Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Words Will Kill Me

Kanji jumped from the bed to the window. A man’s silhouette sprinted across the sidewalk, and a bullet hole smoked on a nearby Ginkgo tree.

Kanji’s heart raced. “What… Why did you shoot?”

“That man was spying on us. I missed on purpose to scare him.”

“Spying on us? Should we follow him?”

“No, it’s pointless. He’d have escaped by car by now.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“No. But whatever you did just now, people seemed to notice. I could sense it too.”

“Sense it?”

“You reeked of red.”

“What… What does that even mean?”

“Care to explain what that was?” Yuki said and folded her arms.

“Well… I went to sleep holding the hammer, and I met Dr. Sollenberg.”

Yuki’s face was surprisingly still. “In a dream?”

“It was a dream, and it also wasn’t a dream. I pinched myself and could feel the pain, but when you fired your gun, I snapped out of there.”

“And?”

“Well, he told me something about magic. Apparently—”

Wait, should I be telling her this? I haven’t figured out who’s side she’s on yet.

“Apparently?”

Kanji gulped. “It… has to do with inspiration. As a fundamental principle.”

“Hmm. That’s pretty general,” she touched her chin, “Now that I think about it, it kind of makes sense.”

“How come?”

“The sorcerer used fire, your spirit friend used a video game, the surgeon used some sort of hypnosis, and your hammer… Well, that’s still left to figure out. These are all things that were born out of the same core; inspiration.”

“I guess so. It’s still unclear how inspiration causes magic, though.”

“Then, how about you go back to sleep and ask him?”

Kanji had gone back to sleep with the hammer, but he did not travel to the world again. He simply woke up in the morning.

It didn’t work? Why?

*****

Kanji and Yuki sat in the Arts Club room at the end of the school day. The room was bustling with students, drawing, painting and sculpting. Yuki came back to her bubbliness as soon as he woke up, and her mood hasn’t faltered since, which Kanji did not understand at all. He however could not get a moment of rest from the stone on his heart.

I think it’s possible the hammer is usable only once per night. Then, I’ll try using it again the next night.

The door slid open, and in came Mr. Yamaguchi, the arts teacher in whose office they had met before. He smiled widely as he went up to Kanji.

“Okimoto-san and… Hatanaka-san? You look a bit different. I heard you had a little… incident in school the other day?”

“You can call it that.” Yuki said and smiled.

“It’s good to see you both have joined the Arts club! I didn’t know you were both artists?”

“We’re learning! Acrylic helps me calm my nerves,” Yuki said as she poured a handful of red paint on her palm, and proceeded to smear it all over a blank piece of paper, “See?”

“Oh, Good! Very good…” Yamaguchi laughed nervously, “And what is it you’re working on, Okimoto-san?” He looked over at Kanji’s notebook.

“Just some calligraphy.” Kanji said.

“Caligraphy? Interesting. I wanted to study it too when I was your age! But I was too impatient to ever get any good. Mind if I take a look?”

“I’m sensitive to feedback. Please wait until I’ve improved more.”

Mr. Yamaguchi laughed. “Aren’t we all? Well, that’s fine. If it’s possible, won’t you two stay after club hours today? I’ll need some details from you to officially sign you up.”

Kanji nodded, wanting nothing more than for him to go away. “Okay.”

“Great! I’ll see you later then.”

The afternoon passed uneventfully, the students left one after another, until only Yuki and Kanji remained. Kanji tried to think of how to use the hammer with the idea of inspiration, without much success. Inspired by his first solution, he tried to rearrange the hammer’s label in different ways. Mr. Yamaguchi approached them again.

“Oh! I think I forgot the forms in the other room. Hatanaka-san, would you please be so kind and fetch the papers from my office? They’re on top of the yellow box.”

She smiled at Mr. Yamaguchi. “Okay!” the chair creaked, and she stepped out of the room.

The room was silent besides the flickering of a lamp.

“So, Okimoto Kanji. Why are you so interested in calligraphy?”

“Um…” I need to say something convincing. “I just hoped I could do something that will impact someone. If one person liked my calligraphy, that’s fine.”

“Is that so? But it so happens, your calligraphy is not in any human language.”

Crap, my notes were open!

Kanji started sweating. “Yes? Is that a problem?”

Yamaguchi leaned forward.

“It’s quite unfortunate, Okimoto-san, that I have failed you as my teacher, so much so that you have lost interest in the human languages. There’s really not any reason to make new ones.”

Why would he be upset about this?

Kanji’s heart started racing. “But… what if the new language can help someone that the old language couldn’t?”

Yamaguchi sighed. His chair creaked as he stood up slowly. He stretched his arm over the other.

“What use is there for a language that no one but you can speak? Art is made to connect people. It’s quite unfortunate, really.”

“But I can teach it to Yuki. And then to others, and then it won’t be just me.”

“But you forget. Do you think the other languages will just lay down and die? No. They will take up arms.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Languages are very much alive. They spread, they multiply, they eat, fight, and die. And what do you think would happen if this very language we are speaking would die, Kanji-kun?”

“Yamaguchi Sensei?”

Yamaguchi faced his palm towards Kanji. In it, a purple spinning ball whirled and made a humming sound, “Sorry, Okimoto-san.”

Kanji froze.

The ball grew larger, staring at his forehead.

“Why?”

“You should have never taken that hammer.”

A muffled explosion sounded.

Yamaguchi dropped to the floor. Blood pooled around his head. A bullet-sized ragged hole protruded from the left wall; the paper layer was torn outwards, and dust crumbled on the floor. The sound of running leather boots. The door slid open, it was Yuki, staring at Mr. Yamaguchi curiously.

“I hit him.” She said with a grin.

Kanji looked down. “Why…” He started shaking. “How did you know he was trying to kill me?” he said, “How did you know where to shoot?”

She shrugged. “I just shot the wall. It felt right. I seem to feel more things now, and know more things.” She lifted her revolver, “But this tiny one won’t do. It could barely get through the drywall.”

Yuki gasped. She jumped on top of Kanji, pushing them both on the ground.

Gunfire erupted from the adjacent wall and the hallway. Bullets tore through the walls, shattered the windows and splintered the door; acrylic, waterpaint and torn canvas sprawled all over; tables and chairs fell and collapsed. They both lay under the rubble, pressed together. He could barely see a black kevlar-wearing arm throwing a purple orb into the room. The orb exploded as it hit the ground. A boom sounded as the floor gave way beneath them; they plummeted through the dust and splintered wood into the classroom below, the rubble breaking several tables and chairs underneath.

Kanji coughed dust. They both crouched behind the rubble, and as his weight shifted, a sharp pain shot through his right leg. He glanced at it, and found the hammer standing on its handle right next to it. How did it get out of the bag?

“No kills confirmed by the deathtoller!” A man yelled from the hole in the ceiling above them.

“The lower floor! Move! Move!” Another voice yelled.

Sounds of rushing boots thundered towards the stairwell in the middle of the hall.

“Yuki-san, we need to run!” Kanji whispered.

“Run? They have assault rifles. We fight them here, behind the concrete.” Yuki said.

“They’ll just throw another one of those orbs at us!”

“That won’t be a problem.”

How won’t that be a problem?!

“But we don’t know what else they’re capable of yet. We’ll have to improvise.” Yuki said.

The sounds of rushing boots and shouts neared the class’s door. The door slid open, and a man wearing a red ribbon around his arm entered, followed by another with a yellow ribbon, and three more without a ribbon. They fired as they entered, bullets tearing into the rubble. Yuki raised her gun, and shot the red ribboned man, who quickly got back to his feet. The yellow ribboned man put his hand on the ground. Steel slabs burst upwards from the concrete floor, forming three waist-high covers in a line.. The men quickly rushed to hide behind them.

“Deathtoller out!” A loud humming sounded, and a purple orb flung from behind a steel cover. Yuki shot it, and it immediately exploded, blowing the steel cover forward alongside two men hiding behind it, who then stopped moving.

“Medic! Man down! Don’t throw explosives!” A hoarse voice yelled.

Yuki tried to peek out of cover and shoot again, hitting the yellow ribboned man’s helmet. Hand on the cover, he dragged himself up again.

“Shit! Kanji-kun, my bullets are too thin. We need to do something!”

Bullets cracked overhead, puncturing the wall behind them..

Shit, shit, what can we do? He looked at the hammer. “What does a hammer do? Have you never used a hammer, Kanji? Were you lacking a father figure perhaps?” Sollenberg’s words echoed in his mind, “It all comes down to a simple principle. Inspiration.”

He started mumbling shakily, as if asking the hammer. “A hammer fixes things, a hammer bashes things, a hammer…”

“Intuition. It just felt right.” Yuki’s words came to his mind.

That’s right. I don’t even know what I’m feeling. What am I feeling? He put his hand to his chest, his heart racing, his stomach turning.

“I am a murderer.”

“She’s an angel of kindness…”

“It’s all my fault…”

“The remedy is in my hands…”

“Kanji takes hammer.”

He grabbed the hammer. Strings of sensations tingled his fingers ever so subtly, information, ideas, possibilities; right into his bloodstream.

His eyes widened. I can feel it!

“Yuki! Show me your gun!”

She pointed the revolver at him, and he hit it as hard as possible, which made it fly from her hand to slide on the floor.

Did it work?

Yuki crawled to pick the revolver back up. Only that it wasn’t the same Type 26 revolver. It was a black, thicker revolver, of a type Kanji had never seen before. Its body had a glowing red line throughout.

Yuki raised her arm above cover and shot the red ribboned man’s helmet again. His helmet shattered completely. He fell lifelessly to the ground.