Four Months After the Death of Ishida Ken

In her dreams, the hallway to her brother’s home dojo was long and dark. The ceiling was overcast with cobwebs, and the floorboards were half-rotting and roughhewn such that they caught her little feet and sent her falling face-first into the dust, again and again. This was the toll her mind inflicted upon her. If she wanted to see Ken, even in fantasy, then she had to crawl through the darkness, catching splinters in her pudgy hands and ruining the drawing she clung to.

The recurring dream was a depressing perversion of an already unpleasant memory. At the far end of the hallway, coming from the partially open, sliding paper door, she could hear the repetitive thwacks of Ken practicing his sword strikes. A familiar sound growing up, but made much worse in the nightmare, with her mind conjuring the sounds of his pained panting and, worst of all, the dripping of his blood onto the floor. Instead of the ticking of a clock, she heard the drop, drop, drop of Ken’s lifeforce running down the hilt of his wooden training sword and hitting the tatami mats below.

It took the same amount of time to finally reach the door at the end of the hall as it always did, which was to say, just when panic began to grip her, and she had lost all but the last shred of hope of reaching it, she was there.

Ken was exactly as she remembered him that day. He was boyish and shirtless, dripping sweat in front of a bamboo post, legs and arms trembling slightly from exhaustion, a look of total focus on his face. Like in real life, he didn’t acknowledge her entering, so lost in his practice that he couldn’t even notice the blood pouring down his wrists from the torn open callouses. With every hit, crimson droplets splattered him and everything around him in an arc, soiling his torso, pants, floor, and striking dummy. In life, he had only begun to bleed minutes before she’d come, but here, it was a horror show that worsened the longer she looked, like something out of a gory B-movie, covering him almost entirely in heavy red.

“Onii-san, I drew us at the festival!” she exclaimed as usual, holding her drawing out proudly.

She almost repeated the whole script, the cry of shock at his injuries, the attempts to get his attention, breaking down in tears, etc. but the nightmare was all so passe to her by now, having visited her almost nightly. Nothing she could do would stop him, not tugging on his legs, or trying to climb the striking post – Ken would continue his training for as long as the dream would allow.

No, instead she let the fear and anxiety fade away and allowed herself to enjoy the sight of her brother standing before her again. He was young, dedicated, and alive; if she focused her mind on those qualities, then she could easily ignore the bloodbath and the leaden weakness slowly sapping at his strength with every strike, making him slower and sloppier, but never taking from him enough to grant him a merciful rest.

“Why?” she’d always wanted to ask. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of why she never did. There had always felt like there would be some other, more appropriate time to bring it up. “What are you training for? Wh—”

She was shaken awake. Zelda was looking down at her horrified, and her hand on her shoulder was clinging to her as though it was afraid she would pass from this world if it loosened.

“Oh god, Maki, please tell me you haven’t been here since I left.” She called her by her name; it had been ‘baby’, ‘babe’, or ‘sweetie’, or some similar epithet for a year now.

Maki peeled her face off the borrowed old textbook it had molded itself into and blinked up at her girlfriend – soon to be ex, she was pretty sure. She could see it in her face, hear it in her tone; it was over.

“I thought you were presenting a paper in Atlantic City.”

“It’s Friday, Maki.” Again, Zelda used her name. It sounded accusatory in her Southern drawl. Zelda loved cute little nicknames and had one for even her casual acquaintances. “Have you eaten once?”

She creased her forehead, trying to remember, before discarding it as relatively unimportant. “I’ve been reading into semiotics. You were right, I think it’s the key to—”

Zelda shook her head forcefully, beautiful, brown ringlets coming free from the loose bun she kept her hair in. “Stop. Don’t—I can’t handle any talk about that right now. I need to know if you’ve eaten in the two days since I’ve seen you!”

Maki looked around her desk at all the various papers copied from rare books from the library, the borrowed texts, and her diligently categorized notebooks. Hadn’t there been a jar of mixed nuts here?

“I snacked,” she said. Then, for honesty’s sake, she added, “I think.”

That was the start of their last fight if it could be called that. Zelda yelled, pleaded, accused, and argued her points, while Maki responded in a short listless monotone. She wasn’t sure why she did even that much, the outcome was set in stone regardless. In the end, it came down to an ultimatum, as she knew it would.

Zelda was sitting on her bed, face buried in her hands, thoroughly exhausted emotionally. “I thought that this vendetta of yours was a part of the grieving process – I thought I was helping! But you aren’t grieving, you aren’t feeling anything, you’re barely living. Talking to you now is like talking to a machine. You’re a revenant and you aren’t even dead!”

Maki stared at her palms. They were soft and uncalloused; she’d never loved the martial arts as her brother did. The pain had always kept her away, and how sweaty everyone was at the end of class had upset her bookish sensibilities. What a silly girl she had been.

“I came here, I’ve been coming here, to help, not to watch you kill yourself slowly. And despite myself, I still want to help.” She took a deep breath and readied herself to make the demand she’d likely been debating for weeks if not months. “All I’m asking is for you to take a few weeks or a month to rest, recover, and heal, or if not that, then take a day off a week. Just one day off when I can hold you, and we can talk like we used to, one night that I can go to sleep knowing that you’re safe, with me, in my arms. Because I’m sorry, Maki, I can’t do this anymore…Are you,” she laughed bitterly at the yawning silence between them, “are you even listening?”

“I will,” said Maki, continuing to examine her weak, feeble hands, “make sure to eat every day. I will make sure to wash my clothes, to bathe, to do my makeup, to look presentable – all of those things I can promise you. They will, I’ll admit, be good for me and my cause, especially as the months and years wear on. But I won’t stop, Zelda. I won’t stop.”

Zelda made a sound like she’d been punched in the gut but said nothing, stopping only to press her copy of the door key into her ex’s palm before she left. Maki didn’t look up, tracking her by sound as she picked up her bags and swept out of the apartment, choking back tears until she made it past the door and into the hallway. The thin plaster walls carried the muffled echoes back at her like knives through her throat.

It was unfortunate, but perhaps, she thought, for the best. Zelda had believed her quest to be about vengeance and grief, and Maki could admit that it was, but she failed to consider duty and honor, or simple, neighborly compassion. Certainly, she could take her time, and be as thorough as reasonable caution demanded, but at what cost? Neither her pride nor her humanity would permit her to sacrifice one more brother, or father, or husband to the monster that killed Ken. How many would die just so that Maki could appease the misguided pleas of her loved ones?

No, it was best to go this alone. Zelda had access to some minor magic through her matrilinear line, but she was, and would forever be, a mere hobbyist. The woman lacked the tolerance for risk required to work any great spells. She was gold, rare, beautiful, and impossible to tarnish, but soft and delicate, whereas the task required each of them to be like sharpened steel, with hands as calloused and inured to the ways of pain as master swordswomen. Ken had hardened himself, body and mind, through the process of decades, while she had only a few years according to his own research before the Hungry Ghost would haunt the streets of Chinatown again. If, and it was a big if, she was to have any allies in this, then they would need to be like her, driven beyond what most would consider madness.

Maki contemplated the key in her hand; she and Zelda had gone together to make a copy for the latter the day Maki had moved into the little studio off-campus. It was just another spare key now, a spare to the spare. She tossed it into the wastepaper basket by her desk. There was no need for two.

A few days after the Bell Street Exorcism

Her grandfather mussed her hair as he looked over her shoulder. All the love in the world beamed down at her as she looked up at his wrinkled face. “Such a pretty drawing. Go, show it to your brother and let him know that dinner is almost ready.”

“Okay!” She said cheerily. She had been, as she always was, secretly hoping for an excuse to bother Ken.

Her little feet pattered on the parquet floors of her family home. When the Ishida Clan had first moved to Black Harbor, they had brought four generations with them and had bought a home accordingly. It was a veritable mansion by today’s standards, and larger all the still as seen through the eyes of a child.

She turned the corner and looked down the long, imperious hall that led to the home gym. Twelve worn, wooden torii stood between her and her destination, all adorned in ample charms hanging from long frayed ropes. All of the eaters of the dead lined the hall. Perched atop the torii were crows and vultures and ravens, and in their shadows sat watchful cats and rats, jackals and coyotes. They eyed her impassively and she them, for she and they knew that all of them together loved her brother the same, undyingly and unquestioningly.

The water that flowed along the floor towards her was warm and she enjoyed the way that it splashed her shins as she ran. It purified her as it went, washing away all pain and horror as it flowed through her toes and over her feet, and banishing all that was wicked.

“Onii-san, I drew us at the festival!” she exclaimed as usual, casting the sliding door to the side, holding her drawing out proudly.

A shock met her on the other side. There was, as always, a blood-covered warrior practicing his sword strokes on a dummy, but there was no boyish, thirteen-year-old Ken here. Rather, it was James Li, tall, strapping, and very much a grown man. That was strange, she thought, they were basically the same age, so he like her should have only been six. And as she had the thought, she looked down and saw that she, like him, was in her early twenties.

Blood poured from James worse than in any of her previous nightmares. His back was as it had been after his fight with the ghost, more wound than flesh. She could see his spine in no less than four locations. Other than those terrifying injuries, he bore all the wounds of his life as though they were fresh. On his front were the gouges she’d seen him receive in that viral fight with the Tiger gang member, and everywhere else were countless cuts and bruises, such that fragments of bones peeked out at her from each of his limbs and many of his ribs.

Maki clasped her hands over her mouth, but the dream wouldn’t allow her to turn her head away, as much as she wanted desperately to do so. Thankfully, unlike in past nightmares with Ken, James noticed her entrance immediately and gave her a cheery smirk. He threw his wooden practice sword aside and took a great breath, healing each of his many wounds with an easy effort of will.

“Oh god, please don’t call me ‘Onii-san’. My sister will strangle me if she finds out I do sibling-play,” he said, taking a bucket of water from the ground and pouring it over his head.

The water instantly cleaned him of all blood, for which she was grateful, but annoyingly also clung to his thin white pants in a way that revealed every inch of his perfect body to her. He was grace and beauty incarnate as he walked up to her, taking the drawing from her weak grasp.

“James?” she asked, disbelieving. This wasn’t right – Ken was supposed to be waiting in here for her, her beloved brother, not the city’s most infuriating man.

“Eh!” he said with surprise, looking back and forth from the drawing and her stunned face. “You drew this? Ahahahahahaha! This looks like a baby made it!”

“Sh-shut up!” she said, snatching it away from him. She frowned at the paper; couldn’t her mind have updated it as it had everything else in the dream? “I made it when I was six, you jerk!”

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“You know Maki,” he said, wagging his eyebrows, “if you want my attention, you don’t need any excuses.”

James placed those leathery, calloused hands of his around her waist and picked her up, pulling her into his grasp as though she were weightless. She found herself wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, clinging to him without meaning to. Their faces were only inches apart and it was a work of willpower to not seize his lips with hers, to carve her name on his tongue with hers. He was oh so beautiful and glowing, like the dawn after a long night.

She had to tear her eyes away, lest she embarrass herself by launching into some amateurish ballad. “That’s not it at all! Ken is supposed to be in this dream, not you!”

“Oho! Maki’s dreaming about me? How flattering.”

He spun her around and planted a kiss on her cheek. She had to admit to herself that it thrilled her, even as it called uncomfortably to moments when Ken had done the same.

“Now, how should I repay the kindness?” he mused mockingly. “Ah, I know.” He slapped her on the butt and took a firm hold of her cheek. “Why else would my dear, sweet Maki call me to her mind? She’s horny, of course. Awakened something in you, did I?”

She gasped, jumping in his grasp, but alas, her body wouldn’t dare try to wriggle away as much as her pride may have demanded it to. “You brute! I don’t know why you’re invading my dreams, but that has nothing to do with it.”

“Hmm, you’re pretty clearly mistaken though.”

The martial artist tightened his hold on her ass, to just before the threshold of pain. It was a dream after all, and her mind could only conjure so much. She told herself that she hated the feeling; it was like James was announcing his dominion over her body more thoroughly with that gesture than words could ever hope to do.

And yet, in the privacy of sleep, some deeper, truer part of her rebutted, ‘But if you are his, then he is yours in a way. And you want him very much, don’t you?’

“No,” she whimpered. But even before the word left her lips, she knew it was a lie.

“Ha! Oh, come on, Maki.” He lowered his face into the crook of her neck and gave her a hickey, of the sort she always wanted to receive but was too proud to wear in waking life. “You’re dreaming, and you know you’re dreaming, which means you could make me stop with less than a word, and yet—”

James finished the sentence by grabbing the collar of her kimono and tearing it off her, leaving her hanging off of him completely nude. Through those thin pants of his, she could feel his manhood harden, so, so tempting as it called forth sense memories from their long night together of pure ecstasy. Her sensitive nipples and breasts delighted in the feeling of his hard, male chest pushing into them, those powerful muscles tensing as he hugged her tight.

‘There’s no shame in the wanting. He wants you more than he can admit to himself, you need only look into his eyes to see that. What gain is there in fighting your mutual attraction, what reason?’

Maki turned her head to face him and there saw all the dozens of looks he’d given her in the short time they’d known each other. There was so much respect and adoration as well as an ember of love that she knew she could tend to and stoke into a roaring bonfire if she should only try. Of course, there was a Ken-like teasing quality there as well, but she’d have it no other way.

She kissed him and was rewarded with the impossible taste of his saliva as his lips parted for her. It was disgusting and foul the way she longed for the flavor of that slimy, gross bodily substance of his. She should have been revolted by herself the way that she scooped it into her mouth with her tongue, and with the way that her insane fervor for more caused their mixed spit to drip down her chin and onto her breasts. God, she was like an animal, a graceless beast driven by some sick hunger, for it, for him, and for everything that he could possibly give her.

James reached up and grabbed a fistful of her hair as tightly as the dream could allow. Yes, oh yes, she loved that. The idea of driving the hardened warrior wild with desire ignited a very primal part of her. And, at a higher level of consciousness, feeling him go as mad for her as she did for him alleviated a great deal of the shame from her own sluttish behavior.

He spanked her, making her grunt into his mouth. She tucked her hips up, pressing his barely clothed cock into her very wet sex. Barely clothed? What was she doing? This was a dream; she may as well take advantage. With less than a thought, she made his pants vanish entirely, so that she could revel in the underside of his absurd cock part the lips of her sex and rub sinfully against her clit.

‘Why not make him yours? All of the whores that orbit him, they could never have him like you could. They may claim his body, but you could take his heart if you wanted.’

No, she was wrong. That was narcissistic pride and girlish infatuation mixing together to tell her pleasant lies.

As if in answer, the dream shifted, and she found herself being laid gently down on a bed. Through an open sliding balcony door, she could see a full moon and taste the sweet Japanese air, heavy with wisteria. James loomed over her, moving her by her hips further up the bed and shuffling forward on his knees between her legs. In the absence of his touch, she was met with immediate longing. She wanted him to hold her as he had moments ago, to feel him along each of her limbs and his weight bearing down on her. She even with some dread admitted to herself that she wanted him inside her, to stretch her and fill her completely.

Maki outstretched her arms for him, cursing the deliberate slowness with which he was moving into position. James so loved to tease her, the absolute bastard.

“So eager,” he said with a smirk.

“Hurry.”

“Let a man enjoy the view a bit.”

He settled back on his legs and ogled her openly, raking his eyes up and down her, licking his lips with hunger at the sight of her bared breasts, her soft thighs, and her wet sex. Were it any other man she would have felt sick to her stomach to be the subject of such lust, but with James it was different. To drive so powerful a man mad with her naked body and refined sexuality made her feel strong and drove an iron spike of desire straight into her core.

“Hurry.”

She wrapped her legs around his waist and tried to pull him down atop her, but even in her dreams, she lacked the strength to move the warrior. He laughed it off and began to lean very slowly down. Maki parted her lips slightly, silently begging for a kiss, but he moved lower to her breasts instead, taking one of her nipples into his mouth. A rough hand took her other breast, rolling its nipple between thumb and forefinger with the perfect amount of force.

It wasn’t the kiss she wanted, but she liked this too.

“Mmm, ah!”

She liked it a great deal, now if only he would take her already. His cock was weighing heavy against her sex, burning hot against the sensitive skin and teasing her with its presence. Maki reached down to help it along its journey inside her, but those damned telekinetic limbs of his grabbed hold of her arms and pinned them above her head.

“Nooo,” she whined, “James! Hurry!”

He smiled up at her with his eyes from where he was nursing on her breast. She swore he was worse than any fox spirit or trickster from mythology when he wanted to be. With his free hand, he traced with his fingertips a line down her flat tummy, just missing her clit as he finally took hold of his cock and brought its ludicrously large head to the gates of her sex.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, feeling him drag it up and down her opening. “Hurry! Hurry!”

A sunbeam fell upon her face, stealing her from sleep back into the waking world. Maki groaned angrily, never more upset with her past depressed self than she was at this moment. How, in the three months that she had lived in this apartment, had the woman failed to buy decent blinds for the windows?

The situation could be saved, at least. If she shifted herself up slightly, the sunlight lay a hot line across her neck. She hummed, closing her eyes and sending a hand down to her sex. With the heat of the sun there, she could imagine better the idea of James holding her neck as he rutted into her.

Maki made short work of herself, imagining her chiseled, semi-divine lover hammering her insides, shaking the bed, and driving the air from her lungs. The orgasm was a pale imitation of those that James could give her, but it was very nice all the same. She’d have to come up with a sort of thank-you gift for unlocking her ability to climax, chocolates, maybe.

She rolled out of her bed and glared at the shadeless window. In her grief and zealotry, the apartment had gone completely undecorated and unadorned.

Well, now was the time to right that wrong. James had implored her to take some time off and to recover something of herself after their victory. Hearing the sense in it, she had agreed.

“Maki, anything,” he had said, “I’m telling you, literally anything. Shit, do nothing at all if that’s what calls to you. But for the love of God, woman, for me, if not for yourself, take a goddamn break. You fought the ghost for two years. I fought it for a day and I’m fucking dying for a vacation, but I’m a stupid asshole with a million stupid asshole enemies, so it's up to you to take one for the both of us. Got it?”

She laughed a little at the memory. There was something uniquely funny and interesting about a frantic and/or annoyed James Li that she couldn’t get enough of.

After her morning ablutions and a small breakfast, she dug through her closet for the unopened box of decorations that she’d been dragging with her to new apartments for two-plus years now. She pursed her lips at the string lights and the photo collage of her old high school friends. There was a replica series of woodblock prints that she liked, but for the most part, these just…weren’t her anymore.

Almost without realizing it, she found herself messaging James of all people for advice.

‘Other than classically Japanese (want something new), what style of decoration and furnishing do I bring to mind when you think of me?’ she wrote.

‘19th Century Explorer’s Club,’ came an immediate reply.

Yes, she could see that. And she had always wanted a nice globe. She’d have to do without the taxidermized animals, but there was room in the aesthetic for allowances. Now it was only a matter of finding all the various antiques for reasonable prices, but that could be a fun hobby in and of itself.

She almost messaged James back to ask him if he wanted to go antiquing with her but stopped herself. That was too clingy…right? She didn’t want to give the impression that they were dating. Though, he had said to call if she wanted to hang out. And, it wouldn’t be clingy if they weren’t dating, it would be friendly…right?

No, best not to risk it. She didn’t want to endanger their burgeoning partnership. Not a romantic partnership, she was quick to add in her head, a regular, normal, platonic, teammate partnership, except the kind where you occasionally had sex and were at all times willing to die for one another – if such things existed. Which they must, because that was what she and James had.

That didn’t leave many people she could go with though. She hadn’t many close friends before she’d isolated herself from most social interactions for two and a half years. Maki knew who she wanted to ask, but could she? Her finger hovered over the contact in her phone.

Oh, what the hell, their relationship couldn’t get much worse than it currently was.

Her call went through before the first ring fully sounded.

“Maki? Are you okay?” It touched her to hear the worry in Zelda’s voice.

“Hello, Zelda. I’m very well. Would you like to check out some flea markets with me today?”

“Wha—I, sure. But, um, did something happen? Are you…sure you’re okay? Do you want to talk?”

She paused to consider that. How could she sum up everything that had happened and was currently happening in her life? Where to start, and how to bring up the topic of James Li who seemed so inextricably a part of it now?

It was probably impossible, so she said, “I’m trying to buy a globe for my apartment. Would you like to help me find one?”

“Oh. Okay.”

Maki smiled, leaning her chair back so she could feel the sun on her face. “Great. I’m glad.”

“So am I.” Zelda added quickly and nervously, “That you asked me to come, I mean. It’s a good day for it.”

“Yes,” she said. It sounded like things would be a bit awkward between them, but that was fine. She’d fought a Hungry Ghost and seduced the most beautiful creature in the city on the same night; fearing social rejection was beneath her, frankly. “It’s a great day for it.”