Kara no Kyoukai:Chapter01 05

／4

I wake up after having a knife stabbed through my chest. The impact was tremendous. That person must have been really strong to pierce someone's chest that easily. That said, it was not a violent excess of power. It did not do anything unnecessary, and slipped straight between the bones and the muscle as if they were nothing. What a sense of unity!

The feeling of death that runs through my body. I hear the sound of my heart being pierced and ripped. The "feeling" of it hurt me more than the pain itself, because that sensation was a fear and pleasure incomparable to anything else.

The chill running through my spine is mind-boggling, and my whole body is trembling. There exists uneasiness, loneliness, and the will to live, and I cried without a sound.

Not because of fear or pain.

It's because this unfamiliar feeling of death was there... Even for me, who every night wishes to be alive come sunrise.

I will never be able to escape this feeling

Since I have fallen in love with this feeling...

◇

I hear the door open. The clock shows the time to be two in the afternoon, and it feels as if the sun is blazing through the closed window. It's not yet time for the examination, so maybe it's a visitor.

I have my own hospital room and there is no one else in here. What's here is the bright sunlight, curtains that never flutter in the wind, and this bed.

"Excuse me, Are you Fujoh Kirie?"

It seems the visitor is a woman. Greeting me with a husky voice, she comes near me without sitting down or anything. It seems she's looking down at me. Her stare feels cold.

...This person is a scary person. She will probably bring about my destruction.

But I actually feel happy inside, since it's been many years since I've had a visitor. I cannot bear to turn anyone away, even if the one who comes visiting was Death himself to finish me off.

"You are my enemy, right?"

The woman nods.

I try to focus and somehow see this visitor.

...It may be because of the strong sunlight, but I can only see her silhouette. She is not wearing a jacket, but her pressed, wrinkle-free suit makes her look like a teacher and causes me to relax somewhat. Nonetheless, her orange tie is rather flashy for her white shirt, so I have to take some points off for that.

"Do you know that person, or are you that person?"

"No, I'm an acquaintance of both the one who attacked you and the one you attacked. We, you included, made contact with the weirdest people. We must be pretty unlucky."

Saying that, the woman takes out something from her pocket and puts it right back.

"I forgot you can't smoke in here. In addition, it seems your lungs are bad. The smoke would do you nothing but harm."

She sounds regretful. I guess it was a cigarette box she took out. I've never even touched one before, but I wanted to see this person smoke. Probably... no, surely it would suit her well. Like a pair of lizard-skin pants on a showcase mannequin.

"It's not just your lungs that are bad. That must be the reason, but there are lots of tumors all over your body. Starting with sarcoma, it's worse inside. It seems that hair of yours is the only thing normal. But it's amazing how much strength you have left. A normal person would have died before it got this bad. ... How many years has it been, Fujoh Kirie?"

She is probably asking about my hospitalization, but I cannot answer her.

"I don't know. I stopped keeping track."

Because it's meaningless. Because I won't be getting out of here until I die.

The woman nods and says, "I see."

I don't like her tone, as it contains no sympathy or dislike. The only thing I get from people is sympathy, but this person is not willing to give me even that.

"Is the place Shiki cut all right? I heard Shiki cut you around the heart area, near the main artery... I would assume it was in your bicuspid valve."

She says an amazing thing with a normal tone. I let out a smile as a testament to her weirdness.

"What a strange person. I wouldn't be able to talk to you like this if my heart had been cut."

"Of course. That was just for confirmation."

I see. With that question she confirmed if I was the woman stabbed by that person who I couldn't classify as Japanese-styled or Western-styled.

"But the effect will come in time, Shiki's eyes are strong. Even if that thing was your second existence, the destruction will reach you in time. I wanted to ask you a few things before that... which is why I came here."

Second existence... She must mean that other me.

"I haven't seen you actually floating. Can you tell me what that was?"

"I don't know either. The only view I can see is this view out of this window.

“But maybe that was bad.

“I've been looking down at the world from here. The trees showing the colors of the four seasons, people coming to the hospital in turns.

“They cannot hear me even if I talk, and I cannot reach them no matter how far I stretch out my hands. I have been suffering all this time inside this room. I have been loathing this view for a long time. Isn't that what you would call curseing?"

"I see, it must be your Fujoh blood. Your bloodline is that of an old pure family. It seems they were specialized in prayers, but I see that their true powers were in curses. The name ‘Fujoh’ might come from the word ‘impure’"

Bloodline.

My family. But that came to an end a few years ago. Soon after I was hospitalized, my parents and my brother died in an accident. Since then, a friend of my father has been paying for my medical expenses.

"A curse is not something that is woven unconsciously. What did you wish for?"

...I don't know myself. Even she wouldn't know.

"...Have you ever longed for the outside world for a long time? For so many years that you lose touch with reality? I hated, despised, and feared the outside world. I was overlooking it all the time. After a while, my eyes became weird. I was in the sky above that garden, and was overlooking the world below. It was a feeling like my eyes were flying around while my body and mind were still here. But since I can't move from here, all I can do is to overlook the area around here.”

"You must have imprinted the surrounding scenery into your mind. If that's the case, you should be able to think that you can see it from all directions... You started to lose your vision around that time too?"

I'm surprised. She knows I'm on the verge of losing my vision.

I nod.

"That's right. The world turned white and in the end, nothing was there. At first, I thought everything turned into darkness, but that was wrong."

Everything disappeared, or at least everything that could be seen.

But I have no problem with that, because my eyes are already flying around. I can only see the scenery around this hospital, and I can't get out of here anyway.

"Nothing changed, nothing..."

Then, I cough. It's been a long time since I've talked this much, so my throat is burning.

"I see. So your mind was up in the sky. But then... why are you alive? If that ghost at the Fujiyoh building was your mind, you should have been killed by Shiki."

Yes, I am wondering the same thing.

That person... I guess the name is Shiki... How was that person able to cut me?

That floating me cannot touch anything. In return, I cannot be touched by anything, but that person killed me as if I had a real body.

"Answer me. The you at the Fujiyoh building, was that really Fujoh Kirie?"

"The me at the Fujiyoh building isn't me. Myself looking at the sky and myself in the sky, ‘that me’ gave up on me and flew away. I have been left behind even by myself."

The woman gasps. For the first time, she showed her emotion.

"So it's not that your personality split up. There was someone that gave you, who had one container, a second container. I see, you controlled two bodies with one mind. This is indeed nothing like before."

Now that she says so, that might have been the case.

I gave up on myself and was looking down on the world. But neither one of us could put our feet on the ground, and just ended up floating around. Since I am rejected by the world outside this window, there is no way for me to go out there no matter how much I wish for it.

It must mean that we were connected in the end.

"That makes sense. But why weren't you happy with just imagining the outside world? I don't think there was a need to let those girls fall."

Those girls...? Oh, I see, the girls I was jealous of. They were unfortunate. But I did not do anything, because the girls fell on their own.

"The you at the Fujiyoh building was more like a will. You used that, huh? Those girls were able to fly from the beginning, right? Even if it was just an image in their head, or if they really had the power to fly. People flying in their sleep isn't rare, but it never gets to be a problem. Why? Because they only do so in their sleep and they never even think about flying when they are awake. Since they are unconscious, they have no evil will when they are flying.

“Those girls were special even in that case. We're not talking Peter Pan, but it's easier to fly when you're small. Maybe one or two might have actually floated, but most of them should have floated only in their dreams.

“But you made them think about it. You gave them the impression they had while they were dreaming when they were awake.

“As a result, they found out they could fly. Yes, they can fly... but only unconsciously. Flight with only human power is difficult. Even I cannot fly without a broom. The chance of flight under consciousness is about thirty percent. The girls tried to fly as usual, and fell as they were supposed to."

Yes, they were flying around me. I thought they could be my friends. But all they did was float around me like fishes without noticing me.

It was shortly after that I found out they had no consciousness. I just thought they would notice me if they had consciousness. That was the only reason, so why...

"Are you cold? You're trembling."

The woman's voice is cold like plastic.

I embrace myself as the chill does not go away.

"Let me ask you one more thing. Why did you admire the sky? You hated the outside world."

That's probably because...

"There is no end to the sky. I thought there would be a world I wouldn't hate if I could go as far as I wanted, if I could fly as far as I wanted."

The voice asks me if I found that world.

My chill does not stop. I tremble as if someone's shaking me, and my eyes are getting hotter.

I nod.

"...Every night, I feared I wouldn't be able to wake up the next day, I was scared I wouldn't live until tomorrow. I knew I wouldn't have the strength to wake up if I fell asleep.

“The days like a tightrope were only filled with fear of death. But because of that, I could feel that I was alive.

“I could only smell death every day, but to live, only that smell was reliable.

“Since I am nothing but a discarded shell, I can only feel alive when I am facing death."

That's right. That is why I like death more than life.

To fly anywhere, to go to anywhere I want...

"You took my boy as a companion to death?"

"No. At that time, I didn't know. I was attached to life and I wanted to fly while being alive. I should have been able to do so with him."

"You and Shiki are similar. You guys have a bit of salvation in that you guys both chose Kokuto. It's not a bad thing to search for the feeling of being alive in someone else."

Kokuto. I see, so that Shiki person came to take him back.

I guess my savior was also my death. I have no regret in that though.

"That person is really childish. He is always so straight. That's why he should be able to fly to anywhere he wants if he tries.

“... I wanted for him to take me."

My eyes are hot. I don't get it, but I'm probably crying.

Not because I'm sad... If I could really go somewhere with him, how much happiness would that have been? It's something that wouldn't come true, because it's a dream that shouldn't come true, that's why it's so beautiful that it makes me cry. That is the only dream I've had in the past few years.

"But Kokuto has no interest in the sky. The more one wants the sky, the farther they are from it, huh? How ironic."

"You're right. I have heard that humans have many things they don't need. I was only able to float. I could not fly, and all I managed was to stay floating."

The burning in my eyes disappeared. Probably, this will never again happen in the future.

What's controlling me right now is only this chill inside of me.

"Sorry to be a bother. This is the last question, but what will you do now? I can heal that wound Shiki gave you."

Without answering, I shake my head. It seems the woman frowned a bit.

"I see...

“There are two ways to escape. Escape without purpose, and escape with a purpose. You call the former floating and the latter flight.

“You are the one to decide which one your overlooking view was. But if you choose one out of guilt, that's wrong. You shouldn't choose the path ahead of you based on the sins you carry, but rather, you should carry the sins on the path you choose."

Then the woman leaves. The woman has not told me her name, but I know there was no need to.

... She must have known what I would choose from the beginning. Because I could not fly, and all I could do was to float.

Since I'm weak, I cannot do as she said. That's why I cannot overcome this temptation. The flash of light I felt when I was stabbed in my heart. The overwhelming torrent of death and the beat of life. I always thought I had nothing, but there is still that simple thing left in me.

What's there is death.

This fear that sends a chill down my spine. I have to feel the most death I can to feel the happiness of life. For everything in my life I have ignored until now. But it probably would be impossible to die like I did that night. I probably cannot hope for such a striking end. That death pierced me like lightning, like a needle, like a sword. That's why I will try to come as close to that as possible. I don't have any idea right now but I still have a few days to think about it. And I've already decided on the method. I don't think I even need to say this, but I think my end should be a long fall from a place overlooking the earth.

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