Chapter 501:

Dissonance

Shift


Across the foothills on that same morning awoke one more stranger in the world. However, he had little interest in what was happening or the plots that were in motion. He was alert, but only stared up at the ceiling, if one were to guess he might have seemed lost in thought. Yet that was not quite the case for him.

As a boy and a child, like everyone else, he certainly had plenty on his mind to be pondering. Though the immediate situation wasn’t really what his mind focused on. When it wasn’t blank or in an emotionally regressive state. Currently, the problem was more focused on the fact that he was in yet another world and things only pushed him further away from his sister.

I found the silence more than a little refreshing right now. In all of the gaps of my mind, the last things that I can recall were all chaos and noise. That is all that my memories hold for the last week. It is all so incomprehensible to watch. Time isn’t consistent or even fair. My little sister is gone and replaced by someone that I don’t even recognize anymore. And once more I’m separated and left alone.

Right, he had other problems on his mind than the immediate concern of the new world. He didn’t even know that he was a child yet. That wasn’t something that he even noticed or would likely care about for now. Time flowed in different ways for everyone involved in Yumi’s current situation. The rift that it created only increased with each world.

It might not even be something that could be repaired.

The future was at risk.

I found myself disliking this new world the longer that I stared up at the ceiling. There is little reason for it. It is just something that started to swell up inside me. ‘How soon will this world try to kill me this time?’ I think, only able to keep any sort of grasp on things with dark humor. Hate it as much as I did, the few moments that I’ve had to think about things only all led to that conclusion. Given how things change, it only seems to make sense that everything in this place would actively seek me out.

However, things aren’t going to stay the same. Whatever this rustic place is and the people in it, they won’t beat me. I’m the one that will take back control. They can try to steer things down the path that they think is right, but I know better than any of them what’s right. That woman has no clue what she’s talking about. They’re all delusions and lies spinning a web that’s completely convinced Yumi.

Standing out of bed, I walk over to the window, but find that it is too tall for me to reach. This is another attempt by them to fight against me. But they won’t beat me!

I will find the real you once more. They’ve hidden you from me, but I know I will find you once again. They can’t keep us apart.

We’re family.

I will save you.

Chapter 501 – Dissonance

Back to normal now, Yumi, the child known as Yoshiko within this world, stood out on the deck of the vast estate that she found herself dropped within. It might have been the third time that this had happened to her, but each new world carried its own mystery and beauty to it. The beauty of each world sometimes seemed hard to find, though this one seemed to have it apparent and in the open.

Perhaps that meant that this world would be different. Each one seemed to have a sense that mirrored the sort of feelings of it. Fear and death focused so much of Masa’s world that reflected within her own heart. While the cold of space and isolation of the alien planet worked in pair with the intelligence and solitude that Sumiko confronted. What did the sight of the city below tell her about the one that she would find here?

The more that she did this and spent time in her mind, patterns emerged. Intent was at the heart of everything that they did. Nothing about it was random or out of calculation. No doubt like Yuki, who had theories of his own, Yumi crafted several hypotheses about what it all meant. Five years of nothing but tracking and training along with another year of handyman gave her a lot of time to pause about the meaning of it all.

Her purpose had been to converse and reach an accord with them so that she could stay in control. If they were in her mind and she couldn’t speak with them without she would have to go within. Going within her mind proved to be more challenging than she had counted on when she made the decision. It was something that she knew wouldn’t be easy, but spending literal years within her mind and now a child body, wasn’t what she could have foreseen when she made the choice. All of the passage of time made her worry about what it meant for her body in the real world. Things in the mind might have been able to be accelerated because of the way the mind processed information, but it wouldn’t be zero time. She was going to return back to the real world having lost hours or days of her life, not to mention all of the time that she accumulated within as well.

Nothing would ever be the same.

“Young Mistress?”

The servant snapped Yumi out of her thoughts and forced her attention back towards the hall. She could see the pressing need to be somewhere else. She hadn’t even gotten a sense of what she was supposed to be doing. A life existed before she arrived that she had to follow and she had no hopes of being able to keep up with it at the start. ‘It’s a good thing I’m a child. I should be able to get a pass on being scatter brained…’

A snap of a long reed of bamboo hit the surface of a polished wood desk, completely isolated from the rest of the room. Though it wasn’t the sort of desk that Yumi expected, in the modern sense of having legs and room for a chair. It was old fashioned, she had to sit on the floor and the desk was such because it was the only flat space in the room that could be worked on without causing damage to the floor. She even saw an ink reservoir along with an inkstick or sumi. ‘Calligraphy?’

Even if her questions were towards what she would be doing, the more immediate problem that Yumi faced came from an aging woman in simple kimono that looked to be getting wrinkles around her eyes by the minute and adding to her slightly graying hairs that streaked through the sides of her pinned up hair.

It was pretty easy to know who the woman was, no questions were needed for that. Though the intense stare from the instructor made Yumi freeze up. It wasn’t fear that she had from the woman, no her heart had been hardened from something like that. Something else paralyzed her and it was a familiar feeling. The uncertainty and unknown, she could make a mistake and cause things to be worse. Even with her excuse as a child, she didn’t know how far that would take her, especially with the way that the woman glared at her right now. Could she really use it as a free move at any time and how long could she use it? She wasn’t ready for acting within this world’s rules and setting.

The stern look quickly transformed into a direct assault upon Yumi as the woman unleashed a lashing of words. “What are you doing just standing there mouth agape?!” If this world had been with super powers, she was certain a blast of wind would have knocked her off her feet and sent her flying through the hall behind her. She would have been picking herself up amongst shattered twigs of wood and rice paper unable to fathom the strength of the woman.

Given what she had figured out of the situation already, it was impressive the determination of the instructor. Yumi’s status between the two clearly would mark the woman beneath her, yet she had no hesitation in disregarding that status. A status that Yumi was certain held a significant weight within this society, if she had any reasonably good guess to the time period of Japan that she currently inhabited.

Even without any sort of superhuman abilities, the woman’s intent was enough to rattle her tiny legs a little. Perhaps it was the towering presence that she presented or due to the fact that she was in a child’s body, thus everything looked more imposing than they normally would, but some of the missing fear from before seemed to have found itself within her. It surprised Yumi when she realized it, considering what she had already been through. Why was someone as unintimidating as this middle-thirties woman making her question her grit? She faced down Demon Lords, superhumans and mental powers, yet a raised voice got to her.

“M-mistress, y-you should sit down…” The servant only realized too late that she picked the wrong word choice as Yumi’s legs obeyed the suggestion very literally. This only seemed to cause more frustration and anger from the instructor, who Yumi had no way of knowing had pressure on her as well. She was correct about the hierarchy of status, one that the slightly graying woman knew better than a naïve and sheltered child.

Words failed to help get Yumi to move as she was dealing with the processing of how her body wasn’t reacting in ways that she expected. It felt even more like she was pretending rather than being herself. There was almost a preprogrammed response that seemed engineered with years of hard discipline within the body that she couldn’t surpass.

Scared herself, but realizing the situation that they were in, the servant picked up Yumi as best as she could while dealing with her own shaking limbs. The glare from the instructor was no longer just on Yumi, but her person now too. While Yumi took the initial hit from the woman’s wraith. The longer that things went, it became clear that more than one party was at fault. The reasons or excuses didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter that she wasn’t even the personal servant assigned to the child. None of that mattered at all. Only a single issue faced them, the tardiness wouldn’t be overlooked if discovered.

Positioned before the desk, the servant tried to get Yumi to hold the brush in her hand, but Yumi’s mind was still locked up. The exercise was futile though as on schedule, like the instructor already knew, a firmly placed ring of a foot echoed from the courtyard that surrounded the instruction room. It was nothing that the servant could have known about for she had a routine that didn’t involve her being part of this under normal circumstances. She had only been trying to make sure Yumi didn’t face any punishment from the instructor for ignoring her and being late to lessons. Nothing of the schedule that was maintained everyday was familiar to her.

She had escorted the Young Mistress to her lesson because if her father found her wandering, she knew how he was about everything being on track, especially when it came to his daughter. The man, as the servant knew, had a fierce intensity when it came to his daughter, that she never understood. It didn’t seem to be something out of pride, as she originally thought during the first time she saw the outburst from him that left the child in tears and severely bruised. He hadn’t broken anything in her body that day, almost as though he had that sort of control and doing such would have defeated the purpose. Something else fueled him, that she had never figured out. She only resolved to try to see the Mistress avoid such things, even if it wasn’t her business as so many of the other women told her.

Standing with just his right foot on the porch, the imposing figure of the Master of the mansion split the open view through the doors and consumed all attention leaving the previously bright morning scene darkened by his mere presence. Had Yumi been paying attention to what was happening, she would have immediately understood that presence of status that she theorized before on full display.

While a young man by his appearance, the Master still commanded authority that no one questioned. His shining black hair tied back his shoulder length cut with a simple bit of cloth of a neutral white. The harsh presence that he emitted would have made his age an easy guess of thirty, but the truth was that he hadn’t even managed to reach twenty-five yet. Removing the aura that surrounded him, in isolation he had a young face with a broad and firm build that revealed his strict training regime that he followed. It was the stature of a warrior and well prepared for whatever that came to him in the next instant.

Yumi only briefly managed to recover in time to be hit with the assault wave of her new father, not even knowing him as such with her zoned out state. Only with the sight of the servant bowing deeply along with the instructor’s head hung low did she realize that he wasn’t just merely a frightening individual, but the one that commanded the household. ‘This is this character’s father…’

He stood only a meter away from the instructor despite it seeming even closer. The two adults stood next to the desk ignoring the presence of the child, while having a conversation that neither expected her to follow as they used advanced kanji that she wouldn’t have normally known.

“My apologies, Master Kaoin. I wanted to review past lessons in order to reinforce what she had learned thus far.”

“You will be prepared for the appointment in three months.”

“I promise that she will be.”

“Don’t fail me.”

“Yes, sir!”

The entire time, he didn’t even give her a partial glance. He clearly had to know that she was next to him. As his daughter, Yumi figured that he cared something about her. The fact that he was in an argument with the instructor over her seemed to be such, but never even giving her a glance seemed to speak contrary to that. ‘There’s a lot going on that I don’t know about yet…’

She had the urge to intrude on the conversation, but she knew better than to do that. Even if she apologized for being late, she doubted that would change anything that was happening. Her position as a child and his daughter meant that she had little authority. Yumi could only wait for things to calm down.

An appointment in three months made her curious though. ‘I still need to know more about this world, but an important event like that… I might meet the one that is the ruler of this world at that appointment. I need to learn more about it… I must find who’s my next target…’

Sota
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Eytha
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