Ink Stained

35: the late princess*

後期の王女

It was only through sheer force of will that Pai managed to keep her thoughts from meandering back to what Shouta had revealed to her. It was as he'd said – what was done was done. It was in the past, and no matter how she felt about it, none of it would change the fact that it had happened. Agonizing over it would only make her feel worse.

She had enough of that with how anxious and hollow she felt whenever she tried to force herself to remember whatever it was her stupid brain had blocked out.

Like Shiori wanted, the four separated by the time they reached the foot of the mountain and stepped into busier streets. Pai and Shiori went on ahead to the train station, with the Daitengu further behind but always in sight. They were quite a bit taller than most of the people milling about on the streets (evolution unfairly favouring Hengen again), so whenever she really tried and looked for them, it wasn't hard to find them. It was easier to spot them in the crowd than it was to ignore all the people she caught looking at her hair as she walked.

She had almost forgotten that she looked different from everybody else because her hair was white. Being at Ayashi House, where everyone was used to her hair, made her forget that white hair wasn't normal on an eighteen-year-old. Sure, it could be, but Sapporo wasn't Harajuku or even Shibuya.

She wondered what it would be like if she was in Tokyo instead, where people dyed their hair all sorts of colours and received no odd-looks (unless it was something truly insane) like she did here. Would she fit in better there?

She stared at her feet as she walked. Looking at them would not only catch the way they stared at her for being different than them, but would also mean seeing the Goryo shrieking at them soundlessly, Yosei pulling at their hair and clothes, and the nameless blobs of gooey colour that traipsed along the power lines between the electric poles lining the street.

Some unnamed Yori Chiisai rode atop the hoods of the cars that zipped up and down the street. At the train station she ignored Yori Chiisai who attempted to push humans onto the tracks. All they succeeded in doing was making those humans stumble, and cause a fight between a harried-looking office worker who snapped at a middle-school boy, thinking he'd been the one to try push him.

Despite their cruel and dangerous pranks, as long as the humans couldn't see Yori Chiisai, most of what they did to them would be have no effect.

She wasn't sure why, but the only reason Yori Chiisai were able to do so much damage to humans in the old times was because, even if they couldn't see them, belief in their existence prevailed among humans. Modernity had dampened that belief to intense scepticism.

Now Yori Chiisai didn't have as much power over humans as they once did. It was also why she and Shiori were so susceptible to harm by them. They both could see Yori Chiisai, and so they both believed in their existence. That belief was a fuel, adding strength to whatever actions Yori Chiisai took to the two.

She hadn't seen Yori Chiisai in a while, but it was impossible to forget about them when she could watch them as they played in the snow and tried to shove unsuspecting humans down to their knees on the streets. She and Shiori sometimes sidestepped out of the way to avoid stepping on some vagrant little Yosei rolling in the snow.

She could only imagine what those on the street thought when they saw the two girls doing that. Maybe they thought they were enacting some weird sort of dance.

As they walked, Shiori told her what she'd missed in school besides the work, warned her that Natsume was likely to knock her down with a hug from having not seen her in over a month because Natsume got attached to people frighteningly quickly, and informed her in a grumble that Shuusei was likely to fall asleep on his feet when they were all together. Shiori wondered aloud if his tendency to fall asleep almost anywhere, in any position, was because he was haafu, or something of the like.