ETERNAL SUMMER
⸻   神として火の中を歩く

( 2011 )

     Satoru can hear the crashing waves against the white shores, taste the brine from the seafoam on the air. His hands bury into the granular sand, his throbbing heart sinks into the eddying waters of despair. All the memories and secret wishes that he had whispered to the traitorous gods, the touch of her caress and curve of her lips. It feels like they're all slipping between his fingertips and he clenches them tightly into his palm leaving a trail of crescent marks upon his skin.

If fate is so insistent on tearing her away from him, then he will upturn the very heavens to retrieve her. Satoru will shred the fabric of time and space to have her in his arms once more. He had made a vow to himself long ago that he would never let her go, not even if Enma-o rips him limb from limb in the bowels of hell. In every life, every world and every incarnation, he will go into the depths of the underworld to steal her back from death's own embrace.

Pushing himself to his feet, he glances around the unfamiliar and empty beach. She had closed all the gates, leaving him stranded on foreign lands. From the signage on the nearby path, he deduces that he's somewhere in China. There is a towering statue of the beloved Guanyin in the distance, hands clasped at her breasts offering silent solace. At the back of his mind, he wonders what Sayuri was doing in a place like this. What could possibly be out here that she was looking for?

Taking a calming breath, he pulls out his phone and calls Shoko to activate his talismans. "Huh? All of them?" she questions incredulously. It's the first time he hears her sound so concerned but he needs a transit point in Japan to get out of his predicament.

"All of them," he responds. In theory, he crafted the talismans to imitate the residual flow of energy from her gates. It should act as a rudimentary beacon for him to locate her, a navigational device for him to find his north star. Hopefully, Sayuri still has her phone on her. In his other hand, the talisman he keeps starts to burn a vivid blue. Focusing his cursed energy, he exhales slowly and allows himself to be taken by the current of the converging infinity.

He stands in front of the familiar low table where Sayuri would lay her head on, hair sprawled across the surface and spilling over the corners. Cheeks aglow within the half-light and the taste of plum sake on her rose-stained lips. He would always wait till the dead of night for her invitation with a hollowness that can only be filled by her tender kisses. The phantom of his longing fades away and she's still nowhere to be found.

Satoru tears the sliding door open, squinting his eyes from the intrusion of the pale autumn light. The courtyard is empty, the bamboo fountain cracking against the rocks at regular intervals. He runs down the wooden verandas, feet treading heavily across the traditional houses. Faces peer from between the lattices and white paper as he attracts their attention. Finally glimpsing the main hall with its ornate statues and immaculate stone gardens, he halts in front of the open archway of the entrance.

Hoping to annoy the man into a sense of urgency, he yells at the top of his lungs, "Kurosawa Homura! Get the fuck out here, you bastard!"

People start to gather around his periphery, family members and household staff alike, throwing him dirty glances and irritated scowls. The whispers resound all around him; the azure eyes, the platinum hair, the unparalleled cursed energy radiating off of him in seismic waves. His chest heaves with heavy breaths as he waits impatiently. Then, the clatter of wooden sandals can be heard approaching him from the corridor.

He's only seen pictures of him on her phone, but the resemblance is uncanny. Sharing the characteristic starlight-laced midnight hair of someone born with their inherited techniques, Homura is a formidable opponent in his own right. He has a smile of contempt on his face as he stares Satoru down with disdain. As if he's nothing more than a mere insect beneath the wooden base of his traditional geta. It's a look that Satoru is unaccustomed to receiving.

Where Sayuri holds herself with the serene grace of Kanzeon Bosatsu, imparting compassion and mercy to all around her. Even uttering words of prayer and parting to the cursed spirits they exorcise, easing the pain of all those passing onto the other side. Homura is the embodiment of Kagu-tsuchi, a raging inferno who holds no qualms in burning everything within his path with the temperament of an enraged guardian dog.

"Gojo Satoru," the eldest son of the late Kurosawa head greets him with icy malice. "Have you finally come here to die?"

"Where's Sayuri?" Satoru questions imperatively. "Take me to her or bring her to me, whichever is fastest."

"She's renewing her vows to our ancestors," Homura tells him. "None is allowed to enter the sacred shrine while she's holding the ceremony."

"She's planning to exorcise that thing." He clenches his fists by his sides, eyes darting around the area for a hint of the shrine's whereabouts. There's no sign of any reverse cursed energy radiating from their vicinity, it has to be deep underground then. "You know what will happen when she does, right? So where's the entrance? Point it to me and I can see myself there."

Homura is quiet for a brief moment, chin tilting downwards with a faraway glaze in his dark eyes. Unlike Sayuri, he has only inherited half of their family's coveted technique or else he would have naturally been the next clan head instead of her. "So? If that's her decision then no one can stop her."

He starts to walk away but Satoru raises his voice, causing him to halt in his steps. "Are you really okay... for her to die like that?" he questions in annoyance. "Alone, in pain and despair. She deserves better than that."

"You don't get to tell me what my sister deserves," Homura snaps over his shoulder with a vicious snarl. "For whom is she doing this for? Do you not know? With your Six Eyes, can you not see?"

"Of course I know," Satoru retorts. "I see it all. And that's exactly why I can't allow her to do this. In the end, when we're both wrinkled and grey, I want her to leave this world with a smile on her face right by my side."

Homura glares at him in vexation before striding forward, storm clouds brewing within his gaze and fangs bared in feral fury. He grabs Satoru by the collar, each staring the other down in a battle of convictions. An expression of strife paints itself across his features, a clash of duty against devotion for his cherished sister. Satoru knows that Homura will never permit any harm to befall her, even if it's by her own hands. Not when he knows that there's a better alternative, no matter how slim the chance may be.

"The both of you are such troublesome brats," Homura remarks with a glower. Then a sly smirk stretches across his lips, "Hey... since I don't have the right to kill you, deactivate your technique and let me punch you once. Then I'll take you to her. If you really love her, that's the least you can do, right?"

Satoru snorts, "Don't underestimate me." The moment he ceases his flow of cursed energy, Homura lands a hard blow against his cheekbone that almost sends him reeling backwards. He rubs against the bruised skin with a jagged smile, glaring daggers at the asshole. "Now it's your turn."

With a grunt of displeasure, Homura turns back towards the main hall with a flick of his wrist. Satoru follows in his footsteps as he's led towards the ancestral altar at the end of the room. They slip behind the gap of the opening doors where there's a set of stairs leading deep into the forbidden abyss of their lands. Lining the stone walls are thickly woven shimenewa enclosing rope for purification and talismans warding off evil spirits. Satoru now knows what Izanagi had felt when he travelled into Yomi-no-Kuni; the dread pooling in his belly and the treacherous chill that permeates the air.

But he alone would attain that which even the gods have failed to grasp.

     Years have passed since that fateful moment that ended the halcyon days of their youth. The scars have faded and yet, the memories will remain forevermore. Seared into her eyes, into her very soul. Haunting her in every waking and sleeping moment that she would beg the gods to spare her of the misery and guilt. Losing her mind within the darkness of her inebriated thoughts, day after day as her vengeful ghost ties a noose around her neck.

Sayuri is cursed to live an endless cycle of despair, where everything she touches turns to ash. She wonders what their lives would have been like now if that day had never happened. If that blighted sorcerer killer had never been born. She will curse his soul over and over, until she too crosses into hell and joins his loathsome company. So that she can wring his throat between her hands.

Her bare feet cross the threshold of the sacred shrine, the sleeves of her ceremonial kimono trailing from her arms to the stone floor. All things must come to an end eventually, reclaimed by the hands of death. Izanami awaiting her due. Standing before their ancestral altar, she raises a dagger to her palm and offers her blood as penance for her faithlessness. Unwrapping the inverted spear of heaven, she lifts it before her and feels the foreign energy radiating from the cursed tool. She places it upon the altar for safekeeping before drawing a circle around herself to summon the wretched remains of their blessed mother.

Long ago, Kurosawa Chizuru had been the epitome of their kind. The supreme sorceress who held life and death in her hands, heaven and hell within her eyes. Blessings and curses fell from her lips, judgement and enlightenment were the boon of her grace. Her legacy undone by the blade of love, reduced to a pitiful shadow that clings to life through the blood of her cursed progeny. Her wails of dissent fill the cavern, ringing in Sayuri's ears as she's throttled to the hard ground.

"A binding circle?" Chizuru questions with icy hands clenched viciously around her collar. "Your tricks never last long, little girl. How long will you deny your destiny?"

"Forever," Sayuri whispers back. For years she has been searching for an answer, always seemingly out of her reach until she finally ventured out of the country. Retracing the steps of all those who came before, gathering all of the lost knowledge buried within the ancient temples of yore. Craning her neck back, she gazes upon the cursed object that she has placed beforehand. The remedy of her wretched existence, the final piece of her sacrificial offering. With a fatalistic smile, she utters the command, "Gate open."

"Wretch!" Chizuru shrieks, unable to move as she's shackled to Sayuri within the ritual circle. The prison realm unfurls itself before them, its one eye locking onto them before ensnaring them in place with its cursed flesh. Maniacal laughter fills the air and she can feel the spirit's claws sink into her skin. "Misguided fool of a girl, do you really think you can escape your fate?" Chizuru grasps hold of Sayuri's face, forcing her to look into the mirror of her own eyes and her own identical face grinning back at her. "My pain is yours, and so is yours mine."

Tears brim over her lids as she closes them. "I know..." she whispers. "I am the other half of your soul, the part that still loves him with every breath I take. The part that would rather claim my own life instead of his."

She knows the truth of it, the endless curse that haunts their footsteps. Doomed to suffer that ill-begotten tragedy of their first lives, hungering for the illusion of peace. Chizuru continues to laugh with absurdity on her face that soon gives way to pity. "I tried that once before and look how well that turned out."

Sayuri is exhausted, feels it deep within her bones as she prepares herself for a long slumber. Perhaps this would be atonement enough for all those she had failed. Riko, Suguru, I'm so sorry, she would seek their forgiveness for aeons to come. She hopes with every fibre of her being that when she wakes, it will be in a better world for them all. Satoru... of all the words left unsaid between them, the summer dreams of their lovelorn hearts, she would beg the gods to spare him of this misery. To free him from the fate that binds them, to break this endless cycle of torment.

She inhales a breath to utter the command once more, "Gate close." 

Resigning herself to an eternity of restless respite, she welcomes the cold embrace of the prison realm as its flesh engulfs her whole. Skeletal hands wrench her body unto a bed of brittle bones, entrapping her within that pocket dimension of eternal purgatory. Finally, it all culminates to an end. The taste of her fruitful endeavours is one of bittersweet ambivalence. Relief and desolation escape her lips in an empty sigh as time stands still.

She reaches her hand out to the darkness as she recalls the sensation of infinity within Satoru's embrace. The world expanding and contracting all at once between the imperceptible seconds between them. Endless life after death in the convergence of time and space, reliving a hundred centuries of perpetual devotion and fidelity. How eerily familiar it feels within that wasteland of obscurity that she's almost comforted by the comparison.

Sayuri has no concept of time within that realm. A thousand seconds or days or even years, it melds into an amalgamation of complete oblivion. By some stroke of luck, Chizuru is dormant inside her and only her own thoughts keep her company in that lonely graveyard. Despite that, she knows that it hasn't been long when she feels a sudden shift within the ether surrounding her, a shattering of the barrier separating her from the outside world. A shiver of trepidation runs through her body and she curses her lack of foresight. No matter what she does, she is always fighting a losing battle, struggling against her own futility. She should have destroyed the inverted spear of heaven when she had the chance.

Its mythical blade pierces the gate of the prison, nullifying the seal of her incarceration. Her self-exile is short-lived and denied by the infernal gods. She feels phantom hands ripping her away from her ivory tomb, the glow of candlelight flooding her vision as she's spat back out onto the stone floor of the sacred shrine. Falling into familiar arms as she glimpses blazing sapphires and moonlit hair. She wants to scream, extinguish every star in the traitorous heavens and overturn the foundations of hell.

Sayuri lashes out with vexatious hands, crying out in quivering rage and seething indignation, "Why?! Why won't you let me go?! Do you not understand?" Her fingers clench around the fabric of his clothes, misery and woe brimming in her eyes as she turns her face to his. But even as she says it, as she beholds the divinity of his existence, she knows that it's all for nought. "Don't you know by now? We have always been destined to die at each other's hands."

"How could I?" Satoru questions back, voice soft and filled with remorse. Grief is etched into every stroke of his face. "How could I, Sayuri? When you would do the exact same thing."

She looks at him in utter dismay, hands reaching for his face as her heart aches with forlorn torment. Their fates are spun by crossing stars and fickle deities but their love transcends beyond the imaginings of mortal flesh. Each one laying the entire world at the other's feet, throwing themselves at the sins of the sun and the deceitful moon. Ash in their lungs as their souls are lit ablaze, unspoken wishes trapped within the bottom of Pandora's box.

She weeps bitterly into his chest. "I failed them, both Riko and Suguru. I failed you once too. I can't bear the thought of you dying again. Not again."

"Sayuri," he murmurs. "I love you more than anything, I can't ever let you go. So please... just stay with me." His fingers caress her face, cradling her cheek in a tender palm with sorrowful eyes. "Stay with me... we'll get married, have children and grow old together just like we promised."

Her lips tremble, fresh tears pouring down once more as she squeezes her eyes shut. Her throbbing heart bleeds into every atom between them. "I want that so much," she whimpers fervently. Encasing herself within the solace of his arms, clutching him close to her body with shuddering breaths and crumbling resolve.

"We'll go to all the places you want to see, do all the things you want to do, so please..." he pleads desperately, "Promise me that you'll never leave me again. I'm begging you, Sayuri, please."

She succumbs to the unbearable agony of their longing, the dreams that they both cling to with unyielding desire. Clawing at the folds of his clothes and every inch of his bare skin, she sobs and cries out vehemently to every forsaken star in the heavens, "I love you, Satoru, I love you so much... I've never wanted to part from you." And he holds her as if his very life depends on it, but so does she.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.  i swear she's telling the truth, no more running away for her ): the man needs a break.