30/10 Vision in Hindsight

Kira woke in a tangle of darkness, activity from the gloom pressing on her body in incessant, chittering tides. Panic made her fling her arms wide, hissing as the knuckles of one hand bounced on a solid surface while the other grazed something soft but dense enough to bunch between her fingers; she hauled her body to standing with the latter’s help. It waterfalled down straight ending in a heap on the floor. Early memories of giggling, tiny legs exposed – all the infinite wealth of a three-year-old’s cleverness – told her it was a curtain.

A slit of light came through where the curtains parted some distance away. So too were the sounds more vivid. She inched closer, taking the barest peek.

Around a lengthy, narrow walkway of a stage jutting out, darkness drifted like forests of kelp fronds. Villi lining the small intestine. Kira willed down the distress mumbling from her own, nearly missing the heavy footsteps approaching until they were nearly upon her. She lunged for the bundles on the floor, throwing herself down, in hopes the dark would shield her from sight.

Soon the footsteps passed, and a bright light bloomed as the curtains were thrown open. Bone-shaking applause roared beyond the stage. Lifting her head, Kira risked another glance.

He was a healthy-looking man, a chin for each hand on his round face, atop which sprung a field of black, coifed hair. White robes swaddled him. An aura of joviality hung about his plump frame like the light that bathed his path to the center of the arena. Kira crept from her spot to watch him, taking in the sight of countless hands stretched out to the man, fingers curling, calling hither for notice, for touch. He waved as he passed. They called his name but the overlapping voices made it impossible to pick out the syllables. Her ears began to burn with feverish intensity.

Kira looked to the ceiling. An event such as this would have decorations, banners and such on which the names and dates and event signifiers were written. Some bit of information to confirm the location, at the very least. She searched and searched but found none hung, only discovering that nothing of the arena bore familiar traces. It was certainly no place in Japan, nor any Western landmark she recognized in all her hours of perusal of campuses and universities.

Reaching a circular platform ringed with stairs, the man held aloft his hands and – the image of a statue whose name danced on Kira's tongue, but could not recall. Silence overtook the audience. Trepidation became their shared language, expressed through the soft steps taken up the platform.

One of the spectators took his right hand in theirs. He did not relent, nor did he pull away. Kira watched as their shoulders slumped, their head drooped pulling down the rest of their body to the ground, the warmth on the man’s face spreading to the spectator’s. Another took his left to the same effect.

More followed. Soon, hands were linked across the audience, smiles proliferating through the crowd. Calm spread like wildfire on dry prairie, its heat wafting across the harsh, acute angles of Kira’s gaunt face, burning her. She clenched the curtain, fingers thin as needles whitening as she fought the growing tumult in her stomach.

Only to lose.

She heaved bile and agony onto the floor. Her teeth burned in her gums. Claws tore at her stomach and up her airway. A hand flew to her throat but she touched papery skin. No cord. No metal. No scratch of engraved script. No feeling but her own thin flesh. No touch but fear pulsing, like a starving maggot.

From the stage, the man turned around – past his audience, past the grand result of his presence – to stare directly at Kira. His face was warmer than ever, looking at her, a girl crawling in her own muck, and his smile was that of one reserved for an old friend. And for a moment her agony was cupped in a soft sheath of cloth.

Then, he was gone again; the warmth of his smile replaced by the heat of braziers. The company of thousands replaced by the jagged breaths of four supine bodies: the Don, his Lieutenant, and the pair of guards. Their chests heaved and fell, but the angle of their limbs suggested a deep unconsciousness. Kira took in the sight of them before a sharp pain twinged in her head and made her vision swim in all the colors of candy, and she drew a lungful of air almost as sweet. Her breath had caught. She’d almost joined her aggressors on the floor.

Only Arata remained standing, eyes adhered to the crystal in his bleeding hand, mouth agape, the beginning of tears in the corners of his eyes. He turned to Kira, blinking dumbly, a touch in his gaze like sorrow. Wiping those tears away, a look of determination revealed itself.

“We need to beat it. Right now.”