Hyakki Yagyou

Chapter Three: Fuchsia, Apparition

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”

-        Edgar Allan Poe

December 6th, 12:30 AM

She ran as fast as she could. Although she had more than two cocktails, her legs still functioned. One two, one two. One in front of the other and she accelerated. Seeing his face in the club… How could she be so stupid to think that at such a place someone other than him would be selling it?

Of course it was him. Damn that man, he had his fingers everywhere. He was like a spider, combing his web all over the city. She wished she knew how conveniently popular he was all over the city before she asked anything from him. He could be following me right now, Asuka thought.

Maybe he sent a friend to run after her. He definitely was not the type to chase someone, she calculated quickly, so one of his friends, a lad or two that were sitting by his side at the club, could be right behind her. But there were no footsteps. By the time she reached an overpass, there were no sounds of footsteps behind her. Neither of a possible follower, nor of other people. Everything became silent. Uncomfortably silent.

Asuka turned around and saw the world continued where it stopped. Wait. The world did not stop. Only hers did when she saw his face but then she escaped. And she was alone. Safe from his claws. For now. How long would she be able to run anyways? Who knew? The girl sighed and fell down, leaning against the concrete and iron fence on the side of the overpass. Trying to calm her breath from the running and the sharp inhales of the night’s cold air, her eyes closed and the entire evening rewound in front of her eyes, partially even against her own free will.

                                                                **

December 5th, 11:40 PM

The music was too loud for Asuka’s taste. The club was full and she watched the people, individuals mingling with the rest of the crowd, carefully from the bar, sipping her cocktail. She definitely should not be drinking since it was a weekday and she had work tomorrow but the day was a nostalgic one – one of those days when everything reminded her of something else and thoughts and memories formed a chain that just led deeper and deeper into the darkest, dustiest corners of her mind.

Those corners that she thought were locked behind a metal door with a key to the lock lost forever. But the key was still there, she found out today and scolded herself for keeping it. For keeping it somewhere inside of her heart.

It was December 5th, the day that she wanted to sleep through each year for the past five years. Today, the first snow fell. She did not know whether she should have expected it sooner or was it surprising that it came so early this year. Born and raised on Hokkaido where winters could be as cruel as those in Siberia (well, maybe not with temperatures as cold as in Siberia but definitely cruelly cold), Asuka never knew what to expect of the same season here in the Tokyo Metropolis .

Sometimes, the winters were cold; sometimes they barely had any snow. The sun would sometimes break through the overcast on the Tokyo sky and make the air all lukewarm. This was what Asuka enjoyed the most. She hated the heats and detested the colds. This was one of the reasons why she left Kushiro  anyways.