Supernatural Encounter

Shino

I dashed towards the bathrooms in an instant, but my legs were holding me back.

The hall was maybe a hundred meters long, but it felt like an eternity, so I chose to call on the curse to help me.

"Iwazaru!" I shouted. At the same time, I felt something grab on to my heart. The echo of my words pushed me from behind, and in not even a second, I had traversed the hall.

Right in front of the door to the women's toilet, I took a brief moment to think of a plan. 

No, that was a lie. I dashed into the toilet with my pocket knife ready for a fight.

I could see everything, hear everything, and use sound waves to boost my movement. Be it a Mimono, Kikamono, or Iwamono, I was ready for a fight. The small underground space also played to my advantage.

Yet what I saw was neither of those. It was a plain white figure. No face, no distinctive features, nothing. It looked like a white mannequin from any store. I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman.

What's more, it lay on the ground, lifeless.

Still, all of that was secondary.

"I'll take a look later," I said, taking some photos. What I was more concerned about was Chigira. I had to make sure she was safe, or I would lose the only lead I had.

I shouted her name again and again, knocking on every stall.

"Chigira! Are you okay? Chigira!"

Nothing. There was no answer. For lack of a better solution, I kicked the doors open. They were full of scared people, hiding for their lives. Yet there was no Chigira—no sign of her hair as green as grass.

My thoughts were racing, and my heart was beating faster than I thought possible. Never before had I been so out of options. Never before had I had someone so crucial for my mission.

"Chigira! Where are you?"

There was no way for her to simply vanish.

"Please move!" I shouted at the women hiding. I had one final idea of where she might have been.

"If she's come out of a flower, then maybe... Maybe..." Nothing. There was no flower, no plant, no green-haired lady, and no lead.

I shouted her name again, feeling the curse gripping on my heart for using it for too long, but I couldn't give up. I had to do something.

I dashed out of the women's bathroom and shouted to the sky—no, to the ceiling.

"Curse! Help me!"

I needed to hear more, to see more, and to make her hear me. I needed the power of the curse to last me a little longer. No, I needed it to give me more. The price didn't matter—not as long as I got to kill the one who put the curse on us.

It was at that moment that a sharp pain behind my eyes forced me to close them. I tried to open them again, but the light before me was too bright. Even with my eyes closed, the light hurt.

With trembling hands, I touched my face. Is this how it starts? I thought, scared that I might become a monster. But something felt off.

However much I tried to analyze it. My mind was still clear. I had no desire to kill or do harm. I had no interest in any sort of tower or energy. I had lost my ability to see, but I hadn't become a monster yet.

"No... that's not it..." I whispered, failing to open my eyes once more.

I slowly came to realize there was no need for me to open them. After a couple of seconds, the light had become bearable, and I could see everything even with my eyes closed. It wasn't only everything that surrounded me. I could even see through the walls.

"You've helped me..." I told Mizaru.

Even if it was just one of the three curses, it had given me strength. No, it had given me clarity. It took a bit of time for me to adapt to the new power, but once I did, I could look around for her.

And there she was.

"Chigira!"

The moment I saw a hint of her green hair, I started running in that direction. Seeing through the walls made it hard to tell things apart, so I felt my body colliding with many objects. I didn't even have to open any door, for I had crashed through it.

When I finally reached her and saw that she was safe, my pulse returned to steady. It was then that I was able to get a grasp on what was around me and the place I was at.

"The men's toilet..."

There, a couple of steps before me, Chigira was trying to tie the laces of her new shoes. She looked helpless, but not the kind of helpless I was expecting.

"Please help me! I'm not used to wearing shoes..." she said with bubbly eyes, ready to break down in tears.

*****

"I want to go there!" Chigira said, dragging me by the hand towards the local temple.

I was too tired to say anything more. Too many things had happened that day. All I wanted to do was go back home and rest. I didn't even bother asking what had happened in the station's bathrooms, but I knew I had failed to protect someone yet again. Typical of a killer.

"We'll go if you tell me something..."

Still, there was something I had to know.

"Back then, what happened? With that mono, I mean."

"Mono?" Chigira repeated after me, tilting her head in confusion. I sighed and explained what a mono was.

"Ah, the white monster? I killed it!"

The smile on her face as she proclaimed she had taken a life was one nobody could ever forget. She smiled as if congratulations were in order. Well, it's true that the mono had to be killed, but the last thing I was expecting from the girl as gentle and as smart as a flower was to kill anything with joy.

"It tried to do harm to people, so I killed it. Then I went back to where I had left my clothes."

"So, you weren't in that bathroom when it appeared?" I asked.

"No. I was in the other one."

A smile when she said she'd taken a life, and now a straight face telling me she was in the men's bathroom. I hadn't tried to understand that woman until that moment, and it was right then and there that I decided I would never bother doing so.

Instead, I shrugged my shoulders and let things flow as if it were the natural order of life. I had taken a photo of the mono and gained favor with the girl who spoke like my target. It was enough for one day.

I let Chigira go to the temple and pray, but she dragged me with her.

We both threw a coin and clapped our hands together. I didn't pray for anything, for somebody like me had no right to pray to gods. Next to me, Chigira seemed to be praying intensely, drops of sweat dropping down her forehead.

When she finished, she was dizzy-headed.

"What did you pay for?" she asked me.

"Ah... Happy—"

"Don't tell me!" she interrupted me the next moment.

"You have to keep it secret!" she said with a dummy wink.

Outside the temple, she waited for me to light one up. This time, she didn't intervene, except for when I threw it on the ground. Then, she wasted no second and stepped on what was left of the cigarette many times. I wondered if she had confused the mono for a cigarette too.

"No," I shook my head. That was a stupid thought.

Looking back at me, Chigira stretched her hand.

"Come on, let's go!" she said, and grabbed me by my finger.

I looked at her, wondering how come she still had so much energy.

"Maybe it's because of the sun? No," I shook my head. another silly thought.

I was clearly too tired, so I decided to follow her home and jumped into my futon the moment I stepped foot into the apartment.