TWENTY DAYS

          You find blood icky. You're not sure why. Blood is hard to avoid; the colour of red paints your life. Blood is everywhere—underneath the samurai's fingernails, the same hands he uses to caress your cheek is the one that red rests on a sword; in the eyes of the village madman, bloodshot and hollow; rushing out of your sister's head, slicking down her skin alongside throaty cries—

          Blood is shaped by it all.

          Nagamichi doesn't know life without bloodshed; you can never live your life in peace if red stared at you from everywhere. It's as if God wants you to suffer. We've never touched and yet you suffocate me.

          Your hands are shaking after what happened. Reality was fractured.

          Shoji's arms wrap effortlessly around your shoulders, the limbs fold carefully as if you are delicate. His touch is cold, as if the blood recoiled from his skin at your touch—you, the strange girl, the unwanted presence.

          It almost makes you laugh how you had to live here, in this village. You with your dislike of blood and all things gory, the only one to want to live vicariously in the façade that everyone puts up with. You want the narrow lanes, fresh flowers and quiet mansions to be real. You want the rumours and wonderful tales about Nagamichi that are passed between merchants and travellers to be not a myth but reality.

          But it is as you had concurred earlier: Reality is fractured.

          The reality is that Miwa is dead. That they burned her. And in twenty days time maybe they'll burn you, but you know Sukuna doesn't like burnt food. Miwa wasn't for him, the Demon King, she wasn't meant to be for anyone except herself.

          Behind every quaint, little smile that the people put up, lies a vengeful curse. Nagamichi is a hub for them, perhaps, because it is home to the King of Curses. Nagamichi is not just your home, your birthplace, your life. It's reduced to nothing but the place of Ryoumen Sukuna, a name that barely exits the quivering lips of humans.

          Shoji inhales and full of mercy, he sighs. His head hurts from the crying—his eyes threaten to roll out of his sockets from how agonising it was to be there, to feel the heat on his face and to choke on tears that will never see the light of day, to lower his mask for the slightest second and be vulnerable.

          "Don't look back."

          "You think I want to? That's our sister burning there. That's... that's her burning throughout the air."

          The smell. It chokes you. The smell of charred flesh. Bits of ash being flecked into the air, muddied with webbed-out billows of grey smoke. A bonfire worthy of the divine. (But the divine never arrive, only the devils do.)

         Shoji tries his best, but his best is never enough. Not when his sister is picked as a sacrifice for a curse that feeds off the [L/n] family. Not when he knows that the curse will never kill him, the golden son, the pride and joy of the village.

         "Sorry," He murmurs, listening to your feet drag. He had slippers made especially for you, ones that cost almost two winters of saving, and you were starting to make them flabby and jagged as you kick across the dirt.

         He doesn't blame you. He will never blame you. But he knows you blame yourself for what happened today so he'll have to keep debating.

         "We're going to the village head, right?" You swallow back with a dry throat.

          The village head, the ever-so (not) delightful Masanori-san, has a heavy influence over Nagamichi. Even if he sits holed-up in his hut on the corner of the village, his word is God. Your parents bicker about him back home—he entertains himself with curses far too much. He makes curses sound synonymous with a butterfly and it terrifies you.

          This town is stooped in pitch black tar and opulent omens. And no matter how much you can bury yourself from it, by protected by this rabbit hole of pity, reality will kill you slowly.

          And the best way it did that was killing Miwa.

         And it's not fair that you will be next.

          "No," Shoji shakes his head. His eyes are dark despite the glint of the sunset, "We're going home."

          The air is stale with dead prey the predators had littered across the forest, thick with the leaves and the mud garnering anywhere beneath the two of you. Nagamichi is different when the day draws to a close. The recluse crawl out of hell and venture into the open. Blood is spilt across the earth, bleeding into dirt. People vanish and lips are tightened.

           "Going home?" Your heart drops. Part of you wonders if your legs will give way and you'll fall onto the ground.

            You thought it would go like this. One train of thought running smoothly in your head. You go to visit the village head, head bowed, hair tied up neatly with Miwa's red hairclip. You watch him pour some tea, you listen to the wind howl and the door rattle and then you make eye contact with the curse in the corner and—

          And?

          And Masanori will have this pulverising smile on his twisted face when he says:

         Sukuna-sama would like to have you.

         Shoji snaps you out of it, "Yeah... Don't you remember? We saw Masanori this morning."

         Oh yeah, we did, is what is stuck on the tip of your tongue. It seems that everything is blurring together into one bloody smear. Sukuna dips his thumb in the blood of Miwa and smears across your crown.

         "So..." You whisper, wondering if you're stuck in this situation. In loving and and failing and letting your sister die because you just let it. You made your sister out to be the perfect person ever to make them take her and not you.

         When you love, you're afraid. Afraid of the light that comes with purity, afraid of wanting to touch God, afraid of hurt and real darkness. You're rotting at the core of the troubles this town suffers and this stranger was blighted by the tainted hearts and empty souls.

         "It's too late to visit the temple now but I'm sure we can pray to God tomorrow," Nothing Shoji can say can possibly lighten the darkness of the situation, the gravity of words and religion. He can't wind back time. He can't do anything. He can't help you, not when it's set in stone. You, the girl that grew up too fast, whose old self died all those years ago, will be dead in twenty days.

         The only thing he can do as the golden, precious boy of Nagamichi, is put on another fake, pretty smile and watch you drift further and further away from him.

         Night-time falls and words fall flat on both of your tongues. The only sounds are the ones that elicit the terror of darkness—leaving being crunched under Shoji's samurai boots, birds cawing in the distance, the crackle of a dwindling fire and... and...

         Don't look back. Don't look back. Don't look back.

         You look back: it's the sound of licking lips and bones crunching when some monster picks up Miwa—or what was left of her— and her lifeless eyes fix on you when the teeth sink in and flesh is ripped apart.

         That's me, you turn look at your brother and put on a shamelessly pretty smile like he does at most times. Isn't blood so pretty? Doesn't Miwa look happy?