#chapter28

You were the first to pull yourself upright, harsh breaths slithering out of your protesting lungs as you gasped and wheezed into a kneeling position. Your head felt like a merry-go-round, twirling and spinning in the time it took to find even an ounce of clarity. Steadiness was a gift you cherished once it arrived, putting a hand to your temple and wincing at the remaining headache that throbbed there as you took in your surroundings. It was…strange. Not Lady Ana’s estate anymore, but then again was that surprising considering the circumstances? No, this was more what you expected now knowing that the hunted mononoke had finally made its appearance to you and the Medicine Seller. A grandiose theatre sprawled out before you, elegant paintings of past wars, gods, and demons lining the ceiling in a mirage of colors, shapes, and bodies. There ornate gold trimmings lined every inch, curving flowers, diving swans, cranes that reared back their long, elegant necks back and the occasional woodland creature. Seats lined the sloped floor below, each plush, dark red in color and made of carved, dark woods where they transitioned to benches under the fabric.

There, bodies sat, poised and still.

The crowd was an alarming addition, to say the least. Your body jolted at how many eyes were on you, each blank and empty, devoid of emotion from head to head, face to face. Men, women, everything in between, at least forty or so people there in the front row seats, dressed in the clothes one might expect to see at a fine function, or a festival. There were a few faces you were coming to recognize there in the dim lighting, feeling your heart start to beat faster at the sight of them. In the front row, where the stage view was at its best, sat Mai, Ren, Hana, Sota, and the Medicine Seller. All looked like they were just coming back into consciousness, the only animated members of the crowd at all, heads tilting up with echoed expressions of confusion and terror. The swordsman was the only one who appeared unsurprised, his pale eyes slowly opening and a frown spreading on his lips. You saw him try to get up from his seat, teeth grit as his gaze darted to where his arms seemed glued to the armrests. Threads, you realized—marionnete strings kept them firmly planted in place. The only good news was the sight of his sword still clutched in one hand, its eyes rolling around and looking at the room, at you, and at its master in obvious worry.

That left the stage. A large, open space with yawning darkness for its back area and huge, blood red curtains pinned up to the ceiling in great, curling rivets. If they fell, it looked heavy enough to crush a man, or at least break a few bones. There with you on the wooden platform were Lady Tomoko, her husband Michael, Lady Ana and her husband Hideki. All of you were sitting up at that time, exchanging confused and wary glances, Mai’s father the first to drag himself to a standing position like a shaking, newborn deer.

“What the devil is this place…?!” He snapped, glaring at you as if it was your fault, fists clenching at both sides and face turning red. “What manner of madness have you brought to us now…?!”

You matched his glare with an even fiercer one, pulling yourself upwards with every ounce of strength you had left and looking out at the crowd where the Medicine Seller struggled to be free, taking in his surroundings with a cold calculation you recognized as his focus. Your eyes met there, pausing his motions, a thousand things reflected there as his lips pulled back from his teeth at Michael’s towering stance next to you.

“I think the honors for this haunting go to Lady Ana and her family,” You responded dryly to Michael, looking for a safe place to hop off the stage and providing his aggressions no attention. “We just happened to be here, how lucky for you.”

You tried to step a foot off onto the ground below, grunting when an invisible force pushed you backwards onto the stage. Landing on your rear certainly hurt, but it answered a question you were asking, which was the possibility of leaving the stage. Answer? No possibility. After all, Emi had told you the crowd was made up of three parts—the stage victims, the audience, and the witness. Which meant you had some part to play in all of this, sins of some kind this mononoke considered you a monster for, and deserving of punishment. You had some guesses as to your crimes, the major one being Shou’s murder despite it being in self defense. The very thought made you sigh, but it was unimportant compared to a missing element Emi had mentioned.

The witness.

You looked up at the box seats, wondering who had been chosen to sit up there and place unwilling judgement upon you all. But no one was there, each and every one of the boxes starkly empty and devoid of life. Everyone at the dining table was here, save for the servants who seemed to leave at the correct time to avoid getting sucked up into a different little pocket space. 

Which left questions that needed answering. Again.

“Priestess…!” The Medicine Seller’s voice rose in alarm at the sight of you being knocked back to the stage, his yellow eyes wide as he watched you rise again with a wince marring your face. “Are you alright?”

Mai and Ren were awake now at his side, your friend looking at you and her family on stage in pure horror as she too struggled to rise, her voice overlapping with the Medicine Seller’s as she cried up to you, “Y/N, what’s happening…?!”

To many questions at once. Your head was throbbing now, the mononoke’s energy encompassing the space like a loud, humming cocoon of sound and vibration. It took any available willpower not to curl into a ball and cover your ears, wishing to the gods that there was a way to cease the white noise but without options. You looked at the two of them with a pained expression, struggling to find a proper response when a rough hand grabbed your shoulder by the yukata fabric, yanking you violently onto your feet with a half choked cry of alarm. The collar dug into your neck, harsh and heavy with the addition of your body weight hanging from it. You tried to dig your nails into the hand that held it, hearing shouts from the crowd, and from the people around you on the stage as you were wretched up into the air.

“Stop it, Michael…!” Lady Tomoko snarled, fiercer than you had ever heard her as she managed to rise from the floor, shoving her husband away from you just as he began shouting, your feet unsteady when you landed back onto the floor and heartbeat in your throat.

“Everywhere she goes, this nonsense follows…!” Michael screamed at her, his voice a fierce bellow that echoed through the theater in waves of sound. His aggression was now pointed at her, a sight that made your blood boil as he grabbed the woman by the front of her yukata and hissed. “I put up with her and her mother’s presence for far too long, I coddled you and your tearful requests to aid them…! Thrice now this danger has come to our family, and I’m not having it…!”

He tried to shove past her and lunge for you, your eyes wide with alarm at the freight train of male anger and violence that threatened to hurt you. Mai screamed from her seat, Ren’s accompanying shouts at her father falling on deaf ears as his clawed hands tried to grab you again, this time with intent to do some damage. But you watched his body lurch, dangling from invisible strings that snapped to life mere inches away from your face. He was yanked firmly backwards, snarling as he was hoisted up in the air like a puppet on a control board, his face still animated but his body entirely not his anymore. Limbs held askew, head forced upright, eyes staring wildly at the people watching in horror below as hot breaths of air gusted out of his nose like an angry bull. But there was no missing the terror there in his irises, the hot blooded fear that pounded in his veins like a tidal wave of roaring panic. Michael was a man who liked control, and in that moment he had never been so devoid of it, so utterly captured in the whims of another.

Lady Ana was shaking next to her husband, a scream leaving her throat when she was hoisted too, then Hideki, then Lady Tomoko. You were the only one left on the ground, but the strings were there, ghosting over each limb and finger as if stuck to your joints like glue. It was an unwelcome and uncomfortable situation, but you couldn’t look away from the bodies dangling above, mind spinning as you tried to think of a solution that wouldn’t involve them getting killed, or earning the ire of the mononoke. 

This was getting out of hand, and you were running out of time before the process of pain and punishment would begin. The dire nature of the situation had scattered both you and the swordsman, but you could regain focus if proper attempts were made. You had to believe that, had to screw your head back on before any of these innocent people died, or were made permanent, numb members of the glassy eyed audience. You wondered which of them were Emi’s parents, sitting there like dolls with no facial expressions, no way to speak.

It didn’t matter. Not yet. 

“We need its form, truth, and reason,” You spoke aloud, head turning to look at the Medicine Seller as he struggled hard against his binds. The sight of blood starting to form on his arms had you running to the edge of the stage, snapping loudly to get his attention. “Medicine Seller…! Listen to me…!”

There was an anger in his yellow irises that surprised you, and a level of panic that was completely foreign to his usual nature. You couldn’t recall a moment you had seen him this unhinged, his expression a fierce snarl and his sharp nails digging rivets into the armrests, and the hilt of the sacred sword. Its eyes rolled and teeth chattered anxiously at the pressure, looking up at you as if begging silently for the gap between you and the Medicine Seller to be closed.

“You were—” His voice was a deep, guttural hiss, eyes ablaze where they met yours in the distance that spanned between you, but your words cut him off.

“I need you to focus,” You wished your response was steadier, less shaky, less fearful as you crouched on the stage to get at his eye level. Hoping that you both could maintain calm together, to solve this even in such a dire situation. The trigram’s straining froze, breaths still pushing hard through his teeth as you added softly. “I will be alright, I promise. Right now, I need you to do what you can to help me figure this out, and I’ll get you out of those strings. Got it?”

The Medicine Seller seemed uncertain, his gaze travelling quickly around the room to gather information but not seeing a solution. It was the most uneasy he had appeared, a level of fear that you didn’t quite understand the source of. There was utter loathing in his eyes as they gazed at Michael up in the air, the man still snarling and huffing at the strings that held him aloft, Lady Ana sobbing and pleading for her life already and her husband utterly silent. Resigned, you assumed. Below, Mai and Ren were trying to calm themselves down, your friend gazing at you with fear and worry weighing in equal parts, tears rolling down her cheeks as she ignored the shouted words of her enraged father.

“W-we will help,” Mai hiccupped, the Medicine Seller’s head turning to her in surprise and his yellow eyes widening slightly. “I trust you, Y/N. I know you’ll get us out of this, a-and…and it isn’t your fault…!” 

Ren nodded vigorously, looking up at you as well with equally earnest eyes and a steadiness that shocked you. Judging his character in times of stress was a new thing, but he seemed more solid than a boulder, keeping himself strong to give Mai a place to lean on. 

He was her anchor, as the Medicine Seller was yours.

“We will do what we can,” Ren smiled at the Medicine Seller, jerking his chin in your direction and barking commands like he had been doing it his whole life. “Do as she asks, trust her. I don’t know all  the details of the past, but if you two could figure out a monster oarfish in a flooded hotel, you can do this…!”

The Medicine Seller had always been in control before this. The conductor of music you could never understand, his place in the world decided and his purpose like that of a flowing stream. To be put in a situation where he could not raise his sword, could not move to protect you was not a comfortable one. That you knew, could understand. This was his job, his purpose, but now you were in the passenger seat of a wagon that had no one holding the reins, expected to get yourself out of it with nothing but your skills as a priestess. It had to be enough, it would be enough.

Those pretty lips of his pulled back over his sharp teeth, brow furrowed and eyes fierce as acceptance was forced upon him. You knew not what drove his fears to such lengths, but he resigned himself to sitting back in the seat, his claws still dug into the rich, dark red fabric and irises still wide with concern.

“His truth should be that Theo himself is the mononoke in some way,” The Medicine Seller replied to you, his eyes darting to where the sword trembled in his grasp. “But the sword doesn’t respond. There is an element we are missing, something not yet revealed…!” 

You opened your mouth to reply, wracking your brain for any details you had missed that would correlate with what the victims had already told you. But music started to ring out from a location you couldn’t see, loud and filled with brass as your hands shot up to cover your ears. Just then, the audience started clapping all at once, even those from your group raising their hands against their will and applauding like polite visitors to a show, each of them looking alarmed at this sudden change. Ren’s parents were starting to come to now, appearing frightened and bewildered as their son tried to soothe them, to provide some reassurance that not even he could fully believe in. His blind faith in you was kind, but things were just starting to amp up, and you had to be ready for whatever nonsense this particular mononoke could pull. Images of the blood, bodies, and gore you had seen at the previous locations flashed through your mind, and sweat shivered down your back in small rivets, freezing cold as you rose to your feet in a calm act of defiance. 

You didn’t see Theo appear, nor his little puppet. But the marionette’s voice rang out clear as a bell from above, your eyes instinctively rising to the top of the stage but seeing nothing in the darkness of the catwalk. 

“Thank you for joining us for today’s production…!” Such a grating sound, high pitched and exaggerated like a character in a stage play. Your jaw tightened at the intensity, stepping back to the very edge of the stage and trying to pinpoint where the continued introduction originated from. “What is this show about, you ask? Well, this is a show about sin—about the faithless acts of cruel, violent humans! And the punishment that is dealt henceforth for their crimes!” 

Of course it was. You resisted a sigh despite how your heart raced in your chest, opening your mouth to shout out to the creature in an echoing, eerie bellow.

“Enough of this, Theo…!” Your words carried to the very back of the theater, where darkness spread like curling, coiling fingers out of invisible entrances and exits. If any existed in the first place. “Why are you doing this?!” 

No answer came, the silence stretching out after your shout like a thin sheet of snow muffling any and all noise. Even Michael who struggled above went quiet, as did the sobbing Lady Ana. You froze as your thudding pulse became the only thing in your ears, added to only by the music of spiritual energy that thrummed loudly, pulsing, screaming to life. 

Things began to move and shift all around, a whirlwind of light and sound that had you stumbling back against the invisible barrier around the stage with a gasp. Stage props began to descend from above, made of wood, paper and metal as the bodies above were wretched wildly about the stage. A house was formed, a familiar manor front with a pond full of fake koi fish, mechanisms clanking and whirling loudly as each piece fit into place, faking the movement of the trees and animals in simple, back and forth motions. Your eyes widened at how quickly the scene manifested, the lights lowering to the stage itself, turning into hues of light orange and pink as Lady Tomoko and Michael were lowered down, both looking terrified as they squinted at the bright light in confusion. 

“Tonight’s performance requires a guest actress,” The voice announced, more clanking and whirling sounding from above as another body was quickly lowered down. “Please give a warm welcome to tonight's woeful victim—Kiyomi!” 

That wasn’t—

Your heart felt ready to splinter in your chest as the mannequin marionette was lowered between Michael and Tomoko, dining a kimono of soft, pink flowers with a dark green sash, her hair pinned in billowing waves atop her head. It looked like your mother, as close as a puppet could, its eyes half opened with the same sweeping lashes you had once watched caught the sunlight during a nice summer’s day. Your legs shook at the sight, heart hammering so fast you wondered if your chest would crack open, allowing it out to scream into the crackling, whirling sounds like a choir of denial. Why was your mother being included in this, what was going on? Even worse was how Michael and Tomoko reacted, your mother’s friend weeping openly at the sight of her, and Mai’s father purposely looking away with a look of alarm that had dread firmly making its home in your gut. Nausea bloomed, threatening to overflow in such a profound swirl that you had to physically put a hand to your mouth to hold it back.

“M…mom…?” Your whisper was entirely involuntary, dragging itself out of your throat as a fearful little whimper. Like you were a child again, staring at the woman you so desperately missed with tears burning the edges of your vision. 

“Stop…!” The Medicine Seller shouted from the crowd, his voice taking on a desperate edge, so profoundly strong that you wanted to look at him, truly you did. But your eyes were trapped on your mother, unable to drag away as the trigram continued to snarl. “Face me, mononoke…! Leave her out of this…!” 

Why did he sound like that? 

The scene was finally laid out at this point, the visage shimmering and shifting like it played out on a long, scrolling piece of parchment. The expressions of Michael and Tomoko faded, lost to their roles now as the mononoke took over, moving about the stage and moving as if they were naturally playing themselves as stage actors, every action narrated by the invisible voice that echoed out from all around. It seemed to seep from every corner of the theater, digging into the very marrow of your bones as the scene filled you like a cup overflowing. With it the vision began, swallowing you down into it until it felt like you were standing in the very memory itself. Not on the stage anymore, not in the play. 

Inside the past, playing out in such clarity you could have been standing there where your mother once stood.

You could feel grass under your feet, a breeze on your skin. The night air felt warm and sticky, smelling of festival food cooking and the dampness of wet tree leaves. You stood outside, in the night, eyes not looking where you wished and completely outside of your control. Sweeping over the landscape, taking in the familiar visage of Mai’s family home, the outer gardens, the gazebo area that you and your friend had spent so much time playing in. The windchimes still swayed where they always had, the babbling sound of the koi pond a trickle in the back of your ears. You couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t blink your eyes. Even in that unfamiliar space, the narrating voice of the mononoke could be heard, echoing as if it spoke into the very recesses of your mind.

“Ladies Tomoko and Kiyomi grew up together in the neighboring estates of their hometown,” Two girls came running across the yard as they spoke, squealing and laughing as one of them accidentally plunked one foot in the pond. They looked real, not like the marionette of your mother, or Tomoko as an adult. Two teenagers, having fun, yukata’s pinned up to give their legs some much needed air. “They were like sisters, those two. Hand in hand from the moment they could walk, two halves of one unit that swore they would share lives together until they were old and grey.”

The scene shifted, like paint smearing on a canvas until it formed a new, unfamiliar image. Your mother was alone now in an elegant looking room, older in age and carrying herself with a maturity her younger self lacked. She must have been sixteen or seventeen at least, dressed in a kimono, her face delicately beautiful in makeup and eyes staring out of an open paper door to the rolling waves of the sea. You didn’t recognize this version of her—eyes bright, unburdened by sadness, lacking the mournful look you had seen as she fell into the arms of a monster willingly. She seemed pure, bright, happy, the truest version of herself, unwarped by the harsh hand her life dealt to her all those years ago. Your heart ached at the sight, wishing you could reach out across the space between you and touch her, but unable to do so, feeling like your entire body was invisible as an observer, incorporeal and wispy like a ghost. 

Something shifted in the corner of the room, a dark shadow that had your attention darting in that direction. Someone had entered where the moonlight didn’t pull through the open paper doors, drawing your mother’s stare and a smile curling her lips. 

“Kiyomi was such a sweet, naïve girl. She thought she found love in a young man that moved to their hometown, a foreigner from another country,” Gasps rang out from the crowd somewhere you could no longer see them, echoing far away in the back of your cranium as the narrator spoke. The scene moved as his words did, perfectly synced. “Michael Alford, one of our evening villains…!” 

That’s–that isn’t—

Applause rang out like a ghostly howl, distorted and strange as you watched the young, teenage Michael step out from the shadows, taking your mother’s hand with a soft smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Confusion and shock mixed like a cauldron bubbling in your stomach, burning and scorching all that it touched as revulsion made the mix burn, eyes watching them share a kiss with a cry of denial trapped inside your body. That couldn’t be possible, it couldn’t be real—and yet you remembered the maliciousness your mother held for him, the bitterness and hatred. More than a friend simply hating Lady Tomoko’s husband, or simply dislike. Even with that realization pulling at the back of your skull, you still wanted to deny it, trying to pull back from the vision just as it started to to shift, darkness creeping into the edges of your view just as Michael’s hands began to slip into your mother’s kimono, his mouth on her shoulder and eyes filled with hunger. 

Stop it. Please stop.

“For months Michael bedded the naïve Kiyomi,” The narrator continued, voice lilting and loud in your head as days flickered by your eyes in seconds. Every moment they shared, every laugh, the love growing in her eyes with each shifting, changing scene. “Promising marriage, a life together. Children. But unbeknownst to her, Michael was courting her very good friend Lady Tomoko behind the scenes. At family events she didn’t attend, in business meetings that had nothing to do with sweet lady Kiyomi. And all the while he begged her to keep their relationship secret from her friend, for the sake of certain intricacies that would be interrupted by their truth.”

The images shifted to Lady Tomoko with the passing revelations, showing their courting within the confines of Michael and her friend’s home where he was also telling her to wait before telling your mother of such good news. Your eyes were wide as everything came apart at the scenes, laid flat for you to see like a scroll rolling out over and over, longer and longer. Michael, bedding your mother, whispering that they would be together, but a business deal required he keep his relations hidden for now. Promising a proposal, taking whatever he pleased and giving those same bright smiles and whispered nothings to Lady Tomoko as well. Contrasted with night and day, the monster weaving his web wide and strong with a skill that spoke of just how selfish he truly was. The two women weren’t in communication much at this time, life was pulling them in separate directions—your mother, towards the responsibilities of her own family and their pushing for her marriage, and Lady Tomoko the business dealings that would lead to your mother’s breaking heart.

He lied to them. He lied to both of them.

Then, the scene shifted again.

You saw your mother alone, sobbing in her room in the dark, a quilt over her head and both hands clenched to her stomach. There you could see it now, the agony that lived in her irises, blooming like an iris covered in blood. Rain pounded on the paper walls adjoining her balcony, staining the hardwood darker and bringing the familiar scent of must to your nostrils. There she screamed when thunder crackled out like a roaring beast, drowning out the shrill sound in the surrounding white noise.

“Then, heartbreak rears its ugly head…!” The narrator hissed, its voice rattling around your skull in echoing hums. You watched the image change, showing your mother glassy eyed and empty in the presence of her parents, the two of them shouting words you couldn’t understand. “Michael Alford announces publicly his engagement to Lady Tomoko, and in private? He levels threats, hissed words that their relationship must end for the sake of his family’s business. Our dearest Kiyomi knows she can tell Tomoko, knows she can reveal the truth—but Michael knows this too, and has planned her failure well in advance.”

Mom—what did he do to you? How else could this man possibly hurt you?

The shouting of your grandparents continued as they shoved a scroll in her face, Michael standing politely nearby as other family members bowed low to the ground in apology. He is threatening to expose your mother to the public for being pregnant out of wedlock, for bedding one of his friends at a gathering and hiding the baby. A scream tries to tear itself out of your throat at his words, body lurching, clawing, biting at the barrier that kept you frozen until pain tore across your temple in warning. Your head rang as you watched him blackmail your mother’s family, your family, into silence, claiming that her attempts at smearing his name would lead to backlash and failure against their business. Your eyes cannot look away from the blank look on your mother’s face, the way her eyes stare dead and lifeless at the man who once held her not that long ago. Her family decides to send her away, and they themselves move away from her hometown with no intentions of taking the poor girl back. As requested, of course. 

Money went so, so far back then.

You were always under the impression that she left willingly to become a priestess, to live in a temple with the others. That she didn’t say goodbye to Lady Tomoko because she was ashamed of something her family did. It was evident now that even that story was told to protect her friend from the truth, to keep Mai’s parents together out of fear for your safety and her own. Your mother was sent by force to the temple, that’s why she never got to see Lady Tomoko before vanishing, why everything didn’t make sense. Her coming back to her friend out of desperation must have been so terrifying, so difficult—and even then, how did Michael threaten her into silence? Threaten you? Over and over the questions piled, one after another, weighing you down into the dark like bags of rocks attached to your feet. They aimed to descend you to the innermost depths of a dark, dark sea, and even as you watched that scene fade into the next, you knew it could only get worse. That it could only hurt more, until your mother was barely holding herself together

More movement, more smearing, as the crowd murmured and gasped, invisible tears burning your eyes so strongly you wondered how you were still able to see. The temple was forming, a room with hanging tapestries and low lit candles, smelling of incense and some kind of standard soap. Your mother sat in the center, draped in cloth, weeping bitterly as blood pooled around her, inconsolable as the priestess’ gently helped to clean her off, some praying, some rushing to get towels and needed medical supplies. Your stomach fell at the sight, threatening to pour your nausea out onto the nonexistent temple floor, your rage searing though every limb as you realized what was going on, what had happened to her once she reached the place her family sent her to.

Michael wasn’t lying about her having a baby out of wedlock. He just lied about who the father was.

“Tragedy strikes, bloody and unfortunate,” The narrator clicks their tongue regretfully, blissfully unaware of the tears that stained your eyes, that dripped to somewhere unknown as all the eyes of the theater watched the group of kind women help pull your mother up from the floor, leaving the blood behind. “Lady Kiyomi, with Lord Michael’s child, miscarries upon arriving at the temple, and is thus… heartbroken.”

Hushed whispers and sobs echo in your brain from the people you can’t see, distant shouts of familiar voices screaming over and over, repeating your name, trying to pull you out of the vision. Mai, the Medicine Seller, Ren—all of them were seeing this too, seeing what Michael did, seeing how he hurt your mother, betrayed her, lied to her. He had taken all that he wanted from a beautiful, naïve woman and shattered her body and soul, the stress so profound from her family’s disownment and his callous nature that she had lost the child they bore together. Your loving mother, who had smiled and kissed cuts and scrapes without complaint, who had cleaned Michael’s home with her mouth closed and eyes cast down. Who had still loved Lady Tomoko despite her ignorance, and Mai—the child of the man who destroyed her, and her best friend. Over and over the realizations burst in your brain like fireworks, burning and bright and profoundly aching. She had endured so much, suffered unimaginably. But had done everything she could to keep you safe, happy, and whole.

And Michael had acted like she was a lowly servant. A burden. 

The images started to fade as the knocking started on your mother’s walls, a soothing, dark whisper speaking to her in the dark. Your spine froze in your body, knowing what would come, who would be there to comfort her. Gentle tapping, scraping, then the first fingers of the monster's hand flitting through wall paper. Only then did everything fade to black, leaving out the mononoke that had created you, that had taken your mother into its embrace. Part of you was grateful for that—after all, what did that have to do with Michael’s sin of arrogance, selfishness? Or Lady Tomoko’s sin of ignorance? No, that was still a part of your mother’s story, a part that would remain tucked only where you had seen it, a whisper of something profound and strange that Mai’s parents didn’t get to see. They were not deserving of Kiyomi’s truth, not anymore, and certainly not in this place.

You came back into reality with a scream, tearing out of your throat so hard you thought it might rip your vocal chords in half. Back to your place on the floor, elbows bracing on the hardwood, head flush with the stage as you screamed and screamed and screamed. Until your lungs ached, until it hurt so much that a gasp had to forcibly cut off the sound, making you choke out a heaving sob instead, vision blurred with tears and heart hammering in your chest like pounding fists. Rage, horror, mourning. It all swirled within like a brewing storm, howling wind screeching through the bramble patches that grew, curled, bent, and snapped. It was filling all the empty spaces, and you struggled to hold it down, struggled to find yourself there in the agony that kept your hands shaking and your eyes wide open.

The others had returned to the stage now, Lady Tomoko sobbing and wailing to your right, Michael groaning somewhere further down. Her hands covered her face, whole body shaking as only her pale grey eyes stared at you, stared with all the apologies her mouth couldn’t voice, the ignorance gone now that she had learned what her husband had done. To Kiyomi, her best friend—the girl who had braided her hair as a young girl, who had protected her from crass, unruly men. Who she had sworn would raise their kids together until they were old and wrinkled. Used, thrown away, and she had known nothing. Kissing a man with lies on his lips, lips that had taken everything from someone precious to her. It ripped out of the woman as wheezing, shuddering sobs, echoed by your own as she remained motionless in the spot that the puppet left her in.

 The only silent people present were Lady Ana and her husband, who sat dazed in the corner with matching expressions of terror as you rose up from the floor, unable to perceive any of them once your eyes locked on Michael’s. He looked exactly as you thought he should—mortified, indignant, angry, terrified. Watching you, the visage of the woman he hurt so terribly, stare at him with such profound and utter hatred, like a mirror image of how she had once regarded him. Only he knew what you were capable of, the power that burned in your chest as a lingering gift from your father. His regret as a mononoke, strong and palpable, a bitter taste on your tongue once the screaming stopped. 

The Medicine Seller was shouting at you, but you couldn’t hear him. Just roaring in your ears, your vision blurry with the steady fall of tears that fell down your cheeks. No one could reach you there in the hissing scream of your spiritual power burning through you like molten metal, searing each vein, each limb as you remembered how your mother suffered. Her tears, her glassy eyed stare, her blood staining the stone floor of a temple she never should have been in. All because of that man, the one who hurt her, betrayed her. 

“Stop, Priestess…!” The Medicine Seller, frantic, still tugging at the strings that held him, crimson crisscrossing in stripped patterns on his bare skin where the threads dug in and tore flesh.

Mai was crying, wailing, Ren a pale statue beside her, frozen in shock and anger as he remained locked on where Michael still remained stock still on the floor. She was trying to get out of her seat now too, her grey eyes haunted, echoing the guilt that lived within her mother Tomoko as her voice tried to reach you.

“I didn’t know…!” She wept, voice shaking, body leaning forward as much as the strings would allow as she screamed up at your unmoving form, knowing the rage that burned like kindling set aflame within your body. “Y/N…! I’m sorry…! I’m so sorry…!”

They sound so far away. 

You could barely hear them, like your head was under water. Muffled, echoing, blurry. Every memory of that man mistreating your mother felt cemented in your mind, bringing clarity to each moment she had avoided him like the plague. Every forced interaction like torture, every held conversation ripping open her wounds like claws tearing into unhealed skin. She had endured his rolling eyes, his sneers, the backhanded remarks, his constant complaining to Tomoko about you both staying at the estate, her family’s manor. Not his, never his. A whiny, selfish monster of a man that had taken all that he had seen fit, leaving nothing but destruction in his wake. You knew the hunger you had seen in his eyes while holding your mother now, how he planned to feast like some unhinged beast until his belly was full, and his feet carried him far away from any repercussions. 

You wanted him dead. You should have let him die back at the hotel.

He should have been a toothpick in the teeth of that oarfish. You fiercely regretted not letting Himari shatter his bones that day in the office, a sniveling coward through and through. Steam hissed out of your clenched teeth at the thought, your spiritual vigor flaring hard, hard enough to make the wood beneath you bend and bow, agony bursting from your tendons and joints as if they were on fire. You ignored it, your eyes leaking black fluid in thick, bulbous drops onto the stage, staining it obsidian as you took a purposeful step towards Michael. 

The narrator gasped when you grabbed the man’s threads from the yards you stood away, yanking him towards you with a half choked scream of alarm coming from the man’s pathetic lips. Not the marionette strings, no—you had Michael’s soul in your fingers, held tight on the flighty, thin wisps that came off from it in a grip so tight you were sure he could feel it. Did it burn, you wonder? Burn where he could never hope to soothe it, aching how grief did in your chest. How could he stare up at you like that, like you were the monster after all he had done? Every selfish action, every greedy piece he had ripped from your mother without so much as a thought. You knew what Master Hiroto had told you about killing humans, but it didn’t matter now. Not with his life in your hands, and the memories of his crimes spinning around your head like a swirling whirlpool of anger, regret, and misery. Every cordial act you had spared this creature was a wasted act, and you would sooner crumble then let him breathe another moment of air. 

“Oh dear…!” The mononoke narrator clicked his tongue, sounding both alarmed and delighted by your actions as you lifted the man off the ground, dangling him by his collar as energy surged up your arm in thick, dark bruises. “That isn’t in the script…!”

You didn’t register what changed as you stood there, eyes wide and glassy as you stared at the twisted, terrorized look on Michael’s face. Feeling his soul flop and twist like a desperate, pathetic rabbit in the mouth of a fox. Maybe it was your power fluctuating in such a volatile space, or maybe the narrating, marionette mononoke had gotten distracted at the direction everything had taken. But somewhere in the madness, the hold he had on the crowd loosened just enough for the threads to weaken, the sound of them snapping barely registering in your ears as your mouth opened to utter the words that would end Michael’s miserable existence for good.

The Medicine Seller was faster than you were. Out of the seat in a blur of color, on the stage in three bounds of his feet and launching at you even faster. It felt like a single breath had passed before strong, unyielding arms were crashing around your waist, yanking you hard enough for a half choked scream to leave your throat and kicking Michael back with one black and white patterned heel. He heaved away like a rope snapping, bouncing, rolling onto his side and shaking like a leaf as your view of him was removed, indignant snarls bursting from your lips as the Medicine Seller held your writhing body without yielding. Backing away, covering your eyes, keeping your back flush with his chest as you wailed without holding back, aching from head to toe, so lost in it then that you could have hurt the trigram, unable to think. Your energy lashed out at everything, making him wince, teeth bared and eyes burning as he tried to settle you down, his arms so strong that they might have been leaving more bruises on your skin.

“Stop…!” The Medicine Seller hissed out, then softened his tone, one hand still on your eyes and the other like an iron bar around your waist. You were weeping now, shaking from head to toe, straining against his hold as something thick and viscous smeared onto his fingers. Your tears, still black, still volatile as the Medicine Seller’s voice rumbled near your ear. “You must stop, you must. Killing him won’t fix what he did to Kiyomi, it won’t bring your mother back…!” 

You knew that. You knew. But you also knew the nights she spent softly crying when thinking you couldn’t hear, the way she cleaned till her hands blistered. All that your mother had done for Mai’s family, shouldering a heartbreak that could be shared with no one. No wonder her mind started to break, she must have felt so utterly alone, without a shoulder to lean on, her dignity shattered and her soul suffering.

“Monster…!” You sounded unfamiliar even to your own ears, voice grating and raw, a snarl that tore out your raw through just as sharp as the screams had. You tried to push off from the Medicine Seller, a hand bracing on his chest, shoving forward hard enough that your shoulder could have popped from its socket. “Unforgivable…! Selfish…! Vile...!”

You didn’t know what you were saying now, the words spilling out like slurring, drunken rambling and not making sense. But the Medicine Seller’s grip did not yield, even as the momentum brought him to his knees, bracing one hand on the ground and pressing your chest downward so you couldn’t try to lunge again. A sob burst from your aching lips, a frustrated wail that bounced off the walls of the theater in repeating, dulling patterns. You didn’t care who saw your rage, didn’t care about any of them now. All that was left were the regrets, the grief, and the desperation. Lady Tomoko’s eyes were on you, they were a physical presence that refused to lift as she sat lifelessly on the floor, eyes dull with tears still pouring out. Did she see your mother there, all the indignation and pain she never got to show her precious friend? Maybe it wasn’t just the mononoke’s regrets that lived inside you—maybe Kiyomi’s were still there too, and poured out like glass shattering out the side of a jar. 

The Medicine Seller’s warm, familiar presence was the only anchor of sanity keeping you grounded, desperate to pull your mind back from the edge. Uncaring of the people around you, his head pressed to yours, both arms around your body now as your breaths heaved and sobbed. His body weight kept a constant pressure on your back, his hand gripping the fabric of your yukata in tight, unyielding fingers. You were scared now, scared of the feelings tearing through you like wet parchment—it didn’t feel like you anymore, like a stranger inhabited your body, making its home in the loving places you and your mother once curated. And the Medicine Seller, your heart, your lover, remained there to block it from swallowing you whole, knowing full well what sort of pain had its claws dug deep into the very marrow of your bones.

“I am with you, priestess—” The Medicine Seller murmured, his forehead pressing to your cheek, his hair smelling sweet like freshly bloomed flowers as you struggled to calm your breathing. “Stay with me. Breathe, deeply, slowly now—that’s the way.”

It felt wrong to calm down, like a betrayal to your mother’s memory. But sorrow was replacing the anger now, bubbling up like a freezing wellspring over coals that still burned red and hot. It cooled the fires slow and steadily, leaving you shaking and weeping where you remained held to the floor by the Medicine Seller’s weight. Your chest heaved with the force of your sobs, aching and burning from the energy that had torn through it mere moments prior. This hatred that swelled within you was an unwelcome stranger, an intruder that you wished was gone. But it grew and grew, hand in hand with the grief that kept overflowing as you saw your mother’s suffering replay on a loop in your head.

You didn’t see Lady Tomoko stand up, nor did you see her walk over to where her husband remained sat on the floor, terrified and mute now that everything was out in the open. There was a short passage of time where he didn’t even look at his wife, not until she was a foot away, staring down at him with empty eyes and tears still pouring down her cheeks. Like you, she didn’t seem to hear Mai crying, the shouts of Ren and his parents, the surrounding area falling away to what had been seen there in the first act. No love existed there in her eyes for him, not anymore. Hatred, anger, despair—all three took the place of her joy in being his wife once held, leaving nothing but an empty field where lush, beautiful flowers had bloomed. How long had she made excuses for him, defended him despite how Kiyomi despised him? Her crime was ignorance, willful omission of knowing despite the red flags that had been waved in her face. She knew something bad had happened to your mother, knew they never liked each other, knew that something ached and clawed within her friend with no chance of coming out.

“I should have known,” Mai’s mother whispered, her voice raw and ragged, hands clenching to fists at both sides. Michael looked up at her with wild eyes, his face paler than it had ever been before. “I should have known when Kiyomi was waking up screaming at night, screaming your name. Mumbling, pleading in her sleep. I knew, but I could have never dreamed what a vile thing you were.”

Her voice was so calm, so soft. You could barely hear it over the chaos, over the Medicine Seller lifting you up into his arms, sobs quieting into gentle, half-hiccupped whimpers. But his yellow eyes watched the exchange, wide and unblinking as something started to slip out of the ceiling, thick and red above where Lady Tomoko stood. It slithered down like blood pouring from a spicket, but it wasn’t liquid—no, it was threads, strings slithering in one, giant mass down to the floor like a serpent. There at the ceiling, Theo now stood floating on nothing but air, his mouth open wide and gaping, the mass coming from his straining maw as the marionette laughed, the sound echoing through the theater without end. Ringing, bellowing, screaming. It was so loud that many in the audience began to groan and writhe, still caught in the trance that captured them but completely unable to break from the cycle of suffering. The Medicine Seller immediately covered your ear with one hand, shoving the other to his chest to muffle it so his free hand could summon ofuda, spreading it out in a great, arcing motion across the wooden stage. 

The threads hissed and sizzled when touched by the sacred charms, rearing back and crashing across the back wall in a spray of wooden shards and debris. Lady Ana screamed, barely pulled aside by her husband at just the last second, Tomoko unflinching as she stared at her husband with glassy, empty eyes. The Medicine Seller grit his teeth hard, eyes flashing with anger when they tried to surge at him, arm slipping around your waist hard to hold you against his body to dodge. The stage crumbled where the threads hit, and all the air seemed to leave you at once when the Medicine Seller landed against the invisible stage wall, trying to pull you out into the seats only for you both to separate.

A gasp left him as he went through the wall without strain, but you were wretched back with a half-choked cry of alarm. You hit the ground hard, eyes widening with shock as the red appendage of weaving, writhing threads shot past you, slashing through a wall of ofuda before slamming into the Medicine Seller’s body like a torrent of water. He snarled at the impact before being caught up in the tangled mess of strings, wretched back to the stage and straining against its hold with every muscle in his body, enough so that you were terrified he would hurt himself.

The narrator clicked their tongue, slowly lowered from the ceiling by extra threads that came out of Theo’s back. The doll shook its head, seeming perplexed by the display of anger it was seeing from everyone.

“Now you aren’t one of my cast members,” It tipped its head at the Medicine Seller, who stared back with wide, cold yellow eyes. Threads wrapped around him, tight and unyielding as one free hand twitched, summoning ofuda that were quickly slashed. “But I suppose I can find a use for you during act two! And the rest of you should know, judgement waits till the show is over—no killing before the crowd is done watching…!”

Lady Tomoko was lifted into the air as they spoke, her face still drawn with grief and rage as she gave in to the manipulation without protest. The Medicine Seller snarled, his voice cutting through the air like razorblades he locked eyes with the mononoke with sharp teeth bared in threat. 

“I know what you are—” He spat, sword still tucked into his kimono and watching with anxious, rolling eyes as his master hissed out to the creature with malice. “Tsukumongami…!” 

There. The teeth of the sword slammed shut, the sound echoing through the theater with a clear, metallic clang. You stared up at him in shock, trying to figure out how he had figured something like that out in all the chaos, trying to wrap your head around the term. When it clicked to you that the little doll in Theo’s grasp was strangely close to the little Hina dolls that girls walked around with when young, albeit warped and changed in unsettling ways. It was a bit dingy and faded with age, in a way that reminded you of stuffed animals that had been loved too much. The Medicine Seller must have sensed the sentimentality attached to the little marionette doll, even when you hadn’t.

The doll clicked its tongue, if there was even one that existed in its mouth, and turned away, the stage beginning to weave and change again with extended periods of rumbling. You could feel the humming energy rise, overtaking the space, your eyes locked on the Medicine Seller above with a cry of alarm caught in your throat. Seeing him captured was frightening, your power surging in your chest just as the threads around you tightened, smothering the sensation like a heel extinguishing a lit cigarette. You choked, eyes rolling back a bit as your form was unwillingly hoisted from the stage, heartbeat in your throat and the Medicine Seller’s shouts in your ears.

And the narrator, who spoke with conviction, puppeting the show as the world shaped to a new vision for your eyes.

“Act two begins now—And I should warn you, dear audience, it’s a tragedy…!”

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66166489/chapters/183857281