Re-

Fuyutake: Re COVER

(Experimenting with new writing style,
⚠️bad words⚠️)
(私は新しい書き方スタイルを試します,
⚠️悪い言葉⚠️)

There is dried crimson underneath my fingernails. I wonder how many surface-dwellers I've killed this time.

I thrust my hands into the porcelain bowl of water Ila offers me. The frigid water bites at my torn skin, but the blood clings. I shouldn't bother, it would go away in a couple of hours, but I detest this.

The blood.

Like the things that stick in my head.

The only difference is that the blood could go away.

Feet tap against the carpet somewhere behind me, followed by the sound of sipping tea.

I don't need to look.

Ila always sits there, drinking the same tea as she did before the attack.

Before the attack.

As if she didn't drink that tea when it happened.

As if she drank a different type.

Swiping the water away from my hands, I turn to face the worried Lady.

For as long as we're trapped in Arthur's house, Ila's looks are somehow a continual, present surprise.

She looks as young as she did when she earned her position as General of the Atlantean Royal Army, her bluish black hair still messy, her hands still restless. Her iridescent bodysuit still fits her well, hugging her petite figure, shining in the dim, warm light.

She once possessed this gleam of eagerness in those yellow eyes, an undying fire burning on challenge and new adventures.

The fire had long since extinguished, the only aspect of her appearance that changed after..

..that.

I wonder if my unchanged looks shock her too.

"How many, Ila-san?"

I say, the formality unchanged, but now with less respect than it used to come with.

"About 43, new record."

New record. I should be proud of myself. But I'm not. It's a lower-than-shit amount considering the destruction I caused by myself when I first showed up in Atlantis.

"And the Leviathan Princess?"

"Probably rebelling against her mother, for the first time. She's pretty good for an 8-year-old, pity her perpetually blank face says otherwise."

I look back at the blood coating my nails, and the familiar tightness wraps around my rib cage. I put my hands back in the bowl and drown them in the water. It's so cold it almost steals my breath.

"Ila, look at me, for fuck's sake! I'm covered in blood!" A lick of anger curls through my chest. "I'm not supposed to kill any more surface dwellers!"

As if sensing a threat, Ila's ear fins perk up.

Once, there was Vanadis, who would put her hands on Ila's shoulders and lick her. Once, there was a house full of misfits and friends, who had flipped coins to see who Princess Rualinna would marry when she was all grown up.

Once, there was Tracy, who would have thrown a surface-dweller insult at my antics.

Now there is me, and there is Ila.

And we will be gone.

Like the blood on my hands and the lingering tension between what was once a duo of bickering little girls that never separated. The floor will be warm with sunlight, and the house will not be quiet anymore.

Rualinna will rebel, and winter will start again.

But there is one thing that won't change, no matter how many attacks I survive and recuperate from, and that is me itself.

Wounded and scarred.

For the rest of my life.