Chapter 296: Demon? Death God? (Patreon)

Amamiya Rin didn't think twice. He lifted a hand and wiped away the sweet cream sliding down the back of Kawakami Tomie's hand and along her fingertips. The cool touch made him falter for a moment, and Tomie took the chance to hook her arm through his even more tightly, clinging to him like a spoiled child.

Across from them, Azawa Tomie bristled at the sight. She thrust out her own little hand, smeared with matcha, and glared at Amamiya Rin, demanding that he wipe hers too. The two girls looked alike but couldn't have been more different in temperament, and their squabbling dispelled some of the eerie, oppressive atmosphere hanging over the stage.

Amamiya Rin obediently wiped the cream away. As his fingertips glided over her skin, the silky, icy touch put a thoughtful look on his face.

Just then, the lights in the tent dimmed abruptly. A single beam of cold white light shot straight up to the top of the tent.

Babirus tipped the brim of his top hat and strode to the center of the stage, the spotlight following him.

He raised an arm, his voice flamboyant and grand as it echoed around the tent. "Honored guests, our final performance is about to begin! Now, please welcome tonight's show of extreme romance and thrilling danger: the flying trapeze! Performing for you are the lovely Leiliya and our circus's foremost heartthrob, Mario!"

All over the tent, the audience looked up.

Two platforms, a dozen-odd meters high, stood at opposite ends of the stage. The space between them was empty. There was no safety net and no cushioning mat, only two bars hanging down beside the platforms.

The cold white light fell on the steel frame and cast crisscrossing black shadows, like a spider's web hung in midair. Just looking up at it chilled the blood.

Leiliya stepped out in a plain white dress. Her features were delicate and strikingly beautiful, but a melancholy and sorrow that wouldn't fade clung to her brow. Her eyes were faintly red, as if she had just been crying.

She climbed the steps one by one, her stride steady but stiff, like a puppet on strings, slowly ascending the towering platform.

Mario followed her out. He was tall and handsome, his features exquisite and dazzling, a confident smile on his lips.

He waved to the audience, drawing screams and applause from the women in the crowd. Then he straightened his clothes and climbed the platform on the other side, gazing tenderly at Leiliya across the gap.

Next, he reached out and grabbed the bar hanging in midair. He drew a deep breath, about to leap from the platform.

"Don't!"

But at the very moment he was about to begin, Leiliya suddenly dropped to her knees on the platform and screamed. Her anguished, despairing voice pierced the whole tent.

"Hm?"

Babirus frowned in displeasure.

Amamiya Rin narrowed his eyes and sat up straight.

Mario froze too, halting mid-motion.

"Don't go up there! Mario, the ringmaster has deceived you! He isn't human! He's a demon! He's Death himself!"

Leiliya clung desperately to the edge of the platform, tears streaming down her pale cheeks, and shouted with everything she had.

"To plunder people's souls, he uses me to kill, and he enjoys it, Mario! If you go up there, you'll definitely slip and fall to your death! I'm begging you! Come down, now! I love you! Mario!"

"A demon?"

Amamiya Rin sat up straighter, his gaze fixed on Babirus.

Yet to Amamiya Rin's eyes, the man accused of being a demon looked perfectly ordinary.

Even so, in his heart Amamiya Rin had already grasped the situation.

A demon, then... He couldn't remember whether the Junji Ito collection had a story like this. Several hundred years had passed, after all. If it were some popular manga, he might have recalled it, but what was unfolding before him clearly wasn't one of the better-known ones.

Still, he had felt all along that this circus was strange. The fact that he couldn't detect anything abnormal about it made it all the more suspicious.

"Getting ready to meddle again?"

Kawakami Tomie leaned against Amamiya Rin's shoulder, watching everything with cold eyes. A disdainful snort escaped her nose.

"Even your eyes can't gauge his depth, and you still want to go looking for trouble?"

She paused, her gaze shifting to Babirus.

"That ringmaster might be on the same level as the Apology Demon. Meddle, and you'll die, you know~~"

Even Kawakami Tomie felt a measure of fear toward creatures like demons.

After all, she had witnessed the Apology Demon's power. That ability to alter the structure of matter happened to counter her immortal body. It couldn't kill her, but turning her into something else was just as unacceptable to her.

If this Babirus was a demon of that caliber, she wanted nothing to do with the guy.

"Die?"

Amamiya Rin didn't rule out the possibility.

In his experience, none of the demons in the Junji Ito stories were weak. The demon of the Dissolving Classroom series could wipe out all of humanity in one gulp. The demon of the Village of Sirens could also exterminate the whole human race in a short time. And there was the Demon King of Dust, which had never shown any combat power, but whose body had blanketed an entire city.

Compared to those demons, who were practically higher-dimensional beings, the Water Dragon formed from a single head of Yamata no Orochi was nothing to speak of.

It was like the nine-tailed fox demon that Indou Ranko had smashed to pieces. The monsters and ghosts of this new era were far more outrageous than the yokai of the old one.

"One careless step, and I'd probably die," Amamiya Rin said frankly, turning his gaze back to the platforms, his eyes clear and resolute.

"But I've spent hundreds of years cultivating my mind and my strength. If even I can't achieve the unity of knowledge and action, how could the light ever be born?"

If, after all this time, he still couldn't see through life and death, then all those years of Amamiya Rin's practice would have been wasted on the dogs.

"Is living so bad? Why do you have to go looking for death?"

Kawakami Tomie clicked her tongue in irritation.

"Looking for death? Don't put it so harshly. I won't necessarily die."

Amamiya Rin smiled lightly.

"And even if I did, it's no big deal. That person's soul was able to become a beautiful white boy, so why couldn't I become light and go on existing..."

Halfway through, Amamiya Rin stopped short.

"Maybe... for me, and for this world, it would be better if I just died."

He lowered his head and murmured to himself, deep in thought.

"Quit saying stupid things like that!"

Azawa Tomie drove an elbow into Amamiya Rin's side, her pretty little face full of anger.

"What's the point of you if you're dead? We want the living, breathing you."

Amamiya Rin only smiled and didn't argue. His heart was a still lake without a single ripple, so the Tomies couldn't sense his emotions either.

(Hey! Didn't you hear what this guy is thinking? Or does he not care if he dies?)

Kawakami Tomie's fury echoed through the Tomie Network. Even though Amamiya Rin said nothing, they knew him well enough to be certain that, for the sake of a greater goal, he would gladly sacrifice himself as a human being.

(Tch! Studying Buddhism has turned him into an idiot. If I'd known, I never should have pushed him so hard back then.)

"It's not Buddhism, you know~~ Or rather, it's not only Buddhism. It would be more accurate to say it's light, and Buddhism is just one of the parts that make up the light."

Sensing the Tomies' complaints, Amamiya Rin said with a beaming smile.

In his mind, no, not only in his mind but in this whole world, death wasn't an end but another beginning. Amamiya Rin didn't consider death something unacceptable.

Of course, the Tomies didn't see it that way.

(Buddha this, light that! I don't care! All I want is for you to stay alive!)

(What's the future me doing?! Hurry up and go back to the past and change history!)

(You jerk! Do you think your life belongs to you?)

(You're mine! Until you're completely mine, you're not allowed to die!)

(I'll be there soon! With this sword in hand, you won't be able to die even if you try!)

(Come to think of it, Buddhism doesn't encourage suicide either, does it?)

"But I'm not committing suicide. If I can't beat the enemy and end up losing and dying a miserable death, then there's nothing I can do."

Amamiya Rin shrugged and chatted with the Tomies as if it were a joke, his eyes still on the two people on the stage.

(Rin, if you die—)

Mara Tomie's voice suddenly rang out in the Tomie Network, soft as a sigh, or like some nameless melody.

She paused for a beat, as if she were genuinely giving the question serious thought.

(I don't know what I might do, either.)

Her tone was airy, tinged with a little melancholy, a little distress, a little bewilderment, as if she were describing a problem that had troubled her for a long time. It also sounded like she was acting spoiled.

She was like a child who couldn't find the answer, turning to the person closest to her for help.

Or like a girl deeply in love with a terminally ill sweetheart, lost and bewildered as she watched him slip toward death at his bedside.

Unlike the other Tomies, Mara Tomie didn't threaten or warn, and she didn't even show any intense emotion. But it was precisely that calm that made her words weigh so terribly.

A person who doesn't know what they might do is capable of anything.

In the Tomie Network, all the clamor went quiet for a moment.

"..."

Amamiya Rin fell silent too.

Or rather, he chickened out.

Mara Tomie was without doubt the most special of all the Tomies. She didn't have the overwhelming power of Flesh-Mod Tomie, nor the terrifying killing ability of Swordmaster Tomie. But she differed from the others in one crucial way.

It was her state of mind. Her spiritual cultivation was on par with Amamiya Rin's, though completely opposite in nature. Any power the other Tomies possessed, she could acquire given enough time, but the strength of her mind was something the other Tomies could never reach.

What would Mara Tomie, who loved him with such obsessive devotion, do after he died?

Amamiya Rin couldn't imagine it either, but he knew it wouldn't be any gentler than a world-ending anomaly.

"Hmm... Actually, I was joking. After all, only the living have a future."

Looking up at the performance on the stage, Amamiya Rin said it without batting an eye.

(Is that so? That's wonderful.)

Mara Tomie began to laugh. It was a soft little laugh that carried genuine joy, with an innocent, carefree quality. It rippled through the Tomie Network like a guileless little girl's, pure and sincere.

(This girl...)

The Tomies clicked their tongues without meaning to, and indescribable expressions spread across their faces.

They hated to admit it, but even though they were all Tomie, this one was the only one who didn't fit in with the rest of them.