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RED flames were dancing.
Through the haze of her mind, she knew this was her childhood village. She was home again.
The flames were coming from the fires burning throughout the village. Everything was destroyed…crushed. Bodies were lying everywhere. The corpses of the village folk, who’d been chatting together, going about the business of their lives only yesterday…
They were all dead. Akari knew it.
She looked down at her hands. A child’s hands. Of course. She’d only been about seven when it happened. Clumsy Akari kept falling and getting up again as she ran through the village, desperate. Her breath was harsh in her lungs, the blood pounding in her ears.
In her cold, sweaty hands, she was clutching a book.
A brand-new, sturdily bound book.
How could this have happened?
In the heart of the village, two demon yokai were fighting. With a sweep of its mighty arm, one crushed a nearby house into wood splinters, summoning the power of a storm. It was a terrifying, otherworldly sight.
But Akari’s eyes were fixed on the other yokai.
It was big, and gold in color. Its body a grotesque, imposing form.
It had manifested in that form, exactly as Akari had narrated it.
But…they had asked her to do it. The Narrator had asked her. And her friend had too…
Narrate, and we can be together.
“So, what am I to you?”
Her friend was always so straightforward with her. And she could sense how much he expected of her.
And so Akari had answered proudly, in her usual manner.
The only difference…the book in her hand. And the words she narrated.
“To me, you are the strongest demon! Stronger than any other!”
“That’s right. No one can beat me. I am fear personified, and no one can stop my wrath! Isn’t that right?”
She should never have nodded.
But she did. Emphatically. Then she’d backed it up with words…
As entreated, she’d narrated out loud the old village legend. It didn’t really match her perception of her friend, but he had told her to read it just as it was written in the book. But who was he, again?
She didn’t think it would matter. Regardless of how she narrated, the friend she knew would appear. Or so she’d thought.
But when she read out that name she was hearing for the first time, something completely different appeared.
It was the brutally cruel demon whose tale had been told in the village for as long as anyone could remember.
The friend Akari had wanted to meet…this horrible demon surely wasn’t him.
“But it was your words that manifested me.”
It was the same voice—the same voice she knew.
It was the same one that had always spoken to her, the one she’d never dreamed to doubt. She wanted to scream that it was wrong, but the words were stuck in her throat. Instead, she could only tremble and shake.
This is all my fault.
Akari had narrated it wrong, she must have, and that was why it had become that horrible yokai.
No, what if she hadn’t done it wrong? She’d read the Kotogatari exactly as it was written…so the creature summoned must’ve been exactly as described in the account…
Was the friend she had so cared for nothing but an illusion all along?
Tears began to spill from her eyes, unbidden.
The yokai was terrifying, and its violence was horrifying, and the village she’d loved was in ruins…but somehow the worst thing of all was…
Hands and feet freezing. Air painfully pumping through her lungs. Something jumped in front of her…
She tried to run, but her legs were too tired. She couldn’t make it another step.
A big hand came down in front of her, as if reaching to offer assistance, but she felt a flare of pain up her back as something burned her flesh.
“Aaagh!!!”
She could hear her dear friend crying out, but she could make no sound in return.
She couldn’t breathe anymore. The pain was too much.
Was she…going to die?
But just then, her body was lifted into the air, her vision obscured.
“Forget, forget all of this… This was only a bad dream.”
Someone was speaking to her in a kind voice. A somehow sad voice…an apologetic voice.
No, this was all her fault…so how could she forget? If she forgot, then everything would be lost…
Akari made one final vow to herself…
She would never narrate again. Not ever.