The Kill - Part One (Himeko Soryuu)
| The Kill - Part One (Himeko Soryuu) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 22 November 2023 |
| Location: | Soryuu Shrine |
| Synopsis: | Is there still a kami of the Soryuu Shrine? Does she still have her powers as Pyrite? Himeko Soryuu tries to find out. |
| Cast of Characters: | Pyrite |
Himeko sits inside of her shrine, with an old oil lantern in front of her. It's fortunate that the bakeneko wanted to stay with Mamoru for a while, because otherwise the youkai might try to lick up the oil. Yes, she's using authentic sardine oil as they did in feudal Japan. She hopes it will work.
A moment is taken to look around at the interior of the Soryuu Shrine. This is not the Shrine that others see. This is not the one marked by a deathly void. This is the interior she was trapped in for so long. It's what the inside of her mind looks like. Four walls, roof and floor, and a door that she couldn't open. Not until people started praying to her. Not until voices started reaching her in her isolation, and she was able to wake up.
This is that space.
The ghost looks again to the lantern, burning and producing the only source of illumination. Then, she reaches out her hand, just like she did once upon a time. Palm out, fingers splayed, causing the lantern light to shine around the edges and the gaps between her digits. Just her hand, a black shape, blotting out the light. The approach of night, smothering the setting sun.
Or, just like Japan, is her hand representative of night retreating before the rising sun? Is a hand that has inflicted so much death and despair capable of bringing life and hope?
There's something about that... Something about a myth... She can't quite think of it right now. Didn't someone bring it up recently? Well, if she can't remember it, then it must not be important.
Himeko tries first to strengthen the flame. Adding to it, fueling it... Trying to make it brighter, or larger. Anything. Anything at all to suggest she has the capacity to heal, and not just destroy.
She tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and keeps on trying, for hours, days, years, centuries, and achieves nothing. The time that passes inside her mind is not the same as that which passes outside of it. So the slow progress would be totally normal and acceptable to her, if progress she could make.
All her efforts, concentration, and varied methods, achieve nothing. No progress.
Disheartening. But the little ghost princess can keep trying forever if she must. She is very good at waiting.
If she is unable to make progress at killing the flame as well, then that will at least indicate to her that perhaps neither direction is what she is suited to. Perhaps she is becoming something else entirely, transforming to favor neither life nor death. Perhaps... She can just be Himeko.
She has wondered more than once, when her mind is clear, if she should ask Mamoru if she can take his alias's name. He is going to change to Mamoru Chiba full time eventually, yes? It would be sad if the identity of Shields were lost, the time spent as Darien forgotten... It was as Darien Shields that they were first acquainted after all. That means something.
It at least means something to the little sister whose role she has agreed to fill.
So, though she does all this to confirm whether or not she still has her ghostly abilities, or whether her attempts to become a normal girl are bearing fruit, she has a little bit of hope that she will fail in this test.
The dead don't change.
It is Himeko's hope that, by changing, she can rewrite her very nature. But first she has to defy one of the fundamental laws of beings like herself.
She has learned much from the people she has met and interacted with since being granted a sort of probationary period away from her shrine, to prove that she can fit in, that she can be worthy of love, that she can be a person and not just the memory of a dead girl who can only repeat the same cycle and never change.
Amy Faust wanted to help her get a body. Perhaps Himeko will go see her soon, to find out what she knows about that sort of thing. She is definitely not going to follow her mother's plans for her.
Hotaru Tomoe had a monster of her own inside of her. Himeko wants to hang out with her more. It has been far too long, and maybe being there will give her insight into how she can help her adopted Onee-senpai.
Takashi probably had more experiments for her to help with. It made her feel good to help him, and see his excitement when he was learning things because of her.
Kyouka Inai had extended trust to Himeko, in an act of good faith. She wanted to be able to repay the chance she was given. She wants Kyouka to be her coach too.
There were many people she has met, and gained something from, and she didn't want to lose any of it. If she stayed a ghost...
She inevitably would lose all of it. Then she'd be alone again. Just like always.
So, with hope inside of her, throughout her whole being, like that shining golden pearl she had saved, that she had learned to manifest as a Golden Magatama thanks to her big brother, she focused on proving that she had grown. She sought to prove that she had changed -- that she was capable of changing. A ghost, by definition, is a vestige of something dead. If she can change, a property of life, then she will no longer be a ghost.
It couldn't be more logical to her.
With a mysterious, barely-there, Mona Lisa smile on her lips, Himeko closes her hand that she is still holding in front of the lantern flame, just like she did once upon a time, as the spirit that almost became the Kami of Murder.
The flame goes out instantly.
It took nothing to kill the fire. It came back to her naturally, that ability she had lost ever since becoming Pyrite and leaving her Shrine to be with Hematite.
She hadn't grown or changed a single bit.
If anything...
She was reverting.
She was losing ground to her nature.
A curtain of despair falls over her as the inside of the Shrine in her mind became nothing but darkness.
Then there was an almost-light. The Soryuu phantom pauses. Is there still hope for her after all?
She turns her hand, feeling the cold radiating from what is clutched in her palm.
Carefully, she uncurls her fingers, allowing the ghostly cyan radiance to shine forth.
It was not like the golden light of her treasured pearl. It was not warmth, and life, and growth, and fertility, and the riches of the Earth itself.
It was a phantom light, a cobalt flame that swelled and contracted, danced at its edges and moved side to side as though eager to explore its surroundings.
It was the cold of the grave, what came after the end of life, and hunger, and sterility, and the embrace of the underworld -- Yomi.
Himeko stares at the Hitodama she has just created by killing a flame. A youkai, created by her own hand.
It's much like when she learned she could make ghosts by extracting a soul from a dying body.
But this is new. This is growth and change. It's something she couldn't do before.
She isn't just killing, she is creating new life through her murder. She is giving physical form to a story.
A smile spreads across Himeko's face as she looks at the bobbing ghost flame hovering above her palm. The first child among many.
"I can make them." she whispers to herself in wonder.
