The Longing Of Shiina Ryo:Volume3 001
Greetings, my pupil.
The one writing this is your beloved teacher who goes by the name Honne Reikoku during my stay in this country, although if changing it was possible I would have; I only realized my mistake in picking such a name when on my third day teaching I was given the nickname ‘Professor Honey’, first in a really poor pronunciation of the English word and then ‘Mitsu-sensei’, the Japanese equivalent. While even today I cannot put my finger on ‘why’, it annoyed me instantly or at least enough for me to hit my treasured pointer against the table with enough strength to damage both, forcing me to start carrying around my current telescopic one.
Needless to say, I got reprimanded for my reckless actions and from that point on I would always count down when upset, as I have been told to do so by my supervisor. Doing it out loud has proven to be marvelously effective, so I assume this was good advice. The most remarkable of the times I had to do it was when, two years ago, someone found amusing to change ‘Mitsu’ for ‘Tsumi’, as in ‘sin’, which is quite a juvenile pun if you ask me; the reason why you never heard of any of these occurrences before only proves my supervisor’s point, counting down really does wonders.
Chances are I’m dead if you’re reading this message, and this is one particular cliché I would personally love to avoid. Not to say clichés are bad, if I thought that way I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my favorite movies or even talking to you. The reason is simple: to an extent I know you better than you know me and this is not how I wanted things between us to be.
That statement might require some explanation from my side.
Disregarding ‘Koukishin Shinzou’, I don’t know by which name or alias you are being called these days, which is not anything to be amazed at, considering how many of them you seem to have had over the past years while I wasn’t around. Even though I did my best to stay out of your way in order not to involve you into this ever-changing spiral of strange unusual happenings, both you and our brother were constantly drawn towards the magnetic appeal of fate.
Yes, as you probably considered before, I am your sister.
…
Just kidding!
…
Except I’m not. I really, really am your sister. No, seriously.
If this strikes you as a huge surprise I’ll be thoroughly, presumably posthumously disappointed. Not to say I set any particular flag of it for you to pick on but you seemed to have an uncanny ability to tell those things that goes far beyond the common man’s awareness range. It’s what I like the most about you and is exactly why I do my best to have fun with you when it comes to analyzing things. Be it a supernatural power or not, I am counting on that to help keeping you alive. Which is good and surely essential to your survival, considering how single-minded you can be most of the time; don’t take this as a disguised compliment as it’s usual with me, this half-joke carries a truth you should work on.
While I cannot say us meeting and getting to a certain degree of involvement was just a fortunate/unfortunate coincidence, you may rest assured that I had no intention of reaching out to you as a family member. I don’t see the world in that light and to me blood relations are just that and nothing else, although our shared destiny and trials may try and prove me otherwise multiple times. Even now I am only revealing it because it is convenient to me, so you really should not to think of yours truly as a saint; I just happened to fight monsters, as I presume you chose to by this point yourself and for yourself.
It doesn’t matter one bit at the end of the day.
The real reason why I am telling you about our family ties is because having you learn everything from scratch at this point of the game would probably be highly counterproductive and I already wasted my time by having to do it all alone when it was my turn. No, can’t have you let my research go to waste. Sorry about that, you are going to be lectured by your very possibly late teacher, hopefully before it’s too late to make a difference.
You will come to realize it’s absolutely important not to be on your own when it’s you against the world. I have a very small but reliable network. Three persons I can rely on, people that will most likely come, look for me and aid you when they notice I’m deader than disco. I assume I am entitled to drop lines like that left and right, it’s my funeral party after all and I’ll laugh if I want to.
Would make a great zombie movie, wouldn’t it? If I came back as such, would you have it in you to kill m…
Never mind. The answer is obvious, you are you after all: the moment I turned into some inhuman monster, you wouldn’t rest until I was resting in pieces. If I tried killing you as a human you would restrain me and that’s it, if some guy attacked a loved one of yours you would sacrifice yourself to defeat him yet the moment you see something otherworldly you get so ready to kill you get scared of how far you can go. And you don’t even need to be strong, but I can see why you’d prefer to: raising your chances of using your own strengths limits your chances of using friends as sacrificial pawns.
I won’t say I agree with that fully when it comes to war, but it’s a flaw in you I can respect and be proud of.
It’s kind of ridiculous how life ruined you and it was also extremely obvious that you learned, and reasonably well, my fighting style in order to be able to fight worse than you can although better than you’re willing to against humans; going barehanded would result in your death and imminent mission failure, but even after seeing me go against the guy in the alley you still think your true way is far more lethal than mine.
This made me want to spend more time with you and I am terribly sorry I couldn’t. As someone who is quickly becoming an adult, you should be able to understand me when I say there are things we must do and the things we want to do. Most of the times the first takes precedence and it kills us a bit more every time. Even so, I wish it would not happen to you. I wish I could have watched more shows and movies with you, played more games with you, taken you outside to go somewhere and just stargaze, talked about the girls you’ve been interested in and be overprotective, discussed philosophy and chitchat, eaten more of your cooking and maybe learned a thing or two from you about it so I wouldn’t have to live off convenience store food, smiled at you as you held the rings as a page boy pretending it was against your will and that you weren’t happy to see me getting married.
Above all, even if I could trade those for just one, I wanted to have been there whenever you felt down and unloved, whenever the burden you carried was simply way too heavy for a child and held you in my arms like the baby brother I was not able to see growing up.
I’m sorry.
Whatever you do now is up to you. I cannot physically force you to carry on my plan, but if it came to me being taken down after all the time I spent working on it you should really consider if that is the best idea. For now, it can be contained: this syndrome doesn’t have to spread any further; it doesn’t have to become the worst plague that ever afflicted mankind and might end it up for real. You know the value of a life better than I do.
So do what you know is right, beyond good or evil.
I’d prefer if you didn’t read this part out loud, in case you are in the company of the girls: you’re usually right from the start but cannot prove your point because you have no verifiable evidence, and your main flaw is to let other people change your views based on whatever half-baked excuse they can provide; a scientific mind always questions, indeed, but there is no point in over-analyzing everything to hell and back when you already have an answer.
Trust yourself. I know I do.
| Back to Prologue | Return to Main Page | Forward to 002 |
