"Execute Hemlock Philosophy"

The next day, the rain came down in sheets, while thunder echoed throughout the hills. The unrelenting rainy season gripped Higashikatsushika in a world of mournful grey.

Shigeko herself ignored the mournful feeling inside her, sitting at her desk in 2-C, chin on her palm, staring petulantly through the windows at the empty school courtyard. Dikkun’s late today, she told herself, but it’s not like I care. Hmph!

The lack of Dick in the classroom soon became noticed.

“Oi, oi,” Yoizuki called out to Shigeko, her face dripping with amusement (and spray tan). “There are rumors that the gaijin’s been coming to your shrine. You act like a dead fish, so no wonder that Dick got bored of you.”

Arashi and his delinquents laughed. “Or perhaps you added him to your kill list! Would we find a body if we went to that rotting shrine of yours?”

Other classmates gave Shigeko a wide berth, afraid that she had caused yet another death.

Shigeko wanted to protest, that she had nothing to do with Dick, and that whether he showed up to class or not was his business and his fault alone. But she didn’t say that, because she cared. So she kept quiet, ignoring the taunts, keeping her gaze on the rain outside, hiding her worried look from the rest of the class.

Dick was absent for the entire day. When the last bell rang, Class Representative Zuiho Hisa approached Kinugasa Enji. “Vice Rep, please take today’s printouts to Slaughter-kun at his apartment.”

Enji yawned. “Wakatta. I’ll go after basketball practice.”

The basketball buchou gathered his things and ambled out of the classroom. Shigeko tepidly followed, deftly maneuvering through the crowded hallways to arrive next to him. Enji walked slightly hunched over, hands in his pockets, an impassive look of indifference across his stoic face, samurai pony-tail bouncing along.

“Hey, Enji. Can I talk to you?”

“Eh?” Enji glanced back, a finger scratching at an ear. “Oh, it’s you. What’s up?”

They pulled off to the side beneath a rain-splattered window. Shigeko and Enji weren’t exactly acquaintances, but they did know of each other, since the Kuroshio Shrine and the Kinugasa Dojo had history together during the shogunate days.

“Have you heard anything from Dikkun?”

“Hmm?” Enji looked bored. “Why would I have?”

“Eto…I was wondering why he was absent today. I thought he might’ve texted you about it, since you're his buchou, and he’ll have to miss basketball practice…”

That earned her a raised eyebrow. “He’s not on the team.”

“...eh?”

“He quit.”

“Quit…nani? Why?” As far as Shigeko knew, Dick had been going to practice before meeting her at the shrine. He even said so himself.

“I won’t speak for the man. You’ll have to ask him yourself. If you’re so concerned, why not bring the printouts to him?”

“B-Bring…I’m not concerned, so why should I bring them?”

Enji gave a sheepish, lackadaisical smile. “You got me. It’s not right for a man to pawn his work off on a woman. We all have to fulfill our duties. I’ll be seeing you.”

Shigeko stood beneath the window for a bit, face bathed in alternating light and shadow with each flash of lightning. A broadside of thunder seemed to shake the whole school. Fortunately, Shigeko felt so distracted by the whole Dick thing that for the entire walk home, she barely registered the whipping wind, the pelting rain, the girl in the fox mask, the urgency and fear in other pedestrians as they hurried home, since the rain only seemed to be growing stronger and stronger, bringing on storm warnings and flashing lights and stomachs doing somersaults. When Shigeko arrived back at her house at the temple, she closed the front door behind her, then slumped to the floor, not even bothering to turn on the lights.

“Doshio…” she mumbled, hugging her knees. She knew that the pain came from the fact that she missed Dick and his presence. But she also knew that there would be no pain now if she had never met him in the first place. She couldn’t imagine what the pain would feel like if they became good friends, only to go their separate ways at the end of the school year…but she also couldn’t imagine going back to being alone now, after their days together.

From her spot on the ground, she could see down the hallway, into the kitchen, through its window onto the garden outside. The forest and hills lied beyond it, but Shigeko’s focus remained on the garden, remembering the way Dick handled the hoe back there. Why didn’t Shigeko go join him outside? Why didn’t she invite him inside? Why did life have to involve both pleasure and pain? Wasn’t it easier if life was just one big maw of nothingness?

As if to answer her, the storm roared, and the world outside became so gray it melted into blackness, like the night sky came early. Shigeko sighed into her knees, feeling the weight of the word upon her.

A lightning strike made her glance up. And there, standing outside, illuminated through the window, was the girl in the fox mask.

They stared at each other for a moment. The eyes of the mask were pools of darkness.

“...anou…” Shigeko said, eyebrow raised.

When the lightning flashed again, the girl was gone. Shigeko stood back up, held the Inari statue in her hand, and opened the back door of the house, staring out into the forest. The bark and leaves and clouds, all various shades of gray and dappled dark green, blended into each other, one contiguous darkened landscape that became the sky above. It took Shigeko a moment to find the girl standing atop a tree branch just beyond the shrine. 

The girl stood no taller than Shigeko, dressed in a kimono colored like blue cotton candy, socks within geta balanced calmly atop a withering branch. Red and black lines accentuated the white fox mask. 

Shigeko scratched her head, tired. “...can I help you?”

The girl clapped her hands, the sound resonating in the wall of rain. Shigeko tensed, thumb on the statue, as the girl’s fingers elegantly, deftly, firmly made the ancient hand signals of kuji-in, and then placed a pale hand on the branch below. Shadows carved their way across the branch, down the tree, which creaked and groaned and splintered and shuddered, until burying themselves in the ground.

Shapes emerged from the dirt, dark and haunting, and coalesced into two humanoid figures. The shadows flared and spiraled, polishing their features, taking on insectile shapes, until their final forms emerged.

“Bro,” said the man-sized rhinoceros beetle, standing on two hind legs. “We’re alive.”

“Aniki,” answered the man-sized stag beetle. “I can talk.”

“Far out, bro.”

“I know, aniki.”

From the branch above, the fox girl pointed at their target.

“We gotta kill that shrine maiden, bro.”

“Let’s kill her, aniki.”

Like good automatons, the beetle brothers - the famed, beloved combo of rhino and stag - began ambling towards Shigeko.

She sighed. “...right.”

Feeling exhausted, not really wanting to bother with all this, especially when it was raining out, Shigeko pricked her thumb along the statue and smeared it with a drop of blood. The beetle brothers briefly hesitated, their mandibles and claws and horns glinting in the rain, but nothing happened.

“...eh?”

Shigeko glanced down at the statue in horror. She tried again, a deeper cut this time, but still, Inari refused to grant Shigeko her strength.

“Why now?” She tried again and again, the blood now leaking, making the statue slippery and slick, but the scythe refused to emerge. “Work, kami-damnit! Work-”

The beetle brothers were on her, charging with great speed despite their size. Shigeko leapt out of the way of the rhino’s horn and ducked beneath the claws of the stag. She spun, cursing, and decided to fight conventionally, slamming a fist into the rhino’s flank, only to succeed in spraining her wrist when it bounced off the hard exoskeleton. The stag knocked her across the garden with a claw, wiping out a row of little tomato plants as Shigeko skidded across the dirt.

Anger rose within Shigeko, both from the sight of her ruined garden and her own uselessness. She slashed her palm, letting the blood wash over the statue from head-to-toe, but the statue refused to budge. Inari almost looked saddened, or maybe it was the dizziness. Starting to feel woozy, Shigeko just barely dodged another charge by the rhino, landing awkwardly next to the hoe, which Dick, in his infinite wisdom, never put away. She grabbed it and swung into the stag, hoping to hear a satisfying crunch, but the hoe simply shattered when it struck the beetle’s armor.

“She’s a fighter, bro.”

“Don’t worry, aniki. Humans are soft on the outside.”

Shigeko rolled away from the stag’s counterattack, but failed to see the rhino beetle lying in wait across the garden. He struck at the right moment, charging across the dirt, and Shigeko could only raise her hands as the rhino horn collided with her. Had she not been holding the hoe’s handle, the horn would’ve impaled her, but the collision had enough force to send her flying backwards, through both walls of her house, sending her smashing into the dirt of the front courtyard, the handle disintegrating into splinters that trailed away from her hands until she came to a painful stop. 

It was growing even darker now, or maybe it was just Shigeko’s heavy eyelids. She rose unsteadily to one knee, stinging pains everywhere, on her arms and legs especially, little scrapes and bruises and cuts. Her previously-injured side flared with pain, while her mouth tasted copper from the blood. The rain and dust and tears made it hard to see the statue in her hands.

“Work! Work!” With the splintered edge of the statue, Shigeko made trembling cuts on the inside of her arm, sending slashes up and down, wincing with each desperate slice, but the statue rejected all of her offerings. In fact, the worn face on the statue seemed to be pleading with her to stop and reconsider. But Shigeko could only see it as rejection. She collapsed backwards, sitting down, slouched over.

The fox girl landed lightly atop the Kuroshio Shrine. She gazed upon Shigeko for a moment, mask betraying nothing, then commenced with making another round of hand signs, concluding with her hand raising to the heavens. The sky answered - a lightning strike flashed downwards, connecting with her fingers, passing through her body with a scratch, and out her other hand, fingertips pointed down at the shrine roof.

The roof exploded. When the dust settled, the girl was gone, but the fire remained, rapidly spreading across the wood. Shigeko struggled to rise, her eyes blurry, but then the beetle brothers lumbered into the courtyard, blocking her path.

“Why? Why did you leave me?” Shigeko wiped her eyes, unsure if she was speaking to the statue, or the memory of her mother who gave that statue to her on her deathbed, or her father who promised that tonight would be the last night of gambling, only to stumble into an oncoming train, or the Old Man, who seemed like he would live forever, except he didn’t, or even that classmate of hers, Miyoki Marika, who killed herself a few years ago, during the fireworks at the Bon Festival, mere hours after speaking to Shigeko.

And then she thought of her new friend from America, gone from her as well.

“It’s all my fault. I make everyone leave me.”

And so Shigeko stood, bloody statue in hand, and prepared to go all out, just this once. If she could at least save the shrine, she could look her loved ones in the eye when she met them in heaven.

If slicing her thumb didn’t work, or her palm, or her arm, then she cut a spot guaranteed to produce blood, and relief, and escape, and angled the splintered edge at her thin wrist, right at the artery. She raised the statue, crying, and rammed it down towards the crossroads of veins and fate.

“Woah! Hold on there!”

And then Dick Slaughter arrived, standing behind her, wrapping his arms around her, his presence cradling her, halting the statue with one hand, pulling her wrist away with the other.