Chapter 0.8

Reiko’s mornings always began with fire.

It was difficult for her to describe every morning’s sensation to others. How would they know what it felt like for every organ to melt inside of them? How would they know the intimate feeling of boiling blood, scalding like hot irons, scorching the caverns of her every vein and artery?

The easiest explanation, Reiko assumed, would be simple comparison. No, it was not like stabbing your finger on the cutting board or spilling hot coffee on yourself in the lounge. No, she did not feel pain when they pinched her cheeks, and no, not even pressing her hand against a hot stove could induce so much as a yelp.

And no, Reiko felt nothing when the storm of swords pierced her body.

Mamoru jolted awake when Reiko’s blood dashed across his face and seared his cheeks. Droplets splattered on his hand and sizzled, leaving behind black ringlets and wisps of scarlet steam.

Reiko’s back had been exposed by the serrated imaginarium that had torn open the back of her blazer. That tear revealed to Mamoru the withered, ashen flower painted on her back. It glowed, glowed with an eerie, night blue radiance while the stems and petals writhed across her spine.

From the outline of the flower, a ghastly fire emerged. Where blood flowed, the flame followed, erupting across her body until it reached the jagged imaginarium that had spilled Reiko’s blood upon the world.

The imaginarium dissolved at the flame’s first touch. Its ruby sheen turned obsidian, then crumbled like paper thrown into a hearth. Where magic left open wounds, flesh merged and closed, and Reiko’s body was made whole once more.

Fervid breaths escaped Mamoru’s lips. He tried to rise, but stumbled backwards, his eyes wide, tears flowing.

“What’s the matter, Fujimoto?” she asked. “Still think you have what it takes to kill me?”

Officer Sakurai cocked his head at her.

“Hmm,” he said. “Mrs. Hasegawa? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question, Mr. Sakurai,” Reiko replied. “What’s the Brideskiller doing to my precious new juniors?”

“No,” the Brideskiller narrowed his eyes. “You’re not Mrs. Hasegawa.”

“That’s right,” Reiko nodded. “Why don’t you do me a favor and stand down? I’d rather not be seen assaulting a police officer at night.”

“I knew there was something odd about you,” Sakurai ignored her. “Ever since you approached me with that clueless smile, I knew it was too good to be true. No woman would ever approach me like that, not unless I used the usual tricks. Money. Charm. Magic. Lies. It’s all you can expect from women who don’t have an ounce of respect for their husbands.”

“That’s why I saved the others,” he continued. “I dressed them on the day they were the most beautiful, and I saved them from becoming uglier than they already were. I told myself I’d save you for once I got my hands on the others. At least you weren’t despicable like them. You weren’t married. But they all disappeared, didn’t they?”

“You mean the others like Himiko?” Reiko yawned. “I’m sorry. I took her home with me last night.”

“So that’s why all of those unfaithful crones avoided me,” Sakurai laughed. “You stole them from me! Just like he stole her from me!”

“I don’t care about your personal life,” Reiko glared. “It’s over. You don’t have a sacrifice to finish the ritual. Stand down.”

Sakurai grinned.

“Oh, you’re such a fool. This is what’s wrong with the police. They watch too many movies and procedurals. They think there’s always a motive, a pattern…”

Reiko had heard enough nonsense. She snapped her fingers together–

A loose tendril above the Brideskiller lashed at Mamoru behind her. Reiko snatched the appendage out of the air. Its notched edges drew her blood and once again, the fire inside her reduced the imaginarium to soot.

“I’m not finished!” the Brideskiller screeched. “If you dare to interrupt me again, try shielding the boy and the two girls over there with just your body.”

Reiko glanced at her other juniors.

Miyuki leaned against a tree for support. Her right arm dangled beside her, but Reiko watched Miyuki stretch and curl her left fingers to test their malleability.

Fujiko’s left eye was squeezed shut more tightly than her resting right eye, but she turned her face towards Reiko all the same and motioned with a muted nod.

“...There always has to be a motive,” Sakurai moaned. “Why can’t I just kill them because they’re hideous? Ugly hearted? I never needed any of the other women. I never needed you. You were always just extras.”

The Brideskiller cackled.

“I’ve already killed the eleven women that I intend to marry.”

Miyuki pushed herself off the tree and dropped into a combat stance.

“Captain!” she yelled. “It’s him! He’s the last sacrifice!”

“Kazama,” Reiko barked. “Stop him!”

Fujiko revealed her right eye.

“Freeze.”

A swirl of imaginarium leapt from her eye and formed a leash of interlocking chains. They wrapped around Sakurai’s wrists and ankles and pulled the man to the ground.

“How perfect!” the Brideskiller squealed in delight. “Incant. Sacrifice. Me.”

Miyuki braced to sprint forward, but the blades above Sakurai dropped like myriad guillotines. Reiko snapped her fingers and ignited half of them with a torrid blaze, but the other half pierced the inferno and impaled Sakurai where he lay.

Death for the Brideskiller came instantly, but death was not the end.

The blood that stained the grass bubbled. It pooled beneath the Brideskiller, and his body sank into the earth. Then there came a flash, a sprawling barrage of vivid, kaleidoscopic lights that streamed out of the park and reunited with all eleven other ritual sites to form Sakurai’s sigil of infinity.

Two porcelain hands surfaced from the pool where Sakurai’s body vanished. They gripped the contours of the world with slender fingers and pulled, pulled until the earth groaned and gave way and became wide enough that they emerged into The Now.

Reiko gazed at a faceless entity, its edges smudged like paint.

It was dressed in a wavering shadow-black tunic. Patterns of off-white filament crawled across the robe. A cloak, frayed at the edges, fluttered behind it. Its hood dipped low over its head, but no eyes or nose waited beneath the brim. A veil mask was stitched above the neck, but Reiko saw no mouth or chin behind it.

Then it howled. A tortured scream filled the gardens, and Reiko knew.

This thing needed to die.

As the phantasm released its gruesome knells, Reiko stepped towards it. It was akin to a newborn, summoned against its will. Reiko harbored no animosity towards it, no trace of ill will, but it was a distortion all the same, an affront to the world’s natural laws, a thing that should not be.

A thing just like her.

She stepped into the pool of the Brideskiller’s blood. Her ears bled as the wailing echoed inside her skull. She rested her palm over the phantasm's empty face.

“Incantation,” she recited.

“Thus I Burn Eternally.”

Corollas of cerulean flame danced in Reiko’s palm. A high pitched whine, like the charging of a capacitor, overwhelmed even the phantasm’s screams, and from Reiko’s hand there erupted a pillar of fire that swallowed her and the phantasm whole.

The blaze pierced through the evening clouds and erupted towards the stars. Anyone who gazed at the horizon of Sapporo that night saw a roaring tower of primordial flame–the flame that primed the opening hours of Reiko Nakamura’s every morning.

The phantasm writhed within the inferno. Its fair hands stretched towards Reiko as if to plead for its life. As time passed, however, it endured. The edges of its tunic flared into burning threads, its haunting hood lay laced with cinders. And yet, it remained.

It was as if it somehow adopted Reiko’s own resolve, as if the two of them, bonded together in those unyielding flames, realized that not only were they both things that should not exist in the world, they were both things that violently resisted their erasure with an unsettling permanence.

Then, in the light of that eternal fire, the faceless phantasm, for the briefest of moments, revealed to Reiko a forgotten face, who called to her with a sweet, soft-hearted laugh.

“Reiko!”

The tower of flames dissolved. Reiko’s eyes and hands shuddered. She blinked, but all she saw this time was the phantasm’s cold, faceless visage before it darted into the unlit corners of the botanical garden.

“Shit!” Reiko cursed. “Kobayashi. Kazama. Cut it off!”

“Don’t move!”

A brilliant white light flooded the scene. Reiko blinked again. When her vision cleared, two dozen robed men and women encircled her and the rest of Section Eight.

A lone old man entered through the encirclement. Unlike the section chief, this old man had no need for a cane.

“Captain Nakamura? Section Eight?” he asked. “I know your boss. I’m your senior, Public Commission Safety Director, Tanaka Arataki. We’ll take it from here.”