each and every time he hears the derogatory comparison.
Ken grits his teeth and does what he’s been doing every day since Seiko first called – imagining Miss Ayase’s face. Imagining her smile. Imagining her light up as he finally, finally, gets to tell her how he feels. He’s had more than enough time now to think about how to go about it. He’s imagined every scenario, every location. At this small shrine in the heart of the city, at the Ayase home, at school. He’s imagined, too, what she’ll be wearing; her school clothes, that favorite sweater of hers, even a shrine maiden outfit like the one she put on before they went to confront Turbo Granny. He’s never told her, but she had looked so beautiful in that getup. He’d no idea why she insisted on stripping it off.
He's imagined what he’ll say, and how he’ll say it. Screaming it from the top of his lungs. Whispering it into her hands as he plants kisses against her knuckles. Just…just speaking it to her face…his voice breaking with emotion. The words of it change from day to day with the nervous rise and fall of his emotions, but the gist of it remains the same.
He loves her.
He loves her, he loves her, he loves her.
He harnesses the energy of his heart nearly bursting into his attack on the aging floorboards.
Seiko has not said much in her prior calls. Just that she is in the hospital with some pretty serious injuries and that Momo and the other kids have all been fixed by the priests of the Izumo Grand Shrine. All returned to their prior selves, no one else even injured in the altercation that left the aging miko immobilized. Ken is happy to hear about the recovery of the others, and concerned about Seiko, but to his immense guilt there’s only one person he truly wants to hear about.
She is back to normal size.
Ken keeps that thought in his mind as he works himself into exhaustion. Pushes past the blisters forming on his fingers. Past the dust filling his nostrils and the sweat burning where it drips into his eyes. Past the ache in his shoulders and the heavy press of his knees against the hard floor. Pain is fleeting. Housing a demon in his weak teenage frame has taught him that. Pain is a necessity. Pain keeps her safe. Pain brings her home alive.
She is coming home.
“Takakura?”
Ken looks again towards Manjiro. His somewhat rumpled exterior belies the quiet strength beneath. He fills the shrine’s entrance without even trying.
“There’s been a complication.”
When Manjiro had mentioned a complication, Ken had assumed the man meant with Seiko. That perhaps her wounds were worse even than she’d initially suggested and that their return would be delayed until she could heal fully. He was prepared for depressing news.
Nothing could have prepared him for the reality.
“She…she doesn’t remember?” he asks, unbelieving.
The stoic man shakes his heavy head. “My Master indicates that she has lost several months’ worth of memory, basically from the time period when she first awakened her powers.”
That…that encapsulates the entire length of their friendship.
“Does she…?” No, she wouldn’t, he thinks, tries again. “Does she even remember meeting me?” he asks desperately, his eyes glued to the wooden step beneath him. There had been some time, some few hours, between their first interactions and her gaining her psychic abilities. Though he’d hate for her to have only those memories of him. A pathetic weakling, without even the emotional strength to meet her eyes, but still so superior in his insistence that his particular interests were real while hers were just childish hallucinations. It was…he had been…kind of a dick. The fact that she’d been just as much of a dick right back to him didn’t excuse his embarrassing actions. But at least it would be something; her remembering the occult-obsessed dork from school who didn’t believe in spirits.
“I’m not certain, my Master did not go into detail.”
Ken feels himself bending over and into himself, his stomach roiling. “Does she at least remember Jiji?” he almost whispers.
“Apparently she recalls him from her childhood, but nothing after that.”
Ken’s eyes squeeze shut. So, she remembers Jiji only as the mean boy who had teased her and left her crying. Jiji was basically in the same boat as Ken. They would just have to work together to get her to remember them, to remember who they are now. He swallows hard and breathes deep, finds the strength within himself to meet Manjiro’s patient gaze.
“What can I do?” he asks. If this is just another trial for them to suffer, another mission for them to accomplish, then he’s ready to jump right in. He can’t run to her anymore with the speed of a barreling locomotive, or carry her weight through carnage, or smash through opponents with the All Out thrusting force of his head, but…he will find a way. He remembers trying to make a typhoon out of a Serpo dressed as a space heater. He’s willing to try anything to help her, no matter how crazy.
It's what she would do. Momo would find a way.
Somehow.
“There’s nothing much to do, at the moment,” the older man explains. “My Master and Miss Ayase will return by plane in a few days. Until then keep up with your practice, your chores.” He stands, wiping dust from his hands off on his pants. Ken nods in acquiescence. Back to the grind. To the realm of constant exertion which never seems to advance him towards any goal. The large wrapped box containing the incongruously small “club” Seiko has gifted him leans in the corner of the shrine, untouched. “I’m going to do some studying to see if there’s any precedent for this sort of reaction after spiritual exorcisms and the like.”
Ken’s eyes widen with a thought of his own.
He steals what few minutes of freedom Manjiro grants him to go to the library. He runs the whole way there, both to save time and to make up for any training he may miss during his absence. His internet search doesn’t turn up much useful, but he finds a few books that deal with actual cases of amnesia. They’re heavy medical texts, not what he’d usually carry home with him from the library. He jogs his way back to the shrine only to be met by Manjiro’s impassive glare. Dropping the books guiltily next to the near forgotten weapon box, he returns to cleaning duties.
Sweep. Mop. Wax.
Rake the rock garden. Scrape moss from the guardian statues. Paint the faded posts of the torii gate a clearer red. His clothes get spattered with crimson. Dirt becomes permanently affixed in the quicks under his fingernails. The skin of his neck turns red from sun exposure.
At night, he lays on a futon in the dark confines of the shrine, reading by flashlight. He tries to make sense of the obscure terminology, the dense subject matter. It might be easier if his thoughts didn’t keep flying to Momo. Was she frightened there in Shimane, sleeping amongst strangers? How terrifying it must be to lose your memories. Like losing a part of yourself.
Eventually, he gives up. People suffering from true bouts of amnesia either recover their memories, or they don’t. They either go back to the person they were before, or they learn to live with the loss. Or they die, memory loss being not that uncommon among the significantly aged. The books have been no help. Give comfort, they say, but not too much. Surround the victim with things from their past, they counsel, but try not to throw them into dissociative confusion. Don’t get mad at the sufferer, they’re not at fault.
Ken doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to help. He remembers a spaceship and a gut filled with terror and the same feeling of uselessness.
He turns out the light.
Things are quiet in the shrine at night. The floorboards creak with age and paper shide crinkle in the slight breeze coming in through the entranceway. Outside, the city carries on impassive. Cars pass, whipping leaves in their wake. Leaves that will cover the shrine’s walkway by morning. Leaves that he will need to sweep.
Ken recalls another night spent alone inside a shrine. Similar sounds, similar feelings. The floor just as hard. The darkness just as lonely. And Momo at the center of it all. His only hope. Her jewel toned personality suffusing a world which night has stripped of color. He can make it through this night, through this interminable waiting for her return.
He can do this. He can do this. He can do anything, so long as it’s for her.
The others come home first, unable to justify more time lost with their studies or away from their families. One by one they stop by the shrine, relate their individual tales, express their condolences.
As if she were dead. Or maybe…as though he was the one who had passed.
He refuses to think of either of them that way. Maybe…maybe she is lost, but then he has been lost before, too. He remembers wandering incorporeal through Hokkaido. Remembers searching in vain along endless stretches of telephone wiring. She will find her way back to him, just as he eventually wound his way back to her. He has faith in their ability to come together, to join metaphysical hands across interminable distances.
He has faith in her.
He is most surprised to see Unji. He barely knows the boy. The priests of the famous shrine have stopped the degradation of his eyesight but could not fully restore it. He peers out uncomfortably from behind squared frames. He comes to thank Ken for helping with the cursed game box. For believing Daiki. For fighting the Fairy-Tale Card demon that had taken control of him.
In his turn, Ken thanks him for all he did for Momo inside that box. He will owe this boy forever, he knows, for protecting what is most precious to Ken in all the world.
Jiji and Vamola visit together. Characteristically, it’s Jiji who breaks down, who cries into Ken’s shoulder. He believes this is his fault for leaving the two girls to fight alone. For listening to Momo’s instructions. For saving Seiko at the potential cost of Momo’s soul. Vamola seems sad, but not nearly as much. She has lost so much in her short life she cannot be expected to mourn a sister still alive, still walking and talking and sleeping beside her.
What are memories but the spirits of what once was? There can be no ghosts for those still living.
“We’ve already told her so much about you,” the boy insists, “About all of our adventures.” Jiji dries his eyes on the back of his arm. “We’ll make her remember, Okarun. I swear it. Somehow, we’ll do it.”
It’s the first time Ken finds himself wondering if they should.
It’s not like this fantastical existence of theirs has been kind to Momo. From the moment the two of them made that pact (only months ago, seems like forever) her life has been nothing but strife and worry. Is it fair to her to drag her back into that world? A place of dread and difficulty. Of demons and aliens. Of blood and fire and poison raining from above.
Wouldn’t it be better if she were free?
He wonders if he is being selfish, wanting her to remember. He had sworn to make himself into whatever she needed, to be her monster if need be. But, what if that was something she never desired in the first place? What if she’d never needed a monster to begin with? What if he hadn’t dragged her heedless into this demon world?
She had filled him with purpose, had made him her protector and partner, had given him a name. Who was Okarun without Momo? Who is Ken now that he’s become her weapon?
Who had he been before she’d come into his life?
As is so often the case, they assemble at the Ayase home.
Ken cannot help but be cheered by the sight of so many of his friends come to welcome her back into their fold. Friends he has because of her. Her memories may be gone, but these people stand as living proof of their connection. They have fought together, laughed together. She will not be able to deny this overwhelming evidence. These people are the shared legacy of their adventures.
How could she not want to remember them?
A cloud of dust announces the approach of Manjiro’s aging van. It pulls through the torii gate, forcing the gathered teens to step back towards the shrine. The breaks squeal as it rolls to a stop. Ken cranes his neck, but cannot see inside.
The side door slides open and she emerges. As reports have indicated, she seems unharmed. She gives a watery smile and raises a half-hearted hand to the group. Her mystical maroon eyes sweep over the courtyard, over the various individuals gathered there to greet her. They slide with minimal recognition over Jiji and Vamola, pause consideringly at the sight of Aira’s shocking pink dye-job, dismiss the others standing awkwardly in a line, and land on Ken’s visage. Her mouth quirks, her face alighting with sudden recognition.
Ken’s heart taps a snare drum staccato in his chest.
She steps forwards. “You,” she says, as the quirk dissolves into one of her characteristic buoyant grins. “You must be this ‘Four-Eyes’ I’ve been hearing so much about.” She steps forward again, and Ken cannot help himself. She is here. She has come back to him. All else may be forgiven, forgotten, worked through somehow. He lifts trembling palms in her direction.
Her eyes focus behind him.
She steps past him.
Sidles close to the tall boy standing at the rear of the group.
Looks up almost shyly past rapacious bangs, and directly into Unji’s dark gaze.
Ken’s hands fall to his sides.
“So…ummm,” she drops her eyes to the cobblestones, and digs the toe of one tennis shoe into the dust. “You’re Ken, right?” She blushes with embarrassment.
Color bleeds from the world. Once vibrant hues becoming admixed into a murky purplish-grey, the lifeless color of Evil Eye’s soul-ball. The cerulean stretch of the cloudless sky, the imposing vermillion presence of the overarching torii gate, even the autumn maple leaf glow of her hair, leech into a monotonous miasma.
“Uhhhh…” Unji responds, a look of confusion spreading across his broad face.
Ken remembers the first time he entered this courtyard. Not the time where he immediately burst into flames, his first real entrance. How the whole place had felt alive. How his body had tingled with invisible electric charge. The mesmerizing draw of potential. That feeling had gone away once Seiko fixed the sigils. He wonders, idly, if she’d ever bothered to change them back after Turbo Granny left, taking his potential along with her. He wonders if he will ever feel that alive again.
He feels dead inside.
“Sorry,” she apologizes to the other boy. “This is so…awkward.” She brushes her bangs behind one ear in a gesture so familiar that Ken aches. Always, he has wanted to brush his fingers through those tresses. Always, he has wanted to reveal her eyes with the same motion. Always, he has wanted to hear her use those words she never does, the ones she won’t let him say.
She gives those words so freely now. Gives them to someone else. As if she had the ability in her all along and was just waiting for someone worthy to hear them. Worthy of capturing her attention. Worthy of being hers.
He reaches deep within himself, seeks the person he is without her, and finds nothing.
He is nothing.
Perhaps he always has been?
He runs.
Something tugs at the loose fabric of her sweater.
She turns her head to see…nothing. A whisp of breeze rippling through the shrine courtyard, strange in this otherwise windless day. A shiver of cold runs down her spine. Perhaps a storm is brewing somewhere out of her sight.
“The fuck, Manjiro,” the old bag growls around the cigarette she’d lit up immediately after stepping from the van. She lifts a hand to her forehead and gazes into the distance beneath the torii gate. “Thought you said the kid’s chi practice was going poorly.”
The stoic man who’d driven them home from the airport stares off in the same direction. “It was,” he deadpans.
“Whaaa?!” exclaims Jiji, rushing to stand next to her grandma. “Since when did Okarun get his powers back?!”
Momo snorts and turns her attention away, back to the tall boy before her. “So…Ken?” she confirms. She can’t help but smile at that. The guy even looks a little like her beloved Ken Takakura. Tall, dark, and quiet - just how she likes them. It’s no wonder she and the boy had apparently become such fast friends. Jiji had hardly been able to shut up about him. Her grandmother had been more cautious in her description, but in a way that makes Momo think she was being purposefully vague to hide underlying affection. She finds it hard to believe this guy could have sheltered a demon like the famed Turbo Granny.
“Uhhh, no,” he finishes.
What? No?
“I’m Unji,” he continues. “Unji Zuma? We…were in the castle world together?”
Momo blinks. This is the street tough with the bad attitude and worse eyesight her grandma had mentioned? No way. He seems way too nice. Way too handsome, as well, if she doesn’t mind saying so herself. But, if that’s the case, then where’s this-
“We need to go after him!” Momo looks over her shoulder to see the rest of the welcome party has joined her grandma in staring out over the empty rice paddies. The pink haired girl is waving her arms about wildly. Momo recognizes this chick from around school. Some pampered princess who she’s never cared enough about to give the time of day to. “We can’t just leave Takakura like that, he’s probably freaking out!”
Takakura? What is she-
Her grandma huffs in response. “You wanna try and catch him be my guest.”
“So, that’s what he looks like transformed?” one of the dark haired girls asks the other in a low voice.
“Told you,” the girl in pigtails responds, leaning conspiratorially close to the other. “Handsome. Vampire.”
“The Great Kinta should be fast enough to catch up with him.” This from the chubby boy she barely noticed before. He has one hand on the frame of his rectangular glasses and a determined look to his somewhat flabby face.
He…he can’t be the ‘Four Eyes’ her grandma has spoken about?
Can he?
“Dumbass.” It’s the pink bitch again, being predictably bitchy. “You’ve got no idea even what direction he went.”
“My suit has…tracking.” Vamola bites at her lip, struggling with the language barrier.
“That might work,” comments her grandma, “Assuming what you're tracking is actually Four Eyes and not some demonic entity that’s taken him over.” Momo’s gaze skips to the chubby boy, then back to Unji (who appears supremely uncomfortable with the entire situation). Pigtails is the only remaining person in glasses.
Now she’s really confused.
Ensconcing her fists at her hips and widening her stance perceptibly, she turns to face what was supposed to be – if you believed the old bag’s bullshit – a group of her best friends in the world. Some friends, to be completely ignoring her. “Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on here?!”
As if on cue, the entire crew turns over their shoulders to stare at her.
“Momo,” her grandma asks, removing the all but spent cigarette from between her teeth, “Did you not just see some kid go tearing out of here trailing demonic flames like a meteor?”
Did she…what? “What kid?!” she shouts, tearing at her bangs and growing more confused by the minute.
“I can assure you,” her grandma’s studious apprentice says over the general ruckus surrounding the chabudai, “I have been putting Takakura through his paces for the last several days and have seen no hint of spiritual aptitude.”
Her grandma taps ash from her latest cigarette into a tray and grouses, “Well, clearly yah missed something.”
“Could it be some sort of remnant left over from Turbo Granny’s powers?” Jiji asks, leaning his arms on the table in excitement.
The aging miko just tips her head. Her hair is down, for once, the hospital staff having forbidden her to put it up in her traditional beehive tower until the integrity of her spine can be confirmed by medical specialists. The white ends trail like miniature kitsune tails along the edge of the tabletop. “Could be,” she theorizes. “Not too enthused about chasing the old hag down again to ask her, though.”
“Just…just call us if you see him, okay?” That Shiratori chick has been pacing back and forth, wearing a hole in their tatami mats, for the past 20 minutes, running down her list of phone contacts and getting increasingly more agitated with each negative response. “Who else? Who else?” She asks herself rhetorically, staring at her phone screen as if it might have the answers.
“I am certain that Private First Class Takakura will return once he has had a chance to compose himself.” This from the portly square-headed dude. Momo’s trying not to judge these people on first impressions, but he seems like kind of a dolt. Seriously, who talks like that?
“Shut it, perv!” Shiratori barks, running fingers through her expensively aligned locks and making a mess of them. “You barely know him,” she finishes weakly.
“Well I know him,” asserts the short girl seated to Momo’s left. She tosses her pigtails, “And I agree with Sakata. Takakura’s too sensible to stay gone for long. He’s just-“ Her eyes cut suddenly to Momo. “Overwhelmed.” Momo gets the impression that was not the word she was going to originally use. “He’ll get over it,” she asserts, with very little conviction in her voice.
Whoever the hell this Ken Takakura asshole is, everyone sure seems to be worried about his hasty disappearance.
After her grandma expressed disbelief that she hadn’t even noticed the guy before his disappearing act, Momo had wracked her brain in an attempt to remember what he’d looked like. She has a vague impression of someone short and dark, and maybe wearing glasses? Honestly, he had seemed indistinguishable from the fat guy.
A nobody.
A nobody that quite everyone in the room seems desperate to locate.
Everyone but her that is.
“Rokuro!” Shiratori shouts triumphantly, then fists her fingers in her hair. “GAH! I don’t have his number!” She points accusingly at Momo. “You! You must have his number!”
“Bitch,” she responds, allowing her annoyance to slip into her demeanor, “If I had a phone before I went to fucking Shimane I sure as hell don’t have one now.” She crosses her arms across her chest. She’s beginning to get pissed at everyone assuming she should know all these things…all these people…that she just…doesn’t. “And I’ve got no idea who this…this Rock Your Whatever is.”
“He’s a Serpo,” pigtails, interrupts. “He works at a convenience store near the police depot.”
“Hold up!” Momo holds her hands palms out in frustration. “I thought the Serpo were those rape-y guys trying to steal my fucking ovaries.” In all honesty, she’s willing to believe she’s misremembering that part of the story. It had all sounded pretty damn crazy.
“Rin,” Shiratori enthuses, “Do you remember which convenience store?” Pigtails shakes her head and Shiratori gives an angry growl of defeat.
“You know, it’s possible he’s gone back to the city shrine,” Manjiro interjects. “They don’t have a direct phone line, but I can go and check.” He stands up from the table.
“Take a look at the wards while you’re there,” her grandma suggests. “If Four Eyes passed through with that sort of aura leaking out of him they’re sure to have gotten charred.”
“Maybe Okarun goes into phone lines?”
Everyone turns to Vamola in shocked silence.
“Shit,” her grandma says, retrieving yet another cigarette from her crumpled pack. “I forgot he could do that.”
“He could be anywhere,” Shiratori gasps. It sounds so goddamned fake. Everything about this bitch seems concocted, from her technicolor dye job to her near comical over-concern. Momo finds she’s sick of it already and she’s just met the girl.
“Why do you care, skank?”
Shiratori rounds on her. “Because he’s my friend, you asshole, and you just…you….” She loses her train of thought in righteous fury.
“I what?!” Momo jumps up from beneath the table. “I went to some stupid shrine in Shimane and got my memory wiped. How the fuck is that my fault?! You ever think that maybe you’re all just not that memorable.”
She realizes she may have gone too far when she hears Jiji gasp, when the alien girl she’s so recently come to know gives a whimper. But she’s on a roll, and she’s sick and tired of being ignored when she’s the victim here! “I never asked to lose my memory,” she asserts, “I never asked for this to happen. But, who’s to say I even wanted those memories in the first place?!” She feels her hands close into fists, her nails dig into her palms. This is what she’s been wanting to say ever since her grandmother’s told her about her life amongst the spiritually sensitive. Ever since Jiji, the first friend to truly hurt her, had assured her she was just going to love meeting all their shared acquaintances again. “Maybe I don’t want to remember being sexually assaulted, or…or being naked in front of the entire goddamned school. Maybe I’d rather forget being burned and beaten and fucking eaten alive!”
She is shouting now and she doesn’t care if it hurts them. She doesn’t even fucking know them. Her voice resounds through the crowded living area. It shakes the paper of the shoji screen dividers (which Jiji has assured her are now actually comprised of some sophisticated alien tech). Not even her childhood home is safe from these people’s perversions. “I don’t know you and from what I’ve heard so far I don’t think I fucking want to know you. Any of you. So why don’t you get the flying fuck out of my house!”
In the scared silence that follows, she seeks her grandma’s eyes through furious tears. The old woman nods, understanding. She stands and claps her hands for attention.
“All right, all right. Everybody clear out.” She heads towards the genkan, leading by example. Reluctantly, the people around her get to their feet and try to follow. Momo finds she has to step away to let some of them get out from behind the table. No one meets her eyes. “I don’t care where you all get to,” her grandma continues, “But you can’t stay here.” Expertly, she shoos the unwanted houseguests out the door. “You can come back once Momo’s had time to rest and figure some stuff out for herself. Not you Vamola,” she grabs the girl by her lizard-headed hoodie and drags her back through the doorway. “You live here.”
The three remaining women eat dinner in silence. Afterwards Vamola offers to help clean up, but grandma sends her up to bed. She acquiesces with obvious reluctance. Then the old woman turns to Momo. “You can help me with the dishes,” she orders.
Momo washes, her grandma dries. It’s a reverse of their normal pattern, but it’s…fine. Everything’s fine. Nothing is particularly good, though either.
“You feel better now, getting that out of your system.”
Momo frowns down at her work. “No,” she says after a pause. She needn’t have said anything, she knows. Her grandma would not have asked the question without already guessing the answer. “Look, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, it’s just….” She falters, not easily able to put her thoughts into words. “It’s hard to care about hurting someone I don’t remember.”
“But you will remember them some day,” her grandma insists. “And they’ll forgive you, because they know you,” she insists.
“That’s the thing,” she tries to explain, “I don’t know them. And for the life of me I can’t understand why I would.” She thinks of the group sitting so comfortably about her dining room table, as if they’d done it a million times before. “How could I possibly get along with a bitch like that Shiratori girl? Why would I ever waste my time on – forgive the insult, but it’s true – tasteless weirdos like that fat guy, or the girl with the toddler style pigtails? Jiji, at least, I understand, but I really can’t see forgiving him that easily for the shitty way he treated me when we were kids.”
“Four Eyes brought you all together,” her grandma speaks quietly, a rare event in this household. “They’re your friends. The ‘you’ being plural.”
“And that’s another thing!” Momo grips at a serving bowl in anger and swipes it with the sponge. “Who is this asshole who runs away from me without even a hello? If he’s supposed to be such a close friend why’d he just leave me.” She grits her teeth, says between them, “I don’t even know what he looks like!”
Her grandma sighs heavily. “Look there’s some things I didn’t tell you about Four Eyes. Things I thought he’d probably want to tell you himself.”
“Like what?” she asks argumentatively, “Like how everyone apparently cares more about him than me?” Some fucking friends, she thinks.
Grandma leans her elbow on the sink and gives Momo a hard look. “Like that fact that he’s in love with you.”
Momo’s not surprised to hear it. She can read between the lines. The way everyone’s been tiptoeing around descriptions of their supposed relationship, she’d guessed as much. But what’s it to her if some douchebag rando has the hots for her? He’s hardly the first guy to try and get into her pants. “That’s…that’s beside the…UGH!” She nearly stomps her foot in aggravation. “That’s not my fault either, you old bag!”
“No,” her grandma agrees, “No, it’s not. But, maybe if I’d told you earlier you wouldn’t have treated him like….” Her voice trails off, but Momo knows what she was going to say.
Like a nobody.
A non-entity.
But that’s what he is! Who he is, she supposes, though she’s yet to see any evidence the guy even exists. He sure doesn’t sound real. He’s no one to her, anyways; no matter that everyone else around her seems to think differently.
“Nah,” she assures her grandma. “Even if you had I still would have thought that – what’s his name? - that hot Unji guy was him.” Because of the glasses, of course, and not because he looks like a younger version of Ken Takakura. She smiles goofily into the soapy water.
“You’re not into Unji,” her grandma comments.
“Well, why the hell not?!” she responds rhetorically.
“Because you’re in love with Ken.”
The soaped up bowl slips from her fingers and drops back into the water with a giant splash. Momo pulls her soaked shirt away from her front with disgust before turning an accusatory stare at her guardian. “I’m in love with the disappearing weirdo?”
“Yep,” her grandma says simply, retrieving the bowl from the sink to see whether it’s been chipped.
“I’m in love with some dude I can’t even remember?”
“Yep,” her grandma quips again, turning the bowl upside down and examining the bottom.
“HAH!” Momo responds with great incredulity.
“Take it or leave it, Momo.” She sets the bowl back into the sink, apparently assured that it remains undamaged. “He loves you. You love him. Kid would walk over hot coals for you, and you walked right past him like he was trash.” She shakes her head. “It’s no wonder he flipped out.”
“Well-“ she starts, angrily.
“Well-“ she continues, somewhat less angrily, but with rising confusion.
“Well –“ she goes on, trying to argue away the guilt she feels for apparently breaking some dude’s heart without even trying.
“Well,” she finishes, “If he loves me so much, why’d he run?” She’s the one with the lapsed memory here. She’s the one needing support and understanding at the moment. Because it’s not like this shit is easy to take in. It’s not just like normal amnesia, if “normal” is the way it’s depicted on daytime TV shows, anyways. Sure, she’s got all the annoyance of the ‘Who are you again?’ scenarios, but her issues go way beyond that. Into the realm of spirits and aliens (she’s still not sure about the whole aliens thing), and goddamned fucking fairies, for all she knows. If he cared for her at all he should have been the first in line to…to comfort her and explain things to her and….
Be there for her.
If he loved her, he should have been there.
“Oh, kiddo,” her grandma sighs again and looks towards the ceiling. She leans against the sink and her thin hands squelch against its wet edge. “That’s all he knows.”
He runs.
For some time it is the only thought he has, the only thing his mind can handle. One foot in front of the other. Weight redistributing on the curves. Head ducking beneath low slung branches. Toes gripping with different traction over pavement and grass and pine needled forest floor. Toes sticking out from the ends of destroyed shoes. The pound of soles against earth beating a direct counterpoint to the crashing beat in his chest, until he becomes certain that if one stops then so will the other.
He sees nothing as he runs. Or, at least, he sees nothing that stays in his mind past the brief moment needed to avoid crashing into it. He hears a car horn once, blaring a warning of imminent collision. With a burst of speed he careens past the hulking moving van, coming close enough to run one hand along the chrome of its bumper, then hops the drainage ditch and splashes away through the surrounding fields.
He wonders, vaguely, why he bothered. Letting the damn thing run into him would probably have been easier.
He thinks he wouldn’t mind the pain. He’s gotten used to that. All Outs make it feel like every bone in his body is being simultaneously broken and reforged. Even the tiny ones, the little sound amplifiers in his ears and the ones fused into the evolutionary baggage of his tailbone. One more break wouldn’t make a difference. One last excruciating surge of agony and then-
What?
Who knows.
There must be something, he believes that much now. He’s seen spirits. Seen them rise ecstatic to meet their next role, their next existence. Whatever that may be. Ken would like to think they get the chance to live again, to try again, to fail and persevere and learn, through endless trial and error, to lean towards love. But Ken knows that what he wants to be and what is real are rarely aligned.
He’s seen what happens to spirits that lose their chance at love, that are thrown from that ever circling path. He knows what they become. It’s been a source of concern for him all along. He’s not sure one can just stop being a demon. It would be a terrible price to pay for speed should he die and be unable to move on, unable to try again. He'd felt it every time he transformed. Alive, heart still beating, he’d experience that loss. That terror. That fury. He’d feel it and be expected to control it. To bounce back from cruel oblivion and pretend that it wasn’t like dying. Like dying over and over and over. Dying alone.
It’s damned depressing.
It is hours before he realizes he cannot possibly run this long. That Ken does not have that kind of stamina. That this is demon speed. The revelation hits him like a rock to the stomach and he stares down at hands gone corpse grey and cold.
Not like he would have noticed anyways. Nothing has color anymore.
There is no color, but there is light. Ken notices it lessening. The Earth making its long slow roll away from the sun, dipping Japan into twilight.
Eventually, he slows. He runs for a bit at what might be considered a normal human’s pace. He tries to get his bearings.
Where the hell is he?
In the distance there are lights, the telltale ambient glow of civilization. In his more immediate surroundings there are fields. Not the endless alternating lines of piled dirt and stagnant water that surround his own town, but vast plains of knee-high swaying grasses. Like a sea, their tufted tops undulating waves in the passing breeze. He sees one burst of firework brightness and then another. Sees more brilliant points of light blinking between the grass stalks. Fireflies? When was the last time he’s seen one of those?
As a child he might have been enthralled by a scene like this, the stars of heaven brought down to Earth for one evening’s merriment. But he is not a child anymore, has not been since the day he first devoted himself to the care of another whose life meant so much more than his own. Took on the role of an adult, became a source of unconditional love.
He stumbles to a halt. Feels whatever preternatural energy that has carried him this far ebb away, leaving him bereft. Turns out, it was the only thing filling his emptiness. His knees buckle and he collapses in a heap.
Stupid. Stupid. What if this is all he had? All the power his inner demon had left to give to the world? What if he’s wasted it all on selfish escape?
He should have used it to help her.
He has no idea where he is. He has no idea what time it is. He looks to the firmament. It is too early for stars, yet, so no good way to even get his bearings – to know which way is north or south. He cannot recall in what direction the sun had set. He cannot recall ever seeing the sun. He cannot recall much of anything before he met her, before she appeared pink and precious and perfect in the circular frames of his spectacles. He’s had a lot of time to think about this recently, during those dark nights spent alone in the city shrine. His memories of childhood are fleeting, murky. He views them as through tinted glass. They hardly seem real.
Is he real?
Before her, he cannot recall ever feeling his heart pumping blood through his veins or the thrum of the earth rising up to meet his feet. Before her, there was no bubble of laughter rising in his throat, no flood of embarrassment leaking heat across his cheeks, no stench of fear filling his nostrils. Before her, speed was just a number. Crab had no flavor. The touch of silk might as well have been sandpaper. He does not remember ever chasing fireflies in his youth, feels no nostalgia now in this ocean of fire-touched grass.
His only clear memories are those formed with her. Now they live only in him.
Assuming, of course, he is even alive to begin with.
He feels the spirit approach before he catches sight of her. That ability, at least, has not left him with the rest of Turbo Granny’s powers. He senses she is large, imposing. He should run. He cannot run. He has run as far as he is able, as far as his demon will take him without Momo’s encouraging presence. He turns to face his destiny, unafraid.
There can be no fear when there is nothing left to lose.
She is huge. Statuesque. Beautiful. The fireflies blink an intermittent dance of enticement beneath her flowing skirts. It’s how the tiny bugs communicate, how they find a mate. Ken knows that sometimes a female will blink a false pattern, will lure another species’ male to her with the promise of love. Will devour them whole.
“What have we here?” she purrs. A girl’s voice, and yet within it Ken can hear the far off drone of airplanes, the shriek of falling bombs, the wails of the dying. There is nothing about this demon that is pleasant, despite her outward appearance.
“Reiko Kashima,” he recognizes, acknowledges.
She bends down to his level. The position should be uncomfortable, but Ken knows discomfort means nothing to a yokai. You don’t become a demon until pain has already become so familiar it seems almost a friend. “Are you lost, little boy?”
He thinks of a number of things he could say in response to that. That he’s not a little boy (true), that he’s not lost (false), that he’d prefer to be left alone (immaterial). Says the first thing that comes to his mind. “Fuck off.”
“My, my!” She affects a scandalized attitude. “Such language!” She places one giant, well-manicured finger beneath his chin. “And where is your guardian?”’
Ken thinks to rip his head away from her icy touch. He thinks to spit in her face. He thinks to get to his feet and try to run. He wouldn’t get far, of course, but he used to believe there was a value in trying. He does none of those things. “I don’t know,” he answers honestly.
“Did you lose her?” The question actually seems candid. The demon doesn’t know.
“She lost me,” he responds, and the demon laughs. She laughs high and free, releasing her hold on him to peal her hilarity up to the heavens. Much like her voice, her laugh is laced with the horrors of her past. Ken hears the screams of orphaned children, the burble of blood-choked last breaths, the squelching degradation of rape. Revolted, he turns away.
“I knew she would,” the demon says finally, her momentary jubilation expended. “Momo Ayase,” she continues thoughtfully, “Too blind to realize that even the blessings of kami may be mislaid.”
Ken doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know if there is anything to say. The sound of her name has paralyzed him. Even now it is like hearing music. Like the exhilaration of running. Like breathing.
She’s never once called him by his real name.
Wrinkles crack along the demon’s features. Her eyes become whirlpool swirls of blood. Her teeth elongate, sharpen. “I told her I would take you.”
Ken shakes his head. “There’s no point now,” he tells her, unsure why he feels the need to explain. “It won’t…it won’t hurt her anymore. And that’s what you want, right? To hurt her?” The demon is silent, giving him the chance to speak. Polite that, allowing him last words. He thinks what to say in this moment. What could encapsulate all he’s come to know in his short time on Earth? Short whether it’s been only months or sixteen years. Too short. Always too short, when love is meant to be forever.
“She doesn’t remember me,” he says. He looks at the yokai then, really looks. Sees the girl behind the demon mien, just as he’d heard the monster hidden within her honeyed maiden’s voice. Wonders if anyone will recognize the boy within once he is gone.
“Well, we can’t have that.” The demon smiles a slit mouthed grimace. Raises a gnarled hand topped with browned and broken nails.
And snaps.
In pink room, two girls sleep with the windows open. A soft wind blows in off the rice paddies. Leopard print drapes rustle. The loose corner of an alien poster flutters.
Momo sits up straight in her bed, jumping directly from nightmare into gasping wakefulness. Eyes wide, hair flying, she grips the bedding in shock.
“OKARUN!”