Chapter Text
After I died, I was nothing and no one. I felt and saw nothing. I was just there like a shadow floating in the void. Just a soul, I suppose. I couldn’t remember the specifics of who I was or how I died. Only that I had lived once, and it hadn’t been easy. I remembered fear, though. That survived with me. I had died in the dark, alone and unseen. I had hated the dark, once—hated how it swallowed me whole.
But now that I was shrouded in it, cradled within its embrace, it wasn’t so scary anymore. There was no malice in the shadow. It was just there, like me, but it was more than I was. It felt powerful. Powerful like a formless entity tucked within the endless night.
All I knew was peace.
Until the dark fractured like glass, that is.
A hairline split snaked across the void, crackling as it bled light into the formless expanse. The edges shimmered red. It wasn’t warm or comforting, but angry and alive. The crack widened, spiraling inward. At its heart, a spinning eye appeared. It was red, ringed in black tomoe, and glaring through the void as if it could see me.
The sight pierced through me. The shadows recoiled. A pulse thrummed in my essence, like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine. For the first time since I’d died, I felt fear.
Then the fracture imploded, swallowed once more by darkness.
I might’ve believed I’d imagined it if not for the echo of that foreign heartbeat, pulsing again before everything shattered into color.
Red. Far too much red.
I never was a fan of that color—that much I knew. It was an angry color, to me. But this was a cloying red, the kind that burned the air and stung the senses. The heat was suffocating and the air carried an acrid tang.
My vision blurred as figures began to take shape. People swarmed my senses. They were all women, crowding close. All of them beautiful and different, their faces aglow beneath the soft flicker of red paper lanterns.
Then sound hit me like a hammer. It came on with growing intensity until it was almost too loud, coming with pitches that made me want to scream. I’m pretty sure I did scream.
It was then that I became aware of my autonomy. I had hands, now. Tiny fists enclosed in skin instead of shadow. A body. I was more than a soul. I blinked with great effort before I could manage to wrench my eyes shut from the world as I processed the sound. Their voices came with actual words, now, and I could understand some of it. One of them was saying something about my eyes being black.
Then a hand gripped my face. It wasn’t done roughly or anything, but it was too sudden. I snapped my eyes open with a wrathful cry, trying to slap at the hand that held my chin. I had expected to see a warm expression, but a woman looked upon me with her eyes blown wide. She stumbled away, releasing my chin, shrieking.
She was afraid, I realized. But was she afraid of me, or for me?
She pointed wildly while shrieking out words I couldn’t parse before running from the room.
The other ladies looked on with similar expressions of discomfort, but they remained composed. I couldn’t hear all their words, as they came so quickly, but it was still about my eyes. Anchored to the moment by their discomfort, I gripped the hand of the person holding me, hoping to find even just one person who would look upon me kindly.
A woman turned me toward her, peering down with golden-brown eyes filled with affection. Her wet hair clung to clammy, pale cheeks. And in that moment, all the sound and overwhelming colors faded into the background. This woman was my mother, but not my first mother. And I was her child.
“It’s okay, Yamiko-chan,” she whispered, smiling as if nothing were amiss. “You surprised us, is all. You are perfect as you are.”
Regretting that I couldn’t voice my confusion, I remained quiet and watching before a giggle filled the air. “See, she is no demon, girls. Her eyes are fine.”
My mother spun me around, showing me to the other ladies.
Their discomfort washed away faintly, their bodies losing their rigid stances and their accusing stares lowered. Some of them started laughing, and one apologized, but it was awkward all the same. The ladies filed out one after the other until it was just one woman in there with us.
The last woman didn’t seem happy. If anything, she seemed resigned as she said, “Yamiko is a Nara through and through, Hana-san. They will want her. They will take her from you.”
“I know,” my mother said, her voice soft and sad. “But I will love her all the same.”
“It would be easier if you didn’t.”
And as my mother held me to her chest, cool tears dribbling onto my cheek, I knew that this life would be no easier than my last one.