Ink Stained

69: can help is not will help*

助けることは助けにはならない

Pai.

She continued walking through the halls, ducking and weaving past the attendants and other visitors rushing through the Palace. It was early morning, around half past six, but there were still a number of people going about their business, men and women of all ages dressed in traditional Japanese wear that she'd noticed were mostly worn inside the Palace.

She wondered why that seemed to be the norm, here. Everyone wore clothes that were worn in the Edo Period, or the Meiji Era. Some wore normal modern outfits, but the overwhelming majority dressed like they were still in the past.

She, on the other hand, had abandoned her homongi, leaving it in her room and choosing to wear normal street clothes. An old pair of jeans torn a bit at the thighs, her favourite dying sneakers, and a baggy maroon t-shirt. People only glanced at her as she passed by, too quickly for them to bother saying anything as they went about their way.

Pai.

She pursed her lips, clenching her jaw as she veered right , into a quiet corridor that only went on for a few feet before coming to an end at a wall with small, rectangular windows all over it. The glass was clear, offering perfect view to the outside world. She walked to the end of the corridor, glancing out down to the bustling activity of the Palace below through the curve of the windows.

The sun was rising over the wall around the Palace, bringing with it the light of day. It was early but already people in the village were awake, or waking up, bustling about on their business as people opened up their shops and the like, or helped take down the multitude of decorations hanging all over the place from the festival. Now that the signing of the Treaties was over, all the other Ayakashi were preparing to go back to their homes.

Do not pretend you cannot hear us.

She turned left and quietly slid the door open, noting that LADIES sign on the front. She couldn't help slamming the door shut, then stalked to the row of five white marble sinks by the mirrors. She glanced behind her to the five toilet stalls, but the doors were all open. No one was in the bathroom with her.

She lifted her blank gaze up to her reflection in the mirrors. She didn't recognize herself.

Her hair, black, beginning to go white at the roots, was pulled into a messy ponytail swinging from the top of her head. Her eyes were lined in pink, painful to look at. Her skin was paler than she could ever remember, made all the more obvious from the dark shirt she wore. Black shadows smudged under her eyes. She wondered if the paleness was from lack of sleep, or from the ice settled in her stomach, in her chest, in her head.

"What do you want?" she asked in a flat, monotone voice.

She didn't recognize herself in the mirror, but she knew that voice; it was the voice that belonged to the that Pai, the one who killed and drove herself to near insanity by choosing to remember the faces and names of everyone one of her victims because there was no one else to. She wondered if the line between herself and that Pai was blurring so that they would become one. She wondered what she would do when that happened.

But now, she couldn't bring herself to care.

It does not matter what we want. Kuniumi mused.

The sound of a ticking clock echoed in her head. It grew, steadily, endlessly, louder, so loud that she wanted to lift her hands and press them to her ears in an effort to ignore the grating sound. She made no such move and remained staring emptily at the vacuous expression on her face through the mirror.