Clockwork and Scalpel

What’s the difference between a clock and a scalpel? Both cut you open, piece by piece, until nothing is left but precision.”—Kagame Jin

______________________________________

Time moved wrong on this island.
The waves ticked instead of crashing.

Even the wind seemed to breathe in patterns, like a clock wound too tight.

A man stood at the landing path’s edge—too still.

Like a statue left behind. Not to weather, but to keep time.

His coat carried the precision of a soldier, but buttoned with the restraint of a servant. A single monocle caught the gray light—right eye bound in glass, left eye free. His hands locked behind his back, spine too straight to be human, as if an invisible cane was already inside him. When he shifted, the scabbard brushed against his side, boots striking in metronome rhythm.

His smile was carved on, like someone had told him never to let it fall.

He bowed, slow and precise.

“Welcome to Wonderland.
Where the clocks tick backward.
We’ve been waiting for your arrival.”

His voice was mechanical elegance. Not warm. Not cold. Just… measured.

Then he tapped his watch. Once. Twice. Three times.

It shouldn’t have meant anything. But the sound hooked under my skin like a fishhook. Every gesture of his moved with practiced perfection, like he wasn’t speaking to us at all—just performing his part on a looped stage.

Kyoshin, of course, was already laughing behind me.

“So Tokeiji the rabbit came to welcome us,” he drawled, hands spread like he was announcing a magic trick. “How generous of you to waste that lovely time of yours. Where’s my brother? I was hoping for a fight like the old days. Don’t worry—I’ll try not to burn the whole stage this time.”

His face smiled with elegance.
His shadow promised fire.

Tokeiji—the rabbit—slipped his watch back into his coat with the care of someone sealing a weapon. His hands returned to their place behind his back, as if they’d never moved.

“Shiromasa-sama isn’t here,” he replied evenly. “I was sent as a representative.”

Kyoshin tilted his head like a curious bird, eyes glinting.
“Heh. Busy as always. My dear brother never changes.” His grin sharpened. “So, Tokeiji the Timekeeper is in charge now. How efficient. How perfect. How boring.”

No flinch. No shift. Not even a blink.
Tokeiji’s silence was its own reply.

Around us, the island breathed—not with life, but with ritual.

Fog thickened at our feet like waiting hands. It didn’t just clutch—it leeched, draining heat, or maybe soul, from whatever it touched. Pale stone and twisted roots curled beneath, the texture rough as old scars.

The dirt was dark, almost red—not clay, but dried blood scraped clean and left to stain. The air carried rot with it, iron-sour and old, pressing against the nose until it stung.

Tokeiji stepped forward. His boot aligned exactly with the center of the path, like it had been measured in advance.

“Everyone is waiting for us,” he intoned, still looking ahead. Then he turned—to me.

Before I even met his gaze, before I could decide if his eyes held anything at all, I caught myself inside his monocle—reflection warped like a clock with no hands. A rhythm that never fit.
Then he turned again, and began walking.

Kyoshin followed with a dramatic shrug, humming something tuneless and low.

And I—
I watched them go.

I waited. A beat. Two. Three. Their footsteps were already dissolving into the mist, soundless like ghosts in rehearsal.

So I have to follow the Rabbit and the Mad Hatter to the tea party, I thought. What a joke. The kind that laughs back at you.

I stepped forward, and the sound of my boots echoed back with a delay. Like the ground was thinking about whether or not to remember I was here.

The path was narrow. Too clean. The stones were veined with cracks that pulsed faintly when I wasn’t looking directly at them. The trees overhead leaned in closer, their branches like bent fingers—motionless, but angled like they were listening.

One tree leaned closer than the rest, its bark carved—not by blade, but by nails. Not words, just gouges. The kind left by someone trying to exist here. Or trying to warn whoever came after.

And beneath all of it—inside my head—something stirred.

Not a clock. Not exactly.

A ticking.
Not sound, but sensation.
Pressure behind thought.
Crooked rhythm.

Unfinished.

—------------

Tokeiji walked ahead like a man with no spare seconds.
His shadow didn’t flicker in the fog. It followed like a line drawn in permanent ink.

He could’ve been a machine—
or worse, a man who’d chosen to become one.

Kyoshin spun suddenly as he walked, his coat flaring out like a broken umbrella.

“Do you think the tea will be poisoned?” he asked no one in particular.“Or perhaps time itself has gone bitter.”

I said nothing.

The trees leaned closer.
The island was listening.

The ticking got louder. Not in the world—but inside me. Behind my ribs. Beneath the skin of my skull.

Like rot threading through my thoughts, spreading slow and crooked.

It had been frozen for so long I forgot it existed.

But now?
Now it remembered me.

Tokeiji didn’t look back. He didn’t need to.His body spoke of precision so absolute that even the wind seemed hesitant to interrupt it.

Every step forward was a statement.

Every silence a sentence.

Kyoshin drifted like smoke. Humming something tuneless, tossing invisible cards into the air as if we were walking toward a circus tent and not—

…whatever this was.

And me?
Every step I took felt like judgment.
The ground measured my pulse, weighed my hesitation, carved my purpose in dust before erasing it again.

The trees began to thin.

The fog opened, and in the distance, something shimmered. Lights? A building? I couldn’t tell yet.

But the island was guiding us there, like a story already written. One that had been waiting for me to step into it.

I didn’t want to follow them.

But I did.

Because the clock was ticking now.

And it wasn’t waiting for permission anymore.

Kyoshin was the first to slice through the silence.
“You seem to prepare everything, even when the plans change at the last second. Still glued to your sacred little timetable, like it’s the Bible or something.”

He laughed—a dry, cracked sound—swinging his cane like he was conducting an invisible orchestra of absurdity.

Tokeiji didn’t flinch. His gaze fixed forward, posture crisp, one hand behind his back like a soldier reporting to no one.

“It’s important to organize everything precisely,” he intoned.
“We wouldn’t want to delay the ritual, after all.”

Ritual.

The word snapped into place like a blade sliding home.
Something about it scraped at the inside of my chest.

I stepped forward. My boots sank just slightly into the earth, like the moment I spoke I’d already fallen into a trap.

“What ritual?”

Kyoshin tilted his head, pretending to search the skies for an answer.

“The ritual to turn that princess of yours into a proper killing machine, of course. To forge her into the perfect blade.”

He turned, hand on his hat, grin sharp.
“Oh? Did I forget to mention that? How careless. Maybe I’m getting old.”

“Turn her into a perfect blade? That’s not a plan—it’s a curse dressed as a bad joke.”

My voice cracked. I wasn’t even trying to hide the edge anymore.
“What exactly have you shackled Emiha to?”

Tokeiji answered, calm and polished, like a courtroom verdict.

“Emiha, daughter of Shiromasa-sama, was raised for this. She was trained from birth. She has already accepted her fate.”

He pulled out his silver watch and tapped it three times with one gloved finger.

My fists clenched before I could stop them.
He’s using his own daughter. Turning her into a weapon. What kind of twisted monster would call that fate?

“And that’s why you’re here, little knight,” Kyoshin murmured.
His voice tilted sharp, almost affectionate, like an insult dressed as a gift.

He flicked a playing card into the air. It spun, flashing as it landed neatly in his palm.
“You’re the knight in this fairytale of blood, come to save the princess from the cruel teeth of fate.”

The card showed a grotesque knight, drawn in thick black lines.
Its armor cracked.

Its eyes glowing like they’d long forgotten what mercy was.

It didn’t look like me.
Not exactly.

More like what I had been. Or what I would become.
A reflection that lied better than I could fake the truth.

Kyoshin’s eyes flickered as they measured Tokeiji.

“Must be hard, huh? Being her keeper all these years.
Watching her walk willingly into the abyss. I bet that gives you… complicated feelings.”

Tokeiji didn’t look at him. Didn’t even blink.

“I’m just playing my role,” he said, sliding the watch back into his coat. “Just like her.”

Role.

So it’s a script now?
A daughter raised to kill.
A keeper to nod along.
A clown to narrate it like a joke.

Then what’s mine?

That thought curled like smoke in the back of my mind, whispering deeper questions I wasn’t ready to face.
Who wrote it?
And more importantly—what if I refuse?

—-------

We reached it then—a building too surreal to be real.

It looked like a courthouse stolen from a dream.
Marble pillars slick with fog-dew, steps too smooth to have ever been walked.
A gate that opened not with sound but with certainty.

Like it had been waiting.

A figure stood before the gate.

A woman.

Muted dark-green hair falling to her shoulders. A lab coat snapping faintly in the wind.

She kept glancing around, searching for someone—until her eyes landed on us.
Her posture shifted. One hand on her hip, a smile cut sharp enough to be rehearsed.

“Well, well. The Mad Hatter and the Rabbit together. I wonder if it’ll rain needles tomorrow.”
She said it without masking her clinical tone, as if the joke were an autopsy note.

Her gaze lingered on Kyoshin first.

“Our scalpel, sharp as ever. Out of the lab for once. Perfect timing—our guest could use an escort. Us adults have preparations.” He said it like he was interoducing a new toy while pointing at me.

Then her eyes found me.

Her lab coat was drifting through the wind. Maybe she was a doctor.

For a moment, her brow twitched.
She tilted her head. A faint smell of anesthesia clung to her like perfume.

“…Strange. Looks like I’ve been working too much. I’m hallucinating a corpse walking out of the morgue.”

Never mind.

She wasn’t a doctor. Definitely a surgeon. With a tongue sharper than a scalpel.

Tokeiji and Kyoshin had already drifted away, their silhouettes swallowed by fog.
Which left me alone with her.

She didn’t speak.
Only stared.

Her emerald eyes dissected me, slow and precise.

And in them, I saw a reflection—stitched skin, hollow veins. A corpse still pretending to stand.

The corner of her mouth lifted.

A smile that lingered longer than it should have in my mind.

“Perfect timing, huh? Fate really does have a cruel sense of humor. But since you’ve got a little free time before heading back to the morgue…”

Her grin widened.

“…how about helping me out, corpse prince?”

She’d already turned on her heel, walking away without waiting for my answer.

Her shadow stretched in front of her, long and thin—like a scalpel already cutting.

I wasn’t sure if she was offering help… or sharpening me for practice.

“You could at least name yourself,” I muttered, trailing at a distance that felt instinctive—like getting too close would mean getting cut.“…before handing out weird nicknames.”

“Kagenui,” she said simply.
Then she glanced over her shoulder, smiling with an edge that sliced deeper than her words.
“Not that you’ll need to remember it. You might not be here long.”

For a moment, my shadow flickered behind me.

Almost as if it agreed.

“You mentioned helping,” I called. My voice steady, though my foot hesitated a beat before the next step.

“What did you mean?”

She didn’t turn.

“Hunting for a mouse.”

Her voice was clinical. Detached.

I couldn’t see her face—
but I couldn’t shake the image of her smile widening in the dark.

____________________

Kagame Jin’s Commentary :

“A corpse, a rabbit, and the mad hatter wandered to the tea party… and what did they find at the gate? A scalpel smiling back. Wonderland begins to show its hidden colors, one cut at a time. 

Curious: do you guys prefer quotes that feel personal to Hiiro, or the more general, thematic ones like today’s? Drop a comment if you’ve got a preference.”

Visual alert: “Our author insists on sketching corpses in mirrors. I told him clocks and scalpels would sell better, but he doesn’t listen. Anyway—if you’re curious, you’ll find his latest attempt at capturing Hiiro’s reflection on the showcase of the story profile .”

Author's Note :

Tokeiji (時計寺) — literally “temple of time,” standing as the keeper of precision and ritual.
Kagenui (影縫い) — literally “shadow stitch,” here framed as “she who stitches shadows,” a fitting reflection of her scalpel tongue and clinical presence