"Remember Twilight" by mafiaman

The village priest, Shimazu Daiki, was praying in the village shrine before the statue of Kichijōten, the goddess of happiness, fertility, and beauty. She was the matron goddess of the village. Daiki was a middle aged priest with a jolly disposition and a youthful appearance. he was the keeper of the shrine. The shrine was a serene place. It was a blue roofed building with a small courtyard, perched on the top of a small hill and, like the rest of the village, surrounded in lush forest. Daiki was kneeling before Kichijōten, who was portrayed as a miko holding a naginata clutched lovingly to her breast. Daiki was flanked on both sides by a pair of cherry trees, their sakura petals fluttering lazily to the ground as the breeze gently swayed their branches. Before Daiki sat a collection of jars, each jar representing a youth of the village. Each jar filled to the brim with sakura petals, to symbolize the soul. As he lit the ceremonial incense he prayed that with the spring love would bloom in the village. “please show me a sign” he said aloud. He raised his bowed head to gaze into the cold stone eyes of the goddess.
*CRACKLE*
the blurred object fell from the heavens, obliterating one of the jars and throwing a cloud of sakura blossoms into the air. Daiki stared in shocked silence at the sight before him. In the middle of the shattered remains of a jar sat a small white stone.

It was a beautiful summer day. The sky was a calm yellow as the sun descended into dusk. Takeda Akazaji released a sigh of contentment as he walked leisurely down he old forest road. He leaned back his head and enjoyed the cool breeze that whispered through the trees and ruffled his hair. It was a day unlike others. It was a good day, akazaji thought. A really good day, considering it was him. That made it a superb day. Oh yes, it cant get much better than…
*WHACK*
a solid object impacted akazaji in his left temple. He gave a grunt of surprise and his legs turned to butter. He detected a flurry of movement in his peripheral vision as he watched the ground come rushing at him from the side and the world faded. He didn’t feel the impact as his body thudded against the hard ground.

Akazaji groaned. His head was pounding. There was something cool and damp pressed against his left temple. He reached up as though to touch it.
“are you alright?”
akazaji’s eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright. The regret was a hammer blow hitting instantly for his head swam and he shut his eyes against the pain. He felt a hand on his chest, gently pressing him back. It was a small, feminine hand. Smooth and cool like the voice that accompanied it.
“you should lie down. You’re not in the condition to get up yet.”
Akazaji lay back down, settling into the blankets beneath him. He slowly opened his eyes and took in his surroundings. He was in a room lying on a futon. However, that was not what riveted his attention. The girl was. She looked like a goddess bathed in the golden light filtering in from the window. She had long, flowing pink hair and bright blue eyes.
How did I arrive at this place?, akazaji thought to himself. Why does this seem so familiar? She leaned over him and gingerly took the cloth from the side of his head, placing her well endowed breasts within inches of his face for a brief moment. A primal urge tore through akazajis body, only to be suppressed by the logic of civilization. She turned and wrung out the cloth into a bowl. She then dipped it into another bowl and brought the now damp cloth to his temple, dabbing gently at the wound concealed beneath the hairline.
“where am i?” akazaji asked, acutely aware of the warmth of the cloth and the contrasting coolness of the hand that held it.
“you are in my home.” She stopped dabbing with the cloth and began rubbing.
“well who are you?” he asked with a confused look.
“you don’t remember?” she looked down at him coyly, a teasing smile on her face.
“no…I don’t” akazaji said, a look of regret forming on his face as the smile on her face melted away to be replaced with a horrified stare.
“im so sorry.” She looked down at her hands as she spoke, eyes shining as tears began to form.
“wha?…” he began.
“I only wanted to get your attention, not hurt you!” she was crying now, tears streaming freely down her lovely face. Her hands crumpling her skirt, the knuckles white.
“get a hold of yourself” akazaji braced himself against the pain and sat up. He grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her gently.
“I hurt my only friend.” She sobbed. Akazaji drew her into an embrace. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. She continued to cry into his shoulder, soaking his shirt.
“its okay. I’m fine” akazaji said. He was lying of course. Even as he said those words he could feel a trickle of blood inching down the side of his head. Oh well, He thought. I have plenty of blood. A little less wont hurt.
The girl in his arms gradually seemed to calm down. After about a minute she was silent. She was still shaking a little when he separated her from him, his piercing golden eyes boring into the reflective blue of hers.
“feel better?” he asked.
She managed a weak smile and looked away. “yea.”
“good.” He smiled and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“I don’t know what you did or who you are but I forgive you.” Akazaji said softly. He drew her into another embrace. Her eyes widened in surprise.
She returned his embrace. “thank you.” She whispered.
His back was warm beneath her hands and he smelled of the earth and sweat. She found it surprisingly pleasing and she felt incredibly secure in his arms. Her face was flushed but she was no longer sure it was from crying. She closed her eyes and smiled.

*DRIP*

a drop of liquid landed on her shoulder. Is he crying? The girl thought.

*DRIP*

she opened her eyes. On her shoulder was a dark red mark.

*DRIP*

the mark got larger.
BLOOD. Alarmed, she looked up at akazaji’s face and saw the rivulet of blood on the left side of his face. He gave her a sheepish grin.
“sorry. I should have told you earlier.”

*DRIP*

she snatched up the cloth and pressed it against the wound to staunch the flow.
“why didn’t you?” she asked. A serious look crossing her face.
akazaji grinned. “didn’t think it was a good time”
she sighed and gave him an exasperated look. “baka”.
He smiled. She smiled back.

The bleeding had stopped. The girl turned to leave, intending to get some fresh cloths. Akazaji’s hand shot out and caught her wrist. His grip was firm, lacking the gentleness of before.
“I want you to tell me what happened.” He said, his cold expression giving him a threatening appearance. Her eyes widened in surprise at this unexpected change.
She saw akazajis eyes burning with a fiery passion she had seen only once before.
He looks the same as that time…
“please.” She heard his voice as though in it were far away, off in the distance.
The hand squeezing her wrist firmly snapped her back to the present. He needed an answer.
“ok.” Akazaji released her and she took a deep breath.
“I was walking through the woods towards my house when I saw you coming down the forest road. I thought it might be funny to get your attention by hitting you with a dirt clod. I grabbed one and aimed for your shoulder…”
“you need to work on your aim.” Akazaji rubbed his temple, wincing dramatically.
“quiet. Anyways the clod exploded on impact and you fell like a stone. When you didn’t get up I ran over and found this…” she produced a small stone from her pocket. It was a small stone, about the length and width of the enter key on a western keyboard(the one in the bottom right of the keyboard next to the number keys.) and roughly the thickness of a CD case. It had a silvery color which seemed tinged with blue in the light. its luster was somewhat reflective yet misty, as though it contained a tiny cloud trapped inside its mass. It was a moonstone.
The girl held it in her palm and continued.
“I could have sworn there were no pebbles in the clod I threw but I found this next to you with some of your blood on it.”
“ah…” akazaji picked the stone out of the girl’s outstretched hand and examined it. “how did I get here?” he asked.
“I carried you.” The girl replied. Akazaji slowly lowered the stone and looked her up and down. He then looked into her eyes and impaled her with an extremely dubious, skeptical expression of sincere doubt, which was exactly what he was feeling.
“ok, ok, you got me.” Akazaji broke into a grin. “hikari helped me.”
“whose that?” akazaji inquired, amused by the recent turn of events.
“my sister.” The girl replied.
“she cute?”
she shot him a dark glare.
“cant blame a guy for asking.” Akazaji said, feigning innocence.
“ill call her and have her come over.” She walked out the door.
“WAIT!” akazaji yelled, his hand extended toward the door.
The girl’s head popped out of the doorframe.
“your name… what is it?”
“mizuki.” She disappeared into the hall.


Mizuki leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. What was she going to do? I guess he can stay here for a while, mizuki thought. After all their families had been close for years and her parents shouldnt mind. Well… their parents had been close. Akazaji had avoided her family ever since hoshi died. It just brought back to many bad memories.
Bad… memories… mizuki sighed. She would not tell akazaji about hoshi’s death. And definitely not about the part he played in it. Not yet anyways. She wanted him to smile again. Like earlier today… the first smile she’d seen from him in a year. Yes. It had been almost a year since the accident. The accident that had killed ryu and left his twin brother akazaji an emotionless wreck, unable to smile even if it killed him. A week after the accident hoshi killed himself. Akazaji took it like a hammer blow and mizuki could do nothing save watch akazaji plummet into depression as his world collapsed around him.
She slammed the wall with her fist in tearful rage.
“This time I can do something” she said to herself softly. “this time I WILL do something.”
She wiped her tears and walked back to her room.

A lone dark clad figure walked down the old forest road. An 18 year old girl whose name meant light. Ironically she preferred the darkness, dwelling in the shadows of life away from the sun. it wasn’t that sunlight harmed her. It was that she was different. Different in a unique way. The shadow of a tree fell over her as she passed under it. As she was temporarily engulfed in shadow her eyes shined with an ethereal light beneath her hood, giving her the sinister appearance of a shade. the sun retreated behind an advancing line of dark clouds. A breeze ruffled the hem of the girls cloak. It carried with it the smell of the earth, the forest, the mountains… the smell of the coming rain. The sun became increasingly obscured by the clouds and finally disappeared, throwing the valley into shadows. The girl smiled.

Mizuki opened the door to her room. As she suspected akazaji, was still awake. He held a picture frame in his hand. Who is this? Mizuki crosses the room and takes the picture from him. It is a picture of mizuki, hoshi, and ryu. Ryu on the left, hoshi on the right, mizuki standing centered in the middle. All are smiling.
Mizuki smiles. “that’s a picture from a year and a half ago.” She explains and points. That’s your brother ryu and that’s… her voice trails off. She silently grabs the frame and he relinquishes his hold as she turns away and sets it face down on the dresser.
“what happened to him?” akazaji asked.
“them.” She replied quietly, her eyes closed.
“what… happened to them?” akazaji asked cautiously. Aware that he has touched off a nerve but unable to contain his curiosity about his missing past.
“they died.” She whispered. She opened her eyes. They were moist with welling tears. “It was a fatal accident.” She continued, choking on her words. “ryu died on the scene and hoshi a week later.”
Akazaji sat in stunned silence. He groped for words to say to erase the somber gloominess that engulfed the room.
“im sorry.” Was all he could manage.
Thunder rolled in the distance. Outside it began to rain, the drops impacting hollowly on the roof overhead. They continued in silence like that for a space of minutes. Neither saying a word to the other, both suffocating in the morbidity of the past.
There was a knocking on the door. Mizuki wiped the tears from her eyes.
“ill get it.” She said, brightening up. “its probably Hikari.”
mizuki opened the front door to find herself face to face with a cloaked figure. A flash of lightning illuminated the doorway, casting light on mizuki’s suprised expression. The cloaked figure stepped inside the threshold and closed the door behind her. She turned to mizuki with an evil grin on her face.

The lights went out. Akazaji flipped the switch on and off a few times and cursed softly under his breath. No power, akazaji thought. His hand fell away from the switch. I really screwed up, he thought. I’ve caused her a great amount of pain today, first by not remembering her and then by asking about the picture frame. He hit his forehead against the wall. Stupid, stupid, stupid he thought as he banged his head against the wall again and again. It hurt a little bit but somehow he felt better afterwards. Well, he thought, ill make it up to her somehow.

A bloodcurdling scream shattered the near silence of the darkness. Only one word formed in akazajis mind. Mizuki. Akazaji tore down the hall at breakneck speed. Mizukis in trouble… I must help her somehow. He rounded the corner an stopped dead in his tracks, frozen by the sight before him. There was a sinister figure standing in front of the doorway, obsured by shadows. A flash of lightning confirmed his worst fear, illuminating the crumpled body of mizuki at the intruders feet. The flash also illuminating the lower half of the intruders face, displaying an evil grin. The intruders eyes seemed to glow with an inner light a light borne of hell itself. He gasped in terror and took a step back. It was then that the figure began to laugh. A very musical, human laugh,
“mizuki, get up and look what he brought as a weapon” the figure said, pointing and almost doubling over with laughter.
Mizuki’s “corpse” sat up and she too began to laugh.
Akazaji looked down at his hand. In it he held a hairbrush. He did not remember grabbing said brush nor did he remember settling into a fighting guard with the brush held like a knife.
“honestly! What were you planning on doing with that?” the figure, now helping mizuki to her feet, said amid bursts of laughter.
Akazaji fell back and plopped down on his haunches, staring at them, a mixture of disbelief and relief plain on his face. “ive been pranked”, he whispered to himself, unwlling to believe that a pair of girls could actually pull such a cruel joke.

Mizuki crossed the distance between them and held out her hand. Looking at the ground Akazaji sheepishly reached up to hand her the comb. Rather than grab it she got hold of his arm and hauled him bodily up. He in turn drew her close and whispered into her ear…”that was not cool.” She smiled.

“isn’t the dark romantic? Maybe I should go and leave you two alone.” The girl said teasingly. Taking off her soaked robe and hanging it on a waiting hook.
“hikari!” mizuki blushed and separated herself from Akazaji. “we aren’t like that.”
As mizuki said this akazaji felt slightly disapointed. Disapointed, that is, because in the darkness he failed to notice the shade of pink mizuki’s face had become. Akazaji missed it… Hikari didn’t.

Akazaji lay awake on his futon that night. Staring at the ceiling and listening to the soft breathing of mizuki, the beautiful girl who had ended his life. It was a peaceful sound. A sound that under normal circumstances would have lulled him to sleep immediately. But akazaji had much on his mind.

“Akazaji-kun” this is Shimazu Hikari.” The words echoed through his head. Something about ths girl frightened him. She had led him back to mizuki’s room, not making a sound the whole way there. When they entered mizuki’s room she sat herself down in the corner, where the shadows were darkest. Again her eyes glowed with that unearthly red luminescence .
“takeda-san… sit”. She indicated the floor infront of her with her hand.
He had.
She had watched him… watched him as she sharpened that knife, its blade reflecting the moonlight from the window. Without saying a word she had delivered an unspoken threat. At least, that’s what he thought it to be. The sound of the stone scraping along the blade had been almost hypnotic and he barely noticed its dissapearance when mizuki appeared and went to bed. Hikari followed suit, only she had left in favor of sleeping in the living room.

He closed his eyes and tried to reach dreamland. A large weight fell onto him and he opened his eyes. Mizuki had fallen off her bed and now lay on him. Am I dreaming? Akazaji thought to himself.
“cold.” Mizuki mumbled in her sleep and pressed her body against his for warmth. She shivered slightly and hugged him subconciously. Akazaji felt that familiar urge shoot through him and his loins.
He relented. he smiled in the sarkness and pulled mizuki’s forlorn blanket from her bed and draped it over her still form.
He stared at the glow-in-the-dark starfield mizuki had on her ceiling, listening to the slow rhythm of her breathing close to his ear. He noticed a red/orange glow from the window.
“dawn.” He whispered to himself. He closed his eyes to sleep, hoping to nod off before the suns rays made sleeping impossible. He finally suceeded.
The clock, which akazaji couldn’t see from the floor, read 2:12AM. Dawn was still hours away.

♪imagine a faint melody here.♫
Akazaji tilted his head to hear the faint melody. He opened his eyes to find himself enshrouded by thick fog. The fog was cold and damp like the soft grass beneath his feet that glistened in the misty light of the full moon overhead. It was also thick. One did not breath this air… they drank it.
♪♫
Akazaji heard the melody again. He began walking, drawn towards the ethereal music as though by an unseen force. Like a mosquito to a bug zapper. It was not long before trees loomed ahead of him, scarcely visible through the swirling, ever present, banks of fog and mist. He continued through the trees. The forest was silent as the grave and devoid of all life. Not even a cicada broke the silence of his trek through the wood. The trees seemed hard and still as stone as made his way forward through the fog.
♪♫
the music was getting louder as he walked. The melody had evolved into a song, for he could now hear singing.

♪ In the darkness I wait♫
♪Even as it grows late♫
♪The moon hangs overhead♫
♪Its silence wakes the dead♫
♪Memories so hard to find♫
♪Locked away inside my mind♫

it was a girl’s voice. Pleasant and sweet amid the surreal silence of the surrounding tree-lined nightscape. He was close…
he could feel it.

Akazaji found himself at the edge of a clearing. Clear not only of trees but of the swirling fog as well. In the center of this clearing was a large monument. Similar in shape to an obelisk; the stone, or pillar, was roughly 1.5m. wide in diameter at its summit and was about 3m. tall. It had 8 sides and sloped steeply, forming an octagonal cone that was ringed by a staircase roughly 2 feet in width. The stair wound around the stone like a vine, clutching the the stone that shone cobalt blue in the moonlight with the tight embrace of a long lost love. Runic symbols, visible only by their shadows, followed the curve of the stair. Eight symbols were larger than the rest. They were set higher on the sides than the single continuous line that curled around the structure at waist heigth until it reached the summit, which held a small altar.. However interesting this monument might have been, it went largely unnoticed by akazaji whose attention was arrested by the figure sitting atop it.

♪Underneath my flesh and bone♫
♪There lies a little snow white stone♫
♪That glows with love, such pretty light♫
♪It brightens up the winters night♫
♪It is the key into my mind♫
♪The lock is what I need to find♫

she sat facing away from akazaji. Singing as though she was projecting her very soul into the swirling, echoing, ocean of fog. She was fair skinned, slender and wore a white dress which combined with her silver hair gave her the appearance of an angel. But what angel sang as though her heart was drowning in a sea of sorrows? From here akazaji could not discern the age of the girl. He took a step foreward, hoping to get a better look at her.

And stepped on a twig. Its destruction under his right foot seeming to crack like a flash of lightning and echo like thunder.

♪So as I start to sing my song♫
♪The answer comes to me so long♫
♪That I must…

the singing stopped abruptly and akazaji froze. The girl turned and looked over her shoulder. her eyes glowing with an inner light. eyes akazaji had seen before.

The girl smiled and, turning, hopped off the altar and faced akazaji, looking down on him from above.
“Oyasimi, Nii-san” she said and bowed.
She seemed friendly enough. Akazaji took a few steps forward, his body tense and ready to run at a moments notice…but to where? He sagged and relaxed, if anything bad happened he would simply die, he surmised. It was morbid, but it was true.
“Oyasimi”akazaji bowed and looked around. “What is this place?”
“This is the Netherworld.” She replied. “the resting place for those who commit suicide.”
Upon hearing this, akazaji panics for a brief moment. “WHA?!!”
“rest assured you alive and well, Nii-san. You were just summoned here.” She giggled as his shoulders sagged and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“who summoned me?” akazaji looked at her quizzically.
“im not allowed to tell you that, Nii-san.” She shook her head negatively. “its against the rules.”
“there are rules?” at his question she walks over to the top of the stairs.
“Only two.” She said, slowly waking down the stair. Her right hand hovering over the wall, her fingers idly tracing the symbols there-on. As she traced the lines of symbols they became covered with a film of frost and reflected the moonlight. Wherever her fingers went there followed a trail of frost.
“and those rules are?” akazaji prompted her.
“we cannot appear directly to anyone we summon. And…” she gave akazaji a look with her glowing eyes and an evil grin that nearly made his blood run cold. “we are forbidden to harm the soul of anyone who is summoned.” “not that I would devour your soul, delcious as it may be.” She turned her eyes mournfully to the ground and her voice dripped with sadness. “your friend would never forgive me.”
“so why are their rules?” akazaji had a tinge on unease in his voice. The girls comments did not settle well. He did not like being refered to as one might refer to a piece of tender, cooked meat, roasted to perfection and drizzled with teriyaki sauce.
“why does your world have gravity or mortality?”she reached the bottom step of the stair and paused to answer her own question. “because your plane of existence, or world as you call it… its life force, which is the source of all magic, miracle, and phenomenon on your plane, mandates it. each person is born with a set amount of magic energy, or mana. Their store of mana slowly declines with age causing their bodies to wither. Inversely it gives children the ability to see or sense things others cannot and some adults who actually generate mana are able to DO things others cannot.”
“and gravity…”
she cut Akazaji off. “gravity is the result of everything on your plane trying to return to the source of the mana it is was originally created from. Your plane is a hollow sphere, containing inside of it 12 smaller spheres arranged as a small stellated dodecahedron(see wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_stellated_dodecahedron) with the core in the center” as she said this she pointed up at the moon. Akazaji looked and after studying if for a moment indeed noticed that the surface of this moon was different. She continued speaking, her hands gesturing to the land around them. “These spheres are the underworlds. 7 are the various hells of legend, 3 are the heavenly paradises, one is the sphere of war, known by your sphere as Valhalla, which is both a paradise and a hell, and lastly here… the netherworld. The special place for those who were not around long enough to earn their place anywhere else.”
She stepped onto the water and it froze beneath her touch. With every step she left a patch of ice slowly drifting in the pond. The settling of her weight creating small ripples that caused the moon’s image to dance upon the water. She reached the shore on akazaji’s left.
“Um…” this lot of information she had told him was difficult to digest. This was made more difficult because with her almost within touching distance of him he was able to fully ascertain her female charms. He determined her to be about his age. her eyes, glowing only faintly now that her face was bathed in moonlight, had a blue luster to them. Lastly, she was well endowed. Akazaji looked away, trying to ward off his lustful thoughts with logic that it would be necrophilia to…
she walked to the edge of the fog and turned to akazaji. “follow me.”
“why?” akazaji turned to face her.
“do you want to know why you are here or not?” she said it impaciently, as though she had something better to do, which, ironically he doubted considering where this was.

he shrugged his shoulders and followed her into the silent woods.