Elsewhere

Noa didn't tell Shijo anything. Even if he'd wanted to, he didn't know anything. 

She didn't seem to be waiting for his answer. She wheeled the bed over to the wall with an impossibly light touch and then wrenched Noa's arm around in its restraint. She clucked over the countless needle marks in his elbow. 

"This won't do," she said. "Takara-kun's done a number on you, hasn't he? And just from elbow draws. Well. I suppose we could start there, but it's not exactly…efficient." 

She let his elbow go, and then reached up to his neck, tracing along the skin. 

"This takes a bit more skill, it's true," she said. "And poor Takara-kun never got the knack for it. He bled a few of our test subjects dry simply by accident. But I have confidence in my abilities." 

She held a finger over a spot in his neck, and Noa felt growing pain, sharp and stabbing as an icy needle. 

"There we go," Shijo crooned, and came at him with the glass rod.

Noa felt every second of it slipping into his skin—felt the moment it connected with the vein wall, and the moment it broke through.
Shijo rested the rod against Noa's chest, where it moved subtly with every breath he took. Noa held as still and breathed as shallowly as he could so it wouldn't stab further into his neck, or fall out and leave him bleeding freely. 

Shijo had connected the glass to piping and had something long and narrow in her other hand. A paintbrush, perhaps? Noa could only see her out of the corner of her eye, but it seemed she had a paintbrush. 

He felt his blood flow from the piping onto the wall, and the brush came down….

And he was in the Garden again, a world of sensation and rushing power. 

Noa took a moment to orient himself. Unlike the other times, he wanted to stay close and see what Shijo was up to, but there wasn't much he could see at all. All he could do was feel. The sensations of the blood pumping through his body were growing distant and fading, but much closer, on the edge of the garden, his blood was flowing into new shapes—

A spell. One he couldn't read, but could feel the spell taking shape, solid as a brick wall. 

And, he realized as the wall grew firmer and larger, cutting off his sense of his body entirely. 

When he realized that, he fought it—trying to push his consciousness back out, back along the tubing and into the body where it belonged….

But it was no use. The spell snapped shut around him...and suddenly Noa could see.

He was standing suddenly in a narrow street, both the walls and his own body dark and translucent. It was lit by, or infested with, light—splotches like lichen and streaks like roots or trapped rivers in all colors of the rainbow. Overhead, flowers bloomed—light purple ones that drifted from dozens of boughs, and a profusion of others in every color of the rainbow. 

He'd been inside the Garden before, but it felt like he was now somehow beyond it. He could still sense the familiar magic all around him, but now there was a world attached. 

And it felt like something in that world was waking up. 

The ground groaned and trembled beneath his feet, and the magic ached—a good ache, like a stretch after too long sleeping. 

"And here you are," came a familiar voice from behind him.

Noa spun around as Murasaki Shijo appeared from the shadows. Instead of her usual suit, she wore a kimono, intricately embroidered in wisteria flowers that seemed to rustle as she breathed. 

"The harvest will begin soon," she said, beaming at Noa. "I'm so glad I get to show this to you, Takasu-kun. If I could, I'd show it to everyone…and someday, if my research keeps progressing as it has been, I might just figure out how." 

She stepped forward. Her body wasn't like Noa's; it was made of pale starlight, every wrinkle and imperfection gone, her brown eyes turned a deep, translucent amber. 

"You're barely a shade in this place," she said. "But if you could stay long enough, I'm sure you'd come to love it as much as I do...though unfortunately, I doubt you'll have the time. 

"Now, Takasu-kun…but that's not your true name, is it? Not in this place. Sumiko Takasu's blood would not be sufficient to grant you entrance here. So…whose blood was?" 

She reached out a hand. Noa took a step backward, instinctively at first, then continuing when he realized he could. 

"Now, now," Shijo said, and raised a hand. The flowers from above shifted, vines crawling down the walls behind Noa. The pathway behind him was closing, just as his connection to the real world had. 

Noa had seconds to get away, and he didn't intend to waste them. 

He threw a punch at Shijo, willing his magic to cross the gap between them. 

Then he turned and dove through the flowers before they could cut him off. 

He felt the thwack of his spell hitting its mark in his bones, even as his feet raced impossibly fast across the shadowy ground. Over his footfalls, he could just make out Shijo's grunt of surprise. 

Then, bubbling up out of the silence, he heard her laughter. 

"Oh, you want to play?" Her voice echoed as Noa reached the end of a street and turned a corner. Shadows passed around him—autos and people, insubstantial as an echo, the Garden imitating the world outside. 

Flowers crowned all the buildings as he raced by, threatening to engulf them, and Shijo's voice whispered to him through them. "You'll find that this is my playground, Noa. And it will help me pull the truth from you before we're done."