fictional spring

I woke up from a long, long dream, and the vine flowers in the courtyard outside the door cascaded down like a waterfall.

The warm sunlight fell on the bedding through the shoji, and I recalled the content of the dream in a trance.

I remembered that I liked someone in my dream.

We walked in the brightly lit downtown, held hands on the banks of the river where the fireworks were gorgeous, met again when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, and parted ways when the winter snow fell.

It was a dream that spanned 1000 years, distant and long.

Our feelings flowed along the long journey, from Kamo Shrine to Yoshiwara Flower Street.

The unforgettable years entangled me like vines, and those memories were like thorns on the vines, deeply piercing into the flesh and blood, what was absorbed was life and love, this love continued from the ancient past to the future, throughout Every moment of our meeting and parting.

But facing our final parting, I suddenly realized my mistake.

I was wrong from the beginning.

This mistake is not because of forming a fate with him, nor is it because of falling in love with him, but because of the obsession that arises from not being willing to accept the disappearance of the fate and not being willing to face the end of the love after the fate has been formed. .

So words are mantras, and people's hearts will become ghosts.

I knew it from the very beginning, because I am a disciple of Abe Seimei, so I have always known that - if I don't want to lose something, there will be a day when I lose it, and the result of being too persistent will only be twisted and hideous.

It's as if I've always known that to get something, you have to trade it for something else.

I exchanged so many things that when we met that time, we almost forgot each other's true colors.

And for a while, I even forgot what I looked like.

The person he loved shouldn't be like that anyway.

So cruel and selfish.

That's not me, and that's not who he likes.It's a... I don't know what it is.

That thing is uglier than an ugly goblin.It's what I don't want to be and what I don't want to be.

So I remembered his original appearance.

The emaciated young man was coughing lowly in the Japanese room with a burning brazier. His slightly curly black hair was scattered on his bony back, and the slight vibration of his body when coughing made people tremble.

That was the man I loved, miserable and unaware of him.

That person had eyes that were scarletr than the blood he coughed up, and his dark curly hair made his skin paler, and his frown and frail body fell into my eyes.

I stopped in the past, the past where I fell in love with him, but he turned into a ghost and devoured our memories.

I know.Even if I die in the past without obsession, he will still turn into an unrecognizable evil spirit.

【He is like this. 】

In his body lies a quiet and weak evil flower, which only needs a little blood to irrigate, and it will bloom in an unreasonably cruel and enchanting way.

So I have to do something.

[I am like this. 】

The maids who helped me change my clothes respectfully called my name, and I was still "Mutsuki Hime" in their mouths.

That is my original name.

"Will he come?"

A voice that doesn't belong to me at this moment came out of my mouth—what time am I at this moment, even I can't tell the difference.

All the memories related to me and him were intertwined in my mind, and the past and the future overlapped on my body at the same time.

"Are you asking about Ubuyashiki?"

The maid smiled softly: "Have you forgotten, he will come over tonight."

"He said it himself," they said.

He said too many words himself, and those words twisted in my heart, like vines that broke through the ground, and entangled with my heart.

And because I also talked a lot, he was also entangled in the vines that words turned into.

Sharp poisonous thorns sprouted from those vines, piercing deeply into our flesh and blood, twisting him and twisting me.

Putting on court clothes, riding in an ox cart, in the afterglow of the setting sun, he stepped on the ground and came to me in the light of the sun.

"Muzuki Hime."

He called me with a soft voice, took my palm and put it on his lips, let me snuggle into his arms, the maids retreated silently, only me and him in the huge courtyard.

This is... the "past" that only belongs to us.

The present is the "past".

And everything that belongs to us should stay in the past.

Brother Laiguang once left for me the boy Che Anzuna who killed the ghost king, and now I want to use it to kill another "ghost king".

Even if he hasn't become a "ghost" yet.

But I do know-

He is the ghost of the beginning and the king of all ghosts.

The sound of the blade sinking into the flesh pierced my ears clearly, and the deep and thick black-red gushing out from the eye-catching wound instantly filled my entire vision.

My beloved looked at me incredulously, his face paler than ever.

He opened his bright red lips, but he couldn't make a sound.

—I covered his mouth to keep him from making a sound.

Perhaps in his eyes at this moment, I must be uglier than a ghost.

But I saw our future, I watched him witness my death again and again, and I also witnessed his death - the pale man lying in my arms, I put his head back to the neck.

But there is no going back.

The hands holding his head were trembling, these hands were covered with blood, I don't know if it belonged to him or mine, tears rolled down, and the blood coughed up from my mouth also mixed into his blood.

The red flame was burning on the knife that cut off his head, which was as scorching and cruel as the scorching sun. The person who killed him wore the scorching flower earrings under his ears, just like the man we saw a hundred years ago.

He was killed by a fire called "hate" that had been burning for centuries, and I was an accomplice.

I am not only his accomplice, but also the accomplice of others.

Wu Mi has been thinking wrong things, doing wrong things, repeating the same mistakes over and over again - and I am the same as him.

The past that belongs to us should have ended in the real past long ago.

Ending in... What I am at this moment is the present for me, and the past of the "past" for him in the future.

I want to hear his voice, to hear him call my name with a mute softness wrapped in honey and poison.

"Muzuki..."

That voice has always stayed in my mind, running through our past and future, it is the "curse" that has held us back for thousands of years.

That is the mantra called "Everlasting Earth".

But not now.

I tightly covered his mouth, suppressing his thoughts of struggling to get up back to the ground, and also suppressing the voice I most wanted to hear where I couldn't hear it.

Because it is impossible.

As long as the slightest bit leaks from my fingers, even if it's just a small whimper and choke, it's enough to shake my decision.

I am killing him.

I am, killing my most beloved person with my own hands.

I'm killing him in our past, forever in our memory.

What is under me now is Wu Mi, which belongs only to me.

He is neither a "ghost" nor a "ghost king", nor is he the future "ghost dance Tsuji Wumi".

He's just miserable.

"No misery."

I called him softly, looking at his pale and thin hands, the neatly trimmed nails embedded in the back of my hands, the scratched skin oozing blood, his hands were stained with our blood.

A similar scene should have happened many years later, but now it is 1000 years earlier.

His eyes were full of pain and anger, and his pale face turned red at this moment.

His hair was wet with sweat, his forehead was bulging with blue veins, and his wide-open eyes were full of my reflection, and we are still looking at each other until now.

I remembered the first time I met him when I was nine years old. I stood in front of him when I was young, cut his hair with my own hands, tied it for him, and my master helped him put on the black hat.

What I watched at that time was his growth.

What I am watching now is his death.

When Wu Mi was a human being, he had an overly weak body, and even those things that were very common to ordinary people would torture him deeply, not to mention that at this time, I had the talent and strength that had been praised by Brother Boya and the others.

He could not break free from my grasp, nor could he escape his imminent death.

So I could only use those thin ten fingers to tightly grasp the back of my hand, and embed the nails into my flesh and blood until the knuckles turned white.

"Don't be afraid." I told him softly, brushing away the broken hair sticking to his face with the other hand, and wiping the sweat oozing from the forehead with the palm of my hand.

I stroked his face that was gradually losing its color, and smelled the thicker blood in the air.

I don't know if I'm talking to myself or to him.

"Do not be afraid."

I am repeating such words.

For us in the future, there is no need to be afraid of everything we are facing now.

If we don't do this, we will face even more painful torture in the long, long future.

So... "Don't be afraid, Wu Mi."

I repeated it over and over again, and the life under my hand was gradually disappearing with this sentence. His struggle became smaller and smaller, and his attempts to make a sound became smaller and smaller.

Only the nails embedded in my flesh still tingled.

Wu Mi is in more pain than me at this time.

The pupils of those wide-open red plum-colored eyes dilated, and the emotion in the eyes became weaker and weaker, and finally all that was left was an empty dark red.

He didn't move at all.

My beloved just lay there under my palm, his eyes wide open, his pale and beautiful face covered with mottled blood.

That curly, seaweed-like black hair was spread messily on the wooden floor, stained and glued together by thick blood, and the blackened blood soaked his court clothes, and I was lying on top of him When it seeps through my clothes.

The boy Qie Angang had long since fallen in the distance, and the ones killed by that ghost-slaying knife tonight were "people" who had not yet turned into "ghosts".

"No misery."

I heard someone talking.

The voice called Wu Mi's name in a low voice, from being soft and calm at the beginning to trembling out of control later.

That's—my voice.

I'm probably crying, because my vision has turned into a blur of black and red, and there are sticky blood stains everywhere. As long as I raise my hand a little, I will find that the most stained is the one in my palm. blood.

Only then did I realize that my hands were already bloody and bloody, and the bone-deep scratches were all over the backs of the hands that should have been white and clean, making them hideous and ugly.

Memories of me that don’t belong to “now” come down in my body, thoughts of me that don’t belong to “now” arise in my mind, driving me to kill Wu Mi of “now”, and also kill “now” " of myself.

It's quiet everywhere, only those strange memories are buzzing in my mind.

How could I do such a thing.

I personally killed the person I love the most.

——*——

The strange voice stopped at some point, my beloved lost his warmth in my arms, his body became stiff and cold, and the smoldering candlelight cast ferocious flickering shadows on the screen, and also appeared on his cheeks. Leave patches of shadow.

I wiped the blood on his face with my palm, but his face became more and more blurred.The blood, whether it was mine or his, caused him to be unrecognizable, and something dripped on his face.

are my tears.

His face became more and more clear, and the beautiful facial features emerged little by little in my eyes-it was not that I wiped his face clean.

But...

"Wu Mi," I said, stroking his cheek.The shining light illuminated the Japanese room.

"The sun is up."