An Exploding Ally XLVII

Maybe this time, it was not Shotaro who had to bear the majority of the burden.

Perhaps it wasn't anyone else's burden to carry.

Maybe—just maybe—she wouldn't have to be rescued after all.

She gazed again at the large black door before her.

Its frame glowed with an entrancing color that was akin to a mixture of oil and ink, an otherworldly light that seemed to beat in time, much as a wound skillfully sewn into the very fabric of existence itself. Her fingers automatically wrapped around the key that hung ominously marked with the words "The Incident."

And she moved forward a step.

As soon as she stepped across the threshold, the hallway shifted. The light flickered out—not darkness, but memory. Sour, gritty memory. Like static. Like grainy film in motion just beneath her skin.

The door pulsed.

Then it roared.

Not by sound, but by the richness of emotion.

It struck her with the power and fury of thunder slamming down her spine—a lone, all-encompassing query that resonated through the air that surrounded her, vibrated in the rock beneath her soles, and filled the very air that she inhaled into her frame:

"ARE YOU READY TO SEE WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN?"

She stepped back.

Her heart pounded with a single intensity, once in a powerful beat, as if it were attempting to give an answer for her.

Once more, the door pulsed rhythmically, with some unearthly black luminance seeping and churning through the cracks and seams rimming its surface.

ARE YOU READY TO SEE THE ACCIDENT THAT OCCURRED?

The word landed like iron.

The Incident.

Not an accident.

Not a misunderstanding.

An event. Chosen. Carried out. Remembered.

Fatiba didn't budge. Chest tightened. Shaking fingers.

But she did not drop the key.

Her hand moved forward with hesitant slowness but with unyielding and resolute firmness.

And then, suddenly, the door swung open.

.....

Just as the cringe had reached critical—Hiroki hyperventilating over belly rubs, Sayaka openly bemoaning having been born, Shotaro's soul half-out of his body—something changed.

The air. The light.

The pressure.

It bore down against his skull with a slow tightness like a vise closing, an intangible force that was unyielding and absolute in its clamp.

Shotaro stiffened. His eyes narrowed.

You must get out of this place right away," he growled under his breath.

Tatsumi glanced up, cheeks full of cake. "Huh? Why?

He rose slowly. Red eyes burning, voice lowered. "We're in a domain now."

Tokioni Muramasa flew to his hand in a silent flash—blade gleaming, almost humming.

Tatsumi blinked.

And then, he slashed at her.

She shrieked, closed her eyes—arms going up to protect herself. She could feel something hot spatter onto her face. Blood?

Her breath stuttered—until she heard a low snarl and a sickening crack.

She slowly opened her eyes.

Not cut. Not hurt.

But behind her, slumped in half and twitching, was something monstrous.

A truly nightmarish vision of a crocodilian monster—a monstrous form, it was covered with a thick layer of moss, hunched and skeletal, with an unwholesome and ghastly mixture of flesh and bubbling smoke. Its breath smelled of decaying flesh combined with the oily stench of swamp water, and its wide, gaping maw was open enough to swallow her completely in one quick motion.

The blood she'd sensed was its own.

It had been mid-lunge.

Shotaro had already cleaved it down the middle.

He stood before her now, his sword extended, his face set in a mask. The stench of musk on the dead body cracked as reality distorted around its dissolving form.

You were only seconds away from being chonked," he replied coolly and unruffled.

Tatsumi's gaze locked onto him, shaking visibly in voice and hands. "Y-you actually swung at me."

"I was targeting through you," he explained, skillfully wiping the blood from the blade's tip with a practiced hand. "There's a big difference, you know."

Behind them, the café had already melted into something wrong.

Walls grew longer. Shadows shifted by themselves. Screams began to echo from where nobody was. The date was over. Then came hell.

.....

The moment Fatiba stepped past the black door, a barrier of sound hit her, battering her with the ferocity and dreamlike nature of a fever dream—

A broken lullaby echoing from nowhere and everywhere.

"London Bridge is falling down."

But it was warped. It was being slowed down. It was off-key. The tune was coming from a little child's voice that was being dragged through a cacophony of static interference, that recalled the innocence being spooled back and played in reverse.

She blinked—

And she was once more in the vibrant city of London.

But not her London.

The sky was off. Yellow-gray, as if it had been stained with nicotine. The sun was too low, too motionless. The air smelled of rust and mildewy bleach. The buildings were unnaturally tall, leaning inward as if they were sharing secrets behind her back.

The road that stretched out before her feet—was it Bethnal Green Road, she asked herself?—was lined with cracks and was smeared with thick coats of grime. She walked, her ears battered by the jagged shatter of broken glass underfoot. In the distance, the wail of sirens sounded on and on, an endless refrain, a sickening presence that had attuned the city to be in a state of perpetual terror.

Shadows crept within the corners of the alleys. Not human. Not necessarily. Just shapes with eyes.

She walked slowly.

And the bridge was everywhere.

Not one building, but fragments of it, strewn across rooftops, lodged in buildings, fused with walls. It moved sometimes—always in decline, never resting. A shattered children's rhyme brought to life.

"London Bridge is falling down."

Again.

Again.

She passed by a shop window in which her own face stared back at her—not moving. Stand still, as if no longer believing in her. Her scarf is darker in this one. Her eyes are emptier.

As one proceeded down the street, the telephone booth emitted a soft, flickering glow. Bright scarlet messages flashed in quick succession along its face, and thus it became an attractive sight:

GET OUT.

YOU JUST DO NOT BELONG HERE.

A rat wrapped in a scarf.

She gasped for breath.

She continued walking.

The road curved—too sharply. Before she knew it, she found herself in front of her old university building. But the doors were padlocked and the windows pulsed red strobe. The walls were covered with graffiti.

"Terror Sympathizer"

A burden or strain on the system.

"Gues the bomb is in the bookbag."

She stroked a single word with shaky fingers and flinched. It was on fire.

A sound behind her—she turned.

No one.

Merely a small, shallow puddle of water.

It was only her reflection again.

But this time—it grinned.

She stepped back. Pounding heart. The voice sang on:

"Build it of such materials as wood and clay, with a strong and solid foundation."

And the clay bled.

She turned the corner and found herself facing suddenly the entrance to the alley. That same alley.

The person I was referring to. Now, though, the boys were no longer indistinct shadows. They were statues—trapped in the instant of laughter. One clutched in his hand a knife made from shattered privilege. Another wrapped his arms around a bottle labeled TOLERANCE.

And Natalie was there.

Back turned.

Wearing the same denim jacket. But now it had tiny Union Jack patches down the line that she had not previously noticed. She glanced over her shoulder—grinning.

I brought you here," the statue-Natalie said gently.

Why?" Fatiba whispered, so softly it barely made it past anyone's ears over the cacophony of the falling sky above them.

"To find out if my judgment really had been correct."

And with that final moment, Natalie was reduced to nothing but ash.

Fatiba didn't cry.

Not yet.

Her legs ache. Her mouth tastes like metal. But she kept walking.

The city pressed in tighter—London, but twisted. No double-decker buses. No warm pubs. Just the version of London that watched her, tested her, tolerated her. Every racist whisper carved into school desks. Every stare she was taught to ignore. The quiet ugliness dressed in politeness.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down.

The broken lullaby dripped around her like fog.

She glanced up. The sky was bleeding bricks.

"I guess I have to go," she gasped gently, her heart pounding fiercely in her breast. Her voice dripped out into the silence like a child reaching out for a reassuring hand from a parent, looking for security and solace. "Lamb.?" she called out into the silence, her voice both hopeful and unsure.

But the dragonfly was nowhere to be found. No sparkle. No wings. No riddles.

None but her.

Alone.

Her boots scraped forward. A step. A spasm of nausea.

"I don't want to hear the truth anymore," she told him. Not loud. Just truthful. It fell from her lips like a breath held too long. "I'm not ready."

Then—

A voice behind her. Calm. Clean. Too familiar.

"Facing the harsh truth of a situation, even though the truth is undoubtedly bitter and hard to swallow, is ultimately much better than opting to live in a state of illusory bliss that is tantamount to a fool's paradise."

Her entire body froze. She turned slowly.

And there he was, standing right before us.

Mugyiwara Shotaro.

Standing there as though he had been for hours.

Folded hands.

Silver hair blowing in the wind that was not there.

Crimson eyes—firm, impenetrable, and full of mystery—glowed softly like embers that had endured the harshness of too many long, cold winters.

He wore his school uniform open at the collar, shirt rumpled, belt tied up as if he'd wrestled with a god to get to school and not even taken the trouble to tidy himself up afterwards.

Divine delinquent. Teenage apocalypse. An angel with detention power.

Shotaro posed as if he'd always fit in with nightmares such as these. As if the Labyrinth was merely an after-school chore.

He smiled—small, crooked. The kind that made things worse.

"Hello there."

"AGHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Fatiba screamed at the top of her lungs, her body twisting in mid-air as if she might fly away, almost floating off the ground. "WHAT—?! HOW ON EARTH?! WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DOING HERE?!"

Shotaro rolled his eyes melodramatically in a wide arc, the motion followed by a languid, careless shrug weighed with utmost attitude and sass. "I dunno," he answered with a nonchalance, "Field trip?"

"THIS IS NOT AMUSING IN THE LEAST—"

He cocked his head, deadpan tone. "Never said it was."

Her heart trembled against her ribs. Pulse like war drums. She was flushed now, adrenaline and shock intertwined like vines in her throat. He was here. Actually here. In this room.

She did not know if she was supposed to scream again, cry, or simply punch him on the shoulder for resembling a ghost without a sense of timing.

:You". she started, her tone hardly above a whisper, as she attempted to keep up with the things running in her head. "You're Shotaro, aren't you?

Stop.

"Or are you Lamb?"

Shotaro didn't blink. Didn't budge.

Yes and no, he replied.

His voice changed—it softened, but it had a heavy weight..

"I wouldn't say that I am necessarily the type of kid who can change lives… at least not here. Here, I am the Son."

Fatiba's eyes grew wide with shock and amazement, but he kept talking, his eyes still locked intently on hers without wavering.

"I am not the Lamb. Lamb is not me. I am not God. God is not me. God is not Lamb."

He drew nearer, his step slow. His dark, thin shadow fell over the crevices that pocked the face of the street, as if it too were real and had an existence of its own.

"But all three of us are the truth"