black king

The cold metal case feels like it weighs a hundred pounds in her arms, but she keeps her grip on it as she steps out into the cool morning sunlight bathing the roof; her eyes burn and her vision blurs, trying to adjust from the dim light of the warehouse and the stairwell, trying to soothe the pain with tears that her tear ducts can’t manage to produce. Her eyes aren’t bleeding yet, at least. She still has a few minutes. A few minutes are all she needs.

Her knees give out the moment she’s on solid concrete, but she hardly registers that pain compared to the rest. No injury is going to matter in a few minutes, when the toxin she knows to be ravaging her internal organs at this very moment finally begins to shut down her brain. All she has left is single-minded purpose: get into the case and disarm the bomb, or hundreds of innocent people, civilians, children, are going to die the horrible death that awaits her.

And four digits are all that stand in her way.

If Aunt Hanae picked a random number, I’m going to die for nothing.

There’s no time to brute force it. There’s only seconds left on the timer.

After all these years, she still wore the locket. She never forgot. Even after Father cast her aside, even after she sold him out, she mourned his death.

That was the day everything started.

Shiori grits her teeth and punches in 1-0-1-7.

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Open.

The lock releases, and she lets out a sigh of relief that feels like needles pressing into her lungs as she fumbles to open the case. The timer ticks down ten seconds, and hundreds of Necrosis capsules glimmer up at her like tiny, golden eyes.

The bomb itself isn’t connected to anything, no wires to cut, no more locks to break, and she could just cry when it pops out of its casing easily in her hands—finally, in this final moment, it’s easy—and she forces herself to her feet. It takes every ounce of strength she has—and a bit more—to even make it to the railing, but she hurls the bomb over the edge right as the timer ticks out its last few seconds and throws herself to the concrete, shielding the canister of Necrosis from the shockwave with her body until it passes.

There’s no telltale sickly sweet smell in the air. The glass doesn’t so much as crack.

And with heaving breaths, any one of which could be her last, Shiori rolls onto her back and laughs.

“It’s game over,” she says, even knowing no one’s listening. Maybe someone saw the explosion. Maybe there’ll be some conspiracy theories about it for people who live to see tomorrow will wonder about. But no one’s going to know the truth. The game is over, and no one even knows they were playing.

But she won. She saved everyone. For once in her life, she was the good guy like she always wanted to be when she was a little girl. All those hundreds of people down below will go on and live and laugh and love and because of her, no one’s life is going to be taken today but hers.

Well—there’s a familiar looking black blur in the middle of her field of vision, so maybe someone was listening after all.

“For you to choose death for the sake of strangers…” Sebastian’s never been easy to read, but he’s more inscrutable than ever. Shiori can’t tell if he’s disappointed or amused. “That said, you have saved me some hassle. Now I can take your soul.”

That just makes her laugh again, a pitiful wheeze of a sound that makes her whole chest ache.

“Oh well,” she says. Somehow, she thought when the end came, she’d be more frightened. She thought she’d have more regrets. But—it’s her cursed life against so many others. No more selfish pride. No more debt to Sebastian. It’s fine. It’s all fine. “This is the path I chose.”

She chose not to run and leave others to die so she could take the easy way out. She chose to do the right thing. She doesn’t regret it, she thinks. She’ll be alright.

“Lying to yourself and acting tough now?” Sebastian scoffs. “Dying without fulfilling your goal… what a pathetic master you’ve turned out to be.”

His face finally comes into proper focus, twisted into a smile so forced that Shiori can’t stop herself before she’s laughing again. That’s not the face of a demon savoring the last pitiful agony of his prey, disappointed at an early end. It’s a terribly human face. A man trying to laugh in the face of something that causes him pain.

He feels bad for me. Now, when it’s all over. He knew he couldn’t stop me, and he—

“You’re lying to yourself too, aren’t you?”

She squints her eyes to try and keep his face in focus—and sees the way his smile vanishes, the twitch in his cheek as he tilts his head down toward her.

“You wanted to see for yourself—” It hurts to talk. It hurts to keep her eyes open. But he’s looking at her, really looking at her now, like in the last moments of her life she’s being allowed to catch a glimpse of who he really is. Or maybe she’s just delirious. “—what sort of person would throw away their life to save everyone else.”

She can see Sebastian swallow, his brow furrowed. It’s been ten years, and she’s never seen him look… perturbed like this.

“Somehow… you still have hope in the good of mankind,” she says. You were testing me, weren’t you? You could have forced me to leave the bomb and taken me to safety. But you just had to know what I would do, if you gave me the chance. “That’s the real reason you’ve stayed in this world all this time, isn’t it?”

“No.” All that put-on scorn is gone from Sebastian’s voice, leaving just—this. Hollow. Resigned. She’s never heard him like this. “Driven by one’s own greed—for money, for power—not even murder is too horrible a crime. That is the ‘mankind’ I know.”

And you were just waiting for someone to prove you wrong, Shiori thinks, smiling wider than she has in a decade. Sorry I couldn’t have been a better person. Sorry I couldn’t do that for you sooner. I’m just as bad as the rest of them, greedy and vengeful and dishonest, so don’t look at me like that. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.

But you don’t want it to end like this, do you?

Her vision’s starting to go gray around the edges, but she keeps her eyes on him.

What are you going to do, Sebastian?

“You know—I heard a story, once, that demons used to be angels.” Supposedly when you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. Maybe that’s why she’s thinking of it now. Father telling her bedtime stories, about their family, about their “curse”, the guardian angel that calls himself a demon. Mother, Father… I won’t see you in Hell, you know. I’m sorry I let you down. Sebastian blinks, looks like he wants to say something—but he doesn’t. He just clenches his jaw and looks so human, and she wants to joke about his stupid face having to be the last thing she ever sees, but if it’s like this maybe that isn’t that bad. “Their expectations of humanity were just too high, and they were cast out of Heaven into Hell, to become demons.”

Sebastian doesn’t say anything. She can barely see anything anymore, and she’d just wasted her energy prattling on about a fairy tale.

“Well—” She laughs again, shaking her head even as that makes her vision swim and her head throb. “—it’s just a story, anyway.”

The pain starts to fade as everything goes black. With a smile on her face, she closes her eyes.

...And opens them to Sebastian’s knee pressing against her back and his hand tight on her wounded shoulder and a self-satisfied smile on his face.

Her lips are tingling, and she can taste something bitter and she knows what it is before she even wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and sees red—but she still pulls herself out of his arms and asks “what did you do?” like there’s any mystery to it.

“I gave you the antidote.” And Sebastian’s back to his usual self, smug and haughtily amused, like this was all a game, a bad dream.

“Why?” She has to ask—she has to hear what he says, she can’t leave herself to guess. “You dind’t have to save me.”

“Where would the fun have been in taking your soul now?” He smirks, raises his eyebrows—animated and above it all again. “If I let your soul steep in darkness a bit longer, I’ll be able to savor a taste darker and richer than any other.”

It’s a typical answer. She almost believes it.

Until his smirk turns into an almost wistful smile, and he looks away, like he can’t meet her eyes any longer. And, in baffled silence, she thinks to herself—that’s the first time you’ve ever lied to my face, isn’t it?

Blinking, Shiori reaches out and touches Sebastian’s arm with the tips of her fingers—a small, hesitant gesture that she knows is unlike her even as she does it.

“Sebastian.”

“What is it, young master?” When he turns back to look at her, he looks just the same as normal. Just a game. Just a dream. Nothing’s changed.

Except everything has, hasn’t it?

Shiori takes a breath, and swallows a dozen questions she’s not sure she’ll ever be ready for the answers to. Suddenly, she feels very, very tired.