>>5963861Eventually when you do look back up, you see that the lowering sun still sparkles, dappled light once again cast down by the wind through the nearby trees, shining on the statues of the kami. Mute stone. Impure world. You could decorate it with statues and paint, laughter and joy, but in the end, the beauty of this place was an illusion. Down this path you walked, it would be an endless cacophony of misery and destruction until you finally met your end.
But you had to walk it. You couldn’t risk the temptation to turn away.
It was ridiculous to consider that you ever had an option.
You had to.
You have to.
And you will, because Naoki and Masami still might need you. And not just them, everyone needed their little soldier. They needed your blood, they needed your tears, and one day, they would need you to die out there, somewhere on some unknown, foreign field. You’d wind up there eventually, of that you had no doubt.
Until then, you had a duty to attend to. You couldn’t risk the selfishness of allowing your friends to face it alone. If there was one thing you knew for absolute truth, it’s that you needed to be there for them.
As you near the torii at the end of the temple complex you avert your eyes from the specter of Hiraku Hyuga standing within its boundary, a dark apparition. He knows. You know he does. There needn’t be words between you. You had somewhere else to be, and he would be waiting here in formless eternity until the end of your days in case you changed your mind.
Yeah, no words needed to pass between you, but you had words for him anyway.
“I can’t risk it. I just can’t. But you don’t need to worry, because you’re wrong. There’s nothing corrupt within me, and I won’t become some kind of monster. It just doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t. You jumped to a wrong conclusion.”
You turn fully forwards to face him head on only to catch billowing smoke from some unknown source fading up and into the sky. And you keep walking, passing through the torii and beyond the sacred ground. Moving into the surrounding village you wipe your face with your sleeve and prepare to face your team again.
