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Two broken figures laid in the bamboo forest.
One figure's otherwise spotless skin was ruined by deep red burns, her blood still boiling from the heat and scalding her skin further, licks of smoke still seething from her open wounds. The other laid in a pool of her own blood, lacerations ripping across her body, punctuated by inexplicable, perfectly cauterised and perfectly circular holes where flesh and bone ought to be.
For now, the bodies laid still. The full moon, low in the sky, peeked through the fields of blackened bamboo, strips of serene white light washing over them. In a place as exposed as this, the two corpses would be easy pickings for the beasts and youkai stalking these lost woods.
Yet no predators, supernatural or not, visited the bodies. Those who ventured close enough to see the ash-white hair of the first corpse and the silken black hair of the second turned tail and left to seek other prey. They knew better than to trifle with those eternal perversions of nature.
Lying in the bamboo forest were two corpses that did not die.
The white-haired corpse twitched. It started with her chest: the gaping gash torn across it wriggled and squirmed, blood flowing upwards and flesh knitting together to fill the cavity where her heart laid. Her heart, too, spasmed and began thumping in uneven beats, as the girl's other wounds came to life and closed themselves. Her heartbeat evened out and her chest started to rise and fall into a slow rhythm.
With a sputtering cough, Mokou woke up to the sight of an ever beautiful, ever condescending and ever infuriating face.
Kaguya gave a sardonic smile as she looked over the human's eyes fluttering open. 'Good evening, Fujiwara no Mokou.'
Mokou's heart burned with a deep black resentment at the mocking delivery of that line, but her constantly aching body didn't allow for much physical retaliation. The most she could manage was a half-hearted swing of her arm at Kaguya's face. She responded by gently clasping her slender hand around Mokou's wrist and giving it a sharp twist, producing a sickening crack.
Mokou let out a heavy sigh, the pain of a broken wrist barely registering in her mind. She attempted to sit up to at least look her nemesis in the eye, but a sudden stab of pain from her spine caused her to collapse once more to the cracked earth.
Great. I look like even more of a fool in front of her now. Mokou's tired mind barely had time to register the thought before she felt a pair of slender hands, the same hands that snapped her wrist so effortlessly, wrap around her shoulders and lift her up to meet Kaguya's gaze. The sheer objective perfection of her face, perfectly spotless and perfectly symmetrical, never failed to unsettle the otherwise dauntless immortal.
Kaguya's mocking smile remained. 'Easy now. A human really shouldn't move so suddenly after a grievous injury, you know?'
Mokou's broken wrist spasmed and twisted itself back into place. 'Quit your patronising. You of all people know I'm far past the point of being human.'
'And whose fault is that?' Kaguya raised an eyebrow.
If this was when she first met the lunarian princess, Mokou would answer 'Yours' without hesitation, with no shortage of venom behind the word. She held genuine hatred towards Kaguya then, for callously humiliating her father to the point of ruin and suicide. But as the wheel of time relentlessly turned, the changing of seasons becoming an indistinct blur and the people around her coming and going like specks of dust adrift in the air, the flame of hatred grew cold. It burnt through its fuel and faded away until naught remained in her heart but mere embers of annoyance.
Thus, Mokou scoffed at her once-mortal enemy and answered. 'Mine, I guess.'
It was the only answer she could give. It was her that followed those soldiers, her that saw them kill each other over the Hourai Elixir like rabid dogs over a corpse, and her that pushed the last survivor off the ledge and downed that accursed poison.
Kaguya's expression was unreadable. Her unblinking black eyes stared into the immortal for a few, long seconds. Finally, she closed her eyes and broke the silence.
'Surprising.' Her voice was flat and impassive rather than sounding like the condescending princess she normally was. 'I expected you to deliver a few scornful remarks about how everything was somehow my fault.'
Mokou scowled. 'Well, it is. You were the one who wanted to live forever in the first place, dragging everyone around you into this mess. Say what you want about my idiocy back then, but you encouraged that idiocy to happen.'
Kaguya giggled with an uncharacteristic innocence. 'There it is.'
'Honestly, though?' Mokou closed her eyes and slumped onto the ground, her bones weary and tired. 'I don't have it in me to care anymore.'
It was the truth. Try as she might, she couldn't stoke the fire that managed to stir her heart for centuries. The flame of hatred was hardly the most pleasant thing, all sharp and scalding, but at least that meant she felt something. Now? Everything felt numb, and every movement of hers felt languid.
A few more seconds of silence followed, punctuated only by the buzzing of dragonflies and the creaking of crickets.
'...Is that so.'
Kaguya's reply was quieter than normal. She didn't know what to make of that. As always.
Is she disappointed? Sad? Angry? Could you act like a normal person for once and show anything other than that haughty smile!?
A spark landed in the embers, and a flame blossomed. Mokou relished in the feeling.
This. This is what I hate. Your sheer inability to give a straight answer for once.
Mokou pushed herself off the ground. Her aching body burned once more with one thousand years of resentment towards that princess. That princess that tore her family and countless others apart with her sadistic games, that hid her every intention behind the same porcelain smile, that commited the one absolute sin against life out of sheer selfishness, that vain princess that—
—was completely enthralled by a butterfly that just landed on her finger.
Mokou blinked. The flame in her heart was doused.
What?
Kaguya Houraisan, who saw life on earth not unlike how a human saw dirt, was completely captivated by a butterfly, as if she was some child seeing one for the first time.
The jaded immortal narrowed her eyes and scrutinised Kaguya's face. She searched for any false smile, any trace of contempt in her crystal-clear eyes, perhaps even the slightest smirk peeking below her lips that revealed this to be another twisted joke of hers.
She came up empty handed. In Kaguya's smile, she found only a little girl who saw a butterfly land on her finger, and was struck with an overwhelming peace and contentment for life.
Mokou wordlessly stared at the princess.
She's content. Kaguya's in the same boat as me, doomed to suffer eternally, yet she's content. How in the world does she cope with it? How does she not shatter under the weight of eternity?
'...I'm kinda jealous,' Mokou unwittingly muttered.
Kaguya snapped out of her trance, the butterfly fluttering away. 'Huh?'
Only now realising her mistake, Mokou covered her mouth, her face flared with embarrassment. Her eyes shot down and stared holes into the ground. She heard that. She definitely heard that. She's never gonna let me live this down, is she?
The girl was trying her damndest to pretend that nothing happened when she heard an airy laugh. It was the first time Mokou heard such a sound from the princess, and for some gods-forsaken reason, the experience caused Mokou's heart to spasm in her chest and stole her breath for a split second.
Kaguya's voice had a maddeningly coy lilt to it. 'My, my. Have you finally succumbed to my unearthly beauty, like so countless many have before? Don't try and deny it now, I heard your breath hitch just from hearing me laugh.'
Mokou really wanted to die right now. Well, she wanted that all the time, but especially right now. Annoyed, she looked up at Kaguya to at least see what kind of shit-eating grin she was wearing—and froze to see a sombre, grim smile in its place.
'...You're jealous of my attitude. You're wondering how I haven't been broken by the weight of forever.'
Mokou's stunned silence was all Kaguya needed for an answer.
The princess held out her hand, and the butterfly returned to rest on her finger. After a long moment of contemplation, she spoke. '...Close your eyes, if you will.'
Mokou blinked, then levelled a glare; she'd earned a few too many wounds from trickery just like this. 'Look, you might've caught me in a pretty dour mood, but you're not getting me to fall for that—'
'No tricks.'
The air grew thick with apprehension.
A few more seconds of silence, and something in Kaguya's persistent stare caused Mokou to relent and shut her eyes. She told herself that she did this because of excessive tiredness and hoped to god there wasn't a deeper reason.
No sudden attack came from the princess. Mokou internally heaved a sigh of relief, again not knowing why—nor wanting to know why.
'Now, count the seconds that pass.'
What is this, meditation? Nonetheless, she followed. 'One... two... three...'
Mokou heard Kaguya's otherwise regular breathing hitch, then rapid footfalls approaching and stopping by her side. She thought for a moment that the princess was scared, before dispelling that thought. Kaguya doesn't lose her composure.
Does she?
She heard Kaguya seat herself beside her. 'I... didn't think it would be this severe until a few millennia at least.' Her tone, too, was unusually tense and terse. 'The interval between your words was not one second. It was four.'
Huh? Mokou started. Was I that off?
She huffed and opened her eyes. 'Yeah, my sense of time is off. So what?'
'You're getting swept along.' For the first time she could remember, Mokou heard the slightest tinge of emotion behind Kaguya's words. 'Seconds become minutes, become hours, days, months. Years. Centuries. All gone before you could realise. Surely you've noticed by now?'
Mokou found it impossible to refute what was said. A crack started to form inside her blackened heart. She thought she buried her worries long ago, yet those wounds were starting to prove her wrong and make themselves felt. A sour, festering pressure bubbled up from the bottom of her heart.
Against her better judgement, she tore off the layers of ennui surrounding her heart and let the words out of her mouth.
'It's... everything's a blur, Kaguya. I wake up, and the day slips through my fingers before I could even grasp it. Memories, too. Landscapes, dreams, faces, names. Every new experience I have is just more paint splashed onto the ruined, rotting canvas that is my life, the only difference being that I can't throw this god awful painting in the trash and start over.'
The more she spoke, the more she wanted to say, like a dam had finally burst.
'Kaguya, I have to endure this forever. The world will change a dozen times over and the people will flutter by like leaves in a hurricane and I will still be here, unchanged and unchanging, forever. How do I care for anything if it's just more paint that will lose its colour? What's a day, a month, a year, in the face of eternity? And—most of all—how can you manage!? How can you know perfectly well what will happen and still manage to be enraptured by a fucking butterfly—'
Mokou froze. She felt a tender hand clasp over her own, and just now realised how tightly her hands were balled into fists, fingernails digging into her palm hard enough to draw blood. Forcing herself to relax, she was struck all of a sudden with the sheer absurdity of Kaguya holding her hand—and not breaking it.
In that instant, Mokou was not an accursed walking corpse that spent 1500 years too long on this world, but a blunt and reserved girl who was flustering and floundering at the hand wrapped around hers.
Another airy laugh escaped Kaguya's mouth. 'What made you stop?'
Mokou stammered, then groaned in exasperation. 'You—you're holding my hand!'
'That I am.'
'So that's why!'
'That doesn't answer the question.'
'I—' Words tried and failed to stumble out of the white-haired girl's mouth. 'It's embarrassing!'
'It may be, yes.' Kaguya's giggling smile turned into a smirk. 'But if it's just going to blend in with the rest of your life, why do you care?'
'Why do I—Because it's embarrassing now!'
'And there it is.' Kaguya inched closer, wearing a mollifying smile. 'You asked me what today was in the face of eternity. To which I ask you: what is eternity compared to now?'
Mokou stilled. Her thoughts ground to a screeching halt.
What was eternity?
The sensation of forever. A moment that never ends. What did that feel like?
She… didn't know. Eternity seemed too distant a concept for her to grasp.
It couldn't be helped. Mokou was immortal, but she was still human. She knew of eternity, that it was the fate she was doomed to, but her human mind drew a blank when she tried to picture that fate in her head.
The present? She could understand that just fine. She was living it right now, after all.
Kaguya's honeyed voice broke Mokou from her bout of introspection. 'Well?'
Mokou scoffed, remembering the… predicament that Kaguya had put her into. She could still feel the cool touch of the princess' hand, the silky smoothness of her skin, the tips of her perfectly manicured nails, the way she squeezed her hand ever so slightly as if to pull her back from her thoughts…
Mokou resolutely ignored the red dusting her cheeks as she answered with a stammer. 'J-just cut the crap and give it to me straight. You know I hate it when you talk in circles like this.'
Kaguya gave a low chuckle. 'You hate it when I do a lot of things, Mokou.' She then let her body sway closer to Mokou's arm, letting curtains of her perfect hair land on her shoulder and goddamnit, Kaguya was most definitely enjoying every second of this at her expense. For all of Mokou's aptitude with fire, she felt just about ready to combust.
She found her heart alight with a flame that was most definitely not anger, and she tried her damndest to ignore it.
A few long seconds later, Kaguya seemed to have enough fun and returned to her impassive posture, though her hand remained. 'No fun, are you? Even your reactions are predictably extreme. I was hoping I could avoid spelling it out for you, but hope too much I did.' Mokou was ready to jab back at that quip, but what the princess said next gave her pause.
'I know eternity.' The words flowed from her mouth, pristine and ancient. Kaguya was still and cold as a corpse, and it took Mokou a moment to realise she was staring at the full moon. 'I was born in it. I was bathed in it for uncounted centuries. I could see it in every unchanging soul there. I could see it engraved in everything they built. I could see it in myself. And I could see it in our future, clear as night.'
'Fujiwara no Mokou.' Kaguya tore her gaze from the moon and stared into Mokou's eyes, unblinking, her voice almost a whisper. 'Your mind is human, constrained by human perspectives. You cannot see the vastness of eternity as I do. Trust me when I say that it does not hold a candle to this present moment.'
The grip on Mokou's hand tightened, as if to anchor her to the ground. 'And promise me that you will peer not into the abyss of forever. The present is a treasure. Live, and don't cast it aside.'
As much as she wanted to brush off Kaguya's musings as esoteric ramblings, there was a gravity in her voice that forced Mokou to consider them.
She wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe that her mind could be unburdened if only she shut her eyes to the future. She knew, however, that life was seldom so easy—to say nothing of a life without end. How long could she really live with her feet planted to the ground, as Kaguya would wish? How long until her old mind tires of this mortal-filled world and surrenders to the currents of time, drifting forevermore?
Mokou was hardly the most optimistic person to begin with, so she was just about ready to dismiss Kaguya's poignant speech as idealistic drivel before her vision came to from her introspection.
For the first time, Kaguya wore her emotions cleanly on her face. It was marred with something she couldn't quite name, her eyes etched with apprehension and her smile touched with hope. It felt wrong to see the unflappable Kaguya so openly anxious, about her no less. She tried to ignore the guilt eating her from the inside.
Her hand was still there. At times, Mokou could swear it was trembling.
That decided it.
Damn my treacherous heart.
The girl sighed. 'That was a lotta words just to tell me to stop worrying about the future.'
Kaguya's mask returned as quickly as it fell, but it was hard to ignore the way her shoulders sagged in relief. 'Of course that's all you take from it.'
'What can I say? My mind is human, constrained by human perspectives.'
The two returned to their comfortable routine of exchanging jabs and insults easily enough. Truthfully, Mokou was thankful for it. She was never one for introspection; staring back at her rotten life was never a comforting thing, and it required a mind too still and a hand too delicate for her to possess.
Speaking of which, Kaguya's hand was still there. Perched on her knuckles was that butterfly again, still and content.
Kaguya seemed to notice, as her eye gained a familiar mischievous glint and her smile turned teasing. 'My, you sure got used to this quickly. Your hand has completely relaxed, and I can't help but notice you've made no effort to pull away.'
'Well, because it slipped my mind!' Mokou scowled as she yanked her hand from Kaguya's grip, trying not to lament the newfound lack of warmth as the butterfly flitted away. 'Honestly, you're acting way too strange tonight.'
Kaguya's face was the very picture of innocence. 'How so?'
'What do you mean 'how so'? You're supposed to be the most stuck-up, condescending person I've ever met, and you absolutely are, but tonight… when your face fell apart and your hand trembled, it's almost like you—' Mokou practically spat her next words out as if they burned her mouth, '—you cared about me, or something. It's like you're breaking character.'
Kaguya appeared to contemplate something for a brief second, before smiling. 'Then allow me to break character once more.' She then rose from the ground, straightened out her kimono—and held out her hand.
'Geidontei is open at this hour. Why don't we pay a visit together?'
Mokou could only blink at the straightforward request. 'You're serious?'
'The night is yet young.'
Mokou considered it.
There was little more ephemeral in life than a night filled with alcohol, with drunken revelry and candid conversation that would leak from the mind come morning. A night spent drinking was a night forgotten. It was for that reason Mokou always kept her distance from such events.
Kaguya's words, however, echoed in her mind. Here I go worrying about the future again. If I'm actually gonna take her advice, I guess this would be a good place to start.
Besides, after tonight, I… wouldn't exactly mind spending some more time with her. What is she thinking, choosing now of all times to suddenly become tolerable?
There was that fire in her heart again. Compared to the flame of anger she was so accustomed to, it was at once more intense and less scalding.
She liked it, she decided—the way it warmed her body and made her feel a little less alone in the world. Mokou wondered if this was how it felt to live.
'Fine.'
Mokou took the proffered hand and felt that fire blaze ever brighter, the warmth keeping her from feeling at all the biting chill of night. Sure that the warmth was touching her face, she fixed her gaze to the ground as the two began to walk. The butterfly came to rest on her head for some time.
She didn't see Kaguya's mask slip once more to reveal a similarly flushed face, painted in equal parts with surprise and relief as she led her forever-mortal partner through the forest.
Patrons of Geidontei that night would later attest to the arrival of two seldom-seen figures that were further seldom seen together. Supposedly, the two sat at the counter and, after a period of shy silence, they talked. About everything and nothing, about old fairytales and events long past, about mundane parts of their lives they never before bothered to share, about wounds and scars they thought before buried. There was sake, and there was weeping, and there was laughter.
That is, until a half-drunk Mokou loudly challenged Kaguya to a drinking game, who was all too condescendingly eager to accept. Thirty minutes and a veritable mountain of empty bottles later, they were swiftly escorted outside after several tables were shattered and the counter was lit on fire.
They paid it no mind. The nights they shared before were always filled with death, a mere shadow of a release that was never to be granted to them.
Tonight, for the first time, was a night filled with loosened words and thoughtless joy. Gone was the weight of their curse, for tonight was a night spent living.
Those two ageless souls have never felt more alive.