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Part 7: Conviction

 

     So much had happened in so little time – so much harrowing loss, so much distress and suffering. So much gruesome horror. When he had left Rao to find adventure, all of this was not what Ario had expected to find.

     What was he supposed to tell Rika? What was he supposed to do?

     “I—”

     Ario could not finish his sentence. Not with Rika staring down at him with those beautiful eyes full of desperation – with that loud heart of hers beating to the rhythm of supplication. Rika desperately needed him to understand, to follow her trail of thought; to see, as she somehow did, that the Orebashi meant them no harm. To simply follow her. Oh, how he yearned to follow her to the ends of the seas.

     He finally lowered his gaze, gritted his teeth and swallowed. Then, responded with a shaky breath, “I—I’m sorry, Rika. The Orebashi – that thing – needs to be killed. I don’t care that it’s of the sea and rejects us or whatever reason it might have.” He lifted his gaze then, and held Rika’s. “All I know is that Soba’s dead. The Orebashi killed him. I want it to hurt for what it did to him.”

     Rika’s disappointment tore out the heart from his throbbing chest. It was a depth without end; a sea without bed. An endless darkness that collapsed upon his mind like a wild landslide and threatened to smother him.

     “It is so,” she breathed out. Her last breath, it felt like to Ario. Steady as she stood, Ario had no doubt whatsoever that she was about to keel over and expire right on the spot. When she took a step back, he immediately reached out to her – but Rika held out the palm of her hand towards him. A painful gesture of rejection.

     “It is so,” she repeated, her tone louder. Tentatively determined. “You do not understand. I understand.”

     What exactly she understood, Ario wasn’t certain. The smile she gave him, clearly meant to reassure him, only left him feeling cold and remorseful. He had hurt her. Distress wafted from her like the pungent stench of a dubious experiment gone even more wrong. She was not okay. Not in the least. And yet, she bowed her head to him as were she fine; turned away and walked, a steady enough stance, as were she fine. Ario yearned to follow after her. To apologize. To hold her in his arms and tell her she would indeed be okay, that they were all going to be okay.

     Knowing full well none of them would be. No one was leaving this ship alive.

     Ario dropped to his knees. He tried to breathe, but all he felt was this dead weight in his chest pressing down on his lungs.

     He was going to die. This wasn’t merely a paranoid fear anymore, but a certainty. A cruel, unpreventable certainty.

     A certainty so outlandish, Ario couldn’t keep himself from chuckling. Him, dying on a ship? Killed by a monstrous mythological serpent? Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

     As his chuckles grew louder and heavier, Soba’s voice chimed in. “I see what you do,” the Alweira said. “I envy you, Ario. Truly. I’ve never been able to laugh away my fear.”

     Ario’s lips twitched into a grin. Gradually, laughter buried itself beneath laboured breaths. “I’m not laughing anything away, you depraved Alweira,” he whispered in turn. “How can I laugh away that I’m about to die? Which is in part your fault, you know.”

     To Ario’s shock, Soba himself walked in front of him – crouched in front of him. The brief smile on his entirely white face was unmistakable. “How is our predicament my fault?”

     Ario gritted his teeth. “It’s not our predicament. You’re dead. You’re—”

     “Indeed I am,” Soba responded, unbearably casual. “And do you believe I would wish the same to you?”

     A memory flashed in his head; of Soba’s last written words, now gone forever. Ario, I ask of you, the words had stated, please do not regret existing. “Yes,” Ario lied, grinning. “Of course you would. You lived to make my life miserable.”

     Soba smiled; a broad, amused smile. “So I did,” he said. “After all, owning a Yosen suit would have made my life far simpler. And I do find yours quite appealing—”

     “You should never be allowed to joke around,” Ario said to the Alweira in front of him – to the emptiness that replaced him in the blink of an eye. In Soba’s wake, nothing remained but the creak of the hull, the distant laments of the fearful. The elusive caustic touch of the Orebashi, disrupted by the loud crack of thunder. Ario lifted a hand to his chest and clasped tight his vestments, imagining he was holding onto Soba’s last written words and wishes: to celebrate his life and all that he was. A depraved, debauched Alweira… and, Ario refused to quite admit to himself: a friend.

     “I need to stop thinking,” he said to himself, promptly diverting his own attention. What was he supposed to do now? What could he do? Would anything make any difference? Was there any chance left of surviving this trip? What were his options?

     “A liar, a crazy woman, and an even crazier guy I don’t want to ever get close to.”

     Though come to think of it, Triku might be just as crazy as the other two. Ario’s gaze slowly traveled to the side, over his shoulder, towards the Kokai crewmember Triku had thrown over his shoulders mere minutes ago. The crewmember whose neck didn’t look quite right anymore. Triku had shown no remorse harming one of his own kin. What was it he had said? Sometimes, sacrifices must be made. No doubt would Triku kill him if he needed to.

     Ario shuddered, and let out a defeated sigh. Perhaps he could find anyone else who might be able to help. Anyone at all. Anyone at all who wasn’t a monster-loving zealot or a fellow scientist eager to dissect a Yorei at the first suspicion.

     He swallowed hard. No, his only real options were the people who had shown any sign of caring what happens to any of them. People who would trust him implicitly, to whom he wouldn’t have to explain his secret and risk deadly exposure. This left only Rika and Triku. The one who wanted to save the Orebashi, and the one who wanted to save himself.

     With a sigh, Ario considered his options, and the horrific corpse Triku had left in his wake. ‘It is my duty to keep us all safe’, Triku had said. Ario heaved; his hands balled into fists. In his heart, hatred rekindled.

     ‘With hate,’ Soba reminded him, ‘one cannot live, nor grow. That is what we learned from our ancestors’ mistakes.’

     “But he let you die,” Ario snapped back at the ghost in his head. “He did absolutely nothing to protect you – or that man there. You were never his concern.”

     And neither was I, Ario hated himself for thinking. After all, what did he care about a lying hypocrite who would walk over corpses? What did it matter that Triku cared so intensely about his sister that the mere thought of her had almost brought him to tears? ‘Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for her,’ Triku had said – right before admitting that he regretted nothing. Not even the death of the fellow Kokai he had so casually thrown over his shoulder.

     Ario closed his eyes on these thoughts, and breathed. All around him, the ship creaked. Panels cracked, an ominous sound that set his hair on edge. Somewhere just beyond his reach, the Orebashi’s caustic mind slithered beneath the violent roll of thunder.

     I don’t have a choice, do I? Only the choice to do nothing at all and to die. A choice he was not willing to make anymore. Not anymore.

     He stiffened at this unpleasant thought, but refused to dwell on it. Instead, he slowly picked himself up, averted his eyes from the Kokai’s corpse, and hurried down the hallway Triku had taken earlier.

 

     Before long, Ario’s step slowed. Between two sways of the ship, his gaze darted about – towards large cracks in the wooden walls, in the floorboards. Gigantic scratches, made by an equally gigantic beast on the run. This was the path Soba had taken, days – hours? – ago. A path of destruction and death, that had ultimately led him to his own.

     —monstrous teeth snapping through flesh and fur; blood and guts spilling—

     Ario gripped his face in his hands and let out a yell, willing the memory away. He could not afford to think of his friend’s gruesome death, not now, not ever again. Not if he intended to save his own life.

     And I do, he convinced himself of. I do want to live. These words he repeated to himself, over and over, even as he diverted his attention away from Soba’s path of destruction and resumed his unsteady march in pursuit of Triku.

     Along the way he kept his eyes focused onwards, his heart closed to everything and everyone except for his own determination. To live or die became irrelevant. What ultimately mattered to him the most was that his life served a purpose: for the guilty to take responsibility for Soba’s death. Triku. Ursuri. The Orebashi. Someone had to pay.

     After an interminable walk fraught with passengers’ fears and cries, cabin doors finally made way for open space. Ario gasped in relief when he reached this large room, and took a moment to recover his bearings before studying the area. He swallowed when, first, he looked towards the other end of the room, where he spotted a large gaping hole that, he easily imagined, had once been a door. He thought he saw a few shadows on its other side – crewmembers perhaps? – and decided that right now was not the time to disturb them. Perhaps not ever. Thus, he turned his attention to his surroundings – nets, and barrels, and boxes, some of which strewn about, destroyed, their contents spilled onto the floor. He noticed fishing hooks glinting beneath the swaying lanternlights overhead, as well as spare bed covers, cooking tools, things that looked like dead insects… Ario turned away his gaze then – and shrieked as the ship violently dipped forward. He immediately fell forward; veered wide to the side as the ship did, and soon collided against a bunch of hard leathers spilled out of a fractured barrel.

     A while certainly passed before Ario recovered his bearings – before the sickness in his stomach began to settle, the dizziness in his head recede. He groaned out, loudly, and slowly tried to push himself back to his feet, until a sharp pain in his back forced him to pause. ‘I can’t—I won’t’, Soba had gasped out, just before he had no longer been Soba, and he had tossed Ario away like a ragdoll – against the very sturdy and very sharp frame of their bunkbed, he had later learned. Maybe he ought to be grateful he could still walk…

     Memory faded from his mind as the hull cracked all around him. From somewhere beyond, he heard the low rumble of thunder; and the loud patter of pouring rain, he thought. He swallowed, saliva sliding down his parched throat. A different memory struck him then: When had he last drank or eaten something? Must have been forever ago, since he didn’t even feel hungry. Or maybe he was already dead and everything happening now was some kind of cruel afterlife joke.

     “That would be just my luck,” he muttered to himself. “Even in death, still scared of dying.”

     A thought that he ended with a scream and his own hands slapped to his lips as, from nearby, voices boomed out and filled the air with crackling anger. He quickly recognized the linguistics: Kokai. The Kokai crew, without a doubt. Arguing. Infuriated. This anger soon began to seep into his heart, hot and destructive and laced with the cold of anguish and lukewarm acceptance. He swallowed mounting anxiety and, despite better judgment (and the very strong need to run for dear life), Ario focussed on these emotions – waded through their blistering mass until he discovered their sources: fear for the future, disbelief. Lost amid them, he found stray strands of detachment and indifference. Smothered by them, he perceived a speck of desperate hope driven by selfish care. He recognized the voice of the man holding these emotions: Triku. That damn manipulative hypocrite who had let Soba die. Ario’s teeth grit, his hands balled into fists. ‘We both know it isn’t you I would’ve been concerned about,’ Triku’s memory said in his mind. ‘It is my duty to keep us all safe, without exception.’

     Liar, Ario thought. He gritted his teeth harder, groaned, and slowly peeled himself up from the uncomfortable leathers. Nearby – beyond the gaping hole in the wall, Ario soon discovered – the argument carried on. One sailor responded to Triku in gruff words rife with blame and contempt. Ario’s own anger evaporated at once when he caught a single word: ‘Alweira’. He swallowed hard.

     In the wake of that accusation – at least, it had sounded like an accusation – a sense of tense calmness spread across the room beyond, in what felt like gradual waves. Anger subsided, revealing in its stead the desperation, distress, and the solemn recognition of men aware that death was now their only remaining course of action.

     Yet Triku’s anger flared up again, weighed down and amplified by desperation of his own. He spoke again, few words, in a far quieter tone. Then, his footsteps clicked – quickly followed by another’s. Both sets of feet stopped. A man’s deep, awful voice boomed out, full of contempt and rage. A moment later, Ario heard a loud thud, followed by the thumps of a body hitting the floor. He immediately slapped his hands onto his lips to keep himself from shrieking.

     Panic pounded in his heart and blurred his vision with fear; with the memory of the corpse Triku had left in his wake, back in the hallway. Fear that shrank to anxiety as he heard the Kokai sailor – the hitter? – shout. He was blurting out words – insults, no doubt, which Ario did not understand but could imagine all the same. Despite himself, he remembered witnessing Triku getting kicked in the ribs – in his bleeding ribs – and spat on by a fellow crewmember. Ario’s hands slid onto his ears as he crouched down, unable to will Soba’s words out of his mind. ‘Divergence is a curse unto its own,’ he had said. ‘Yours, at least, can be hidden…’

     ‘If you were to believe in gods, then you might consider your divergence a gift. Your talent could mend many suffering hearts…’

     ‘If you are the one to read my last wish, Ario, I ask of you: celebrate my life, our encounter, the bond we have shared…’

     ‘Not all of us Alweira are scornful worshippers of Death.’

     ‘I can’t—I won’t—’

     “I won’t,” Ario repeated through gritted teeth, even as the bottom half of Soba’s bloodied corpse tumbled to the floor of his mind. I won’t let this happen again.

     Ario yelled. He launched himself onto his feet, breathed in, and released this breath into a louder yell. He kept on yelling, needing to yell, needing to make himself known, and ran, swerving straight into the crew quarters. Countless pairs of eyes – of emotions – turned towards him at once, with disdain, disgust, violence repressed. His voice cracked in fear, but he kept on yelling nonetheless, kept on stamping forward, until he reached the slender Kokai man lying on the floor. Ario came to an abrupt halt near this man – near Triku – and started flailing. “Stop! Leave him alone!”

     Ario kept on flailing, yelling in louder bursts when sailors attempted to approach him. He stomped his foot, pitched higher his yells – everything and anything he could think of to deter them. It took a while – hours, it felt like to his raw throat, to his heavy arms – until the sailors finally exchanged looks and sighs, and stopped trying to get close. Ario still let out a few yells, with his voice growing hoarse, his throat raw, until he let out a shrill gasp that immediately cracked to desperate, wheezing breaths. He doubled over then, hands at his knees, his lungs on fire, his energy all but drained, as though he had run the entirety of the Academy grounds pursued by angry tsusa protecting their disturbed nest. At least, he couldn’t help but think, on this ship he didn’t have to worry about getting stung to death. Only eaten to death.

     Ario shuddered in between strained breaths. He refused to think about Soba again; he could not afford to, not now, not ever at all anymore. A feat easier to achieve once Triku began to speak. Ario’s hand balled into fists at once; tighter still as he heard the floorboards creak beneath Triku’s weight.

     “Have to say,” Triku said, his own breath hoarse but somehow steady, “You sure know how to make an entrance, Screamy.”

     Don’t call me that, Ario thought. How he’d wished to say these wors to Triku’s face, but his lungs, his poor burning lungs and his stinging throat… All he could do was to grit his teeth, and only briefly, as his lungs quickly demanded he open his mouth and breathe instead. He did feel the need to cast a sidelong glare towards Triku, who was now wobbling up straight onto his feet. Holding one hand at his bloodied waist. Triku had a disdainful grin on his face, but Ario could feel the surprising truth of his heart: albeit reluctant, he was grateful for the interruption.

     “I think we’re done here,” Triku said towards the crew. He added words in Kokai that Ario couldn’t understand, but his tone, and the contempt in Triku’s heart, made it clear he was insulting them. Ario swallowed, and flinched; and relaxed when the sailors made no attempt to approach. They merely exchanged looks and grunts. One spoke up, with as much contempt as Triku, though it was laced with the detachment of accepted defeat. The other sailors approved with nods and grunts. Triku’s heart, however, hardened with vicious derision.

     “I’m the baesim, eh?” he spat under his breath, loud enough for Ario to hear nonetheless. Triku’s tone, his disdain, intensified. “All of you standing there like frightened little goats ready for the slaughter, thinking it’s—what? Some sacred duty passed down to us by our ancestors? Tradition? Hah! You’re the cowards, I say!”

     Triku breathed out, a grating, pained sound. His free hand balled into a fist. His heart, to Ario’s concern, closed itself entirely off as he continued, “All of you here, all of you dutiful little korokai, I swear I will dance on your graves with a good pint in my hand.”

     Triku held up his fist then and cried out a couple of words in Kokai – a gesture that ended quickly in pained gasps and Triku doubling over, his hand tightly squeezing his bloodied side. Before long, he dropped down to one shaking knee, swearing to himself under his wheezing breath. All of his anger evaporated, leaving in its wake resentment and, Ario thought, a hint of despair. Ye, beneath it all, Ario also perceived genuine care.

     ‘Everything I have done, I have done for her’, Triku had said, when for once he had been completely open and vulnerable and revealed he had a sister. A sister who, clearly, meant the world to him. This man regretted nothing – not even killing a man bare-handed – all because of his sister. Because… he yearned to see her again.

     In his mind, Soba chuckled. ‘You truly are peculiar, Ario. In a comforting way.’

     Ario cracked a grin. “I’m peculiar and crazy. I’ve got to be crazy.”

     And that he stepped in front of Triku when a couple of crewmembers began to approach them again certainly was proof of his madness. He swallowed hard, shaking on his feet while the crewmembers exchanged confused looks and heartbeats. Meanwhile, Ario gathered his thoughts and his chattiness.

     “I get that you hate him,” Ario finally said. He glanced over his shoulder, down at Triku, who was still catching his breath. “I hate him too. But I also think all of us need him. He may be a manipulative hypocrite, but I do think he wants what’s best for us. Even if we’re only an afterthought to him.”

     The crewmembers exchanged another look. In their hearts, confusion shifted; it grew softer, interspersed with what felt like a question. The question being, Ario thought: what do we do now?

     “You can let him try, at least,” Ario responded. “You can stop beating him up and let him prove that he really does mean to keep us all safe. No exceptions,” Ario added, and he looked down at Triku. “Am I right?”

     Triku snorted. A wave of genuine amusement breezed through Ario, which soon turned cold in the middle of his heart. “You’re a fool, that’s what you are,” Triku said. With a few pained groans, he slowly got himself back up on unsteady feet. The darkness in his eyes – in his heart – made Ario tremble, until Triku turned all of that disgust towards the crewmembers. “And none of those fools understand you. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. They’re ready to die.”

     Ario frowned. Triku’s heart was like a polished hard stone – cold, heavy, uncatchable. Every word he had said, he had meant. And when Ario turned his attention towards the crewmembers, towards their flittering gazes, towards their quiet heartbeats… he found that he could not discern whether Triku was right or not. The crewmembers cared, they surely did. Some of them felt apprehensive, others passively accepting. All of them, Ario thought, felt uncertain about the next step to take.

     “You’re wasting your breath talking to them,” Triku said. He gripped Ario’s shoulder and turned him away from the Kokai, and their emotions. Now, only Triku’s remained in Ario’s heart; a deep swirl of anxiety and urgency. “And you’re wasting what little time we have left. You and I, we need to leave.”

     Suddenly Ario was tugged away, forced to follow Triku’s rapid step which, soon, led them both out of the crewmember quarters. The moment Triku stepped out of sight of the other Kokai, his step became unsteady against the ship’s sways, his grip on Ario’s arm weakened. Only the hardness in his heart remained – until Triku tripped over a rolling jar, which he sent flying as he fell, back first, against the floor. A litany of curses burst in Triku’s heart, followed by loud groans as he slowly – with great difficulty – got back to his feet. Almost at once, he set his hand at his bloodied side and wheezed out in pain.

     Despite himself, or perhaps because he could so well perceive Triku’s agony through his distress and the growing hopelessness in his heart, Ario scrutinized the Kokai man.  He noticed a certain paleness to the man’s skin. The glisten of sweat that wasn’t caused by effort, but by pain. Was Triku sick? Or… worse?

     To Ario’s own surprise, he felt no joy at all at the prospect of Triku dropping dead within the next breath. He only felt a strange sense of emptiness.

     “Are you okay?” Ario asked without an ounce of interest. Triku responded with a dismissive snort. He couldn’t conceal the muted hint of desperation and distress in his heart, however.

     “This?” Triku said, glancing down at his waist. “This is nothing. I’ve experienced far worse, you can trust me on that.”

     An unconvincing lie cut short by a sudden bout of coughs. Triku gripped his side tighter. Ario thought that the desperation in his heart strengthened, but, somehow, he wasn’t quite certain. “I’ll be fine,” Triku said. “No chance am I dying on this ship. And certainly not like this.”

     Ario tilted his head and examined Triku from head to toe. For the first time in what felt like never, he couldn’t perceive any feeling at all. He only saw the certainty in Triku’s absent gaze. Sweat roll down his brow. While he stared and tried to understand Triku’s silent heart, Ario suddenly felt his stomach cramp up, so painfully that he choked and doubled over. He became horribly aware of the scratching dryness in his throat, of the pungent smell of salt in the air. All at once, he noticed how sore and heavy his limbs felt, how rough and dirty his face was when he ran his hand along his skin. How thick and slippery his hair. Ario’s sight blurred; his breath hastened. Deep in his chest, his heart skipped a beat to the memory of Soba’s last smile.

     As though in response, lurking darkness gathered at the edge of his mind, prickling his skin and his senses. Ario could not make out its voice nor its meaning, but the darkness was there. It was still there. It had never left, and never would leave until it was snuffed out of existence.

     The Orebashi.

     The monstrous fiend that had snapped his only friend in half without any hesitation.

     Hatred flared immediately in his heart. Ario gritted his teeth – against the prickling, against his sore body aching. Then, hands raking through his hair, he let out a loud cry.

     All he could hear was the deafening beat of his heart; pounding, pounding to the ghastly sound of Soba’s innards splattering everywhere.

     Soba was dead. Every reason to live, lost. Yet here he still was.

     Here he still was, his eyes twitching to the sound of Triku’s voice. The man was speaking now, words clearly meant to be distracting. Ario thought he felt a hint of distress. “Seems we’ve both been through a lot, haven’t we?” Triku said. “But that will all be for nothing if we can’t stop Ursuri. Or commandeer this ship back to safety. Whichever happens first.”

     What had happened first, Ario couldn’t help but think about, was his meeting Soba. Perceiving his grief and his fear. Getting to know the debauched Alweira, for better and worse. They had indeed been through a lot together – through far more than Ario was willing to dwell on. Right this instant, only one heart-breaking fact mattered to him.

     “You let Soba die,” Ario spat. Tears welled at his eyes. “That isn’t nothing. It won’t ever be nothing.”

     Triku clicked his tongue in response, and in an instant everything changed. Ario’s heart flooded with Triku’s concern and resentment. It wasn’t concern for him, nor for Soba. Triku was only concerned about himself. “This is hardly the time or the place—”

     “You said that your duty was to keep all of us safe! Without exception! And yet he died! Soba died! Did you even see how he died!?”

     Triku held his gaze for a while. Ario could not define the swell of emotions, both in his heart and in Triku’s. At length, the Kokai’s gaze dropped. “No,” he said. “I heard about it. I didn’t see.”

     “And I can’t get that image out of my head! I’m thinking about it all of the time! How that—that thing—snapped its teeth on Soba and cut him in half! Can you even imagine what that’s like, dying like that!?”

     For a while, Triku said nothing, but Ario could hear his heart loud and clear now. There was remorse, and there was detachment. As though he took no responsibility for Soba’s death. None at all. Ario straightened, his eyes wide in shock.

     Then, he screamed. “How would you feel if that had been your sis—”

     He only realized Triku had gripped him up by the throat when he felt the man’s fingers press so hard on his throat that he could barely breathe. Triku’s eyes – his heart – burned with cold fury.

     “I have warned you,” Triku said, his voice a menacing whisper. “Sorry as I am for your loss, I will not allow you to jeopardize all that I have built. Mention her again, and that will be the last word you never get to speak.”

     Ario was unceremoniously thrown down to the floor, yelping. For a while, he could do nothing but breathe and knead his pulsing throat; breathe and steady his racing heartbeat. He could but lay there and listen to the cracks of the hull in between two coughs; to the creaks of Triku’s boots as he walked away, soon slamming a door behind himself.

     For a while, Ario was alone with himself, with his hatred and his grief. With regret and with hopeless wishes. Tears prickled behind closed eyes, brought to life by the memory of Soba.

     And then, he started perceiving a warmth. Kindness, closing in on him; footsteps, approaching him. The closer this perception came, the clearer he felt that kindness – and the resentment lining its warmth. Ario slowly shifted about once the person stood close to him. He swallowed hard, flabbergasted.

     The Yosen staring down at him had the same ruffled short black hair as he did, the same round face, the same thin lips. Only his blue eyes were smaller, and his nose flatter. Ario would have bet anything that this person had about the same height as he did. Even his hand, which the Yosen held outstretched for Ario to take, looked to be about the same size as his.

     When the Yosen talked, that horrific little bubble burst. The Yosen’s voice was firm but soft, and its pitch definitely classified him not as a him, but as a her. “Are you alright?” the Yosen – definitely a girl – said. “That argument sounded pretty heated.”

     This is disturbing, Ario thought. He looked at her hand, then back up at her face, and down at his own hand. Was this how other races felt? That Yosen all looked alike?

     These thoughts flinched out of his mind when the girl crouched next to him, her heart swirling now with despicable pity. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said – a very bad start to wherever this conversation was supposed to lead, “but I remember you. You’re pretty loud.”

     I am not! he would’ve shouted if his lungs weren’t so dry that he struggled to breathe without coughing. Instead, Ario propped himself up on his hands, and glared up at the girl. A moment passed, during which he tried to decipher her feelings – to understand where that concern and unwarranted attachment he perceived were coming from.

     … Wait, what had she just said? “Y-You… remember me?” Ario stuttered. “What do you mean?”

     To his surprise (and mild frustration), the girl sat herself down next to him. Her concern and attachment flourished in her heart, warmed him with their unfurling kindness. She said, “I heard your conversation earlier. I—I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, it’s just that you were all standing right outside of my cabin. I heard what you said. That no loss is nothing special.” Upon stating those words, the girl’s heart shattered. All that remained of her concern was a bottomless sense of loss. Which, somehow, she managed to talk through. “I can’t say I agreed with everything you said. But, I did agree with that.”

     She genuinely did agree with him, if not entirely, as she had just admitted to. Across her bottomless loss stretched an entire sea of determination; not unlike Rika’s, yet entirely different from her. Ario did not know what to say. He could but stare at her, dumbfounded, as she offered her hand again. “Let me help?” she said, with a smile Ario couldn’t quite decipher. He felt no threat emanating from her, nor any genuine kindness towards him specifically. Even the feeling of bottomless loss had disappeared, leaving nothing but quiet determination in its wake.

     “Thank you,” Ario reluctantly said. He took her hand and, with more of her help than his ego had hoped he’d need, finally got back to his feet.

     “Seiko,” the girl responded, though he had not asked, nor cared to know her name. Still, he gave his name in return, all the while staring at her, trying to determine where his own anxiety was coming from. Was it because she was a girl? Or because she somehow looked so much like him? Or perhaps, he thought as his stomach violently growled, his anxiety was due to her feeling so calm despite the situation? The very very likely deadly situation they were all facing?

     That was it, he realized: Seiko didn’t feel real.

     She felt like even less of a real person when she gave him an awkward smile and asked, “That wasn’t thunder, was it?”

     Dumbfounded, Ario merely stared. He leaned in a little closer, and waved his hand in front of her face, slowly, cautiously – awaiting some kind of reaction beyond that obnoxious awkwardness. Something about her simply felt off.

     “You know,” Seiko said, leaning left and right to look at him from around his hand, “the crew were serving meals earlier—”

     Ario immediately froze. “Where!?”

     Seiko pointed down the hallway, towards a gathering of people – of passengers and, he thought he saw, a couple of dark-skinned, red-haired pointy-eared people standing by a trolley. Ario immediately zoomed towards them; pushed through the passengers until he was right next to the Kokai crewmembers, who stared at him with terror. Ario didn’t care what anyone thought of him at this point. All he cared about was food and water; sustenance he finally received – with second servings – and devoured within seconds, never stopping to breathe, never taking the time to think.

     Until he felt sick. Ario gasped and heaved, his stomach contracting and, it felt like, attempting to squeeze everything he’d eaten back up. He pressed his hand to his lips, held them tightly shut to repress imminent vomit. Heaves tugging at his chest, Ario slithered his way between the passengers – between feelings of distress, of resentment, of fear and of anger and certainly a few insults thrown his way (even with words), until he found a wall he could rest against. He promptly slid down the paneling and dropped onto his rear, staring absently forward, desperate to ignore the cramps in his gut as he focused his attention on the grain of the wood.

     His attention digressed nonetheless, to the last proper meal he’d shared with Soba, who had kept glancing at him, his cheeks flushed. How he had despised the Alweira for admitting his unnatural attraction to him – “I like a wounded man,” Soba had said as well, a ludicrous declaration. Yet, knowing Soba would never again make one of his stupid jokes, Ario could barely hold back the sob in his chest. If it was merely a sob. It tasted a little too acidic.

     Ario swallowed back a grating heave. At the next breath, a hollow feeling came over him. The world itself had crumbled from beneath his feet, and he was about to fall forever.

     This terrifying sensation faded with the creak of footsteps, of a person sitting next to him. No longer did he feel hollow. Despite paying the intruder no heed, he could perceive their foreboding determination, which rolled over him like an incoming storm.

     “Are you alright?” the girl from earlier asked. What was her name again? What did it matter?

     “Mm,” Ario replied.

     “You must’ve been starving,” she continued. “Were you not offered any meals before now?”

     Ario’s eyes narrowed to the twinge of her emotions. Where one moment ago he had perceived her kindness as this floating cloud in her heart, now it had hardened into… What was it? Purpose? What a strange feeling. It made Ario slowly turn towards her, so he may examine her expression. She looked friendly. Nothing but friendly. Ario’s brow furrowed.

     “Did I say something strange?” the girl asked without flinching. “You’re looking at me like no one’s ever taken an interest in you.”

     Ohh, so much was wrong with that sentence – so many memories of suspicion immediately came to his mind, so many fears. Yet, now, his first instinct wasn’t to run away.

     “What was your name again?” Ario asked. A question that successfully distracted her from whatever reason she had to speak with him.

     “Me? Seiko.” She smiled, her amusement rife with anxiety. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re scaring me. Just a little.”

     It was the truth, Ario perceived. Though she may be more than a little afraid. He glanced over at the other passengers, and perceived their own fears and uncertainties. Ario sighed.

     “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s been… a very long few days.” Had it even been a few days? Had it been weeks? Or hours? He no longer knew. Though, counting all the meals he could remember, and the one that was finally settling down in his stomach, it had certainly been a few days since he had left Rao behind. Only a few days, which felt like several lifetimes full of cruel experiences.

     “I understand that,” Seiko said. She glanced back towards the passengers, herself. “I don’t think these trips are usually so eventful.”

     A darkness came over her, that put Ario ill at ease. He barely dared glance at her, while her attention was focused solely on the wall opposite them. “We found a corpse there, just earlier. No one knows what happened. Only that it happened.”

     Ario swallowed. He looked towards the wall, and remembered – remembered how Triku had so casually thrown his fellow Kokai over his shoulder and broken his neck. ‘Sometimes, sacrifices must be made,’ Triku had said. Ario tensed, his fingers coiling tight.

     “I suppose something like that was to be expected,” Seiko said, her tone now as hard as her heart, “with at least one wesai on board.”

     Ario stiffened at once. Hatred wafted from her like the stench of vermin found dead after months – after years. After years and years of lying forgotten until, one day, their carcasses were found. Bones, rotten meat, maggots; death festering on death.

     Ario turned away from her, with a heave barely but gratefully repressed. The swamp of her hate lapped at his mind – at his feet and his legs, inexorably pulling him under.

     “No one understands how it made it aboard,” Seiko continued. “I don’t want to think that one of these korokai allowed it to join us, but then, they must have known. Someone must have known.”

     Her gaze turned towards him. The world burned away from Ario’s senses, leaving him surrounded by flames – by hatred and suffering and, he thought he heard, the screams of the dying. He could barely breathe.

     “Someone allowed that filth onto the ship,” Seiko stated – shoving his head beneath the murky swamp of her hate, “and I hope that person suffers the same fate as the wesai. They brought death onto the ship. And now, death is upset.”

     At the end of her monologue, Seiko’s heart released him. Ario burst out into loud breaths, panting, catching his breath after drowning for what felt like hours. Seiko’s heart rumbled still, but now, it no longer held him prisoner while she kept speaking.

     “No one can hear it,” she said, unperturbed. Her gaze slowly lifted towards the ceiling – towards something beyond the ceiling, something she truly believed was there. Or so it felt as she kept speaking, “I have tried to explain to these simpletons, but no one believes me. It isn’t a storm we are facing, but an oroi’s wrath. It despises us for bringing a wesai into its territory. Well, for bringing at least one wesai into its territory.”

     Ario’s brow furrowed in between steadying breaths. That word, wesai. She spat it with such ferocious contempt. He had never heard the term in his life, and yet, he thought it sounded familiar – felt familiar. Disturbingly familiar. He wanted to ask what it was she believed had been brought aboard, but as her words further sank into his head, as he realized that another word elicited a bizarre form of awe in her heart, Ario’s attention diverted.

     He asked, “What do you mean, an oroi’s wrath?”

     “You’ve seen it from up close,” Seiko replied. She looked at him, her eyes glistening – her heart swelling with determination and darkness, lapping at his feet, once again threatening to pull him under. Instinctively, Ario pulled his feet close to himself and wrapped his arms around his knees. Seiko simply continued, “You called it the Orebashi. The big black snake that devoured the wesai – your friend, wasn’t it?”

     Finally, as the girl’s vicious disdain and revulsion contained within those words accused him, Ario understood. Scrutinizing her, the casual but distinct look in her eyes, the callous bitterness screaming in her heart, Ario understood what about this girl had truly put him ill at ease. She had been suspicious of him all right, but not of his Yorei lineage.

     She was accusing him of betrayal. Her heart accused him of the Orebashi’s presence; caused itself by, if he understood her correctly, the wesai‘s presence. The Alweira’s presence. Ario swallowed back the rage clogging his throat.

     “You’re talking about Soba, aren’t you?” he barely managed to say. At once, his heart constricted, his veins boiled, and he forced himself back onto his feet so he could stare down this disgusting piece of Yosen trash. “And you think I somehow let him aboard the ship? Me? Have you even looked at me!? Do I look like the kind of person with that much influence or money!?”

     She was about to retort, but Ario cut across her immediately, his voice pitching higher. “By the way, the Alweira had a name. Has a name. It’s Soba. Do you hear me? His name is Soba! He didn’t ask to be killed by that thing, and yet he was! He just wanted a chance at a better life! And now he’s dead! Murdered by that horrible thing! Whatever you may think of Alweira – and yes, I do know our history! – Soba didn’t deserve that! He didn’t deserve to die, not like that!”

     Ario let out a yell – let out all of his frustration and grief at the girl, at the walls, at the oppressive smell of sweat and rotten wood that twisted tight his stomach. Hands raking through his hair, Ario yelled out again and started pacing about the hallway, at a distance safe enough from everyone’s fears and distress. He still perceived Seiko’s smothering hatred and contempt; felt them eventually steady and harden, never quite fading.

     “Rika was right,” she said, which brought Ario to a sudden stop. He stared at her, wide-eyed, and utterly thunderstruck to hear that name coming out of her mouth, spoken of like a beloved friend. Seiko added, “You truly don’t understand.”

     “Don’t talk about Rika like you know her!” he spat. “She wouldn’t have wanted this either—”

     “And what do you know!?” Seiko suddenly yelled. She sprang to her feet and came to stand before him, her face – and her heart – twisted by scorching grief. “I know Rika better than you do! And I understand what she means when she says that the Orebashi is of the sea! We are the trespassers! We brought something foul into its territory! And now we will all pay the price of one person’s mistake!”

     Of your mistake, she was saying.

     ‘To this day,’ Soba stated in his mind, ‘we still pay the price of our ancestors’ fervour.’

     Even Yosen do, Ario suddenly realized. Seiko’s rage reminded him of what else Soba had said that day, during their very first encounter: how often he had smelled the fear of the persecuted, similar to that of the people in his hometown. Yosen, Yorei, Alweira without distinction, innocent people who had been massacred by, as he had called them, ‘the same sort of Yosen you fear’. People like Seiko. People incapable of looking away from the past, from tradition, from all that they know, and who perpetuate the bloody history of their nation while calling it justice.

     “Soba wasn’t a mistake,” Ario said without thinking. What he had meant, he wasn’t sure of, but he was certain that he was right. “He only wanted to get away from Rao – from people like you.”

     Seiko’s emotions collapsed at once, and her body nearly did the same. Breathless, she said, “You did—It was you. How—Why would a Yosen—”

     She could not finish her sentence. Ario did not need to perceive her dismay, her disbelief, to understand what she had meant to say: how, when history taught them that Alweira would massacre Yosen without hesitation, could a Yosen stand up for them? Why would he choose genocidal beasts over his own kind?

     Why indeed would he choose a debauched, compassionate, loyal Alweira over the people whom he had always had to protect himself from? Why indeed would he not choose the Yosen, who had performed gruesome experiments on the Yorei – on fellow Yosen like himself!?

     Ario opened his mouth to speak, but Seiko cut across him. “This is what happens when a wesai is allowed to roam free,” she spat, waving her hand towards the wall – towards the spot where, moments ago it felt like, a Kokai’s corpse had rested. Killed, she clearly did not know – or didn’t care about, he’d rather expect – by a fellow Kokai. “People die! People suffer and die!”

     “Now wait a minute,” Ario snapped. “Soba didn’t kill him—”

     “But its presence on board still led to that man’s death! Perhaps there are more them, did you even think of that!? Perhaps one of them came out of its hiding place and killed that man! These beasts are like vermin! They huddle together to better destroy us, but one of them is enough! One of them! Just a single one of them will lead to all of our deaths!”

     She suddenly crumpled on herself, hands pressed tight against her ears. Somewhere beyond the hull, beyond Seiko’s whimpers, Ario heard the rumbling roar of thunder.

     “The oroi is angry,” Seiko whined out. She was rocking herself now, utterly broken, all of her anger and hurt lying fragmented in her heart atop a lake of fear. “I can hear it. Everything we do now comes too late. It’s going to kill us, because we brought these wesai into its domain…”

     Ario’s lip curled up. “Stop calling my friend a wesai,” he spat. “Whatever you think you’re hearing, it isn’t real. You’re just having an anxiety attack. It’s paranoia.”

     Thunder rolled again beyond the hull, closer than before. He thought he felt the caustic touch of lurking darkness reach out its tendrils to him, and immediately shook the unease out of his head.

     “It’s only paranoia,” he stated, his voice loud, and more unsteady than he’d willed it. Ario swallowed, then added, “Oroi are a myth. You’re only hearing thunder, the paranoia is doing the rest. Take a deep breath and try to relax.” Advice that Ario took himself, even if he wished he did not need it. Something about the girl’s behaviour simply felt… off.

     A sentiment that strengthened in his heart when she let out a mad laugh, and slowly straightened herself, her rear onto the ball of her feet, until she could stare up at the ceiling again. “You simply don’t understand,” she said. Her smile grew bittersweet, as did the touch of her frantic heart. “People like you, they simply can’t understand. You see the world through your lenses and your vials and your annotations, but you don’t really see it. I know what I hear is real. I have always heard the spirits, ever since I was a child. The one that threatens us is an oroi. I hear its fury. It’s raging all around us.”

     Fear and awe filled her heart while she stared up at the ceiling, that strange smile still on her face. Ario had the unsettling feeling that she did in fact see the storm looming far overhead. He almost looked up himself, but dreaded what he might see after all. His mind, surely influenced by her madness, begun to imagine every shadowed corner in the hallway pulsing with living darkness.

     “You’re hallucinating,” he blurted out. Then, realizing that Seiko was no longer the only person growing paranoid, he glanced towards the passengers and steadied himself. “It’s just a storm. Likely a bad storm, but still: it’s only a storm.”

     The girl’s expression, her emotions, sank at once. She burst out into loud sobs, lowered her head, and ran her hands through her hair, screaming.

     “Why will no one believe me!?” she said. “I know what I hear is real! It has always been real!” She dropped her hands abruptly and turned an accusing glare towards Ario – towards every other passenger, as she rose back to her feet. “All of you yagaku, you believe only in what you can see and measure! You do not believe in Yorei, but I am living proof that we are real! We are not a legend! I hear this oroi as clearly as you hear your own thoughts!”

     Ario’s breath had rattled at the mention of Yorei – stated so openly, so brazenly, so obviously ignorant of the true meaning of that word among what she called ‘slaves of science’. She had called him a slave of science, too! As though she had no idea that he, too, was Yorei! A real Yorei! Not some deceitful girl pretending to hear things—

     —like caustic darkness, reaching out, slicing open his veins as it wailed—

     “You’re not a Yorei!” Ario yelled out. “A Yorei would never reveal themselves to be a Yorei! Especially around yagaku, as you dare call me! Do you even know the history of Yorei – beyond the cult of the Empresses!?” he added the moment she’d raised her hand to speak. “Yorei were dissected! They were sliced open, cut up, experimented on, for years and years! There’s no commodity more valuable than a living, breathing Yorei! And you claim to be one!? Liar! You’re a liar!” You’re not like me, you can’t be!

     He hadn’t known what to expect – didn’t know what to think or to feel, what with his sight growing hazy, his heartbeat pounding in his head and every extremity of his body numb and tingling. There was a ringing in his ears, through which he heard whispers, through which he heard people calling him Yorei and clamouring for his capture. A weight dropped in the pit of his stomach, straight down to his knees, and nearly toppled him.

     Meanwhile, Seiko smiled. A wry, pained smile, beneath which slithered noxious agony. “What would you know about it, yogaku?” she said, and Ario bristled at once. Not only dared she call him a slave to science, but now she spat on him for also being a Yosen!? He clenched his fists, kept himself from reacting as she continued, “My people relied on my ability to hear the spirits. I knew when storms would rise, when floods would surge. Many of my people survived thanks to this gift from Aorei Herself. And you would’ve had me stay quiet? Do you even understand what you’re implying? Had I said nothing, then many of my people would have been lost sooner than they were. And for what? What did I stand to gain?”

     Survival, Ario didn’t want to say. Clearly, she had never concealed her identity, and yet she was there. Alive. Unharmed. She had survived as a Yorei, not as a Yosen. She had been granted the privilege of going through life as herself, without worry, without suffering suspicion or pain or, worse: a gruesome death that would take years.

     But his resentment began to falter as Seiko’s heart filled with regret, with remorse, with anger and distress and hate and emotions that never quite settled, never quite burned into her veins nor faded from her heart. Soon, she dropped to her knees, sorrow drowning her, tears suffocating her.

     “The spirits had warned me,” she said through hiccups and sobs, sinking lower unto the ball of her heels. “The wesai displeased them, yet my people allowed him to stay. I should have insisted. I should’ve—”

     ‘We both know it isn’t you I would’ve been concerned about,’ he suddenly heard in his mind. Triku’s words, horrible words, that had driven Ario into hating the man for allowing Soba to die. Why Ario thought of these words, why right now he remembered Soba’s monstrous transformation, he wasn’t quite certain. He preferred not to dwell on these thoughts, for intuition told him that he would not like the conclusions he would draw from them.

     Instead he remembered that time long ago, when his peers had tampered with his teacher’s liquor bottle, which he always left in his desk unattended. Never expecting the worst from his pupils. Even when his teacher had spat up blood, Ario had said nothing. He had remained silent, even when he had learned that his teacher had nearly died and would never quite recover.

     But then, Ario reminded himself, some secrets were not worth dying over. Had his teacher died, well: he would have died. It would already have been too late. What difference would it have made to accuse his classmates?

     What difference would it have made if he had told his teacher that they intended to harm him, long before they had even decided how to do so? Of course he had known. Now and again, he had felt their resentment, and one classmate’s utter hate for a man strict but fair. What difference would it have made if Ario had spoken to those classmates? If he had tried to convince them to leave their teacher alone?

     Ario swallowed hard. He knew exactly how such a rush of generosity would have ended for him.

     And yet… none of the predominantly Yosen passengers seemed to care about Seiko’s admissions, or about her suffering. A couple of them had snorted. One of them had rolled her eyes, he was certain of it. As though…

     As though it meant nothing to them that she might be Yorei. That she might possess abilities. That she might even be a descendent of the Empresses of old.

     At worst, he started to think – to feel, for their hearts revealed their truth to him – these people thought Seiko was exaggerating. Lying. A madwoman to be dismissed, as Ario shamefully had dismissed her up to now.

     Their dismissal did not stop Seiko from trying again to persuade the passengers. She begged them to believe that she did hear this imaginary oroi. That it was upset. That it was, Ario came to understand, somehow more important than every other person aboard. More important than their own survival. More important than the people who had died.

     “You have to understand,” Seiko pleaded with them, “The oroi is part of the sea – it is the sea. It demands we surrender any remaining wesai! If we do, perhaps it will spare us—”

     “Shut up!”

     Ario had yelled, and only realized after the fact that the yell had come from him. When all eyes turned towards him, when every passenger’s shock and apathy and grief submerged him, Ario stumbled, hesitated. He clenched his fists to steady himself, closed his eyes, and thought of Rika. Of Rika’s soothing touch, of her genuine kindness. Of her bottomless sorrow when he had turned away from her. What would a girl like Seiko know of the sea? What would it know of its demands?

     “You’re nothing but a nasai liar!” he spat out. “You have no abilities! Don’t you even dare compare yourself to Rika, you disgusting piece of Yosen trash! Stop pretending you’re a Yorei when you’re not!”

     Seiko turned her cold fury towards him. “And how would you know, huh? Yogaku!?”

     In that instant,…

1. Ario lost himself to the argument. “Because I am Yorei!” he yelled back at her.
2. Ario bit hard on his tongue right before stating the truth. “Because Yorei are a myth!” he yelled back at her. “They do not exist, and never have existed!”
3. A loud crack rended the air. The entire ship shook and swayed, the hallway’s lights flickered in and out of existence. Time was running out, faster than anyone had anticipated.

(Voting ended September 1st 2024)

Stay tuned for the next installment!

 

|  PART 01  |  PART 02  |  PART 03  |  PART 04  |  PART 05 |  PART 06  ||

 

‘Ario’s story’ and its long title and tale, is (c) 2021-2024 to Isabelle ‘Nocturnaliss’ Apel. You may share my work if you credit me and link back to this website, but you may not claim it as your own or otherwise appropriate the creation of Aeyuu or any of its characters. You may, however, write fanfiction, as long as you also share it with me so I can read it.