Vermillion to Vermeil

Himeko handed Dr. Nakamura a few nails and a hammer before turning away to focus on her own task of setting up her hologram projector. Music – one of the innumerable playlists that Hanami had made for her – played from her phone, and light rain pitter-pattered on the roof. She finished up with the hologram projector and made way to pick up the next thing to be set up before hesitating. It was the record player.

“Himeko? Is everything alright?” asked Dr. Nakamura, one final thump cementing a shelf’s place on the wall. With one hand, he handed the tools back to her, and with the other, he began to put the few trinkets she’d wanted there – a photograph of her brother, another with the scientist, Hanami, and Dr. Tsuru, and a thing from some mobile game Koiki liked that was particularly cute – on it.

Himeko’s hands grazed the record player’s box. “I met someone at the record store; a woman with orange hair and eyes who called me an abomination.” She watched as the scientist stilled, opening her mouth before he had a chance to open his. “Just how many problems have I caused?”

“Himeko, you haven’t-”

“-You don’t need to lie to me,” Himeko cut him off. “Tell me the truth.”

Dr. Nakamura sighed, his shoulders slumping as he climbed down from the stool he was on. “When you talk like that, I’m suddenly reminded of… It makes me sad.”

Himeko didn't know what to say. She waited, for a silent moment, for him to start again. “Like all things, the morality of bringing the dead back to life was not cut and dry, even if our peaceful lives hinged on it. There were some people who didn't agree with the Madam’s and ‘your’ decision to approve of my project, and some of them attempted to sabotage it. It seems like now they're targeting you directly.”

“And that woman is one of them?”

“Shusoin Tenko,” Dr. Nakamura murmured. “She was never violent before but considering what happened to the partitions…it seems like she's wanting to ramp up her attacks since you were successfully brought back. I have to go inform Madam Nahaku. We have up with a plan to keep you safe.”

“‘Me,’ me? Or the Cube?”

“Himeko, what a ridiculous question-”

“-If worst comes to worst, who would you save? Me, or myself?” Himeko asked, stepping closer to him. “Which of us matters more for the world?”

She braced for the impact of his words, her body stiff, and she feared that she wouldn't be able to break out of this bought of vertical rigor mortis. Would this be the final nail in her mental coffin, that this life – her precious, wonderful life – was a farce, destined to crumble under the weight of reality? That she was only brought back because her most valuable component needed it?

“You, Himeko. The Cube is a machine. It can be fixed. Your brilliant mind can remake them all or find a better solution, I’m sure, but it’s only possible with you. The Cube offered no help when it came to your resurrection, after all.”

“I’m a machine, too, aren't I? What’s the difference between us, when we have the same brain? If I can fix her, then can't you fix me?” Himeko let out a shuddering breath, her hands bound so tightly together that her artificial joints were white with the pressure of it. “If things get worse, if the only way to save New Urania and the precious, fragile peace we’ve achieved is my ‘death,’ then I don't mind. You can bring me back again, can't you?”

Dr. Nakamura held her shoulders tightly, hesitating only a moment before pulling her into a hug. “Never say that, Himeko. I’ll never let that happen. It was already difficult to bring you back once. Who knows what would happen to you if I tried again? I will not let either of ‘you’ die. The Madam and I will find a way to keep you both safe.”

Himeko’s resolve lasted mere seconds before her lips trembled and she cried into Dr. Nakamura’s shoulder. She felt so small again, like she was back to being no more than five or six crying in her brother’s arms as they watched Urania City turn to ash behind them. Himeko remembered how then, unable to see from the hazy air and her own choking clogging her vision, she’d tried to run back in for her parents, and her brother had to snatch her up. She’d fought and cried and screamed, but he wouldn't let her.

Was this too like trying to run back into a burning city?

“I didn't realize you’d given me the ability to cry.” She whispered once she’d calmed down to breathe again.

“Even if there are many mysteries about the human body, I – we - tried to replicate it as much as we could. It was already going to be disorienting to come back after death. The least we could do is not make living the same.” Dr. Nakamura replied.

“You put so much effort into me.”

“And you put so much effort into us all,” he let her go, wiping her remaining tears away with his sleeve. He stood up straight and offered Himeko a kind smile. “Now, why don’t we finish up your room and then go downstairs?”

✦✦✦

After they finished, had dinner, and watched the first episode of a crime show that Dr. Nakamura was strangely passionate about, Himeko bid him a good night and slipped into the silken sheets of her bed. The holoprojector displayed sea creatures and shimmering dancers clad in holographic particles danced over the walls of her room, lulling her into sleep.

She dreamed she was a princess of a lofty tower of hard light, caged by a dragon. Then she dreamed she was the dragon caging the princess. Then she dreamed that she was the tower, and she could fell the weeds grow between her crevices, the flowers shooting up from their seeds to sway in the wind, and a vermillion canine creature slumbering in her grasses.

The vermillion creature stirred. It looked at the tower, and it circled around her with excited yipping once she (as herself) stepped from the tower wall. Himeko reached down to pet it, but it ran off before she could, waiting for her beneath a torii gate the same color as its fury and topped with obsidian black. Tattered shimenawa, severed in the middle, hung from its middle and skirted the ground.

An uneasy feeling fell over Himeko. She looked at the creature, whose eyes flashed utterly too human, before it jumped up and snatched the shimenawa between its jaws. It wrapped it around the gate and stared expectantly at Himeko. Still hesitant, she started walking towards it, and although the creature bounded off straight through the middle, she stuck to the edges.

As it ran, Himeko followed. They passed through another torii gate, and another, and another, until they’d passed through at least five more than they started with, and she was sucking in air at every chance she got. Her lungs expanded, her throat constricted, and still she pressed on, resting on the edge of a final shimmering gate. It rippled vermillion and trembled gold when her fingers grazed its edge, and twinkling lights – akin to curious eyes peering at her – blinked from the darkness beyond. The canine creature sat just beyond its edge. Its eyes beckoned her forward. She obliged.

Himeko found herself on the edge of a starry sea. It shimmered amethyst and cobalt, and hard light constructs floated above it, born from the fingers of a dark figure’s hand. Snow fell like shredded paper into the sea. The constructs shifted and carbon fiber shifted and Himeko called out –

“It’s you! I didn’t expect to see you! This little thing led me here,” she shouted, running over and forgetting entirely about the vermillion canine. Her mirror image turned around, her expression shifting to one full of fear and trepidation, and before Himeko could blink, the Cube slung constructs at it eightfold. Himeko screamed. “What are you doing!?”

“It isn’t what you think it is,” said Cube Himeko quickly, hurtling more constructs towards the creature and pinning it between them. “This thing led you here to put us both at risk.”

As she walked over, the canine yowled and thrashed in its bindings. The space shifted around the two girls, and Himeko watched in horror as the torii gates shattered into pieces and the background shifted from the night sky to strings of dark code. Cube Himeko released the constructs and swiped at the creature. It dodged her, slinking to their side before convulsing, its form morphing before it stood up. It was the woman – Shusoin.

She looked around with a sharp grin and even sharper eyes. Vermillion eyeliner made them pop out against the blue of the dream. “What an interesting place. I’m glad my hypothesis was correct. Your minds are linked. One of you can lead me to the other.”

“You know as well as I that this place isn't meant for you. Get out.” Cube Himeko said.

“But I’m here all the same, aren't I?” asked Shusoin, her sharp grin suddenly full of teeth as the sky and sea became streaked with cinnabar.

“What you’re doing is in direct opposition to the Takamagahara Protocol. You're breaking the law.”

“I wish you no harm, Miss Himeko, because I have nothing but good intentions. I only used this method because I had to. You know as well as I that the so-called Madam would never let me close enough for us to have a proper conversation! I’ve come to bargain – a dissolution of the Protocol and freedom for you. Won't you hear me out?”

Cube Himeko put her hand up. “I don’t need ‘freedom.’ I know what my duty is. I have seen humanity go from nearly extinct to flourishing and I have led us here. I am content.”

“And yet you malfunctioned. You fell apart. Your only happiness comes from living through a cheap mockery of yourself, a machine meant to emulate your brilliant mind. You aren’t happy, Miss Himeko. All you are, is a ghost.”

“I’m not a machine.” Said Himeko, her hand splayed over her chest. “I’m just as much as ‘Zaiyabōto Himeko’ as she is.”

“Oh, my apologies. Would you prefer I call you a zombie instead?”

“Enough, Shusoin. If the ‘me’ that I am is ‘Himeko,’ then so is she. We both share her brain matter. If she is not Himeko, then neither am I. I am not uniquely Himeko, nor is she uniquely not Himeko. Do not insult her, for you will insult me.”

Shusoin – let out a lofty and exaggerated sigh, like she couldn't believe that Cube Himeko had said that to her, and smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Was it not you who laid your body down and merged with the cube? What does this one have? What has she done? Tell me honestly, o’ maiden in the metal: would you not trade this caricatural puppet for true freedom?”

The Cube sighed. Himeko looked at her, desperate to see that she would shrug off Shusoin’s words, that they had no effect on her, only for her mirror image to look away. She stared, the air knocked from her lungs.

How could Dr. Nakamura assure her so confidently when her own self could still debate whether her existence was valuable?

“You-I…” she swallowed thickly. “How could you…?”

Smiling sympathetically, Shusoin bowed. “Well, it seems like that’s my cue to ‘exit the stage,’ so to speak. Thank you for your time, Miss Himeko, and just remember, should you need me, I’m only a call away.”

Chains of data surrounded Shusoin, and her body vanished like a hologram would. The dream heaved and sighed, as if finally cured of its illness, and the vermillion in the sky bled silver. Looking at her reflection on the clear sea’s surface, Himeko crouched down and cupped its cheek. In this dream, it felt real. It was if her reflection was connected to her, and she leaned into her own palm’s warmth.

The waves rolled with the wind. Clouds drifted across the sky, and stars shone brightly, as if spotlights in this dream. The Cube stood at the edge of the beach. She whispered after a while, “Himeko. I know it seems inexcusable to you, but please, allow me the chance to explain.”

“Would you give me up and destroy what we built just to be in my shoes? Is that what you really want? Are you really willing to do that?”

“Of course not, but you can't blame me for considering, for a mere moment, even if I know that Shusoin’s attempts have less than a thirty percent probability of success, the possibility I could walk in the world again. I would not sacrifice you or the Protocol to do so. But I can still dream.”

“Is it not enough for me to live it?”

“Though precious memories are still warm, they lack the texture of life. Don't you want to live, Himeko? What’s so wrong with me wanting the same?”

Himeko stared past the Cube, at the artificial stellar horizon. “You considered trading me for it.”

“Himeko…” The Cube sighed.

“Shut up. Don't act like you care. You’ve said you do, you’ve assured me, but you haven't seen me as a real person since day one, have you? I’ve spent so much time wondering which one of us is the person and which is the machine and the only answer I found was that we both were Himeko. But you…deep down, I don't think I’m a person to you, even if we share the same brain and the same memories and the same longing. Otherwise, why would you even for a second consider it?” Himeko ran across the sand, stopping between herself and the ocean. The waves smacked into the shore, soaking their clothes, and she clenched her hand into a fist by her heart. “Tell me why I’m less than you. Tell me why I’m not a person but you are. Tell me why you’d consider giving me up just to take my place!”

“I’ve never believed that.”

“I don't believe you.”

“I’m not a person, and I haven't been one in a long time,” whispered her mirror image. “I’m just a wishful echo. I dream of walking the world as you do. I dream of making friends, and going to school, and having a family again. I dream of what hasn't been mine since we died. And I am sorry.”

Himeko squeezed her eyes shut. She scrunched her face to contain her tears and felt them spill over anyway. The wind kissed them cold. “Why did you even let Dr. Nakamura make me when you wanted it?”

“Because I wanted to believe so badly that ‘I’ could be there, that I could split in half – one half in that body and one half here in the cube - and still be of one mind, whole. Indeed, I did split in half. It just made two of us; two Himeko’s. It made you.”

Himeko paused. “Do you regret it?” she asked, but they both knew what she really meant: Do you regret me?

“No. I couldn't even if I wanted to.”

“Why not?”

Cube Himeko looked so, so sad as she smiled. It was wobbly, barely holding its shape, and her eyes were wet with unshed tears. Himeko almost laughed - she had always been a crybaby, hadn't she? – but she only exhaled as her mirror spoke.

“Because I love you.”

She inhaled sharply and took a step back, feeling herself sink into the sand beneath the waves. “I don’t know how I feel. I don’t- I think I hate you.” The Cube flinched with her words, yet Himeko pressed on, despite disgust pooling in her core. “I hate Zaiyabōto Himeko. And I think I hate myself the most of all.”

Himeko looked away. She couldn't bear to look at herself.

Her body sank further and further into the sand. It consumed her until only her eyes were above the water and filled her lungs, and when she drowned, she couldn’t tell whether it was by her own desire or the Cube’s.