Dear Renko...
Maribel didn't quite wake up, as she hadn't exactly been sleeping. She simply became more sharply aware of her dark surroundings. Of the lumpiness and scratchiness of the blanket drawn up to her chin. Of the awkward way the multi-pronged tube attached to her arm dug into her flesh where she had leaned it against the bed's metal frame. Of how the air she swallowed tasted like static.
She remained still, doing her best to ignore the static gathering at the borders like dust around crevices. During night, the already sluggish world of the hospital became a void of time.
And it was while she lay in that void, squinting to discern the hands of the clock above the door, that she felt something come loose within her skull.
The digital numbers of the contraption ensnaring her blared red. 3.14. She hadn't known the machine could show anything but increments of fifty.
Slowly, desperate to maintain peace, she sat up.
The floor felt cold even after she found her slippers. Not as cold as the machine, which radiated chill. She wrapped her fingers around it regardless, grimacing at the stabs of burning ice. Distantly, she wondered if the nurses would later find her with frostbites.
She shuffled gingerly forward. The wheels of the machine squeaked, but her footsteps made no sound.
Someone was listening. But really, did it matter? Someone was always listening in this white-walled prison.
She made it to the foot of her bed. She peered into the dark corners of the room. She stared at the top of the cupboards mounted to the wall to her right.
She couldn't actually tell if there was a cat somewhere in the room. Cats had reflective eyes, didn't they? But perhaps shadow cats did not.
She shuffled ahead regardless. You can watch, cat. I'm not committing any crimes.
Under normal circumstances, it would have taken her five seconds to get where she wanted to be. Even hooked to her metal shadow and having to dance around the pole to keep the tubes straight, it should only have taken fifteen. Yet it felt like another night entirely by the time she finally stood at the foot of the other bed in the room, catching her breath and clinging to the pole like it was the only thing keeping her from drowning.
The curtains looked impossibly heavy to her half-blind eyes. The ones which had been drawn around Maribel's bed for her early check-ups had been thin and white. These were rich and thick. Stage curtains.
She reached for the nearest edge. She steadied herself against the pole as her hands began to tremble.
It was silly. What was she expecting? A monster? She had already seen her share of youkai. Whatever was behind the curtain was unlikely to devour her now when it had had so many opportunities to do so over the past...
Past... weeks? Months? Past...
Past.
The curtain was velvety smooth under her fingertips. She grasped on. She took a deep breath. What would Renko do under these circumstances? Renko would have torn the tubes connected to her arm and walked right out of the building ages ago, shortness of breath or no, bleeding or not. But here and now, Renko would have torn the curtain aside, with a matter-of-fact comment already prepared on her lips.
Thinking of Renko's confident smile, Maribel braced herself and pulled the curtain aside.
On the other side stood a metal bed identical to her own. It was empty.
Confused relief washed over Maribel, leaving her legs weak. She let go and clutched onto the machine with both hands.
And there was light.
Maribel could only stare as the room lit up in a soft firey glow that touched every surface but the curtain. It wasn't light from the night sky. It was decidedly not the pale light from the light strips attached to the ceiling. It was cousin to the moonlight she had felt glowing on her skin on the Torifune. But different. Wholly different.
This time, there was definitely something watching her. She turned around.
Nothing.
Except for the silhouettes.
There was her own shadow, of course. Only it didn't look right. It was too tall, for one. The silhouette's hair was twice longer than Maribel's had ever been, and it wore a bulky dress antithetical to the hospital robes.
Maribel tightened her grip around the metal. The shadow held onto something as well, but it wasn't the machine. It was...
Maribel frowned.
A lantern?
And there were the other figures. A cat — the cat, she knew at once, the very one she had sensed lurking just beyond her vision — sitting calmly to the first shadow's left. The light had distorted its shape, leaving it looking like it had two tails. But no distortion could explain why the shadow to the first shadow's right had nine tails, symmetrical and rising high like the erected train of a peacock.
And there were eyes. Lidless narrow eyes that opened and closed like the wings of a butterfly, within and without the shadows, observing, calculating, waiting...
As she backed away and stumbled, her calf striking against the cold metal of the bed behind her, another eye opened in the face of the silhouette she had taken for hers. It wilted, but not before getting a good look at her.
Something else opened in its stead. A mouth. A regular mouth, placed where it ought to have been on the face of the silhouette. Only, it shouldn't have been there, it shouldn't have been visible, Maribel was not a cardboard cutout, none of this made sense, why was it smiling, why was it smiling?
But smile it did. A bright, narrow smile, one full of invisible teeth...
