Two long, slanting shadows fell across the hot spring inn's paper door.
Nono still had her arms locked tightly around Lu Mingfei's waist, her cheek pressed against his thin back. A few seconds later, a warm drop of liquid splashed onto the back of her hand.
She snatched her hands away as if shocked and darted around in front of him.
The night-light was dim, but the smell of blood was overwhelming.
The loser was still posed as if gazing at the moon, two streams of blood running from his nostrils. His chin and collar were already a disaster. He seemed completely unaware, though, merely blinking sluggishly and staring blankly at the bloodstains on the tatami.
"Lu Mingfei! You-" Nono's voice suddenly went shrill.
She lunged forward, grabbed the cold, wet towel that had fallen onto her legs earlier, and pressed it hard against the lower half of Lu Mingfei's face.
The snow-white towel soaked through in an instant, glaring scarlet blooming and spreading rapidly across the white cloth.
Lu Mingfei's chest convulsed violently, and his eyes lost focus.
That pungent smell of blood was far too much like the LCL solution filling an entry plug. The suffocating sensation of drowning engulfed him, followed by a phantom pain digging into the flesh over his carotid artery-the countdown of the DSS explosive collar.
But he immediately clenched his back teeth, raised a hand, and clumsily patted the back of Nono's trembling hand.
"Easy, senior... you're going to break my nose." He chuckled through the towel, his voice muffled, forcing out a little of his usual glibness. "This really isn't my fault. The matsutake in that kaiseki dinner must've been way too nourishing..."
"Shut up! Lie down!" Nono caught his wrist in a firm grip and dragged him down onto the futon.
The red-haired witch who usually looked down on everyone now spoke with an unmistakable edge and tremor in her voice.
She knelt beside the pillow, turning the towel over and over to find clean patches as she wiped the blood from his chin bit by bit.
Lu Mingfei looked past Nono's shoulder, his lifeless gaze settling on the ceiling. His hand rose weakly, instinctively trying to push her arm away.
"Stay back..." He stared fixedly into empty air, incoherent, dreamlike muttering spilling from his throat. "The water's too deep... you'll dissolve. The bomb... the bomb's around my neck... when it goes off, you'll get hurt..."
Nono's hand froze as she wiped away the blood.
She set down the towel and enclosed Lu Mingfei's cold, struggling hand tightly in her own.
"There's no water. You've just got a nosebleed from too much internal heat." Nono lowered her head and leaned close to his ear, speaking each word in a steady, soothing voice. "There's no bomb here. You're safe."
His eyes slowly shifted to meet hers, and his rigid shoulders finally relaxed, little by little. His heavy eyelids closed completely, and he sank into unconsciousness.
Nono did not let go. With one hand, she pulled over a blanket and tucked it snugly around the poor boy.
Then she brought over a basin of water, rinsed the towel, and cleaned the blood from his face.
Lu Mingfei's breathing finally became slow and even.
The paper lamp on the tatami gave off a faint yellow glow. Nono sat kneeling beside Lu Mingfei, her feet already numb. But she did not shift position. Her body had a stubbornness of its own, as though something would fall apart if she moved.
The copper basin sat beside her hand, its water stained a dull rust-red. The lamplight trembled on the surface, breaking into little fragments.
Nono's mind wandered. Her gaze gradually lost focus in the basin of red water, and without warning, the scene from earlier flashed through her mind.
A boy sat alone high atop the ruins, holding a girl in his arms. Her red hair fluttered in the blood-colored sunset, almost merging with the boundless red sea.
That dark red was too painful to look at.
She rubbed her cheeks and forced her gaze away from the copper basin. A fallen strand of red hair clung to her hand.
Remembering the inner world she had seen in Lu Mingfei's mind was like remembering a vivid dream. After waking, she found she could no longer describe its texture, the humidity in the air, the angle of the light, the hardness of the ground, or that swelling ache in her chest that might have been fear or sorrow.
All she remembered clearly was a bare outline of events.
"A city was destroyed, a dragon devoured the world, and everyone died."
Put into words, that was all it amounted to. Ninety-nine percent was lost.
But that other ninety-nine percent was still inside her.
She remembered the dying red-haired girl in Lu Mingfei's arms.
And the red dragon's corpse being eaten by nine white dragons.
The two images overlapped in her mind.
The same red, the same presence, the same sense of life slipping away.
The connection was so strong, like-
"Twins."
Nono murmured the word aloud.
The academy's conclusion was clear: dragons could take human form, but it was essentially a disguise, like putting on clothes. The human form was an outer covering; the dragon form was the true body.
But what she had seen was not the relationship between an outer covering and a true body.
What she had seen was a tree splitting into two branches.
Neither branch took precedence over the other. There was no inside or outside, no "true form" or "disguise." They grew from the same point and stretched in different directions, but the same sap flowed through both.
She could feel an invisible thread connecting the red dragon's corpse and the red-haired girl in Lu Mingfei's arms. It was like a plant split in two, one half withering in the soil, the other fading in the hands that cradled it.
Then she remembered the presence behind Lu Mingfei.
That quiet black dragon.
At the time, the boy and girl in the sea of blood had seized all her attention, and she had almost overlooked that immense presence in the background. But now she remembered. The black dragon had stood silently at the far end of the ruins, back-to-back with Lu Mingfei, like a silent shield.
Nono's hands began to tremble.
She realized that the relationship between Lu Mingfei and the black dragon mirrored the one between the red dragon and the red-haired girl.
The same structure: dragon and human, twins born of one being, neither separate from the other.
Two pairs of twins, two camps.
Resisting the same thing.
Nono's eyes snapped open.
"The Black King."
All the fragments began to fit together.
The Black King Nidhogg, Ragnarök, the World Tree devoured; the red dragon nailed to death, the black dragon silent; all life emptied from its vessels, the world dissolving into a red sea.
Dragon and human had stood on the same side, and lost together.
They had been devoured by Nidhogg, returned to the World Tree, and become part of that immense tree woven from light and bones. The entire world had dissolved inside the Black King's belly. Only Lu Mingfei remained, sitting at the highest point of the ruins, holding a companion who would never wake again, waiting to become part of the void himself.
Nono rested the back of her head against the wall. It was cold. That felt good.
She remembered Lu Mingfei kneeling on the surface of Lake Ashi.
Now she understood. He had been checking whether that red sea lurked at the end of this world, too.
He had found his answer. There was nothing there.
He had said nothing, just knelt on the water, covering his face and curling into a ball.
"Lu Mingfei."
"Who are you, really?"