Kara no Kyoukai:Ceremony of Boundary-1
/Kyoukai Shiki[edit]
On the hospital bed which was no different from any ordinary day and would never be different, her weak body lay shivering uncontrollably.
The door through which there is no chance of visitors coming in opens.
Without a sound, but with a presence unmatchable by anyone else, that person came to visit.
The visitor is a man, tall, with a wide build. His grim face was perpetually shadowed like that of a philosopher attempting to solve an eternally unsolvable fundamental question.
Quite probably --- this person always looks like this.
The man watches her with grim and sincere eyes.
That feeling, of closure to the point of terror. A sense of restriction that makes you wonder if the room has somehow been put into a vacuum. It's to the point where even she who does not fear death but only the shortness of life begins to feel a wariness of death due to this person's presence.
"Are you Fujoh Kirie?"
As expected, there is an echo of agony somewhere in his heavy voice.
Looking with her sightless eyes, Fujoh Kirie replies to the man.
"Are you Dad's friend?"
The man doesn't give an answer, but Fujoh Kirie was sure that this was the person who had paid the hospital fees for a family-less person like herself.
"What did you come for? I can't do anything," Kirie says as she shakes. The man doesn't even bat an eyelash.
"I've come to grant your wish. Another body that will be free. Don't you want it?"
In those revoltingly unrealistic words was a hint of magic, or at least it felt so to Fujoh Kirie, because she accepted that if it was this man he could carry out that which he had promised without any resistance to the idea.
After a brief contemplation of the offer, she nods her shaking neck.
The man nods. His right hand rises.
Kirie's long-cherished dream.
And a nightmare that will never end. In one wave of his hand, he grants her both.
But before that --- she asks him one question.
"Who, are you?"
The man replies as if the question was inconsequential.
Freed from the ruined basement bar, she set off on her way home with feeble steps.
The rhythm of her breathing is strange and she is dizzy. She can't walk properly without supporting herself on something.
The cause is probably the scary thing that had happened to her earlier. For whatever reason, one of the five youths who had been getting ready to humiliate her as usual had struck her back with a baseball bat.
It hadn't hurt - no, she had never known pain in the first place. It was just... heavy. The chill radiating out from her back contorted her face into a frown, and the knowledge that she had been hit in the back crumpled her mind. Still, she hadn't shed any tears and had meant to return to the student dorms after enduring the time of humiliation.
But today that road seemed to stretch forever.
On top of that, her body isn't listening to her.
The reflection in a shop window she happened to look into showed her a deathly pale face. She doesn't feel the pain, so she doesn't realise what injuries she's received or what that means. She's been struck in the back, but all she knows is that she has been hit; she has no idea that her backbone has been broken by the blow.
She is clueless, but right now she can at least tell that her body is suffering.
She can't go to the hospital. The neighborhood clinic she goes to without her parents' knowledge is too far from here, and even if she calls them, she will be asked how she was hurt. She can't lie very well, so she isn't confident that she would be able to explain away any of the doctor's questions.
"--- what should I do? What should I do --- ?"
Gasping for breath, she falls to the ground.
A huge man's arm stops her fall.
Surprised, she lifts her face. There is a serious-seeming man there.
"Are you Asagami Fujino?"
The man's voice does not allow for any denials. Just then, for the last time in her life, she --- Asagami Fujino --- felt a wariness that froze her whole body.
"There's a crack in your vertebra. You can't go home like this."
With a magic-like freshness, the statement that she can't go home grips her mind.
That, she doesn't want that to happen. Her home --- she doesn't want to be unable to go back to the dorm. Because right now, that is the only place Asagami Fujino can rest.
With pleading eyes, Fujino looks up at the man. Although it's summer, he wears a coat-like cloak. His cloak and the clothes he is wearing beneath it are all black. The flapping cloak and the man's piercing eyes, for some reason --- brought to mind a monk from a temple.
"Do you want to be healed?"
A voice with a hypnotic strength can be heard.
Fujino does not even feel that she is nodding.
"I see. I'll fix your body's fault."
Without any change of expression, the man puts his right hand against Fujino's back.
But before that --- she asks him just one thing.
"Who, are you ... ?"
He replies as if the question was inconsequential.
But before that --- he asked just one thing.
"You, who are you?"
The man in the black coat replies without even blinking.
"Magus --- Araya Souren."
Like a god's proclamation, his words rang out heavily across the back alley.
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