Shinrabansho: Myriad Souls

I stayed by the door a little too long after Tomoka disappeared from sight.

The courtyard below had gone still again. A bicycle rolled past. Somewhere nearby, someone shut a sliding window. Life kept moving in an ordinary way that felt a little cruel when my feelings had just been shaken up.

I closed the door and stood in the genkan with my hand still on the frame, listening to the silence in my new apartment.

It felt bigger with Tomoka gone and much quieter too.

I got attached way too quickly to her. It was just one day! What’s wrong with me?

That thought should have embarrassed me more than it did. It was true. Tomoka had hit me, tested me, kissed me hard enough to leave my knees weak, held my hand through half of Tokyo, and looked at me with the kind of passion that I had been starving for. Of course I had reacted. She was too much like Aoi in all the right ways. She was strong, decisive, and warm when she chose to be, not to mention pushy enough to knock me off balance.

I could absolutely see myself with her.

That was the problem.

There were others depending on me too. Rui. Ume. Natalia-sama. Akuchi. I loved Rui and Ume. I had feelings for Natalia-sama and Akuchi too. And then there was Tomoka now, barging into my life, grabbing my hand, seizing my mouth and stealing my heart before I could decide what to do with any of it.

What am I supposed to do with myself?

It had been easier in Baku’s dream world. I had not known everything then. I had not carried all these memories and names and obligations at once. I had innocently followed my heart and let it drag me where it wanted, even when it hurt. Even then, I had loved Aoi first and most. But I had still felt so much for Riko and Yuna too, almost as though they were entirely different people, even though they had only been masks Rui and Ume wore in the dream world.

The ache of that sat heavily in my chest for a second.

Then I blew out a breath and shook my head.

No.

If I stood around spiraling, I would waste the whole afternoon.

I went back to the living room, dug my wallet out of my bag, and took out the copied key Tomoka had made for me. The freshly cut metal sat cool and smooth against my fingers. I looked at it for a second, then turned and nearly jogged back to the door with it.

If I was going to live here, I needed to know whether this copy actually worked.

I slid it into the lock, going in without any snags.

This door is a little weird, right? :D This illustration gets the scene across at least!

My heart lifted a little before I had even turned it. When I did, the lock gave with a solid click. I opened the door, shut it again, and tested it a second time just to make sure the first one had not been luck.

It worked just as smoothly.

“Good,” I murmured.

That left me with another practical problem at once.

I needed a keychain for this key. Keeping it in my wallet would be annoying.

I looked down at the key in my hand and pictured it getting lost in my bag among my wallet, my phone, tissues, receipts, whatever else I ended up carrying.

No.

That would be stupid. If the grocery store had one, I would buy it. Nothing too childish. Maybe something with a cute mascot on it if it wasn’t overdone.

That thought tugged up another memory at once.

The keychain Reiko had given me when we first met. The ultra-rare Jetman. She’d liked manly things even back then.

It was still in a box at my old apartment.

I stood there for a second, the key in my hand suddenly feeling heavier.

If I could find that, I would rather use it than anything I bought today, not out of any sense of masculinity or insecurity. It was the keychain that Reiko gave me.  That made it simple. Recovering it would be a priority. Right before recovering my laptop.

Then reality pushed back on that too.

When I had fought off the policemen just after becoming a noh face yōkai in the station near my old apartment, the laptop had taken some hits. It had still turned on after that, but it had been slower when I booted it up. Maybe it was already halfway to dead. Then again, maybe my next job would not even require one, and buying a new laptop could wait until my first paycheck.

That was assuming I did not decide to donate most of that paycheck to SSDS.

I grimaced.

What I had promised Natalia-sama was a little optimistic. I had no idea what kind of pay I could even get at whatever job I ended up with, let alone what spiritual detective work paid or what Rui might pay me for helping with SSDS once all that truly started.

Future problems to worry about.

One thing I did know was that I wanted to keep this apartment. I felt more certain of that now than I had this morning when I made the announcement at Natalia-sama’s ryokan. Back then it had been an idea tied to resolve and pride. Now it had walls and a door and a key in my hand. Now it felt like somewhere I could really be.

I locked the door properly, slipped the key back into my wallet for the moment, and started exploring.

The kitchen came first.

I moved slowly through it, opening cabinets and drawers one by one, checking what was there and what was missing. Pots. Pans. Ladles. Chopsticks. Plates and bowls stacked neatly. Measuring cups. A rice cooker. A microwave. A kettle. A toaster oven. More dishes than one woman strictly needed, but not in a wasteful way. It looked less like somebody had used this kitchen a lot and more like somebody had prepared for something that Reiko didn’t quite accept.

Her mother in the dream had given her cooking sets and Reiko had almost steadfastly refused to use any of it, preferring conbini food.

The refrigerator was almost empty too.

There were no perishables as I thought, no moldy leftovers. No milk. No vegetables. No half-forgotten tofu. There were only condiments, tea, the kind of things that lasted. The pantry space was in the same shape, an assortment of snacks, and dry goods. Nothing that would turn into dinner without shopping.

I leaned one hip against the counter and looked around the kitchen again.

I cooked cream stew here.

The memory came back so clearly that I could almost smell it. Reiko in this room with me. I still thought of her as Aoi half of the time. The both of them tangled together inside my mind. Her flirting without mercy while I cooked. My face turning redder and redder until I could barely focus on the pot in front of me. Eating together after. Ending up in her lap later with my whole body on fire.

My fingers tightened slightly against the counter.

Stop doing that, Sumire!

I left the kitchen before I could embarrass myself further, not that there was anyone around to see it.

The living room held little traces of Reiko’s life, but not many soft ones. There were no plushies, no frilly decorations, no piles of what she might think of as cute nonsense. The knick-knacks she had collected over the years were sparse and practical, small souvenirs, game items, a few neat things from places she had gone to, the sort of objects someone kept because they meant something rather than because they filled space prettily. It all suited her, feeling very sporty, direct and a little tomboyish even when she started growing more feminine later. But that was just a mask. A means to an end, not who she really was.

That thought led me toward the bedroom.

The bed was made.

I stopped in the doorway and looked at it for a long second.

Part of me wanted to go right over, bend down, and smell the bedding. I knew exactly why too, which made it worse. But then Tomoka’s words came back to me. She had stayed here sometimes. She had used this place as a refuge. Where else would she have slept?

Would that make smelling the bedding less appealing?

DOKI-DOKI

I turned scarlet at once.

Definitely not.

Now all I could think about was whose scent I would notice most strongly when I slept there later.

I pressed a hand to my face.

Pull yourself together, Sumire!

Flustered, I backed out of the bedroom and escaped to the bathroom instead.

That only led me into another ambush.

The room looked so similar that my chest tightened the moment I saw the tub. I remembered bathing with Aoi here. The heat of the water, steam fogging the mirror, her nude skin pressed against mine, even the bottles were lined up near the bath, looking almost the same, organized exactly the same way.

I reached for the body wash and picked it up.

Roses on the label.

I smiled. It made sense.

Even when I was still Susumu, I had always sneaked a little of this product into my regular body wash after she told me why she smelled so good. What I put in was never enough to stand out. Just enough that I could catch it sometimes and think of her. Since becoming a woman, I’d started using the whole bottle that I held in my hand. It was no wonder Aoi had chosen that brand in the dream. She had all of her memories the whole time while I had none. I had only rediscovered it once again asking why she always smelled so good. I wondered if she felt deja vu when I did. Probably.

I set the bottle down very carefully and left before the bathroom could ruin my mood any further.

This apartment could be a little dangerous at first, seeing things that reminded me of her. I could see myself crying sometimes, especially when my period came back. I thought about how it was gone when I woke up after Baku’s dream world. Some things had happened in it that might have aborted it.

Her closet space was worse in a different way.

Inside hung exactly what I should have expected and still had not fully prepared for. Some clothes were the sporty practical things Aoi would wear without any hesitation. Others were nicer and more feminine. Dresses and tops Reiko had started wearing later. Seeing them all together made the overlap between them feel even stranger. There were skirts like the ones that Natalia-sama had picked for me, blouses and a few military-style jackets.

Then I found the dress.

It was dark blue with a leaf pattern.

I touched the fabric lightly with two fingers, and at once I was back in that game store, younger, stunned, trying to process how beautiful she had become when we ran into each other there some time after she’d rejected my confession. The same dress had shown up again on our date in the dream as something she and I noticed in a shop together. Standing there now, I could only stare at it.

There were enough clothes here to keep me from needing Natalia-sama to send over all the things she had planned to give me. I was not even sure where I would put them if she did.

That reminded me that I needed to tell her I had an apartment now.

I held off for the moment.

Back in the living room, I checked the television and the cabinet beneath it. Inside were exactly the sort of things I should have expected. Consoles. Controllers. An assortment of fighting and sports games. I was not especially surprised. Reiko and I had enjoyed playing Tekku together when we were younger, and the dream version had not bothered collecting much because the whole place had only ever existed for our brief borrowed time.

I crouched there for a little while longer, looking through them.

Would Rui kick my ass if we played Tekku now?

Maybe not.

She had not criticized my stance while I was doing kata that morning. That had to mean something. I was not sure what, but something. If she ever visited, I would probably end up challenging her just to find out.

I searched a little more after that, looking for computers, tablets, old phones, anything like that. Nothing. No laptop. No obvious devices at all.

Paper records could wait.

By the time I straightened and looked at the clock, around forty minutes had passed since I started looking around.

That settled it.

I needed some groceries and a keychain. I needed to start changing this place from a memory into somewhere I actually lived.

I went to grab my bag.

Naturally, I left my bag behind.

Natalia-sama had packed it with more provisions than I could reasonably carry around all day without being burdened with the additional weight and I’d have to carry groceries home. Now that I had a furnished apartment with dishes, appliances, and a refrigerator of my own.

So I went back to Reiko’s closet instead.

After a little hesitation, I picked out a jacket with buttonable pockets, dark enough to go with almost anything and light enough for the weather. When I pulled it on, it fit perfectly.

Naturally, it would.

I tucked my wallet into one of the pockets, locking the door behind me, and headed downstairs.

In the dream world I had my mamachari to get around. In the real world, I went on foot.

That should have felt at least a little less convenient, but it didn’t. I knew exactly where to go, not because Reiko’s memories were feeding me directions, but because of the high schooler Sumire’s memories. She grew up in this area, so naturally I didn’t even have to think about where I was going. Those memories were nothing like Reiko’s, which remained separate and distinct from mine rather than fully integrating with mine, they were more like files I could open when I wanted. The dream girl’s memories blended with mine far more deeply. These streets felt like where I grew up.

I followed them.

It wasn’t long before I found myself in front of the same grocery store where we had shopped for ingredients for cream stew.

My chest tightened a little at the sight of it and I hesitated, but I went in.

The produce section greeted me first with cool air and the smell of damp greens. I took a basket and started walking slowly through the aisles, deciding what I wanted to cook. Cream stew would have been too much for the first night here. Cooking it would have put me much closer to the memory waiting to swallow me whole if I let it.

So I chose something simpler.

Nikujaga sounded right.

Comforting. Filling. Something I could make well without needing to think too hard about it. I would need potatoes, onions, carrots, thin-sliced beef, shirataki, soy sauce, mirin and sugar. Rice too, though I’d need only a little since the apartment already had some dry goods in the pantry. I could get away with getting a smaller package. I moved through the store starting collecting ingredients with my basket over my arm. It felt a lot like it had in the dream whenever I’d shopped and cooked.

Then someone entered the aisle I was in from the opposite end and my body went still.

She looked so much like my mother from the dream that for one impossible second I thought Baku had materialized her in the real world.

Her hair was dark brown with softer warm tones in it, pulled half back the way a busy woman might do it without needing a mirror, leaving the rest to fall around her shoulders. She looked around five years older than the mother I remembered from the dream, maybe a little more than that, her face gentler in a tired way, with the first lines of real life beginning to settle around her eyes and mouth. Those eyes held the same warmth that had once nearly made me cry just by hearing her voice, but now there was loneliness in them too. A fine sadness, the kind that lurked in the corners of the eyes even when a person was moving on with life.

She passed me without noticing me.

I turned and stared at her like an idiot.

What’s her name? Is it still Shinohara Ayaka?

Of course I had no answer. Why would I? She wasn’t actually my mother. She wasn’t even the woman from the dream. She only looked enough like her to make my chest hurt.

She stopped a little farther down the aisle and reached for something on the top shelf. Her fingers brushed the box, but couldn’t quite get her fingers around it to pull it down.

Before I thought better of it, I moved.

I slipped my basket onto my other arm, stepped over, climbed onto the lowest shelf and snagged the item for her. Then I hopped back down and held it out while looking a little away, suddenly shy for no reason I could explain.

“Ah, thank you,” she said.

Her voice hit me almost as hard as her face had.

She took the item from me and started to move on, then paused and looked back.

“Would you mind helping me finish my shopping?”

I looked at her.

Then I nodded.

“I don’t mind.”

Something in me felt absurdly happy for the excuse to be by her side.

So I followed her through the store.

At first she only let me carry one or two things. A pack of tofu. A bag of onions. Then a carton of eggs. Then I started taking more before she could protest, adding them to my basket while she tried to insist that I didn’t need to carry everything for her, “You really don’t have to do that,” she said, smiling a little helplessly as I took a bag of daikon from her hand.

“It’s fine… I want to.”

“I’m not that old yet.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“That’s only because you’re very polite.”

That wasn’t anything that a woman should ever be told. I shook my head, denying it with a smile.

We moved from aisle to aisle together, her pace unhurried, mine adjusting naturally to hers. She selected things with a kind of practicality that made me wonder whether she cooked for herself every day or if she just liked doing things properly whenever she had the energy. More than once she glanced at my basket and looked like she might protest again, but every time she did, I had already taken the next thing before her.

By the time we reached the check stand, she was giving me the kind of look older women gave a younger person when they had already decided you were sweet, but troublesome for not listening.

Then she turned to me properly and said, “If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like you.”

I flushed at once.

“Ah...” I smiled before I could stop myself. “You remind me of my mother too... I lost her, but...”

I trailed off there.

The woman thought for a bit. Something in her expression softened further, and some of the loneliness I’d seen on her face earlier lifted.

“Would you like to come to my home and have dinner?” she asked.

My eyes widened.

I waved both hands immediately.

“No, I couldn’t possibly...”

But even while I said it, I hesitated.

I wanted to say yes.

She noticed that too. Of course she would. Women like her noticed everything hidden before you finished hiding it.

She put a hand on my arm.

“Please let me feed you for taking such good care of me,” she said. “Are you new to the neighborhood?”

That question made me pause in a different way.

Reiko probably would not have gone shopping in a normal grocery store. She had always moved through the world differently, more direct, more self-contained, less likely to come to a place like this. That simplified things a little. It gave me room to be here without worrying about running into more people that recognized her on sight.

“Ah...” I looked down at the basket, then back up. “I’ll help you with cooking as well.”

“Oh.” Her smile brightened. “If you insist. Maybe I can teach you a few things... or maybe you can show me a technique that I don’t know.”

Then, while we waited for the cashier to finish scanning her groceries, she asked, “What’s your name?”

“Shinohara Sumire,” I said, looking at her and waiting. I realized that I wanted to see if the name would mean something to her. I waited to see if the dream overlapped in a more unlikely way.

It didn’t. She only smiled at me.

“What a lovely name.” She adjusted one of her shopping bags and then gave me hers. “I’m Mizuno Ayaka. You can call me Ayaka if you’d like.”

I nodded.

This woman wasn’t my mother.

Even so, it felt strange to call her by her first name, which happened to be the same as my dream mother’s.

Special thanks to PrincessArylin, ShinjiHinako, Assurbanipal II (Achan) for beta reading book three!