覚醒
Awakening
*hira hira* The flower petal butterflies flit and dance.
The moonlight shining through them is so bright, I have to squint my open eyes.
In the center of that light, the smile of that precious person flickers at me.
Yumei: Kei-chan, welcome back.
Kei: Ah...... Yumei-oneechan.
This is the place in the middle of the mountain, where the Shrine Tree of the Hashira Seal resides.
She must have required this tree's power to surpass the black shell, and carry her voice inside.
Kei: Onee-chan, thank you......
Yumei: More importantly, now you understand everything, right?
Kei: Yeah.
Kei: I have to thank Hakuka-chan... er, Kei-kun.
My elder twin brother, who showed me the truth and saved me from that nightmare.
When I closed off my consciousness, no doubt it was he who carried my body here.
Kei: I thought he'd woken up before me, though......
The one who regained consciousness first was me.
Kei-kun is laying flat, using the roots of the Shrine Tree as a pillow.
With the moonlight gathered there, his face is such a wan color, it looks like a corpse... His body isn't moving at all.
Kei: ......Kei-kun?
As I call out, his closed eyelids tremble.
(Kei): ......Hmph.
After warping the edges of his mouth and coughing out a sneer-like grunt, he slowly opens his eyes.
The color of their light is...
Kei: You're not...... Kei-kun?
It's not like we have some sort of twin telepathy, but I can tell.
(Kei): Feh heh heh!......
As he rouses his body, opening and closing his hand as if testing the timbre of an instrument, I feel none of the same nostalgia about him as with Yumei-oneechan and Kei-kun.
Rather, the presence he floats about him is much the same as I felt around Mikage-chan...
Coming to the same conclusion, Onee-chan comes to stand ahead of me.
His eyes brim with bloody red light as he glares back.
(Kei): It's been some time since I've exerted my reign over this body.
Yumei: ......Who are you?
(Kei): Without asking, as the Hashira of the Seal holding your foot over my tail, surely you would know.
(Kei): Can you not guess, by the nature of my power?
Yumei: Nushi's... wakemitama, correct? After possessing Hakuka-chan ten years ago, you murdered my uncle. (TN: Wakemitama - partitioned spirit. Another apt word would be "bunshin." An isolated portion of spirit separated from the whole.)
Nushi: Ahh, that man, was it? By the stock of the Nie no Chi, his blood was thin.
Nushi: Thanks to him, the power I gathered didn't suffice, and by the time I realized it, I had been pushed to the back again. In these ten years, I can count the number of times I've come to the surface.
Nushi: When the reign was flipped, time and again I searched for an opportunity, but couldn't gain the upper hand. As to be expected of one party to the blood that perpetuates this seal.
Nushi: It seems this foray will be longer than most... and I don't plan to let this chance go. In this time of freedom I'm allowed, I shall release my own body from bondage.
Yumei: Can I not ask you to sleep quietly?
Nushi: When I find myself put to sleep and awakened by a stranger's whim, I tend to get restless. Exactly whose words should I heed in this?
Yumei: I truly am deeply regretful of that. However...
Nushi: When sealed in a narrow space for over a thousand years, one can expect a measure of boredom.
Nushi lets a scattering Enju flower petal fall into his palm...
...and crushes it.
For a split second, a red electricity cracks through the openings of his balled fist.
Nushi: What's more, do you think anyone would pleasantly accept having their power chipped away year by year, however insignificant in scope?
The petal - now rendered ash - flutters to the ground.
Yumei: ............
Nushi: Further, now I can freely--- though not to that extent, perhaps... I have a body that moves, only one step away from removing the seal.
He presses his palm against the Shrine Tree.
He said one step, but if he does the same as he did to that petal before, it would probably be... the end.
However, doing nothing of the sort, Nushi leans his body against the great Enju Tree, and shifts his gaze in our direction.
Strangely, his posture is the exact same as Kei-kun when I first met him, but inside, he is the polar opposite.
Nushi: You think that I would obediently sleep, just because you told me?
Yumei: ............
In this length of silence, the flower petals fall quietly into piles on the ground.
Nushi watches the petals that steal the power from his true body beneath the tree, and break away, with an air of disinterest.
Yumei: ......In that case, what manner of deeds do you intend to perpetrate when you regain yourself as a god?
Nushi: Hmph... what, indeed......
Nushi: Perhaps a measure of vengeance is in order... against the sun gods who hounded we ancient ones as profligate oni gods. But, before that...
Nushi: First I would drink the Nie no Chi I failed to obtain back then, and restore my sapped power.
Kei: ---!?
Yumei: I will not allow that to happen!
As Yumei-oneechan stands in front of me, she throws her sleeves open wide to block his gaze as she declares...
Yumei: I will not let you spill a single drop of Kei-chan's blood!
Kei: Yumei-oneechan......
Yumei: And I will have you return Hakuka-chan's body, without fail.
Nushi: Oh?......
Nushi: As a successor, inferior to even the Hashira, can the likes of you stand against me?
Yumei: Facing you in your godhood, such a resistance would be doomed to fail, I am sure.
Yumei: However, as you are now... a wakemitama who merely slipped through the crack in the seal...
Yumei: ...I cannot lose.
The moonlight shines in her eyes.
Yumei: Much the same as the Ohashirasama Shrine Tree changes your power into the form of butterflies, and returns it to the great flow...
Yumei: As the wakemitama settled in Hakuka-chan's body... I will return your will to the void!
As she flutters her sleeves with a swing of her hands, a pale blue light rises from Onee-chan's body.
A strong wind begins to blow.
A blue wind that melts the moonlight.
They say a lone butterfly's flapping wings can circle the Earth to become a tornado.
That exact supposition is what happens now.
The wind rocks the Enju tree, sending the flowers yet to be scattered into a dancing frenzy.
*hira hira* ...The flower petals become a swarm of butterflies.
Before, the butterflies of light she used would meet and mutually extinguish the twin oni's power, but...
The swarm of butterflies crafted by these falling petals are no frail illusion. Uniting spirit and flesh into one, their strength is far greater than any butterfly made by light alone.
And their numbers...
...could well surpass hundreds.
Nushi: What the hell......!?
It's little surprise that even Nushi is taken aback.
Even the cloud of red power extending from his body is being blown away from the edges inward.
And...
The gigantic Enju, the rings of its base surpassing a thousand years, lets bloom a nearly inexhaustible multitude of white flowers from its outstretched branches.
Nushi: Khu!...... At this rate......
Pushing his palm to the Shrine Tree and gathering his power there, Nushi attempts to blast the seal to ashes and release his true body.
Scarlet electricity crackles.
A burn mark, the shape of his palm, is boldly carved into the trunk.
However, at that level of strength, the Shrine Tree is hardly swayed.
Instead, like a moth to the flame, at the most, he only manages to shake more petals loose from the branches above him.
Though harmless to me, each and every flower petal shaves away at Nushi's power like a razor.
Nushi: Ggh!......
Nushi makes a wide jump to his side, escaping the shadow of the Enju branches.
His eyes are turned in my direction.
If he drinks my blood and increases his power, he can gain an advantage over Onee-chan, and if he gets rid of her, there would be no obstacle to him removing the seal...
That is the intent I see, there.
Kicking at the earth, a half-turn.
As he dashes this way, his red power surging, his appearance is much like the fragment of a falling star, blazing with the heat of atmospheric friction...
The trail of power, stretching long and fiery through the darkness, is the very image of a great red serpent...
And meeting it...
...with her sleeves thrown wide and surrounded with blue light, Yumei-oneechan herself takes the semblance of a butterfly...
...as she meets him in a head-on clash.
Entities of massive power and power collide, and the wave of that clash washes over me.
The overwhelming flow of power even blows away the air, itself.
In that spot, all is swallowed by the light...
Not even sound exists there...
And unable to even take a breath...
I can merely wait for it to end.
The modest wind that touches my skin brings with it air and sound, and whisks away the enveloping white.
Kei: Hah...
I'm finally able to breathe again.
Kei: Yumei-oneechan...?
My vocal cords tremble, and the word I most wanted to speak falls out.
Is Yumei-oneechan all right? Is she safe?
In the place where she was standing moments before...
Nushi: Ggh......
Nushi, and...
Yumei: ............
...Yumei-oneechan are standing there.
Cloaked in a blue light, Onee-chan holds him wrapped in her arms.
Nushi: Khhahaha!....... Seems you weren't just talk, after all, successor of the Hashira. You taught me a good lesson, today.
From his body, a forlorn haze-like light hangs feebly in the air, slowly eroding into the night.
Nushi: Truly, it is as you say... even a successor can dispatch a lowly wakemitama.
He must not have the strength left to stand. Nushi - Kei-kun's body - slips down, falls to his knees, and finally collapses into the earth.
Yumei-oneechan has won.
Kei: All right! Yumei-oneechan, you're ama---
Nushi: However...
Kei: Eh---!?
Nushi: To think you'd dispatch yourself to do it... have you not mistaken your cause for the end?
Fretfully raising my eyes...
I see Yumei-oneechan's body, growing weaker.
The reason she didn't support Kei-kun's body... wasn't because it was physically difficult...
In other words, that is what it means.
Kei: Onee-chan! Yumei-oneechan!
As she threatens to plunge into a dark place, I run to her side.
I run to her, but...
Kei: ......Ah!
The beat of her life... grows farther away.
Yumei-oneechan's being... grows farther away.
ただ見ることっしかできなかったく
And I can do nothing but watch...
絶対にお姉ちゃんを助ける
I'm saving Onee-chan, no matter what!
Note: Depending on how much blood you have left, you may be sent down the right route automatically.