Kara no Kyoukai

Volume 2, Part V: Chapter 17

Tomoe Enjō leans on the cold walls of the confined, claustrophobic elevator as it slowly moves upward. He stares blankly into space even though his breath becomes more ragged every moment. Ever since he cauterized the stump of his arm to stop the bleeding, his arm nerves haven’t stopped sending signals of pain. Knowing that his mind and body are both in the worst possible conditions, he is unable to think straight, his mind hazy and blank. It takes him serious concentration to even keep his breathing at a manageable level.

He’s only ridden this elevator one other time, but even now Tomoe can feel it moving slowly, taking its time climbing the chamber, and making him grow impatient. Carelessly, Tomoe drops the sword. The thud it makes hitting the floor wakes him back to concentration. It’s heavier than he expected, and only an hour or so of having it slung across his shoulder has already made his arm numb. Lacking a second arm, he can’t even draw it from its scabbard, let alone wield it effectively. So he takes out the knife in his pocket and grips it tight, thinking it a better weapon for his situation now.

Finally, the elevator stops. It’s reached the tenth floor. When the door slides open, Tomoe steps outside and into the central lobby. Immediately in front of him is the corridor to the east building, and on the other side of the elevator chamber is the corridor to the west building, unseen from here. Tomoe starts walking towards the west building, where the lights are off and the real corpses are left in their places. He walks around the elevator chamber, sees and walks through the corridor, and comes out in the hallway that describes the circumference of the Ōgawa Apartments. In a few more minutes, Tomoe knows, it will soon be eleven o’ clock in the evening.

Here in the hallway, the view of the outside world is quiet and lonely. All the apartments and condos surrounding this particular one all look about the same. Below, sporadic spots of garden greenery mixes with the dull dark grey of the asphalt. It makes the entire scene look less like an assemblage of high-rises and more like a cemetery and its gravestones writ large.

Though his attention is facing the night scenery outside, he is certain he feels the presence of a person somewhere nearby. So with deep breath, a bout of concentration, and a grip on the knife, he slowly turns toward the direction of the elliptical hallway, unlighted save for the faint blue glow of moonlight. There, separated from him by a distance of two rooms, stands a figure wearing a black greatcoat. Though the light makes it difficult to make out, the person’s height and silhouette leave little room for doubt. A lifetime of anguish has chipped away at the face. Standing here now is the mage, Sōren Alaya.

The moment Tomoe confronts Alaya, he freezes. For a moment, his breathing normalizes, his pain disappears, his consciousness is stilled, and all becomes silent. He stands there, unable to do anything. But he is glad for this because it is a moment of respite where he can redouble his purpose.

“Alaya!” Though he cannot do anything, and his freedom of movement is stripped away and limited, Tomoe speaks with confidence, invoking his opponent’s name as a sort of proof of equality. Trepidation will not be his quality this time. Alaya’s features seem to darken at this brazen act.

“Why have you returned?” the mage asks in his heavy set voice. Tomoe denies him an answer and only looks straight at him and his eyes that don’t seem to take in any light. It is all he can do not to look away. “You have no place here. Your replacement has been readied, and your return was not a necessity.”

Why did I return? Tomoe thinks. Well, the first time was because Ryōgi brought me along for the ride. But now it’s—

“To save Shiki Ryōgi, is it?” Alaya asks mockingly. “Fool. Do not think your heart is a thing that belongs to you. If you have not realized it yet, you are a mere puppet. Do you find yourself unable to live, separated from this spiral?”

“Wh—”

“It is true that you escaped this spiral of an existence. The Tomoe who died, died due to the actions of his family. But that was not for you. You thought you escaped. You despaired. You even contemplated the thought of suicide, and you would have done so, left alone as you were. But you had a role to play in this stage as well. A role you were designed for. Tell me, do you know it?”

Tomoe wants to scream and cast off Alaya’s lies, but cannot seem to summon the strength to do so. Instead, he stands there, unmoving. The mage’s face is unchanged, the eyes still sneering and ridiculing his inaction as he continues.

“It was the final throw of the coin for me. And I succeeded, as you fulfilled your role better than my wildest expectations. Without knowing me, you brought Shiki Ryōgi here to her final act. Though I had the lowest expectations for you, you defied them. And though I reward you by removing the leash, it seems you must still come back. Make no mistake; you have no agency that I do not ultimately shape. You did not crave Shiki Ryōgi out of your own will. I only appended one thing to your existence after your first escape: to draw in Shiki Ryōgi and bring her in clandestinely.”

Unable to form a coherent argument against Alaya’s words, Tomoe finds it difficult to remain standing. Because after all, he knows inside that it is true. How can someone like Tomoe, who had never truly loved a stranger before, suddenly find himself in love with Ryōgi? Ever since he first met her, he had already felt some inexplicable impulse driving him, telling him to observe her, and take interest in her.

“So you understand now, do you?” Alaya says. “You gave a reason for Shiki Ryōgi to come here, but the decisions were never yours. You are but a mere congregation of the memories of a single day in this pocket reality. Nothing before, and nothing after; your so-called will an illusion maintained by delusions. There is no other place for your simple life. For you are powerless, and as such, unlike the fantasies you entertain in your heart of hearts, you cannot hope to stop me.” Now, as before, the mage’s words are charged with the taint of magic.

The facts of his artificial origins, the one day of life lived over hundreds of days, and the delusion of the past he relied on and a future that he could hope for all come crashing into Tomoe’s mind. His feelings toward Shiki, and toward his dead family, his humanity: all an artifice. Only the exits and entrances of the one day drama he had lived repetitively remains in a weak emanation. And even that, Tomoe wonders—even that cannot be trusted.

“In the end, you are not even worth my attention in watching you expire pathetically. Disappear, and never be seen again,” Alaya says in a deep, commanding voice. He seems to lose interest in Tomoe after he said what he felt must be said, averting his eyes from the boy. But against the revelations that Alaya attacks him with, Tomoe offers only an unprecedented smile.

“The fuck you blabbing about? That sh*t isn’t as important as you think it is to me,” Tomoe says, but if it dealt any crack on the mage’s demeanor, he does not make it visible. “Being here in front of you now, I get it. I didn’t want to admit I was weak like you, but now I know I gotta face it. ‘Sides, real or fake, doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is what comes after it. ‘Least I know that I’m Tomoe Enjō. Even if I got no past, what matters is that I think I do. And for me, it gives me all that I need.” He chews with an empty mouth, but finds it helpful to his concentration. “I really liked Ryōgi. Fuck the reason. The ride was fun while it lasted, even though I couldn’t give her anything. And if you say you’re the reason for the whole thing, then I gotta be a gentleman and thank you, don’t I?”

Tomoe clicks his tongue, remembering what he can of Shiki Ryōgi. It seems like a different life now. At least every time he remembers her, the clicking of the gears and cogs that placed him in the circumstance of his life seem to fade away. That Mikiya guy was right, Tomoe thinks. It’s more important to think of myself sometimes. He needed to come here. Shiki is only part of the reason. He had to know all that had been revealed to him tonight. Own up to the cost. Maybe find his own redemption in what little he can do. But I still gotta do it.

Sorry about this, Ryōgi. Looks like I’m not dying for you after all. I’m putting my life on the line for my own self. In his mind, the apology is a whisper, and with just that, the thought of Shiki Ryōgi departs from his mind.

“Call me a fake all you want, Alaya,” Tomoe declares. Alaya’s expression finally changes, though subtly, with the slight quiver of his brow.

“You would go against your nature? That way lies foolishness and hubris. It will never change the truth of you,” he replies with disdain.

“Maybe. But at least my soul is true,” Tomoe says with a quiet murmur, carried on the wind and echoing out through the night.

“The time for talk is long past.”

Tomoe nods slowly and determinedly, secretly agreeing. The mage raises his hand in his familiar gesture, like a signal for his enemy’s imminent demise. As soon as Tomoe sees this, he holds back the chattering in his teeth. He knows he will be killed. But at the very least, he can pay him back a few for the trouble. This isn’t suicide to him. This is for the sake of his parents, and for the sake of the dead and dying in this spiral of a false world, and for his own sake as well. Tomoe doesn’t want to die. But there are some things worth dying for. Time to run. To run and face the truth. Run with the same joy in my memory. Run like the hands on a clock, or the changing seasons. Run so that I don’t end up in the same place every time. Whether it’s a dream that doesn’t truly exist, it drives a determination that I know is real.

“Alaya, I will kill you.” Gripping the knife tight, Tomoe Enjō breaks into a sprint.

Tomoe Enjō aims to hit only one target: Sōren Alaya’s heart. He’d seen Shiki strike the same place with a determined strike, and he thinks that repeating it might proffer the mage’s death. And so, aiming at this, Tomoe runs, attempting to close the same six meter distance that Shiki once closed in a mere two or three seconds. He kicks off the floor with an explosion of strength, remembering the sprints he repeated over and over in the track in school. He will make this his best time yet.

In the space around Alaya, a circular perimeter appears much like the one he deployed in his fight with Shiki. However, unlike the threefold circular ward that he used with Shiki, he only uses one, perhaps to mock Tomoe. This particular one only spreads out a meter away from the mage. Tomoe knows no way to avoid it, and so he steps right into it. With an arrested jerk, his body halts in place. The power that only moments ago flowed through Tomoe’s legs is gone in one disorienting instant. He is immobile, unable to do anything.

Frowning, Alaya takes one sluggish pace forward, impressing upon Tomoe the gravity of the situation. His outstretched hand slowly takes hold of Tomoe’s head. No good huh, thinks Tomoe as he closes his eyes. But he refuses to back down.

“My family didn’t deserve to die like they did,” Tomoe struggles to say. “They weren’t so bad that they deserved to be killed!” he shouts. He fights the invisible chains that bind him as hard as he can, not caring even if his legs might be snapped in two, as long as it doesn’t end like this. I’m not worthless.

“I existed! I’ve lived!” Tomoe cries as he pours his last burst of effort into escaping. He hears a snapping sound, then a sharp tear, and then the flash of pain of a leg splitting open. He starts to fall forward, but turns that momentum into his last attack. Passing under Alaya’s arm, he lets his hand that holds the knife fly to the mage’s defenseless chest, the steel glinting and seemingly leaving a cold, silver trail in the air. And it hits its mark. But that is the only thing that happens.

“You fool,” Alaya says with a voice tinged with regret. He draws back his hand to seize Tomoe’s head once again, unfazed by the strike at his chest. This time, his hold is solid, almost crushing.

“You are not Shiki Ryōgi, nor do you have her Eyes. You do not realize that the knowing of death is not enough, for there is value too in the seeing. You cannot hope to actualize my entropy without seeing it.” Now the mage’s muscular arm begins to crush the head which it holds. Tomoe’s hand that wielded the knife is now forced to withdraw it from the mage’s chest, slipping out easily and dropping to the floor in a clatter, the hand that only seconds ago gripped it tightly now losing its strength.

“You never knew the reason you were chosen,” Alaya whispers sternly. Tomoe does not honor him with an acknowledgement. The hand seems to rob him of his last will to live. “In your last moments, you have earned this knowledge, so listen well. All things have an impetus that drives and shapes their very existence. A primal impulse contained and cycled in the

Akashic Record we mages call an ‘origin.’ I knew you would murder your mother, and fall into despair because your origin is known to me.”

Again, Tomoe does not answer. Alaya holds Tomoe’s body up high by the head, and with a voice far too chilling, speaks.

“Know this: you were never capable of anything. For your origin was ‘worthlessness.’”

In the flash of a moment, some arcane power, like a command, passes through Alaya’s hands. The power enters the body of Tomoe Enjō, and he begins to fade from existence completely, disintegrating into the air into nothingness.

After the destruction Tomoe Enjō, the mage Sōren Alaya stands stock still in the tenth floor hallway. He knows the time is close at hand. He has prepared the body he will use, and his soul is ready to be relocated, and he will finally leave this inferior flesh. Unlike the puppet master he once knew, his soul will not move to something similar to his previous form. He has no need of one, for he has never known death. He has known rot and decay, but his soul presses him forward to some grand goal, and so he survives. And in the end, he stands alone. This body will either be his medium for ascension, or death; for there is no other. Due to this, his extreme attention to caution can perhaps be forgiven.

Not much longer now until he leaves this false material world, his soul sublimated to the vessel of the girl connected to the spiral of origin, from where he can command reality itself. As above, so below. The process has already started. But before this happens, there is one matter left to settle.

“So you have fallen, Alba,” Alaya mutters in a lifeless voice. He closes his eyes. At first he is in the unlit hallway, but with a single thought, he feels himself fall through the floor as if diving through a deep sea, and seems to descend into slumber.

While Alaya’s body remains in the tenth floor, his consciousness travels downward. Without shape or form, he observes the state of affairs in the lobby on the first floor’s east wing. Present there is the mage Tōko Aozaki, as well as the boy called Mikiya Kokutō. Tōko is nursing the fallen boy’s wounds, but it seems Cornelius Alba cannot be found. It is just as he expected. He prepares to return his consciousness to his body, but something holds him back.

“Where are you going, Alaya? Scrying is in poor taste,” Tōko says with a click of her tongue. Though formless, Tōko looks over her shoulder as though he sees Alaya. She is at the foot of the staircase, while he is observing from the top. As before, they find themselves confronting each other. Hmph. So you did indeed have a second puppet as I thought. And through it you have disposed of Alba. The heart I plundered from you was real, I know it to be. Does this mean you are a mere fake?

Alaya’s voice echoes throughout the lobby. But there is no sound. It is a reverberating voice only Tōko can hear. Upon hearing Alaya’s question, Tōko sighs.

“First Alba, then you. Both of you sure like fussing over the little details. Always asking ‘what’s the difference between then and now,’ and never anything productive. I wonder how long you plan to take the questions this time.”

The propensity of your mouth to utter irritations seems unchanged, at the very least. Then will you duel with me once more?

“No, thanks. I’ve got no chance of winning in this apartment building,” speaking frankly, Tōko turns her attention away from the mage’s presence, deciding that nursing the unconscious boy is more important than maintaining her conversation with Alaya. She produces a bandage from beneath her brown trench coat and begins to dress the wound in the boy’s knees. Is your decision true? The familiar you contain within that box is capable of defeating me.

“I humbly decline. If I just cut this familiar loose, it might well consume the entire building. The Ordo Magi would definitely notice, and they wouldn’t let that slide. After all the trouble I went through occulting myself here, I wouldn’t want all of that to go to waste.” Tōko doesn’t look over her shoulder when she answers him. “I lost when I died. I accept that. Whether you acquire Shiki’s body and cast of your own or not, I don’t care. If there were someone able to stop you, it wouldn’t be me.”

Do you still rely hopelessly on the Deterrent this late in the game? I have told you before that it will not function.

Tōko shakes her head, in pity more so than repudiation. “Maybe so. Maybe you’ve actually won this time. I don’t know what you’ll do when you reach the spiral of origin. They told us that the mages who reached the realms above remained, never to return to the material world below, sloughing off their memory of it like dry skin. But you fancy yourself different, don’t you? You’d reshape reality, cast your shadow here on this side.

As above, so below. You think you hate humanity so much that you want to save them. If that were true, you’d will yourself from existence after your ascension. But you don’t really hate humanity, Alaya. You only love the notion of the Platonic human you think you harbor within you. It’s why you can’t forgive the world of suffering you see. It’s hilarious, too, how you think you want to save them. But you only want to save your delusional self.”

Alaya does not immediately respond. At this point, any common cause they thought they shared, and what Alaya thought he could appeal to, is now well and truly broken. When he speaks, he speaks in a tone of grief.

Then there is little else to speak about. For I see only one way to salvation. Farewell, Aozaki. I cannot leave any proof of my arrival at the spiral of origin. Only content yourself with the knowledge that you were the one that endeavored to stop me, and find meaning in that.

The mage’s consciousness starts to fade from the lobby and the senses of Tōko Aozaki. Back still turned, she suddenly remembers a certain doubt.

“Wait, Alaya. I have one last matter to ask. You made this facsimile of the Taijitu to contain the Taijitu, didn’t you?”

Of course. I made this pocket reality primarily to keep Shiki Ryōgi from escaping. Everything else is an addendum to that objective.

Though Alaya replies with an air of composure, Tōko starts to snicker, initially trying her hardest to hold it back. Unable to calm herself, the female mage begins to laugh loudly, and with mockery and humor, unrestrained and even somewhat disconcerting.

“Yeah, this building is just one big pile of sorcery, isn’t it? A closed realm to hide Shiki and your experiment from the Ordo, from me, from the consensus. A prison! A prison to keep the Deterrent from acting. Up until that point, your theory is watertight, Alaya. But what a pity! You have committed your gravest mistake yet.”

Alaya is at a loss at grasping the meaning of Tōko’s words. I made no mistake. His voice is without hesitation, a self-affirmation. Tōko tries to answer as she holds back bouts of laughter.

“Yes. True. Perfect weaving, for any mage’s spell. But think back, Alaya. What if your assumption itself was wrong? You isolated Shiki not in a room in this building, but within the building itself, didn’t you? A spell bordering on sorcery that cuts her off from regular space, trapping her in a lemniscate space, rendering anyone incapable of escaping. A prison that won’t break no matter which weapon one uses. It’s a finely woven pattern for one versed in the arcanum of the wards such as you. You think you have trapped her, and your guard slackens. But you see, Alaya, it is no proof against her. We mages might be an abhorrence of reality, a paradox on the pattern of the world, but Shiki is a reaper for beings as uncommon as us. Even now, she works against you!”

Her words unsettle the observing mage, and he feels his mind seem to stop. Certainly, Shiki’s talent lies not only in the killing of physical things. The many weapons that humanity has created are tools enough for such purpose. It is her ability to bring entropy upon things that don’t even know the concept of “life” as we know it, concepts and thoughts without form, bringing the ultimate void to bear.

The one that brings entropy to all things. That is her ability. She is contained in an infinite span of nothingness. Without form, Alaya thought the space would keep her safe from anything that would extract her physically. But the Arcane Eyes that Shiki Ryōgi holds grants her power over that formlessness as well. And so, Alaya realizes too late.

“Now is your blunder obvious, Alaya? It might actually have been better for you to trap Shiki in a concrete cell. Matter with form takes its toll harder on her when she weaves entropy, and is the reason she uses a weapon. Though I doubt even a material prison would have kept her for long. But your flimsy cage is not so solid. You treated her as you would a mage, but now your oversight is costing you, as she now tears it apart tooth and nail slowly but with the ease of shredding meat. And soon, you will be witness to her escape!” With her final sentence, Tōko finally looks back over her shoulder at Alaya. Before he can comprehend what her eyes told him, his consciousness fades and is fished back into the body that contains it.

As Alaya is pulled back into his body, he senses in it the rumblings of an irregularity. There is coldness in it that he has never before felt, and his fingertips grow numb from it. The sweat on his forehead mocks the chill running through his body, even as his insides seem to completely stop, shouting to him of some impending peril.

It has been severed, he thinks in protestation, unbelieving. But he is now face to face with the truth of the matter. For he senses the place, somewhere in this building, where something has just torn its way free. It is the closed space he’d constructed, now destroyed in a single unwavering stroke.

Though Alaya’s will controls his body, it also has sympathetic correspondence with the almost living properties of the building. The framework his flesh; the wiring his nerves; the pipes his veins and arteries. And the pain of it being cut reflects and finds its way back to roost in its owner, a pain so great that even Alaya cannot ignore it, the proof of it lying in the loss of concentration that forced him to close his scrying spell on the first floor lobby and return to his body, as if compelled by some forceful arm.

“What is happening?” he murmurs as he wipes the sweat off his brow with an arm. Chills trickle down his spine, little spiders crawling up and down with their tiny legs. It is the herald of a nauseating emotion that he has not felt in many, many years. “Be still, Sōren Alaya,” he scolds to himself for his moment of weakness.

But the phenomenon he feels doesn’t stop. The arcane power that only moments ago he channeled through every fabric of his body seems to grow dim, and he cannot bring his fingertips to change the threads of reality’s weaving, as mages do.

He feels death given form draw closer and closer.

Unexpectedly, a deep rumbling sound can be heard. It comes from beyond the hallway Alaya stands in now, echoing from the lobby. It is the distinct and familiar sound of the elevator in operation, bringing something up towards the tenth floor. It is not long before the rumbling noise stops, and silence returns, only to be broken again by the sound of the elevator door opening. Now a soft, dry noise, repeating. Footfalls from shoes resounding from the marble floor, their metronomic click growing louder, coming closer.

Wasting no time, Alaya directs himself back to the lobby. And then, though finding it hard to believe, he sees who it is that comes. She appears before him, the light of the lobby behind her forcing the figure into a silhouette, but it is easy enough to see the white kimono, and the accompanying leather jacket that clearly does not match it. It is easy enough to see the raven hair, looking wet and unkempt as if its owner had just emerged from a long slumber in a lake. And the normally black eyes of the void, now burning with an Arcane blue. In one hand she holds the hilt of the sword being drawn slowly, lovingly from its scabbard in her other hand. Even in the oppressive dark of night, the blade glints. Sword drawn, she swings it lazily across her to rest at her side as she walks forward, gliding ethereally like a soldier in a bloody battlefield.

Bringing the tranquility that heralds death in her presence, Shiki Ryōgi has returned.