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She is a scared girl of eleven.
There is something inhuman glimmering in his irises, though he smiles at her sweetly. “Yosano-kun,” he says, and she already knows what she must do. The stench of blood is too strong; the moaning of men with broken bodies too loud. She can’t stand it. She knows what she must do.
She gets up shakily, leaning on the wall for support. Mori Ougai offers her an arm, which the girl shoves away with a scorching glare. “Stay away ,” she spits out, with a certain vehemence no child her age should know how to harbour.
The man looks surprised for a second before his face takes on a guise of cold nonchalance. He shrugs as if to say suit yourself and throws the cell door open.
Oh God. They’re too loud.
“The Angel of Death! She’s here!” they call out, a chorus of rising voices, suddenly hopeful. They make her want to claw at her skin.
She walks across the barracks, something hot and unpleasant welling up in her gut. She shuts her eyes, but the image of desperate men with missing limbs and bandaged heads grovelling at her feet is something she knows she’ll never be able to erase.
“Our mistress of healing! Help us!” one man says as he crawls his way towards the girl. She opens her eyes and backs away with revulsion – the man’s eye socket runs freely, grimy splotches forming tears of blood down his cheeks. The sight wouldn’t have affected her a mere two months ago, but now disgust pools in the pit of her stomach.
Still, she knows what she must do. She can feel the gaze of the man she’s grown to hate so much burning into her back. She crouches in front of the man, wincing. She touches his forehead. “Thou shalt not die,” she whispers quietly, almost a sob.
When she stands up, she walks right into the crowd of men, not bothering to look back as the soldier cries tears of joy. An eye for an eye, Yosano thinks to herself bitterly. In giving these miserable men a second chance at life, she’s letting them gnaw at her heart; piece by piece, they are devouring her whole.
She holds a palm up to her chest. “Don’t you understand? You must not die ,” she screams out, voice hoarse and crackly. “For my sake, you must not die.”
She weeps and the entire room weeps with her.
xxx
“Your little … outbursts grow more frequent by day, I’ve noticed. I’d like to remind you of one little thing,” he says, getting close to her face, baring his teeth. “They are not welcome. You will do your job without complaint.”
“But I don’t want to do this anymore! I can’t!”
“Yosano-kun, I’ll be very clear. There are several hundred men in there who will die if you keep acting up like this, and it will in no way help our cause. There are several hundred men in there who put their lives in your hands which leaves you with no other option but to go in there and heal them, goddammit !” The sudden rise in infliction of tone is uncharacteristic. It makes her afraid in a way she has never been before.
She has always thought of Mori as a monster. To see some of his humanity seep in through the cracks, – that raw frustration – to know that he’s entirely human shakes her in a way she cannot comprehend. He’s more than just a monster in my closet. He’s real and he has the power to dictate every little thing I do. He’s so very real.
He steps back, takes a deep breath. Shakes his head, as if exasperated. Just like that, Mori puts his mask on – the one he wears before all the soldiers and crew. He smiles at her, that same wolfish grin that has plagued her nightmares for months now. She shudders.
“Do as I say, my dear. You’ll soon realise it’s the only way to survive around here.”
The door slams shut on her as Mori’s boots clatter on the marble floor, all the way up to the upper deck. She doesn’t cry this time. She has used up all her tears.
xxx
She is a confused girl of eleven.
He holds her hand in his, sweeping a calloused hand through her hair. His face splits into a smile as blinding as it is broken. “Till the end of my days, I’ll be thanking you.”
Her heart aches, threatening to rip at the seams. She has never known tenderness like this. Yosano locks the memory deep inside her heart, something to return to time and time again, something to cherish. Something that is just hers.
Her fingers brush over the golden butterfly nesting on her hair, and she smiles back at him. Reassurance is all she’s ever needed, and he has given it to her. It’s all so foreign to her – what are these feelings? She can’t help the little crush she’s grown to have on him, but it goes beyond that.
He’s the first person to see her as what she is. A human being.
xxx
She is a broken girl of eleven.
The scream that escapes her throat doesn’t belong to her: it feels distant and unreal. She doesn’t even hear it, not really. All she can focus on is the swaying body before her, a vision to be etched into her mind forever.
You are too righteous, his voice whispers in her head, over and over again, like a hymn. She heaves onto the floor, covering her ears. The din grows louder, unbearably loud. His dog tag looks up at her from the floor accusingly, the carved numbers pointing their fingers at Yosano and shrieking. She has saved him a dozen times over, but she couldn’t save him from himself.
The butterfly flaps its wings, once, twice, flying far, far away until hope itself has deserted her.
xxx
“Take me back,” she whispers, and though she tries to make her voice sound commanding, it’s more of a plea. “I can save the lives of all those people, I can save them all… Or it’ll all be a waste…” She trails off then, looking off into the distance. Her eyes threaten to snap shut. She hasn’t seen any of the soldiers in three years, but their voices continue to echo in her head.
“That’s a load of crap!” the boy leaning over her wheelchair exclaims, a bright smile gracing his face. “If your ability’s such a burden on you, you don’t have to use it, you know,” he says, squinting, still smiling that too-bright smile of his.
How simple. You don’t have to use it.
She stares at him, blinking painfully slowly. Her mouth opens, but no words come out. It’s really not that simple, he wants to scream at him, tear at his hair, claw at his eyes. She doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, she says, “You don’t understand. I can save people on the verge of death. The one thing I can’t do is pump back life into a still heart. But I can save people .”
“What, it’d be selfish of you to keep that gift to yourself? Because it’s so important? Don’t flatter yourself, my ability is clearly the most important in the world. This little detective agency wouldn’t be here without me.”
It jarrs her, how easily she’s being dismissed. She wants to punch him in the guts. She wants to wrap her arms around his neck and cry herself into oblivion.
“Here, you’ll get this as proof.” The boy gestures towards her lap, and Yosano’s eyes widen. The butterfly, lying there, as if it’d never been gone in the first place. She inhales sharply.
“ How? I didn’t tell anyone about this!--”
“I found it while searching the old base. Some things lie hidden in plain sight, you know.”
Yosano clamps her hand around the delicate ornament, revelling in the prick of its sharp edges. “What do I do now? Everyone I’ve cared about, they’re gone because of me. Is there any place on this earth where it’ll be okay for me to live?”
The boy scoffs. “You’re joining the detective agency. We don’t need you for your ability. You’re more than just that, you know. What we want is that gentleness, and for what it’s worth, I think you have it in you. All this pain, all this suffering – is worth something.”
This single moment of clarity is what she’s been seeking for the past three years. Yosano has been living for the wrong reasons all this while.
He holds her in his arms as the tears finally begin to fall.
xxx
“You haven’t taken us out for dinner in a while, just the three of us,” Ranpo says, arms folded, squinting up at Fukuzawa. “What’s the occasion today?”
“I just figured we’d have a casual dinner together,” Fukuzawa says. He coughs and glares at Ranpo. “It’s not unlike me to do nice things for my juniors.”
“Awww, I suppose the old man really does love us!” the detective exclaims, shooting a grin towards Yosano from across the table.
On certain days - more often that she'd like to admit - when she looks at the two of them, different faces come to mind. Their faces morph and distort until she's looking at the devil itself, and her failed saviour. But today is not one of those days.
She smiles back openly. “What you should be saying is, ‘Thank you, Fukuzawa-sensei.’”
She is a woman of twenty-six. She is no longer scared.