“Where am I?” Yori asked himself aloud. It had a bit of a rhetorical element to it. While he knew that he was inside his sister’s conscious mind, it was easy to forget. The familiar was something very familiar. A weird sense of reality and fantasy. Things appeared real and his body knew that they were real. Yet his mind knew better. It did everything it could to prove it was right.

That effort left him feeling almost queasy like he had a stomach flu. Yori tried to keep from throwing up. He didn’t remember feeling that part before. ‘Everything in here feels heightened. Like everything wants me to leave.’ A very hostile intent hovered through the air. It took getting through the unease for him to pick up on it.

“This is very wrong. Yumi isn’t like this.”

The space suddenly changed, housed with fire and burning buildings. Smoke filled up his lungs making him curl over in a coughing fit. For not being real, it certainly seemed to feel that way. His body couldn’t help reacting to it. The smoke was thick and impossible to see through as it rolled in on waves. Light highlights of red and orange lined edges of the smoke as the only sight of the flames consuming everything. It was impossibly oppressive.

“Because it isn’t just her in here,” answered a woman with a very unfamiliar voice. There was a dark and mature tone not filled with menace, but still powerful. A voice that demanded respect and easily found it.

Amongst the smoke Yori could see nothing of the woman. “Who’s there?” His mind started to run through who it could be. An immediate answer came to him. “It’s you! The one controlling my sister!”

“You don’t belong here.”

“It’s you that doesn’t belong! Give my sister back to me!”

“You’re as annoying as they said.”

“Who said?” He started to think that this wasn’t the same person he had fought with before. It made his mind spin with doubt and questions. ‘It’s not that woman? Another?’ Then he remembered the meeting that they had with Yuki. ‘The unnamed one we don’t know. Is that who this is?’

“Leave if you know what’s good for you.”

“I’m not leaving without my sister!”

“You don’t have a choice.”

A sudden blast of wind pulled all of the smoke away from around Yori. It dragged on him, making his feet slide back. “I’m not…leaving!” But he couldn’t hold himself against the wind. Each second only made it grow stronger and stronger. Before long his feet lost contact with the ground and he flew up into the air cast away from everything.

He crashed into the ground seeing a road stretched out before him. “Huh? I’m somewhere else now…” It took him a moment seeing something familiar that he hadn’t seen in so long once more. It was almost welcoming. Until he felt something stabbed through his back.

Pain jumped through his body after the shock of it wore off for him. It paralyzed him sharply. He couldn’t even look to see who had attacked him. “…n-no…” Yori breathed heavily with his face crushed against the pavement as his body felt impossibly heavy.

Nothing moved.

He was dead.

Yori gasped for air suddenly nearly going lightheaded with it happening so fast. He looked around to see that he returned to his sister’s side at the bed. Reality disappointedly returned. He stared down trying to figure out the wet sensation.

Blood. He wiped it away from his mouth and nose with his sleeve. Then turned back to her not losing his determination.

“You succeed?” Seiji asked quickly, wanting to stop him again.

Saki held Seiji back while Yori leaned in again to her. “I’m not finished. I’m going back in.”

Chapter 381 – The Uninvited

“Yumi!” Yori shouted within her mind again. He had no clue what he was doing. He promised himself to find her and bring her back, but he had no way of knowing how to do it. It wasn’t something that he really focused on at the start. But now that her mind fought back against him, it made him wonder what he was supposed to do.

Unlike before, a large room with lanterns casting light across well polished wood floors stretched out before him. It had a very distinctive traditional Japanese feel to it. He didn’t recognize the place. It couldn’t be from Yumi’s mind. “Which one of you is it this time?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You really don’t know when to quit.”

“You!” He had never heard her voice before that wasn’t from his sister’s lips, but he recognized it immediately. The superior and confident tone that effortlessly stood above all else without peer. They were so far into the sky it seemed like no one could even see them.

It was the woman that Yuki dubbed the Tactician. He knew it without her having to tell him. However, he couldn’t find her. Yori walked forward in the well lit room towards the voice. The room never ended. It continued to grow as he walked in an endless repeating pattern of columns, lanterns and wood. “Where are you?! I’ll settle this with you now!”

“Fighting me won’t find your sister.”

“It’s not about that!”

“You’re in our mind. You have no power here.”

“You expect that to stop me! You don’t know me as well as you like to claim.”

“No, I know you very well. That’s why you’re there. You will continue this futile and fruitless case even to your own death. You believe your selfishness and ego-centric reasons will bear you results if you keep smashing your head against the wall. Foolishness.”

Yori turned around in search of the woman, getting the feeling that he was being misdirected by her. Her voice couldn’t be trusted. But she kept out of his sight. The distance only repeated what surrounded him. No walls or doors appeared in all of his walking. Being in the mind, such an impossible space was normal.

They had him trapped.

“Then come out and face me!”

“That’s unnecessary.”

Once more something stabbed him in the back. He fell down collapsing to the wood planks spilling out his blood over the clean floor. In her mind, he really was helpless. They could do anything to him. He struggled to fight back in the only way that he could.

Surviving.

Though even that might have its limits. The second death came just as painful as the first. However, after the ninth he started to have trouble remembering each from the past. And then they started to lose their weight. He just felt tired and exhausted.

“Where am I?” he asked aloud, staring at a foggy space that he couldn’t make out. “It must be bad if I can’t even see straight anymore…” But he wasn’t dying repeatedly so he found some comfort in that. Yori fell on his back not even feeling it anymore. Everything became so numb for him. “I just need a moment to rest…”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” replied an oddly familiar voice that he recognized, but couldn’t place it.

He turned his head about trying to find where the voice came from. Nothing. “Another one of those persona...” Yori closed his eyes ready to deal with more death. A sharp jolt went through his body forcing him up. It felt different from all of the other attacks. “Something new now?”

“I told you, you shouldn’t sleep.”

“I haven’t listened to any of the voices in here, I’m not about to listen to you. I’m doing what I want.” He tried to close his eyes again to get much needed rest, but the jolt came again. Because it was so foreign to everything else that he had felt in the deaths, it actually hurt. “Just kill me already.”

“I’ve got no interest in doing that.”

And now they had his attention, though still blurry-eyed from all of the death-dealing. “Then what do you want?”

“I’ve come to let you know that I found her.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

Yori immediately jumped to his feet looking in the first direction that he saw. “Yumi!? Who are you? Why are you helping me?”

“Because we share a common interest.”

“Common interest?” Yori found the voice puzzling and it clearly wanted it that way. The mysteriousness was annoying, but any clue about her he was going to jump at. “Where is she?”

“It won’t be easy, but I trust you’ll be fine.” There was an odd sense of a laugh in their words even though they remained restrained.

He ran out into the haze without concern. He just expected to get his answer. “I don’t care about how hard it is. Just take me to her!” The fog in his eyes started to clear with his mind finding focus once more.

It was a room, a white normal appearing room. At the center was a table with a single chair. There was something very familiar to the sight that unsettled Yori a bit. However, he didn’t dwell on it. His attention went to the voice. “Show me!”

“Since you’re awake now…let’s go!” The room faded away sharply along with his footing. Yori flew through space led by the voice to where he might find her. He still didn’t know what to expect on the other side. He hoped for something that wasn’t so out of place as what the persona’s presented.

Yet that seemed to be the most normal. The blackness gave way to light and light fell into darkness. Out of the darkness crept a massive door or gate. A hulking behemoth of a structure that went far beyond his own sight. Connected to the gate ran a wall equally as imposing. But that was the normal part. Standing out in front of the gate was a pencil as a guard on the right. To the left, that bastard Yuki stood as though it was completely normal. Though with how screwed up he was he might not have found the surroundings strange. But Yori found it unnerving seeing papers, books, animals, desks, bentos, trees and dust paddles just flying around with life of their own.

It looked like a mess as though it was someone’s room. Yet it also appeared like a dream, as things that weren’t alive looked and moved as though they were. Yori didn’t know what he was seeing. “Yumi’s here?”

“Of course, idiot. This is subconscious layer one. The part of her that’s closest to be awake. What you see is just a reflection of what’s just below the surface of her thoughts. It tends to be filled with recent things.”

“And what about the guards?” He just accepted the explanation without any questioning. More important matters were at hand and he had to know how to open that gate to get through to her. This physical manifestation had to hold his sister and the key to waking her up.

“While I put them asleep you’ll sneak in. The rest will be on you, buddy.”

That was a plan he could work with. He put everything into his legs ready to sprint for the gate once he had the opening. There was no clue how long it would last. This was her mind and she was probably going to resist him. But he didn’t even put that in his mind. Yori zeroed in on the gate and nothing else. He could picture his sister being behind it.

First the clutter came to a stop and then the guards looked dizzy. Then they collapsed to the grass. The moment he heard the thud of them hitting earth, Yori flew out from his spot launching himself at the door. He hit the gate doors with an immovable crash. “I didn’t expect it to be easy. But this won’t stop me!”

Screaming his lung hoarse, Yori put all of his muscles in his body into moving the gate door. It seemed to be completely stone and impossible to move. Yet it didn’t stop him from trying. He knew it would open if he pushed hard enough. His sister wouldn’t be held from him any longer. “Yumi! I’m coming!”

Suddenly, the door cracked and then shattered. Yori stumbled through crashing into the stone floor. But he didn’t have time to think about his pain. He pulled his head back to look at what the inside was. “What the hell is this?!”

“The labyrinth of the subconscious! Good luck!”

Laid out before him wasn’t just some walls that turned and twisted in a maze. The entire space was consumed by the so-called labyrinth. Twisting and turning pieces never ended and pockets into the endless void dotted the sights. It was like someone was trying to solve a Rubiks Cube. Everything was in a constant state of movement with no clear beginning or end. He couldn’t even understand what was up or down as it even existed under him. “Where are you, Yumi…”