In a castle in the sky, memories unravel the truth.
There lies Yan, a woman who delves into her ghost-infested past, knowing it will give her the answers she seeks. What she doesn't know: if she stays in her past for too long, she may never wake up...
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I had two knives, one I left on my bed, the other flowing merrily toward me in the dark waters. The waters weren't always this dark; they were dyed in blood.
I killed someone else.
Undoubtedly, this has to be the truth. I am a serial killer, banished to the sky castle to be forced to repent and purify my soul before... I don't even know what's to come. All the wall said is that "you will not return" otherwise, but it never told me if I will come back home dead or alive. This vagueness is enough to petrify me.
Because what is the mercy a killer can ask for? Misery made me a fiend, I'm sure—who would even want to or delight in bringing death to others anyway? Perhaps misery and mercy are one and the same, with the same starting and ending letters, the same hiss in the middle shooting across the lips. A killer's mercy and a mercy for her are both intertwined with misery, compounded. Yes, that's how it is.
As the knife leaps into my palm, I know I have long unleashed this atrocity within, that monster many others in society deem boring and dismiss as the trivial pastime of Sinnoh's finest attention-seeker yet, when its sense of self permeates mine, hurling me inward into its rotten abyss, forcing me to see its toxic pessimism and boundless catastrophising. Its scythe-like claws rake into my sullied flesh and melt like wax, sticking to my skin and bones, coercing me to be one with it. Its gleaming eyes spell more trouble than the Spiritomb ever will. A ghost cannot go against a beast of impulse without dying again. This has to be the conviction that reverberates in the well, shattering the Forbidden Pokémon's ill resolve, teaching it how to shudder in the most affronted way possible.
"Goodbye." Languid breaths pierce the air.
Seriously? You can do way better than that. Why did you run away just like that? Just because you can't stab a ghost doesn't mean you have run out of options. You are born with a mouth for a better reason than to declare your surrender!
But of course, I must have been overcome by fear. Any rational human would succumb to dear fear without much problem, especially in such a setting reminiscent of horror films, seconds before being chased down by an evil ghost. Not even thrill-seekers will admit that they don't feel a hint of fear. Fear can be addictive like that, and even if I can stab a ghost, would that be a double murder? Will the punishment double up into torture? Murders are rare in the Pokémon world where vigilant Pokémon will always sniff out any ill intent and do their best to stop crimes from occurring. Disasters are another thing, though, chained to nature's hands, bound to be inevitable, just like the classic failures (and sob stories) of Absol.
More than that, I'm certain how obvious my dissociation is now. I am awkwardly both character and audience, even as I ascend in the light toward the moon, the Spiritomb returning into its keystone. I used to separate parts of myself, often contrasting sides, like light and dark, good and evil, etc. Whatever I cannot accept or condone of myself, I'd willingly and automatically set that distinction and see it as a whole entity of its own, a doppelganger that fails miserably to imitate me, the paragon of perfection.
