You Just Watch
"Are you all right?"
"Do you know how many times I have heard those words?"
Hong Yumin dragged a hand across her brow. Her palm came away slick with sweat.
"I ask because you do not look all right."
"And does my not being all right satisfy you?"
"Understood."
Hong Yumin shot Phantom a glare and set her feet moving.
"The mountain is foul with ill omen."
Her skin prickled. A thorn-sharp unpleasantness pressed in from every side. The mountain in the dead of night was not silent; it harbored a ghostly qi.
"I shall have to move."
A leaf rustled under her step and, in the same instant, crumbled to dust and scattered. The soil was so dry and rotten she could not bear to touch it. The birds in the trees had been corpses for a long while, and the corpses had never rotted—only stiffened. No one could live on land like this. Anything that did would not be human.
"And this is merely what leaked out, faint as a breath...."
They were still on the outskirts. What manner of demonic realm, then, waited at the sealing ground?
"Do you regret it?"
"Are you mocking me?"
Hong Yumin glared at Phantom.
"No. I ask in earnest."
Those eyes, deep as an abyss, made her flinch. She set the long pipe between her lips, and white smoke billowed up in soft coils.
"Not once have I failed to regret it."
She exhaled, and the smoke unraveled.
"Nor have I ever forgotten."
Only—
"...it ended there."
If only she could have shaken it off as easily as this smoke, or as an ordinary mortal might. She had not been able to. She had not overcome it. Should she have spent those hundreds of years seeking some other means? Should she have gone down into the mundane world, forged bonds, and endured it together with someone? What if she had done this? What if she had done that? Dozens of suppositions rose, and every one of them was a future she had never reached.
"It is a hollow shell."
"......So it is."
Hong Yumin drew on the pipe. It hardly mattered anymore. She had come this far; there was no fleeing it.
"I will stake my life."
Not Hong Yumin—the girl bit down on the stem of the pipe.
"With that, I will end it."
The girl steeled herself. She would sever a cursed bond that had dragged on through long ages.
Phantom watched her. They were paltry words, but he said nothing. If she could not see it for herself, a lifetime of telling her would teach her nothing. That she had managed even this clumsy resolve was, if anything, a comfort.
"Do not die. She would grieve."
"......Hah."
A tangled feeling rose in her. Smoke seeped into a heart gone soft, as if to tell her there would be no running now.
Hong Yumin and Phantom reached the sealing ground.
"It has rotted."
"Yes. A complete wreck."
As expected, a demonic realm had unfurled over the seal. The talismans had rotted and fallen away, and the yellow membrane wrapped about the cave had bled to violet. The energy leaking through its cracks had dragged the whole region toward ruin. The seal had not yet broken, but leave it like this and anyone could see what would follow.
"Tsk. It never does things by halves."
She crushed a sprout pushing up from the earth. A shoot meant to blossom into life had blossomed into evil instead. A dark-red liquid soaked the ground beneath her feet.
"Is there a way?"
Hong Yumin considered. Sealing Akho had left her weakened, while that thing had only grown stronger. Hatred fed for centuries on the years themselves was no different from a natural disaster. To face it, she would need a power that surpassed it.
"There is no sharp answer worth the name."
She did not speak of Life, though it had flickered through her mind. Relying on others was finished. She felt it without thinking: it could not be solved that way.
"I know one."
"What did you say?"
Hong Yumin's eyes narrowed.
"There is a way."
"And is that the truth?"
"Yes."
Phantom walked toward the cave. The closer he drew, the more the baleful qi clung to him, like a child clinging to its mother. The qi hungered for life. Claw marks carved themselves into his body. An arm was torn without mercy and left dangling. Flesh was gouged from his thigh until the blood festered and burst. The nape of his neck split three ways. The skin of his belly tore open, and his innards spilled out to gather dirt. Dozens of beasts took their share of the meat called Phantom.
And yet Phantom lived. Blood ran until it was a river. There was more bone than flesh, and still he went forward.
"......Ha."
Hong Yumin's tongue clicked at the sight of him.
That thing is more dangerous than Akho.
For a moment she had forgotten what he was. Alive, and yet not living. Present, and yet not a thing that exists. Before her eyes, Phantom warped. The leg that had bared its bone became a tentacle. The suit that had dressed those innards seethed with insects. A mask grew from the back of his head.
A low, shivering wail. The demonic realm shuddered—a cry soaked in terror, and in awe.
"Hong Yumin."
"......What."
Cold sweat ran down her back. Fear closed in. The Phantom who had been warped a moment ago had returned to his original form. The wounded body, the body turned monster—none of it was anywhere to be seen. Only a human.
No.
Phantom.
"Is your resolve ready?"
Must she answer that? And if she did, what then? Would she sink into the abyss and beg for death?
"You said there was a way, did you not?"
Hong Yumin tugged up the corner of her mouth. It was a thin trick, meant only to resist the fear.
"I have no need of it. I will do it."
"..."
Asking for help was meaningless. She was the one who had let matters swell this far. She had to bear it.
Hong Yumin drew level with him. Under the baleful qi, her skin was already rotting.
"If this goes wrong, you will die."
"And what do you know of death?"
Hong Yumin snorted.
"Spare me the chatter and open it."
The seal would come undone regardless. The point at which it might still have been stopped was already past. She found her courage. There was something she feared more; a thing like Akho did not frighten her.
"Let me see that damned face of yours."
"Very well, then."
Phantom set his hand upon the cave. A sharp crackle—sparks leapt from his palm. A power that refused all defilement was shoving him back.
"Make ready."
Hong Yumin pressed her palms together.
I set myself upright, and true.
I will not be swept away. I will not be shaken.
I deny what is defiled. I resolve—
and so this karma may be carved upon the world, the world about my body turns upon me as its center.
The only earthly immortal made her existence known.
Light gathered in eyes that opened, just barely. Her weakened body collapsed, and from the cracks what fell was not blood but light. She burned her life.
Phantom watched the girl. It was a sight to stir awe, and he felt nothing at all. Grand to look upon, and empty within. The girl had never become an adult. Phantom respected that will all the same.
He closed his hand with a crunch. Sparks spat between his fingers. A refusal rose in him—this one thing must not be allowed. It was a plea. The girl's? The immortal's? Or something that waited inside?
A crack. Now it was time to see what that plea truly was.
He tore.
A mistake upheld for hundreds of years came undone in that instant.
Kyaaaaa!
The roar of liberation struck, and in the same breath a stillness settled over the forest. The demonic realm returned to the forest it had been. The foulness that had seized the mountain vanished. As if no such thing had ever happened, the demonic realm was gone.
Strange.
Phantom looked down into the cave. It was an ordinary cave.
"Hong Yumin."
Phantom called to her. Hong Yumin did not answer. She was staring at something.
"I wish you fortune in the fight."
"......Begone."
"Yes."
Phantom walked. Two eyes slid past him. Something neither beast nor human offered a silent bow. Phantom did not so much as glance at it.
"You..."
The voice sounded as if hundreds of people had been stirred together.
He caught its muzzle in one hand.
"Quiet. I don't want to hear it."
"......"
It lowered its eyes.
"Right. Mind you dodge."
"...?"
A flash of light pierced its head.
"Krrrk."
It groaned and looked toward the source of the light.
"What are you looking at, you base thing."
"Kyaaa...!"
Thunder rolled, and then the sky broke open with a boom. Lightning fell. Judgment came down upon it.
"One will not suffice."
Boom! Boom!
"Ah. I misspoke."
Flame roared up.
"Lightning will not suffice."
Wind shrieked past.
"Nor will fire,"
and the air rushed in a torrent.
"Nor wind."
The earth groaned.
"My mouth grows tired. Just take all of it."
Nature rose. At a single will, law itself warped.
Centuries of lingering resentment? Of grievance? Of hatred? Of rage?
Hong Yumin was the same. Because of that thing before her eyes, she had given up an ordinary life and lived like a ruin of a person. And now, in the very moment she meant at last to taste happiness, it had dragged her back here again. As if it were fate.
"You are not the only one who has let it fester."
A howling wail tore loose. Nature was swallowed by the lament and scattered.
"Foolish. Have you still not understood?"
Akho looked upon the sinner. There had been hundreds of chances—chances to end what she herself had begun. And what good were they? Vain, and vain again. The sinner still had not understood.
"Now atone for that sin with your life."
"And here I wondered what you meant to say. My ears will rot from the hearing alone."
The immortal crooked a finger. The sky darkened, and a typhoon came howling in.
"Had you been this paltry, I would have killed you long ago."
"I cannot die, and I do not die."
"A beast, and ignorant for it."
Akho bared its teeth. The grievance spilling from its mouth became spit and fell, drop by heavy drop, and from the spit came screams.
"Kyaaaak!"
"Hup—!"
With a shattering crack, as if the breaking of the air itself were the signal, two calamities collided.