Trial

Chapter II
Trial
 

Thursday, 21st November

Stepping out of the elevator, Rin and the bear she found to be an Ayakashi named Kumashidoro - Kumata, for short - were now on the first floor of the main administration building. Walking down the warm corridor, Kumata got back to his explanation of what was about to happen.

“I was the one who received your profile due to being closest to the chute at the time, so I’ll be overseeing the rest of your process.”

Noticing that the bear beside her was less skittish than before, Rin felt a little more relaxed herself. It wasn’t easy for her either, being chaperoned through a maze of hallways by something that looked like it was out of an Otaku’s LSD trip.

Stopping at a particular door, Kumata held his paw up to a scanner Rin had only ever seen in Sci-Fi shows. Once it beeped, a mechanical click sounded and the heavy-duty barrier 'vhushed' opened in a sliding motion just like any other traditional Japanese door. A burst of stuffy air hit the duo and before the redhead could make a comment about the pungent computer smell, she was already following her company inside the dingy room lit by stacks upon stacks of monitors alone.

She'd never been a computer geek, but she had been acquainted with that specific smell before. The twins' room stunk off it. It was just as dark, too. The bright screens and flashing bulbs blipping against stark darkness paired with the oppressive smell and incessant clicking caused by God-speed typing made her stomach fizzle and her skin prickle from an uncalled-for sweat.

“Take a seat, Rin Tan,” He gestured to the empty contraption that looked like a modified dentist chair with one of those hair dryers that old ladies used for perms hanging above the head-rest.

Trying to ignore the others that had stopped going about their own tasks to steal a glance of her, Rin heaved a breath only to be choked by muggy air. "Please can I have some water?" Walking over to the alien device, the redhead hopped up into the seat and put her feet on the metal steps. Sitting rigid, too scared to lean back in case it locked her in, she fiddled with the hem of the dull hoodie she was wearing as she kept her eyes on the bear.

"It's probably best to wait until you're done," a stranger's voice called from the abyss.
 
Waddling back over to his subject with a clipboard in his grasp, Kumata stood to the right of the woman’s legs. “Rin Tan, please relax; I’m not going to hurt you.”

“She probably thinks she’s going to be probed,” the same voice which had refused her request coughed a laugh as he finished talking.

Turning around, Rin could see that he appeared to be a human. Pushing himself out of his swivel chair as it spun across the empty walkway, the man groaned as he stretched his arms above his head. Yelping when his spine cracked, the brunet hobbled over like an old man in his eighties, despite seeming to be only in his late-twenties.

“Good Afternoon, Shibata Chan. I’m your technician for the day. If you could-”

“What are you going to do to me?” Suspiciously looking between the two stood near her, Rin tensed even further.

The brunet, who had crouched down to her left in order to adjust the contraption, peeked up with a smile. “We’re gauging-”

“-What?! What are you gauging?” The redhead recoiled and crossed her arms over her torso - as if that would help if a giant teddy bear decided to strike her out.

“You’re Qi.” Straightening up after pressing some buttons on the side of the chair, the brunet with wild hair and bags under his eyes raised his left brow at the panicked reaction. “And finding you a suitable Contract.”

“Kumata San, you mentioned something about that before,itching the inside of her ear cartilage nervously, Rin tried to prolong the process. “Can you explain to me exactly what happens before you stick that thing on my head?”

“This machine measures everything about your body-”

“Perv,” Rin cut the assistant off with a sidewards glower.

“You’re a rude woman, you know?” Pushing the mop of hair off his face, the assistant clucked his tongue. “It measures important things such as your internal operations: blood pressure, brain-waves - which I'm seriously considering you're lacking at this moment - body mass in correlation to muscle tone, if you have any undiagnosed illnesses, the amount of Qi you have, etcetera. The machine then factors all of this to calculate your potential, your element, and sorts through our database of over 1.8million potentials to find an Ayakashi that is suitable to become your first and Official Contract.”

“And there was me thinking this was going to be a long and tedious process,” the woman rolled her eyes and huffed out the sarcasm.

“R-Rin Tan, it should only take about five-to-ten minutes,” the bear patted the air with his free hand, worried by the growing tension.

“If she ever sits back and lets us get on with it.”

“Ok, Mister Grumpy.” Gripping the armrests and hoisting herself up, the redhead threw herself back into the firm leather backrest. Surprisingly, the torture device was actually pretty comforta-

“Lights out~” The brunet sang as he pulled the giant helmet down over Rin’s head. In the same instance, reinforced cuffs clipped her wrists, chest, and legs to the machine.

Sight obscured and sounds of the room completely gone, the redhead was now left in darkness. All of her senses had seemed to have abandoned her, yet regardless of the fact that should have made her feel vulnerable, this was the most at ease she’d been in as long as she could remember. Maybe there was some sort of sedative within the head capsule...

Standing either side of the chair, Kumata and the man assisting him watched as the machine powered up and a sequence of numbers and symbols whizz across several flat-screens behind it. Eyes turning to the largest monitor to the right, the pair of technicians waited for the best part. Even if all of the data-input and mundane phone calls to make bi-annual check-ups with forgetful Contractors was a pain in the ass, getting to see inside somebody else's mind was a certain sort of fascination only they got the privilege of witnessing. Sure, there was the one in a billion who had the power to experience the phenomenon outside of a lab, but it was one in a trillion who could make that happen on cue, without equipment. For those guys right there, it was their job. No matter how boring what the test-taker conjured, it was still brilliant to them: what made another person tick, the vividity of it, the world of a person in absolute colour more sharp and precise than anything any plane could offer; when watching side by side with their vitals and the very body right next to them, to see how people really react in their darkest, most private and primal moments, there really wasn't any bigger rush than that.

Suddenly feeling a bitter chill, Rin tried to rub her arms to get the blood flowing. To her surprise, she was able to despite feeling as if she was restrained only a split-second before she was thrust into darkness. But that wasn’t all; she wasn’t in the chair - she was somewhere completely different than the closed-off tech room. A sense of deja vu so strong it made her feel physically sick caused her legs to wobble as her eyes tried to take in the vast difference in scenery. Standing in the middle of a snow-covered road, under the yellow glow of a streetlamp, the redhead felt her heartbeat begin to quicken. The scene was nostalgic, but there was something seriously off about it. Nothing she recalled about it was exactly the same. Something was really wrong about the way there were no people around. Cars that lined either side of the street were left unattended despite it being the main road into the city’s shopping district, the doors left opened and Christmas gifts left splayed through untouched snow as if abandoned in a last-ditch attempt to escape something.

Something past the whirring of electricity and the heavy precipitation caught Rin's ear. Turning her head left and right, she tried to find out where the sound was coming from. Forgetting about rubbing her arms to keep her circulation going in the sub-zero temperatures, Rin dropped her hands by her sides and began to walk. Besides the jingling tune that she was following, there was the crunch of very real untouched snow beneath her boots. She was in Shinjuku and there was not a soul to be seen, nor a plane flying overhead to be heard - Even an idiot would be able to tell there was something wrong.

In her pondering as to what was going on, she had wandered over to the left side of the street. Standing in front of a store window, Rin now remembered why she had thought the scene felt familiar. Glancing down at the display behind the pane of glass surrounded by tube lights and glittery paper snowflakes, celadon eyes watched a small train chudder around a plastic track. Tiny model people mouthed carols and a figure was shown to be dancing on an iced lake while a festive tune chimed from a substantial multi-tiered ornament.

During the Christmas period when she was younger, much younger, her parents would always take her out to see the sparkling lights high above the shopping districts and the elaborate store displays. When it was the three of them. Just the three of them. They would eat vendor food and be wrapped up in layers upon layers of their fancy seasonal clothes, and she would always stand in the middle and hold their hands. Her father would swing her up over icy patches where water had frozen, and her mother would always buy her a new hair decoration. And then it all stopped when those stranger's faces turned up on her doorstep when she was eight.

She felt the back of her nose begin to tingle as her eyes stung. Once a person has abandoned someone, they have no right to come crawling back to ask for forgiveness. That was Rin’s mindset. Blood ties have nothing to do with it. She felt it then, and now was no different.

The cry of a child caused her head to snap to the left. Twenty yards away, a small girl appearing around eight years old stood with her hands balled up, rubbing her eyes. Scarlet winter coat dirtied around the hem and opaque white tights scuffed and black on the knees, the child sobbed.

Eyes wide and pulse throbbing throughout her body, Rin's feet were frozen to the very concrete as she tried to comprehend the sight she was smacked with. She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut. It hurt; it really fucking hurt - her entire frame trembled with aftershocks from a physical hit she'd yet to receive. Thoughts rushed through her head, but she couldn’t pay attention to them. Before she had thought anything through, she rushed towards the child with twin braids, a white lace bow in the grey slush by her patented dolly shoes.

Skidding to a stop on her knees at the child’s feet, the redhead threw her arms around the girl. “Hush now, you’re not on your own,” she stroked the back of the girl’s head.

“We’re born alone, and we die alone,” the figure squirmed within the grip and Rin pulled back a little to look at her face when the voice came out distorted. “That’s what you taught me.”

The child removed her hands from her face to show black sclera streaming with tears of crimson. Falling back onto her rear in the snow, Rin stared up in horror at the changing visage. The child’s body began to bulge and contort, its voice distorting as the figure mangled in on itself and then expanded.

Muscle swallowed the outer skin and turned in on itself, pulsing and twitching, the mass croaked, “or are you a liar? Are you in denial?”

Now five times the mass it had originally been, the being was no longer a child. It wasn’t human - It wasn’t even a seven-foot bear that could talk. It was a murky taupe monstrosity with a single eye and visible, pulsing maroon veins throbbing around its entirety.

“Are you so lonely that you didn’t care when you were falling from that platform?”

“S-shut up...”

“You can’t lie to me, Rin Chan. I know everything about you.”

“You know nothing...”

“You’ve lied, and cheated, and stole, and purposely hurt those that cared about you.”

Rin’s head dropped and her hair hung over her face. “They didn’t care about me.”

“You murdered the love people tried to give you because you’re a bitter little girl who thinks they're more important than they are.”

Grip tightening on the snow in her palms, the redhead tried to convince herself. “You don’t know anyth-”

“-And you’re a weakling. You were glad when you were pushed in front of that train.” Gurgling on its laughter, tendrils pushed their way from the deformity and covered her shoulders in a sh0w of comfort. “'Ah, it’s all over now. Finally.’ Wasn’t that what you thought?”

“No...”

“You wanted to die, and you couldn’t even do it yourself.”

“That wasn’t it.” Flopping to the side, the redhead shifted onto her hands and knees, a feeling of acute sickness forcing her to gag.

“Rin Chan...You’re really going to die now.” Sludging closer, the stench of rot growing, the nightmare advanced for its prey. “I’ve come to put you out of your misery.”

Slamming her hand down into the blanket of white, the female grit her teeth. “I never wanted to die; I wanted them to die!” She had been tormented by that thought over and over for years, but that was the first time she’d ever said that out loud.

“Uowahaha~ You really are wicked. What kind of person wants to kill their own family?”

Hunching over on her hands and knees, Rin thought about the question with wide eyes. She’d never asked herself that before. She’d always gone straight to the answer: she was a horrible person. She hated the people who had brought her into the world, and then rejected them when they tried to make up for their wrong-doings without hearing them out. Come to think of it, she had hated just about everyone that she’d come into contact with over the last thirteen years. It was no way to live, but it got her by. She'd wonvover life with nothing but her will to piss everyone off before they could get close.  She'd loved too many people and been betrayed at least double that, so there there really wasn't any to hold out a hand any more. She couldn’t bear to invest in another person because she was too scared that she’d be thrown away by someone she loved again. She’d rather hate everyone and live alone than love a single person and have them turn their back on her. Still, even if she had been a horrible person when she was alive, she had been given another chance to do something worthwhile with herself, and Shibata Rin did not make the same mistake twice.

Stopping a few feet away, shadow and stench looming over its victim, the monstrosity cooed facetiously. “A-are you crying, Rin Chan? How long’s it been? I’m surprised your tear ducts are still working.”

“I told you to shut up.” The feeble tone had become sharper.

“Eh?”

Staring up with her teeth bared, the redhead snarled. “What the fuck are you supposed to be, anyway?”

Unfazed by the change in attitude, the deformity continued its attack. “I’m you; a monster. I’m one of those things parents warn their kids about.”

“Clearly,” pushing herself into a kneeling position, Rin pushed the wealth of crimson hair back to clear her view, “we don’t use the same skincare.”

Raising the gangly appendages ready to strike, the oddity snarled. “You silly bitch, do you think you can win with that smart-mouth alone?”

“Whoever said anything about winning?” Right hand sneaking into the pocket of her hoodie, her fingertips brush what she was after.

Slime salivating from its jaws, the creature let out a grow, “bluffing won’t save you-”

“-No, but waking up will,” grin stretching across her lips, Rin held up a Switch-blade knife.

“You’re running away again?” It laughed at her. Or rather, howled. Bulkberous gut jittering, the creature

“I know I can’t beat you with this little thing, but I also have a feeling I’ll be seeing you again in the near future.” Holding the blade towards her stomach with both hands, Rin paused. Giving the disfigurement a final once-over, she tilted her head, “I’m not the type to throw away a second chance, because I know how hard they are to come by.” Plunging the blade into her gut, the redhead grit her teeth as hot sanguine pulsed out over her numb hands.

Updated: 8th February 2020 - 14:56