Andromeda

“…real world…” said Yuki softly while he was still staring at Ayumi. The thought had almost made him laugh knowing how much of a strange and ironic statement that was to be said. ‘Most wouldn’t see it as a real world and until yesterday it was just a fake world to me. Strange to think my fantasies could be in the real world.’ He stood up from the grass looking straight at Ayumi smoothing out his uniform. There were questions that needed to be answered and he did not have a lot of free time. “We need to talk.”

“Yeah, you said that already. What is it you want to talk about?” Ayumi had dropped all of her facades that she wore for the public. She was not in the mood for wasting time.

Yuki knew that he had countless questions for her, but he had to pace himself. There were things that he needed to know more than anything else. Those things were not something that he could not ask before when his family was around him. “Why can’t my family remember the assassin and what happened last night?”

Chapter 14 – Kasou-ryoku

Ayumi began to walk around Yuki coming to the edge of a tree in the school grounds. She leaned back against the tree while keeping her eyes on him. “This is an easy answer. I did it. It would be rather difficult if your family learned about your problems.”

He turned around completely to face her not completely satisfied with the answer. “What do you mean you did it? I already figured that much out. How did you do it?”

“That is more complicated than you can understand.” Ayumi was going to leave it at that, but she could see how frustrated it was making Yuki. “I did it while I was cleaning your house. I made them forget what happened through a special chemical I created in the air.”

“Made them forget? You’re talking about your power. Your Kasou-ryoku.”

Ayumi tilted her head up suddenly at the strange word that Yuki had just used. “Kasou-ryoku? What is that?”

“Well I’m always just saying ‘this power’ ‘your power’ ‘my power’ I felt that it needed a name. What you think?” Yuki had been very excited about the idea. He had wanted to tell her sooner, but there was not a good time during class. Most of the time at night had been spent thinking about it and he was very proud of it.

Ayumi was left without words feeling that she was sweating a little by his reaction. She could see the barely contained excitement. “Kasou-ryoku…I prefer Meso Prosecho.”

“M-Meso Proshesho?” he said roughly having trouble speaking it seeing as it was not Japanese and not even English. “What is that? Sounds like Latin or something.”

She looked back at him suddenly angry for reasons that he would not understand. “It’s not Latin, it’s Greek. And it means way of the mind. It’s what we’ve called it since ancient times.”

“Well I’m not Greek and it sounds hard to say. I’m sticking with Japanese, besides it sounds cooler in Japanese.” Yuki was still looking very proud from the statement ignoring or, perhaps, not noticing the frustration that was developing as a pulsing vein in Ayumi’s forehead. He went on leaving the issue behind as he had other things he wished to know. “Did you use your Kasou-ryoku at school too to make them forget?”

“Are you going to keep saying that?” she said flinching her eyebrow at the word. She was not certain if he was saying it just to annoy her or because he liked the word.

“Yes, it needs a name.”

“Fine…and no I didn’t do that here. No one else saw us and apparently most of the students were oblivious the whole matter.”

“Really? All of the noise. I would’ve thought someone would have seen something.” It was a relieving thought for Yuki to know what he was safe. None of his friends had asked about it once he started to think more about the matter. It all seemed rather strange to him, but if no one found out then it did not really need him to press the issue further. However, he then thought about something that did not fit in. “What about Saki? She knows and you haven’t erased her memories. Won’t she be a problem?”

Ayumi leaned away from the tree before pulling herself from its support walking to Yuki. The matter of Saki was certainly a problem for her, but this was a calculated risk at this point. It was unavoidable seeing how close the two were. “It would have happened eventually. Better now than lying to her and then having more problems later.”

“I guess you’re right. You thought this out pretty far, huh?”

“Of course, I planned on taking you back. I wouldn’t have gotten very far without planning ahead.” She began to walk away from Yuki. Their time was coming to an end as she was satisfied with the number of questions that he asked. It was not time for him to understand everything. He would not have been able to comprehend it all yet.

Yuki turned around rushing after Ayumi taking her wrist in his hand to stop her. “I’m not done! I have more questions. You keep saying that you need me, but why is it so important that it is me? I know nothing of your people or what to do to save them.” He could tell that she was pulling to get free while making it look like she was not struggling. This was important to him; he needed to understand completely what she was trying to get him to do. It was all still so fantastic to him. He felt so small in what seemed larger than he could deal with.

Ayumi found Yuki’s grip to be surprisingly strong. She had thought that he was just some weak child that stared too long in front of the TV screen and read all the time. ‘Why can’t I get free?’ She looked back to Yuki seeing his determination in his eyes. ‘There’s more to him that I haven’t seen yet.’ This was a point that she wanted to deal with at a later time. She knew that the longer she stayed the sooner it would come up and she had not chosen her words as carefully as she liked. The casual conversation had distracted her. “Let me go.”

“Not till you answer my question.” He tightened his hold on her wrist to enforce his point.

She grew tired of Yuki’s thinking that he was in control of the situation. Ayumi drew back towards him and took her other hand to grab the arm that Yuki was holding her with pulling him over her in a single fluid motion. When she was finished he was laying on his back staring up at her confused at what happened. “Just because I’m not using my powers doesn’t mean I’m weak. Come to my house tonight so we can begin your training immediately.” Ayumi walked off leaving Yuki to stare at the clouds in silence.

Yuki blinked slowly staring up at the blue sky barely acknowledging that Ayumi had left. The moment eventually caught up to him and he stood up dusting off his uniform. Once he finished he raised up his fist to the air with the annoyed angry vein popping out of his forehead. “You didn’t answer my questions. Ayumi, I’m going to…”

When he released his anger to the void and grew tired of nothing but the wind replying back to him he lowered his fist. School was over for him and he was late getting back. If it was another day Momoko might have yelled at him for being late, but those days were far between. Jun and Ken were waiting for him to make them a snack. However, Yuki was not in the mood with how Ayumi left him. ‘Why didn’t they just do it themselves when they came home. They don’t need me.’ There would be no amount of pulling on Yuki that would convince him otherwise, much to the disappointment of his younger brothers.

Ken stuck his tongue out at Yuki’s back before running way. He disappeared into the kitchen starting to make a worrisome noise. Jun walked around Yuki looked up at him as though he could tell that there was something off from his brother’s usual anti-social personality around his family.

Yuki tried not to look at his brother, but Jun made it difficult to be ignored. He gave into Jun after some frustration and looked down at him. “I’ll be fine. It’s just been a long day.” The reassurance did not seem to give Jun comfort as he still hung around Yuki keeping a firm hold on his uniform in his hands. Yuki let out a small sigh and knelt down to look at Jun closer. “You don’t need to worry…” He took a pause trying to figure out what he should say to get Jun to release him. Yuki knew too well that if Jun was concerned about someone he followed them around silently in their shadow until their mood changed (he knew that because it was generally himself that was caught). “How ‘bout this. We’ll see what noise Ken is making and fix up some snacks before Momoko comes home?”

Jun gave him an eager nod adding a little leap in his excitement. Yuki grabbed up Jun quickly with little effort and placed him on his shoulders. The house was tall enough and the two of them short of enough that they fit through without troubles. He knew how much Jun liked riding around on his back when he was younger and though he was getting older Jun was still very much a child at times. When they came to the kitchen doorway Yuki had to bend down a little to get through, but Jun seemed to be in a better mood now as well as Yuki. The mood had lasted until he saw the mess that Ken was starting to make. “Ken! Momoko’s going to kill you if she sees this mess.”

“Well I wouldn’t be making a mess if you had decided to help,” Ken said as he spilled out rice across the cooking table. It looked more like he was trying to make a point with the mess rather than doing it innocently.

Yuki gasped a little seeing him wasting the food and picturing Momoko’s reaction in his head. The thought made him turn blue for a moment feeling fear throughout his body. “I’m here now. Jun and I will help you clean this up and make something to eat.” Yuki let Jun down on the countertop and walked over to Ken in order to halt his progress.

Ken did not want to move out of the way, but Yuki found that it took very little convincing as he handed everything over to him. While Yuki began to clean up the spilled rice and other bits of food that Ken brought out Ken went over to Jun. He helped Jun down off the table and gave him a mischievous grin nodding to him. Jun returned with a silent half vacant conspiratorial nod back to Ken. The two children darted around the kitchen pulling out things for a snack.

Yuki had finally finished with the food clean up when he saw a whole new group of things in front of him along with eager eyes staring up at him. “You planned this didn’t you…” There was no use fighting the two. He gave into their plotting and between the three of them managed to put together something that would hold them over until Momoko came home.

When the snack was over Yuki left them going to his room to think quietly. A long morning proved itself to be a perfect prediction of what rest of the day was going to be like for him. ‘Maids and fairies…samurai too. And there’s things that Ayumi aren’t telling me. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. There are a lot of things she hasn’t told me, but why doesn’t she want to talk about it?’ Yuki closed his eyes while resting on his bed. He still had a while before Momoko was back from classes at college.

‘She said that she’d teach me how to use my power, but what does she want me to do with it? She said I’m so heir to her people, but does she expect me to take over rule or something? I can’t do that.’ There were still too many things that Yuki did not understand. The power that he had was the worst of them. He had been safe during school for no outbreaks, but he did not know how long he could keep it up. It was exhausting for him to keep his mind as empty of thoughts as possible. ‘I don’t know if I can keep this up. Maybe I should stay out of school, just in case.’ He could feel the black void of fear surrounding him leaving him alone and scared. This was more than he wanted. The power was beyond what he could control.

He felt his leg slip on his bed suddenly, but pulled it back thinking that it had somehow wandered off his bed. Once again his leg fell away and he pulled on it. A third time made him lift his head and open his eyes to find that there was a large dark vortex in his bed that his body was slowly sinking into. His body jumped around struggling against the darkness that was like quicksand and holding like tar. He grabbed his legs with his hands when found that his muscles in his legs were not doing enough. “What’s going on?”

The circle expanded further encompassing more than half of his bed preventing his escape and leaving little room for him to hold on. His futile struggle with his legs only made them be devoured faster losing everything below his hips to the black that was threatening to eat him whole. He quickly retreated his hands back out while he still had him to take a hold of the nearest solid object, the frame of his bed. Soon after he found his anchor he lost his waist bringing him firmly against his bed and the vortex. His head and chin rested against the edge of his mattress as his back up line of defense to support his hands. “Did I…create this too? What is this?” Yuki fought against what felt like inevitability dragging him down. His eyes darted around the room looking for something that would save him.

The edge of the expanding black circle had something written on it clearly labeling it for what it truly was. It had caught Yuki’s eye as he searched. He read it out to himself, “Black Void of Fear, trademark…really? You’ve got to be joking.” The almost ridiculous nature of what was eating him laid out in a nearly comedic manner would have made him laugh if it was not him being swallowed. “My own worries are literally trying to eat me.” Yuki found a little extra strength to begin pulling back some of his body, but the substance of the void was clinging tightly on this uniform not willing to let him be free. ‘Can my own power really kill me? I’ve got to get…free…’

Yuki’s hands were sweating badly and tiring out from the constant strain to keep himself from being taken while pulling himself free. He could feel his fingers starting to slip free from his hold and pressure being placed on his chin as the void took back what he had freed and some extra. ‘Is it really going to eat me?’ Yuki’s mind was starting to spin around trying to think about what was going to happen to him. The fear was setting in no longer panic. His strength was failing him and time was not lasting for him. Yuki closed his eyes struggling to keep his hands from coming free against the increasingly eager void. ‘What do I do? I can’t stop it. Am I going to die?’ His fingers were coming free suddenly as the pull against him rapidly increased.

He could not keep his hold any longer as his right hand lost its hold quickly followed by his left hand. Yuki scrapped the bed to hold on longer, but his fingers could not take hold. His face slid roughly across his comforter making it burn. ‘I can’t let it…’ A last futile effort from Yuki stopped his progress for a moment. He dug his teeth into his bed covers barely keeping from ripping the threads. However, his covers were not tightly held to the bed and he cursed his failure as the void won shortly. His chest was swallowed up quickly dragging in his head and arms.

“Yuki! Yuki, are you asleep again?!”

“Momoko?! She’s home and going to see everything! She can’t know. But…” The door to his room was already being turned and panic returned to him pushing away the fear and the void that had been eating him. He need to hide it all from her, but knew that he could not. There was nothing that he could do to prevent her and the door was opening. He closed his eyes not certain how long he had left before it ate him accepting what was coming and the screams to follow.

“Hey Yuki! You got to help me with the dinner.” Momoko grabbed Yuki’s arm up to get his attention seeing that he looked half dead on his bed.

Yuki pulled back taking his arm from her in shock that his secret was found out. He drew across his bed sitting up quickly staring at her. “Momoko I-I…can…wait…it’s gone.” In the panic of Momoko coming into his room he did not realize that he had been freed from the void that was eating him. It had disappeared oblivious to him during the moments just as quickly as it had come. He did not know what to think, but sigh heavily against his wall.

“Gone? What’s gone? You lose something again?”

“Huh? N-No. Everything’s fine. Anyway, you needed help with dinner?” Yuki jumped up from his bed and went to his door leaving it behind quickly. The terror that he had created would keep him up all night. He needed to get some distance between what he did. He ran downstairs heading to the kitchen leaving Momoko staring blankly at his empty room.

“Hmm…”

After dinner was over Yuki went to the closet in the living room. He pulled out his white jacket with blue stripes down the sleeves and put it on. Momoko called out to him before he made it to the door. “Where are you going? I’m leaving to the bookstore soon.”

“I’m just going out for some air.” Yuki grabbed the door knob quickly and opened it trying to get out of the house before anymore questions were asked. He knew that Momoko was suspicious of his actions, since it was rare for him to leave the house at any time.

“Where are you going?”

“You sound like a broken record. I’m going out!” He rushed out of the house closing the door behind him and ran into the street. He did not stop until he made it down in front of a house, the old Kitayama house. Yuki took a breath from the running and stood up straight. He stared down the house not knowing what he was going to be getting into. ‘I must do this. I can’t worry about trusting her. I need to learn how to control my power.’

To be continued…