After I buried Nino with my hands, I looked at her grave.
Then I looked at my hands.
The skin was gone in places. Raw, split, bleeding into the dirt.
The police came up behind me. They were about to move in when one of them stopped the others.
"Hold on. Lower your weapons. I'll go."
He approached carefully. Came around to my back. When he saw it — the scars, the wounds layered over older wounds — he went quiet for a moment.
"What are these marks? Are you actually human?"
He touched my shoulder, waiting for a response.
I didn't give him one.
He came around to face me. Looked at me directly.
My eyes were empty. Whatever he expected to find in them wasn't there. He waved his hand in front of my face.
Nothing.
His expression changed. Something in it went sad.
He put his hand on my shoulder and lifted me — gently, like something that might break — and said:
"We'll need to ask you about what happened."
He didn't restrain me. He left my hands free.
The interrogation room was small and bare. He came in first, then two detectives after him.
The first detective leaned forward.
"Name?"
Darkness filled my eyes. I could see him in front of me. I just had nothing to say.
He waited. Then went to the officer.
"What's wrong with him?"
"He was inside the building when it exploded."
The detective looked back at me and repeated the question.
I said nothing.
He stood up, visibly irritated. "Don't bring me people who don't talk. I could kill someone in the middle of an interrogation dealing with this." He walked out.
The second one tried.
"Can you hear me? Just tell me your name."
He pulled out paper and a pen. Slid them across the table.
"If you can't speak, write. That's fine."
The paper sat in front of me untouched.
He slammed the door on his way out.
In the hallway, the two detectives spoke without lowering their voices.
"He won't talk, he won't write — how are we supposed to get anything out of him?"
The officer said: "He was carrying a body. Dug the grave himself, bare-handed — refused to use a shovel. Took off his shirt and jacket and buried her in them."
The first detective was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, with something heavy in his voice: "I understand him. He won't speak for the rest of his life, most likely. I've seen grief before — but not like this. Whatever level he's at, no one's been there. If I were him…" He paused. "I'd have buried myself with her."
They left.
The officer put me in a holding cell.
"You'll probably be out tomorrow. No charges."
He closed the door. Turned off the light.
The cell suited my condition perfectly — it told me I was trapped, and I already knew I was trapped, and at least that was honest.
I lay on the floor and closed my eyes.
The dream that came was darkness eating me alive, and another darkness I was drowning in, and Saka's hand reaching down, and Nino's hand reaching down, and both of them getting further away no matter how high I lifted my arm.
And then a darkness in the distance that looked like it was welcoming me. I tried to move away from it.
It swallowed me anyway.
I was floating in something vast and black and without edges.
Who is the leader?
I killed the judge. The doctor. The lawyer. All of them.
Wait.
The school guard.
Is it possible that the school guard is the leader?
That sounds insane.
But — he was always there. Everywhere. He knew me. He saw me. He was the one who proved my innocence in court.
It's him.
It's him.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
I can feel tears running down my face somewhere but I can't see them.
He played the innocent from the beginning. And from the beginning, he was the one removing everyone I ever cared about.
If I ever see him again, I'll kill him in that moment.
Then the darkness turned white.
And I fell forward.
When I tried to get up, I wasn't where I'd been.
An empty space. No one in it.
Then a figure appeared — black, featureless, like a shadow that had learned to stand upright.
It took my hand.
"The school guard won," it said, "because of your ignorance."
I looked at it carefully. Nothing to see. It was right beside me and still nothing.
"Yes," I said. "All of it happened because of me. If I hadn't been in their lives — none of it would have happened to them."
Two white circles appeared where its eyes should have been.
I tried to pull away. It held my hand.
Its voice came out wrong — too deep, the wrong shape for a mouth to make:
"Go. Your journey isn't finished. There is still much ahead of you — to protect. To save."
I tried to speak.
It pushed me with both hands.
For a fraction of a second, its shape was mine.
I hit the floor — except the floor wasn't there — and I was sinking into something that moved like water.
My eyes opened slowly.
Different light. Different ceiling. Different air.
A different world entirely.
I was in a room. People around me.
I looked down at my hands. There was armor on them.
A teenage girl appeared in front of me — she had the particular energy of someone who had never once doubted whether the world was going to be fine.
"Hello! I'm Miura Sajini — nice to meet you. I'm on your team, Shield Hero."
Shield Hero.
I looked around the room. I was in a completely different world, and this girl had just summarized the situation as if that were sufficient.
I didn't trust her.
A large contingent of soldiers filed in behind her and lined the walls. Then the king entered. He gave the Sword Hero and the Spear Hero and the Bow Hero each two bags of gold.
He looked at me.
He tossed a small bag in my direction. The kind of toss you give a beggar.
I caught it. Opened it.
Thirty silver coins.
I turned to a soldier nearby.
"What's thirty silver worth?"
He looked at me with unconcealed contempt.
"One gold piece." He spat on me.
One gold piece. Right.
I said nothing. I took the bag.
The king led the other heroes out to tour the palace. I let them get some distance, then walked the other way.
The Sword Hero noticed. He followed me and grabbed my shoulder.
"Where are you going?"
I removed his hand.
"That's not your business."
"We're all strangers in this world," he said, frustrated. "We need to stick together."
I turned and looked at him.
"Stay away from me. You're all strangers to me — I don't care if you're from my world or not. I'm not in a good mood."
I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
He grabbed the front of my shirt.
I took a long drag, and blew the smoke directly into his face.
He choked. Let go.
I started walking again. He grabbed my shoulder a second time.
I turned, took his hand, and squeezed.
He made a sound. The pain showed clearly in his face.
I released him and looked him in the eye.
"If you want to keep living — walk away."
He stood there and stared at me. At my face. At the scars. At my one remaining eye with nothing behind it.
He didn't follow me again.
I went looking for somewhere to buy supplies and sleep outside if necessary.
While I was searching, I saw Nino.
Or I thought I did — a shape running ahead of me, excited, taking in this strange new world with the particular joy she would have brought to something like this.
The weight of it nearly put me on the ground.
One tear.
I kept walking. I'll carry her in the only way I have left.
I found an inn that sold food and rented rooms.
Before I could ask about prices, Miura appeared.
"We're on the same team — get me a room too."
"Go ask your father for money. I'm not spending on someone I don't know."
She looked at me. Smiled.
"Fine. As you like."
I paid for my room. The dinner was included, which was the first decent thing this world had done for me.
I noticed Miura had taken the room next to mine.
I knocked.
No answer.
I went in. Empty.
I searched the room — her belongings specifically.
What I found: a manuscript, poison, two daggers.
They want to kill us. They want to become the heroes themselves. The others are just fools waiting to be removed.
I left. Closed her door. Went downstairs.
She was at the food table with her back to the room, doing something with her hands.
I smiled.
She was poisoning the food.
The whole world, and still this.
Everyone hates me without reason. I found nothing at the beginning. When I finally found something — two people — I lost them both. It seems like life has simply decided it doesn't want me in it anymore.
I lit a cigarette.
"Hey," I called out. "Don't eat before me."
I walked toward our table. A server came from the side and I stepped out of the way — and bumped into the table behind me. A drink went over.
A large man stood up. Very angry.
"You're going to pay for that."
I nodded.
"Unfortunately, I don't have the money right now."
"Then," he said, "you pay with your body."
I looked at him.
"That's bold. You know that's the kind of thing you say to women who charge by the hour."
The room went up in noise. Everyone was waiting for it to start.
He threw a punch. I ducked, and kicked him between the legs.
He went to his knees.
I let myself feel that for just a moment.
I crouched to his eye level.
"You don't actually want to pay for the damage to this place either, do you."
His eyes were watering.
I grabbed his head, stood up, and broke the table over it.
Silence.
I looked at his friends. Took a drag. Pressed the cigarette out on the back of his neck.
They stared.
"Pay for the table," I said. "Then leave."
They carried him out. Paid on the way.
I went back to Miura.
She was frightened of me now.
"I'm not going to hit you," I said. "We're on the same team, aren't we."
"Yes," she said, carefully. "That's right."
"Then sit down. Eat with me."
"No — this is yours, you paid —"
"We're a team. Isn't that what you said?"
She said yes again, quieter this time.
I smiled.
She'd poisoned the food. So I stood up, knocked on the table hard enough to bring the room's attention around, and addressed the room.
"Good evening. I'm new here, so — all your drinks tonight are on this woman. Enjoy yourselves."
The room erupted.
She tried to object. The noise buried her completely.
They lifted me off the ground.
I had escaped her poison, and she was paying for the entire inn's evening.
Your cheap tricks don't work on me.
The night ran long. She paid for everything.
When I finally moved toward my room, she fell into step beside me and pressed her hand through my arm.
I stopped.
Took her head in my hand and looked down at her.
"If you want that badly to be with me, you can just say so. We're a team, after all."
She blinked at me strangely.
"That wasn't what I meant — but if you want —"
They want to frame me. Fine.
I picked her up. She made a sound.
"We haven't even started," I said.
I carried her to her room and put her on the bed.
I didn't have a shirt on. I reached for my belt.
She was watching me with wide eyes — not quite sure what she was looking at.
I sat over her. She was ready for whatever she thought was happening.
I took her throat in my hand, looked at her once, and said:
"It's going to be a beautiful night."
Then I hit her precisely in the throat.
She went unconscious.
I found the innkeeper and brought him to the room.
"She asked for you," I said. "She's had a bit too much to drink — she's asleep, but she'll be happy to see you."
He smiled.
"I thought she was your woman."
"I don't go for women like her."
He took off his belt. Closed the door behind him.
I walked out of the inn laughing — she was in the room, I was going to find a different inn, and whatever she woke up to was the consequence of her own planning.
Your cheap tricks don't work on me.
I woke up the next morning in a world I had been half-convinced I was hallucinating.
End of Chapter 38