7th of January, 4:55 am, Ai Hoshino's gravesite
Heavy eyes, Aqua quietly sat on a nearby bench. The shadows had started to torment him more and more over the past few days; every time he had closed his eyes, they came, every time he had moved, they came, every time he had thought, they came. And they only ever left after hours of silent whispers, promises, and rambling. He got up as he glanced at his screen; 2 minutes til it will strike 5:00 is what the clock said. Ruby still tried to visit Ai at least once a week to maintain her grave since nobody else did it; he, on the other hand, couldn't even stand to look at it. Now that he saw it in front of him once more, he knew that better than ever before.
However, regardless of this, he still decided to come; perhaps his thoughts had been correct. Maybe he really could think of something while he was here. The graveyard was completely silent and void of any other humans; he even had to climb over the fence just to get in. He looked at his phone one last time, 30 seconds left.
Why am I expecting that I will just magically think of something once the clock strikes 5:00?
If I can't think of anything tonight, I'm going to get help.
I just broke into a graveyard because my thoughts told me to.
What if they tell me to hurt anybody…
He snapped out of it as he heard loud and rhythmic steps approaching from his left. At first, he wanted to turn and see who else was crazy enough to randomly break into a graveyard; however, the mere thought of it just being another illusion of his mind made him refrain from moving. The steps stopped right next to him. "It is so wonderful that I can finally meet you in person, Aqua Hoshino," a voice said, but it was weird. The voice wasn't like the distorted whispers; it sounded gentle, kind even.
Aqua's body tensed up as he tried to turn, just to find out that he physically wasn't able to. "W-Who are you?" Aqua hesitantly asked.
The graveyard fell dead silent for a moment; the only thing Aqua could hear was his own heartbeat. "My name is Tera… Tera, the wise," the man finally said.
It felt like a pressure was lifted off Aqua, a pressure that made him finally able to turn and look again. To his left stood a man who appeared to be in his early twenties. He was blond and wore a brown suit. A nearby lamp illuminated his face ever so slightly; his facial features appeared to be rather European instead of Japanese. His metallic blue eyes glowed down at Aqua as he took a step towards him.
"I know about your suffering, and I know who causes it. It is Tsukuyomi. I have also met her before… We are sort of the same, Aqua. You might not fully trust me just yet; it's natural, but please listen to me… Tsukuyomi feeds off the human soul to stay alive. To do this, she needs to make you suffer," Tera said.
Aqua looked Tera up and down for a moment. His suit looked like it fit perfectly, just made for his frame, while his blond hair gently blew around in the wind.
"Let's say I believe you. How did you know I was here today to begin with?" Aqua's voice was cold and calculated. He already knew the answer, but he just needed the confirmation.
Aqua formed a fist with his right hand. He was unsure whether the man before him, who had a striking resemblance to a person he had seen before somewhere, and he just couldn't put his finger on where, was another shadow of his past, or a gift of the present.
"Tsukuyomi once told you that there were others with supernatural powers. I am one of these people, and so are you. No others are as mighty as Tsukuyomi, but we have some useful techniques… My ability lets me influence another's psyche..."
"In short... The shadows you've been seeing for years weren't your imagination; they were my way of contacting you," Tera said.
Aqua took a few steps away from Tera; getting the confirmation was a bit much after all. "B-But then you're evil, not Tsukuyomi. You've been manipulating me for years, edging me towards ending my life."
Tera remained completely still, his hands still buried deep within the pockets of his suit. "Please let me show you the situation from another perspective, because I believe you are biased…"
Tera waited for Aqua to respond, but all he got was a suspicious gaze. "Okay. I know my methods were brutal, and I'm sorry for that, but there was no other way for me to contact you. Yet, I didn't edge you towards ending your life; I actively prevented it. Every time you were about to kill yourself, my shadows appeared, telling you to keep going, and now you finally managed to kill Kamiki; you have achieved your goal."
Aqua thought back, weighing his options while his sharp eyes stayed centered on Tera. "But you also kept me alive even after Kamiki had died. Why?"
Aqua, who hadn't even noticed that with all the backing up he did, he had distanced himself a good few meters from Tera, stepped closer again.
"Good question," Tera replied, "Because the thing you actually wanted wasn't to kill Kamiki… What if I told you that you could bring Ai back from the realm of the dead?
"What?" Almost invading his personal space, Aqua took another step towards Tera. "But Tsukuyomi said that it's impos-... Oh… I think I understand now… But what do you gain from helping me?"
Aqua's tense body slowly began to relax, and his heart beat slowed down again. Tera's voice was soothing him more than anything else in the past weeks.
"Thank you for asking," Tera said, "What I gain is that Tsukuyomi loses, that's it. Our feud has been going on for decades. I was once just like you; I died and was brought back. But Tsukuyomi wasn't able to control me, thus she cursed me to wander this earth for eternity. I hate her so much it hurts. I want nothing more than to see the witch's plans fail miserably."
Tera reached into another pocket of his suit and pulled out a thick book. It was made out of some kind of black leather, perhaps from a calf or a goat. Tera didn't care to open it, yet from the side alone, its pages looked far older than Aqua himself, probably even older than the cemetery they stood in or Tokyo as a whole, too. On its cover were 4 plain Kanji symbols, Kanji symbols which Aqua had never before seen anywhere. Aqua's hand barreled towards the ground for a second as Tera handed it over to him; the book looked heavy, no question, but it was even heavier than Aqua had expected.
"What is this book?" Aqua asked as his hands glid over its cover. The leather felt really dense, but also, to a degree, silky and almost even oily smooth. That was definitely not goat or calf leather.
"It is the reason why Tsukuyomi cursed me. She told me I flew too close to the sun, that I was poking my head into things beyond my comprehension. But in short, it's what holds the knowledge you need," Tera said as his hands disappeared back inside his coat.
Aqua paused his inspection of the book to look up once more. "Thanks. I will use it wisely."
"Good. For now, I will have to excuse myself, but don't worry, I will always be with you. If you have a question, call me… Till then."
Suddenly, the word around Aqua began to fade. The last thing he saw was Tera turning away from him before his mind drifted off into nothingness.
A lone crow, which silently sat on a nearby gravestone, cawed once before it lifted off the ground and flew high up in the air. The crow flew through the bustling streets of Tokyo, high above the heads of the people who were already up for another day of slaving away at their 9-5, if you can even call it that, job. It passed through the countless skyscrapers, flying close enough to some of them that it almost hit them at full speed. It flew even when it left the big buildings behind again, even when it also left the smaller buildings behind to slow down and finally stop at the outskirts of Tokyo. It was a seemingly random location, barely anybody was ever around this neighbourhood these days; however, 18 years ago, this looked vastly different.
"You have come to tell me something, haven't you, my little friend?" A gentle voice said to the crow, which had by now landed on the person's arm.
She used her free hand to gently pet over the black animal's head while her brown eyes glared down at it. "Just like mother's prophecy said it… At last, the two of them met."
"But don't worry, my little friend," Tsukuyomi said as she gently scratched the crow's head, "I still have the blue-haired girl as an ace up my sleeve; with her, I can surely stop his plan from commencing."
…
The sun was already on his face as Aqua woke up again hours later. His head hurt as he sat in the small patch of grass and looked around, his new book still lying beside him. Slightly embarrassed, he quickly picked the book up and began on his way home. The walk home was uneventful, perhaps even too uneventful; his shadows didn't show up even once. Just a few hours ago, they couldn't be quiet for more than a few minutes, and now absolute silence in his head for easily 30 minutes. Could it be that Tera told the truth about the shadows' origins?
Aqua finally arrived at home, unlocking his front door and silently sneaking inside. It was down to the minute, exactly 1:00 p,m as he entered the house. Luckily, around that time of day, nobody's at home anyway. Ruby was probably out somewhere, and Miyako had worked awfully hard the past few months. He made his way up to his room, shutting his door behind him and placing the mysterious book down on his desk. With a single click, he activated his lamp.
He was greeted by a thick cloud of dust as he expectantly leaned over the book and opened it for the first time. After a few coughs, Aqua murmured, "Hold old is this book?!" to himself. The pages felt like even small contact would make them crumble, yet no matter how hard he touched them, nothing happened. The text on them was written using black ink, the style of prose and font of which looked horrendous. The language, though, while certainly being Japanese, was the weirdest point; some of its passages were just off by a mile.
"Great," he sarcastically said as he started to browse through it; since, much to his discomfort, the book had no table of contents, nor was it in alphabetical order. He sighed as he realized that if he'd really wanted to find what he was looking for, then he'd have to read every last page of it. So he got to work, analyzing every page carefully; some depicted ancient tales, while others showed battles of which Aqua had never heard. Other chapters seemed to contain various rituals, some promising happiness, others to curse your enemies.
Aqua went on, but it was no help; after the first 100 pages, he needed to stop. While the pages up to this point were readable, by now, he could only understand every other sentence; for some reason, the grammar and general structure were just off, too much. "Why is this book written so strangely?" he frowned as he shut the book and placed it to the side. Reluctantly, he turned his ancient PC on for the first time in ages and began his research for anything that even remotely matched.
He spent hours upon hours looking into this topic. The sky outside turned dark as his fixated eyes turned red. Site by site, link by link, he went through old archives and decade-old threats that never gained any traction. Most of these sites were unrelated; however, now and then, he found a site that helped. His red eyes were by now not only red from all the unfiltered blue light that just invaded his pupils, but also from the countless hours he had already spent. He yawned as he felt the subtle sleepiness within him creep up again, but he couldn't let it win; the book told him to continue.
7th of January, 9:00 am, Kana's house
The dim sun that shone through Kana's blinds woke Ruby up. She initially had problems falling asleep, but eventually she managed to fall asleep too. Arms stretched towards the ceiling, and nothing more than a quiet yawn escaped Ruby's mouth since she didn't want to disturb Kana, who was still sound asleep in her bed. Ruby's heart melted away as she looked at Kana's cute face, which was slightly illuminated by a warm ray of sunshine that landed right below her eyes.
Ruby pulled her phone off the small table next to Kana's couch as she lay back down. Bored out of her mind, but not wanting to wake Kana up, she began to scroll through the Twitter posts in which she got mentioned. At first, it was just fluff. Some people randomly tagged her in various memes, others talked about miscellaneous topics, while most people either asked her about Keiko or Kana's current status.
But one post piqued her interest.
The account didn't have a profile picture or an actual name; its username was just a combination of random letters and numbers. The tweet was just 7 simple words long, 7 words that instantly remind Ruby of the reason why she slept at Kana's place to begin with. "Why didn't you come home last night? @RubyKawaii"
"What are you looking at?"
Ruby's phone flew through the air as she physically jumped up, her head missing Kana's chin by mere centimeters.
The time seemed to slow down as the phone began its descent. High above her head, Ruby could just watch as her new phone, which she had gotten just a week prior since her last one stopped working right after Aqua had dropped it, was about to meet the same fate as its predecessor.
Then Kana smoothly caught it and instinctively looked at the screen.
Ruby didn't dare to move through the silent room as Kana's gaze dove into her phone.
"Ruby, what is this?" Kana asked after a moment, only briefly looking up. Her eyes down at the floor, Ruby stayed silent. Kana read the message over and over again.
"Is this why you wanted to stay with me?" Kana asked after a moment, her voice softer this time around.
Ruby's cheeks looked pinkish and pale at the same time, and her eyes were distant as Kana placed her fingers under her chin and gently forced Ruby to look up at her. "I'm sorry that you had to find out," Ruby said as their eyes met, "You already have more than enough trouble, and-"
"Hey, it's okay." Their shoulders touched lightly as Kana sat down next to her. "This is a serious matter. Do you want to tell me more about this guy?"
Ruby gently shook her head. "No, I don't."
"Come on, look at me. I let you in, and now it's your turn." Kana reached out for Ruby's hand, gently squeezing it.
"But you also needed your time to process." Ruby's voice was quiet.
Kana gripped her hand even tighter. She knew that now it's her turn to be the supportive one. "That's true. But your situation is different; you're in direct danger. Have you at least told Aqua?"
A knot formed inside Ruby's chest at the mere mention of Aqua's name. "I don't want to have anything to do with him anymore. I am strong enough without him."
"I understand… But then let me help you instead," Kana insisted.
Ruby spoke after a short while of silence. "I think that this has been going on for a long time. He recently gave me a picture he drew… It's… it's of me sitting in my room… I don't know what I should do; he even broke into my house. What if he placed cameras around my house while I was gone? What if he made weird videos and pictures of me while I was naked? This could ruin my career…"
The pain within her voice physically hurt Kana. Ruby's words were quiet, yet echoing back and forth in Kana's head, amplifying every time they bounced off the inner walls of her head.
"Should we inform the police?" Kana placed her hand on the side of Ruby's head and gently pulled her closer as she tried to console her to the best of her abilities.
"NO," Ruby said, louder than intended, as she jumped up and shoved Kana away. "What if he really has those videos? This would only anger him."
Being shoved as that hurts, but Kana didn't take it the wrong way. She stood up and gently placed her hand on Ruby's hot cheek, which made her temporarily forget about her own problems, her wound, which didn't even allow her to look into a mirror just a day ago, was gone from her mind.
"What should we do then?" she asked.
Kana's red eyes beamed at Ruby's like two glistering gemstones worth millions, while her cold hand did a great job at cooling Ruby's hot temper down a lot. Kana's red, shoulder-length hair looked a bit longer than usual; Ruby had never actually seen her hair unkempt before.
"Well," said Ruby after she thought for a long moment, "he will probably want something from me eventually. Depending on what it is, we could maybe catch him on our own then."