An Awkward Encounter that Sigmund Freud Could Never...

A… ra… ta…

Hoshino gasped, his brain snapping awake. Focus. Right. He needed to focus. His thoughts… he couldn’t quite gather them. They crumbled the moment they tried to take form.

The clock was ticking. He was asleep. But not really. Dream. Yes. Like that dream. The one he always had. He would wake up. Shower. Grab a snack. Go to work. Then he would find out it was a dream. Then he had to do that shit all over again. Then it would happen one more time. Again. Then again. And again.

Hoshino pinched his wand… with his thumb, pointing finger, and middle finger—the rest of his fingers static—and pressed its tip against his forehead. He widened his trembling grin. This might actually be worse. He stifled a sob. Mirror. He was so confident too. If he had a mirror right now, he would look like a cat denying the sleepy allegations. Definitely a bad look.

The hard part. Now. Hoshino had to concentrate. His desire to vomit was still there. Mana. He gathered it at the tip of his wand. The glow made it seem like he was staring at a blue sun with his eyes closed. He took a deep breath, the air grating his throat.

Healing. Another puff of air escaped Hoshino’s lips. The image of him plopped on the ground, slowly deflating like a worn air mattress, made him want to chuckle. But healing… Hoshino never got to internalize both the theory and the process itself. The entire logic of how it worked was built upon anime, games, and a thick layer of glittery duct tape—Spongebob called it “imagination.” It was a process where someone would just bippity-boppity-boop someone and the booboos would go away. Hoshino had to be careful… still. With the mana gathering right up to his face, there was a risk of him bippity-boppity bolting a hole through his forehead.

Then… another trembling breath. The floor. It was getting colder. Focus. Concentrate. He had to maintain his focus. His mana was not a problem. It was the image in his head. He couldn’t afford to visualize regenerating bodies like plants anymore. Speed didn’t matter that much either. He just needed to not die. So threads. Yes. Like threads. Like sewing a broken plushie together. That might be better. He could somewhat imagine it… the idea of putting the stuffing back, shoving it into a thin layer of skin, rearranging it so it would retain its shape.

But the fight…

Should he really bring himself back up?

Why not just let this pass?

“Hea—”

Hoshino lost the feeling in his middle finger. His thumb and pointing finger couldn’t bear the weight and let go. The wand tilted and rolled away into the void. Hoshino breathed, smiling. The feeling twisted his heart… but it was warm.

Then there was a sound.

A thin, piercing chime of a handbell murmured in his ear.

Hoshino swallowed, almost with a whimper. Like a child. His heart started beating. Loudly. His body screamed at him to run. He pressed his eyes shut, not minding the pain burning through his left eye and the nothingness on his right. He gritted his teeth.

The sound was crisp. Too childlike. Too high. Too clean. The note lingered, lifting the hair on his nape and arms. He trembled. He heard his own teeth chattering. He was aware of how he breathed—how pathetic it sounded and felt.

Hoshino trembled as he tried to curl into a ball, but the pool of blood beneath him… the frigid, stiff hands of death wrapped themselves around his limbs and stopped him from doing so.

Then came a measured thump from a drum. It was heavy. Deep. The droning sound rolled along the ground and echoed in his head. Hoshino pressed his lips tight. He thought of hugging his own pool of blood. But before the thought could linger, a stiff crack resounded above his ear, and a pair of calloused fingertips curled over his left eye, prying it open.

Hoshino was in a different place. The bone-white tiles that should’ve cradled his dying body were replaced by a very familiar stretch of dark, damp wooden floors. He was at that shrine again. He was home. In the village. In the mountains.

The childlike handbell cried again, its sound like the cold edge of a kitchen knife marking a line through his throat. Hoshino swallowed, trying his best not to break. Then there was another thump, this time following his heartbeat, as a breathy pitch of flute filled the citrus-ridden air like a slow, muffled scream. His eyes slowly adjusted to the light… and what lay in front of him was gore—lustrous blood spread as if it were galaxies cradling stars from far away, and frozen, eyeless heads with their mouths open… yellowish, orange, bluish light emerging from the darkness of their skulls as if they were suns themselves.

There was a headless female figure sitting before him, legs folded beneath its thighs. Its body was whitish like chalk, ethereal and translucent—stiff like stagnated water, trapped in time. Thick, black blood oozed from her neck, spilling over her supple chest, staining the surface that seemed to hold a million tiny glints of light, and converging into the black star that marked her swollen belly.

Slowly, it tilted. The black ooze slid to follow her motion. The drumbeats grew heavier, louder. The flute filling his ears grew even more wrong, now rising closer to a scream. The figure’s hand reached for him, lifting his arm and guiding him toward his wand, which was mere inches away.

Hoshino trembled, now wanting to scream.

The figure made Hoshino grab his wand and press it against his temple.

Say it.

Hoshino shook his head.

Say it.

Hoshino shook his head again, his motion more expressive, more visible this time.

Say it.

The figure leaned forward.

SAY IT.

The figure tilted its body again, putting more weight onto Hoshino’s hand. It pushed the wand forward, the black blood from its neck dripping onto the side of his face—filling his head with the smell of oranges, so much so that the scent was slowly turning rancid.

And with its gentle, soft fingers wrapped around his… Hoshino could feel the tip of his wand cutting into the skin of his forehead.

SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT.

Hoshino shook his head again, tears streaming from his left eye.

SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT. SAY IT.

It wasn’t commanding him anymore. It was crying. Begging. More and more. The more he looked at it, the more it seemed like it was screaming. It was running out of patience. No… it looked like it was in pain. Someone else was running out of patience.

Hoshino flashed the figure a sad, surrendering smile. He could understand, even as it increased the pressure, shoving the wand deeper into his skull. He could understand, even as his own pool of blood seemed to want to crawl and stuff itself back into his broken body. He could understand, even as he felt his heart resisting, threatening to tear itself in two. He couldn’t bear to look at it anymore.

A… ra… ta…

There was that voice again.

Hoshino.

That was the name he had given himself.

But he would forever be bound as Tsukishiro Arata. Right. How could he dare to forget?

“H… heal…” Hoshino mumbled.

The shrine grew brighter, pleased.