Hisako listened carefully for the chimes. In the distance, she heard the jingle carry faintly on the wind.
She turned, opening her mouth to alert them happily, but froze.
In the grass behind them, she could see an odd inconsistency in the pattern of the blades. The yellow-green was orange in some places.
The other two turned to follow her quizzical gaze.
She squinted. "Eyes!" she exclaimed.
As she shouted, there was a flurry of motion.
Something lunged forward from the tall grass at the same time Amajiki's door erupted into existence behind him.
The shape was airborne, leaping at Sasaki, and the roulette board had emerged, standing vertical and bold.
Sasaki shouted an animal noise as the creature caught her extended arm.
A tiger.
Hisako's blood froze in her veins, yet her heart thundered in her ears.
The animal was huge. She'd never seen anything like them. They could easily eat the dog she'd seen the other day. They rivaled a motorcycle with their bulk, and they moved seemingly just as fast.
Their brilliant orange face was scrunched and feral, eyes wide and burning. Their teeth were as big as Hisako's fingers, buried in Sasaki's forearm, but somehow not drawing blood.
Sasaki grunted as she stumbled back with the force of the lunge. Hisako staggered back as well, nearly falling in her numb panic.
Amajiki's face was tense, fingers raised and poised to snap.
"Don't spin it!" Sasaki roared. "Give me a moment!"
Her door appeared viciously. A moon gate, complete with shoji doors sliding open rapidly, appeared. The wooden rims of the doors slammed loudly open, and ribbons of light dashed to Sasaki's form, embracing her.
She broke free from the tiger, powerfully flinging it wide. When the jaws were torn away and she stopped moving to brace herself, Hisako saw her weapon.
She bore twin, golden gauntlets, simple and strong. They went from her knuckles to her elbow, with a keyhole pattern engraved at the end and sharp diamonds protecting and hardening her knuckles. Over her unarmored fingers were tight black gloves.
"Sasaki-san!" Hisako gasped. She pushed herself onto shaking legs. "Are you alright?"
Amajiki snapped as the grass rippled in quick lines. The wheel began to spin, rattling loudly as the ball rolled.
"I'm fine!" Sasaki snapped. "You didn't tell her anything, did you, Amajiki-san?" she barked at the man.
Amajiki smiled nervously.
The tiger was close–
They leaped into the air at Amajiki, just as the spinning stopped. Amajiki didn't flinch back as the glowing light from his door once again shielded him from attack. The roulette ball clacked loudly, but the rolling was slowing.
"Between Rounds," Sasaki explained quickly. "It's a mechanic of his ability: no creatures involved in his game can inflict or take damage between rounds."
Hisako's eyes flicked to the retreating roulette table. It took the glow with it, the door fading away behind him.
In his hands was a chain-link whip with a short triangular blade at the end. The veins in the metal snapped and crackled, glowing a fiery orange. The air around the whip sizzled with heat waves.
The tiger retreated momentarily, crouching like a spring in the grass just out of reach.
He sighed at the weapon, and Sasaki cackled uneasily.
"Can you keep up with me, old man?" she teased.
Amajiki snorted and cracked the whip. It sliced through the grass, lighting it ablaze and cutting it down like butter. The fire didn't spread far, though, as the grass snapped into ash in the air before it could light anything else.
The tiger slithered back a bit, wary, but remained tense, ready to strike again.
Amajiki swung once more, in a wide arc at the tiger. The whip sliced at the grass, but instead of flinching back, the tiger attacked, lunging over the low-angled swing.
Instead of going for Amajiki again, they went to Sasaki. She put her weight on her back foot and raised her arms to protect herself.
Hisako's legs felt frozen. She only managed to shuffle back a few feet. She needed her sword.
Sasaki fed her gauntlet to the tiger. She reared her other arm back for a hook, but the tiger found purchase on the ground and shook their head, throwing her off-balance.
They took her to the ground and batted out with their front paws, managing a slash across her right shoulder before she could begin to defend herself.
Blood bubbled across deep scores in her clothes and flesh. Hisako hurriedly reached out for the feeling of her door, but nothing responded. The fear had turned her skin clammy, and she was sweating. Her hands were wet–would she even be able to grip the sword like this?
"Watch out!" Amajiki shouted, lashing out with his whip.
It cracked once at the tiger, singing fur, then twice, snapping across the tiger's haunches, but they held on tightly to Sasaki.
The tiger was smart enough to know that Amajiki wouldn't risk hitting Sasaki.
"Mochizuki-san!" Amajiki called.
"I'm trying!" she shouted back. "It's not working!"
"You don't need to beat the walker!" Sasaki cried. She kicked at the tiger's stomach, barely fending off increasingly vicious shakes of their jaws and slashes of their claws. "You just need to understand your fear and strive to overcome it!"
"I-I'm trying!"
Reaching out to the door was simple enough, but the door was simply not there to open. She knew it in her gut.
It's because you're afraid, she thought. Why am I so scared?
"It's a tiger!" she exclaimed. "I hate tigers!"
"Why do you hate tigers?" Sasaki screeched. She lost focus for a moment, and one of the tiger's legs scratched down her ankle, shredding her boot.
"I don't know!" Hisako laughed nervously. "It's a phobia–it's not rational!"
Amajiki swung the whip dangerously. It flew out and hit the tiger's ears, making them rear back and wrench Sasaki's arm painfully with a loud cry.
Desperately, Hisako reached out for her door.
"Phobias have some kind of logic, twisted or archaic or something else. What are tigers to you?" Amajiki asked.
Hisako gritted her teeth in frustration. "They're just tigers! I've been afraid of them since I was young; I don't know the reason why. I've never even seen one before!"
"Roll again!" Sasaki shouted at Amajiki. She devoted her energy to defending, curling her legs in and counter-rolling each jerk of the tiger's jaws.
Amajiki tossed the whip into the air. The roulette table emerged quickly; if it were a real physical presence, it would've threatened the sound barrier.
The tiger's wild eyes flew to the table, and they quickly abandoned Sasaki. Hisako was just two strides away–a blink for the creature and a skipped heartbeat for her.
She very quickly learned that, despite not being an active combatant, Amajiki's ability included her.
The tiger's maw smashed against an invisible barrier, paws thundering onto the ground around her as she was shoved down with a strangled scream.
The others shouted her name, but all she could hear was the heaving breaths of the animal, and all she could see was each hair bristling. She could count the strands of color in their wild eyes, and their maw dripped frothing spit on her.
Her heart felt like it was going to explode, and her lungs screamed for air, but her body wouldn't listen to her. She had to escape.
She pushed herself onto her elbows, unable to look away as the tiger rained down bites and scratches at her. Each attack simply slid off her, like it just couldn't reach her, but the tiger just kept going.
They've identified the weakest link. You.
She bit her cheeks in shame, pushing helplessly back.
Didn't you want to be better than this?
The protective glow cut off, and a metal-clad hand grabbed the tiger by the scruff, yanking it back from her.
A paw lashed out and caught her face before the tiger was pulled free, and a stray claw left a searing wake across her mouth.
The pain was unlike anything she'd ever felt. The crushing from Kohaku's big walker had been a different animal. This made her want to writhe out of her skin and twist her skeleton into shapes unknown to humanity.
Shouting out only made it worse. She threw a hand up to grab the wound, and the other hand twisted into the ground. Her feet kicked uselessly, and she slithered on the ground, curling into soft, rich dirt.
The tiger had left a cup, piercing through her skin and opening a new, small gap in her face, extending her mouth crookedly, diagonally downwards.
"Mochizuki-san!"
She felt Amaijiki's presence next to her and looked over her shoulder.
Sasaki was wrangling the beast in a reckless bout of combat; she had the tiger lifted into the air, but the animal could lash out just below the protection of her gauntlets.
"Can you stand?" Amajiki asked.
She pushed herself onto her hands and knees, then her feet. The pain lancing through her face made the freezing fear feel insignificant. The panic that had hindered her had turned to adrenaline.
Amajiki stood protectively between her and the tiger, a battleaxe raised to guard them. The blade had an odd crystalline glitter to it–a display of its elemental attribute, Hisako concluded.
"I want–" she panted, shaking with energy instead of fear. "I want to win."
"That's not enough!" Sasaki shouted.
Hisako bit her cheek, wincing at the pull on her torn mouth. The adrenaline faltered.
Sasaki dropped to the ground with the tiger, falling to one knee. Before the tiger could recover from the backbreaking knee, she pulled back and punched the tiger in the stomach. The big cat went flying a meter away, slowly recovering but recovering nonetheless.
Trying wasn't enough.
Sasaki was bleeding, and Amajiki was unable to help her, with Hisako weighing him down. She gave up trying to wrench her door into existence.
"What should I do?" Hisako asked carefully.
Amajiki spoke calmly as Sasaki engaged the tiger again. She caught it by the jaws, holding them open as the cat flung them both around. She struggled to stay on her feet, half-crouched in a low, strong stance.
"The walker represents something. Come to terms with that something," he explained.
"Old man!" Sasaki snapped.
Amajiki sighed and jumped into action. He threw the axe, and it arced, spinning, through the air before burying itself in the tiger's midsection.
The tiger screeched loudly, wrenching itself from Sasaki's grip to roll away with the axe still stuck in their ribs. The axe still refused to give–Hisako notice that the hair around the axe wound was stiffening strangely.
The tiger was slowly crystallizing. Hisako held her breath.
Sasaki didn't let the tiger pause–she ran forward, forcing the tiger to retreat. It disappeared into the grass. The gusts of wind picked up again, and the tiger was lost.
Amajiki gestured to Hisako, and she hurried to his side. Sasaki backed into them, eyes darting around, reforming their defensive triangle.
"Where's your axe?" Sasaki whispered.
Amajiki shook his head. "The tiger shook it. I either go find it or re-roll."
"They're gone," Hisako said. She knew, without knowing why. "They're learning. They'll be back."
"Well, it's doing a lot better than us then, isn't it?" Sasaki hissed. "We're certainly not learning!"
Hisako frowned. "I don't know why the walker is a tiger!" she protested. She opened her mouth to argue more, but sighed instead as pain and failure ripped through her.
The fire had diminished.
The goal of becoming a Doorkeeper suddenly felt out of reach, just like so much else in her life.
She didn't chase trains that had already left the station. Why would she? Maybe she'd just missed this one.
The wind shifted, blowing in a new direction and bringing in a new scent. Something crisp was carried on the first breezes, and then bits of dead leaves floated on the air.
The shadows in the grass darkened and lengthened as the sun above was slowly eclipsed by a wispy field of thickening gray clouds.
A ghastly feeling brushed over Hisako's ankles, and she jerked to look down.
Fog was forming, as if the ground was steaming beneath them. All around the three, a thick haze was slowly condensing and rising.
Sasaki smiled nervously, lips twitching in a battle between pure anger and frustrated confusion. "I've never seen this happen in person before."
"What's happening?" Hisako asked.
Amajiki frowned, waving a hand through the fog. It parted briefly before clouding thickly. If it continued, they wouldn't be able to see far beyond their triangle.
"Your door is shifting. It's progress, in a way."
Sasaki rolled her eyes. "The 'one step forward, two steps back' kind of way."
"Is that good?" Hisako mumbled.
Amajiki made a strained face, and the clouds darkened above. He made an even more pained face as he noticed it.
"It makes things a little more obvious, I guess, but it means there'll probably be more obstacles."
"More?"
"We're going to see your entire zoo of issues," Sasaki crowed. "That's what he's trying to tell you. Every stupid hangup you have is going to be here soon, so we'd better get going! Find your stupid windchimes."