Self-Love and Sacrifice

Peeved that she had been kicked off the quest and that she had been unceremoniously thrown off the boat, Hitomi had intended to just go home. Maybe she could just forget about everything. Maybe Hitode would just win and she could forget about it. Such things would have been nice.

If only they hadn’t been married.

One wrong step had her falling face first into the ocean. One right step had her pulling Hitode up as the heat bubbles from a ball of fire pushed them upward.

They broke the surface near the boat, which was somehow still intact. With some difficulty, they managed to hoist themselves back in.

Collapsing in on themselves, they lay beaten, and exhausted, being kissed by the storm heavy sky.

Hitode sat up. “Are you okay?”

Hitomi checked her body for injuries.

“I think I’m okay. How about you.”

“I can’t die so I should be alright.”

“Okay, perfect.”

She kicked him between the legs, crushing his future children.

“Why the hell did you leave me!?”

She punctuated every word of that sentence with a kick.

Hitode doubled over from the 9-hit combo.

“I…didn’t…want you to…risk your life. That’s my job. Besides, don’t you hate me?”

“You do not get to decide how other people burn their life away. That’s exactly why we’re in this mess in the first place.”

She sighed.

“I don’t know what to feel about you anymore. All I know is that, even though you can’t

die, even though you can heal up all the damage, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be saved. That’s something I’ve chosen by myself.”

Hitode’s jaw clenched “Is that so?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“Yeah, but not with you.”

Hitomi groaned and leaned backward. “Well, whatever problem it is, let’s deal with the armless elephant in the room. How are we going to get back to land? We have no oars or sail...Like hell, I’m paddling with my hands.”

“We only have to paddle a little.”

Hitode pointed towards the Umibozu floating in the water.

Oftentimes when spirits die, people don’t recognize it. They’re imagined to simply fade

away back to dreams and vapor. But yokai are real creatures, with real bodies. They don’t just fade to nothing—they fade into nature.

If anyone were to see this dead Umibozu now, all they would see is a large whale carcass floating in the middle of the ocean. The fish certainly saw this, already nipping away at its flesh. Hitode definitely smelled it.

He jumped onto the dead body and started stabbing into its meat, cutting away till he

was able to find a long white bone from its abdomen.

“This rib should be enough.” he tossed it to Hitomi.

Hitode looked out onto the horizon, trying to track where the sky met the water.

“Aren’t you gonna come back in or what?’

“Give it a second.”

The Historian suddenly broke to the surface. He slowly began swimming to the Umibozu body.”

“Aw crap,” said Hitomi, getting up. But Hitode stopped her .

“What are you doing? He’s getting closer to us. I can fry him right here right now.”

“You don’t have enough hair left”, said Hitoe looking at her tiny little curls. “If you burn him now, you will go bald and I’m sure that’s the last thing you want right now.”

Hitode squinted.

. “And at this point, he doesn’t have much left in him. I can handle it. Go home. It’s basically over.”

“What about you?”

Hitode touched the Umibozu and carved just a bit off to heal himself.

“This is how I’ll save myself.”

She looked at him with uncertain eyes.
“I can stay. I can wait for this to be over.”

“I promise it already is. Please go on ahead.”

“Then promise me you’ll come back. Not because I care but because you said you’d save yourself.”

“Is that even a question?”

Hitode nodded and silently she began to row away.

“You’re really going to take me? You really think this is over?” asked the Historian, clambering onto the Umibozu's corpse.

“Isn’t it? You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” said Hitode.

“And what exactly is that?”

“Me..”

The Historian smiled.

“That’s exactly it.”

He touched the flesh, and healed himself just to the point where he felt normal.

“No bells. No whistles. Just an honest to goodness fist fight to end all things.”

Hitode nodded.

“I think things are just beginning.”

They charged at each other, fists raised and slamming into the other’s chin. They both stumbled back, brains ringing. The next strike was determined by who could recover faster.

It was Hitode’s win. Years of lobotomies had conditioned his brain to recover at its utmost limit.

He struck the Historian with a barrage of blows, making sure to disable his legs and bind his arms. He engaged his enemy in a powerful grapple, locking his head in his arm, his waist bound by his legs.

Hitode grabbed onto his head and pulled. To his surprise, it came off with a loud ripping sound.

Looking down, he saw the Historian’s head was still attached. It was only his hair that came off. Right where Hitode’s hairline ended was where the Historian’s hairline began. Everything behind it was as smooth and as clean as a baby’s bottom polished to reflect sunlight.

“I knew it!” laughed Hitode, letting the Historian go. “I knew you couldn’t have a perfectly nice head of hair.”

“We both had a lot to regenerate. I don’t think hair was really the priority.”

Hitode raised an eyebrow.

“Looks like you made it a priority though. It was stuck so well on! It didn’t even come off during the crazy parts of our fight.”

“It was a big investment.”

“Why didn’t you just go for a hair transplant? It didn’t seem like you were lacking money.”

“They would never take.”

“Well that’s a shame. I was hoping I could get one for myself.”

“Fat chance. You’re not getting out of here.”

“I have every intention to.”

They charged at each other once more.

It took a few days but the fighting eventually stopped. Between several dozen broken bones and no meals, it was a surprise neither of them stopped earlier.

They floated together beside the rotting corpse of a yokai, drifting in a stain of red amidst a wide open blue.

“Did you think it was all worth it?” asked Hitode, clutching a shattered wrist “All the people you hurt for this?”

“Worth…what a strange notion.” scoffed the Historian, shattered legs floating freely in the water. “That stopped meaning anything after the first hundred years. It’s a wound. It will heal. Heck, a thousand years from now it’ll all be forgotten, with nobody to remember what’s been done”

“So you don’t feel guilty? You don’t feel ashamed?”

“I never said I didn’t. All I meant, however, was that, why should I care when only I’ll be the one suffering in the end. It’s temporary. It’s brief. It ends. But not me. It can never for me. You of all people should understand how lonely I am.”

“I do. And that’s why you won.That’s why I’m here laying beside you now.”

“Then why’d you fight me!? Why are you trying to keep me from what I want? You’ve run from this your whole life. You’ve destroyed your own brain because of this.”

His voice echoed out into the open sky and into the deep chambers of Hitode’s heart.

“While you left and chose to be a monster, I chose to stay. I chose to be here for everyone and make things better with my time. The least I deserve is something that lasts.”

“I built all this. Hoped for all this and yet, you all kept leaving me.” his voice cracked. “You all left me so alone. Why should I be able to love and have it stain me like a scar?”

“Because you were there to remain. While they were your friends in your long life, in their brief lives you’re like their god.”

“Oh shut up! What do you know? You’ve never built a thing in your life. You’ve only destroyed and hurt and loved without any regard for yourself or others.”

“I was doing the best with what I had.”

“No, I did the best with what I had.” replied the Historian, angrily. “You just did whatever

the hell you wanted. I built a goddamn kingdom.”

“And yet you’re still miserable.”

They both groaned loudly.

“I guess we both could learn something from each other.”

“This whole situation…we’re like a starfish broken in half,” said Hitode.”Each of us is missing an important chunk of what we could be.”

“What do you suggest we do? Glue ourselves back together.”

“No, if you break a starfish in half, you can’t put it back together. They become two whole different starfish.”

“So what do you suggest they do?”

“They could become friends.”

“What and learn all the things we missed.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s going to take some time.”

“What else do we have?”

They sighed together.

Night had fallen and the sky cleared, leaving them to bathe under white moonlight as they drifted.

“Do you think this is what our parents imagined when they made us immortal?”

“That their son would get cut in half and such an event would have a massive effect on the city’s yokai and their own existentialism? No, I doubt they had this in mind.”

“What I mean is—Do you think they knew how much this would change us?

“Before I answer, would you like to hear a story?”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s the story of the mermaid.”

Hitode nodded.

“It’s a secret story only given for us to know. There can only be one true mermaid at any given time. She was born at the bottom of the ocean, where life is hidden and dark. Some say she’s born from the souls of the traveling sailors who never reached their destination. Some say she’s the spirit of longing for eternity. But truthfully, she’s much older than any of that.

She was born in the time before men, a bygone fragment of the era of gods. She never eats or sleeps. And her eyes are perpetually open and watching.

The thing is, there was at least one point where there were two mermaids. Early on, when she was small. Someone to have birthed her. Someone who had taught her how to live.

That’s why she’s been able to keep going for as long as she has.

That’s why she never cried or never seemed lonely. Even when she’d be cut up for her parts.

Now maybe she never cried because she’s physically unable to. But I think that’s just because she’s strong.”

“And so to answer your question, no I don’t think they intended for us any of this. We were just given these things because parents like giving things to their children. And that’s the kind of strength the mermaid was given.Because they were prepared for eternity.”

“I don’t think I’m prepared for anything that comes next.” said Hitode

“Me neither.”

“Do you remember them?”

“Remember who?’

“Our parents?’

“Just bits and pieces.”

“Do you have a favorite one? It’s probably going to be mine too.”

“I remember the first time our father took us to the water. He plopped our feet right into the icy water. ‘This was where you came from. Never forget where you came from.’”

Hitode laughed.

“What did he think putting us in the water was going to do?”

“I think he was worried that we were going to become a fish and suddenly forget how to breathe air..”

“What a silly silly man.”

Hitode sighed

“I think that beach was already built over.”

“I still kept some sand from there. I put it with all the other things I couldn’t let go of.”

“They were kind people, our parents, weren’t they?”

‘We wouldn’t have gone through half the things we would have if they weren’t as kind as they’d been.”

Hitode looked up, letting his eyes catch the light from every single star. He then swam to the Historian to give him a hug.
“What’s this now?”

“Let’s be like them then”

“Oh well then.” As the Historian melted into the hug, there was a sharp pain in his head then. He could have fought back, he could have broken away with how weak Hitode’s grip was, but he just let things go dark.

For the first time in more than a hundred years, things were quiet.