Within The Exoskeleton

A week.

And a second one.

And now the third passes.

Since waking up in that cave, I’ve lost something. Or perhaps, I’ve grown aware of something I’ve always lost.

To be alive.

To be alive? I suppose it’s to choose according to your will. That I haven’t grasped the feeling of.

To be alive? They say it’s to create memories worth remembering. That I haven’t grasped the feeling of.

To be alive? It is when a man reshapes his world. That I haven’t grasped the feeling of.

And so I ask myself, am I alive?

And in the absence of answers, I go as far as to redefine what living truly means for me.

But I failed. I failed. I failed. I failed.

The pendulum around my neck has been shining quite a lot recently. Each ray of light that glimmers within it burns my will to cease existing. Of course, I didn’t tell Mitsu-san or Scarnetii about it. I can’t stand any more nightmares of revelation.

Oh, speaking of Scarnetti, I’ve met him twice this week. Same place. He loves Italian food. I guess it’s because he’s Italian, haha.

His words were as vague as the first time I met him. He always replies with “You’re going to understand sooner or later” whenever I ask him to elaborate. That said, I began to actually understand some stuff.

I think the three of us—I, him, and Aliskra—aren’t regular Faithful Sorcerers.

If what he said about Faith shaping deities into existence is true, I fear I might be connected to powers beyond my comprehension. Powers that very much could be connected with the Scorpion and its control over my body, which I realized was the main reason behind my memory loss.

To think a deity lives within me is the pinnacle of terror. Yet, in spite of my history as a nihilistic suicidal individual, I find myself capable of accepting this fate and utterly incapable of killing myself to escape this whole mess.

The truth is, it’s not only the Scorpion’s whispers that I’ve been hearing. They’re whispers of other people. People I’ve never met or seen, the dead.

Yes, whispers of the dead from different ages. Am I schizophrenic? I very much hope so. In fact, I hope I’m walking down the path of madness. Naturally, any of these situations are better than having a fucking deity sealed within me. Don’t get me wrong, I could likely get my answers from Scarnetti if I try hard enough.

But the truth is, I don’t want to.

I don’t want to hear any answers.

I don’t…

I really don’t…

What I have despised most since childhood is despair. When I was six, my mother killed herself. She did it because three years earlier she had lost her eyes in an accident, and she could no longer tolerate being blind.

At that time, I hated her and hated how I couldn’t do a thing about her vision when she was still alive. I despise despair.

But now, I do not blame her. In fact, I respect the courage behind her action. To let go of life is not easy.

I’ve learned that the hard way.

Another source of despair I faced in my childhood was my lost sister. After my mother died, my father told me that I had a sister who went missing when I was three. I barely remember what she looked like. Whenever I asked him about her name, he always refused to tell me. I even asked the villagers, but they refused too. It’s as if my sister were meant to be forgotten.

I remained desperate to know the truth about her, or even find her, until I forgot about her myself.

What I mean is that I’m willing to escape the truth if it drives me into despair. Especially now, due to this peculiar will driving me, I can’t escape with my old ways of seeking suicide. I’m genuinely trapped.

That’s why I’d rather figure out the truth behind the Scorpion by myself than reach a desperate conclusion.

…

The two people I’m concerned the most about are Scarnetti and Aliskra… They act quite strangely and also seem to be extremely powerful, especially Aliskra. I went with her on a date this week. To think she’d come to the agency and ask me out, a gorgeous girl like her? I don’t know how to feel about that. But I can’t lie, I’m developing some feelings toward her.

Just like Scarnetti, who swings from being a serious, straightforward individual into a paranoid clown, Aliskra also has some serious personality swings. Most of the time she’s this all-knowing, affectionate person, but sometimes she becomes eerily quiet and depressed. I don’t understand her at all, but I find myself relating to her due to my blackouts.

I spent this week mostly helping Ken-san in the coffee shop. Occasionally, I helped Enji-san with his detective work. Our relationship has gotten better after “The Yokai” announced their surrender of the boss in the upcoming days.

Enji-san apologized to me, and although I’m still quite mad about what he did, I accepted his apology. After all, he was the person who had gotten me into this agency, an agency that has become almost like a family to me. A family I’ve been longing for.

He also gave me a cool-looking, red wristlet.

I happened to use my magic twice. One time during training with Enji. He taught me the basics of mana channeling and control, and the other time was when I went on an information delivery mission with Eiri-san and Hanami-san. We happened to be stopped by a group of assassins, and I had to put up a fight. Eiri-san, as was her nature, fell unconscious out of fear, but Hanami-san and I handled things quite efficiently.

I’ve also grown aware of when the Scorpion tries to take over my body. I managed to suppress it many times this week and barely lost more than two hours of memories. And by the way, Mitsu-san told me a rule about the system of Faith that helped calm me down. It’s that in cases where one’s Faith is utterly strong, it begins taking over him gradually, but this can be easily fought back.

I mainly take Scarnetti and Aliskra to be mentally fucked individuals who I somehow connect to. You see, these past three weeks—no, to be more just, my whole life till this point has shown me that pessimism leads nowhere.

I will believe that I am to overcome this fear of the unknown. Things will always be horrible anyway, so failure is nothing to fear.

I can overcome despair.

I should be able to do so.

Yes, I should be able to overcome it, hopefully without giving birth to a new fear.

To overcome hell is to give birth to another one.

That is only natural.

It was a long week.

In fact, it was the only actual week I lived through.

The rest were only fragments.

I still wish the Scorpion were no separate entity and only an illusion.

I don’t want to be a slave.

…

Now that I remember, I had an interesting dream today.

I dreamed of a scorpion crawling across a desert. It walked endlessly, seeking water and nourishment.

Suddenly, the sky blessed—or perhaps cursed—this scorpion with rain.

The droplets of rain were as red as blood.

Each drop on the tiny creature tore its way through the skin.

Then the flesh.

Repeatedly, until skin crumbled and faded into the infinite sand covering the desert.

Although I’m driven by this foreign will to live and thrive, I find myself gripped by a single unwavering emotion.

Jealousy.

I felt jealous of that scorpion.

[End of Arc 2: "Cracks On The Exoskeleton"]