“Yumi?”

“I’m not your sister, boy.”

Yori grabbed onto her body, nearly shaking her for answers. “Who are you?! Where’s my sister?!” A wild look of desperation filled his eyes as he demanded answers.

Stepping in behind Yori, Saki placed her hand on Yori’s shoulder trying to get his attention. Unfortunately, he wasn’t paying attention to her. She dug her fingers a little into his flesh without drawing up blood. “Shaking your sister won’t get you any answers, Yori.”

He wound up his arm batting away Saki and glaring at everyone. “What do you know?! None of you understand!” Fire seemed to glow in his eyes as something else took him over. A strange manic look painted his face.

While the others back away Saki didn’t care one bit for his attempt to have a bite. She just wound up her fist and decked him into the floor. Not enough force to completely destroy the building, but it did give it a good shake and jiggle out the dust. And more than enough to put him out cold. Saki looked up at everyone, a little shocked at her solution. “You want to listen to him scream at us for an hour before we can get some answers from Yumi?”

Yumi looked up at Saki with a slight change in her expression. “You’ve got an interesting method. And you seem a little more level headed than her brother.”

“So you going to tell us what’s going on then?”

“You don’t seem that surprised by this.”

“I got filled in a little on some of the things that happened back in Atlantis, though we still have no more clear answers to what’s going on than before.”

“It would seem that we have reached a critical threshold.”

Chapter 373 – Broken Mind

Putting the unconscious Yori to bed in Yumi’s bed and moving the conversation back into the main room, the person inside Yumi gathered up everyone. She carried herself very differently than Yumi. The presence that bled off her gave her a commanding and dominant aura that demanded attention. She had confidence and power without even needing to say a word. It all merely came from her stature and eyes. No one could see Yumi in her despite appearances to the contrary.

“So anyone going to explain what’s going on?” Hiroshi asked, being the odd man out along with Tatsuya. He had no clue to what Yumi’s power was or what happened to her. Yet everyone else seemed to be clued into the situation on some level.

Saki took point on the explanation. “Aside from the power that Yumi possesses, she has another latent ability or whatever this might be called. We’re still trying to understand what it is, but there seems to be other minds, people, personalities, whatever inside Yumi besides herself.”

“Other people? Why would Yuki do that to her?”

“He didn’t do it,” corrected Nerine, “Even with his Majesty’s power uncontrolled he never would be able to selectively give people power. Whatever happened to Miss Mizuno was the same thing as how she got her power. Based off who she is, this is the result of how his Majesty’s Law was answered by her.”

Nodding, Yumi agreed with the assessment. “That is correct. We exist as part of Yumi Mizuno.”

Putting the conversation back on the important question, Saki focused on whomever currently controlled Yumi’s body. “In the past, you helped her in fighting, but this isn’t a fight. Why are you still here? Why haven’t you returned Yumi back to her body?”

“This is a result of damage wrought by Takako Yamazaki.”

“Takako?”

“The hell she got to do with this?”

“It was a defensive means of protecting her mind. Unlike Yumi, I can handle the effects that Takako left on us.”

“But that still doesn’t answer the question of why you’re still here. Takako’s dead.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Yes, but the damage is still done. Yumi is unable to return.”

“What the hell do you mean unable to return?” Seiji started to take on the physical role that Yori carried while awake. Though Saki lifted her arm up to keep him behind her. He looked down at her at the table annoyed that she didn’t seem more troubled by the words.

“Getting violent isn’t going to do anything to get answers.” Saki focused back on the woman speaking to them. “So we need to get Yumi back then?”

“If that is your desire.”

“Of course it is!”

“Seiji.”

“Then you must find a way to do it.”

Hiroshi still had a little trouble believing the whole situation even with it explained to him. But he caught up as well as he could to everything happening. “The way you’re talking sounds like you’re not going to help us.”

“That’s correct.”

Seiji jumped over the table, managing not to hit his head on the ceiling and land behind Yumi. He grabbed her up by the collar of her uniform that she still wore. “What do you mean that you won’t help us?! This involves you as well. You’re going to help or so help me—“

“You’ll what? Punch this body until I do?”

Glaring at her, he couldn’t take any action against her. Even with a different person or whatever in Yumi’s body, it was still her body. There was no way that he could do that to her. She had him completely powerless.

Releasing herself from his grip with her telekinesis, she walked over to the door. “You started this problem. So you will find a solution to it.”

“Damn you, do you feel nothing!?”

“It’s not my concern. Show me your worth.”

Hiroshi stood up from the table to get her before she left. “Where are you going? You can’t be wandering around the city!”

“It’s been more than a few centuries since I’ve seen Japan. I’d like to see how things turned out.”

“You can’t just leave. We need to solve this!”

“I don’t need to be here for you to find the answer. When you figure it out, the brother will know how to find me.” She opened the door and left just as abruptly as she arrived. The storm that she left behind only furthered stirring the pot that they all stewed in now.

First to yell, Seiji pounded on the table. “So what the hell are we going to do about this?!” No one jumped to an answer or even an uncertain remark. They held their silence, not sure what to do. Things went from back to worse and there didn’t seem to be any slowing in the avalanche. “Silence?! Yumi’s our friend and you’ve got nothing?!”

“Seiji, we still don’t even understand the situation. And how do you expect us to get Yumi back when she’s lost somewhere in her own mind?!”

He had no answer for Saki. No one did. That was why they were all silent. This was beyond their ability to problem solve. They all wanted to save her, but it wasn’t that simple as Seiji said.

They were out of options. Saki had no idea. She might have been her friend and classmate, but she didn’t know her very well. Not as well as she should have to be called her friend. “What about Kaede or Katsumi? Maybe they’ll know something that we don’t.” Unfortunately, the moment that Saki brought them up everyone went silent. She hadn’t seen them in the room since she returned. They came back with the others that much she knew. Yet, it felt like she just stepped into a funeral with how dark the atmosphere suddenly went. “What happened? What’s going on?”

Hiroshi put a hand to rest against the wall for support. He fought with the grimace that tried to carve through his face. There was no avoiding it. “We haven’t had the chance to tell you. It’s best if you just see.”

Jumping out of her seat at the table, Saki felt the depression surrounding her pour through every pore in her body. It froze her down to her bones. “What happened to Yumi’s friends?”

“Follow me. I’ll take you to them.” He opened the door again, inviting Saki to come with him. It wasn’t meant to be a secret, just not something easily brought up. In light of the situation with Yumi, it almost seemed fitting that it would be now.

Saki quickly followed Hiroshi leaving the others behind, who seemed unwilling to go with her. She glanced back before she closed the door to see them one more time. It was unnervingly chilly just watching them. The way they looked seemed like they were dead, but she knew that wouldn’t be possible. But she still didn’t know what was going on and Hiroshi left it intentionally mysterious.

Guided down the stairs to the first floor and into the back room, they passed through the large chamber that settled the residents of the neighborhood that still survived. It seemed far fewer people still lived than she remembered from the other base. The thought made her heart ache a little knowing how it happened. It wasn’t even by her hand, but she didn’t stop it either.

Focusing ahead on Hiroshi, she tried to keep her mind and heart off the matter for now. She had different and bigger problems than her guilt to weigh on a scale. Friends had to be saved.

Across the chamber was a different door that didn’t match with the rest. It almost seemed like an afterthought or at least not originally planned. Though knowing Phoibe created it all, Saki didn’t understand why it wouldn’t match. But it was a minor point. Beyond the door as she saw was a long hallway with rows of doors.

Then she heard something very familiar that she thought that she had finally forgotten. Screams and cries, the voices of people lost. Immediately her heart jumped, going three times faster than before. Memories of the hospital where she visited Takako flooded her mind. She struggled to keep her balance without missing a step as she walked behind Hiroshi. ‘Why is he taking me here? What’s happened to them?’

Hiroshi then came to a stop at a seemingly random door. Placing his hand on a panel of metal on the door, strange mechanisms shifted and clunked about as metal in the door receded and moved as if it was solving a puzzle on its own. Twenty seconds through the rearrangement of the door it suddenly opened and Hiroshi reluctantly invited Saki into the room.

She hesitated in moving to see inside. Her mind seemed to have already come to conclusions about what she would find. It didn’t want to see. It didn’t want to know. But she had to go. There was no way around it. She couldn’t be frozen at this point.

It took a moment to get her legs moving again, but she made it over to the threshold. She still didn’t see anything, but she wasn’t fully looking around. The room lacked the impersonal nature of what she found in the hospital. Likely since this was created by Phoibe, the woman gave it much more specialized attention. The floor was carpeted with a very soft material that bounced under each step and pictures hung on the walls. Furniture lined the room that would fit naturally as a girl’s bedroom. It almost didn’t seem to be what Saki expected.

Except that this wasn’t an ordinary girl’s room. On the opposite side of the room behind a strange field of cascading water-like surface was Katsumi. She sat balled up in the corner with a blade in her hand digging into her arm yet unable for it to pierce her skin. She mumbled under her breath repeating the same words over and over again.

“Kill me. Please kill me.”