Polar Opposites

Unable to suppress it, Midoriko let out a large yawn as she exited the train station.

“Wow! You seem tired! Were ya up late?” Akira asked cheerfully.

While Midoriko and Akira typically shared an evening commute, today was one of the rare occasions that their morning commute lined up. When they ran into each other leaving their apartments, it was only natural for them to travel to their respective institutions together.

“Yeah…” Midoriko tried, but failed to stifle another yawn. “I’ve been doing a lot of research…”

After she and Xiǎomíng discovered the abundance of English research on Bon culture, they found themselves researching deep into the night for several nights in a row. Trying to find something that could be a clue toward the ephemeral glow of the kīla, they were reading every single article, essay, and study they could find relating to Tibetan Buddhism.

“Crazy! Getting a doctorate sounds scary! Haha!”

Midoriko just smiled and nodded along. She definitely couldn’t tell him that the research she was currently neck deep in was wholly independent of her degree. That would open up a whole Pandora’s box of questions she didn’t want to answer.

“Um…So, Akira. What are you planning to do after you graduate?” she asked, trying to change the subject. “You need an advanced degree to work in psychology, right?”

“I dunno…” He shrugged. “I probably won’t work in that field anyway.”

“Really?” That surprised Midoriko. She had previously talked to Akira at length about the psychological aspects of her research on curses, finding that he was exceptionally knowledgeable. “That’s too bad. It seems like a waste…”

“Hm…How should I put this…” Akira ran his hand over the shaved portion of his undercut. “I’m expected to continue working for my family’s business. It didn’t really matter what I picked—they just wanted me to get a degree because it looks good on paper.”

“Then why not major in business or economics?”

“Psychology seemed fun…” he said with a shrug. Akira looked at Midoriko and smiled. “Plus, I don’t think it’ll be entirely irrelevant in my life…”

As they reached the point where their paths diverged, they waved and said their see-you-laters.

“Hey, Akira!” Midoriko called out. He stopped and looked back at her, waiting for her to continue. “I think you should reconsider! You’re so easy to talk to!”

Akira smiled brightly and gave Midoriko a polite bow before continuing on his way.

When was the last time she’d made a friend like this? Someone who wasn’t just part of her educational cohort, someone who listened to her go on about her research, someone she could just make small talk with…

A certain someone with two moles under his right eye and one on the chin popped into her mind.

Midoriko shook her head, trying to expel the thought. No. No. We’re not friends. We’re not anything. That situation is completely transactional!

Why even think about him? Especially now with someone like Kuroiwa Akira in her life. Akira was plenty good-looking! He was taller than average, physically fit, and smelled nice…

She was reminded of how a certain tall and fit individual smelled on the last day she saw him…

NO! Midoriko pinched herself to banish the thought. They were serious polar opposites! There really was no room for comparison!

She had to think of something else entirely. As she walked to the museum, Midoriko mentally went over everything she’d learned about the kīla with Xiǎomíng.

***

Midoriko looked at her palms for a moment before clenching them into fists. “It’s been almost a month. Have you heard from that guy at all?”

She and Xiǎomíng sat at the table in front of her laptop with piles of notes they’d each taken in front of them.

“He’s probably fine…” the young apprentice said, shuffling through some papers.

“Probably…?” Midoriko winced. She put her head down on the table and sighed. “You seem way too used to this. Itoko too.”

“He’s a bit like a stray cat in that he comes and goes at his own leisure.” Xiǎomíng patted her on the shoulder. “Try not to worry about him too much, Miss Suwa.”

She sat up straight.

“Me? Worried? About him?” Midoriko scoffed, adjusting her glasses. “Absolutely not!”

“Uh huh…”

“I’m worried about myself here. If he fails, then those guys will definitely come after me, right?”

“He won’t fail.”

She slapped her hand on the table. “And how do you know that?!”

“I’ve seen him at work. He’s uh…” Xiǎomíng scratched his head and grimaced. “Very thorough.”

Midoriko quickly reminded herself that Xiǎomíng had met Enishi Ryouma through a triad gang. In fact, she had learned after the man in question left for Russia that he had ties to multiple organized crime groups around the world.

Throughout his career as a well-rounded scoundrel, he’d infiltrated groups to not only steal from them but also pit them against each other. The Russians she had the misfortune of meeting were one such group that Ryouma had sown chaos within.

He was a complete lunatic. Midoriko could crush any unease she was feeling by telling herself that he wasn’t doing this for her—such business was simply a hobby for him.

“Anyway, let’s go over what we’ve got so far,” she said, changing the subject.

In their research, they’d learned that within Bon culture and Tibetan Buddhism at large, deities similar to those found within Mahayana Buddhism were incorporated into the belief system. However, a distinction between them is that in Tibetan cultures, these deities are classified as “peaceful” or “wrathful.” The deity depicted on the pommel of the kīla is considered to be the latter—known as Vajrakīlaya in Sanskrit.

“Wrathful certainly makes sense…” Midoriko said, examining the frightening expressions of the faces carved into the pommel.

“But look here at this…” Xiǎomíng pulled something up on the laptop and turned it toward Midoriko. “It says here that this is an embodiment of a Buddha’s nature.”

“Like a Bodhisattva?” she asked, reading the text he’d highlighted on the screen.

“Not quite. This god is seen as like a component of a certain Bodhisattva, but it’s also called upon in rituals as its own entity,” he explained.

“What exactly are the rituals, though?” Midoriko shuffled through her notes. “Everything I kept finding mentioned something about purification?”

“We’re thinking of ‘wrathful’ in the wrong context,” Xiǎomíng said, scrolling through the article pulled up on the computer. When he found the passage he was looking for, he stopped. “This is a deity that exists to destroy hardship.”

Midoriko looked up at him. Her glasses had slid down to the tip of her nose in her fervent search through the notes. “So what you’re saying is, you call on this one for a blessing?”

Maybe the kīla wasn’t cursed after all. Maybe it was blessed.

“Xiǎomíng, can you sense anything from this thing?” she asked, holding out the kīla. He looked intently at it with furrowed brows before taking it from Midoriko.

“It’s really faint,” he said, holding it in his hands. “I think if I weren’t aware of what you sense in this, that I wouldn’t really know what it was otherwise.”

“What does it feel like to you? Does it feel impure at all?”

Xiǎomíng sighed and handed it back to her. “No? I don’t know? I’m really not sure.”

“Quick, let’s think back to some of the stuff we sorted before.” Midoriko pushed aside some papers to find the notebook that was used to catalogue Ryouma’s collection. She started flipping through the pages. “There were some things that you’d guessed right on and sealed before...”

Midoriko found the page she was looking for and pointed out an entry. “Right here.”

He took the notebook and read the notes aloud. “Object: Cursed Venetian Mask. Confirmed. Cleansed.”

“Keep reading.” Midoriko nodded.

“Mask had one of Xiǎomíng’s talismans on it. When removed, the aura the curse gave off was a smell of sour wine,” he read in a monotone voice. Xiǎomíng sighed. “So what?”

“So? You guessed correctly on that one!”

“Probably because it gave me the creeps!” he retorted, shoving the notebook back into her hands.

“But there was more to it, right?” Midoriko insisted. “Didn’t it make you feel anything when you touched it or held it before you sealed it with your talisman?”

He crossed his arms and frowned. Xiǎomíng rolled his head around, thinking hard. “Well…”

Midoriko sat at attention, waiting for his answer.

“I remember when we first got that one…I got this feeling like something really bad would happen if I put it on,” he explained. He shifted in his seat as if the recollection gave him the heebie jeebies. “I learned after the fact that it had some legend attached to it—some scorned man gave it to his cheating lover on the last day of Carnival, only for her to die suddenly.”

She put her hands on his shoulders. “You’ve probably experienced that many times over handling that collection, but only really noticed it when the object itself looked frightening to you.”

“Y-you think so?” His eyes widened at the revelation.

“I remember the mask looking a bit like a clown. It’s okay, Xiǎomíng, a phobia of clowns is one of the most common phobias in the world.” Midoriko patted him on the shoulders as her expression softened.

Xiǎomíng scooted out of her reach. “Tch! I’m not afraid of clowns…”

“My point is– Did the feeling you got from touching the kīla just now feel the same or different from that cursed mask?”

He picked up the kīla again and held it in both hands with his eyes closed. After a moment, Xiǎomíng opened his eyes to look at Midoriko. “It feels different. It doesn’t really give off a sense of dread or anything like that…”

“Bring me a talisman,” Midoriko requested as she took back the kīla. “The kind you were using to seal curses.”

Xiǎomíng jumped up and ran to his room. Midoriko could hear the sounds of drawers and boxes opening and closing. When he returned, Xiǎomíng brought with him a bright yellow talisman with red calligraphy scrawled onto it.

He took the kīla and gently wrapped it with the fulu. Xiǎomíng muttered an incantation under his breath, then set it on the table and stepped back.

“Well?” He looked between Midoriko and the kīla, waiting for her to confirm what he’d done using her ability.

A smile crept across her face. She let out a breath that was somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.

“It’s still glowing,” she whispered, peeling off the talisman. “It didn’t do anything…”

“What? How?” Xiǎomíng slumped down in the chair, completely deflated.

With the research they’d just compiled, this was the confirmation Midoriko needed.

“Xiǎomíng, I don’t think this is cursed…” She twisted the kīla around in her hands, losing herself in its kaleidoscope-like aura. “I think it’s been blessed.”