Editing Kara no Kyoukai:Chapter05 012

"Age isn't important when it comes to academics. It's all right to make yourself look young, Cornelius. But it's because you are so concerned with your outward appearance that the contents don't match up."<br>

With a strained sense of calm, the red mage changes the flow of the conversation.<br>

"You know, I don't care what happens to an useless thing like Araya's experiment. To tell you the truth, I don't have any interest in the Maelstrom of Origins. Chasing after something that may or may not exist, it's nonsense. If you wish to intrude upon the domain of God, all you have to do is devote yourself to [[Kara_no_Kyoukai:Chapter05_Glossary_and_Notes|gnosis]]. There's no reason to go upstream."<br>

"It was my own decision to tell you about Ryougi Shiki. Araya lost his life while capturing Ryougi Shiki. That fight was a draw. Following that, this ward became mine. But you know, I have no intention of continuing his experiment. It's obvious as to why. You see, Aozaki, the only reason I came to a godforsaken country like this was because I thought I could kill you!"<br>

Laughing so wildly as to make one worry that he might hurt his throat, the mage leaps up the stairs.<br>

She can only watch calmly as the mage goes up to the second floor.<br>

Because... the first-floor lobby was already full of things that could have been the realization of the mage's ill will.<br>

"--- Slimes, is it?"<br>

But the things that were spreading out from the lobby walls weren't as simple as that. The cream-colored mucus dripped down from the wall and quickly took on a shape.<br>

Their faces looked like [[Kara_no_Kyoukai:Chapter05_Glossary_and_Notes|keloid]] and kept melting away, but these things that kept rebuilding themselves looked very real. If you were to take an example they were like real animals and humans who had rotted away for eternity, existences that were both disgusting and elaborate at the same time.<br>

"To think that you could only realize these sort of things in a place like this. Alba, it would be better for you to switch to being a film director rather than continue as a mage. If it was you, there would be no reason to worry about the budget for preparing special effects. Of course, you would have to specialize in cheap horror movies, but it would still be a much more suitable job for you than director."<br>

...Tch. She clicks her tongue. Now that she thought about it, she had entrusted Mikiya with her cigarettes. Touko was slightly regretful. If she had known things were going to turn out like this she would have bought some Japanese brands at least, she muttered to herself.<br>

"No, you couldn't even be a director. Your presentation is too clumsy. Audiences these days won't be satisfied with just this. I suppose there's no helping it; I'll give you an example. Alba, if you're going to put forward a mystery, you will have to maintain this level at least."<br>

Tock. She kicked the bag beside her feet with the toe of her shoe.<br>

In response to that, the bag opens. Clunk, and the bag opens up like a tulip, but there is nothing inside.<br>

The cat is bigger than Touko. Its body is night black, but does not possess any depth. A flat black cat made from shadow. No, he can't even tell if it is a cat. A shadow that resembled a cat. About where its head would be, there is a eye that looks like an Egyptian hieroglyph.<br>

From the second floor, he looked down at the cat.<br>

His gaze meets the cat's drawing-like eyes. When it does --- erasing the space where its mouth should have been, the cat gives him a broad smile.<br>

Was he having a nightmare? Alba swallows his breath.<br>

"That's not right! Was the story that you lost your familiar to your sister only a lie...?!"<br>

She only replied with an 'I wonder' before shifting her glance to the black cat.<br>

"--- I fed you some nasty things. But this next one should taste a bit better. Real human flesh instead of these chunks of [[Kara_no_Kyoukai:Chapter05_Glossary_and_Notes|ether]]. It should also have plenty of spiritual nutritional value. There's no need to go easy because he's my old schoolmate. I always told you, didn't I? That enemies are for eating."<br>

Crossing the marble floor as if it were sliding along, it runs up the stairs. ...Even so, the cat's feet do not move. Only its eye moves as its sitting shadow races towards the red coated human.<br>

To get from the first-floor lobby where Touko was to the second-floor stairwell where Alba was, it probably hadn't taken ten seconds.<br>

But Alba wasn't some normal person to allow such a thing.<br>

"'''''Go away, shadow.'''''<br>

'''''It is impossible to touch things which are not visible.'''''<br>

'''''It is impossible to see things which are not touched.'''''<br>

Carefully, but with a speed which approached human limits, Alba chants his spell.<br>

--- Spells. Within the realm of mages, they were nothing more than suggestions aimed at oneself.<br>

There is a magecraft for causing wind to blow. Just like a certain type of weapon, this was a power which had an ability that was determined from the start. No matter what mage used it, its effect would not change. Only the incantation was different.<br>

The incantations called spells were for the purpose of activating the magecraft that one's body had become familiar with. Its contents showed the nature of the mage. That was because as long as you kept the necessary meanings and keywords for the activation of that particular piece of magecraft, the details of the incantation could be changed to suit the user's fancy.<br>

The incantations of a narcissistic and pompous mage who easily got infatuated with themself was long. But it was also true that the more meaning you put into the spell, the more powerful the final effect. This was because the stronger the suggestion you put upon yourself, the stronger the ability you pulled out from yourself would be.<br>

Taken in that light, Alba's incantation could be said to be outstanding. Not too long, holding the minimum required contents, and putting a phrase to fix his mind on top of that, the speaking of the incantation itself doesn't even take two seconds.<br>

In a matter of seconds, the top of the flames that emerged from the stairs themselves have burned through the second floor and disappear into the ceiling.<br>

Sucking dry all the oxygen in the lobby in an instant, the sea of flame instantly erased the black cat from the world. That was only to be expected, too. These thaumatergical flames that were well over a 1000 degrees Celsius. Any animal that entered them would soon be melted like butter and turn from a solid to a gas. Passing through the liquid stage wouldn't have taken the time required for a comma.<br>

But Alba saw it.<br>

The impossible shape of the black cat, suddenly appearing once all the flames had burned themselves out.<br>

The black cat licked its thin black body as if it that last spell had been unsatisfactory, then shifted its gaze to the red mage.<br>

With a tearing sharpness, Alba repeated his spell.<br>

Once the black cat reached the second floor, it went up to Alba and opened up its mouth. The body of the cat, which was as big as a man, opened up from head to toe. As if opening a treasure chest with the crown of its head as a lid.<br>

Inside of the flat, planar cat, the corpses of the protoplasmic creatures it had swallowed earlier are pasted like mud.<br>

Alba realized only then. That this thing was only taking the shape of a cat, and that it was an organism that had only a mouth.<br>

With death in front of his eyes, terror makes him repeat his final spell.<br>

The cat that was in the process of biting Alba's body stopped moving.<br>

Even Touko, who had been just standing there watching like a spectator, responds to that sound.<br>

The black man grabbed Alba, then pulled him out of the cat and threw him to the floor. Caught in one of the threefold circles the man carries about him, the cat cannot move.<br>

The man looks at the woman below him. With just that, the air in the lobby changed dramatically.<br>

The tranquil atmosphere disappears. As if the building itself was getting tense after welcoming its true owner.<br>

The first floor and the second floor --- divided between heaven and earth, Touko confronted the one called Araya Souren, who was the source of this disturbance.<br>

"It looks like Alba leapt about too much. I originally intended to finish this without your noticing. Well, it can't be helped. I could not prepare 64 bodies by myself. The fact that you are here in this city is probably coincidence as well as misfortune."<br>

"I don't know which side dragged the other in. But coincidence is the jargon for mystery. In order to disguise a law we can't figure out, we bring out the word coincidence."<br>

Giving that reply, Touko retreated towards the wall.<br>

This opponent is on a completely different level than Alba. Ability-wise they may have been similar, but in this building Araya Souren was greater than anyone else. If she does not put her back to the wall and concentrate on the enemy before her, she is bound to leave herself wide open.<br>

"--- So. What kind of mechanism is this mansion? It couldn't be that it is a box where the paradox of those who are dead being alive is made real, could it? It was concluded hundreds of years ago that fabricating a world where a day is complete and gathering the souls at the moment they die isn't effective. No matter how many hundreds of deaths you gather, you can't achieve your objective.<br>

It's true that I was only pursuing the number of deaths. I was certain that if I experienced tens of thousands of different deaths among different people, I would be able to find a spiritual diffusion that led to the origin. However, with just that alone, I cannot reach the origin. The only thing that you can come close to with that is humanity's 'origin'. You cannot reach the origin of that totality known as the dominant organism.<br>

The important thing is not the amount of deaths. It's the quality of the deaths. If you approach the origin, the ways of dying become surprisingly well-defined. By dissecting the road to death, I determined that there are 64 different methods of dying. The ones who are gathered here are people who die in everyone of those 64 ways. In other words, they are a miniature copy of the world. I experience their suffering, and engrave it into my heart. In order that I may soon simplify that from [insert here] ([insert here]: Eight divination tools drawn in the Chinese Book of Divination [insert here 8 types]. It is said that the first emperor of China created them after observing the heavens) to [insert here] ([insert here]: The four symbols of Yin-Yang. Formed by the merging of Yin and Yang there are four the manifestations called [insert here 4]), so that I may reach Yangyi."<br>

"Hmph. Do you like things that are one that much, Araya? Light and darkness weren't divided because they had to oppose each other, but because that had the potential for containing the greatest number of things. Everything is lonely if it's by itself. That is everything tries to multiply. You were never able to forgive that. Investigating the various deaths of humans, and making that your own by researching those lives. You would probably take even my death and make it into a piece of knowledge about the life and death of a human called Aozaki Touko to be stored away in the corner of your brain. You mean to figure out the value of a human that way, but doing that is the role of [[Kara_no_Kyoukai:Chapter05_Glossary_and_Notes|Yanma]]. As a human yourself, all you can do is to continue existing in a hell that keeps sucking in deaths."<br>

"--- I'm perfectly content with that. Whether it's heaven or hell, the fact that it is close to the floor doesn't change."<br>

Within this building that repeats the spiral of daily life, the original form of all the deaths that humans experience is swirling around. The records that the physical body called Araya Souren contained until now, this building has succeeded him as their container. This place was him, his will itself.<br>

Saying, not a chance, with pumpkin-colored eyes that glared at him in the same manner.<br>