Kanji walked without direction.
Direction had stopped meaning anything.
His feet moved on their own, carrying him through streets washed in weak streetlight, past shuttered shops and empty crossings. Night wrapped the city in a false calm, the kind that pretends nothing irreversible has happened. Cars passed occasionally, their headlights sliding over his face and moving on, never slowing, never noticing the hollow thing drifting past them.
There was a distance inside him now—an impossible stretch between what his eyes had seen and what his heart was still refusing to accept. Reality felt thin. Brittle. Like a sheet of glass held together by memory alone.
*They're gone.*
The thought arrived again, uninvited.
Kanji's fingers twitched at his side. His breathing came shallow, uneven, as if his lungs had forgotten their rhythm. The world felt wrong—too solid in some places, too unreal in others. Sounds reached him late. Light felt delayed.
Dissociation crept in quietly.
The part forged in despair and violence—tried to take over, tried to numb the edges, tried to turn this into something survivable.
*You can't bring them back.*
The thought followed immediately after.
Cold. Final.
He stumbled once, catching himself on a lamppost. The metal bent inward beneath his grip with a soft, complaining groan. Kanji barely noticed. His strength had stopped feeling like strength a long time ago. It was just there—something that happened around him, not something he chose.
*Everything I fought for…*
His jaw tightened.
*Useless.*
For a fleeting moment, something dark and sharp tried to rise in him—The image of a perpetrator. A faceless *someone* he could chase, tear apart, reduce to meaninglessness.
Not yet.
That voice—quiet, steady, stubborn—cut through the fog.
*Talk to him first.*
The priest.
The last place that still felt anchored to a time when Kanji was not hollowed out.
He kept walking.
The air around him began to change.
At first, it was subtle—a pressure, barely noticeable, like the moment before a storm breaks. The streetlights flickered once as he passed beneath them. Windows hummed faintly. The asphalt under his feet warped almost imperceptibly,*yielding*.
Kanji did not notice.
A golden shimmer crept into existence around him, thin and unsteady, forming without intention. Yin—responsive, unconscious—spilled from his presence like breath in cold air. It wrapped his outline, traced the slope of his shoulders, the curve of his spine.
It mourned.
Kanji's hair stirred despite the still night, dark strands lifting slightly as faint flecks of gold caught the light—so subtle they could be dismissed as reflection. His eyes stayed fixed ahead, unfocused, glassy.
*What did I do to deserve this?*
The question echoed without answer.
He reached the church before he realized how far he had walked.
The building stood exactly as it always had—old stone, worn steps, windows dim with age rather than neglect. For a moment, the sight of it struck him so hard he stopped dead at the gate.
Déjà vu.
The same path.
The same door.
Only he was not the same man.
Rain began to fall.
Kanji stepped forward and knocked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Twenty seconds passed.
Each one stretched thin.
Finally, the door opened.
The priest stood there, smaller than Kanji remembered. Older. His shoulders sloped now, his back bent slightly under years that had not been kind. His hands trembled faintly as he held the doorframe, eyes narrowing in confusion—
Then widening.
Then softening.
"Kanji…" he breathed.
Kanji's face crumpled.
The golden shimmer around him flickered violently, then dimmed as his control finally shattered. Tears streamed freely now, unchecked, heavy and ugly. His chest hitched once, twice—
The priest stepped forward without hesitation and wrapped his frail arms around him.
They were weak arms.
But they held.
"What happened, my child?" the priest asked, voice shaking.
Kanji tried to speak.
Sound came out instead.
Broken. Wet. Incoherent.
"They're—" His voice failed. He swallowed hard, shaking his head, hands gripping the priest's robes like a drowning man clinging to wreckage. "They're gone. Someone—someone—"
His knees buckled.
He retched, barely managing to turn aside before bile burned his throat, memories flooding back in violent flashes—blood, silence, the smell—
"Someone killed my fam—"
The word died halfway.
Kanji sobbed.
The priest froze.
"What?" he whispered. "What did you say?"
Shock drained the color from his face, his grip tightening despite his frailty, as if letting go might make this real.
At that same moment—
Far across the city, a red-haired figure leapt effortlessly from rooftop to rooftop, hands tucked casually into his pockets, eyes gleaming with idle interest.
Akashi slowed mid-step.
Something brushed against his awareness.
A distortion.
A pressure that did not belong to the city. Like his
He turned his head slightly.
Akashi – "Hm?"
He felt it again—faint, but unmistakable. A presence. Heavy. Grieving.
A church, Nearby.
Akashi grinned.
Akashi – "Guess the tree can wait."
He changed direction mid-air.
--
The priest did not let go of Kanji immediately.
He held him the way one holds something already broken—only making sure the pieces did not scatter further. His hands trembled, yes, but they were steady in intent. The kind of steadiness that comes not from strength, but from having seen grief so often that one no longer fears standing beside it.
Kanji's sobs slowed, not because the pain eased, but because the body can only convulse for so long before exhaustion takes over. His breath came in shallow, hitching pulls, every inhale sharp like it scraped something raw inside his chest.
The priest rested his forehead lightly against Kanji's shoulder.
"There is a passage," he said quietly, almost to himself, "about a man who lost everything in a single day."
Kanji did not respond.
"He lost his children. His home. His future." The priest's voice was low, measured. "And when he spoke, he did not curse the world. He asked why he was still alive to feel it."
Kanji's fingers tightened.
The priest continued, gently. "He said his flesh was clothed in worms and dust, his days swifter than a weaver's shuttle." A pause. "And yet… he still spoke to God."
Kanji pulled back slightly, eyes red, unfocused.
"Did God answer?" he asked hoarsely.
The priest looked at him for a long moment.
"No," he said. "Not right away."
Rain tapped softly against the stone outside. Somewhere far off, thunder rolled—not loud, not threatening. Just present.
The priest stepped back and gestured inward. "Come. Not here."
They walked together into the church.
The main hall opened before them.
Candles lined the walls, their flames steady despite the night air slipping in through old cracks in the stone. The wooden pews bore the marks of time: smooth where hands had rested, scarred where grief had gripped too tightly. The stained-glass windows caught the faint glow of the far away city outside and fractured it into muted colors—deep blues, dull golds, bruised reds—that painted the floor like quiet memories.
Kanji's steps slowed. His shoulders sagged. The golden shimmer around him faded to almost nothing, sinking inward, coiling tight around his heart like a restrained breath.
They stopped near the altar.
"Sit," the priest said softly.
Kanji obeyed without thought, sinking onto the bench. His hands rested limply in his lap, fingers still faintly stained with dirt he had not yet washed away.
The priest lowered himself beside him with effort.
"Pray," he said—not as a command, but as an offering. "Even if you don't believe your words mean anything anymore."
Kanji stared ahead.
"I don't know what to say."
The priest closed his eyes. "Then say nothing. God has heard silence before."
They bowed their heads.
Kanji's thoughts came in fragments now—images without order, sensations without context. The smell. The weight. The emptiness afterward. His chest tightened, and for a moment he thought he might break again.
Then—
Footsteps.
Soft.
Unhurried.
They echoed faintly against stone.
The priest's eyes opened first.
His head turned slowly.
Someone else had entered the church.
A man with red hair walked down the aisle as if he belonged there. His stride was casual, hands tucked into his pockets, posture loose—almost irreverent, though not mocking. He wore the city on him like an afterthought, rain beading off his clothes, eyes bright with quiet amusement.
He stopped two benches away.
Sat.
And bowed his head.
Akashi – "Let's pray," he said aloud.
His voice carried.
Too much.
He began to speak with a strange conviction that bent the air around his words. The language shifted mid-sentence, then again. Latin bled into Greek. Greek folded into English.
Akashi – "God lives," he said, again and again. In different tongues. Different cadences. "God breathes. God sees. God persists."
The candles flickered.
Kanji's head lifted slowly.
His gaze locked onto the red hair.
The memory struck him like a blade sliding between ribs.
*The red-haired man.*
His pulse spiked. Yin flared instinctively, thin golden lines trembling just beneath his skin, responding to something it recognized before his mind could catch up.
Akashi felt it immediately.
His prayer stopped.
He lifted his head and smiled.
Akashi – "So it's you."
The smiled of pure antecipation.
Kanji stood abruptly, the bench scraping loudly against stone. His breath came fast now, heat rushing through his veins, thoughts spiraling toward something ugly and desperate.
*This isn't a coincidence.*
His hands curled into fists.
*It has to be him.*
Pain searched for a shape.
Blame offered one.
The air between them tightened, thick with pressure neither of them consciously controlled. The priest rose halfway, confusion and fear crossing his face.
"Kanji—" he began.
But Kanji didn't hear him.
A butterfly drifted in through one of the high windows, wings pale and fragile against the dark interior. It fluttered aimlessly for a moment, then settled gently—impossibly—on Kanji's hair.
Golden light flickered.
Kanji and Akashi stared at one another.
The space between them felt thinner than air, like the world had stretched a skin over something vast and ready to tear. Neither moved.
Above them, near the rafters, two shapes clung upside down in the shadows.
They looked like bats.
Micro-rotor drones, wings folded, matte-black composite shells absorbing light. Their lenses adjusted silently, irises contracting, recording heart rates, micro-movements, fluctuations in energy fields they could not fully classify. One rotated its head by a fraction, recalibrating.
Outside the church, perched on broken stone and iron crosses, three eagles watched.
They did not breathe like a lively animal.
Their feathers were layered sensor arrays, each plume a receiver, each eye a stabilized optic feeding data back to something far away—something trying very hard to understand what it was seeing.
Inside, the candles burned lower.
Akashi tilted his head slightly, curiosity sharpening his smile.
Akashi – "You're louder than before," he said lightly. "Not with your mouth. With everything else."
Kanji did not answer.
The butterfly remained still atop his hair, wings opening and closing slowly, as if feeling the tension ripple through the air.
The priest stepped forward, voice trembling—but steady enough to speak.
Priest – "There is a verse," he said, eyes moving between the two men, "about a time when the earth itself stood as witness."
He clasped his hands tighter.
Priest – "It says the deep spoke to the deep… and the morning stars sang together, while the sons of God shouted for joy."
Akashi's eyes flicked briefly toward him, amused.
Kanji turned his head sharply.
Kanji – "Leave."
The word came out low, strained, barely controlled.
The priest continued anyway, voice growing firmer, compelled by something older than fear.
Priest – "It speaks of a man who asked why light is given to one who walks in bitterness of soul—"
Kanji's aura surged.
The golden glow that had been restrained now spilled outward, subtle but undeniable, bending candle flames toward him, warping shadows along the walls.
Kanji – "LEAVE."
His voice reverberated.
Dust sifted down from the beams. One of the bat-drones adjusted altitude by instinct, compensating for a pressure spike it could not quantify.
The priest staggered back a step.
His eyes were wet now—not with fear, but with sorrow.
Priest – "The verse ends," he said quietly, "without an answer."
He looked at Kanji one last time.
Priest – "But it does not end without meaning."
Then he turned.
Slowly and Respectfully.
He walked toward the door as Kanji's presence continued to swell, each step harder than the last. The rain outside had grown heavier, drumming against stone like a heartbeat accelerating.
The door Still open.
Wind rushed in.
Candles flared violently, then steadied once more as the door closed behind him.
The church belonged to them now.
Akashi exhaled, almost satisfied.
Akashi – "Good," he said. "No audience."
The butterfly lifted off Kanji's head, startled by the sudden pressure shift, fluttering upward into the dark beams where the drones hid. One of the bat-drones tracked it automatically, then paused—its systems briefly confused as the insect vanished from sensors entirely.
Kanji stepped forward.
The floor cracked beneath his foot.
Akashi straightened, posture loosening, shoulders rolling back like a fighter finally allowed to stretch.
Akashi – "You're blaming me for something," he said calmly. "I can feel it."
Kanji's fists shook.
Kanji – "You're here for a reason," he said. "And You for sure has a connection to (HIM)."
Akashi's smile widened.
Akashi – "Yes, I do have a connection with him" (Said with a confused expression)
Outside, the eagle-drones shifted position, wings spreading silently as weapons systems armed—then hesitated, receiving conflicting data streams they could not reconcile.
Inside the church, the air compressed.
Gold met red.
Kanji bent his knees.
Akashi leaned forward.
They launched at each other.