5 - Ichika Hanasaki’s Grief

“So, where do you wanna go after all?” Sakuto asked, as he and Ichika were walking outside.

“Dunno. What do you think of getting dumplings?” Ichika asked.

“Sure, I don’t mind.” Sakuto said. “When a girl asks you if she wants a certain food, she’s not asking, she’s saying that she wants that food. But hey, I like dumplings too. There’s a great spot nearby, it expanded from a small corner shop into a large diner and somehow retained its quality.” He thought.

“I’m not treating this as a date or something, though. She looked like a corpse in the morning, her mood was awful too. She’s gotta get some food into her system, right?”

“I know a spot in that case.” Ichika said, a little excited. “It used to be a corner shop, but now they have expanded.”

“I had the same place in mind too.” Sakuto said. “It’s the best spot in town.”

“For sure.”

“There’s some other spots too, but this one is just...something about the food just makes me wanna come back constantly, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I get food from there a lot too.” Ichika said. “Do you go out often?”

“Not really.” Sakuto said after a brief silence. “Just know my ABCs on street food.”

“Thought so.” Ichika chuckled.

“Do you?” Sakuto asked.

“Only if I have to run from someone.”

“I see...” Sakuto said. They took a few turns, the weather was slightly cloudy - no more annoying sunlight that got into their eyes and excruciatingly hot weather that caused them discomfort. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Huh?”

“In the morning you seemed like you wanted to kill me.” Sakuto said.

“Right...sorry. That happens when I don’t sleep much, which I never really do.” Ichika said. “My bad if I said anything stupid.”

“You didn’t.” Sakuto assured her.

“Right...”

“He’s taking my mood into consideration?”

“He’s seeing things that others never really see...I don’t know how I should respond.”

Ichika slowed down a little.

“Hey, you see that?”

“See what? The street?” Sakuto asked. “Yeah, it’s uh...it’s a street. Looks like one, sounds like one...probably tastes like one too.”

“No, over there.”

“The shoe store?”

“No, the stand.” Ichika said, pointing at the small carnival-decorated stand to their right further down the street. “It’s one of those scam stands, where if you shoot the targets, you get toys...but you can never knock the targets down.”

“Oh, that...yeah...somehow there’s a queue next to it too.”

“I wonder if those people know that they’re getting scammed.” Ichika said. “They don’t know that the targets are fixed, so when you fail, they just laugh at you.”

“That’s so stupid.” Sakuto said. “They can’t figure the obvious out.”

“And all these plushies are just here for display.” Ichika sighed.

They glanced at the variety of toys, until Ichika suddenly pointed to a small gray plushie of a rat. It looked basic yet adorable enough to stop anyone’s heart at will.

“That one looks just like you.”

“Nope, don’t see it.” Sakuto thought, staring at the toy for a few seconds. It did, in fact, look just like him.

“It does.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It does.”

“Fine, it does.” Sakuto admitted. “Oh no, they trapped me in a carnival scam. Whatever will I do?”

“Well, if they trapped you, I got to save you.” Ichika said, approaching the booth. She picked a few coins out of her pocket and almost tossed them at the con artist inside. “I get to pay you back.”

“Damn, my heart is melting as we speak.” Sakuto said. Deep inside, though, those words did have an effect on him. “Are you a good shot though? And how will you-”

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“Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan.” Ichika smiled. She picked up the long gray rifle and loaded them with bullets. There were five targets total, four that emerged on the sides that needed to be knocked down first, and one in the middle which was the core of the scam.

She handled the other four with no issue, and when it came to the last one, while Sakuto was watching with interest, she chuckled to herself.

“Fixed target, huh? Too bad I'm a soulful.”

“All I have to do is to fire off a strong ice projectile alongside the bullet.”

She did just that, and the projectile ended up destroying the target and part of the stand. The worker stood in awe, and Ichika quickly grabbed the plushie and left. They laughed about the encounter, their next destination being the food spot.

“Ichika, whaddya want?” Sakuto asked, not looking at the menu for even a second

“Hmm...some spicy pork dumplings and potatoes with sweet sauce.” Ichika said. “How about you?”

“I’ll see if he’s a fraud or not when it comes to ordering food here.”

“I’ll get the non-spicy shrimp dumplings with hot sauce on the side. I’ll get some of the cabbage salad too.” Sakuto said without even thinking. “It shouldn't take too long to get the food.”

“That’s the most elite order I’ve ever heard of!”

Ichika thought, almost shocked. “Almost no one knows that ordering the shrimp dumplings here with spices already put into them will result in a subpar product. The right way is to order the sauce on the side and pair it with the freshness of the salad to reset your flavor palette between every bite and maximize the flavors!”

“This guy means business!!!”

“You sure do come here often...” Ichika complimented him. “You know exactly what you’re getting.”

“The same can be said about you.” Sakuto said. “Did you really think I was some hopeless bum when it came to this type of stuff?”

They shared the food. They even force fed the food to their new companion - the plushie, and got its mouth pretty dirty.

“We both had plenty of fun that day.”

They even went for a small walk outside afterwards, enjoying the nice weather. The nice weather in question was a slowly dripping warm rain, falling upon them so playfully that it felt like a blessing rather than an inconvenience.

“He cared about me.”

“And he wasn’t so different from me.”

They got back home and started to desperately scrub the remnants of sauce-infused dumpling juices off of the plushie. At that time, despite the difficulty of the times, everything just felt right. They laughed and had fun...

“I never really got to spend my time like this or have these types of interactions.”

“This felt nice. And I bet it’d keep on feeling better and better too.”

“And then you were taken away.”

The apartment was dead empty. Not silent, for instance, when it was just Ichika and Sakuto relaxing and mindlessly scrolling through their phones, it was just empty. Now it was completely empty - void of any emotion. Ichika was scared to enter.

Through her enormous senses of guilt, grief and denial, she finally managed to open the door. She had to freeze the lock and break it open, as the only pair of keys were in Sakuto’s possession. Slowly, she entered the place. The air felt much more stiff, the comfortable mess that was his home now felt messy and abandoned. Looking at Sakuto’s untidied bedsheets, she could only hold back tears of sorrow.

The person who comforted her through her nightmares and saved her life previously had fallen to the same faction that made her life a living hell.

She noticed something on the couch that shook her even more. It was the small gray plushie of a rat, the one she got from the stand. It looked cartoonish, but that’s what made it so adorable. It was just a small, soft plushie, a toy that’s used to cheer people up, made from soft fabric and cotton. Ichika held it in her hands and broke down crying.

Sometimes Ichika would pet it, playing around with it. She’d tease Sakuto and compare him to it. Sakuto joked back, sometimes jokingly shoving food into the toy’s mouth and getting it dirty. Of course, Ichika had to clean it up.

It was a recollection of small moments over a completely ordinary toy, so ordinary in fact that millions of it exist worldwide. They’re being sold, bought, traded, thrown away, destroyed and created all the time.

Ichika cried.

She held onto that ordinary toy and cried. She witnessed death a lot in her life, but what stung her stronger than death was abandonment. In this case, it was someone she seemingly only knew for a few days, but someone who she managed to form a sort of connection with. The unsuspecting black button eyes of the plushie pierced the girl’s heart. She sobbed, wept her nose, and held onto the toy more and more tightly.

She wiped her tears, before screaming at the toy.

“Why did I drag him into this?!”

She held her head with her pale hands. Her eyes were already red.

“It’s all I do, isn’t it...”

“It’s all I fucking do!” Ichika yelled, throwing the toy across the room. A moment later she flinched in terror.

“Why...”

“What does the toy have to do with this?”

“Why did I hurt it?!”

“I didn’t shed a tear when I first found out...why am I crying now?!”

She slowly walked over to where it landed, which was by Sakuto’s bed. She picked it up and held it.

“I’m sorry...”

“I didn’t mean...to hurt you...”

“You’re the last thing that’s left from him. You...care about me, right?”

She patted the plushie on its head, hugging it tightly. The toy felt warm, comforting Ichika enough to stop her flowing tears.

“All that’s left for me is to make you happy, right?”

“I promise...”

“I’ll fucking kill all of them.”

“Are you sure she doesn’t sense us?” Oskar asked, standing by the apartment’s door. Ausra was crouched next to him.

“No, her own soul presence is devouring her.” Ausra sighed. Dima was still with Hayk and everyone else, so it was the two of them watching over Ichika. Ausra sensed that Ichika cared about Sakuto.

“What the hell...was this?”Oskar quietly asked, as the two of them felt a sense of terror in the atmosphere. Breathing became a little heavy for a few moments.

“That felt like Ichika.” Ausra said, closing her eyes. A small tear escaped her eye. “It looks like the loss hit her pretty hard, huh?”

“You mean-”

“Yeah. Her soul prowess jumped up to a different level...”

“I thought I’d just have to babysit her for the time being, but this...this runs deeper than just the regular grief or mood swing. It was deep enough to cause her to go through...”

“...an awakening event.”