Twelve Lies I Told Shingen Takeda

Chapter Forty-Five - The Grey

I can't keep watching you chase death.

Is this how she felt? Is this what my mother had lived with every day? The unrelenting greyness that muffled all sound, blinded sight, reached inside and amplified everything dark, muffled everything bright?

My fingers were getting numb... I couldn't feel my toes. I couldn't feel.

Come on child. You'll catch your death of cold.

Had it been like this before? Too long had passed since my last journey through the wormhole. It was familiar, and yet not. No. This was not what I remembered. I could see nothing but grey. The fog invaded my eyes, my lungs, my throat. It was...

The rock you threw was on the wrong path. I fixed it. In the same way, sometimes things need a little nudge to get on the correct path.

Shingen... Sasuke... had we crossed paths in the wormhole? Were they back in the Sengoku with Yuki, while I was ... wherever this was? Or were they trapped in here too? For all I knew, they were inches from me, also trapped in this unrelenting grey?

No... they weren't. If he were in here, I would sense him, wouldn't I?

I could sense nothing.

How could I escape from a place that appeared to be part of me? I was as one with the fog. There wasn't a step I could take, a direction I could move that would separate me from the grey. Someone looking at me would only see a fading shadow, perhaps darker in some places, and translucent in others.

The darkness would fade last.

You learn to put what must done in one part of your mind, separate from the you that lives through every day, walled away from your heart. You have to, or one day you'll no longer be able to function. But it's still within you.

It was as if I were back in that crate, as closed in and impenetrable as a coffin, yet without any physical walls that I could pound on or kick. I tried screaming but nothing came out of my mouth.

Kaya, don't hurt yourself thinking so hard

you were only a convenient tool.

Messenger, maid, daredevil, spy... so many roles you've played.

How could I stop from dissolving if I didn't know what to hold onto? Who I was? The adrenaline chaser running away from her mother's death? The housemaid with dreams of escape? The messenger who played at being a spy? Moon Goddess? Angel? Devil?

Find a piece of yourself that you can hang onto through all of the roles you play. Some thing. Some goal that's more important than who you are portraying at that moment in time. If you lose that piece, you'll lose yourself in the game. You might never find your way out again.

I can't stop thinking about the look you get on your face when you're trying to solve a puzzle

The little boy who had fallen into the river. Was this how he felt before a hand reached out to him?

Puzzles.

The little boy... who said to me...

Thank you. I am not careless – I was pushed.

I am not careless – I was pushed.

I am not careless – I was pushed.

I was pushed.

I was pushed.

Pushed

Iekane's fingers dug into my shoulder. His voice rasped in my ear. "You are indeed stupid, putting me right where I wanted to be."