I Will Help You Through This

It would seem that leaving the drinking party without telling anyone worked out for Midoriko in an unexpected way. Apparently, Enishi Ryouma’s idea of “taking care” of her abrupt disappearance was to impersonate Midoriko via email and inform everyone necessary that she had to leave for a funeral in a different prefecture, and would return soon.

When Midoriko reached out to these parties to do damage control, she told them, half-truthfully, that her phone broke and she’d only just gotten a new one. Even after a full week of no contact, her instructors and museum colleagues were all shockingly understanding. But one thing still troubled her.

The night she went missing, the kīla was stolen.

Dr. Tanaka said, via email, that she had some terrible news for Midoriko but would wait until she returned to explain everything. It didn’t sound like they suspected her of anything, but the fact that she already knew what that conversation was going to be about tore up Midoriko’s stomach with guilt.

Midoriko sat on the tatami mats in the room they’d set up as storage for the collection. Pretty much everything that could be cleansed, was. The only aura that remained was that of the kīla, still shining as beautiful as ever, now sitting by itself on a tokonoma alcove like it was enshrined there.

Maybe its curse was the source of all the misfortune that had come into her life over the past week and a half. Midoriko let out a soft groan as she held her head in her hands.

The sliding door to the room opened and closed. She looked over her shoulder to see Ryouma cross the room, then open the door to the veranda.

“Shall we?” He nodded to the veranda and smiled. “It’s nice out tonight.”

It was that time again. After they’d made their “arrangement,” Ryouma would seek her out once a day so she could hold his cursed hand for ten minutes as promised.

They sat facing each other on the veranda with a view of the Japanese garden. It had been raining all day, but finally stopped. The air was cool and damp with that special fragrance the rain brings.

“So, how long does it last after I let go?” she asked, taking his cursed right hand in her left.

“If we do this right before bed, I can sleep through the night. But the numbness is always back by the time I wake up,” he explained. Midoriko nodded and quickly jotted down a note with her free hand. “Maybe the longer you touch me, the longer it lasts?”

“No.”

“Aw, come on! Just a little bit? We could experiment with it!”

Midoriko glared at him, and he shut up.

For the first couple of sessions, Midoriko stayed stubbornly quiet. But she quickly found that sitting in silence for ten minutes was agonizing. When she realized she could use the opportunity to study his curse, her mentality shifted to something more clinical. So after that, she started examining him like a patient.

“How does it feel when I do this?” Midoriko asked, applying pressure in the space between his thumb and index finger.

“Like you maybe want to rip my thumb off.”

“Tch…Xiǎomíng said this pressure point was dangerous,” she mumbled.

Ryouma laughed. “I think that only applies to pregnant women.”

“Was it always like this?” she asked, moving on to different acupressure points that Xiǎomíng had taught her.

“No. It started very subtly at the tips of my fingers. As it progressed, it slowly consumed my arm,” he explained, using his left hand to motion the direction of travel up his arm. “You saw it that day we arrived here, right? That’s what it looks like. Xiǎomíng has been helping slow the progression of it since I took him under my wing.”

He had lowered his yukata on the right, exposing his entire blackened arm. She’d been avoiding looking at his bare chest, but that statement drew her attention. She found herself looking over the entire arm from hand to shoulder. If it started at the fingertips, how fast was it progressing?

“How long have you been enduring this?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“I think maybe a little over fifteen years now?”

Midoriko stopped squeezing his hand and looked up. If she recalled correctly, the museum thefts that fit his MO only went back around a decade. “You’re saying you’ve been cursed since before you started stealing?”

“Not exactly…” he answered, averting his eyes. “It was definitely my kleptomania that got me into this situation.”

“Your parents didn’t raise you right,” Midoriko murmured, shaking her head.

“Oh, no. They raised me right. I’m sure their spirits can’t rest because of my incorrigible behavior, though.”

Midoriko froze for a second, internally cursing herself for that kind of rude remark. She swallowed her pride. “I’m sorry…I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” he said with a soft sigh.

“You know, I don’t have any family either,” Midoriko said, resuming her acupressure. Ryouma flinched.

“S-so…the funeral…?” he asked, scratching his head.

“My last living family member. How tragic…” Midoriko replied sarcastically. “I don’t talk about myself like that to those people, so they didn’t know either. It all worked out cleanly thanks to you.”

They sat in silence for the remainder of the ten minutes, listening to the crickets in the garden and frogs in the koi pond. When the alarm went off, Midoriko silenced it and let go of his hand.

She remained seated on the veranda, scribbling out her observation notes from this session. Ryouma quietly got to his feet and moved across the room. Still buried in her notes, she heard the door slide open.

“Thanks again. Goodnight, Midoriko.”

But when she looked up, the door slid closed before she could respond.

***

The next few days went by in a flash for Midoriko. Maybe it was because she had a smartphone in her hands once more, or maybe it was just because her time as Enishi Ryouma’s captive was coming to a close.

She and Xiǎomíng finished the task they had started together in England. As she had suspected, an overwhelming majority of Ryouma’s collection was definitively not cursed. The things that had been authentic were cleansed—or rather, their malicious spells neutralized by Midoriko’s ability.

When she finally asked him how he’d never been affected by any of these dangerous enchantments, Ryouma simply shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I didn’t actually use any of them…”

Recalling the cursed desk from her elementary school, Midoriko reasoned that for a malicious spell to have an effect, the items needed interaction. A cursed camera had to take a photo, a cursed necklace had to be worn, and a cursed vase placed on display. It felt like a complete breakthrough for her own research.

Midoriko leaned back in the large outdoor bath and kicked her feet, giddy with academic theories. This makes so much sense. But how can I incorporate it into my dissertation without sounding like a lunatic?

As she thought of the myths and legends behind Muramasa blades, a faint wailing echoed from an open window on the second floor. She remembered how, on the first night there, she had mistaken Good Girl for a ghost and giggled at her own stupidity.

…That crying sounds an awful lot like Good Girl…

Midoriko cringed. It was her last night there, and she had finally worked up the courage to try the outdoor bath after everyone else went to bed. She’d only just gotten in!

But what if something’s wrong?

Having taken it upon herself to take care of Good Girl, Midoriko felt compelled to check on the child. She forced herself out of the refreshing bath and threw on a yukata after quickly drying off.

Midoriko found her way to Good Girl’s room on the second floor, where the whimpering and crying were loudest. As she opened the door and slipped inside, she saw Good Girl thrashing around on a futon in the throes of a nightmare.

Midoriko’s heart ached. What horrors have you seen in your short little life to haunt you like this in your dreams?

“Good Girl…” she called out softly while gently shaking the child. “Wake up, Good Girl…”

Good Girl woke with a start, frantically looking around the room and panting. When she saw Midoriko, she threw herself into her arms.

“It’s okay…I’m here,” Midoriko cooed as she held the child’s trembling form. She began stroking Good Girl’s hair, remembering how her own mother used to soothe her in that way as a child.

“Where…are the bad men…with the painted skin?” Good Girl asked through her sobs.

“They were just a bad dream. Don’t worry, they’re not real.”

“They…are real! They…used to hurt me when I was a…b-bad dog…”

As Midoriko tried to make sense of what the frightened child was saying, she noticed Ryouma, half-awake, peering into the room through a crack in the door.

“They can’t hurt you anymore. Papa and I will protect you,” Midoriko said, cradling Good Girl in her arms. When she looked back at the door, Ryouma was gone.

“Are you going to become my Mama?” Good girl asked, sniffling.

“That’s….” Midoriko didn’t know how to answer a question like that. She and Ryouma had agreed to hold their sessions privately in order to avoid such misunderstandings from the small child, but here she was asking anyway.

Since she was the only one who could touch and hold Good Girl, Midoriko had taken it upon herself to care for her. As the little girl eased back into sleep in her arms, she knew she couldn’t just leave her like this.

***

“I’m taking Good Girl with me when I leave today,” Midoriko announced firmly. Ryouma and Xiǎomíng sat across from her at the kitchen table while Good Girl played outside in the garden with her new toys, wearing her new clothes.

“No.” Ryouma took a sip of his coffee.

“But I’m the only one who can care for her properly!”

“She has a point, Master,” Xiǎomíng said quietly in agreement.

Ryouma sighed. You too, Xiǎomíng?

“We can take care of her just fine here,” he asserted.

“She’s completely isolated here! She deserves a normal life!” Midoriko protested, slamming her hands down on the table.

“She can’t have a normal life, though. That’s why she’s here and not in an orphanage.” Ryouma rubbed his forehead and sighed.

“Then I’ll figure something out to make it work!” Midoriko furrowed her brows and bit her trembling lower lip. “Please…She needs me.”

He really couldn’t disagree with her there, especially not when he saw her comforting Good Girl after one of her nightmares. But still…

“It’s too dangerous.”

Midoriko clenched her fists and looked away. It was clear that she was fighting back tears. Ryouma followed her gaze to the direction of the garden, where the topic of their discussion laughed in blissful ignorance. If only Good Girl had behaved…If only you’d never met her…

Ryouma felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Xiǎomíng with an expression on his face that said, ‘you’re not going to like what I have to say, but I’m right.’

“Master. Look how happy she is now,” he said, gesturing in the direction of Good Girl. “That is all Miss Suwa’s doing.”

“Haaaah…” Ryouma ran a hand through his hair and down his face. It just wasn’t enough. He pointed at Midoriko. “You. Convince me why I should let you do this.”

“I will try to find a way to break her curse,” she said, looking him in the eyes.

Ryouma’s breath hitched in his throat.

Midoriko put her hand over her heart, resolve written all over her face. “And your curse, too. Consider it a promise.”