The weasel is not dead

Pain. Life is painful. Life is disappointing. I don't have any memories of good times, someone I could rely on, or a warm place to stay. When I feel miserable, I find no comfort anywhere but in the pain of being myself.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. I'm so broken that I may be just a useless piece of junk. I don't want to feel like this anymore!

Someone, please recognize my existence. Someone, please have pity on me. Anyone, please fix me. I'm begging! If I endure living every day, why is there no mercy? Why is there no rest? Why is there no pleasure? Why is everything so terrible? My every day thoughts torture me.

But now those doubts and that misery are coming to an end.

In the darkness I can't feel anything. My thoughts merge with the nothingness along with my emotions. All my regrets, my silent pain, my cowardice, my will, and even myself are all merging with the void. I feel my soul being purged of all that is wrong. I hope to stay in this place until I'm fixed, until I'm no longer myself. So I stop enduring life. I stop resisting the cleansing; instead, I embrace the change.

So that is your will and how you feel.

A voice? It's so loud. Please stop.

No. You are the one who should stop before it is too late. Listen to me. This is a tanuki manipulation of your senses to prevent you from escaping, not a paradise. When we arrive, this is going to stop.

Who cares? I don't want to think about it. When we arrive, I'll be clean. I'll be a new me.

Reject this nonsense, or the next time you open your eyes, you will once again be disappointed and ashamed, realizing that you doomed us all.

I will not. This is real.

No, it is not.

I want to stay here.

No, you can't.

Why?

You can't escape from yourself. What you lived and how you are can't be removed completely: it is what makes you. If you are stripped of your remorse, you will lose yourself—what would remain wouldn't be you but someone else.

I will be lost then. Why don't you ask the fox woman instead to save you? I bet she can do it.

I will not. At the moment when my mind was going to fade, I heard your pathetic thoughts and could not stay calm; that's why I'm with you. Interacting with the kitsune-woman's blurry mind is something I will not do.

Why is this happening to me? I'm tired.

I, the kamaitachi of the Kyoto mountains, am trapped, defeated and exiled long ago—I have fallen from grace and lost my dignity and my will. Ashamed I live my days in a small cave, regretting my fate as a yokai, completely alone.There, I often run into similar questions as yours. I almost rejected the woman's help to get out of here when she proposed so. But now, on the verge of death, I finally reject my hesitation.

… What does that mean?

It means that I chose you the moment I saw your decayed body on the train. As you put it earlier, you could say I have pity for you. If you can't change, I will change you. If you want to run, I will force you to stay. If you are in danger, I will save you. However it will not come without a cost. It is required to link our souls to get us out of here. That implies that if I die, you will die too; the same is true the other way around. By doing this pact, I will be able to gain some of your vital energy in order to survive myself.

I-I… I don't know. I… well, I… I wish it could all end.

I can't refuse without putting other people at risk, and I don't even think this was ever a real option. I fall silent. The mental conversation was over. Nobody had more to say. I lost.

All of a sudden, a new sensation is born in my brain and saturates it. I grow uncomfortable as I start to experience what no human has before.

I feel them—the air currents in the room.

I can sense even the slightest air currents being drawn by my nostrils up through my lungs, as if they were a new part of my body. An overwhelming sixth sense floods my brain with new kinds of information it has never processed before.

Focus your mind. You should be able to detect the air striking the wagon and the objects and creatures inside it.

Weasel? What is happening?

I focus as much as I can. I think of bats and their ability to detect ultrasonic sounds, but it's not as useful as I thought it would be. After all, a bat isn't the ultrasonic waves it detects.

It takes me a couple of minutes to forcefully sketch a vague approximation of the wagon and to stand up. Immediately I see the weasel, finally standing on its paws.

Why am I feeling this?

It's the soul link that causes you to harbor some of my powers.

~Ugh~

Did I fuse with the air?

I understand the confusion, but no, you and the air are not the same.

I see. So, what do you want me to do now?

You must make an opening in the floor and jump with the woman. I can take care of the rest.

And what happens with the tanuki?

It is certain it will retaliate almost immediately, but I assure you that you are now faster than you think. Just be quick; this is the last chance.

The fox woman—where is she?

In this same wagon, find her.

This is a pain.

With all my remaining mental energy, I estimate the fox woman's body lying near the door.

Why don't you wake her up?

I can't reach the minds of those who aren't conscious. If I did so, they would listen to me as if in a blurry dream, which is often useless.

... How inconvenient.

I try to reach the woman with my hands.

Stop.

Huh? What do you want?

Can't you sense your hands right now?

No, I'm too tired to focus on more small details.

I will explain then. Your hands are currently sharper than any human-made blade. You must be careful to avoid touching living beings.

Sharp? Are they going to be normal again?

Yes, but the transformation requires energy, which we don't have to spare.

Right.

My head is heavier and heavier, making it difficult to think complex ideas.

I really want to go home and sleep.

Following instructions, I cut the floor around the girl and me, doing a spin with the wind's help, which I do surprisingly fast. Even more dizzy now, I see how the gravity makes the metal square with us on it go down, and as we descend from an unexpectedly long fall, my senses come back at me, overwhelming me once again.

I can't take it anymore.

I look up. Apparently, the train was flying all this time, moving like a boat floating on the sky. I also see a tongue shaking from the driver's wagon, but I discard it, as I might be raving. From inside the train, the weasel hurries to jump from the square hole.

I will make an air mattress to allow us to fall. Don't worry, you can rest now. You did decently enough.

I fade away.