"Descending, Unrelenting..."

Shigeko thought she was dreaming, but her dreams usually involved men of the naked variety, while Dick was fully clothed.

“Dikkun? What are you doing here?”

“Enji stopped by with the print-outs after school. He mentioned you were worried about me, but looked real sick yourself. So, pardon the intrusion, but I thought I’d stop by.”

“Me look bad? Dikkun, you’re practically a ghost!”

Indeed, Dick - dressed in the blue sweats and sweatshirt typical for physical education class - looked as pale as milkglass beneath them, though sudden movements also made his face turn green, like some sort of green glass. Maybe like the ones in a Kirishitan Church, except more vomit-y colored.

“Mattaku…I’ve lost so much blood, my mental monologue is going sideways…”

“I’ll be okay," Dick reassured her. "I got sick after being out in the rain yesterday. But don’t worry about me. What’s going on? Are you under attack?”

Before Shigeko could answer, Dick studied the girl in the fox mask standing atop a branch beyond the burning shrine and the two man-size beetles approaching with snapping mandibles.

“You’re under attack,” he concluded. “Where’s your scythe?”

Shigeko grimaced. “I can’t use magic for some reason.” Deep down, she knew why, but not being able to admit why was part of the reason for her impotence.

Dick stood tall, indicating no impotence at all. “I just need to give my blood to the statue, right?”

“It’s not just giving blood…this is the Scythe of a Thousand Truths. If your heart is in turmoil, if you’re lying to yourself, and to those around you…then Inari won’t answer.”

Dick simply grinned at that, and then beckoned for the statue. Shigeko reluctantly handed it to him, feeling like she was giving up part of herself. She remained sitting, woozy, as Dick approached the beetle brothers.

“Oi, bro. We have a new challenger.”

“He looks just as soft on the outside as the shrine maiden, aniki.”

“You’ll find this Dick to be quite a hard one.” The quippy Dick planted a firm foot in the courtyard. The brothers briefly hesitated at this new challenge. The fox girl made no reaction to Dick’s arrival.

The wind whipped and the trees swayed violently around the shrine. The rain pelted them all. Dick held up the statue, resting a thumb on the edge, already weeping with Shigeko’s blood.

“...I’m not gonna get AIDS or anything, right? Well, in any case, call me Yoko Ono, because I’m gonna destroy these beetles!”

Dick ran a thumb on the edge. His blood dripped across the statue, joining the copper stains of Shigeko’s early sacrifices. 

And nothing happened.

“Oh…” Dick glanced down at the statue, his face sheepish, Shigeko gaping in horror. And then the stag beetle smacked Dick with a claw, sending Dick flying across the courtyard, into a storage shed at the edge of the courtyard. Dust and rain and collapsing wood covered any sight of him.

“Stupid human. Nothing’s harder than a beetle’s armor. Ain’t that right, aniki?”

“For sure, bro. Go kill that human. I’ll kill the other one.”

The brothers laughed, then marched towards their targets. Shigeko struggled, trying to stand, but there was blood leaking down her arm, and she wobbled and swayed, and was seeing everything in triple. A claw wrapped itself around her waist, squeezing so hard Shigeko thought she’d snap in half, but the rhino beetle had a worse fate in mind for her. He flung her back into the house - Shigeko briefly caught the black pools of the girl’s fox mask gazing down upon her - before slamming through the front door, landing in a pile of falling plaster and wood, the air smoky and the flames running along the floor, walls, and ceiling, the inferno clawing at her.

The stag beetle arrived at the storage shed. The front wall had been blown through by Dick’s impact, but the rest of it still stood, large enough to house decades worth of tools, equipment, and supplies. The interior of the shed was naturally dark, but combined with the storm-gray skies, the stag beetle went inside rather blind. It didn’t matter too much - that human looked like dung, anyway, and the stag’s claws were sharp (sharper than his rhino aniki, surely). The human stood no chance.

Thus, the stag failed to notice Dick hiding in the shadows, though he did notice when Dick stepped from said shadows, the vending machine from a week ago in his hands. Dick reared back and slammed the machine right atop the stag’s head. His mandibles were sharp enough to punch through the vending machine, his head emerging on the other side, but the rest of his body was now trapped within the box of steel and sharp glass.

While the stag struggled to escape, Dick burst back into the courtyard, taking the rhino by surprise. The rhino swung with his horn, but Dick slid across the grass between the rhino’s legs. Dick stumbled onto his feet behind the rhino, onto the stone walkway, and charged inside the house.

Shigeko coughed, crawling to stay below the smoke. Dick spotted her legs and slid forward, diving-into-home-base style, arriving next to her.

“Through here,” Shigeko murmured, voice raspy from the smoke. She opened a secret compartment beneath a floorboard in a back hallway and slipped inside. Dick followed, arriving in a low, damp, chilly subterranean room with stone walls. Shigeko moved the floorboards over the entrance, while an old ofuda charm on their bottom lit up and sealed the way shut.

“How long will that hold?” Dick asked.

“At least a little bit,” Shigeko answered. They could hear the roar of the fire above them. The beetle brothers, not to mention the fox girl, were most likely lying in wait, knowing the two would have to emerge at some point, or perish along with the shrine in the fire.

The secret basement offered a few items of interest - a small table, two chairs, and several chests full of onmyodo material. Dick got to work, pulling out magic bandages infused with spicebush that could be wrapped around his arm, along with pre-written ofuda charms, the calligraphy for fire adorning them.

“Here’s your statue back,” Dick said, letting it stand on the table. Shigeko slumped in a chair, feeling several years’ worth of exhaustion, while Dick readied himself for another battle.

“I think it’s over,” Shigeko admitted. “I’m useless without my Scythe. I haven't trained with power arm techniques like yours. And you’ve rarely trained yourself.”

“Don’t give up,” Dick urged, but his urging was undercut by a series of rapid-fire sneezes. He ended up slumping in the chair next to her, his face sickly and pale. The room started to grow hot as the fires licked above.

“You said your Scythe couldn’t be used if your heart was in turmoil, right?” Dick asked. “Then we’ll have to resolve that so you can use the Scythe again.”

“How?”

“By being honest with yourself. Only then will you find inner peace.”

Inner peace. Shigeko thought of the Old Man, who taught her the same thing. The thought of losing the shrine where he once lived made her bitter.

“I doubt it’ll work," Shigeko muttered.

“Would it be easier if I went first?”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been hiding things, too. That’s why I couldn’t use the Scythe either. If I admit them, then maybe it’ll be easier for you afterwards.”

Shigeko glanced away. “Just leave me. Save yourself.”

Dick chuckled darkly. “I’ve already done that to someone. I won’t do it again.”

Shigeko’s eyes glanced up, and found a sight she hadn’t expected - a tender-looking Dick, nursing old wounds with soft, regretful eyes. He wrapped the spicebush bandages around his arm slowly.

“I’ve been lying to you. Multiple lies. I’m guessing you already know I quit the basketball team.” When Shigeko nodded, he continued. “Enji sat me down. He said it wouldn’t be fair to the other students if I got playing time. If I were to have one year in the club, then I would be denying someone a year in turn. That student, a Japanese student, would only have 2 years out of 3, and only two thirds of a charmed high school life. I would be denying him his chance to have the full high school experience. He said it would be selfish of me to play. I could still be on the team, but I would never see the court in a game.”

“Dikkun…”

“It sucks. The circumstances of your birth determine so much. Here I was, thinking I could break the mold, and live my dream of being a Japanese high school student, but reality always wins. From the moment I was born, I could never truly be a Japanese high school student...for a number of reasons.” He hung his head low. “But it’s more than just that. I came here to reinvent myself. I wanted a clean start. You see…I’m not even from New York City. I’m actually from…”

It took Dick a moment to admit the truth.

“Hoboken.”

Shigeko gasped.

“That’s the horrid truth,” Dick said. “I wanted to be a Japanese high school student because I couldn’t accept being an American. I’m running from my past, and from the truth - that I’m just another gaijin with weeaboo dreams. I came closer than most in fulfilling them, but I will never reach that platonic ideal of the Japanese high school experience, because I’m from Jersey.”

Shigeko wanted to help him, but didn’t know how. “Why Japan?”

“My family was poor, see, and it was the height of the Streaming Wars. Those were lean times in America. My parents wanted a good life for my sister and I, so they worked hard, scrounged, and tried to afford all the streaming services that life requires. But then my father…there was one year, one year where he really thought the Jets would win the Super Bowl, just once in his life…when Aaron Rodgers tore his ACL in the opening minutes of the first game of that season, my dad had a heart attack right then and there in our living room. He’s okay now, but he couldn’t work, and the medical bills had costed us so much…we became another casualty of the wars, along with our local Blockbuster, turned into a Whole Foods, so my sister and I, along with the other poor souls of lower middle class Hoboken, had to stand for hours in the gnawing cold at the Redbox lines outside the local 7/11…when the streamers came for Redbox, my mother broke down and cried. She just wanted to see Jason Stratham in Hobbes and Shaw…but we were too poor for even that. When I saw my mother crying, I knew I had to be stronger. I knew I had to provide for my family.”

Shigeko was mesmerized and saddened by his tale of woe and despair.

“I had to get a job. But since I was just barely a teenager, I had to get a job somewhere that skirted child labor laws. I scoured Hoboken’s Asian restaurants, since those families always make their children work no matter the age. But none would hire me. Just when I lost all hope, I came across a small, dingy Japanese fusion restaurant in a rundown corner of Hoboken. When I stepped inside, the air was foul, the seats were empty, and the food was mediocre, but not in a good Asian-place kind of way. Akama-san ran the place. He lived alone, his parents dead, his wife having divorced him, taking their son back to Japan with her. Akama-san was born in America, yet felt homesick for a land he had never visited, that land across the sea. I felt the same way, even if I hadn't realized it at the time. America had lied to me. If you work hard, you can achieve anything, that’s what I grew up believing…but I wasn’t even allowed to work hard yet, and I was all awkward and gangly and tall, and all the other Hoboken kids saw me as an outcast, a poor kid who can’t even afford Netflix with ads, let alone Hulu…I was absolutely shattered when I broke open my piggy bank just to attend the newest Indiana Jones movie, only to be the sole person in the theater…America had duped me, duped me good, and I wanted out. I wanted to believe in a better land, a land where people respect one another, a land of stability, a land where hard work can actually pay off…somewhere like America, except before 9/11. But then Akama-san showed me a greater land, a land where money wasn’t everything, where you could survive just with your wits and ability to critically think, because he showed how to illegally stream anime. And Jets games, for that matter.”

Dick continued. “For a whole year, I watched as much anime as I could. I would track down all sorts of websites, throwing caution to the wind, believing I was invincible. I was immersed in this Japanese culture, and I looked up to Akama-san for showing me the way. I would become Japanese, I vowed. I would leave this wretched hive known as America behind for the promised land. I picked up your language through subtitles, your customs through slice of life, your spirit through shonen. Japan would be my destiny.”

And then his head drooped. “Then the FCC arrived. Their APE agents nabbed me on the way home from school and hauled me down to their anti-piracy enforcement prison in Newark. I had been illegally watching anime, which not only hurt the streamers, but Japan as a whole, the FCC said, since by not buying a streaming subscription, I was directly affecting the pockets of Japanese businesses, not to mention the mangaka and artists’ themselves, and the entire future of Japan could be ruined by my transgressions, since my failure to watch through a legal streaming account was preventing them from ever leaving the Lost Decades. And this, of course, hurt the American economy as well, since by not paying the American streamers, I was shorting them revenue which could go towards taxes which would go towards paying off the national debt...I didn't care about America, but to hear I was hurting Japan, I was horror-struck. And most of all, I feared for my family as well, since a pirate son could cost my parents their jobs, my sister's chances of getting into a good school...the FCC threatened my entire family with punishment. But I could avoid it…by giving up names.”

“Dikkun…”

Dick's head hung low. “I gave up Akama-san. I told them I learned about the piracy websites through him. And then the FCC let me go. They've left me alone since. But the next day, Akama-san's restaurant was gone. I only saw Akama-san himself one more time. It was his picture in an obituary. His experience in the American justice system had left him with severe PTSD that only fentanyl could solve. It's all my fault. I'm really just a coward living on time borrowed from a man I led to an early grave. ”

Dick stood now. “For my failures, for Akama-san, for my poor mother, for the New York Jets…I must keep moving forward. I have to overcome my cowardice. I can't look back. I must give it my all as a Japanese high school student, because if I don’t, then that means hard work truly doesn’t pay off, that some things aren’t possible, even if you set your mind to them…and if that’s the case, then what’s the point of it all?”

Shigeko studied him for a moment, then recalled-

“Wait…aren’t we about to die? I totally forgot.”

The two stared at each other, then Dick snorted. Shigeko held back a laugh. Then the two erupted, genuinely laughing, the kind where you hold your stomach and can only let it all out because it feels so sweet. 

When it was over, Shigeko steeled herself. “Thanks, Dikkun. Since we're about to burn to death, I'll tell you all about my okaa-san and otou-san and the Old Man tonight. But for now, you've shown me how to be honest with myself. I know what I need to do now."

Shigeko nabbed the statue of Inari from the table.

"Let's go kick some ass, Dikkun."