With a puzzled frown painted on her brows, she looked back at the door, and again, saw no one there. She was sure she heard someone call her name, though.

​

Maybe she was just imagining it. Maybe the stress and frustration really was getting to her. She knew she could be entirely blind to that when it came to herself; she knew when other people were stressed just by looking at them, but she could never see it for herself when she was the one who was stretched thin, not until someone else pointed it out to her and she realized it like a light bulb that, Oh, I’m stressed. That’s why I feel like shit.

​

It would have been nice if she could use that excuse to explain away the horrible reality of what that dream meant, if it really was something that happened during her three-year disappearance.

​

She shook her head – she didn’t want to think about it. Not yet. There were more pressing matters at hand, with people’s lives on the line.

 

People’s lives, she thought, as the gravity of that thought hit her again, for the millionth time. People’s lives depend on me.

​

It was a horrible feeling, and she hated it. She didn’t want this level of responsibility.

 

She turned back to the window, and shrieked when she saw not only her own reflection looking back at her from the glass, but the faint and hazy image of a girl – her, that was her but not her at all – with eyes blacker than midnight and a sly smiling curling her crimson lips staring back. Her face was right next to Pai, an almost perfect twin rendition. She tipped her chin up, and Pai swallowed a choked inhale at the bloody red line cutting across the pale expanse of her throat, a mirror to the girl’s smile.

​

She whirled around. There was no one beside her.

 

Her heart thundered in her chest as she slowly brought her gaze back to the window, but saw nothing there. There was no second face. She focused all her attention on listening hard to everything around her, but all she heard was the creaking wooden boards of the floors as people in the house started waking up, moving through rooms as the cold day began.

 

But when the voice called again, she knew she wasn't imagining things.

 

How come it’s taking you so long? It called out petulantly.

​

With her heart somewhere down in her stomach and her breath shooting out in shivering gasps, she scrambled to her feet as she stared at the eyes of her frightened reflection. She took a hesitant step toward the window, eyes growing unfocused as she watched herself move warily closer, and closer. She scrambled  her brains trying to think of any kind of Yori Chiisai that could possibly cross over the magic boundary of Ayashi House and somehow cause her hallucinations.

 

Or maybe it wasn't that – maybe it was the Amanojaku, come to knock the final nail in the coffin of all her failures that night at the warehouse. They were known for being able to influence people, especially humans, into doing things they never would. Maybe it was making her imagine things, hallucinate impossibilities where she was seeing faces in window reflections.

 

She stifled another shriek when her reflection warped into a nightmare.

 

Her face dissolved into screaming agony, black seeping into the white of her hair like oil spilling over snow, her hands raising up to scratch and claw at her eyes as her head snapped back. She could almost – not quite – hear the nerve-shattering scream that had her lifting her own hands to her ears as she stared at the reflection with her eyes wide.

 

It was like watching something out of a horror movie. She saw herself screaming in pain, tears of blood welling up in her darkened eyes and dripping down hollowed cheeks, before jerking to the left. Another face, the girl from before but her at the same time, seemed to tear herself out from Pai’s neck, silent laughter echoed in the crazed smirk of her blood-red lips.

​

She blinked rapidly in shock – and between one blink and the next, she was left staring at only her own reflection. At her normal self, mirrored in glass, with white hair and terrified, blown-out brown eyes looking back at her.

 

Come on, a snide voice whispered, half in her head and half out. You know better than that. You know things as weak as they cannot get past a barrier built by the blood and sweat of Hengen.

​

She shook her head, shutting her eyes. “I – this – I’m hallucinating. It must have been that – that dream…” she swallowed, scrunching her eyes tight. “This isn't happening, this isn't real, I’m tired. This is that dream, this isn't –”

 

That memory.

 

“Dream,” she whispered, and she could hear the desperation in her voice. “It was – it was a…”

 

But – was it? Was it really just a dream? It was too real, too close and personal. How could it have been nothing but a dream, if she could remember every detail of it when she always forgot her dreams?

​

She remembered how thin Kazuki’s shoelaces were. She remembered that he kept a pen in the breast-pocket of his white lab coat and she remembered wondering why there was only one, when every other doctor she had ever seen always had at least three.

 

She remembered the precise shade of the woman’s blush when she looked around to see if anyone else on the street had seen her lover, the Tanuki, kiss her. She remembered how cold the spring wind was, yet how warm the setting sun felt against her back, and the cool metal in her hands as she aimed the sights of that gun right in the centre of the woman’s forehead.

 

Stop it!

 

She shook her head vehemently, nauseous in a way she was not used to as she struggled to focus her mind away from the dream-memory. She hated to think that somehow, someway, she had killed those people, maybe…maybe more.

​

She hated more how she relieved she felt at finally starting to remember something. The opposing emotions, the sickening relief, threw her into disarray; she didn’t know what she was supposed to feel.

 

Because how? How could that have happened? How could she have turned into that?

​

“This isn't real,” she murmured, almost listlessly, stuck as she was in the swirling confusion of her head. “This – I’m – I am hallucinating –” she winced when the voice returned.

 

Are you really?

 

“The Oni’s venom must still be in my system.”

 

It has had one whole turn of the moon to get out.

​

“I’ve not been getting enough sleep. That’s it – because of what’s happening, I’m not sleeping enough, I must be really stressed –”

 

You just woke from a nine hour slumber.

​

“Who says ‘slumber’?” she slapped a hand over her mouth. No, no, if I don’t acknowledge it, then it’s not real. It isn't real.

 

Hm, the voice murmured. That single syllable carried in it such dangerous promise, such tangible dark malice, that Pai felt a shiver race down her spine at it. It would not do to pretend we do not exist.

​

Pai was barely thinking when she turned and raced to her bedroom door. She flung it open and bolted down the corridor to the bathroom, belatedly thankful that there was no one in the hall to see her mad dash.

​

When she got there, she lifted her gaze to stare at the mirror in front of her, staring back at herself. There was no one else there, no doubles of herself looking back at her. She gulped as she stared at her terrified face, dimly noting how large her dilated pupils looked. Like a terrified street cat, always having to be on the look-out for danger, with not a moment of rest.

​

Her eyebrows scrunched as her eyes burned, the corners of her lips tipping down in a wobble. What’s happening to me?

​

Nothing answered her, this time.

​

She remained as she was, standing frozen like a block of ice except for her eyes that flicked from side to side, looking from one end of the mirror to the other, searching for something that didn’t step out into the light. She was alone, she could see that she was alone, but she didn’t feel it.

​

She felt like something was watching her, but she could see that nothing was.

 

“I’m tired,” she said softly, worn-out. Hallucinations are supposed to feel real, but they’re not. None of that was real.

​

She didn’t know if it was better to know she wasn’t hallucinating with what she’d seen, that it was real – or that she really had been hallucinating.

​

Shaking her head, she reached out and turned the tap on. Her hands shook as she cupped her hands under the running water and splashed it on her face. The shock of cold jarred her senses into full wakefulness, chasing away the last dregs of exhausted sleep that clung to her bones.

 

Fuck, she thought wearily. Fuck, what is this? What’s happening?

​

She lifted her face and looked at herself in the mirror. Water clung to her eyelashes and dripped over the planes of her cheeks and down her jaw to land on the cold marble surface of the sink. Her bottom lip trembled, and her eyes were – scared.

 

Terrified. She looked terrified.

​

She hated that look in her eyes. Being scared meant being weak, and she hated that most of all. It was how she felt whenever she tried to remember what happened to her before she came to Ayashi House. It was how she felt when she thought about how useless she was, trying to defend herself against the Oni after her life.

​

Tears sprang to her eyes unbidden, burning her as she didn’t let them fall. She hated being weak. She hated it. Sometimes, she thought she even hated being human, for how susceptible it meant to anything stronger, and that was everything.

 

She hated it.

 

She closed her eyes and leaned her elbows on the surface of the sink. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, trying to quell the tide of panic that threatened to sweep her off her feet. She couldn’t let herself get lost. She needed to focus on what was important right now, and deal with that dream-memory, that hallucination, after it, later.

​

She needed to remember Shin’s true name, because right now, that was all she could do. Focus on the one thing that could keep her going, not on what she saw in the window reflection, or that voice in her head. Hallucinations were supposed to feel real, but they weren't real. She needed to focus on finding Shin’s true name first, now, and then figure out what to do about the hallucination after, later.

​

You will never figure it out on your own. Not in time, at least. You need us.

​

Pai jerked upright, eyes going wide as saucers when she saw a woman staring back at her instead of her own face in the mirror.

 

It was not a mirrored reflection of herself this time, but of someone else entirely. Pai’s heart stilled in her chest, body freezing as though touched by the hand of an ice god. A torrent of clashing emotions waged war in her chest, so painful that she felt as though she could cry from it.

​

Oh – she was crying. Tears dripped down her cheeks as fear, relief, sadness, joy, sorrow, swept through, an influx crashing into her so overwhelmingly that she stumbled back a step as she stared at the woman standing in the mirror.

 

“Mi –” her heart ached with such fierce longing as she lifted a hand to the reflection in the mirror. “Mitti-chan.”

 

Midori, her beautiful big sister, standing right there as if all was well with the world and she hadn’t been missing for more than three years now.

 

Her eyes were a startlingly clear mint green, bright against the wash of her pale skin. She had a little smile playing about her lips, almost as if she was amused by her little sister’s stunned reaction. As she stalked around the reflection of Pai’s image in the mirror, her body moved lithely and gracefully, exactly like Pai remembered she used to.

 

Midori’s jet black hair, that she remembered so clearly as always cut in a severe yet stylish bob just below her chin, was now long and piled up in perfect curls beneath flowering silver petals of a kanzashi that sat neatly atop her dark head, with a long river of her hair flowing down the line of her back. The long hair where it had been short made Pai double back at it. Decorated on one side of her hair is an ogi-bara, fan-shaped with silver streamers attached to the end that made jingling sounds, soft and gentle, as she moved.

 

The sounds grounded on Pai’s frayed nerves as she stared.

 

Midori was wearing a brightly colourful uchikake that’s ends swept along the wooden floor. The shoulder pads were stiff and had curved ends raised up to mimic the shape of silver horns. The base colour of the uchikake was bright red, with images of a great white dragon sewn into it so seamlessly that the longer Pai looked at it, the more it seemed to come alive as the fabric shifted sensuously along Midori’s body.

 

Underneath the uchikake, she could see that Midori wore a deep black furisode, easily distinguishable by its ankle-length sleeves, the hems lined in red. There were no decorative pieces to her clothing, and neither was the furisode embroidered the way Pai was used to.

 

What was odd about it was how Midori wore it. The sleeves looked like they had been wrapped around in front of Midori’s torso, winding around her body to keep her arms bound and completely immobilized. Even still, Midori was beautiful. Just as beautiful as Pai remembered, even more so, growing into her own as the years passed, in a way Pai didn’t remember seeing.

 

As Midori passed under the light overhead to come to a stop beneath the window looking out towards the courtyard of Ayashi House, she caught a dull flash of something. Pai squinted, trying to make it out, and then her eyes widened the longer she stared at the black fabric – the groves in it, the way the cloth coiled into shapes that almost seemed to defy gravity, the depth of the curves, the shapes they made…

 

They looked like skulls. Gaping-toothed mouths opened wide in silent screams, opening and closing and screaming and crying in a way she thought she could almost hear, as if it was coming from a great distance away, grieving with a sorrow she couldn’t begin to imagine.

 

But…there was something wrong with her. She looked like Midori, but Pai had the distinct feeling that this…wasn't her sister. Pai always felt warm, happy, safe when she was around Midori.

​

Now all she felt was a bone-deep chill, like there was a winter storm settled deep in her core that grew to a gale the longer she looked at the reflection in the mirror.

 

She drew in a sharp breath that made her throat feel like it was coated in ice. She thought she was about to scream, she didn’t know why but she needed to let something out and she didn’t know what it would be – but nothing ever made it out.

 

Her throat suddenly constricted, as if an iron fist was wrapped around her neck, crushing her windpipe. She stumbled, hands going up to her neck as she struggled to breath around the band around her neck, gasping and expanding her lungs as big as she could get them but never drawing in enough breath.

 

Do not…scream.

 

Her back hit the wall as she stumbled back. Knees weak and chest burning from lack of air, she collapsed on the cold wooden floor as her hands loosened around her neck. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. A white-hot flame torched her lungs, setting her body on fire. Her limbs shook with the effort to breathe. The walls around her were collapsing, falling in and blocking her airways.

​

Pai’s eyes grew wider as she came to the startling, horrific realization that no matter how hard she was trying, no matter how she scrabbled at her neck and gasped and choked, she couldn’t breathe. She could hear the choked sounds she made as she gasped, but even that was muted behind the thundering rush of blood to her head.

​

Then, just as suddenly as it came, the suffocating band around her throat disappeared.

 

It was coming up for air after staying underwater too long. It was drinking fresh, cold water while stuck under the unforgiving blaze of a summer sun. It was closing your eyes to sleep after an exhausting day of work.

 

Her heat hurt, a pulsing ache that started right at the base of her neck and spread like wildfire to the rest of her as she drew in lungfuls of air, breathing too hard and too quickly that her chest ached with it, but she couldn’t stop breathing because she almost fell into oblivion without it.

 

When her breath was caught, her legs stretched out limply in front of her, she tipped her head back and let it thump against the wall, wincing as a spike of pain lanced through her sensitive head. Her skin was hot, as if she was about to burst up in flames. But nothing of the like happened; instead, there was only the sound of her ragged breathing filling up the quiet space of the bathroom as she took a moment to simply breathe, her mind slow as she struggled to understand what just happened.

 

We told you not to scream, didn’t we?

​

Her breath caught weakly as she pushed herself to stand, leaning back on the wall as support so she didn’t collapse. Her knees wobbled so much so that she was sure that she would fall any second. She glanced around herself, heart shaking in her chest as her knees quavered, but she saw no one around.

 

Black butterflies flitted in and out of her vision as she closed her eyes tight for a moment before opening them again. Her head pounded with a fiery headache. In a single spot on each side of her neck, pain pulsed from points where she thought the invisible hand had strangled her by pressing its fingers into her throat, cutting off all her air.

 

She stood there for a moment like that, breathing. The voice in her head was not a hallucination. She wasn't imagining things. The voice – however it was possible – was real.

 

“You –” she coughed, her throat burning just from the effort of speaking alone, and it felt like lava coating the back of her throat when she coughed. Her voice sounded like her lungs were filled with nicotine. Hard and gruff in a way that was completely unlike her.

​

She closed her eyes, breathing in deep, even as tears of fiery, frustrated pain slipped down her cheeks. She tried again, slower, and it was not any less painful for the effort of it. “You are not my sister.”

​

Midori wouldn't do something like that to her, even if she could, and she couldn’t have – they were both human.

​

She felt empty and hollow inside as that realization sunk in deep. Being hit by that blinding ray of hope that she was seeing her beloved sister again only for it to be so viciously torn away seconds later made her realize just how much she had lost. Her entire family, her old life where the rules were clear and straight lines were drawn between the world she lived in and the Ayakashi world that told her what to do to remain unnoticed.

 

Everything – it was all gone. She didn’t know how to get it back. She didn’t know if she could.

 

She looked at the mirror, and swallowed hard when she saw the reflection of Midori again, standing off to the right in the mirror. Without turning her head, her eyes darted to the right, but there was no woman there. She looked back at the mirror again, taking a hesitant step forward.

 

Midori – no, it’s not Midori – pressed her lips tight together, brows scrunching in disapproval. “Even after everything she has done to you, she is who you see when you look upon us? Still, it is her?”

 

Pai tried to speak, but it felt like a red-hot bar of iron was pressed against the walls of her throat. She coughed and winced at the pain, head pounding like a jackhammer was being driven into to the side of her head.

​

She couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so terrible. Even the ordeal with the Onihitokuchi was mostly a blank haze in her head, one she didn’t try to peer through too hard.

​

“Who –” she swallowed thickly. “What are you?”

​

Her answer was silence, stretching like an empty cavern before her. Pai watched a confused frown flicker lightly over Midori’s black brows. She shook her head, reminding herself that this wasn't Midori. It was – could only be – an Ayakashi clothed in Midori’s skin, or somehow looking into Pai’s memories and appearing to her as the person she longed to see the most.

 

Midori – not, not my sister – cocked her head. “We…do not know. We know what we are with him, but we do not know what we are without him. You tell us – what are we?”

​