Chapter 109

BLANKMIND WORDS 5 When I woke up, I was lying down inside a dimly lit room. The cicadas that had driven me mad over the last few days were only barely audible. The space was filled with a cold, moldy sort of air, nothing like what you would normally feel in midsummer. It was interspersed with something…weird. Like nothing I’d ever smelled before. Candlelight seemed to flicker off the rough-hewn stone walls around me. Wherever it was, it wasn’t positioned well enough to illuminate the room, instead casting an endless multitude of constantly shifting shadows. I looked around, eyes still not used to the dimness, until I had a vague idea of the room’s outlines. Across from me in this stone room was a lone metallic door with a rectangular slit high enough for a grown adult to see through. Vertical iron bars lined it. On the right side, against the wall, there was a wooden bookshelf that rose to the ceiling; it was lined with several books and small flasks. Next to it was a Western-style suit of medieval armor with its right arm missing. It stood there motionless, carrying a lance in its remaining arm. On the left-hand wall, there nothing to match the bookshelf—just a lone bag, similar to a burlap sack, with black stains all over it. The candle was located next to the door, which was why its light had no hope of reaching me. That was the main reason I failed to notice my sister’s presence next to me until I picked up on her frail breathing. “Ahh…!” She was standing against the stone wall behind me…or, really, that was her only choice. Both of her hands had shackles, each a couple of inches long, connected to the ceiling with chains. It looked like something out of a fantasy dungeon or POW camp. This bizarre atmosphere threw me for a moment. Was this real? I wasn’t having a dream, was I? But the damp air, the smell that accompanied it, and my sister’s raspy breathing made it all too clear that that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t a dream. I stood up and ran toward Rin. “I—I can’t…What happened to us…?!” My sister wasn’t conscious enough to respond. She was hanging down from the shackles, her weight placed entirely upon them. Even if I wanted to remove them, they were chained to the ceiling—far too high to reach. I took another look around. Nothing I could use as a stepstool. All I could really do was prop Rin up a little so her entire weight wasn’t on her wrists. So I did. I wrapped my arms around her waist, as if hugging her. Ahh, aghhh, what is this?! I thought I went out shopping with Rin that day. We went down to the city stores, ate ice cream, maybe purchased some matching handkerchiefs, ate dinner in Rin’s room, and…Shoot. I couldn’t remember the rest. So how did this happen? Someone must have kidnapped us and then locked us up in here. But who, and what for? And where was “here,” anyway? This stone room, with chains and shackles and an iron door… “N-no way…” A guess that popped into my mind made my body shake. I remember what my sister told me before: “Some burglars tried to sneak in here, and he trapped them inside a basement room, right in this manor.” I thought she had made up the whole thing, including the entire presence of a basement—but if she hadn’t…? This is crazy. I don’t get any of this. And even if that is the case, why us? My arms, still supporting Rin, began to quiver. “Wh-why…Why this…?” There was no point in crying about it, but the tears welled up anyway. My daily life with Rin, all the inane conversations we had, felt so far out of reach. What was going to happen now? We were already locked in a space beyond all reality. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. Just when I thought I was going to collapse on the floor, a familiar delicate voice reached my ears. “…Tsu-Tsubomi? You aren’t hurt?” The voice from my awakened sister was slow, listless, but still clear. I shook my head in response, forgetting how dark it was. It must have been a strong enough reaction to convince her I was fine. “Good,” she replied with a weak smile. We were still in grave danger, but just seeing Rin smile helped reduce the terror that reigned inside me. I tried to tell her what I experienced. “I, um, when I woke up, I was here, and…and I don’t remember…” “No. Me neither. I don’t remember anything after dinner. Maybe someone drugged us…I don’t know what we’re gonna do about this.” She jangled her chains at me. They were nothing she could remove by herself. I was the only one capable of doing anything about this situation. But what? “Could you go check out the door? Maybe they forgot to lock it after all this. I doubt it, but…” I examined the old metal door. There wasn’t so much as a knob on it. Like she surmised, it was locked from the other side. “I—I can’t open it.” “Oh. It’d be nice if there was some other entrance…but what now?” Rin looked around the room. Even during a disaster like this—this crazy room, those shackles—she showed zero sign of panic. She had to be scared out of her wits, deep inside. I knew she had to be. She must be hiding it to keep me from getting anxious, I thought as her eyes went from the door to the bookshelf, then the suit of armor. That sight made her eyes open wide. “Wh-what’s that doing here?” I turned toward Rin, surprised at this sudden outburst. “You…know it?” I asked. My sister replied with a rueful grimace—she did, and she didn’t want to say it. With a sigh and a deep breath, she began to speak. “You see how there’s no right arm on it? Back when I was a kid, I lost it while I was playing with it. That suit of armor wasn’t anywhere near here back then.” “So this, this really is…” Rin nodded. “I think it’s the basement under the manor I told you about. And if I had to guess who put us in here…” She was interrupted by a sudden dry sound from the other side of the door. It sounded like footsteps, one after the other, growing in sound as they approached. I ran to my sister again, flustered at the presence of this new visitor. If someone was coming, it’d be for one of two reasons. To help us, or… The footsteps stopped. The candle’s meager light bounced off the pair of cold eyes peering through the slit in the door. “Ahh…!” It took just a single glance. Our father was there. But nothing he projected indicated he was flying in to rescue us. Rin looked on grimly, glaring at the slit. “I figured it’d be you, since you had the key, if anyone. What…are you doing with us? Whether we’re family or not, this isn’t any kind of joke I’m willing to tolerate.” “…Rin, have I ever joked with you before?” I could feel my hair stand on end. It was the indifferent, emotionless delivery he had always used. My father didn’t even try to deny it. He was the one who spirited us away in here. My sister, as much as she could, stood her ground, her voice sharpening itself. “That doesn’t matter. Please, take us out of here. If you can do that right now, we won’t tell anyone about it, so—” There was a loud ka-chank from the door before she could finish. That must have unlocked the door, because then, with a shrill creak, it opened. Our father stood there with the same inscrutable expression, the same white shirt and suit pants he always wore. Not a thing different about either. That’s what made the differences seem all the starker. In one hand, he held a gigantic cooking knife. The blade, just barely illuminated by the candle, was caked with something dark, a not-yet-congealed liquid dripping from the tip. There were spots running from the cuffs of his white shirt up to the front, like something was spattered on it. I didn’t even need to think about it. It was blood. “Ah—aaahhh!” It was so beyond reality that I screamed and clung to my sister. She tensed up her body in response—it was finally enough to unnerve her. This elicited no reaction from our father as he stepped inside. …He’s gonna kill us. It was like no fear I had experienced before. My body refused to cooperate. It felt like it was going to blow itself apart, shivering violently like it was being lowered into a pot of boiling water. My sister could do nothing to stop him. So she shouted at him instead. “Wh-what do you think you’re doing?! …What’s wrong with you?!” Our father stopped. “What’s wrong with me? Hmm. The servants upstairs said the same thing, come to think of it.” “What…?! So…so that blood…” “Oh, you know—they all got into a little tizzy…Nothing for you to worry about, though.” I could feel my sister stirring in my arms. That much blood on him…He must’ve killed at least one person already. “I’m a little short on time,” he continued in his cold monotone. “If you have anything else you want to ask, I’d like you to be quick with it, please.” I found myself unable to process this situation anymore. I’m sure Rin was the same way. Throwing us into this dungeon and killing people…No matter what the reason, it was the work of a madman. And yet my father wasn’t raving or screaming at us. He was betraying no emotion whatsoever. No sense of normalcy or common sense could’ve prepared us for this. Instead, I just stayed there, shaking in terror. But my sister refused to budge. I guessed she was trying to buy us time. Conversation was the only weapon either of us had left. “Wh-what are you going to do with Mother? She already has enough mental issues to deal with…” “…Oh, her? I’m not going to do anything. She’s right there, isn’t she?” Our father’s eyes swiveled down to the floor. Down to the burlap sack I’d noticed earlier. “She’s been in there…oh, right since the day you arrived, Tsubomi. I thought I mentioned that.” “Ahh…!” My sister finally let a scream escape her lips. Her faint shivering resonated across my arms, and from there to my body. Then, she emitted a sound that no words could describe, sending it echoing across the room. …I wanted to shut off my ears to it all. She’s been in here since the day I showed up…? Now it was clear what gave this room its unique smell. I immediately grew nauseated. A servant told me “the lady of the house’s health has turned for the worse,” but never anything like this. Our father must’ve lied about that to keep them from noticing the murder. That was exactly the type of person he was. Nobody would’ve dared question it. Then he could use his wife’s ailing condition as a shield, creating a routine where he was the only one taking care of her. For months on end… And here we thought our father had lost his sanity only today. …This man isn’t human. He’s a monster in human skin. I grabbed tightly at my sister’s clothes. Unless something happened, we were absolutely going to be next. We had to get out of there. But Rin was shackled to the ceiling, and we probably needed a key for that. A key that, no doubt, our father had. Rin began to openly weep. I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling—her mother dead, her father turning a blade on her. “…Is that all you have to ask?” he impatiently prodded. My sister looked down at the floor, no longer reacting to him, none of the refined elegance left in her eyes as the tears flowed from them. Our father, apparently taking that as a yes, walked up to us. I could tell he was readying his grip on the knife in his hand. What should I do? What could I do? I could never overpower him. So what, then…? “…What, Tsubomi?” I stood up to my father. My body took action before I could think of anything. It wasn’t that I was no longer terrified of him. I just couldn’t forgive the man who, in this indescribably desperate situation, made my sister break down before my very eyes. I stood as tall as I could, breathing in the acrid air. “…You said you’d answer anything we asked you?” “Yeah…” He looked at me. “Do you have something?” …Don’t fall back. Speak to him, Tsubomi. “Well, why are you doing this? Killing your wife, then the servants…Tell me why.” My father exhibited no reaction to my piercing stare. Which was good. If the question had angered him, that would be it right there. But I couldn’t fold now. I had to buy some time, at least. And somehow, in some way, get out of this pit…! Several seconds passed. My father sighed. “…All right. I said I’d answer, so I’ll tell you. About your mother.” “…What?” I was thrown by the unexpected change of subject. I was asking him what drove him to commit this horrendous act, not wax nostalgic about the past. Or did my mother have something to do with this? My father narrowed his eyes. “I…I wanted to live free. I had no interest whatsoever in the future my father had prepared. But I still went to the school he picked for me, took up the post he made, married this girl I had never met before at his bidding…It was like a living hell. It was my life, and I wasn’t allowed to decide on a single part of it for myself. Then we had Rin, and then my father died…and I met your mother right around then.” His eyes right then, I thought, were filled with a passion I had never seen from him before. “I had some clients entertaining me at this cheapo dinner theater, and she was singing there. It was this dinky little stage; maybe a handful of people in the audience, but she was acting like it was so much fun…I thought it was so stupid. This mature woman, screwing around in this dingy corner of the world. What was she thinking? …But.” The words stopped. My father sighed again, staring at a point far away. “I thought she was beautiful. Wild, innocent, totally uninhibited…That completely unencumbered soul she had. For the first time in my life, I felt true love.” I gasped. No. This wasn’t what I asked. Not this… “It was like a dream after that. I set up my job so I had more chances to come back. She was a good listener—she didn’t just sit there and praise everything I did; she taught me everything I lacked in my own life. When she had some time off, she even tried teaching me how to play music. Nothing very good, but still—I completely fell for her. I practiced hard, too. An older guy like me, trying to take up an instrument…I guess you heard me, didn’t you? Pretty good, huh?” “That was you…playing the violin?” Now it all made sense. No wonder Rin had no idea. Our father never told us about this relationship. He only ever played in front of my mom. “But that didn’t last too long. Once she realized I already had a family, she disappeared from my life. She quit singing at the dinner theater; she changed addresses…It was hard. But I put up with it. As long as I was still alive, I figured it was fine. So I kept on practicing because I figured I could surprise her with that if we ever met again…I really thought that would happen someday. Until I heard she died.” My father grimaced a little. His face had never moved an atom before. It made him look extraordinarily pained. I didn’t care at all about my father or how he felt. But somehow, it pained me how much I understood his feelings. I knew more than anyone else how it felt to lose my mom. “…I pretty much went to her funeral that day on a whim. She was dead, and it’s not like I had any parting words for her. It was just…I was shocked. I never imagined you would be there.” He paused to size up my face. His was no longer cold and restrained. It was muddied, unclear, his eyes darting to and fro across my body. “Tsubomi…You’re my last hope. The family I had was like a pair of handcuffs, but you’re different. I never want to let go of you again…And starting today, I’ll be free of everything except for you. We can live together. I can give you anything you want. No matter what it takes…” My father placed his left hand on my shoulder. I looked up at his face, and what I saw amazed me. He wasn’t looking at me at all. I didn’t see one bit of my reflection. All I saw was his firm belief that I was my mother’s daughter. His boundless, hollow eyes confirmed my belief. This man…was beyond saving. At that moment, my sister’s leg came across me and kicked our father on the side. The cooking knife in his hand clanked heavily to the floor. “Nnh…!” He doubled over. Before I could think, I extended my hand. It was now or never. It was in my sights. I had to get that knife…! Just as my hand was about to clasp the handle, a sharp pain crossed my right cheek. The sight of the knife, just an inch or two from my hand, defocused and flew away. The next moment, my body was thrown to the feet of the suit of armor. “Tsubomi!” The armor collapsed, falling to the floor with a powerful clatter. I could just barely hear my sister shouting over the noise. My father’s right arm was in my bleary vision; he must have slapped it away in the nick of time. Slowly, he picked it up and started walking toward my sister, gazing down at her, his expression not recognizable as human. The worst outcome imaginable crossed my mind. My vocal cords vibrated like they would catch on fire. “Stooooop!!” My father glanced back at me, then returned his hateful stare to Rin. “You…You played your stupid sister games with Tsubomi to trick her! I should have known…When I told you to get her back here for me…You must’ve fed her a pack of lies right then, didn’t you?” When she…“A pack of lies”? What is he talking about? “I simply told her what I needed to,” Rin said, her voice thundering across the chamber. “As her sister. This girl isn’t some kind of doll for you to play with. You can’t shut her in here. You won’t even let her set foot outside the house! It’s crazy!” Something snapped in my father when he heard this. He slowly raised the knife, the candle’s glint reflecting in it, and blinked menacingly. Memories of the short time I spent with Rin ran through my head. The first time we met, I honestly thought she was scary. She chided me for every mistake I made, and nothing ever escaped her notice. My inability to express my feelings exasperated me sometimes. …So what did I find happy about the time I spent with her? The way she praised me when I managed to get my feelings across? Or when she patted me on the head and called me “cute”? That all played a part, but I didn’t think it was the number-one reason. Listening to my father, I knew what that was now. It didn’t matter how Rin was related to me… —She accepted me as her one and only sister. I could feel something in my hand. I knew full well that the other end had plunged into flesh. My father looked at me, face clearly racked with shock. None of the coldness from before. It looked human. An actual human emotion. Just as his eyes rolled up and he fell, the metal handle flew away from my hands. With another clank, my father hit the floor, the lance sticking out of him. In another few moments, he stopped moving. The helm on the armor, now at rest on the floor, quietly enjoyed the view of its weapon’s final landing point. I turned around. My sister was looking at me, biting her lip. Was she surprised or sad? I didn’t have the words to describe her expression. I couldn’t think of anything, but my shaking lips still parted. “I…I think we’re alone now, ma’am.” This elicited another hard-to-describe facial reaction. I wasn’t sure how to put it, but it was similar to the face she made whenever she patted my head. “I told you to stop being so formal with me…Tsubomi.” Her words brought tears to my eyes… …only to have them shaken by the sound of a large, door-rattling explosion. It came so suddenly that I fell right to the floor. Then there was another. A whole series of bursts, sending dust falling from the ceiling with every earth-rumbling blast. “Wh-what’s that…?!” Something terrible was happening above us. I flew to my feet and more or less threw the door open with a shoulder. There was a staircase right beyond, with something like a half-open window at the top. I assumed it led to somewhere on the manor’s ground floor. I had to find out what was going on up there. The moment I placed a foot on the first step, there was another tremendous shaking and explosion. “Ngh…!” I instinctively stopped and closed my eyes. I thought it was the kickoff to another series of blasts, but we were greeted with only silence. I waited for a few moments before slowly, gingerly opening my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I saw. “This…This couldn’t…” The window at the top had been shattered, crushed by a half-burned wooden beam. Embers were shooting down on me from the hole. I stood there, dumbfounded, until my sister’s voice rang out. “Tsubomi! What’s going on out there? What can you see?” I turned around to look at Rin. She must have already known the answer. “I can’t believe it,” she added sourly. What did my father say? “…Starting today, I’ll be free of everything except for you.” That, and “I’m a little short on time.” If “everything” meant this entire manor, too… “…Father must’ve set the house on fire. I suppose he planned to take you out of here and escape before the flames got us all.” As always, my sister was way ahead of me. I had no idea how far our father’s plan went, but there was no doubt about his deranged state at the end of his life. Did he really want to bring me out of here? Or maybe, from the very start… I shook my head, brushing my thoughts away. Right then, I had to find a way to unshackle my sister and get out of there. Right. The shackles, the shackles… My heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t think of a single way to take them off. There was no way I could reach them—not without something to stand on. And we were in the middle of a fire. Even if I was willing to forage through the flames for something, there was a giant hunk of wood jutting into the window. There was just barely enough width left for maybe one person to wriggle through—but no space for anything that could serve as a platform. And come to think of it, I still hadn’t confirmed something that I reasoned was probably kind of important. I rushed back into the room and fumbled through my father’s pockets. Into one, into the next, and then… “There’s no key…!” I suppose I should have expected that. He was planning to be “free of everything.” Yet again, the depths of his madness battered me down. He never intended to free Rin in the first place. The key was probably somewhere upstairs, but I didn’t like my chances of finding such a tiny key in an inferno. So now what? What can I do, in the time I have left…? …No. Don’t give up. Think! Whether I’ve got the key or not, there’s got to be some way left to rescue my sister. I know there is. There’s got to be something. Hurry. Hurry up and think! Think, think, think…! “…It’s fine, Tsubomi.” I’m sure I must’ve looked shattered when I turned around at Rin’s voice. There was something in me that was still struggling to keep myself together, even though I knew there was nothing I could do…and that face finally snapped it apart. Once she saw it, my sister gave a weak smile. “Thanks for trying so hard for me,” she said softly. “You’ve given me something nice to remember. Now get out of here. You can still save—” “…No.” Rin’s face saddened at the interruption. Maybe, with my smaller body, I could run a perfect route through the house and escape in time. I knew that. I knew it full well. But my sister was making a mistake. I…I didn’t want to escape together with her. All I wanted was for her to be safe. “I…I mean, even if I ran on you, I’d never be able to live…” The blood from my father was pooling at my feet. A pool that I had made. I’d killed my own father. I was tainted. Even if we escaped together, I’d never get to be near Rin again. And the concept of walking a dark, blood-stained path for the rest of my life seemed…unthinkable. “No. It’s not your fault. You protected me, didn’t you? You can’t say you’ll be unable to…Ahh!” Another explosion, this one far larger than the others, ripped through the house, stopping my sister cold. We were close to the time limit. A time limit, huh…? Maybe calling it “game over” would be more appropriate. I ran up to my sister and hugged her as hard as I could. No longer did I need any of the words I learned to express my feelings. All I did was bring my face as close to hers as I could. The explosion that followed was enough to make the sturdy-looking stone walls around us visibly start to rattle and fall. My sister’s words no longer reached me. A deafening creak dominated them, as the collapsing, fiery ceiling crushed and splintered the bookshelf. The heat blowing down from above toasted the air gathered below, making it hard to even breathe. The scene through the upstairs portal looked like hell itself. The charred furniture began to drop down above the collapsed ceiling like an avalanche. I stared unblinkingly at the chandelier, shining as it reflected the bright orange around it. …And then, right at the end, a large black mouth appeared before me, driving away the inferno surrounding us on all sides. That was about all I remembered from my otherwise-erased memories.