Sureiyazu

Episode 44: Brothers

Aya was in the enclosed yard of the castle. 

Feeling that she needed some peace, she had gone out almost immediately after she had gotten the last of the villagers, who were more loyal to them than she had originally thought, out of the castle - which had been much harder than it had seemed in her head.

The days were growing crisp and cool, so different from how it had been when Akuma had joined them in late spring. But it was this kind of weather that Aya enjoyed, and there was some comfort in knowing that the world did not stop because powerful demons were invading. As if blissfully unaware, the seasons still changed slowly from one to the next, as if they hadn't a care in the world.

Suddenly, she felt that sitting here, contemplating the weather seemed like a very foolish thing to do, when Sennome was awake. Yes, it had been quite a bit of time since Kasai had seen the eye in the Dark Dimension Grikvreak, but it had shaken her nonetheless. 

Aya stood and made her way into the forest, if only for the feeling of moving somewhere. She thought to herself that this was hardly any better, but she pushed that into the back compartment of her mind - a place that had become very unstable lately. She would not lose control again. Failure was even less of an option now.

But she soon forgot her troubles as an odd sense of calm washed over her like a summer breeze on an extremely hot day, her worries and fears riding away in the wind.

Aya shook her head frantically. That was strange. She should not have been so careless. Something was altering her mind -

And then as she looked up an realized the place she had stumbled into, she gasped. She recognized it instantly from the book that Akuma had so rudely cut her off from explaining.

The walls were made from living trees growing up all around her, and the ceiling above was the bright green leaves. Somehow this warm place was unchanged by the weather outside, and yet at the same time it was cool and refreshing. In the center of the grassy floor on the wall opposite Aya was a simple throne, woven from the branches of still-living trees, their branches intertwined like clasped fingers.

And a young woman sat there, on that throne, watching her.

"Good," she said. "You've arrived."

~~~

Ryou finally had climbed the last of the stairs to the Sureiyazu castle. Recently renovated, he had been told, it now looked grander than any of the paintings he had ever seen of it.

But why all the stairs? He knew it was supposed to make it stand out more, and that, yes, they had been built into a natural hill, but it still seemed unnecessary. And very tiring to climb. He stopped to compose himself before rapping his knuckles on the now-reinforced door.

It was a blue haired girl who opened it. Akuma, he remembered. Someone had told him that the new member had blue hair and was named Akuma.

"Yes?" she asked. "Need something?"

"Yes, actually," said Ryou.

"Well, what? Demon trouble?"

"No," Ryou began. "It's . . . stranger than that. I'm here to see Yuuto."

"Yuuto?" Akuma repeated.

It was then that she realized it. 

As she looked at the man at the door, with light blue hair falling aimlessly around his face, and pale skin, she knew instantly. If it wasn't for the fact that both of his eyes were blue, and that neither had any crisscrossing lines across them, he could have been Yuuto.