あなたは誰？

Shin had no idea what Pai was doing.

Shin had no idea what he was doing following her.

It was becoming a trend with her, this confusing myriad of emotions whenever his thoughts strayed to her.

Shinigami laughed behind the wall between himself and his True Ayakashi, a wall that was weakened greatly after his Mask had been taken off twice in his lifetime now. Shinigami was laughed as if the sight of Pai was the funniest thing he had ever seen through Shin's eyes.

Shin had to hold in a snarl of irritation. He didn't have time focus on Shinigami. He needed to figure out why Pai wasn't in her room, asleep, as she should be – why was she out here, in the cold, wandering around in the dead of night?

He tucked his wings close to his back as he drew his arms in and plummeted straight down to the ground, through a hole formed by the canopy of leaves the forest trees made. The chilly wind rushed over his body, ruffling his hair wildly. He landed on the ground with his hands on either side of his body, muscles in his legs tensing as he absorbed the shock of the landing. His wings disappeared from sight in a shower of faint light that enveloped his body for a brief second before that, too, faded away.

He stood, left hand resting on the hilt of his katana belted at his side. His other weapon remained comfortably resting against his leg in a matching sheath.

Pai hadn't noticed him yet.

He frowned at her total lack of reaction before glancing on either side of him, stretching out his senses to touch the vital life forces of all the living beings around him, searching out any threats that might be around.

There were none. He could feel the life of the forest around him, ground teeming with insects and small nocturnal animals running to and fro across the forest floor. The bare branches of the trees smacking against each other in shivers from the cold breath of the wind blowing through them were the only source of obviously audible noise. None of the animals were threatening in the least, most scurrying away rather than approaching the two humanoids in the forest.

For the half-minute he extended his senses, he could feel every living thing for a mile out on either direction of him. The sensation of it was enough to completely overwhelm an ordinary person, but Shin did this often enough that it didn't incapacitate him. All the overload of sensory input and the weight of the force of nature, or life, pressing in around him was something he was used to. It was something he could easily partition in his mind so that he wasn't overcome by it all.

It was only when he was withdrawing himself that he realized it; he couldn't sense Pai's aura. It wasn't that it had changed in some way to become something else, or it was being cloaked by something.

It simply wasn't there.

He could still catch her scent, a subtle whiff of vanilla and something else he couldn't quite put a name to, a scent that attracted both his and Shinigami's attentions whenever she drew near to him. But her aura, the one he had grown so accustomed to in the year they'd shared the same house, wasn't there anymore.

Instead, it was like a spherical wall of empty nothing surrounded the immediate space around her body. If he closed his eyes and ears to the sight and sound of her walking around aimlessly, it would be like she wasn't there at all. Touching that void, that acute sense of emptiness around her, left his senses tingling uncomfortably.

It left him feeling so desperately lonely, and he had no idea why.

He didn't understand it, or how it could be possible, but at least now he figured that the reason Haru hadn't been able to tell that Pai was in the bathroom when he went to look for her yesterday was because of this. This emptiness surrounding her was a black hole, a vacuum around her. It left him oddly hollow as he followed behind her a few paces away, watching her.

When he imagined himself in Haru's place, unsure of whether or not Pai was still in the bathroom, he didn't think he would be able to sense her in there if her aura was strange then as it was now.

The twin braids of her snow white hair hung down her back, swinging from side to side as she walked with halting, jittery steps. Shin had noticed that she'd done her hair differently to the usual, and he guessed, without her saying anything, that it had to do with Shiharu's death.

She was making a conscious effort to forget that day. He'd seen her dump the uniform she'd worn in the trash. She was avoiding Shiori because her best friend could tell that Pai was blaming herself for what happened. Besides what she'd managed to tell Kouta after, she flat-out refused to talk about what happened, barely even managing to say Motomi's name. She fixed her hair in two braids rather than the one she usually wore., like how she'd worn the one braid on that day.

Shiharu's death was affecting her more than she let on. He wondered how long it would take for her to snap before she realized what happened wasn't her fault. He wondered how far she'd need to be pushed before that happened. Pai had the disturbing tendency to completely ignore herself in favour of taking care of others when times were good, and shoving all the blame when something went wrong onto herself.

It was often painful to watch that happen.

Now, she looked like a marionette, a puppet being controlled in its every step by an unseen master. He squinted, brows knitting down in a tight frown when he noticed long lines of dark crimson, stark and weaving over the white hair, as if she had taken strands of her hair and coloured them. When she turned her head to the side Shin halted, watching her look out at something over to her left.

Her cheek was painted with red, smudged over her skin.

A dark emotion, one he was hard-pressed to describe, blossomed in his chest at the sight of the blood. He stepped forward in a move to call out to her, but Pai turned around and started walking in the direction she'd been looking at. She almost tripped over an uplifted root of a tree, but she managed to keep herself upright while still continuing on her way.

Shin followed after her, keeping a short distance away. All the while his mind churned as he tried to guess at why she would be behaving so strangely, be so oblivious to his presence when he made no move to hide the fact that he was following her. She was always aware of her surroundings, more viscerally so ever since what happened with the Onihitokuchi. This, whatever it was, wasn't normal for her.

Several minutes later, he watched her reach out her injured right hand, fingers splayed, twitching and curling like she was trying to reach out and grab onto something. A choked laugh, heavy with nostalgic melancholy, broke out of her as she brought her hand back to curl against her chest, like she was trying to hold something in.

The sound of her strange laugh scratched at his ears, so wholly different to the voice of the young girl he knew. He wouldn't have even been entirely sure it was her, if not for the fact that he saw the movement of her lips trembling with cold as she laughed.

Shin ran his eyes down the length of her body as she continued to make her way to...somewhere. She was in her pyjamas, a pair of sky blue-and-white striped trousers with a matching long-sleeved shirt.

Shiori had bought two matching pyjama sets just like that for her, a few days after Pai was found wandering around in the forest. She'd bought it before Kouta agreed to letting Pai stay at Ayashi House after hearing her story, as if she'd been absolutely certain that Kouta would eventually reach that decision regardless of whether or not it would be safe. Blue was Pai's favourite colour.

Seeing her dressed only in her pyjamas was the first thing that told him something was really wrong. Pai always dressed warm, like she felt the cold more acutely than anyone else. She wouldn't be roaming around outside the house clad only in her pyjamas. Even if she had a reason to, none that Shin could see, but even if she did, she would have taken her haori for warmth.

So why hadn't she?

Shin's eyes dropped down to her feet. That was the second thing that told him something was wrong. She wasn't wearing any shoes, not even the sandals she wore inside the house. Her feet were bare, toes rigid as they curled and squeezed tight together in a mimic of her jittering steps.

His frown deepened, brows almost meeting down the middle. He made sure to step on the multitude of broken twigs and melted, crunching snow underfoot as loud as he could, and then louder still. When he reached up to push away a few branches growing downward, he made no move to quieten the sound of the branches slapping against each other when he let go of them.

Still she didn't turn or pause in her steps to show that she was aware he was there. She continued walking on with slow, stilted steps, head listing to the side as if weighed down by something, or listening to something. It was only when she bumped into a tree that was obviously in her path yet still didn't avoid, and went on her way as if nothing had happened, that he realized what was going on. Or what was most likely to be the cause for her odd behaviour.

She was sleepwalking.

Strangely, the thought wasn't as comforting as he wanted it to be. She was sleepwalking, but how did she get out of Ayashi House? It was possible that she might have climbed over the wall, but would she have been able to do that while sleepwalking?

The boundary wall wasn't short – it was at least double her height, if not more. The only other way was for her to have left the normal way; through the gates. But there was no way Karasatengu would willingly let her out this late at night, alone and unaccompanied by anyone else, especially after what happened to Shiharu, and after seeing her in such an unusual state.

Shinigami snickered spitefully. Willingly.

He almost stopped walking at that, thoughts halting in their tracks abruptly.

Willingly. Karasatengu wouldn't have let her out willingly.

Shin didn't have time to consider the implications of that. Just at that moment, Pai came to an abrupt stop. She was standing in front of a large tree whose spindly branches reached up high to the heavens, as if beseeching Mother Nature's having stripped it off its leaves for the winter and delaying in returning them. Slowly melting snow piled around the base of the tree despite most of the snow already having melted around the forest. She was staring up blankly at the bare branches overhead.

Shin walked forward a few more steps until he was only a handful of paces behind her, off to the left of her. He leaned back against a tree with his arms crossed over loosely over his chest. Shin only gave the surroundings a cursory glance, as a measure to make sure that there were no particularly dangerous Yori Chiisai – or animals, for that matter – around.

He started in surprise as he recognized the surroundings. More than that, he recognized Pai in the surroundings.

×

Shin makes it to the clearing almost immediately after Shiori's frenzied yelling began, heart thumping in his chest as he worries that something has to be dangerous wrong for the princess to be calling out for help like this.

He lands on the ground before Kouta does, withdrawing his wings into him as soon as his feet touch down. A few seconds later, there are two more thumps on the ground as Daichi and Jirou make it to where they are, instantly alerted.

His twin blades sing sweetly through the air when he draws them, hilts clasped tight in his palms as he quickly took note of their surroundings. A few errant Yori Chiisai are about, mostly the harmless Yosei who traipse along the tree branches that have began to shed their leaves for the coming winter.

The ground is covered in red-brown leaves scattered all about. Most of the trees are tall and slim, bark cracked and scratched from the claws and horns of the animals that scurry up and down their lengths. The largest tree up ahead is magnificent in its golden glory of leaves that are slowly turning autumn brown, bathed in the gentle morning light of the rising sun behind it.

Shin halts in his tracks while Kouta streaks ahead of him, only to come to a dead stop before reaching Shiori where she kneels before the large tree. Ryu leaves his sister's side and runs for Daichi to tug at his sleeve, pointing back at his sister with a bright grin and saying something, but Shin is too focused on the princess to hear what he says.

Shiori sits on the ground, back braced against the big tree, with a girl cradled protectively in her arms.

A pang of something strange, an indescribable sadness and longing, hits him right in the chest – hard. He almost drops his katanas from the surprise that flowers in him at how horribly sad he is, not to see Shiori so visibly distressed, but at the sight of the girl he has never before laid eyes upon. He inches forward cautiously to stand just behind Kouta, unable to tear his gaze from the girl unconscious girl.

She is clad in a pair of black pants that are hazardously cut off at the bottom so that the hems are ragged and frayed. An incredibly dirty, oversized t-shirt that might have been once white, now a dirty grey-brown, garbs her upper body. The clothes hang off of her in a way that makes something in his gut twist in concern, in need – in want to protect, to take care. That strange feeling is exacerbated when he just sees the corner of a bandage taped to the back of her neck.

Disregarding circumstances, she looks fairly ordinary, but the most astonishing thing about her is her hair.

It is pure white, streaked with dirt and tangled, but unmistakeably white. Shin is sure that he has never seen anyone's hair so white as hers is – silver, yes, grey, yes, but not so naturally pure white like this, especially not on a girl who looks Shiori's age.

Her body shivers with cold and is caked in mud, with dried blood on the side of her face from a cut on her temple that has long since clotted. Her eyebrows are the dark slashes of a painter's slim brush, smoothed out over her face in a way that makes her look oddly peaceful despite her dishevelled and bloody appearance.

She's alive, but her breathing is shallow, chest barely lifting. Her head lays in Shiori's lap as the princess looks up at Kouta at his quiet approach. Tears fall down Shiori's face that holds an curious expression of profound relief and horror collided together.

Everyone seems to be speaking, all at once. Shin, standing behind and apart from everyone else, sheathes his katanas as he keeps his eyes on the strange girl. He can't understand why looking at her makes him feel so unbearably sad.

Shinigami stirs, then, woken from his sleep by the dejected bewilderment clashing around chaotically in Shin – and by extension, Shinigami as well. Even he seems at a loss for words, staring at the girl through Shin.

Who's this?

Daichi and Jirou are asking Ryu what's happening, what's wrong – and he hurriedly exclaims to them, "It's her, guys, it's her!"

"Who?" Daichi asks, frowning in confusion as Ryu hops about the two Daitengu in mad excitement.

Jirou is giving Ryu a look that clearly threatens to send the boy flying through the air with a good whack to the behind with his shinai spear for jumping around with so much energy too early in the morning for Jirou to handle.

"Our friend, the one Shii-chan told you guys about. She's back! But..." Ryu looks back at the girl with a puzzled frown, his excitement dampening almost instantly. "But her hair...and she's bleeding..."

Kouta kneels beside Shiori. He reaches over and cups her face in both of his hands, forcing her to look at him even as she tries to look down at the girl in her arms, like she's afraid that the girl will disappear if Shiori looks away for even a moment.

"Shiori, who is this?" his voice is calm, quiet, coaxing her to answer.

Shin can see that the sound of his voice settles Shiori's jittering nerves. She finally stops trying to move away from him and looks him in the eye. Shin notices that she keeps a protective hold of the girl's trembling shoulders.

"Kouta," she says, breath hiccupping in her chest. Her voice is thick, clogged with the same tears that fall freely down her face. "It's – it's Pai."

×

This was where they found her. This exact spot – he could tell, from the tree. Few such trees grow this close to the house.

This was where Shiori found Pai, little over a year ago to date.

He watched Pai open and close her mouth, forming soundless words that he couldn't catch. Shin's eyes widened at the sight of a silver track of tears shimmering down her cheeks, lit by the moon shining down from above. They formed a clear path through the red on her cheek. Her eyes were open, he could see that much, but he was too far away to discern what emotion was in them, too oblivious to guess at why she was crying.

Pai fell to her knees on the ground, and Shin instinctively reached out to catch her. He stopped himself from moving any closer as she began digging through the snow at the foot of the tree. She gathered fistfuls of snow and hurled them out on either side of her. Her movements were rushed, trying to dig faster than she already was, yet mechanical and with a mission, a specific purpose.

A minute passed.

Two. Three. Four.

Five.

The white snow around her soon turned dark and wet with upturned soil from her digging, roots of buried plants dug out and carelessly flung to the side. A taut string of anticipation to see what she was looking for was stretching tight in his chest, so tight that he felt like he was about to snap.

He kept a hold of his growing impatience for a minute longer. Just when he was about to make a move to approach her, Pai stopped her frantic digging. Her arms fell to lay limp at her sides as she sat back on the heels of her feet, her pyjama trousers damp from the melted snow thrown about all around her and dirty from the soil.

She stared down at the hole she had dug in the ground. She stayed like that for a long time, simply sitting and looking down, hardly moving, like a statue. Shin waited for her to make a move with bated breath. He wondered what it was she found, if there was anything to find in the first place. He watched her chest rise and fall in slow, steady breaths.

Then she moved.

She reached down into the hole, using both her hands and going down to her elbows. He heard the muffled clang of metal brushing against metal as she lifted a black bag out. It was long, and looked like whatever was in it was heavy, from the way her arms trembled as she pulled the bag out of the hole.

Shin blinked, stunned to realize that it was a tactical rifle bag she was holding.

How the hell was something like that buried just outside the house perimeters? Without anyone noticing it? The only people who came up the mountain were those who lived in Ayashi House, and the occasional visitor brought by someone who lived there. Even if it was one of those visitors, Karasatengu and his crows would definitely have noticed someone digging a hole and hiding a tactical rifle bag just outside the house.

Pai reached over automatically and gripped the zip, the fetters unlocking loudly as she dragged the zip down all the way to the other end of the bag. She pulled the bag open wider and reached in, taking hold of what was inside and pulling it out. She was sitting angled in a way that her body blocked sight of what she was holding. He heard a strange metallic click, and unfolded his arms as unease pervaded his gut.

She stood. Turned to face him.

Shin only had a moment to see the look in her eyes. Only one brief instant to see that the light brown of her eyes were no longer as they had been. One eye, her left, was completely black, iris totally indiscernible from her pupil. Her other was still brown, but her pupil was dilated so much so that the brown was but a ring around it. Seeing the different coloured eyes in place of the light brown he had become used to seeing, had grown to like seeing, had his stomach curling uncomfortably.

But that wasn't the only problem.

Her eyes were dead, a bleak expression in them. She looked more like a robot than a human. There wasn't just a wall her emotions were hidden behind – there was nothing there. Like an empty well that was supposed to be slowly but steadily filled to the brim with all the volatile emotions people felt so strongly every day of their lives, it looked like Pai's well had never been filled. It looked like her well was bled dry.

A cold touch of dread squeezed his heart tight in his chest. He realized that Pai looked like she was dead on the inside.

Shin didn't have time to say anything before his reflexes kicked in and he ducked when she swung and aimed a big, ugly black gun that looked of the same make as the one from the warehouse.

Right at him.

As he swiftly moved down to avoid getting his head blown apart, training and lightning fast reflexes kicking in, he heard the muted sound of the bullet shooting out. It flew straight for him with almost impossible speed, but he managed to duck just before the bullet punched into the bark of the tree behind him. The wood splintered and cracked from the force, the tree groaning in complaint. He bounded to his feet, twisting his head to stare uncomprehendingly at the hole in the tree.

That hole could have been going through him if he was barely half a second too slow.

Shin turned back to her and raised his hands up in the air. "Pai – "

He didn't have a chance.

Her hands moved over the underside of the gun with a practised efficiency that only came with handling weapons regularly. She reloaded the gun in a second, hitched it higher up while keeping it under her arm, and pulled the trigger again. All the while, her lifeless eyes remained on him, keeping him in her sights.

She can kill you, Shinigami snickered as he leaped to the side to avoid another bullet. She could totally kill you.

Shut the hell up, Shin growled back.

He shoved Shinigami down and under as he landed on the ground on his side, snow flying around him. It wasn't a good way to land, and he could tell immediately that his ribs would bruise when pain blossomed in his side. He shot back to standing, spacing out his feet evenly from each other and body tensed as he prepared to dodge another bullet while his mind sped ahead to how he was supposed to get Pai to stop shooting at him.

To how he was supposed to wake her up.

All thoughts of waking her disappeared as he jerked to the side, narrowly missing a third bullet. The curved metal side of the bullet skimmed past his cheek, parting the air and almost taking his ear off. His mind reverted to the semi-blank state he went into when in a fight. In this state, the only thoughts bouncing around in his head were analysis on his opponents every movement, plans on how to react and counterattack, ideas of ways to sneak in surprise attacks, calculations of whether or not he needed to use his Ability when he switched into the deadly mode where he fought to kill.

He looks down at her sleeping – unconscious, he reminds himself – face as her head lolls to the side. Shifting slightly, he settles her head on his shoulder, trying to be gentle to avoid causing any more unnecessary pain. She's been through enough, and even as visibly damaged as she looks – even with that, he can't help the little sunburst of pride that flowers in his chest at the thought of how she didn't give up fighting for her life. She could have – humans always seem to – but she didn't.

He frowns as he turns and sees the gun, a small stream of smoke lifting up from its nozzle.

Shin gritted his teeth and watched her swing the gun around to aim at him again, hands clenching to fists as he held them out to his sides. Pai did not need to die; she was not an enemy. He hadn't gone through risking a confrontation with the Oni and watching her dying on a hospital bed just to kill her now.

You're boring.

She had to be sleepwalking. That could be the only explanation for what was happening, no matter how mundane and unlikely it seemed. It couldn't be that she was doing this of her own volition – it just wasn't possible. Pai didn't even look like she was totally aware that it was him she was shooting at, not with that blank look in her eyes that was still there – there was no way she would do this if she did.

"Pai!" he called out. "Pai, wake up!"

She did not hear him. That flat impassiveness remained in her eyes. Her breath clouded in front of her as she exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger again. He tensed, ready to dive to the side in an instant.

No bullets shot out. There was only an empty clicking as she pressed on the trigger twice more.

Her eyes moved down to the gun, but not even a hint of surprise filled them to find that she'd gone through all the bullets. He saw her lips twist in contempt, the first sign of any sort of real emotion, and she threw the gun aside.

Pai stretched out her left hand in front of her, palm upturned. A strange tugging sensation pulled at his stomach, and his heart dropped down to his feet. Electric lights fizzled to life, sparking around her hand, cloaked in black smoke that writhed around her hand, and the electricity, before curling up to evaporate in the night air.

He watched in fascination, eyes wide, as she pulled her lips over her teeth in a silent grimace. The skin of her face was pulled tight and white lines bracketed her lips. A second later, the smoke hardened. Black ropes of electricity warped into a distinct shape, a small mass of darkness lit from within by a crackling blue-white light that hovered over her hand before it finally gained tangible form and dropped into her open palm.

Shin blinked. It was a double-edged karambit in her hand, a small curved knife resembling a tiger's claw.

In the space of a blink he opened his eyes again to see the curve of the blackened blade of the karambit an inch from his eye, Pai's bandaged hand clenched tight around the hilt, index finger hooked through the ring to better manoeuvre the weapon. She moved with a speed faster than he'd ever seen with her before. Shin's reaction was as instantaneous as it was mindless and automatic. One second Shin was there

and the next, he vanished.

Everything in Shin's sight changed as he jerked out of the way of the blade. No longer did he see the wood of the trees, the white of the thawing snow with the moonlight reflecting off of it. Reality bent and warped around him, and the colours of the world shifted. Everything darkened, yet at the same time the light from the moon sharpened, seeking out everything that hid from his sight in the shadows of the trees and behind rocks and bushes.

Burrowing under the roots of the trees and hiding at the very tops of the trees were brightly colourful spots of the animals that lived in the forest. Every creature had its own distinct colour of varying shades, physical bodies darkened so that the light of their spirits was more clear.

The trees were filled with an inner, glowing golden light that sped up and down like the light of thousands of cars on a highway. The same thing was happening inside the grass buried deep underneath the snow, albeit the light was a pale green that struggled to move weakly under the weight of the snow piled on top of the grass.

Dotting every bit of exposed space all around him were flickering lights of crackling blue electricity that danced and weaved through the air. That was the thing about using his eyes while using his Ability as well – he'd never found out why, but he could see the electric energy and frequencies of the world around him as literal manifestations of light.

His was a vibrantly colourful world when he used his Ability. Most of it clung to the trees and grass, lining everything and giving off a bright blue light. He knew that the light, after having seen it so many times already, liked to stick to things that were alive, that beat with the heart of nature.

Switching to his Ability was always a nauseating experience to start off with. Shin had grown accustomed to it, though, after years of honing his Ability to perfection. All it took was for him to briefly shut his eyes on the changed world before him, find the calm centre within himself. When he opened his eyes again, the world was different, but the same. It was still the world he knew and recognized, just painted in different colours, wearing different clothes.

Shin yanked himself to the side just in time to avoid getting slashed open by the karambit. Pai's smaller body rushed past his and he shifted back only slightly so as not to collide with her. She stumbled, eyes widening as she whirled around with the curved knife swinging out in a low arc from her body, the tip coming close to grazing his stomach.

Pai stopped moving abruptly, body locking with bow-tight tension. Her eyes roved about the area in front of her, seeking him out. He remained perfectly still, barely breathing. Despite being invisible, he could still be heard. That was one of two weaknesses to his Ability.

The brightness of the electricity all around him flared suddenly and stung his eyes. He shut them on the burning. When he opened them again he looked at Pai, muscles in his legs tensed as he poised to dart in any given direction if he had to.

Instead, he saw that all the space, for a good ten feet around her and at least two metres from her skin, was completely devoid of the electricity. She was a dark spot in all the blue light in his vision, and when she moved, the lights moved away from her. It looked like it was avoiding being touched or coming in close contact with her.

He froze when he saw how lonely she looked, untouched by the blue light that loved life, with that bleak look in her eyes that made her seem like she had given up on everything, like nothing mattered to her anymore.

Shin stood off to her right, only two or three paces away. If he stretched out a hand, he would touch her shoulder. At the moment, looking at the girl who was stood before him, the Pai who was not the girl he knew, he thought that if he made such a move, he was more likely to lose his hand from that strange blade she still clasped in her hand.

Her eyes completely darkened all of a sudden, until there was not a spark of light, a trace of brown left. The blue light retreated further from her, abandoning the rocks and the grass close to her in search of others. A sphere of total blackness enveloped her, tendrils of black smoke whipping about in a furore over her head. The sphere grew, and Shin danced away from her before it could touch him, ice filling his veins the closer it got. It continued to extend out from her body before halting and quickly drawing back into her.

Her aura, he thought, nausea rolling in his gut. Her aura is black.

He had never come across any living creature that had aura like this, so dark and heavy and cold. Especially not with any of the human race. Humans' auras did not change this drastically, and he would have known if Pai's aura had ever been like this before now.

Shinigami chuckled snidely. That is not hers.

She twirled the karambit around her fingers before gripping the ivory hilt tight. When she spoke, Shin's eyes widened at the unusual double-edged quality to it, the emotionless words she said shaped in the voice he only heard Ayakashi use.

"Will you save her? Will he save us?"

There was something unknown about it. It wasn't entirely Ayakashi. It was lighter, not quite as deep as the voice of the Ayakashi, yet at the same time reverberating through the air between them like a literal force of its own. It reminded him of the muted sound of crystalline glass crashing to the ground.

Pai's body twitched and her head snapped back. The karambit she was holding aerified and a feral grin broke her face in half, teeth flashing from the moonlight reflecting off them. Her fingers danced through the air as she held her arms rigid at her sides, staring up at the cloudless sky through the branches.

"Save me," she repeated, her voice changing again. It wasn't back to normal, back to the voice of the Pai he knew. She kept her head bent back and laughed snidely, voice hoarse from the angle she kept her head at, laughed like the words she'd spoken were the funniest she had ever heard. "'Save' me? You want to save me? You condemned me to this madness!"

Shin dropped his invisibility.

Pai snapped her head down to stare at him when he blinked back in her sight again. Her eyes had reverted to what they were before – one black, and one brown. He remained where he stood a few paces from her, keeping a watch on her every minuscule move. She cocked her head to the side and smirked at him, but otherwise made no move to attack him again.

He let Shinigami come closer, closer to the wall that separated them, and allowed his voice to double, oddly mixing and mimicking Pai. Red tinged the outer edges of his vision. Shinigami scratched just under the surface, prodding and testing the strength of the wall, looking for holes to slip in through yet finding none.

Yet.

"Who are you?" he asked, a low growl building up deep in his chest.

Pai flinched at the sound of his changed voice. More brown leaked in as her eyes widened. She looked uncertain of herself, taking a hesitant step away from him like she was afraid. Her arms came up to wrap around her torso and her gaze sidled away from his.

"Who...?" she twitched, blinking. The black returned to her eyes between one blink and the next. "Who are we with him, who are we without him?"

In less time than it took for a thought to form in his mind, black electricity spiked around her hand again, ripping the air between them in half. Shin leaped back to avoid being touched by it, but his skin still crawled as the sensation of touching an endless void overcame him. He only had an instant to see something appear in her hand again, longer than the karambit before.

When the lightning fizzled out, she sprang forward and he saw that this time it was a katana she was swinging for his head. He yanked himself to the side just in time, and the long blade flashed by him. There was a tear of cloth, and he glanced down to see that the katana had just managed to rip through the fabric of his yukata. The ragged edges of it slipped down his shoulder, but he turned his attention back to the fight rather than move it up. Pai responded immediately to his avoidance of her blade, twisting her body around to face him while her hand swung the katana up and almost sheared his ear off.

He saw an opening to stop her by striking her momentarily unprotected torso, but she was moving too quickly for him to take it, her feet carrying her nimbly as she spun. He brought his arm up in a defensive block, stopping her, and jabbed at her wrist instead, hard. It was her injured hand he struck.

Better a sprained wrist than broken ribs, he thought. Still, he wished he didn't have to do it in the first place, but he didn't see any other way to stop her – she was interminable in her attack.

Pain widened her eyes. She whimpered, a tiny sound of pain that punched him in the gut with all the force of an iron fist. The katana was knocked out of her hand. His attention was fleetingly distracted as he watched the weapon born of nothing fall. It landed on the snow and evaporated into black smoke as soon as it came in contact with the ground. It disappeared as if it had never been.

Pai took advantage of his momentary distraction and punched him, her fist catching him on his cheek. It wasn't particularly powerful because she wasn't using her dominant hand, but it was strong enough to stun him. He brought himself back to attention fast enough to block a roundhouse kick with his right arm, her leg raised high and aimed for his head. He twisted his arm around to catch her leg and stopped her from pulling it back to come at him again.

Instead of yielding, she shoved him back with her hands pushing on his chest, hard enough to send him falling back. She moved with him, using the momentum of her push to force the two rolling back on the ground. They wound up with Shin knocked flat on his back, Pai sitting on top of his stomach. She had another blade held to his throat.

He kept himself very still – part of him stunned speechless that she'd managed to get them in this position at all – and lifted his gaze from the disjointed reflection of his glowing red eye on the side of the blade. Oddly enough, he thought he caught a whiff of vanilla when the wind ruffled her hair around them. He looked up into her flat, dead eyes while she continued to stare down at him with her pale lips in a thin line.

They remained that way, locked in limbo, for a long moment. The leafless branches of the trees around them whipped and smacked against each other in an angry clamour as the wind blew through their bare expanses. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted cantankerously while searching for prey.

She cocked her head to the side in a curious move that was not reflected in her empty voice. "Why do you not use the knife you have at my back?"

Shin's hand tightened around the hilt of his tanto, pressed against Pai's hip.

"Should I?" he asked. Pulling out his tanto had been instinctual. He had it against Pai, could feel it pressing into her skin through her pyjamas – not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to keep her from moving freely – but there was no way he was actually going to use it against her. Not on her, not on Pai.

He hated it – he hated this strange situation that had his blade pressing close enough to her soft skin that he could feel it, could feel how easy it would be to sink the blade a little deeper and hurt her badly.

He hated it.

A puzzled frown brought her eyebrows down. She stared dumbly at him. "I am trying to kill you."

"Why?"

"Because you must die."

Ignoring the touch of ice drawing down his spine at the cold logic with which she spoke, he pressed on. "Why must I die?"

The confusion brimming in her eyes deepened. "B – because Ayakashi." She looked like she was desperately grasping at straws for anything that could justify why she was attacking him. "You – you – Hengen are a cancerous disease that must be cleansed from the world in order for humanity to survive."

The words she spoke sounded nothing like her. They were more like something she was reading out of a religious zealot's pamphlet than her own thoughts, her own reasoning. Pai didn't make a show of it, but she had her own mind, her own thoughts and opinions, and she wasn't easily swayed by ramblings.

Those were someone else's words – not hers.

You're too slow, Shinigami muttered darkly.

What the hell are you talking about? He snapped back, nettled by the presumptuous tone of Shinigami's voice. Do you know something?

Ask her who she is again.

Why?

Just do it again, you damnable moron. I want to know.

"Who are you?" he said, grumbling the words out irritably. He felt the blade kissing his throat ease only slightly as the black in Pai's left eye started to slowly melt away.

"I...I am...?" Her voice was sluggish. Her eyelids lowered slowly before she shook her head, snapping herself awake. Then her face twisted.

An expression of such profound grief crossed over eyes as her lips parted. A wordless cry broke out of her. Hearing it was like having his heart ripped out of his chest. His hand slackened around his tanto as she wavered, a small tremor running through her body. The karambit at his throat moved, and he tried not to wince at the sharp pain when it dug in deeper.

Tears shimmered in her eyes like sparks of light. She blinked again and a single tear wavered down the length of her eyelashes before falling down to splash on his cheek. Shin didn't understand the lance of pain he felt deep in his chest when he saw the anguished sorrow swimming in her eyes.

Slowly, he reached up with his free hand and cupped her cheek in his palm. She was ice-cold. Pai stared at him with her lips slightly parted, and remained totally unmoving as he ran his thumb under her eye, wiping away the track of tears falling down. She looked like she had no idea what to make of the fact that he was touching her.

"Pai," he murmured, voice low as he looked into her eyes. He could see his own reflection staring back at him. He could never have thought himself – the structure of his face, the set of his mouth and eyes – capable of such empathy and compassion. "Wake up."

She suddenly threw herself off of Shin's body, scrambling away as if terrified of him. Shin sat up as well, moving slowly so as not to inadvertently scare her into running away from him, as she looked ready to do. She moved back until her back hit the tree behind her, and then she put a hand out behind her for support as she pushed herself up. Her legs were shaking so much, he thought she needed the support just to remain standing.

She kept a hold of the black curved blade in her hand, grasping it so tight that her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were wide and frantic. She looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Pai opened her mouth to speak, but a strangled cry erupted out of her instead, and she gasped sharply, eyes squeezing shut. She opened them again and he stared, dumbfounded, as a bead of vermilion leaked from the corner of her eye to fall in a thin line down her cheek. Her eyes were rimmed in red as tears of blood fell down her face.

"So many," her voice was broken. "She won't let us out. I won't let us out. His game, his game, he will destroy them for what they did to her to us. I've lost it, we've lost count. We don't know any more how many I – "

Her body jerked, like she had been electrocuted by something invisible, something inside her. She went limp and slumped down, knees buckling. At the same moment, the weapon in her hands dissipated into dark smoke that curled up into the air in deceptively sensuous whorls that were blown away by a gust of winter wind.

Shin sprang forward just in time to catch her as she fell forward. Her head lolled against his chest as he lost balance when his foot landed awkwardly and he twisted to avoid injuring himself. They fell back on the ground again, Shin folding his arms over her to shield her body.

The snow provided a perfect bed to cushion their fall. Shin kept his eyes squeezed shut and held Pai close to him in the same way he had when he carried her from the warehouse after killing the Onihitokuchi. She was cold now as she was then, her body quaking with fine shivers. He opened his eyes when they landed, first one, then the other, before he looked down at Pai.

His eyes widened in astonishment. She was asleep – not just unconscious, but sleeping, with her eyes closed and her breath breezing out of her slow and deep. Her eyelashes were still against her cheeks, stained red, and her brow was pulled down in a tiny frown. Shin sat up slowly, careful not to rouse her, and put his back against the large tree as a support, cradling her in his arms.

She nestled closer to him, and he froze. She rubbed her cheek against his chest, a soft sigh escaping her parted lips. He could only move when she stopped, and his heart was pounding when he did.

Does she...think I'm a pillow?

She was just trying to kill you, Shinigami marvelled. And now she's sleeping?

She was sleepwalking, he shot back defensively.

The hell kind of sleepwalking is that? She was using power, Shin, you felt it. There's something – someone in her that's letting her to use Ayakashi powers. Either that or she's some type of new Onmyoji that don't need ofuda to use their powers. She sure as hell had no paper talismans with her.

Shin's lips tightened. He didn't know. He simply didn't know.

Kouta had a point when he said that they would've been able to tell if Pai was an Onmyoji. All anyone knew was that she was human. But what else could it have been? What else could have allowed her to use that kind of power when she was supposed to be an ordinary human being?

He wasn't even sure if she had been sleepwalking, or if what just happened was something else entirely. Did people talk when they were sleepwalking? Were they able to control their bodies enough to do what she had – load, aim, and fire a gun – while sleepwalking?

Even if they did, 'sleepwalking' couldn't explain away the emptiness of the black aura that surrounded Pai, clinging to her like a second skin. It didn't explain the way she created weapons – two karambit blades that might have just been the same one, and a katana – from thin air, and then have them disappear as easily and quickly as they had appeared.

It didn't explain the changes in her voice, the way she sounded like there was two of her inside one body. He recalled the utter sorrow and despair on her face, the insanity in her shrieking voice when she screamed out to somebody only she could hear and see.

Tsukimono, he asked, remembering the incredibly brief glimpse Shinigami had given him a few days ago of Pai standing over him with his Mask in her hands, and both eyes blacker than midnight. You said that she used tsukimono in the Torimaku.

No Ayakashi can use power like that, Shin. There was no derisiveness in Shinigami's voice. He sounded just as lost as Shin was, and angry at the confusion. That isn't of this world. We can only use what power this world gives us.

He frowned. How do you know that?

My name means death god, you fucking idiot. Shinigami snapped irritably. We are a death god – at least, we would be if not for that Mask. I know what Yomi's power is like.

Shin stilled. Yomi?

The single word explained everything and nothing.

That black thing, the void around her, is not her aura. It's –

Shinigami broke off – fading away as he abruptly receded, drawing back from Shin. He was about to call out to Shinigami again, to make him explain what he knew, make him finish what he was saying, but decided against it. His lips twitched in irritation and he glanced down at his Mask. It was times like these, when his True Ayakashi somehow knew more and he didn't, that he hated the Mask for its separation.

Sometimes he truly did hate it for keeping him broken in two halves, one murderous and the other always hollow and empty, and all he wanted to do was rip it to shreds. Because of the Mask, he didn't know if Shinigami was an entirely different being, separate from him, or if he was just a more literal manifestation of a dark part of Shin's soul that he wasn't even aware existed, if not for Shinigami's homicidal tendencies. Shin didn't know what and who he was with the Mask, split in two, or without it, the two moieties put together.

Who are we with him, who are we without him?

Lifting a hand cautiously, he lined it up against Pai's cheek and gently lifted her face to look at her properly. Her skin was cold to the touch. She had no obvious injuries. Her hair was messy, dirty with streaks of soil that patterned her face as well, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.

They were so close together now, with her lying on top of him and her bandaged hand curled against the skin of his chest just visible through the loosened yukata. He felt nothing of the emptiness that surrounded her mere moments ago.

But, when he let his senses flow out of him to touch her, he knew that there was something wrong with her. Her aura was returned back to its normal state, yet he could feel something laced into it, something so inexorably wrong. It was like the blackness had disappeared, yet left traces of itself embedded in her.

Slowly, he eased her back so that her head rested against his chest again. Almost unconsciously, he ran his hand down the back of her hair while his eyes sought out the ribbon she'd been wearing, and saw it lying on the ground a few feet from him. She hummed at his light petting, breathing in deep and letting it out, a small smile of contentment curling one side of her lips.

A tight knot of tension eased in his chest at the sound of her voice – the normalcy of it, the voice of the girl he knew. He stared down at her, sleeping on top of him for a while yet, wondering if everything that just happened was some sort of a fever dream. A wild, unexplainable dream that threw him off at every turn when he tried to come up with any sort of rational elucidation of what happened.

Shin tipped his head back on the tree behind him and stared up at the starless and empty night sky above him, Pai's head moving as his chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh.

"What am I going to do with you?" he sighed. His lips ticked up in a faint smile as he murmured under his breath, "Pai."