"Going outside?"

Before I could make my step outside of the palace, a voice I couldn't be more familiar with called me.

"Yeah, sis, just wandering around."

I replied with my usual excuse.

"Sure, just return before sundown, ok?"

"I will."

After blazing my way outside, I slowed my step, and trotted through the grass.

The grass with flowers on top of them.

This is still part of the palace, as the former hell would in no way have these beauties lying around.

I lowered my body, to smell the fragrance they emitted.

It's a mixture of tenderness and slight irritation.

I love it.

The subtle provoke made for the perfect combination.

They have a unique charm within them.

They are the only objects that I could feel the existence of.

I'm different, different from anyone, and everyone.

I'm a satori.

Well, I can't be considered a satori anymore.

A satori can read people's mind, their thoughts and feelings.

It's a truly unique and powerful ability.

It's pure, and carries no mercy.

It reflects a person's most rooted motives.

I've read countless of them.

The radiant, and the dire.

I once fancied showing them their true self.

The self that they would rather hide away.

No one liked it.

When a satori uses her ability, the target would feel a sense of nakedness and discomfort.

They mocked me, and they kept a distance away from me.

They said that a satori doesn't know the boundary of what's appropriate.

It's not an ability; it's a curse.

It stripped away my right to make friends, to be a normal youkai.

Days went by as I just sat in my room, unable to go outside of my own will.

I know I would be rejected.

So I closed it.

The satori eye.

With it closed, I can no longer cast my ability.

Great, I didn't want it anyway.

In the deepest corner of my heart, that vivid beating machine, I always wanted to be expected.

I will no longer create discomfort and agony.

Upon closing that satori eye, I rushed outside.

The world that I had been wishing for, was too real to lay my finger on.

Yet to my surprise.

I was utterly disregarded.

I waved my hands in front of them.

They won't answer.

I poked them with my fingers.

They won't answer.

I shouted out their names.

They won't answer.

As if I had faded away.

Yet these flowers possessed a glamour.

They responded to the callings of my fingertips.

They shook vividly, dancing along to the rhythm.

I adore them.

They smile at me, their pollens dug into my nostrils.

They tickle; it's a form...of agony.

Yet to me, even agony is better than aeriality.

Is this really the only choice?

To give up all connections, to cut off every thread tieing me to this world, in exchange for tranquillity?

Honestly, I'm sick of this void of nothingness.

But a seal is a seal, a one-way ticket.

In a way, a deal with the devil.

I can't find a way to open it, the eye of satori again.

Nor do I know whether I wanted to go back to the way that I had been.

I just wanted to be normal, a youkai, or a human, whatever it may be.

Is that too much to ask?

I couldn't find an answer to my question.

I trotted around the garden, looking for something.

The things that I knew I could never find.

I trenched into the thistles and thorns at the edge of the palace.

They were a mistake due to the lack of maintenance.

I slammed myself into them, letting the spikes torture my skin.

I felt nothing.

Only liquids trickled down my arms.

I knew they were blood.

But would I call them blood, if they convey no torment?

Would I call them blood, if they leaked only from my veins?

Sooner or later, the thistles grew thick enough that I could no longer move forward.

They closed behind me, sealing me in.

...

My hat.

Where is my hat?

They had taken her away from me.

I screamed, but no sound could penetrate the boundaries they had forged.

The callings lingered inches away from my body before vanishing into the bushes.

Ah.

It's no different here, than anywhere else.

My name is Koshi.

It stands for 'love'.

But I can't find a single fibre of that substance inside me.

There's no pain, yet there's suffering.

I could greet pain like an old friend, for it reminds me that I'm still alive.

Yet suffering only drags me down into the limbo.

I abhor it.

...

I felt something.

Something somewhat out of logic.

It shouldn't exist here.

A long, metallic stick, with a fabricated leather handle.

A slim string ran on top of it, tangling a sharp, curvy hook.

I touched on its point.

It made a cut on my finger.

It hurts.

It was agony.

It brought me back to reality.

There was suddenly a stream running through my numb consciousness.

It was memories.

Many of them.

They were absurd, they were aching, they were...real.

Though I've never experienced them, I knew that it was Koshi; it was me who made them.

It shrieked a memorandum.

It cast a fraction of that numbness away.

I knew I had to go somewhere, do something.

To parallel myself with these memories.

They were provoking, and poisonous.

But also a remedy.