The Senketsu High rooftop was somehow even more barren and grey than the rest of the school. Rinkaku Harigane wondered whether they considered that some kind of achievement.
Occasionally, on rooftops like these, tucked away amid all the railings, lightning rods and air vents, you might find some small planters and beds of soil: an opportunity for those inclined to practice and develop their gardening skills. The rooftop was often a place for students to socialise, a place to eat lunch that wasn’t their classroom, and away from the crowds. A place of calm, a place of quiet.
Students weren’t allowed on the rooftop of Senketsu High. The previous year, a boy at his wit’s end had pitched himself from the ledge. That day Rin had lost all respect for the institution and others like it. The two had never been friends—entirely Rin’s fault, he’d just never made the effort—but Mizuki had a creative soul: witty and bright, but not academic. Over time, he’d been driven so deep into the ground by the pressure of conformity from above, he was utterly lost amid despair.
The funeral had simmered with outrage from all in attendance, bubbling beneath a thick skin of mourning. His parents had sued the school for negligence, and rightly so. As a feeble way of saving face, the faculty had bolted the door shut and padlocked it thus. That was the only thing that had changed. No-one much talked of the incident anymore. A shame.
Rin treated such restrictions as gentle suggestions, to be acknowledged and swiftly cast aside. He didn’t necessarily consider himself ‘above the law’: rather, he elected to ignore what he found asinine. He wasn’t about to kill himself, far from it, but sympathised with Mizuki and his choice. He only wished his talents would be valued better in his next life.
Slipping a thin set of wires from his pocket, Rin picked the lock and slid rusted bolts aside, only to be sucker-punched by a bluster of November chill. The breeze slammed the door behind him with a clang that made him freeze, but no-one cared enough to follow.
Rin traipsed over to a coughing vent that would reasonably substitute as a bench. The breeze had subsided, but every inhale coated his trachea with a hint of frost, and every exhale left a misty trail that dissipated up to join the light grey stratus blanketing the sky. He didn’t properly sit but perched on his ankles like a magpie guarding its hoard of treasure. His encroaching hunger took priority, and so he plucked cold sushi from his plastic bento at rapid pace, barely even bothering to chew.
An opportunistic seagull, perched on a nearby railing in a strikingly similar fashion, gave Rin a very odd look and squawked. The boy nearly toppled backwards off the vent.
“Go away, will you?”
It rustled its wings, staring at his sushi. Rin beamed a cucumber roll right between its eyes. The gull gave a shrill, cut-off yelp and tumbled backwards off the railing.
“Stupid bird,” Rin cursed under his breath. He popped one more roll into his mouth for good measure and rummaged around in his satchel for the package. Wielding his finger like a utility knife, he sliced open the box’s tape with his nail and emptied it out beside him. Several dozen packing peanuts littered the floor—he made a mental note to pick them up—before a hefty book and large knife, nearly the length of his forearm, clattered onto the metal. Rin’s eyes shot wide open. In reactionary paranoia, he buried the knife under the cardboard lest anyone else see. They hadn’t. He was alone.
This relic looked like it belonged behind glass, rather being mailed to a highschooler like some cheap trinket. The blade was unnaturally heavy, the type of heft steel alone could not bring. The scarab emblem on the hilt was a telling detail, and the guard extended on one sides in a curved wings. Rin considered himself an expert in many things—because of course he did—but bladesmithing was not one of them. The knife had been shattered width wise, split in two. The blade was only tapered on one side. The edge undulated, snakelike, with such venom in its point that he feared getting cut simply from looking at it. The steel shone despite the lack of sun.
Rin clutched this masterwork in awe. Looking into the metal, he spotted a perfect reflection. Odd. Normal knives weren’t such effective mirrors. Then again, his only point of comparison was the brushed stainless steel in kitchen knives. The broken half of the blade was flat and dull: a clean, deliberate split. Certain grooves had been carved into this flat edge. Were they symbols?
A foreboding—a primordial fear—seeped through the skin and into his blood, spreading like a curse from the point of contact, his right palm. Visceral shivers rippled across his skin. A pit sunk in his stomach.
His possession of this just wasn’t right, as though he had stolen it. But how could he have? This was all addressed to him in that package he received. Surely, he hadn’t done anything wrong. Unless, this wasn’t his doing, but rather…
Dad, what have you done?
Rin wrapped it back up in the paper and lowered it back into the box, covering it with the scattered foam peanuts from earlier, making sure to leave no litter (He may be an ass, but he was no hypocrite). The moment he broke contact, the foreboding faded. Rin looked at his palm and thought he saw a shadow of the blade’s hilt branded into the skin. It could have been just a trick of the light, however.
Seizing the book, Rin held it up to the light in scrutiny. A large, leather-bound notebook.
“The Tomb of Horus’ Banished Disciple…” Rin read off the title. “I fucking knew it.”
The scrawl on the inside cover faded through many years of wear, but below a statement of ownership was his father’s scratchy signature. He’d recognise that handwriting anywhere.
Rin idly traced the man’s signature with his finger. The ink had dried long ago. Leafing through the first few pages, Rin found nothing remarkable about it. The pages were yellow and had curled in a few places, the binding peeled slightly. Neither detail was noteworthy; the book was just old. He couldn’t be bothered to trail through his father’s research if you held him at gunpoint. Besides, lunch break would be over soon. He only had so much time.
The inscription on the inside cover caught his eye. His father’s handwriting was illegible at best, but if anyone was best suited for deciphering, it’d be his begrudging son. Rin sighed. A message was scrawled in large, scratchy black characters.
Rin squinted at the text, brow scrunched. What kind of game was he playing at? What sort of cryptic instruction was this? His father had been in a rush at the time of writing this. After all, he hadn’t had the time to write out the kanji for his name, only katakana. All his previous pathetic attempts at communications—few and far between, especially recently—had the former.
There were many things Rin could forgive him for, but refused. He really wouldn’t. Not in a hurry.
He unwrapped the strange knife—the ‘Ascension Blade’, apparently, what a corny name—for another look.
Use the blade for what—as a weapon? On who?
Rin hadn’t yet reached the end of his tether such that he’d start outright stabbing people, though—let’s be honest—it wouldn’t take much. Besides, the knife looked so fragile that Rin thought it might shatter on contact.
The longer he tried to make sense of it all, the less sense it made. There was a chance that this didn’t mean anything, that none of this meant anything. His father could’ve just sent him a meaningless novelty gift from one of his excavations.
Like hell he cared about that!
Rin had his own priorities. He wanted nothing to do with the dusty burial mounds and relics his father spent his days gawking over like how a magpie lusted after a wedding ring.
The two numbers couldn’t be anything other than page references. The notebook had its pages painstakingly numbered, after all. The tactile papers crinkled and folded under slender fingers. A spiteful voice—the kind Rin knew he let out of his mouth far too often—bounced around his head.
I may have wanted to hear from you once, old man, but that was a long time ago. Do you think this will change anything?
Reels of faded film flashed past his mind’s eye, and he winced. An empty seat at the dinner table; a woman’s face, kind with sunken cheeks, lapsed into disappointment. An office door remained locked. The only sign of life was a man behind a desk, scratching away.
If you’re trying to say anything, don’t bother.
There was a me that might have listened once, perhaps even forgiven you, but that Rin, much like everything you love, is dead and buried now.
Whatever this is, it should have stayed that way too.
Maybe you can dig up her memory and apologise.
You’re good at that kind of thing, aren’t you?
Soon, the seemingly endless flipping of pages concluded. For a moment, Rin stared at the page. Then, he turned the book on its side, squinted at it for a few seconds, before turning it upside down.
“What the hell am I reading?”
Rin was beset with page after page of nonsensical scribbles, a linguist’s fever dream on a lethal quantity of hallucinogen. Squinting at them again and turning the book upside down, Rin could vaguely make out similarities to Arabic. It sure as anything wasn’t hieroglyphics. If this was supposed to be understandable, then he was American.
This had to be some kind of joke.
“Screw you, old man.”
Rin unceremoniously cast the book down onto the bench. The leather hit the wooden surface with a dull thud, striking the handle and causing it to fly off the tabletop. He cursed, diving after it before it could skid too far out of his grasp. Frustration bit at the quick, bile frothing in his throat. Still, he couldn’t let himself be seen with this thing.
The questions that arose, Rin had neither the time, energy, nor bother to have to answer. Retrieving the damaged implement, Rin couldn’t help but study it some more. He traced its fingers along the intricate grooves that ran the length of the hilt.
That was when he spotted the resemblance. The runes etched into the back of the blade were the same as in the book. Rin looked from one to the other and back again.
He’d been deluding himself for his own protection.
This was clearly no joke.
His father didn’t have the emotional capacity for jokes.
An interest in the illegible text suddenly re-ignited. Rin swept messy hair out of his eyes, balancing his chin in the crook of his palm. Using the tip of the knife like a stylus to help him read, he traced the tip along the runes. The mirrored edge of the blade was facing him as it happened and, as he did this more and more, Rin found himself gazing into the blade’s reflection at some perfectly legible print.
Sorry—what?
There was no mistaking it. In the blade’s reflection, he saw Japanese script laid out on the page. Looking back at the notebook, the runes were just as illegible as before. Rin’s gaze bounced unceasing between the blade’s shiny surface and the yellowed pages of book like a ping-pong ball. His head was starting to hurt—not, this time, on account of his chronic lack of sleep.
His eyes must have been playing tricks on him. Putting the blade down, Rin rubbed both eyes with balled fists. Hair flopped across his face like a curtain. Strange patterns danced across his darkened vision from the pressure on his retina. That hadn’t helped, only exacerbating the pain behind his eyes.
Of all the days for sleep deprivation hallucinations to strike, it had to be today.
Picking the knife back up, he held it sideways and read the runes in the strange mirror. His eyes tried to wander, but were kept in place by sheer willpower at this point. He had to make sense of it all, and didn’t have much time left.
—and so, the Ascension Blade is driven deep within the brain. Cleaving the skull, passing the frontal lobes, it pierces the seat of the soul.
Imbued with agony, the metal resonates and awakens the dormant unconscious.
Alert and frightened, it reaches for the Eye and latches on.
Withstanding subjugation, the mind forms connection true. The disparate halves of the mind will unite and achieve original form: transcendence, godhood among men.
But should the Eye overwhelm, the soul is overwritten.
Flesh shall be undone and turn strange.
Those Rejected by the Eye shall cease to be.
No longer of this world; mired in pain.
“… Oh, for crying out loud…”
Rin closed the book very gently and laid the blade on top like a sacred treasure. He cringed at the memory of throwing it to the ground not ten minutes ago.
His father’s warning chimed against his skull like a bell.
He held his head in both hands and seized fistfuls of hair. “This has to be a joke. This can’t be real. It can’t be! Fuck!” Balling up a fist, he hammered on the nearby vent. “I’d pay literally anything. Please, oh god please.” His cries echoed into the sky, and he hung his head. “Oh, it’s so over. We’re absolutely doomed…”
Rin stayed that way for a good ten seconds. One single shaky breath later, he sat upright, wiped a hopeless tear from the corner of one eye.
World’s first speedrun of grief.
The empty chuckle sounded brassy even in his own throat.
All that was left was acceptance.
The nervous sweat on Rin’s face grew cold. The wind picked up, scouring the rooftiles, and he shivered. His watch ticked over the hour, then beeped.
Afternoon class had started ten minutes ago.
He had to go.
Nothing had ever been able to make his blood run cold like what he had read about in that notebook. Like most his age, Rin had desensitised himself to tonnes upon tonnes of senseless horror films for the sake of it, but this was something else.
This was terror in its purest form: truly incomprehensible.
It wasn’t just his mind that disagreed, but his entire body felt like rejecting what he had just learnt. It was foreign, alien. He shivered again.
He wasn’t supposed to know this.
His father wasn’t supposed to know this.
No-one was supposed to know this.
Dad, what is WRONG with you?
Rin hastily shoved everything back into his bag, legging it back down the stairs before he was able to scare himself anymore with its contents. For once, he was grateful for the monotony of the class ahead, hoping it would distract him from his own mind.
Descending from the rooftop, a million and seven unsaid curses danced across rapidly drying lips. Rin thundered down the final set of winding stairs three at a time. The wind had picked up across the rooftop in his retreat, and the forceful draft had slammed the door shut. The shock and noise made him miss his next step. Rin almost fell into a spiralling cartwheel but managed a last-second recovery. He shook the next shiver out through his arm like a twinge of electric current.
No book had ever rendered him so shaken before. His face paled, forehead flushed, skin crawling beneath his clothes. Had his father known about this all along, then the man’s idiocy had just become criminal. The knife in the package was clearly a shattered half. Someone undoubtedly had the other and would be on the hunt.
Rin rounded the bottom of the stairwell, closed both eyes and massaged his sinuses. His satchel weighed heavier on his shoulder—or maybe it was him. He readjusted the strap and rolled his arm. If information had always been this heavy, he dreaded to imagine what his BMI was now.
One deep breath in and out was all he could manage to calm himself, before—
“Not so fast, Harigane.”
An unforgiving hand seized the back of his shirt and yanked backwards. Rin gasped and spluttered. The satchel slipped through his arm and hit the thin carpet. Wrestling with his collar, he looked up into the narrowed, beady eyes of another girl he really didn’t have the headspace to deal with right now.
Rin groaned and tried to prise her fingers off his shirt. A futile effort. He may as well have tried to wrestle the jaws of an alligator. “Uchino, can’t this wait?”
“No!”
Dasha Uchino, the dreaded captain of the baseball team.
A prodigy.
Where he and Dango led in academics, she championed Senketsu High on the sporting field.
Normally, having your father as the baseball coach as well as a prominent member of teaching staff would be enough to warrant cries nepotism, but anyone in attendance for longer than a day knew that on school grounds, family or no, Mr. Uchino took neither prisoners nor favourites. In fact, he was harder on his own flesh and blood for expectation’s sake. She had fought her title on merit alone.
“You’re late to class,” she stated.
“And you’re not?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Oh!” Rin assumed a bashful poise and averted his eyes, blushing like a schoolgirl. “I’m flattered, Uchino. Really, I am. But my heart’s already with someone else—”
“What?”
The act was dropped immediately. Rin coughed and thumped his chest, his voice breaking. “Yeah, never mind. I couldn’t even fool myself with that one.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I said, never mind!”
“I’m on the council. Having to corral idiots like you is my job.”
“Yeah, well, congrats. Have a gold sticker or whatever.” He rustled his shoulders, but she still held fast onto his collar. “Are you going to let me go now, or will you actually get to the point between now and sunset? I am late to class, after all.”
She clicked her teeth. “What the hell were you doing up on the roof?”
The girl had several inches on him and stacked all of them for terrifying effect. She had an angular face with prominent cheekbones and a stare that could chop clean through bone. The black baseball cap securing a tight black ponytail was so on-brand it was infuriating. Rin had never seen her without it—talk about wearing out the joke! Everyone got on his case about not wearing his tie properly, or leaving a top button undone, but no-one seemed to care about her dress code violations.
Pretty privilege, maybe? No comment. He was the worst person to ask. There were many, however, who would fork over bottom yen for the chance to lick her shoe.
“You student council are always on my case,” he said. “What is it to you? I want nothing to do with any of you.” He stuck out his tongue. The stately pin on the lapel of the girl’s uniform gleamed. “Where do you get off, anyway? That prick Ikeda tried to do me in for backtalk the other day, now you’ve got some other bone to pick. The lot of you, you’re always muscling up on everyone’s business like the gestapo.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Kind of is! True, too!”
“You know that’s not funny.”
“Okay, yeah, maybe not—but listen! I could have been having a really emotional conversation with my family about a recently deceased relative. What if I just needed some privacy?”
“You know that excuse has never worked,” she leered, hoisting him two inches off the ground. “You remember what happened up there as much I do.”
He glowered. “Are you even going to say his name?”
She glared back. “Rules are rules, Harigane. You were seen sprinting up there like your ass was on fire, clutching some kind of package. Drop the act. What were you actually doing up there?”
“As I said, it’s none of your damn business!” Through much struggle, Rin managed at last to free himself—or the girl simply let go. He probably had enough oil in his hair to loosen her grip. Rin stumbled to his feet and hastily retrieved his bag.
“If you’re caught with contraband, the police could get involved, you know.”
Dasha folded her arms, brow furrowing. “You’ve only made yourself suspicious—you can’t even give me a halfway decent explanation—and you don’t have any friends to help vouch your case. Whose fault is that?”
“Santa Claus,” he deadpanned. Rin had never seen her smile, and at this point refused to believe it was possible—the mere prospect terrified him even more than the knife.
Actually, that was a good point.
His eyes darted to the satchel. It may have been a relic, but half-a-knife was still knife-shaped. The edge was still sharp—could still harm someone.
Still a weapon, still contraband.
Technically.
Fuck.
“What’s your deal, Harigane?”
“You mean, aside from being short?”
“You’re average-sized.”
“Not compared to you…”
“Get real for a second, would you? Just what is your deal?”
“Why do you care?”
“I’ve never been able to read you,” she said. “And it isn’t just me. No-one can. Do you even know your own reputation?”
“I’m sure they’re all lining up for my autograph…”
“I hate guys who think they’re funny.”
“More reason for me not to change a damn thing.”
“No-one can get a read on you, Harigane. It worries absolutely everyone.”
“Maybe they should learn how to read…” He mumbled.
“You know what happens to those kinds of people, don’t you? No friends, no tether to the real world. It’s dangerous. They read shit on the internet, lose the plot and do something stupid. Then, one loner’s problem becomes everyone else’s, all because they couldn’t exist outside their own head for a single moment. I won’t sugarcoat it: it’s selfish, and I hate it.”
“Hang on a second.” Rin gawked. “Are you profiling me? Do you seriously think I’m going to shoot up the school? Are you insane?”
Several nearby students froze in their tracks and turned gazes on him, so stiff you could hear the joints in their head creak with every degree of rotation.
“Obviously I’m joking!” Rin shouted. “It’s rude to eavesdrop! Get a move on!” He frantically shooed them away with both hands. “But seriously, Uchino? That’s a real insult. You think I’d really be that stupid to let myself get radicalised by that shit?”
“It’s not about intelligence, you twit.” Dasha sighed and put a hand on one hip. “I’ve known you since junior high and I still don’t know a single thing about you—”
“—like you ever made an effort—”
“You’re wrong, actually.” Her lip twitched, as though her face was fighting not to show pity. “You’ve never given anyone the time of day. Smarts in isolation, you’d run rings around the rest of us. You’re not stupid, but you’re an idiot. You never leave your own head. You’re childish, and I can’t respect you as a person.”
“And why the hell should I care?”
Dasha rolled her eyes. “I don’t even know why I’m wasting my time; nothing I say is going to get through to you—”
“Then maybe stop talking!”
“—but it’s those eyes I don’t like, Harigane.” She pointed with two sharp fingers. “I’ve never seen those eyes look at anyone with anything but scorn or apathy. Always suspecting something. You’ve got walls so high you can’t even see past them. That’s why I think you’re a danger. You can’t blame my alarm when—where are you going?”
Throughout that mini-soliloquy, Rin had been gradually taking exaggerated steps further down the hall. He froze, busted.
“Class,” he responded drolly. “You should come with, unless you have another lecture series planned. Listen, is this going to be on the test?” He scratched behind his ear, one eye twitching. “Because, you know, it won’t have even crossed your conceited little mind just yet, but I might have something a lot more important to concentrate on right now, than the concerns of some pretentious peaked-in-high-school wannabe-athlete who thinks she has the right to lecture me on something she knows nothing about!” The blood had risen in his face, and a vein thumped behind his ear. “So, step the fuck off my case, and leave me be!”
He checked his phone.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Uchino’s class too. Daddy’s going to throw a fit. Maybe you should concentrate more on being a good daughter and making him proud, yeah? After all, you said it yourself—I’m a danger.” He leered with emphasis. “You don’t want to be associated with me, and I sure as hell want nothing to do with you. Just because I feigned interest in junior high, doesn’t mean I’m going to join your damn baseball team. Go bully someone else.”
Dasha remained a little stunned.
Rin strode away down the corridor with a scowl, biting down hard on his lip.
Anger prickled in waves under his skin, effective enough to do the impossible and make him forget about the horrors just unearthed.
If anything, he should be grateful—but wasn’t. He was just pissed.
Far enough away for his pleas to fall on the deaf walls of stone, Katsuro’s bloodied face fell limp against his broken shoulder.
Gus had gotten his way in the end.
He always did.
It was only a matter of time.
They had him taken from that prison cell in Cairo, but he didn’t have a clue as to where. His chest heaved without reprieve. A hoarse sound brushed past his vocal cords, irreparably damaged long ago from his tortured yells. He could only make so much sound, and he knew it wouldn’t reach.
He knew he didn’t have long.
Not with her in the room.
“Rinkaku,” he wheezed. “I’m sorry…”
XCEL 
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