Prrrr—!
With a sharp, tearing sound that echoed through her mind, the illusion shattered completely.
In an instant, a torrent of memories flooded Shion's head minutes, hours, and days of the kind Yokai's past rushing through her mind all at once. She saw the girl's fleeting moments of joy, the agonising dark inside the vessel, and the unbearable weight of her isolation.
"Ahhhhhh—!"
Shion screamed, her voice piercing the void as the mental domain crumbled into nothingness and cast her back into reality.
She collapsed hard onto the cold ground, her knees giving out as tears spilt uncontrollably, dripping down onto her feet as she sobbed into the quiet night.
'How... how could anyone endure all of that for her whole life and still...?'
Without even realising it, Shion had stopped viewing the pink-haired girl as a monster or a Yokai. She saw her now as a human being, someone who had experienced laughter, warmth, grief, and unimaginable pain.
"Don't be sad, kind girl..."
The pink-haired girl's voice echoed softly within the depths of Shion's mind, gentle and serene.
"I hope you live a wonderful life. Don't try to hide your feelings... for that is what truly makes us human."
The faint voice finally faded into complete silence.
Shion remained frozen on the ground in a daze, staring blankly ahead. She didn't quite know what to make of the ordeal she had just survived. Though the battle was technically her victory, it left a bitter, heavy taste in her mouth.
"Please... don't go," Shion whispered into the damp silence, her hands tightly clenched against the cold earth.
As her knuckles squeezed shut, she felt a small, sharp object press against her bloody palm.
"Huh...?"
Taking a shaky breath, Shion lifted her hands and locked her tear-stained gaze onto her open palm. Resting there was a delicate, pale hairpin carved as if from polished bone, adorned with intricate, sweeping scrollwork sculpted along its spine.
"Mmmh..."
She exhaled a long, heavy breath, tilting her head back to look up at the dark, overcast sky.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
The rain returned in force, cool drops tapping gently against her upturned face. While the rest of her drenched body felt freezing and numb, a strange, quiet warmth pulsed deep within her chest.
Slowly, Shion pushed herself up from her kneeling stance, standing tall in the downpour.
"Thank you," she murmured into the falling rain. "The only person to whom I have ever truly opened my heart..."
With a swift, practised movement, Shion shed her disguise. She peeled away the synthetic human-skin mask and breast pad that had hidden her identity, letting it drop discarded into the mud.
Her true countenance was revealed to the open night: a face as smooth and flawless as fine porcelain, breathtaking in its quiet, peerless beauty. Her long hair flowed freely in the wind, damp strands sticking softly to her face and clinging to her back under the steady rhythm of the rain.
Her hands, though still trembling from the lingering shock, slowly reached up to gather her long, damp hair. Pulling the dark strands back, she twisted them into a tight bun at the crown of her head and slid the bone hairpin deep through the centre, securing it cleanly in place.
"I am Shion of Iga... and from this day forward, I will walk proudly."
Her eyes sharpened into narrow, resolute slits. Without looking back, she burst into a sprint, dashing through the downpour toward the alleyway where she had left Gabimaru and the children.
Crrrk! Crrrrk!
"Haaah..."
Gabimaru, forcing his battered body upright, leaned heavily against the edge of the roof tiles overhead, his bloodshot eyes scanning the flooded streets below.
Back inside the narrow alleyway, the rising torrent was pushing violently against the makeshift shimenawa ropes and the small wooden cart the children had stacked to keep the surging waters from sweeping them away. The sacred ritual ropes hung along the walls began to ripple and thrash violently—almost as if possessing a sinister instinct of their own, sensing that their barrier was about to collapse.
With a series of sharp snaps, the ritualistic ropes tore themselves free from the stone brickwork,
"Stay behind me, Kate! I will protect you!"
A young boy in the flooded alleyway shouted, his trembling arms shoving his smaller sister behind his back. Tears and snot mixed with the heavy rain streaming down his face, yet despite his terror, an unyielding weight backed his words, a desperate conviction that forced the little girl to listen and curl tightly against his back.
"Tch..."
Gabimaru hissed from the rooftop above. He didn't even have time to think; his battered body moved entirely on instinct. In a fraction of a second, he blurred through the torrential rain, dropping down from the ledge to plant himself directly between the frightened siblings and the incoming strike of the ritual ropes.
CRACK—!
From Gabimaru's back, violent tendrils of crimson blood exploded outward, colliding head-on with the whipping shimenawa ropes in midair.
"What the hell is going on...? Huff... huff..."
His chest heaved as he forced his unsteady feet onto the stone floor, driving his own hardened blood into the cracks of the wet ground like anchors just to keep from collapsing under the impact.
"Why even bother?" a chorus of dark, overlapping voices hissed inside his head once more.
"Haaah—!"
Gabimaru jerked violently, shaking his head side to side as he desperately fought to block them out. He turned his head, his bloodshot eyes locking onto the children crouching behind his back.
"Help! Help us... big brother, please!"
The children blurted the desperate plea in unison without a second thought, their tearful faces turned up toward him in complete, helpless faith.
In that fleeting fraction of a second, a memory long buried deep within Gabimaru's mind suddenly resurfaced: a vision of a gentle woman's face, her soft hand fondly ruffling his wild hair.
"Oh, Gabimaru-kun... you are so kind."
The voice echoed like a sweet, distant lullaby, but the tender memory was brutally shattered as a massive, surging wave of water burst through the alleyway, sweeping away the makeshift barricade and throwing the children off their feet.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Gabimaru's heart hammered against his ribs like a war drum, and for a terrifying instant, time itself seemed to grind to an absolute crawl.