Shinrabansho: Myriad Souls

I followed her out of the station before common sense fully caught up.

The afternoon crowd thinned a little once we cleared the gates, but not enough. It was impressive how easily she cut through it without looking back to see whether I still followed. She moved as if she already knew I would. Her hand had only touched my shoulder for a moment, yet I could still feel where it had been. I kept pace a few steps behind her, my bag slung over one shoulder, my ocha still in my hand, my pulse refusing to settle after the fight on the platform, my conversation with the police and Amagi Ren and the way she had looked at me when she said that name.

Reiko.

“Who are you?” I asked, catching up.

She did not answer right away, although she looked at me over her shoulder with narrowed eyes for a moment. She took us along the broad road on the station’s eastern side, then toward the first block beyond it, walking with the straight-backed ease of someone used to moving through crowds without giving them any room to push her around. She was around my age, around twenty, maybe a little older. Her body was compact and athletic. Dark brown hair cut around her jaw. She had deep brown eyes, wearing a practical jacket and shoes to match. The way she walked wasted no motion. I didn’t recognize her style, but she moved with a grace that I once asked my wife whether I’d be able to move that way, the way she moved.

“Let’s not talk here,” she said at last.

That told me almost nothing.

I glanced at her profile again while we walked, checking it against Reiko’s memories piece by piece. Her nose, the shape of her mouth, the way she held her shoulders. Something in me kept insisting I should know her. But every time I reached, my mind came back empty. Reiko’s memories stayed quiet, or quiet enough to frustrate me.

“You called me Reiko.”

“I did.”

“That’s not my name.”

She finally glanced back at me then, and the look she gave me was steady enough to make me stop talking for a second.

“Mm… That’s strange.”

Her answer irritated me enough that I nearly turned around right then, but I didn’t.

Maybe it was because she had seen me fight. Maybe it was because I looked a lot like her, since this was her body, although there were enough differences that she shouldn’t be so certain. Maybe I followed her because if there really was someone in this world who could look at me and see Reiko despite the differences, I needed to know how.

We passed storefronts, crossing a quieter intersection, then turned left toward a bridge over a narrow river with rail lines and older brickwork beyond it. I did not know this part of the city well, but it felt familiar in the way some places in Tokyo did even when you had never walked them yourself. Traffic rolled on beside us. Water moved below the bridge in the pre-noon light.

On the far side stood an old brick arcade tucked beneath the raised tracks, renovated enough to look modern but empty enough at this hour that most of the café tables sat unused. A few people were inside farther down, but not many. There was enough space in there. Enough privacy for whatever she had in mind.

She led me into the open stretch near the middle and stopped.

I stopped too.

“What is this about?” I asked.

Instead of answering, she slipped her phone into her jacket pocket, rolled one shoulder once, and looked me over from head to toe with the same unreadable focus she had worn on the platform.

My skin prickled.

“Put your bag down,” she said.

I stared at her.

“No.”

“If you keep it on like that, it’ll get in your way.”

That made me go still.

“What?”

She did not repeat herself. She only shifted her weight.

That was enough.

My stomach tightened. I set my ocha and bag down by one of the brick pillars more from disbelief than obedience, straightening slowly as the last pieces of the situation clicked together in my head.

“You dragged me out here to fight me?”

Her mouth moved just a little, not quite a smile.

“I needed to be sure.”

“Sure of what?”

She stepped in without warning.

Her left hand snapped toward my face. Her attack wasn’t wild or sloppy. It was a real jab, fast and accurate. I jerked back on reflex, barely getting my guard up before her right low kick slammed into the outside of my thigh.

Pain shot up my leg.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I shouted.

She was already on me again.

The next jab hit my forearm. Her cross came straight down the middle after it. I caught it late, the impact jarring my shoulder, and then she was inside my stance with her hand behind my neck and her hip turning in for a throw.

I twisted out quickly before she could load me properly, stumbled sideways, and nearly crashed into a table.

A memory hit me then.

It wasn’t her face that had triggered it. It was her movement.

Hayase Tomoka.

The name came so suddenly that it felt like Reiko had spoken it into my ear.

They were in the University martial arts circle. She primarily took Judo. Her secondary style was kickboxing. I remembered her, although they weren’t my memories. She was compact, stubborn and very direct and she happened to be one of the few people who could really spar with Reiko and make her feel the burn. She was the woman who had stayed after practice to talk when everybody else wandered off. The woman who had helped Reiko reach her current skill level, although their styles differed. She was also one of the few friends of Reiko’s that met her mother.

Tomoka.

I looked at her again, properly this time, and what had felt unfamiliar a minute ago snapped into place so firmly it almost made me dizzy.

She saw me recognizing her on my face.

“Good,” she said, breathing evenly. “There you are.”

Then she came at me again.

I raised my hands and met her properly this time.

Tomoka’s jab was quick, but that was not what made her dangerous. It was what came after. She used the jab to touch, to place, to make me react half a beat too early so her low kick or body shot could slip in cleanly. When I parried the next one, she stepped around my lead foot at once and reached for a collar tie and arm control like she wanted to snap me down into a throw.

I slapped her grip off, drove a straight punch at her chest, and checked her shin when she tried to kick my leg again. The impact stung up through my bones. Tomoka barely seemed to be put off balance. She dipped her shoulder, changed levels, and reached for my hip.

This was a Judo move that she liked to use.

I shoved down on the back of her neck and stepped outside her reach before she could turn in fully, then clipped her ribs with a short punch as she came up.

She grunted.

That was relatively clean.

The look in her eyes sharpened.

“Yes,” she said softly, more to herself than to me.

She threw her right hand this time, not her best punch, only enough to make me bring my guard high before her foot swept for my ankle. I barely got my weight off it in time. Her shoulder still crashed into me and drove me back two steps. I caught myself, reset, and felt heat rising through my body.

This was no misunderstanding anymore. I knew that she was really just testing me.

And for all my previous confusion, some buried piece of Reiko deep inside me did not seem surprised at all.

Tomoka circled left. I matched her. Her stance was compact and practical, her hands held high enough for boxing, her feet set so she could step into a reap or body lock if I got careless. She did not bounce, nor did she posture. She looked like a woman who had spent years learning exactly how hard she could hit and exactly how close she needed to stand to make her attacks count.

She jabbed again.

I slipped outside it and answered with a backfist she blocked on her glove-side forearm, then a low kick that landed against her thigh with a flat crack. She came straight through it. Her hook glanced off my guard. Her knee drove toward my stomach. I turned my hips and took most of it on the side instead of letting it dig in too directly.

We broke apart for half a second.

Then went right back in.

Tomoka caught my wrist and pulled, trying to drag me into the path of her elbow. I rotated free before she could lock it down and shot my palm into her shoulder, upsetting her balance just long enough to stop the followup throw she wanted. She planted, recovered, and clipped my mouth with a jab when I came forward a little too square.

Pain flashed sharp and immediate.

I tasted blood.

That pissed me off. She was taking this a little too far.

I stepped in harder, batted her lead hand aside, and drove a straight punch into her body. Tomoka exhaled hard. Before I could build on it, she closed both arms around me in a tight clinch and tried to reap my leg out from under me.

My body recognized the entry from somewhere deeper than thought. Reiko had eaten this exact throw enough times to hate it. I widened my stance, jammed my forearm across Tomoka’s collarbone, and turned my hips before she could finish loading me. That killed her reap. My knee rose sharply into her thigh. She broke the clinch and took a short step back, breathing through her nose, her eyes never leaving mine.

“You still do that to counter it,” she said.

“What?”

“Whenever you stop my throw you go in shoulder first and then the knee.”

I swallowed, my chest rising harder now.

“You’re the one who attacked me, you know.”

“I know.”

She stepped in again.

I met her with a straight punch and she slipped just enough to make it glance. Her glove hand knocked at my wrist. Her shin smashed into my lead leg again. I answered with a low kick of my own, then a short elbow that she barely evaded. Tomoka’s fist drove into my ribs on the way out. I hissed and turned with it instead of giving her the full impact.

This was not like fighting Aoi, as similar as they were.

Aoi was precise in a way that made everything feel inevitable once she decided how to move. Tomoka was different. Practical and meaner in different ways. She was happy to sting, bump, crowd, and keep me from ever settling. Her movements weren’t reckless, all calculated and trained.

I knew that she was willing to make this fight fairly ugly if that gave her the answer she wanted.

And she was very talented.

Much too good for me to keep treating this like it was just a misunderstanding.

I stopped holding back.

When she jabbed next, I parried and stepped in at once instead of drifting away. My straight punch broke her guard enough to touch her cheek. My low kick landed against the inside of her leg. Tomoka swung back, and I blocked steadfastly, closing the distance between us before she could reset her feet. My hand caught her arm, my forearm riding over hers, my foot hooking behind her ankle.

She recognized the throw a split second before I finished it.

“So it is you,” she breathed.

I did not answer because I had no breathing space.

Tomoka twisted out before I could dump her fully, but not before I shoved her off balance and made her stumble. She planted, turned, and fired a right cross that I slipped by inches. My palm struck her chest. Her fist clipped the side of my head on the way past. Light flashed behind my eyes for a second.

We both stopped.

Not far apart, close enough that if either of us lunged, the next exchange would start instantly.

Tomoka’s chest rose and fell faster now. Mine did too. A strand of dark hair had come loose to stick against her cheek. My lip throbbed where she had split it. One of her breaths came a little shorter after the body shot I had landed. We had both gotten in clean hits enough times for it to have marked us.

She laughed once under her breath, not out of mockery. She was relieved.

“I saw you fighting at the station,” she said. “The way you turned his wrist was good as ever. Ahhh! I thought I was going insane watching you.” Her eyes searched my face with a hunger that made my own pulse jump. “Then you moved just now like you used to whenever I tried to reap you. Reiko always drove her shoulder into me first. Always.”

My mouth went dry.

“I’m not exactly Reiko.”

“I suspected that. Your face…” She shook her head quickly. The answer came too fast and strangely softly.

Before I could ask what she meant, Tomoka closed the distance between us.

For a moment I thought she was resuming the fight.

Then her hand seized the front of my jacket and she kissed me. It wasn’t a peck on the cheek. There was no hesitation.

A genuine and passionate kiss.

Hard enough to steal my breath. Deep enough that the shock of it went straight down through my stomach and hit somewhere low and helpless inside me. Tomoka kissed like she fought. Direct and incredibly confident. Her martial arts went into it like Aoi. There was literally no wasted motion, although most sane people wouldn’t worry about anything like that while kissing. When her tongue pushed into my mouth, my whole body jolted as if she had struck me cleanly again in some place I had not properly learned how to protect.

DOKI-DOKI

My hands twitched at my sides before one of them grabbed at her arms in reflex. She made a small sound against my mouth, low and unsteady in a way that only made my heart kick harder. Everything about her hit some terrible, tender place in me that felt too close to being like Aoi. The strength in her body was too similar. Closing my eyes, I could almost believe it was her. The way she held me without asking like she did. The heat of someone who could stand in front of me, fight me seriously, then kiss me like this as if she had been holding herself back for too long.

When she finally pulled back, I had to blink to get the world to sit still again.

Tomoka’s face was flushed. So was mine. I could feel it.

Her hand still gripped my jacket. My fingers were still wrapped around her arms.

She looked straight into my eyes and said, “The truth is, while I rejected you, I couldn’t face my feelings for you properly. When you were gone, I regretted everything, wishing that I’d had the courage to confess to you.”

Special thanks to PrincessArylin, ShinjiHinako, Assurbanipal II (Achan) for beta reading book three!