His eyes darted around the room trying to take in the deluge of information. He didn’t know if it responded to him. The sight of each memory placed out before him unfiltered made him feel naked. He wanted to hide in a corner or under the table. Yori didn’t expect to face his defeat so quickly. ‘What does she know? How much has she already taken from me? Does she know everything?’

‘You’ve already revealed everything to me.’

Yori jumped a little hearing the voice in his head again. ‘You can hear my thoughts?!’

‘Of course.’

The room suddenly grew warm quickly for him. It felt like someone stared at him from all sides and looked inside. She pierced through him knowing his thoughts. He had no safety. He tried to bury his thoughts deeper into layers beyond her with subtle touches. ‘I just have to distance myself more…’

‘It doesn’t matter how deep you try to go. I’m already there. There’s no part of your mind that I’m not already attached to.’

He wanted to say that it was impossible, but knew better than to say anything. Her powers made everything possible, even what she claimed. Yori saw no escape or freedom. The room she stuck him in had no exits, even without the restraints. He didn’t know what he could do. He couldn’t protect Yumi in such absolute control. His eyes flipped around the room trying to figure out his situation.

“You’ve no escape.” The woman pulled herself free from the bleached light of the room as though the air concealed her. Split from the room to become an individual, she appeared bathed in luminescent blue cloth draped over her body in a complex woven dress. The glow gave the material a soft furry like appearance despite being smooth. A windless breeze kept her dress in constant motion. She stepped within a meter of Yori stopping near the table. “Now let’s talk about your sister, Yori Mizuno.”

Chapter 129 – Room of Deceit

The moment that he heard his sister mentioned the walls changed their images. Everywhere he looked he saw Yumi displayed before him. His memories varied from recent to far into the past for him. The sight of her around him made him sweat. ‘…Yumi…’ It might not have been his real sister, but all of the eyes felt like they stared at him in judgment. His actions hurt her and he already gave them everything. He didn’t even know how or when it happened.

Yori turned his head away from the walls, but even the floor held captured memories. He couldn’t escape it. She wouldn’t allow him a moment of reprieve. His eyes slowly pulled up, no longer knowing where to look.

Once level with the wall again, his eyelids widened sharply catching a large image of Yumi staring back at him. She seemed to focus on nothing but him. Yori jumped up, startled by her presence. The chair fell over in his haste and brought him to look back down. It was enough to snap him out of his gaze with Yumi and turn all of his stored confusion and guilt into fear. He ran for the opposite side of the room hoping to put as much distance between them as he could.

He looked a little over his shoulder back at Yumi. She seemed to be getting closer to him, somehow projecting herself out of the image. Yumi stretched out to him, warping the two dimensional image of her. The more it stretched the more horrific Yori’s face turned until he could only turn away to where he ran. ‘I’m so sorry! Forgive me!’ Yori stumbled while fleeing and collapsed roughly to the ground, his nose a little bruised.

“Ugh…” Slowly, Yori pulled himself up with the pain having wiped his mind of its concerns. It took him a few moments to focus his eyes on the ground. He found the white glow of the room no longer present and Yumi’s face missing. “Where am I?” Yori forced himself to concentrate on the ground, his mind suddenly feeling very light. His hands rubbed against the floor feeling a smooth grain of tiles and particles of dirt. The tiles continued out of sight, as he looked further away and walls nearby. “A hall? It seems familiar…”

Yori rubbed his hand over his face trying to push through the lightheadedness. “…so dizzy…” He pushed his back against the wall and supported himself to rise to his feet. Once he stood, he felt a little better, but still had to concentrate to keep focused. “It doesn’t end…” he commented, when he saw the hallway continuing until only a dot in the distance.

It didn’t matter to him. He needed to move. Keeping one hand supported against the wall, Yori began walking slowly down the hall. His mind didn’t even consider the passage of time, his legs just kept moving as though stopping meant the end. Yori believed that an end existed. It kept him moving.

The further he went, whispers began to appear in the hall even though he saw no people. They grew stronger the longer he continued. It made him more certain that an end existed and something awaited him. He heard a multitude of voices around him, but he couldn’t separate any of them. They existed as a mass. He felt as though they belonged to children.

A faded image of a student passed his eyes just on the edge of his periphery. His head snapped behind him trying to see who the student was, but they were gone. ‘Am I imagining things?’ Yori focused ahead of him, but caught a gasp in his throat. The empty hall filled with ghostly images of students. ‘What’s happening? Why are there ghosts? What’s going on?’ Yori’s confusion pushed him onward.

His hallway became crowded and even hovering by the wall no longer kept him out of the way. He had to push through them, but when he pressed his hand, it passed through. Yori stumbled through the student collapsing to the ground. The voices around him grew in volume. Their feet clattered along the tile. Then something bumped into him suddenly. He fell to his back and his eyes closed for a moment. However, when his eyes opened the students were solid. The hallway no longer continued endlessly. Windows and doors lined the walls and the sun beamed down on him.

Yori no longer felt weakened and pulled himself up, but a weight kept him from moving too far. He looked down to see Yuki dazed in his lap. The position made Yori feel awkward and annoyed. “What’s going on, Hayashi?! Why are you here?”

“Huh? Who are you?” Yuki rubbed his head, not completely focused. Once he stopped tending to the bump on his head, he looked up at Yori’s face. It only took him a second to see the second year bars on his collar and realize he ran into an upperclassman. “Sorry! I didn’t see you! Are you hurt?” Yuki pulled himself up and offered a hand to Yori.

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“I’m fine, Hayashi,” Yori curtly spoke, as he stood up on his own. “This is a school hall. You shouldn’t be running.”

“Normally yes, but when you’re getting chased you sort of have to run.” Yuki laughed a little to himself. He patted down his clothes to knock off the dust, but stopped in mid-motion. His eyes focused on Yori suddenly. “How come you know my name? Do I know you?”

“What are you talking about, of course I do!”

Yuki leaned in, lifting his hand to his chin in his investigation of Yori. He got a little too close to Yori, who pushed him away. “I don’t remember! Sorry!”

“Get back here, Yuki!” yelled several students from the end of the hall.

The voices made Yuki turn his head away to respond. When he saw the three boys charging down the hall for him Yuki jumped. “I thought I lost them!” Yuki looked over to Yori and clapped his hands together in apology. “Sorry, but I’ve got to run again!” As his last words, Yuki departed in a sprint keeping barely ahead of the students chasing him.

Yori stared at the scene deeply confused. ‘He doesn’t remember me? What’s going on?’ He looked around at the school, certain beyond a doubt that it was his school. ‘This is our school and I recognize others…’ His eyes scanned the hall as his feet began moving again. Everything was in the places that he knew it. ‘…is this a memory? Did I step into a memory? From before we met?’

A bell rang through the school distracting Yori from the hall. He turned his head almost instinctively, thinking that he needed to be in class. However, he corrected himself knowing that he couldn’t be at school. ‘Right, I’m being interrogated. I didn’t escape…she’s somewhere watching me probably…I need to find her…’

Yori began to move again, still feeling a little distracted. ‘I can’t let her see this…if I can help it…’ When he focused his eyes back on the hall, he saw that it was empty. The students all disappeared, almost too quickly. He turned around and around trying to find any of them, but none of them were around, even in classrooms. Yori ran up to the window in the hall to look outside.

When he looked down at the school grounds, he saw a small group, the only ones present. He pressed his hands to the glass the moment he recognized them. “Yumi! And she’s with Hayashi and the others! What’s going on?!” Yori spun his head around looking for the stairs. He had to get down there to them. There had to be a reason for them, something was happening.

His sense of distance and time disappeared. He wasn’t certain if it was because of the memory or the effects of his focus, but he ran regardless. Yori held no concern for any of it. He had to protect his sister from that woman. He had to stop what was happening before they learned everything, if they hadn’t already. ‘Yumi…I’m sorry…this is all my fault…if I hadn’t stubbornly insisted on going with you…’

Once Yori reached the grounds, none of them were in sight. He searched around for them and found nothing. But he suddenly heard laughing in the distance, a familiar voice. Yori’s head perked up and he dashed in the direction without consideration that it might not be his sister. The voice continued, but grew more distant on him forcing him to push his legs harder to keep up.

Each turn seemed to have the hope of seeing them, but always empty. Only the sound of the laughing kept Yori going. He lost all sense of where he ran or if he still remained in a memory. Nothing mattered to him anymore. ‘…sister…’

Around the next corner, Yori came to a stop. He caught up. “…Yumi…” She stood within reach of him, but her back faced him standing with Yuki smiling. Yori froze, unable to move while watching them. They began to pull away from him. He watched them all disappear before his eyes. Once they vanished, his body suddenly shook, dropping him to his knees. She left him, again. ‘…Yumi…’ His head tilted up staring at the building before him. The sign above the door said ‘Mi Hana Shop’, a phrase that didn’t immediately come to Yori. He focused too strongly on his sister.

Yori pushed himself back up and forcibly marched over to the building. The door opened for him. Inside, he saw an empty front desk and no sign of his sister or the others. Ignoring manners for intruding, Yori walked deeper into the interior.

All of the smaller rooms he found along his search were empty. ‘They have to be here somewhere… I know I saw them enter…’ Further down the long hallway, he heard voices speaking in the distance, once more. He hurried in the direction until he came to the corner from where heard them. ‘Yumi! But that woman… What’s going on?’ Yori hugged the wall, keeping out of sight, suddenly feeling the urge to be cautious.

“It’s important that you don’t fail,” spoke the unknown woman. She looked like a regular businesswoman, except for the fact that Yori could tell that she wasn’t Japanese. The features and hair made it clear to him that she was Western, possibly European. “They’re ripe for rebellion right now.”

‘What’s she talking about? And to Yumi and the rest…’

“I know,” Yuki said, nodding his head to the woman.

Yumi agreed with him, looking over at Yuki. “We can’t let them get away with it any longer. They’ll pay for the injustices that they’ve committed.”

“Right. When you arrive, you’ll be met by those in the resistance. They’ll let you in.”

“Won’t they know we’ve entered?” questioned Yumi.

“Yes, it’s likely that they’ll send a patrol to investigate. But you’ll be able to handle them.”

Yuki comforted an uncertain Yumi. “Don’t worry Yumi. I’ve taught you how to use your abilities. You’ll be fine. You just have to trust in yourself.”

“You’re right! We have to do this!”

‘What’s going on? This isn’t right!’ Yori fell back against the wall suddenly feeling out of breath. His chest heaved and his body struggled for air desperately. He knew that couldn’t be his sister. It didn’t make any sense. It had to all be a lie. ‘What memory is this? It can’t be true!’ Yori felt his body warming up and his clothes becoming stifling. He wanted to escape, but his back felt glued to the wall. ‘This is wrong! Yumi’s not…she’s…I don’t remember this!’

The image of Yuki and Yumi together burned in his mind. They were together and she looked happy. He didn’t understand it. It didn’t seem possible. It was all wrong. It had to be wrong.

There was no possible answer.

Yori shook his head side to side trying to get all of the lies out of his mind. ‘This isn’t right! It’s wrong! This never happened!’ He tried to convince himself what he heard and saw didn’t exist. His hands clung savagely to his head wanting to remove everything. ‘Why?! Yumi?! Is it because I betrayed you? You…’ When his breathing reached its limit, Yori collapsed to the floor pale and almost unconscious. The only word from his mouth repeated endlessly was her name.

Struggling to remain sane, Yori pulled himself crawling on the floor away from the trickery. He slowly made it back to the entrance of the business before collapsing once more out of breath. On his back, he stared up at the exterior of the building. ‘So disgusting…no taste…’ he thought, when he saw the building, ‘Why would she be here… at this karaoke shop…’

The longer that he stared at the sign the more it seemed to stare back at him. The name repeated through his mind as his words triggered a new path. A flash of an image of his sister talking to him about the shop came to him. He remembered something about it. ‘Yumi told me about this place. I remember, she went here with Hayashi and the others. I remember her telling me about it. They played at the beach…it didn’t make a lot of sense then…but this is the place…’

Yori focused on their conversation to remember what she told him about the day. Most of what he remembered was just that she spent the day with Yuki, a fact that bothered him. He ended up focusing more on that than the rest of the details. He couldn’t remember if he heard all of what she told him.

Yori widened his eyes sharply to a realization. “It’s wrong!” His breathing returned to normal and he stood up freely. He stared back in the hall near the desk, finding attendants of varying ages and heights talking to everyone. “The events are wrong! Yumi didn’t have powers then! This is a false memory, but why? Was it a trick by the woman?”

Suddenly, something pulled Yori away from the ground, buildings and even the world. It all quickly fell out of sight. His world fell into darkness. Yori floated away to an end that he didn’t understand. The void he found himself contained in had a strange unfamiliar feel to it. Even in all of the confusion from before he felt certain that he was still in his world, for lack of a better word. The sense of his world no longer existed. He truly felt disconnected.

The veil ripped away from his eyes and bathed him in light. Green hills and forests surrounded him with a small town coming into sight. None of it was familiar to him. ‘What’s happening now? This can’t be a memory of mine?’

A young girl ran up to a house in the block of homes that Yori found himself standing in. She met an older boy, in his teens, and they ran back out into the stone road. All he heard was the boy calling out to the girl. “Slow down, Athene!”