Under twin moons, this city hides a thirst no one else can see.
Kuyou has always been different. Since he was seven, he's needed a strange drink just to function—without it, his throat burns with an unbearable thirst he can't explain. A faded cloth band on his wrist that he can never remove. Streetlamps that sway with no wind. Canal water tinged red with something like blood. Fish made of iron, swimming unseen beneath the surface.
To everyone else in Noxveil, none of this exists. His classmate
City of the Twin Moons - The Stairs to the Sunken Altar—The Thirst I Let Go, and the Hand I Won't Release
Something was calling from beneath the water.
Kuyou woke.
A hard surface against his back. Cold air. The smell of iron and mud clung to the inside of his nose.
(Where...)
He pushed himself up. His whole body screamed. His clothes were stiff with mud and blood, and burn marks from the exudate speckled his skin. A stinging pain. But more than that—
His throat burned with thirst.
"...gh."
Kuyou clutched at his throat. His fingers trembled. Something was rising from deep in his throat, from the pit of his stomach. The paper carton drink was nowhere anymore. He'd left it on the desk in his apartment and run.
(Don't drink. I won't drink anymore.)
Kuyou told himself that.
He looked down. His left wrist.
The faded cloth band lay torn on the ground, fluttered loose. Seventeen years, and he'd never once taken it off. Beneath it, the bare pattern showed through. A complex design the color of rusted iron. It pulsed, glowing a dark red-black.
"...So that's how it is."
Kuyou muttered to no one.
His voice was hoarse.
He looked around. This was the bottom of the ruined central waterway. Crumbling concrete walls. Rusted pipes. The light of the twin moons filtered faintly down from high above.
(Three days, huh.)
How long had he been unconscious? He didn't know exactly. But his body told him it had been about that long.
Kuyou rose slowly.
His legs tangled under him.
His vision clouded gray, now and then.
(My right eye...)
Kuyou pressed a hand over his right eye. The aftereffects of Resonance Level 3. Emotional flattening. Visual anomalies. The "loss of humanity" Hakubo had spoken of was now eroding Kuyou's body as plain fact.
(Not funny.)
Kuyou's mouth twisted.
Just moments ago, his emotions had overflowed so violently. Now the depths of his heart felt dull, as if wrapped in a thin film. Anger, sorrow, fear—all of it distant.
(Am I going to stop being human, just like this?)
Fear smoldered quietly, but surely, at the bottom of his heart.
Even so.
Kuyou took a step.
He braced a hand against the waterway wall and crawled his way up the slope. Mud worked into the gaps between his fingers. Ironfish scales clung to the hem of his clothes, glinting silver.
(I have to see someone.)
That was what Kuyou thought.
He didn't know who, or what, or how he'd say it. But being alone right now was unbearable, terrifying.
---
When he'd crawled up out of the waterway, Kuyou stopped.
"...Oh my."
A voice.
He raised his head.
Standing there was a small old woman with gray hair streaked white, gathered in a round bun at the back of her head. Warm amber eyes. An old burn scar on the back of her right hand. The manager of the Yotsuya East Third Street shop—Oumi.
"What in the world are you doing in a place like this?"
Oumi looked Kuyou over slowly, from top to bottom.
Mud-caked clothes. Burn marks. His bare left wrist. Ironfish scales.
Kuyou felt he had to say something. But no words came.
Oumi didn't ask a thing.
She simply took from her shopping bag a plastic bottle of water, some bandages, and a still-warm onigiri.
"Here, take these."
Kuyou couldn't bring himself to accept them.
"Go on, take them."
Oumi forced them into his hands.
The bottle of water. The bandages. The onigiri.
"...Why?"
"Why, he says—you look like you're at death's door, don't you?"
Oumi said it with a small laugh.
"You see, I've run a shop in this city a long time, and strange things happen now and then. The waterway turns funny colors, the streetlamps sway. But I reckon you're the type who actually sees those things."
Kuyou listened in silence.
"I won't pry. It's not for me to understand. But if you're alive, that's enough. Whether you're eating properly—that's all I worry about."
Oumi's voice was warm.
Kuyou's throat trembled—for a reason other than thirst.
(Ah. I see.)
For the first time, Kuyou realized he was about to cry.
Not treated as a foreign object. Not looked at with disgust. Just—being there, and having that acknowledged.
The loneliness he'd felt for seventeen years. The isolation of not being able to share the city's anomalies with anyone. With a single old woman's words, it melted, just a little.
"...You're strong, aren't you."
Oumi looked at Kuyou's left wrist.
The bare pattern. The pulsing dark red-black light.
But Oumi acted as though she hadn't seen it.
"Now, drink some water. Then eat that onigiri. Are you eating properly?"
Kuyou opened the bottle cap.
He drank.
His throat screamed.
(No. This isn't it.)
Kuyou's body craved iron. Water couldn't quench this thirst.
But Kuyou drank.
One sip, then another.
"...It's good."
Kuyou said it.
He meant it.
It wasn't like the taste of the paper carton drink. There was no iron flavor. But this water seeped surely through Kuyou's body.
(This is fine.)
Kuyou picked up the onigiri.
It was warm.
"...Thank you."
Kuyou bowed his head slightly to Oumi.
"It's nothing. As long as you're all right, that's enough."
Oumi said it and hitched her shopping bag up again.
"Come by the shop again. I've got your favorite drink in stock."
Kuyou didn't answer.
The paper carton drink.
(I won't drink it anymore.)
Kuyou repeated it in his heart.
---
The Archive of Togari.
West Ward, Yomiji Street 3-14. An antiquarian bookshop and private archive.
Three days after that day, Kuyou stood before the shop.
A fresh bandage was wrapped around his left wrist. The one Oumi had given him. The pattern was hidden. But beneath the bandage, it still pulsed.
He pushed the door.
A chime rang.
"...You came."
From the back of the shop appeared a man with long black hair tied back. Hakubo. A thirty-five-year-old observer, a leather glove on his right hand.
"You knew, didn't you."
"Knew what?"
"That I'd go to that place. That I'd let go of the paper carton."
"The records say so. ...It's your decision to make."
Hakubo, as always, avoided absolutes.
"...So what are you going to show me today?"
Kuyou looked into Hakubo's gray eyes.
"The basement."
Hakubo put a hand on the bookshelf at the back of the shop.
The bookshelf moved slowly.
Behind it appeared a staircase leading underground.
---
The basement observation room.
Seventeen years of records plastered across the walls. Water-quality logs of the central waterway, movement traces of the swaying lamps, photographs of Resonants. Some had yellowed edges, some had ink that bled.
Hakubo spread a hand-drawn cross-section of the waterway on the desk.
"The heart of the Slumbering Axis lies directly beneath the central waterway, eight hundred meters down. The Sunken Altar. The Rinkashuu have sealed the stairway to it."
Kuyou looked at the cross-section.
"Forty-two days remain until the awakening."
"...Forty-two days."
"To break through, you'll need to raise yourself to Resonance Level 4."
Hakubo looked at Kuyou's left wrist.
As if seeing straight through the bandage to the pattern beneath.
"The price: your left eye will lose all light."
Kuyou said nothing.
"Even so—will you go?"
"...I'll go."
Kuyou's voice was short.
"I see."
Hakubo took an old photograph from the desk drawer.
"This is where your ancestors were sunk."
Kuyou looked at the photo.
A monochrome image. In it was something like an ancient altar.
"The Sunken Altar is a place directly tied to your birth. Seventeen years ago, you were found in the waterway. Directly beneath that spot."
Kuyou gripped the photograph.
(Where I was born.)
Fear and irritation welled up at once.
"...How much do you know?"
"Not everything. But what's in the records, I've told you."
"There's more you haven't told me."
"There is. But that's something you should confirm with your own eyes."
Hakubo's voice was quiet.
"...It's your decision to make."
Kuyou glared at Hakubo.
But he said nothing more.
---
The apartment.
Night.
Kuyou sat in the center of the room.
He slowly unwound the bandage from his left wrist.
The bare pattern glowed dark red-black in the dark room.
(So I open this further.)
Resonance Level 4.
Losing his left eye.
(And what's left after that?)
Kuyou looked at his own hand.
A human hand. But inside it, something not human pulsed.
That was when.
"...Kuyou."
A voice.
Kuyou raised his head, and there stood Kiriha.
Long silver-gray hair. Blood-red eyes. On the left side of her neck, a rusted pattern floated.
She was guarding her badly injured right arm.
"Kiriha..."
Kuyou tried to stand.
But Kiriha grabbed his arm.
Cold fingers.
"...Together."
It was a small voice.
"I don't want... you to disappear."
Kiriha didn't let go of Kuyou's arm.
Her inhuman golden eyes stared only at Kuyou.
"...I don't want it. You disappearing—I don't want it."
Kiriha's voice was trembling.
For the first time, Kuyou saw Kiriha like this.
A cold, merciless warrior. A nonhuman girl who didn't know the rules of human society.
And now she was clutching his arm, looking about to cry.
(So even she gets scared.)
That was what Kuyou thought.
"...I won't disappear."
Kuyou squeezed her cold fingers back.
"If you're going to make a face like that, then all the more."
"...Really?"
Kiriha's voice broke, clinging.
"Yeah. Really."
Kuyou held her hand tight.
In place of the paper carton drink, that hand.
"...Promise."
Kiriha murmured softly.
"Yeah. Promise."
Kuyou didn't let go of Kiriha's hand.
Between the two of them, the first clear promise was quietly exchanged.
---
The next morning.
Central waterway. Beneath the intake tower.
Kuyou and Kiriha descended the stairs underground.
The air was heavy.
"...Smell."
Kiriha's nose twitched.
"Same as that hole."
Kuyou felt it too.
His throat burned.
(Exudate.)
The entrance to the underground was already overflowing with exudate. A black, syrupy liquid. The smell of iron and rot.
And beyond it.
"...You came."
A gray waterproof coat. A pale blue-white face.
The de facto leader of the Rinkashuu, Kaitou, was waiting.
"Kuyou. Raise yourself to Resonance Level 4, and your left eye sinks into darkness."
Kaitou approached slowly.
"But before that, let me have you prove whether you're truly human."
Kaitou raised his right hand.
In that instant, the water of the waterway reversed its flow.
"I'll manipulate the waterway itself to trigger your runaway resonance. You'll step into Level 4 by your own will. I'll make sure of it."
The water surged at Kuyou's feet.
"...Damn it!"
Kuyou felt the pattern on his left wrist take on heat.
(I have to do it myself.)
Kuyou deliberately began raising himself toward Resonance Level 4.
The pattern glowed.
"Yes. That's it. Come closer to the Slumbering Axis."
Kaitou's voice echoed inside his head.
Kuyou's body began to synchronize with the water.
That was when.
A crackle.
A sound.
The bandage on his left wrist tore completely away.
The pattern spread across his whole body.
"...gh, aaaaaah!"
Kuyou's body was on the verge of merging with the water.
The outlines of his limbs were dissolving.
(No. At this rate—)
Kuyou's consciousness receded.
"...Good. Sink, just like that."
Kaitou laughed.
In that instant.
"—Begone!!"
Kiriha moved.
Guarding her badly injured right arm, she kicked off the ground.
And with monstrous strength, she cut the waterway apart.
DOGOOOON!!
Concrete shattered. Water sprayed.
"Kuyou!!"
Kiriha pulled Kuyou's body back.
"...gh, hah, haah."
Kuyou collapsed to the ground, coughing.
His left eye was hot.
Half his vision was gone.
(My left eye...)
Kuyou's left eye had already begun to lose its light.
"...Oh?"
Kaitou clapped slowly.
"Splendid. The stairway to the altar is open. Your price has been paid in full."
At Kaitou's feet, the water swirled.
"But this isn't the end. Your resonance has begun to reverse. It's my trap. The moment you stepped into Level 4, your resonance began to devour you."
Kuyou looked at Kaitou with one eye.
"...Serves you right."
Kuyou curled the corner of his mouth.
"What
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