A ghost woke up.
It was a curious feeling, waking up, and the ghost quickly decided she didn't much care for it. She did what she could to shake it off, then looked around with wide eyes, seeing nothing but darkness. It wasn't long until an overwhelming dizziness claimed her.
Something was deeply wrong. Her name was gone, and with that, her identity. She could remember nothing of who she had been, but guessed something had gone seriously awry.
She lay back down, biting her lip, and waited for her eyes to slowly grow accustomed to the dark. Stone surrounded her everywhere: the walls, the ceiling, the casket she was lying in, no doubt also the floor she couldn't see from her vantage point. If she had to guess, she was in some kind of a crypt or mausoleum.
She looked down. Where her legs had been was nothing but swirling mist, a crude parody of the missing limbs. She accepted the fact with the same dull resignation as the rest.
She sat back up and looked around.
There was another casket next to hers.
Laboriously, the ghost sat up again and stared down at the body lying in the casket. Her strange bedfellow had been a girl, or perhaps a woman — the white hair made it difficult to be sure. The body was well preserved, eerily so, more like a doll or a sleeping person than a corpse. In its arms it clutched a simple plate, partially obscured by the long sleeves of the robes it was clad in.
Something about the body's features, the stringy hair and child-like face, made a small flame light up in the recesses of the ghost's mind, but no name came to her tongue. Only images, mostly of blood.
The ghost leaned in closer to make sure the body did not breathe, and once satisfied with her inquiry, hovered deeper into the chamber. The closer she got to the end of it, the more impressive the fading paintings on the stone walls became.
It briefly crossed the ghost's mind that the mausoleum was richly enough decorated to be fit for an emperor.
Another casket waited for her at the end of her journey, plainer than she had expected. She placed a hand on the gilded edge of the casket and peeked inside.
Much like the pale girl from before, the resident of the grave looked more alive than dead, or rather like someone who had never lived in the first place. She had a slight figure, and a rare kind of fine beauty to her features. Her honey blonde hair was shaped into cones resembling animal ears, and an ornate hilted sword lay on her flat chest.
The face wasn't one the ghost had known in life, not quite, but immediate the flame in her mind grew and became a fire.
"Toyosatomimi no Miko," she whispered.
With that, the floodgates opened. Her chest ached as tears filled her eyes. She wiped them away hastily, shocked she could even cry in the strange state she found herself in.
She...now, who was she? Who had she been to this beautiful person to be buried in the same mausoleum as her?
She touched her own face, studied its shape, and tried to remember the name Miko had called her.
"Tojiko...Soga no Tojiko."
Tojiko sighed in relief, feeling the alien tingle that came from breathing without needing to. She wasn't sure it was her entire name, or even if it was her real name after all. Still, Tojiko felt good. Tojiko felt right.
She floated back to where she had woken up, hoping that her new-found identity would be enough to figure out that of the other body. She stared at the pale woman in white again. The flame lit up.
"Futo..."
This time she was almost certain the name wasn't quite right, corrupted by whatever had corrupted the rest of her mind. That thought came second to an overwhelming image of blood; gushing forth like a gruesome nightmare, drowning out all sentiment and opinions.
Tojiko sat down to reflect. She had time for that. Time was all she had, really.
She knew who she was, more or less. She remembered the houses she had lived in, both the one where she had dwelled as a girl, and the one she had moved to after marrying, although she wasn't sure who she had married. She had only a vague idea who Miko was, but her gut told her she had been very important to her. The same applied to Futo.
So far, so good. Problem was, her recollection began and ended there. She had no idea how she had died, why she was buried where she was, and why she was now a ghost.
Why did her memories disobey her so?
Another person might have sunk into despair, but Tojiko had no time for that. Crying and rending her illusory garments would get her nowhere. Reflecting, and thus trying to understand how she had come to be what she was, and exactly why the three of them were buried there, could at least bring some results.
She plunged head-first into the muddled parts of her mind, swimming by fragments of faint images and sentences removed out of context, memories that felt more like half-forgotten dreams than any reality. The apex of her confusion lied there, just submerged under layers of mist, but hard as she tried memories only came to her in disjointed order with no rhyme or reason that Tojiko could discern. It was an annoyance, but she kept focusing nevertheless. Any pieces of the puzzle were better than none with such an incomplete picture. She had to try.
She was eight, and her parents had bestowed upon her a beautiful doll. She danced with joy, holding the doll.
She was fifteen, and the crown prince held her close as she wiped tears from her face.
Seiga Nyan-nyan, the strange hermit, smirked at her. Tojiko tried her best to swallow her unease, but couldn't.
She shuddered as Seiga explained the shikaisen process, and turned to see how earnestly Miko and Futo accepted it, their eyes shining at the promise of a new life.
A flash, as vivid as all the rest of her memories put together, of Futo standing on the footbridge over the koi pond of the palace garden, gazing down at the fish. A memory so real Tojiko could feel the breeze on her skin and taste the metal in her mouth.
The wicked hermit smiled as Tojiko told her that like Futo, she had chosen to follow Miko and be reborn as a shikaisen by her side.
She picked up a humble clay jar, fired in an oven for longevity, and clutched it to her chest when she was sure no-one was watching.
She drank down the poison after Futo's corpse had been taken away, and felt Miko's reassuring eyes on her as the foul liquid dulled her sensed and freed the tinge of fear she had so hard tried to keep hidden.
She drank down the poison as Futo, still alive and well, watched, a sympathetic smile on her lips.
Tojiko opened her eyes and looked at the strange wisps where her legs had been, feeling hollow. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter who had drank the poison first, but that she recollected two conflicting events, feeling both to be equally real, well...
She folded her arms. So, she couldn't fully trust her memories. No matter. She would sort it all out, eventually. What mattered now was that she kept trying.
She had the time, after all.
She had been Miko's wife.
Tojiko sat on the edge of Miko's casket, and leaned over to brush off the hair on her forehead. She had been staring down at her face for what felt like days, but was probably only hours.
The revelation had finally come to her after several days of deliberation: only once she had dug up enough memories of both Miko and Prince Shoutoku did she realise they had been the same person. Even after the epiphany, she couldn't blame herself for her initial confusion; the face on the body before her wasn't the face Miko had worn in life. The features were different: softer, more delicate. If Tojiko squinted, she could imagine the shadow of Miko's former appearance superimposed over this skinny woman, black hair and a thin moustache over an often stern lip.
Tojiko squinted harder until the spectre disappeared. She liked the new look better. The Miko with strange hair and a girl's face had already overtaken the old Miko in her memories as well as her thoughts. Looks aside, this was the Miko she had truly known.
Tojiko smiled. If nothing else, it was nice to see Miko's new body matched her soul.
Her gaze travelled downward, and she leaned forward to touch the scabbard of Miko's sword, only to recoil at the last possible moment. The sword hosted Miko's soul now, and while Tojiko didn't know if her touch had any effect on it, she decided not to risk it.
Still, the sword had caught her attention. From what she could see, it was still pristine, almost like it had been removed from the flow of time altogether. Futo's plate was much the same. Why had Tojiko's jar alone crumbled into dust?
Really, the answer was clear enough.
Sabotage.
Since so few had known of the Crown Prince's plan, it was easy to narrow down the list potential culprits. She could leave Miko out straight away; why would she have gone through the effort of saving Tojiko, too, only to kill her in such a manner?
Futo, then? Tojiko glanced towards the other side of the chamber. She still remembered little of her, but recalled no animosity towards her or vice versa. Tojiko wouldn't dismiss the possibility just yet, not without more evidence, but had to admit Futo paled in comparison to the most obvious culprit.
The image of Seiga curling her lips into a smile appeared before her mind's eye.
Tojiko ground her teeth. Even with her hazy recollections she clearly remembered warning Miko not to have undue faith in Seiga, and generally doubting the hermit. Was this Seiga's revenge for that? Tampering with her resurrection, guaranteeing she would perish? If so, every hesitation she had had about following the Crown Prince beyond the land of the dead by trusting her life in the hands of Seiga Nyan-nyan had been proven right tenfold.
Well. At least Miko and Futo were still clinging to life. Tojiko would make sure it remained that way.