Chapter Six

I awoke to what would be the worst day of my entire life.

It was probably the worst day of Reimu’s and Marisa’s lives, too.

I can never excuse the things I’ve done. I can only describe them.

---

I rested well, for as long as it lasted. Sleep must have kept me through the night, because dawn’s gray light came in through the little circular window of Chen’s house.

It wasn’t the light that woke me, but Chen herself. She had crawled across the room, grabbed me and shook me.

“Sakuya!” she hissed. “One of the traps just caught someone!”

“Hu... what?” I said, struggling to wake up.

“It’s humans! More than one, I think. We’re being attacked!”

Chen scooted over to the door and yanked it open. A blast of cold air came in, which I could feel even through my warming spell.

“I gotta go!” she said. “Stay here if you want to be safe.”

She hopped through the front door, out into the clearing, and hit the ground running. The door fell shut behind her.

I sat up, trying to understand what was happening.

One of Chen’s traps had been triggered, by humans. More than one human.

My insides seized. My eyes opened wide with horror.

I untangled myself from my cloak and coat, and ran outside without them.

---

As soon as I was outside, I shifted. I couldn’t let any more time pass. It might already be too late.

With the world frozen, I sprinted across the mostly-empty woodland plot that Chen wanted to turn into a youkai village.

I ducked into the entry tunnel and ran past the bamboo spears, visible from further away now with daylight coming on. If I hadn’t stopped time, those spears would shoot into me without Chen to escort me through.

Through the end of the tunnel, out into the open space of the woods. I stood up straight. To my right, I saw my fears confirmed. Three people were locked in a portrait of violence.

It was Marisa who had triggered one of Mayohiga’s exterior traps, maybe put her foot somewhere it didn’t belong. A bamboo pike stood up from the ground at an angle, impaling her through the lower back. Blood had soaked through her clothes. A few drops colored the snow beneath her. She held one hand over her mouth, holding in a scream. Her other hand was behind her, as if reaching to feel the thing that had skewered her.

Reimu was nearby. She might have been trying to help her injured friend, but Chen had jumped her. The youkai girl must have tackled Reimu and knocked her to the ground. She sat atop Reimu now, using the claw-like nails of her left hand to shred the flesh of Reimu’s neck. More blood stained the snow there.

One of Reimu’s hands was in a white-knuckle grip around Chen’s wrist, trying to get those deadly claws away from her neck. Reimu’s other hand held my throwing knife, and had already stabbed Chen in the side. It looked as if the blade cut cleanly in between Chen’s ribs. Youkai blood stained Chen’s dress at the wound.

---

I was stunned, terrified, trembling. My mind raced.

“What can I do?” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”

I couldn’t hold shift much longer. A headache was already starting to creep into my temples. The instant I let time resume, these three girls would feel their injuries, and would act in panic. I was struggling not to panic, myself.

“Damn it!” I spat.

I walked further away from Mayohiga’s wall, meaning to keep from triggering any more of Chen’s traps. Here I was about two paces away from where Chen sat on Reimu, and another three paces from where Marisa had been pinned.

I had only one choice. I had to let shift go, and then try to separate Chen and Reimu. Marisa might be lethally wounded, but we could only try to help her after the fighting stopped.

The headache was getting worse. I took a deep breath, tried to focus, and let the shift go.

---

“Chen!” I yelled, diving toward them.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to pull Chen off of Reimu. Chen was already moving, yowling in pain at the stab wound in her side. Reimu kept hold of the knife so that it yanked free of Chen’s flesh, wrenching another shrieking cry from the youkai girl. Chen rolled to the side, kicked herself back across the ground, then was up and moving.

Chen touched her wound, but flinched and yelped at the pain. She ran like a frenzied animal, off into the woods, fleeing the three bigger people who might do her more harm.

I was about to call after her. My breath caught in my throat as Reimu sat up, swung her arm around, and stabbed the knife into my left thigh. It was about the same place I had struck her upon our first meeting.

I reacted the same way she had. At first, I didn’t realize I had been hurt. Then my knees grew weak. Then came the pain, the toe-curling agony worse than any I had ever experienced.

A dry thought flashed over my mind: So that’s what it feels like.

I fell to my butt. My bare hands dug into the snow and dead leaves, keeping my upper body from flopping back against the ground.

“I knew it!” yelled Reimu, standing up before me. “I knew we couldn’t trust you! You tricked us into being a meal for your sick youkai friends!”

She held one hand against her neck, blood leaking out from between her fingers. Her face was twisted in an awful grimace.

Behind her, Marisa struggled in vain on her bamboo spike. Her legs could barely hold her upright – but if her legs failed, her entire weight would be supported on the foreign object stabbed through her back. Her face was wet with tears, and her every wheezing breath implied a scream that she was too weak to let out.

“N-no!” I stammered as my body quaked against the knife in my leg. “I didn’t—”

“Shut up!” Reimu screeched at me. With her free hand, she pulled a spellcard from her pocket. She held it up, and took in a deep breath.

She never spoke the incantation.

---

Logically, I know what happened next, but it never seemed like that in my memory.

I must have duplicated a knife off the one in my leg, because a second was suddenly in my hand. It still hurt as if I had pulled the knife out, even though the original was still embedded in the meat of my thigh.

I must have thrown the copied knife, because no one else could have thrown it so accurately. With perfect alignment, the blade cut in between Reimu’s fingers, and pinned her windpipe to the bones in her neck.

Marisa saw this and, with whatever strength she had left, pulled out her hakkero and drew in a breath to shout “Love sign!” I must have duplicated and thrown another knife, because it struck Marisa with the same effect as her friend.

It doesn’t feel as if I did any of those things. It feels like evil deeds from earlier in life took control, moving my body like a marionette.

---

That was how, a while later, I became aware of myself again.

Chen was gone, having fled off into the woods somewhere.

Reimu lay face up on the snow, eyes wide to the bare branches above, hand pinned to her neck with one of my knives. She wasn’t breathing.

Marisa hung limp from the bamboo spike, her weight bowing it down. Her arms hung forward so that her hands brushed the ground. She wasn’t breathing either.

There I sat, with a knife in my leg, the wound repeatedly welling with blood that soaked into my dress.

There was blood everywhere.