Watching the maroon blood pool beneath, reflecting the blue haze of the moon in its sheen,
it was difficult not to find myself feeling like a murderer. If that wasn’t enough, the blood
splattered across the similarly moonlight reflecting blade, not to mention the slouched heap
that lurched over within that ever-expanding puddle beneath our feet cemented that belief
within me. Ahhhh, how did it get to this point – I was sure he was twirling the same half-
assed regrets withing that fading mind of his. Beasts beneath the moonlight, we remained in
our positions like statues, neither of us breathing too heavily nor letting our eyelids fall. We
both knew that the first to allow their eyes to shut would find them to remain shut for the
remainder of their life, however short that remainder may be. Beneath us and surrounding
us, blades of grass were whisked in all directions by the nighttime winds, while the rustling of
the leaves that grew upon the trees demarcated us two from the exterior world. Hmph, it
looked like he would be the first to fall into the embrace of death, but being who he is, it was
more of a fleeting reunion – being who I am, I understood that warped feeling. Perhaps we
were the only two in existence who understood something that absurd, and I was sure that
we were the only two who had experienced it. A meaty thud before an accompanying splash
told me that I was finally free to let that darkness encroaching upon my vision have its way
with me. Ah, that second thud must be me. Aggressively I was torn from that darkness out
into the moonlight once again, like somebody had ripped my nervous system from
underneath my skin and muscles, and finally, it was able to experience what the protective
exterior experienced for the first time in vivid detail. It was a difference akin to working in a
garden with gloves as opposed to bare handed. I could feel the world around me to such an
extent that I was unsure whether I was a part of it or not, the dirt felt like a part of my body,
the wind felt like the air blowing through my lungs, the sword still clutched in my hand felt like
a foreign object that had entered my system, it felt violently like the sensation of an
extremely sharp knife lodging itself in my skin. Within my flesh and visceral muscles, I could
feel the coolness of the steel, the warmth of the hilt, the blood, sweat, and dirt that covered it
and myself from head to toe. Another ripping sensation, and those vivid connections had left
me, leaving me with the vague throbbing sensations and disconnect you feel during severe
sickness. Another ripping of my senses, this time with less force, and I returned to the same
state of being as I had been prior to my death, the same state that everybody lives their lives
in. It was life. I was back in the world of the living, right in that middle between being returned
to the earth and taken to the stars. Well, I don’t really know if there even is anything up in
those stars rather than heat and light, despite my familiarity with death, I couldn’t say I was
familiar with what lay beyond. Everything I felt was still just an illusion – it was as simple as I
had been taken from this world and then thrown back into it. Though hair and blood draped a
curtain over my vision, I could see that the man in front of me had experienced a very similar
phenomenon, probably identical to what I just had. I couldn’t know whether it was a different
experience for him – I would probably never get the chance to ask either – but this process
was probably much more objective than subjective. There was no room for emotion or
personality when faced with death, there was only the process of dying, and for us, returning
ungratefully to our bodies. More hearing than seeing, the clink of his sword in the dirt
indicated that he was more used to this than I was. He had died many more time than I had.
Noiselessly, we both struggled to our feet. There, once again underneath the moonlight,
once again resembling beasts, we stood firm, almost identically as firm as we had when this
all began. Physically, we were no worse for wear, mentally, we were fatigued. Sparks
alighted the air around us, singing our nostrils, sending waves of light into the darkness
surrounding us. We were speaking to each other, not with words but with something more
powerful, meaningful, than words that even without any ill intent were often ambiguous and
easily misinterpreted. Words were insufficient for us, the only way we could communicate
was through sending the other to the brink of hell and back.
Far above my reach, the leaves of the overhanging maple danced in the sunlight, superimposing their cavorting movements upon my face and body along with the cold teak flooring. Where my fingers were splayed and my palms pushed against the ground its comparative coolness made me want to smush my face against it, but it was the kind of assuaging of heat that only came in small dosages; the more I tried to soak it up the less effective it would be. It was unbelievably hot for a day so earlier in the territory of summer, and it was a sticky mugginess that pervaded every part of my body, with even the tacky metallic black and gold dotted yukata that I had draped lazily over myself doing little in terms of mitigating either the warmth or stickiness. Rather, the significant portions of my body that were open to the world around me felt like they were sticking to the molecules of air that surrounded me, giving the impression that exposing myself to the atmosphere was somehow more stifling than covering myself from it. Another breeze pushed at me and the maple looming above, but it pushed greater heat towards us rather than a frigid wind, and both I and the maple were left to soak up the blistering force of the afternoon sun. They say that through evaporative cooling trees can reduce temperatures surrounding them by a significant amount, but either this maple was indeed to drained of energy to enact such a process or I was in for a rude shock when I stepped out from under its protection. Heat must have begun to suffocate my eardrums, because I barely heard the movement of the sliding door to my left or the shuffling of feet against the floorboards. The subdued muffling of their movement indicated that they were wearing some kind of socks rather than being barefoot, but I couldn't imagine what kind of madman would do so in this weather. Said madman took their seat beside me and followed my gaze out into the courtyard, not speaking even a word of greeting. For a while, the both of us stared absentmindedly towards the towering maple, towards the variously coloured flowers of almost as various species that lined the rectangular garden, of which was lush enough that it was difficult to make out the rooms and walkway on the opposite side. A result of the beaming light that illuminated with garish intensity every blade of grass, petal of a flower or collection of leaves that it landed on, the interior that we sat ourselves in, and by extension the other rooms and paths that lined the traditional Japanese mansion, were shrouded by darkness. Stark in disparity, the foggy black interiors seemed exceptionally black as we stared out into the exceptional white, and it took a great while for my eyes to adjust when I turned to face my visitor. "They've accepted you, I see." He cut to the chase, evidently unconcerned with pleasantries. I knew his type, I had seen my fair share of them. Seen too much to be naive yet seen too little to take on another person's point of view, experienced enough to believe that following common courtesy in these situations was a waste of time, yet not experienced enough to relish in any chance of frivolous conversation. Without even turning to face me he rose and headed back out into the adjoining hallway, neglecting to slide the door shut behind him. This wasn't out of rudeness, but again an unconscious need of his for everything to be as streamlined and efficient as possible. He was signaling that I was to follow him. I stood, and as I pulled my outstretched palms from behind me it almost felt like I was peeling tape from my body. Rubbing my hands sticky with sweat against the yukata, I followed out into the similarly wood-abundant hallway, much dimmer than the room I had been whiling away my time in, but as my eyes adjusted without the unhelpful influence of the glaring sunlight it appeared less encroached by shadow. "Hey, do I have to do any kind of interview?" He seemed less annoyed that I had asked a question than the fact that it was a question he deemed to be a waste of both our breaths. As we continued along the gloomy hallway he explained that no such thing would be required, that I had been accepted on the basis of a myriad of recommendations, that my background and previous behaviour had been sufficiently researched and scrutinsed, and that I would start tomorrow. He went on to ask whether I would be taking lodgings here or not, at which I answered that of course I would, it's not like I had anywhere else to go at this point. A twist of his thin, cracked lips indicated that he wasn't impressed with my appendage to that answer. That sentiment was made abundantly clear as he lectured me all the way out of the traditional inn-like area and out through the hanging zelkovas and cedars that blanketed the entire grounds in varying shades of green, and when autumn came, I assumed orange. While passing under their flickering shade he would go on to tell me how he had grown a distaste for things that wasted time, and as he put it, not his, but the world's. Apparently, anything that took up more time than it had been allotted was a disgrace, ungrateful for the long life that Mother Nature had granted us. When I inquired as to how he separated what was a waste of time and what wasn't, he answered with exasperation in his voice that it was an intangible ideology rather than a rule, and that it like a piece of broken glass, every time he turned it it would reflect a new version of that truth. He struck me as somebody that didn't like showcasing his capriciousness, but was relatively conspicuous to those around him. Soon we reached we left the gates that demarcated this place from the outside world, apparently in more ways than one, but it seemed that an explanation for that comment was what he deemed a waste of time. After leading me to the front of a modern yet not ostentatious apartment encircled by a residential district that bordered on the inner city, he dropped a pair of silver keys into my palm before explaining necessities such as what days to take what trash out, how the bills would be paid and other such domesticities. Done with his rigamarole, he offered a pat on the back and the advice to 'not waste my time' before disappearing back down the narrow street that we entered from before being completely enveloped by the shadow of the zelkovas. I stared up at my new home. On street level, it seemed that the lower half of the bunch of apartments functioned as some kind of cafe or meeting area, smaller trees lining the front with large glass panes opening up the interior to the tangerine glow of the dipping sun. A set of stairs carried me upwards across the various rectangles stacked on top and to the side of each other, where I came to face the door of my apartment. Number 5. It didn't seem like there were too many number higher than mine, but I didn't know how many of them were occupied. My keys jangled against each other as I inserted the one responsible for the front door into its lock, twisting it a couple of times before finally landing upon the right angle. For some reason I pushed the greyish-blue door open tentatively, though there was no need to be inconspicuous. I guess I just wasn't used to having my own apartment, let alone one so far estranged from the town I had spent the majority of my years in. It wasn't anything special by city standards, with a generic living room, bathroom, bedroom, and small balcony overlooking the sprawling forest to the building's right and the various small stores and diners that littered the streets to the left, slowly beginning to rise with a warm glow as the sun continued to dip below the horizon and tag-in the moon as night approached. Our walk here had been significant enough that even the temperature had changed to a much more somber warmth. Carefully I pulled the obi and unwound the yukata, leaving it resting against the light-cherry couches in the living room as I headed towards the bathroom. It was similarly hotel-like in its spotless newness, with my employers seemingly even being kind enough to fit it with a range of soaps, shampoos, and facial creams. Disconnected from the bath like a western bathroom, the shower was closed off from the rest of the room by rectangular vertical slabs of glass, with the one that faced the rest of the room sliding to allow for entry inside. My hand wavered above the various editions and brands of shampoo, varying in colour and size almost as much as the flowers in the garden that had enchanted me earlier. Finally, after some deliberation, I chose the one that seemed the least artificial, olive green with various health and environment friendly labels lining the bottle. I wasn't particularly passionate about such issues, but I thought that I may as well try and aid the cause where I could. As I stepped into the shower and began to soak myself in the welcome frigidness of the falling water, I realised that from today on, I would probably be doing significantly more for the environment than using naturally-sourced shampoo. The duties I would have to carry out weren't delineated to me in much detail as they had believed that overwhelming me with information wasn't prudent, but rather left me with a superficial explanation of how my world would come to broaden as the days passed. Of course, they had explained the history of the organisation, why they were needed, the ideologies and rules they were bound by, and what I would incur by breaking them, but the feeling I got from their lecture was less one of a formal institution laying out objective detail than a family business explaining to their son how they would run the shop when the time came. Cold streams of water began to flow across every part of my body that had been tainted with sweat by the heat, a mark strong enough that even after rubbing it into my skin thoroughly I still felt marked by the sunlight. maybe I had gotten sunburned. I sure was exposing a lot of skin with my outfit, so it didn't seem too farfetched. As the water began to pool and trickle towards the metal drain at my feet, they resembled small rivers that verged off from the ocean that was me and eventually reunited as they plunged into an even deeper source of water. From today on I didn't think I could look at rivers the same way again. This wasn't a bad thing, however, as after the knowledge gained today they appeared to me as more beautiful than ever. In fact, every facet of nature did. Since I was young the natural world that encircled me had always drawn my admiration, and it wasn't just because of my status as a country boy, but it felt like an intrinsic connection that only I had been born with, allowing me to see and feel things that only I was privy to see and feel. Of course, that had been explained away as the manifestation of my power, or rather, the symptoms of my power beginning to manifest. After I had sufficiently rinsed the heat from my body, I started on lathering the thick, long hair that fell almost to my shoulders. Maybe I should get a haircut; I did want to look good for my first day on the job, after all. Once I had stepped out of the shower, dried my soaking head and body, I pulled the bathrobe that had been packed in one of the bedroom drawers and fell lazily onto the cherry couches, flicking between channels on the small box of a TV that rested on an elevated marble stand beneath the open window. From below came a low banging, persisting for a few seconds before fading into the night. It looked like at least the apartment underneath mine was inhabited. I wonder if all their employees live in these apartments, or if cases like mine are few and far between. I assumed many of the more important figures resided in that extensively large traditional mansion from before. My body was fatigued from the journey and scorching heat, my mind exhausted from all the new information it had soaked up alongside all the prior information it had to recontextualize, and my eyelids began to slowly droop shut. In that lulled state between consciousness and slumber, my brain seemed to be preoccupied with storing and sorting all the important knowledge and memories, pushing only the more frivolous towards the forefront of my barely waking mind. If that boy had been so hung up on managing his and other's time, why had he sat down wordlessly beside me without speaking up, and why for so long? It was already dark out, and the low, rhythmic hum of crickets sent me into a deep sleep until morning.
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Instead of the man overly pedantic towards the management of time from yesterday, I was greeted as I dazedly stumbled down the stairwell by a fresh face. His features were sleek but hard, a large nose that somehow didn't seem incongruent with his features but rather made his attractiveness more prominent stood at the centre while amber-tinged eyes looked out towards the sunrise with a profound enough glow that he couldn't have been simply appreciating its beauty. As I approached the large concrete wall he was leaning his shoulder against, he turned his attention towards me and the depth of his eyes seemed to readjust to my appearance. No longer in an ostentatious yukata, I was instead adorned with a plain white buttoned dress-shirt and similarly bland black bands, which paled in comparison to his modest but noticeably more expensive and thought-out attire, a specially designed jacket resting in perfect harmony with his outline upon his body, while his pants were a much sleeker black than mine. "Don't get the wrong impression," he offered in response to what must have been my obvious staring. His black hair, long enough to fall over his eyes as he moved his head back towards the sunrise, covered his expression from my vision, and I almost wouldn't have noticed the cigarette that rested in his mouth if not for the tendrils of smoke that wafted high into the crisp morning air. "Headquarters made the jacket, you'll get your own too. Not too disappointed to have that nuisance of a guy replaced, I hope? Well, its only temporary. They wanted me to show you what I could do" he posited while flicking the ash from his cigarette and beginning to move towards me. Instead of stopping once he reached me, he instead continued past me towards the apartments. I new better than to make any needless comments, so I only followed behind. I could assume what this was. I may be from the country, but that doesn't mean I'm ignorant enough not to have realised something so simple. "There's a reason you left these apartments empty and filled them with things you would only find in a hotel, isn't there? Why would they let me stay here, then, if it would only screw with their plans?" "Mmmm, well, let's just say that they were my plans rather than theirs." His voice was gravely, yet somehow smooth enough to be pleasurable to my ears. It was like a rough gemstone that had been sandpapered down, yet couldn't hide its original shape. I followed behind him as he approached the open stairs and began to ascend, the smoke of his cigarette trailing behind him like a serpent. "I guess you're in a high enough position that they let you do whatever you want, right?" "I wouldn't make assumptions, if I were you. The people I work for aren't rigidly stuck-up enough that they would care if we did things our own way. In fact, they usually don't even give us executioners any more directions than to execute. I guess it's my bad for not anticipating the possibility of a new tenant." "My impression was that its a government body, so I assumed that it's modus operandi would reflect that." "There you go with your assumptions again, that better not be a trait of yours or you'll be in for a tough time here." "Don't worry, it's not on my character sheet." We had reached the apartment below mine, the source of the banging from last night that I was too hazy to be concerned about, before finally putting out his cigarette and throwing it in a nearby trashcan. He walked up to the front door and gestured for me to stand back, but nevertheless watch intently. With a single swift motion he pulled the slender sword from his hip and pushed his shoulder against the door, forcing himself into the darkness of the apartment. With the door thrown wide open, the feeble morning sun illuminated the interior, but only so far as the couple of steps that the man had taken into its depths. From my place back on the lowered platform of the stairs leading up to the door, I watched intently as I witnessed my first ever execution and a felt a preliminary taste of my life to follow on the tip of my tongue. Almost immediately a figure launched itself from the murky shadows towards the man, who with little time to react was flung back out into the light of the sun and the hard concrete outside the apartment door. I expected him push himself back up with vigour, but he didn't. He remained on that cold, rough concrete, before a pool of crimson began to reflect the pale glow of the sun. Slowly, like an infant animal leaving the mother's nest for the first time, the figure placed its long, thin fingers on the frame of the open door, using the momentum to slowly push itself out into the open. It's face was a grotesque mismatch of what a human should be, and while the rest of it resembled frighteningly closely the body, arms, and legs of a human, my own body had a profound sense of the reality of the matter being otherwise. As it outstretched its willowy fingers out towards my face, a glint of steel came between me and the creature, sending it retreating back into the darkness it had emerged from. No longer a body bleeding on the concrete, the man now stood before me, gaping wound on his shoulder and neck swiftly closing as the pieces of stringy flesh and blood pulled themselves together, then turned his head towards me with a smirk. Slowly, menacingly, he waltzed back into that same darkness, trailing his sword across the flooring behind him, then disappeared into shadow. For a moment there was a deafening stillness and silence across the world, then a muffled scream resounded from inside the depths that lay outstretched before me, and the long tendrils of hair that had belonged to the creature were dragged by the man's fist back out into the sunlight. The creature clasped in his grip flailed about, one of its limbs striking the man and tearing his left ear roughly from his head. In retaliation the man brought the creature up to eye level and tore it in half with the help of his blade, splattering a blackness more impregnable than any I had seen before across the room. It looked like, unlike the man, the creature would be unable to lift itself from the floor again, and the last of its life sputtered out of existence as both halves convulsed, before any movement completely ceased and once again the world was left with a still quietness. Some part of me had been deluding itself to believe that executing this apparent enemies of humanity would be something glamourous, done for the better of the world, but as my eyes fell upon the blood-soaked man, pressing the ear that he had picked up from the floor back against his head so it could reattach, and the look of profound grief layered upon unimaginable satisfaction that soaked his face, my delusions were torn from me, just as the two halves that lay in bloody mess across the floorboards had been from each other.