Shiki, Slay! (Part 1)

The night was deep and silent.

Fujou Kirie looked out the window. She had already given up on escaping this prison-like hospital room.

During the day, the Youth who had urged her to join promised to come for her at night. Kirie wasn't worried that he might be playing tricks on her. Now she was nothing but a pitiful wretch barely clinging to life in a hospital bed—there was nothing to gain from deceiving her. So now, she waited.

The window opened, and the night wind blew in, lifting Kirie's long hair.

"Yo! Kirie, good evening!"

Shirou sat on the windowsill, greeting Kirie. His left foot rested on the ledge, his right leg dangling freely outside—clearly the posture of someone who looked like they were about to jump.

"Good evening, Shirou!" A hint of joy showed in Kirie's expression. Then, her spiritual body emerged from the wall as well.

Shirou glanced sideways. A spiritual body, huh. The kind of existence that could make Newton roll in his grave.

"Ah, I forgot what time the hospital closes, so I just came through the window. No problem, right?"

"I'm all alone now. Even if I suddenly disappeared, no one would say anything. No one would notice."

"Oh! That's pretty miserable!" Shirou said. "The moon's still high. Want to go for a flight?"

The physical Kirie and the spiritual Kirie exchanged glances. Then the spiritual Kirie floated over.

"What? That's it? I thought your physical body would come with me! Even if the view is the same, only bringing the spiritual body lowers the experience!"

"Mmm... but Shirou, with your current child's body, carrying me while flying would be really difficult."

"..."

What could Shirou say? That was reality. Fujou Kirie was already twenty-seven years old. Sure, she was a bit underdeveloped, but she was still a twenty-seven-year-old.

Anyone who had moved a large cardboard box knew that those big boxes were a pain to carry, even if they were empty.

It wasn't a matter of weight or strength. Big boxes were hard to move because they were big.

By the same logic, an eleven-year-old Shirou trying to carry a twenty-seven-year-old Kirie for a flight wasn't that simple. Note: not simple, not impossible or anything—after all, the Arrancars were all monsters of physical strength.

After repeated persuasion failed, Shirou gave up on the idea of taking Kirie for a flight.

First stop: Shirou and Kirie arrived at the Fujou Building. The night was their best cover. Shirou hadn't learned any hypnotic magecraft. If someone spotted them, the next day's news would inevitably read, "Ghost Sighted at Fujou Building."

Shirou said he was still young and didn't want to make the front-page headlines.

"What do you think of the view here?" Shirou asked Kirie, high in the air.

"It's not like I've never seen it before, but this time it feels different." Kirie let out a smile that didn't match her age—a girl's smile.

Though her body was twenty-seven, because she had spent most of her time in a hospital room, her mental age was actually younger than her physical age.

"That's because the way you're opening it is different. Last time you drifted here; this time you flew here," Shirou told her.

At the same time, in the hospital, another person's story was beginning.

Was Shiki really dead? Ryougi Shiki?

How could that be? Because death was so lonely and insignificant; death was so dark and disgusting; death was more terrifying than anything else. No way!

Ryougi Shiki struggled fiercely against the hands grabbing her and let out that cry.

"The one thing I absolutely cannot stand is falling into that place!"

Shiki kicked away the corpse and struggled to fend it off. But how much strength could this body, untrained for over two years, really muster? On top of that, her eyes were covered. Naturally, Shiki ended up at a disadvantage.

Leaning against the wall, Shiki quickly made her way to the window. Just then, the corpse lunged at her.

"Don't hesitate!"

Shiki shouted, then nimbly sidestepped and tumbled out the window together with the corpse.

Midair, Shiki quickly adjusted her position, pinning the corpse beneath her.

The corpse slammed onto the warehouse roof with a thud, while Shiki used the momentum to bounce off and land on the relatively soft grass, rolling to absorb the impact.

The whole sequence was smooth and fluid. Even Shiki herself didn't know how she managed it.

Shiki credited it all to her decisiveness and beast-like instincts. A single misstep in any of those moves would have been no different from jumping to her death. In a way, the fact that Shiki was still intact was a miracle.

After a clattering noise from the warehouse, white mist appeared. Probably the corpse had smashed into some dry ice or liquid nitrogen or oxygen or something.

But Shiki didn't care about that. Lying on the grass, panting, she said, "Can't believe it was that easy."

"You really surprise me. Are you a cat?"

A voice Shiki found annoying reached her ears. "Touko?"

Touko stepped out from the shadow of a tree and stood beside Shiki.

"Even though I set up a barrier in the ward to keep spiritual bodies out, I never thought it would possess a body just to break the barrier. Logically, they shouldn't have that kind of intelligence. That was my mistake."

So much for trusting that theory. Theories existed to be broken.

While Touko was still speaking, the corpse had already smashed through the chain-link fence and was walking toward Shiki and Touko.

"Then do something, quick!" Sensing the situation was bad, Shiki said to Touko.

"Got it!"

Touko snapped her fingers and used the still-burning cigarette in her hand to quickly trace in the air. The magical energy lingered, forming a letter-shaped pattern.

Rune Magic was the subject she had studied the most during her time studying abroad at the Clock Tower, second only to puppetry.

Blue flames rose from the corpse. Touko used the rune F (Ansuz), which symbolizes fire, but its power was clearly insufficient. Aside from the shroud covering the body, nothing else was burned.

"Tch! The F (Ansuz) runes I brought aren't strong enough!" Touko spat, clearly displeased with the outcome.

"Hey, you liar!" Shiki complained in dissatisfaction.

"Can't be helped. This situation is tricky. If it were alive, burning the heart would do the trick, but the dead don't play by those rules.

Since it's already dead, losing its head or a hand doesn't matter. If you want to take it down, you'd need firepower on the level of a crematorium, or find a highly respected monk.

I do know someone who could blast it to ashes in an instant, but..."

"Stop blowing your own horn." Shiki cut Touko off. "In short, you can't do it."