Perspective: Kage

  From amidst the curtains of sticky black rain, the fog parted, and the "Angel" who would save us from hell appeared. Morito. He walked with heavy steps sinking into the mud, carrying the silver corpse in his arms as if he were carrying the entire world. Every one of us—the mothers covered in soot, the warriors bleeding in silence, and the trembling children—raised our heads and looked at him with those hungry gazes... the gaze of last hope.

  But... After he reached me, he didn't stop. The tall Samurai’s shadow covered my face for a moment, then... he passed me. He continued his path through us as if we didn't exist. As if we were transparent ghosts not worth a glance. The smell of old sake and the smell of death wafted from him, suffocating the breath.

  I turned quickly, panic tearing at my insides, and screamed in a hoarse voice: "Please!! We have no one!" He stopped. His broad back was like a wall before us. He didn't turn his face to look at mine. He said in a cold, hoarse voice, devoid of any human emotion: "And what does that have to do with me?"

  My veins froze. I ran to him, threw myself into the black mud, and grabbed the hem of his wet, blood-stained Hakama. I began to speak with a pitifulness and humiliation I never knew I had, but pride does not feed children: "Were you not a friend of Kinami?! For her sake... please!" He replied in a dead voice, looking straight ahead: "She was not my friend."

  He started walking, dragging his leg from my hands with force, as if dragging an annoying weight. I ran and hugged his leg with all my strength, clinging to the cracked leather of his shoe: "Please!! Not for me! Just for the children! Please, if you have an atom of kindness... I beg you!" "They burned our homeland! Our paradise! They killed our friends! They killed our Mother and our Goddess!" "Please... we will repay the favor in the future! I swear to you... please!" I began to weep bitterly, my tears washing the blackness off his shoe: "Please!"

  "Annoying." He began trying to kick me. A strong shake of his foot, then another. He was trying to shake me off as one shakes off stuck mud. But I stayed attached. My nails broke as I dug them into his clothes. He began kicking me more and more, the kicks becoming violent, painful, leaving bruises on my chest.

  Then, for the first time, his calm voice exploded. He stopped, and screamed in a voice that shook the forest, a voice filled with pain that rivaled ours: "Why do you want them to live?!!" He looked at me with savage eyes, red from drunkenness and stifled crying: "If their end is death... if the end is the same for everyone... what is the point of what you are doing?! Why postpone the pain? Why prolong the suffering? Let them die now and rest!"

  I couldn't answer. The words died in my throat with my sobs. I don't know. Why am I doing this? Why am I still fighting? If everything burns in the end... what is the point? How do I answer a question to which I know no answer?

  Then... from behind me. Yuta jumped. He didn't run from the monster's screaming. He jumped and hugged Morito's other leg, his small face buried in the giant man's knee, crying and screaming: "Dragon!! Please help Kage! Please!"

  Morito froze. His body movement stopped completely. He looked down. At the child calling him "Dragon." His anger calmed slowly, the tension faded from his muscles, replaced by an indescribable fatigue... the fatigue of centuries. He looked at Yuta, then at me, then at the gray horizon. He sighed... a long sigh that released white steam into the cold air. He said in a low, husky voice: "You can follow me. But..." He looked at me with cutting sharpness: "Food... you will find it yourselves. I am not a babysitter, and I am not a savior."

  Then... he raised his free hand, and snapped his fingers. Snap. The air pressure changed suddenly. Our ears popped. And suddenly... the black rain disappeared. The smell of fire disappeared. The mud disappeared.

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  We found ourselves in a completely different place. The air was pure, cold, and saturated with a strong scent of flowers... a scent sweet to the point of nausea. We were in the Field of Rainbow Flowers. Vast expanses of colored roses stretching to the horizon under the moonlight, and before us, the towering Mount Ryu touching the clouds. A place beautiful enough to make one cry.

  But... this beauty carried a heavy, silent sadness. In front of us... among the swaying flowers... were hundreds of small graves. Just mounds of silent stones, arranged with painful care.

  Morito walked silently through the flowers. He placed the girl he was carrying on the ground with extreme gentleness, as if placing a cracked piece of glass. He grabbed an old, rusty shovel that had been planted in the ground there for hundreds of years, as if waiting. And he began to dig. Khhh... Krrr. The sound of the shovel breaking the soil was the only sound in the place. He used his hand, his sweat, and his effort. Stroke after stroke... dirt after dirt. I could see the muscles of his back tensing and relaxing, sweat pouring from his forehead. He would dive into the hole, throw the dirt, and return. As if punishing himself with hard labor.

  Little by little... the hole grew. It grew and grew... until it was big enough for the girl. After he finished digging, his hands stained with soil. He stood and looked at the girl with her pale face, her eyes closed forever. Then he lowered his knee, carried her with all kindness, and placed her in the cold hole. He arranged her silver hair for the last time, and wiped a speck of dust from her cold cheek. Then he began to put back the dirt he had removed. Soil after soil... grain by grain. Her body disappeared... then her beautiful face disappeared under the dirt. Until the soil he removed returned to its place, and he leveled it with the ground with his bare hand.

  Then... he carried a large smooth stone. And with the tip of his sword, he carved words onto it. The sound of metal scraping stone was painful to the teeth. He didn't write an elegy. He wrote: [Sora... The Whore]

  It was the only grave with a name written on it among hundreds of unknown graves. Then he sat on the back of the stone, resting his elbows on his knees. He pulled a sake bottle from the void, and began drinking, his eyes staring into nothingness, seeing things we do not see.

  I couldn't speak. None of us could speak. Even Yuta fell silent, holding my hand tightly. And in that moment... we knew. We knew why the "Dragon" watches without helping. He doesn't hate us. Or anyone. He just... wants to reduce the number of graves he digs with his own hands. Every person he saves will end up here, under this dirt, and he will be the one to bury them. He is tired of goodbyes.

  I looked at his lonely back bent over the grave, amidst the infinite field of flowers. And I decided in that moment. I swore in my secret heart, tears drying on my cheek: I promise you, Morito... I will make this grave the last one you bury alone.

  Perspective: My Perspective

  Welcome... to the Gray World. A normal world... and normal in its normality. No sky, no earth, no colors. Just infinite gray fog extending in every direction.

  I opened eyes I did not possess. And I saw a gray "Shadow" sitting on a normal office chair, and in front of him a table with an old-fashioned laptop, its screen the only source of light. And I... was just a pile of ordinary ash, remnants of deleted code.

  The Shadow remained typing on the keyboard. Click... Click... Click... Click after click. The sound of typing was the only sound in this silent universe. A monotonous, mechanical rhythm. K. Click after click... then finally. He pressed the last click.

  The Shadow stopped typing. He seemed surprised. He tried to click again, clicked hard, but no use. There is no sound. The keyboard is not responding. Then... the Shadow turned slowly and looked directly at me. He had no face, but I felt his gaze piercing my gray entity. He said in a voice resembling the rustling of old paper: "......" "Is this the end...?"

  I didn't answer. I looked at myself. I believed it was the end... "What a pity... I couldn't find......."

  The Shadow returned his gaze to the laptop. He didn't click, just looked at the black screen in long silence. Then he looked back at me, and said as if issuing a command: "You must...... continue."

  Then... in the middle of the gray void. A door appeared. A normal wooden door, with a brass round handle. A bright white door, radiating a light painful to the eye, piercing the monotony of the gray.

  After the door appeared, the Shadow began clicking again. Click... Click... Click... I began walking toward the door. I didn't control my feet; I was attracted to it like data being pulled to a new file. I placed my gray hand on the cold handle. And before I opened the door, I turned and looked one last look at the Shadow engrossed in typing. And I said in a voice that came out of me for the first time, a voice not mine, but the voice of Dream, and the voice of Dio, and the voice of Hong Min together: "Thank you, [......]"

  And I opened the door. Absolute whiteness engulfed me.