1.65: ReunionI shook and noh-cried, filling my cell with tears.

  They rose faster than I expected… first up to my shins, then my waist, then my chest… until the salty, shimmering flood was pping at my neck. It should’ve been suffocating, but as a noh-face, I knew I wouldn’t drown even if the cell filled to the ceiling. My body didn’t work that way anymore.

  Which was when my “genius” idea hit.

  If I let the room fill completely, the pressure had to do something, right? Maybe the walls would buckle. Maybe the reinforced door would crumple. If I could crack even the smallest opening, I might slip out and find Mitsuhiko before he realized what was happening.

  If I gave everything, I was sure my noh-face abilities could overwhelm him.

  That hope was enough to stop my crying.

  The tears cut off like someone had yanked a plug. I stood there, neck-deep and soggy in my own misery, staring at the door.

  …And nothing came.

  DRIP…

  SLOSH…

  Just the sound of the water settling and my clothes clinging to my body.

  I tried to think about Reiko-chan’s plight, about Mitsuhiko’s smug face, about Rui and the others, but the noh-tears refused to restart on command. My eyes stayed dry behind the porcein. Figures. When I wanted to cry, my body finally decided to be stubborn.

  Fine.

  If tears wouldn’t get me out, force would.

  I waded awkwardly to the door and smmed into it with everything I had. The impacts echoed around the tiny cell, loud enough to hurt my noh-ears. The water heaved and spped against the metal in thick, sloshing waves.

  BAM— BAM— BAM—!

  I used all my noh-strength… and there was not even a dent.

  I circled the cramped room, kicking and pounding on the walls, searching for any weak points. All I managed to do was bruise myself and stir the water into churning eddies.

  Eventually, my energy bottomed out.

  I sank down into the cold, stinging brine and let myself drop beneath the surface. New tears finally came… I sobbed harder, letting my body float in the darkness, just another floating piece of debris in my own ocean.

  The pressure increased as the water level rose higher, as more noh-tears forced themselves out of me. It was like something in me had to keep producing, no matter how much water already filled the room. The more the cell pushed back, the more my eyes pushed out.

  It got to the point where moving even a finger felt impossible. The crushing force wrapped around me from all sides, like I’d fallen to the deepest part of the ocean. Every attempt to shift sent agony spiking through my limbs.

  My brilliant pn had backfired.

  The walls didn’t crack. The door didn’t budge. The only thing buckling was me.

  A low groaning vibrated through the metal around me, but it never rose above a dull compint. Nothing gave way. I just hung there, suspended in a salty limbo, utterly paralyzed.

  If I stay here, I’ll actually go insane. Literally.But at least he won’t be able to look into my eyes again.I’ll never be able to move again… I’ll be trapped in a sea of my own tears until my mind dissolves.

  With agonizing effort, I curled in on myself, trying to make my body smaller, to protect… what? There was nothing to shield. The water folded in tighter, compressing me from every direction. It felt like being excruciatingly slowly squeezed into a singurity.

  All I could do was think.

  Celebrate. She’ll be restored…

  His words echoed through the flood.

  If my demise meant Reiko-chan would return to life, maybe… maybe I could live with that. Or die with it. Whatever.

  I kept crying even after I couldn’t move. Even after every nerve felt fyed raw. The pressure was relentless and grew more intense. The tears didn’t stop. The pain was no less than what I’d endured during my transformations… the both times I’d become a noh-face, when my humanity peeled away like skin.

  I should have been dehydrated, drained, empty.

  Instead, I just felt literally crushed.

  At some point, the pain and the monotony blurred together. Time stopped meaning much to me in the inky darkness of the Yamanote line. I didn’t know if minutes or hours passed before my thoughts finally frayed, and the darkness closed in again.

  I passed out.

  From the pressure. From exhaustion. Maybe from boredom too.

  Last time, holding onto my mind for twenty-four hours as a noh-face had nearly broken me. This time… I’d walked right into his prophecy for me.

  Oh, I promised you I would break your mind… and I keep my promises.

  Maybe Mitsuhiko had calcuted all of this somehow. But how could he have accounted for noh-tears?

  But how could he have known how far I would take this?

  SLAM—!!

  The sound shook my watery prison like a struck bell.

  KABAM— BAM— BAM— BAM— BAM—!!

  I jerked awake, disoriented, my head throbbing from the pressure and the exhaustion.

  WHAM—!!

  The pounding grew louder… closer… until finally a different sound cut through my cell.

  SCREEEEEEEEEEEEECH—!!

  A sound like metal shrieking, like steel being peeled apart.

  FOOOOOOOOMMMM—!!

  Suddenly the pressure colpsed around me. The water surged, pulling me with it in a violent, swirling rush. I spun helplessly as the entire ocean of my tears burst out through an opening.

  And then…

  CLAAAAANG!!

  My head smmed into something solid.

  I crashed to the floor, clutching my skull, the impact ringing through my porcein face. My noh-vision swam with sparks and streaks. Slowly, the darkness steadied into shapes.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  A bnk white mask hovered in the gloom.

  Emotionless. Featureless. Exactly like the first noh-face I ever saw… in the train car, haunting me with its silent, awful presence.

  Except this one wasn’t silent.

  “Su… suuuu… muuuuu…” its mouth gaped wider, stretching disturbingly.

  I yelped, scrambling backward. “O-Oh, Kami! D-Don’t hurt me! Please!”

  “Su… SUUUUMUUUUUU!!!”

  It lunged.

  A blow smashed into my chest. Another smmed into my ribs. Then a kick sent me careening down a hallway. I skid to a halt with a jarring thud.

  Was this Mitsuhiko’s doing?Had he made another noh-face just to take me apart physically?

  My back hit a wall. Noh-face rushed me… fast… grabbing fistfuls of my costume and hauling me upright.

  “You… fool…” it growled.

  My blood froze. Mitsuhiko had called me a fool. Over and over. Was his creation mimicking him?

  I went limp, looking away.

  If this was it…If I died here…Reiko-chan would come back.That was enough for me.

  “I-It’s fine,” I whispered foggily. “Reiko-chan will be okay if I die… s-so it’s fine. Just hurry up and do it. I had the most fun I ever had these days—”

  Then my memories of my precious ones hit me.

  Rui. Votile as nitroglycerin. My oni svedriver.But her smiles…Kami, her smiles warmed pces in my heart I didn’t know existed.

  Fighting beside her…I’d grown feelings I couldn’t understand, couldn’t fight.And she…She’d reciprocated.

  I remembered the kiss on my balcony, the storm whipping through our hair, the thunder crashing like a drumroll.

  I loved you, Rui…

  Next came Ume.Her tiny fangs poking over her soft, plump, kissable lips.Her bedroom tucked behind her curio shop… that bizarre, adorable museum of horrors and cuteness blended into one.She appeared like a guardian angel after my first battle with noh-face. The police had nearly captured us… my power had vanished the moment Reiko’s face restored my humanity.

  Her vampires swooped in, knocking the officers out cold, dragging us to safety like it was nothing.

  I remembered waking in my apartment to find her wearing one of my shirts…smiling softly…giving me, just for a heartbeat, the illusion of the perfect girlfriend I had never been able to find.

  Her pyful teasing…Her mischievous fsh of skin before going out to buy ingredients for her mystical curry…

  I love you too, Ume. Maybe not the same way… but you made my life fun in ways I never imagined.

  Then oddly I thought about…

  Rickey.We hadn’t known each other long.A slime creature capable of devouring anything…yet with the gentlest soul I’d ever encountered.

  He came to help us without hesitation. If things had gone differently, he might’ve even defeated Mitsuhiko…

  Except for one…

  Akuchi.

  Akuchi… I’m sorry. Our pn got you killed.

  I remembered our first meeting on Halloween night.We were seconds from failure. Rui begged her to appear, but she refused. Hiding. Taunting.It was a pure accident… embarrassing for the both of us... that I relieved myself on her hiding spot while she pretended to be a wall.

  I remembered her… no… at the time his furious, soaked human form…His face twisted in absolute outrage…

  Worst. Day. Ever.

  But from that humiliating moment onward, she supported us with unwavering, explosive loyalty.She helped me reach the noh-face in time.She tormented me endlessly afterward… trying to cim me for herself… but she brought a fvor of chaos I grew… fond of.

  And her transformation powers, her acting skills…

  They were top-notch…

  When she colpsed in Regal Boost after overexerting and tasting Ume’s homemade cooking…… I felt that was the moment her female form stuck over the male.

  I still couldn’t forget how endowed her original body was.Or how determined she was to win my affection.

  And then I remembered the moment Mitsuhiko pced a hand on her head…… obliterated her…… and turned her into dust.

  I’m not sure if I love you, Akuchi… …but I want you back. I am so, so sorry.

  …

  Natalia-sama.

  Stepping into her workshop for the first time… she was exactly what Rickey had said.The sun.Bright, warm, impossibly kind.

  She supported us more than anyone.Never asking for anything in return…Except maybe the billboard patch she’d sewn into my old sentai suit’s rear… which nearly got us arrested.

  Rui and I, doing ridiculous stunts on the train while the noh-face lurked outside…We were bmed for a publicity disaster gone wrong.

  And yet she still came back.Still helped us.Still cared for us.

  She stood in my apartment after my first fight for my humanity, determined to help despite our failures.Then the day she unveiled the Yokai Sentai Noh-man suit…lifting the veil with the pride of a mother showing her child to the world…A shining masterpiece that meant more to her than all the beautiful gowns she’d ever designed.

  For some reason, helping ME…Supporting ME…… was worth everything to her.

  Natalia-sama… you truly are like the sun. I love you. And I’m sorry I couldn’t be your hero.

  She’d even used me as a chew toy to help me train…… but everything she did was for me.

  Everything.

  My heart broke open under the weight of all of it.

  And then—

  WHAM—!!

  My head whipped sideways as noh-face smmed my skull against the wall.

  Again.And again.

  CRACK—!!

  Pain detonated up my spine.

  “FIGHT!” Noh-face roared, its voice cracking. “FIGHT ME! SUSUMUUUU!!!”

  My vision fractured as my head hammered against the wall. The pster buckled beneath the relentless strikes. Something inside me rattled loose.

  …

  “RUI!” the noh-face screamed.

  My breath froze.

  My noh-eyes widened behind the mask, blinking through the sparkles pricking my vision. “R-Rui-chan?” I croaked. “Did he…? H-He turned you into—”

  My words choked into a sob.

  “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry, Rui-chan… We all were captured because I was too weak. I let everyone down. I’m so sorry this happened to you… kill me if you want… I-I had so much—”

  My head smashed against the wall again, hard.

  The wall caved inward with a deafening CRUMPLE as the noh-face drove me through it at st.

  And then…

  “No…” the noh-face whispered suddenly. “Not Rui… not…”

  It sagged for a heartbeat, its voice trembling strangely.

  “Fool. So weak… pathetic! Is this all you are?”

  I gasped, confused, dazed…

  … and then I saw her.

  “SUSUMU!!!”

  The voice cut through everything… sharp, clear, unmistakably human.

  Rui.

  She was there… alive, whole… leaning through the gaping hole in the wall we’d just made, her eyes wide and shining.

  “Rui-chan!” I cried, a desperate ugh ripping out of me. “It’s you! Are you okay?”

  Rui pulled back a little, bracing herself, ready for whatever came next.

  And for the first time in what felt like forever…

  I had hope.

  “I’m okay, idiot!” Rui ughed… breathless, shaky, but alive. “What the heck is going on with you? You’re… did he somehow do that to you again?”

  Before I could answer, a pale bnk mask drifted through the hole in the wall. The hallways were flooded with my tears. Its empty white face tilted as it entered the cell.

  Rui’s breath hitched. “Wh—what is that?! Did that horrible man send an assassin to kill us and bury our bodies after he’s done with us?!”

  “M-Maybe…” I croaked. “He said he’d drive me insane before killing me. I don’t think he’s done yet.”

  “Ahahahahahaha!”The noh-face burst into wild ughter.

  Then it bounded… straight over me and toward Rui.

  “A pretty face!” it excimed. “I’ll have it!”

  I went rigid. Rui stumbled backward, unarmed, helpless. Noh-face stalked toward her with long, hooked cws, its movements disturbingly eager.

  Memory struck me like lightning… the tunnel fight. The promise.

  “No! You PROMISED!” I screamed.

  “Ehehehe… my new treasure…” it hissed, ignoring me completely as it crept closer to Rui.

  My blood turned icy.

  “NO!”

  I hurled myself forward, smming into the creature with everything I had. My jade bracelet erupted with light… silver, fierce, burning. Pain faded. My broken wrist no longer throbbed—no, it felt whole. Healed. Transformed.

  But more than my wrist changed.

  As I grappled with the noh-face, something surged through me… shadows gathering around my limbs, pooling across my skin, cloaking me just like a true noh-face. My body elongated. Hardened. Strengthened.

  I was becoming something else.

  Faster than I should have.

  Something powerful.

  “NOOOOOOOO! YOU WON’T HURT HER! YOU MONSTER!” I roared, my voice ripping out of me like a tidal wave.

  I threw the noh-face across the room, its body smming into the far wall, cracking it. I seized it by the neck and hauled it into the air. It kicked and cwed at my wrist, but I didn’t yield.

  “I’LL KILL YOU! IF YOU THREATEN HER EVER AGAIN, YOU DIE!!”

  And then…The noh-face… ughed.

  Its body stilled. The cwing stopped.

  “I knew you could do it if you were pushed…” it rasped. “You have far more potential than I ever did… Oh, Susumu. Rui-chan… please forgive me for my sins. I…”

  My heart froze.

  That voice…That tone…

  I knew it instantly.

  My arms sckened. The shadows around me wavered. The bracelet dimmed.

  I shrank down… my monstrous form fading away.

  Rui stumbled forward, eyes wide and brimming.

  “R-Reiko-chan…?! Reiko!” she cried.

  She rushed past me and threw herself into the noh-face’s arms. No… into her arms.

  Reiko hugged her back with trembling hands.

  I clutched my own face, sobbing uncontrolbly.

  “I’m not strong,” I choked. “You were always stronger than me. How could you say something like that, R-Reiko…? Don’t be an idiot! You’re worth more than I am!”

  They held each other for a long moment, and my heart twisted into impossible knots… joy, grief, jealousy, relief… every emotion tangled until I couldn’t tell them apart.

  The faces of Reiko-chan and Rui-chan fshed in my mind, embracing… smiling… together.

  I staggered backward into a corner, sinking down, clutching my head as sobs shook through my whole body.

  Rui…Reiko-chan…Please be happy…

  “I missed you too,” Reiko murmured, her noh-face turning toward Rui with infinite gentleness as she stroked Rui’s cheek.

  Even though I covered my face, I couldn’t shut out the sight.Or the ache.Or the bittersweet relief.

  I noh-smiled through the tears.

  If they were together…If they were safe…Even if I stayed a noh-face forever…I could accept that fate.

  Ume and Natalia-sama’s voices echoed faintly in my mind.

  We accept you. No matter how you look.

  I wasn’t alone.Not anymore.Not ever again… if I could save them.

  Reiko stepped toward me, terrifying in form but unmistakable in presence.

  “We need to defeat Mitsuhiko,” she said quietly.

  “We will.”I noh-smiled back through my tears. “We’ll destroy him for what he did. I’ll… I’ll do my best.”

  “I know you will,” Reiko whispered, sounding half like the woman I remembered. She reached out and touched my noh-face with gentle fingers. “I’m sorry. I hurt you deeply. I never hated you. I wanted to protect you from Mitsu… but it seems it’s your fate to do what I never could.”

  She sighed softly, sweeping me up in her arms.

  “Oh, Reiko-chan… I missed you!” I sobbed, colpsing into her arms. She held me carefully, her form cool but tender.

  “I never hated you… for anything,” I whimpered. “I was always a failure…”

  “No,” she murmured. “You aren’t. And you won’t be. You’ll win tonight. You’ll get your humanity back. I believe in you.”

  She pressed her noh-lips to my forehead.

  I looked up into her bnk, beautiful, terrifying face, tears streaking down mine.

  And then it hit me.

  She wasn’t including herself in that ending.

  “We!” I cried desperately. “WE WILL! Of course we’ll all go back to the way things were!”

  Reiko-chan ughed softly… a fragile, trembling sound.“Idiot,” she whispered. “No.”

  Her noh-face tilted toward me, unreadable yet heavy with emotion.

  “I’ve committed too many sins. I’ve killed people. I’m no better than Mitsuhiko now.”Her voice shook.“I shed out… and it was unforgivable how much I hurt you. In my mind, it was a game, just like always… We were pying Tekku in my mind. But something deep inside me was ignited. I became dark… and I tortured you. I remember every moment. Every scream. Every tear you cried. Do you think I can live with that?”

  “Reiko-chan…” I choked.

  She touched my noh-face gently, as if comforting a child.

  “I have no future,” she whispered. “I’d turn myself in if it would help anything. But it won’t. I’ll go insane again soon enough. I’ll kill again. I’m a murderer.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but no words came.

  Before I could respond, Rui threw herself at both of us, hugging us tight with trembling, desperate arms.

  “What are you doing, Reiko-chan?!” Rui sobbed. “You HAVE to come back with us! We can be happy together! It doesn’t matter to me what you did. Susu forgives you. We’ll carry your sins together. All three of us! I love you both… Don’t think I don’t, Susu. Reiko-chan… please… please tell me you’ll try! I’ll be with you every step of the way! We both will!”

  “We will!” I noh-grinned fiercely, clinging to both of them. “Rui-chan is right.”“We’ll be together forever!”

  Reiko-chan noh-smiled…… but not with joy.

  “We will,” she agreed softly.“But not in the way you think.”

  My breath hitched.

  “I can never truly be who I was again,” she continued. “Alone, neither of you… can defeat Mitsuhiko. Not even I could. And I learned something important when I was turned into a noh-face.”

  Her voice dropped, almost reverent.

  “I had the strength to defeat the prime noh-face that I summoned with my determination. But doing so changed me irrevocably. It was easy… because that creature was born from my own imagination. My own consciousness. When I defeated it, I absorbed its essence.”

  Absorbed.

  My heart thudded painfully.

  She leaned down… … and kissed me.

  A noh-face kiss.Empty.Featureless.But I felt it as clearly as if Reiko’s real lips were pressed against mine.

  Last time, the sight of it had terrified me.Now, all I could do was cling to her.

  If she was going to absorb me, too…If I could live inside her somehow…If it meant she survived…If it meant Rui was safe…That was all that mattered.

  A glow started then.

  It began deep inside her noh-form, spreading outward like molten gold. Shadows rippled across her body. And the jade bracelet on my wrist erupted…A newborn sun, bzing, wrapping my arm in brilliant fire.

  Her voice spoke inside my mind…Clearer than speech…… gentler than breath.

  Fight hard…I love you, Susu.Take care of Rui-chan.I love her, too.Cherish her for me.

  My heart cracked wide open.

  Beside us, Rui’s breath caught in her throat…as if she heard every word Reiko had spoken silently.

  “N-NOOOOOOO!!!” Rui screamed.

  She lunged toward us…her arms outstretched…reaching out…

  Tears flowing from her beautiful chocotey brown eyes…

  But…

  The moment she touched Reiko-chan…

  Her hands passed straight through.

  Rui colpsed into me instead, sobbing and cwing at the air where Reiko had stood only a heartbeat before.

  The shadows surged around my body…a torrent of darkness and fire…wrapping my noh-form, flooding me with impossible energy.Power roared through me, filling every limb, every nerve.

  I wasn’t human anymore.…Not even faintly.Something else had awakened.Reiko had given me something precious.

  But even as strength thundered through my body…

  All I could do……was cry.

  Rui colpsed onto the floor, her knees buckling beneath her, her hands trembling.

  “She’s gone…” Rui whispered.

  My whole world cracked.

  Reiko-chan…… was gone.

  Relwing