Heart in the Darkness

The streets of Tokyo were oppressive to Nagahisa, and not merely because it was the middle of the night.

He’d lived on them his entire life. He’d watched entire casts of cosplayers march down the street on his way to McDonald’s. He’d seen cheerful boy bands take over the nearby highway for an unscheduled performance. He’d admired the skyscrapers of Minato and the hotels of Shibuya. He’d met countless demons who called Tokyo home, and not all of them were bad.

And, of course, he’d snuck out of his room during Nike’s once-a-week rest, escaping from the colourful and clean confines of the retreat to come here willingly.

He knew his perception was warped. Yet he did not see with his eyes, but with his heart.

He stood on a far-flung street, facing an old and worn concrete building. It must have been built a long time ago, maybe even before Japan’s miraculous recovery from the war. It was not a beautiful building, its architecture certainly informed more by cost than anything else, but for many people, it was doubtless home. Nagahisa wished he could see it that way. That it was more beautiful on the inside, the way people were. But he just wasn’t capable, not anymore.

Behind him, there was a mesh fence that turned several corners, stretching across the property boundaries of several adjacent buildings, each one almost as old as the one in front of him. Dim orange light guttered from an old bulb hooked to the building to his left. It did little to dispel the darkness, instead creating a spotlight around which the shadows of the buildings seemed to gather.

“The things you can do now aren’t the only things you can ever do, you know,” said one of those many deep shadows.

“Who’s there!?” Nagahisa reached for the Angel Riser he didn’t have, and then spun, trembling and empty-handed… to face a broadly grinning girl with light green hair and a cute ruby red outfit. She didn’t quite look human, and yet… even though there was something ominous about her… it wasn’t oppressive.

“Just a friend,” the girl said. “You can call me Vivian. So, Nagahisa, what really brings you out here after hours?”

“Vivian?” Nagahisa pointed at her head. “What’s your family name? Takajou?”

“Taka… jo?” The girl calling herself Vivian showed her teeth in an enormous grin, even as she talked. “‘Jo’ as in girl? Or… no, that’s someone you know! Right! No, my last name is Mizuki.”

“How do you know Takajou is someone I know?” Nagahisa’s tone was incredulous, demanding. He didn’t lower his arm.

“Ahaha…” She quirked an eyebrow, and her grin changed just a little. But she didn’t seem nervous. “Call it a hunch?”

Nagahisa harrumphed. He leaned against the wire mesh fence that stood opposite the grey concrete building. He crossed his arms at Vivian and frowned.

She tilted her head, grinning almost cartoonishly.

How did Setsuna make this glaring thing work, Nagahisa wondered?

“I’m here to be alone,” Nagahisa said, without a hint of self-consciousness or hesitation. “Of course, you’re never alone in the world of demons. You’re probably not alone in the afterlife, either. So now is one of my only opportunities to be by myself.”

Vivian sat down on the ground across from him. She pulled her knees up against her chest, but her torso was tall enough to keep her face visible. Her grin did not diminish.

“There are people who’d like it very much if they had so few opportunities. Most people are somewhere in the middle. But, Nagahisa… Do you really want to be alone?”

Nagahisa paused. He opened his mouth, but closed it before a curse could escape. This was not the first time someone had asked Nagahisa the question. And yet every time, it had been hard to answer instantly, to have a snappy retort, to be confident. To be self-assured.

The other problem was that it was his mom who had asked this before.

“I…” He kept kicking up against the right words – he wasn’t even getting far enough to stumble. If he said he wanted to be alone, then like his mom, she might redouble her efforts to convince him to listen. Or… she might leave. He didn’t know which outcome he would prefer. In fact, he didn’t know if he liked either of those ideas.

So he fell silent. Vivian waited. A small gust blew up, and he thought he smelled the distant ocean.

“It’s one of the only ways to be safe. To be stable.”

“Safe for you, or safe for others?”

“Both. It’s… it’s obviously both, isn’t it?” Nagahisa asked. “I’m a selfish bastard, putting my family through this. And I’d do it again. Even though Setsuna… even though I hurt him. This isn’t the first time. It won’t be the last.”

Vivian’s grin widened. “How are you so sure you hurt Setsuna?”

Nagahisa threw up his arms to either side of him, scowling. His brow looked like a bolt of lightning as his face twisted in anger. “I STABBED him!”

“But you know he’ll be okay,” Vivian said. “Physically, he’ll be okay. Besides… It’s only in this single, physical world that those things truly matter. Don’t you think that you’re conflating that physical action… with the idea that you wounded his heart? And not the one that beats in his chest!”

Nagahisa curled both of his upturned hands into his fists. His knuckles grew white in moments. He stomped on the ground and turned sharply to look away from Vivian.

The girl waited, again.

“Fine.. it’s not the fact I stabbed him,” Nagahisa spoke in a low voice. “It’s because things with them… it’s because I made that stabbing happen.” He let out something between a chuckle and an early sob. “You can’t imagine how disappointed he must be in me.”

“Actually… I can.”

Nagahisa scoffed. “Who do you think you are? Hoshigami?” Then, his cheeks, already pale, went a little lighter as he stared into her golden eyes.

“I already told you, Nagahisa. I’m Vivian.” Releasing her grip on her knees, Vivian stood up. “Nagahisa… why don’t we go somewhere else to talk? I think it might be good for you.”

“I’m not a dog. You can’t trick me into thinking things are better because we walk two minutes to a different spot.”

“Well, pretend I’m a dog, then, and it’d make me feel better. I promise there’s almost no one else around right now.”

Nagahisa lifted his head again to meet her eyes as firmly as he could. He tried to look withering.

“If you break even that promise, I will never trust another word you say. Don’t think of this as low-risk.”

“Don’t worry! I’m not, either. All of the drunk salarymen are already on the last train home – you know that!”

Nagahisa narrowed his eyes slightly as she walked over and grabbed his hand. Rather than pulling away entirely, he waited for her to take her first few steps out of the alleyway, and then pushed past her, walking ahead in the direction she planned on going.

The concrete back wall of the apartment building vanished after just a dozen steps. First he saw power lines on that side, beneath the cloudless night sky. He focused on the road in front of him. The street was still narrow, but there was more wire mesh fence up ahead. It let him see a bit more of the city. This area was predominantly residential, and certainly a little old-timey. But it wasn’t far from…

Vivian came up beside him, grabbed his hand, and pulled him further along. This, Nagahisa told himself as she led him out of the back street, was why he didn’t care for people. You can’t even set the pace of your walk with them around. At least it wasn’t Elegy and Setsuna, circa five years ago, who would turn every family outing into track and field and race each other, leaving him a distant third.

He snapped out of his thoughts again.

Harajuku Station. Yes, that was the source of the old-timey feel in this neighbourhood. Tiny brown bricks held up white stucco walls with lattice windows that wouldn’t be out of place on a tiny western cottage. The off-blue roof was steeped and layered, tin on the bottom and what looked like thatch on top. It could be mistaken for a home if it weren’t so isolated – and if it didn’t have the ticket machine, the vending machines, and the way to the platform practically growing out of its left side.

The clock above the central entrance was analog, not digital. Its hands were hard to make out at night, but it looked like it was almost two o’ clock in the morning.

“See?” Vivian turned to him, having let go of his hand while he was distracted by his own thoughts, and clapped. “It’s a half-hour past the last train of the night. You’re fine to brood here, too. And isn’t it so much nicer?”

Nagahisa crossed his arms, trying to look unimpressed on purpose. “It’s not a shrine, but you know a lot of demons would love to hang out here after dark. How are you so convinced we’re alone?”

“Not alone, exactly, but there’s no one cruel or hostile or violent here. This is one of the safest places for you, Nagahisa!”

Nagahisa narrowed his eyes. “A demon is a demon, a human is a human, an angel is an angel. Every time I’ve tried to ignore that, every time I still ignore that, it further cloaks the world in darkness.” He spoke as if reciting a grand speech he’d made for himself, but it was somewhat passionless.

When he spoke again, it was less rehearsed. “Wait, come to think of it… you came out of the shadows, didn’t you?”

“Oops, busted!” Vivian giggled, putting a hand in front of her mouth that didn’t quite obscure her rows of giant, jovial teeth. Then she folded her hands together in front of her, like a schoolteacher standing in front of a new class. “But I hope you can believe me when I say I’m not like you imagine. Think of me as… the bogeyman that chases away other bogeymen. Most fairy tales don’t talk about us, because parents want to scare their children into behaving. But we really are there!”

It was true that Tsubomi had told some pretty extravagant stories, only to leave out details Nagahisa and his siblings discovered later. But that kernel of honesty wasn’t what had Nagahisa’s attention.

“So you’re a fairy?” he asked. “Great. For all I know, I’ve wandered into your trap already. I’d go back and check for mushroom rings if I thought it would do anything.”

“No, not a fairy!” Vivian looked slightly up, thinking, but quickly turned her amber eyes back to Nagahisa. “You should think of me as a Spectre. But one of the nicer ones, like Counting Sheep!”

Nagahisa looked away from her, off into the distance, at the night sky. The Spectres… demon clans were loose affiliations, but most fairies could be grouped among the Yoma or maybe the Oni. This Vivian had put herself in the ranks of Counting Sheep, Sandman, Nightmare… demons associated with sleep and the unconscious.

Symbolism and messages, as well. Yatagarasu was one Nagahisa remembered fighting alongside, though faintly…

Doppelgänger. He snapped his head back to look at her, as she tilted her head at his stern gaze.

She wasn’t wearing his face. Was she wearing some human’s face?

“You’re a doppelgänger,” Nagahisa pointed at her.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, noooo!” Vivian waved both of her hands as she approached him, rather than shrinking away as he’d hoped. “You had a reason to react the way you did at Nukemichi–”

“HOW do you KNOW about that!?” Nagahisa screamed.

Vivian inhaled gracefully, lowering her head and making herself just a little smaller, but through all of this, her smile did not fade. “That’s a good question, isn’t it, Nagahisa? A doppelgänger wouldn’t know these things, would she? You, Cool, and everyone else would have noticed one. So, what you just said about me… it can’t be true, can it?”

Nagahisa’s entire body shook. He closed his mouth, gritted his teeth. He lowered his arm, clenched his hand into a fist. Forcing his mind through the exercises he’d learned this past week, he stopped himself from hyperventilating, but his breath still wasn’t steady.

“Just tell me what you want,” he mumbled.

“I want to help you!” Vivian spread her arms. “Right now, you need someone to talk to, and I know you don’t have many options. Nagahisa… There are definitely times to be alone. But you can’t solve all of your problems with the same method. You… we need to explore.”

Nagahisa raised his head and blinked. That was a strange word to use, even before she put emphasis on it.

He looked uneasily from side to side, never taking both of his eyes off of Vivian. “Explore what?” He asked, against what he felt was his better judgment.

“This place,” Vivian said, holding out a hand towards the ticket machine. She paused almost imperceptibly before she followed up. “The train station is a good start. There won’t be too many people. You can dip your toes into going further out from your usual haunts.”

“Just like you, right?” Nagahisa snorted. “I didn’t ask you to start haunting me. Have you heard of consent?”

Vivian rubbed the side of her head, wiping away a bead of sweat as it formed. “Well… I don’t love to put it this way, but when there’s empty space, squatters will move in. All I’m doing is freshening up the space. Pretend you believe I’m benevolent for a second! Isn’t it better to keep worse tenants from moving in?”

Nagahisa closed his eyes so he couldn’t see her unsettlingly yellow eyes, her green hair, that cartoon smile. It took some effort to pretend he believed anyone short of his own retinue of demons was “benevolent,” and even that could be strained at times. But he knew that if he didn’t take her seriously, he would lead her in circles again.

Unfortunately, by accepting her premise, Nagahisa saw that Vivian had a point.

“Well, I can’t know if you’re a good tenant if I don’t even know you’ve moved in.”

“But you know now!”

Nagahisa exhaled through his nose. He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again.

It was true that many malicious spirits would just never announce themselves to Nagahisa, even at his most vulnerable. It was safer for them to slip into the old and worn cracks of a person’s heart, to let their soul bleed first, and only then devour the husk the victim became. Those low-life demons preyed on truly broken people, and Nagahisa wasn’t that. He couldn’t be that.

So Vivian was not the lowest of the low, like the Vetala who stole corpses or the Legion who could only possess a single human when grouped together. That could mean she was more benevolent... or it could mean she was smarter and stronger.

“So I’m your host,” Nagahisa said bitterly. “Fine. What do you expect we’ll see in the train station, then? Shouldn’t you know?”

“Fond memories, hopefully?” Vivian suggested. As she walked towards the train station, she passed under a streetlight, and illuminated by it she looked fully human. But when she passed the ticket machines, approaching the platform, it was like her feet were swallowed up by the shadows… or maybe part of them.

Nagahisa squared his shoulders and followed after her. At least she wasn’t pulling him along this time; he was lucid enough to make his own way. So he kept his distance, letting her go first.

It wasn’t as dark as he expected. Or, more accurately, it was dark — but only as dark as the platform should have been. He thought Vivian might have had a few friends waiting here, filling in the shadows, making it as dark as the bottomless cliffs of Makai. Or, if not Vivian’s friends, then one demon or another parading about.

The Harajuku Station platform was nothing fancy. It was exposed to the open air, with a small forest visible on the other side of the southbound tracks. It was as late at night now as it had been a moment ago, a relief to Nagahisa, so the only illumination was from the blue light cast by the digital map of the Yamanote line near the seats, but that was some. He hadn’t walked into some kind of shadowy trap.

“It’s a train station,” he said dourly.

“True, and the last train has already departed for the night!” Vivian agreed. “But look, I think I see a train coming now! Don’t you?” She pointed down the southbound tracks.

Nagahisa glanced over. He didn’t see a train. He saw the scars in the concrete, the dull light of the map, the cloudy night sky, the forest across the tracks, a bird flying up to its nest, a young girl grabbing a ball from beneath a tree, the gentle swaying of leaves in the wind… but no train.

Wait, there it was. It looked just as old and faded as the easily overlooked parts of the station, maybe even more so. That struck him as odd. What kind of person, Nagahisa thought, wouldn’t do a double take at a less than spotless train in Tokyo?

Apparently, Vivian was one of them. “Come on, we should board!”

Nagahisa had a special pass, so that wouldn’t be a problem, but the fact this train came at two o’ clock in the morning was, to him, a potential problem. “And go where, exactly?”

“Elsewhere in the city!”

“I need to stay near here. I have to be back at the retreat… soon.”

Vivian turned and grinned, seizing on his hesitation like an eagle snatching a rabbit. “‘Soon’ is subjective! I doubt anyone will notice if you’re back before your scheduled wake-up time.”

She was correct. No one had, so far, and he’d snuck out two times before this.

“You’re sure it stays within the city?”

“Where else would it go, silly? You wouldn’t be wondering if a Tokyo train can leave Tokyo normally, would you?”

Nagahisa wanted to retort that she was anything but normal, and he wasn’t as normal as he might like, and the train running at two o’ clock in the morning was definitely not normal, but he felt like it would all fall on deaf ears, and he wanted to save that protesting energy for the adults in his life like Nike or his mother.

So instead he dug his pass out of his pocket and silently boarded the train.

To be continued…