34 A Mirror of Loneliness
[Player: Kazuki Arata]
[Level: 5]
[Waza: Black Hand, Thread Cutter, Aura Sense, Regeneration, Dark Rider, Retribution, Eviscerate]
[Kegare: 4%]
[Location: Abandoned Peninsula Town]
---
Kazuki’s pulse thudded in his ears as he and Kuro stood back-to-back in the center of a dusty room, every corner teeming with twitching shapes that had been inanimate junk seconds before.
A rustling wave of objects—a sliding waraza mat, a tottering andon lamp, a half-smashed koto giving a low twang—stirred in the darkness. At the edges of the room, countless battered objects began to awaken: a shitajiki board flipping upright, a frayed fude brush rolling across the floor…
Kazuki inhaled, forcing himself to speak. “We… we don’t mean any harm. Can you understand me?”
He felt Kuro shift against his shoulder, her breath quickening. All around them, more of these tsukumogami dragged themselves forward, forming a tightening circle. A chipped suzuri inkstone scraped across the tatami. A makimono scroll unrolled in fits and starts, revealing half-faded calligraphy. Battered tansu chests and cracked shaku batons rustled in from the hallway. They closed in as if compelled - but there was no direct answer to Kazuki’s words.
Kazuki swallowed hard. “Fleet,” he began, glancing to his side but Fleet wasn’t there.
He spun around, searching the tight circle of tsukumogami. Only Kuro remained at his back, tense and coiled.
“Fleet?” Kazuki hissed.
Kuro’s eyes widened, scanning the darkness. “Where did he—?”
Kazuki was sure that he had been there… when? A moment ago? But now the fox was gone.
“Fleet!” Kazuki shouted. He yanked one of his machetes from its scabbard. “Give him back!”
At first, none of the items seemed to notice his fury. Then a battered koshikake (a squat wooden bench) scuttled out from behind a collapsed shelf, front legs lifting awkwardly as it lurched towards Kuro.
Kazuki’s heart hammered. Where is Fleet? He stepped between the creeping bench and Kuro.
A single thump sounded in the corner—a furo bath barrel rolling forward. In the hallway, takezutsu bamboo containers shuffled across the dirty floor. A ragged hōki broom moved closer, bristles scraping.
Kazuki had a machete in each hand now.
An old kama iron kettle suddenly lurched at Kuro. The cat yokai stumbled back with a yelp and Instinct took over. Kazuki slashed. The battered kettle flew back, lid spinning.
Something in Kazuki’s chest flared with a dark, intoxicating thrill.
[Kegare: 4% → 8%]
He felt the corruption shift, a twist of guilt mixed with power.
Kuro wasn't looking at the animated objects. She was watching him.
But the battered furniture lurched closer, drawn by… curiosity? Violence? Kazuki swung his left machete again. “Where is Fleet?”
And then they swarmed him.
---
Fleet , a small red fox, padded through collapsed walls, whiskers twitching anxiously. He had left while Kazuki and Kuro had been sleeping because he felt bad for his friend. Fleets' belly was full of excellent fresh rabbit but Kazuki had gone to bed hungry.
It wasn’t fair, especially after Kazuki had saved them all in the sea like that. So Fleet was going to help.
He trotted out, sniffing at crumbling doorways. Dust and debris. No food. Spotting a faint path into the forest, he thought, maybe the next village is close by…
---
A half-collapsed hibachi brazier hopped forward. A pair of waraji straw sandals scuttled underfoot. Kazuki stomped them flat, smashing them to pulp. A jolt of satisfaction.
[Kegare: 8% → 12%]
A heavy tansu chest slammed into Kazuki’s shoulders. He staggered. Kuro shoved it back, only for it to roll upright, drawers rattling. Kazuki hacked its corner, splintering wood. The chest toppled again but a shaku baton and a broken koshimino waist skirt dragged themselves forward. A fude brush leapt like a tiny spear; he batted it away. Destruction followed each swing: chair legs snapping, bamboo splitting.
With every strike, a flicker of darkness ignited inside him. The power felt… good. He had been exhausted after his manta form in the sea but now, as he chopped the tsukumogami to pieces he felt… better. Raw. Potent.
[Kegare: 12% → 20% → 25%]
The warmth of power was urging him to break more, destroy - and the tsukumogami seemed endless.
Kuro threw up her arms, blocking a kakejiku scroll from looping around Kazuki’s throat. “Kazuki, they’re just things. Garbage! They’re not alive!”
“They took Fleet!” he snarled, slicing the scroll in two. Pieces fluttered down, lifeless. Another wave pressed in: a kama pot, a takezutsu, a battered shamisen.
Kazuki’s machete bit into the instrument, fracturing its wood. It fell silent, strings snapping.
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[Kegare: 25% → 33% → 40%]
His breathing turned ragged. More destruction brought more power, but also a creeping numbness, chipping away at something essential. Yet Kazuki couldn't help it - he reveled in his sheer destructive force.
“Kazuki, stop it!” Kuro cried, ducking a flying shitajiki board. But Kazuki couldn’t hear her. The swirl of dust, the avalanche of broken items - it just fueled him.
He yelled out, swinging both machetes—Karasuyoku and Yamikiri—through a knot of objects. Wood and straw scattered.
---
Fleet trotted through the moonlit forest. The trees thinned, revealing a plain with huts. Light glimmered from one. Yes! A town.
Sneaking closer, he found about a dozen houses. The smell of previous evenings cooking fires reached him. Food. Shifting to fox-boy form, he found a door ajar at the back of one house. Inside, faint snores. He smelled miso, fish, pickles… He quietly walked to a storage area, finding a basket, a pot, and miso.
“Perfect!” Daikon, dried seaweed. A battered pot with a handle he could carry. His arms overflowed.
Footsteps. Fleet ducked as candle light spilled in. A thin old woman peered around, puzzled. Fleet held his breath as she shuffled off.
He secured the pot handle in his mouth, miso and ingredients inside then bounded back up the slope.
---
The entire house was in ruins and the seemingly endless battle had spilled outside. Wood pulp, broken straw, shards of lacquer everywhere. Walls cracked. A half-smashed tachi scabbard wobbled; Kazuki batted it away.
[Kegare: 40% → 52% → 60%]
A tremor rattled through him. It wasn't just the tsukumogami. It was him. Each act of destruction created an urge for more..
Still the tsukumogami advanced, moving forward like huge protozoa.Snapped koto strings slithered. Busted tansu shards dragged into piles. Broken makimono cloth wound around wood lumps.
“Kazuki!” Kuro called, eyes wide. “They’re… combining!”
As she spoke the words, the objects and debris latched onto and clung to each other, growing taller and thicker until they formed a golem of all the mundane minutiae of every family in this deserted town. A tattered waraza cushion clung like a shoulder, a crushed furo tub as a torso. Splintered bench legs jutted out as arms.
Kazuki, panting, faced this colossus of broken furniture. It kept growing and as it did it swayed; shrieking wood and scraping metal.
Kuro’s voice broke: “Kazuki, wait… lonely.”
He heard her, but couldn’t grasp it. “Lonely?”
It advanced, arms of a koshikake bench and a hōki broom flailing like clubs. Then, with the grinding sound of tortured wood and ripping fabric, the huge beast swung its entire upper torso—chests and the furo tub—in a devastating sideways blow. The massive weapon swept through the space where Kazuki had stood a second before, smashing into the far wall with enough force to collapse part of the roof.
He dodged back, then leaped toward it again. Keep fighting. He hacked and Kazuki's machetes cleaved wood and brick and straw and cloth. Splinters rained. The monstrosity reeled.
[Kegare: 60% → 65%]
His body crackled with black energy.
Kuro’s eyes glistened. She lunged, trying to grab his elbow. “If you keep—!”
Too far gone. He whirled, slashing the golem’s left side. A mass of broken hibachi and tatami peeled away. The creature lurched. Again, the shards re-gathered, rising to reattach.
He hammered it with both machetes. The destructive power felt intoxicating, Kazuki didn’t even notice the black veins crawling up his arms.
[Kegare: 65% → 70% → 75%]
There was no blood, no death, no cries of pain or anguish. It didn't matter. Kazuki was becoming something different, something simpler: an avatar of un-making and each blow fed the hungry vortex inside him. The composite giant he laid waste to was his perfect counterpart. It mirrored his aggression without pain or fear.
Kuro ducked behind a tansu fragment. This was getting out of hand. The tsukumogami kept reflecting Kazuki’s anger back at him. Not once had they turned on her.
“Kazuki, they don’t hate us,” she yelled. “They’re just echoes! They’re feeding off you!”
He didn’t answer.
---
Outside, dawn. Fleet trotted back, pot handle clenched in his jaws, fluffy orange tail wagging. “Kazuki, Kuro,” he mumbled. “Soup…”
He saw the collapsed front wall. Roaring and smashing inside.
Fleet dropped the pot.
A giant shape of tangled wood erupted from a fractured panel, smashing outward. Kazuki vaulted after it, machetes flashing, eyes wild.
Was that even Kazuki? Black veins pulsed like snakes along his arms and neck, shadows swirling like living tattoos. He lunged, plunging a blade into the Goliath’s trunk. It shuddered.
[Kegare: 75% → 80%]
Destroy.
The creature tottered, chunks falling off, but it kept moving.
Kuro saw Fleet. “He’s lost control,” she shouted.
The battered monster of junk reared up again and again flailing. A tachi scabbard jammed precariously in its center. Shredded kakejiku rags flapped. A broken seiro basket clung to its side. Fused, monstrous. More and more, always forgotten, always more.
Kazuki advanced again, staggering. His skin seemed to be burning, patches turning black and then breaking off to be blown away in the wind
Kuro’s mind raced. Silent… moved without malice… drawn to fill emptiness… Tsukumogami form from neglect… from loneliness. They mirror the world. Endlessly.
How do you beat a mirror?
“Kazuki, STOP!” she yelled, voice cracking.
He whirled, eyes completely black with corruption, unfocused.
Kuro ran right in front of him, arms flung wide. “Enough!”
Kazuki’s momentum jarred to a halt. He trembled, machetes hovering inches from Kuro’s chest. Black veins throbbed. Then he frowned as if trying hard to remember something.
“Kuro,” he gasped, blinking rapidly.
“Look at them,” she said, nodding toward the tsukumogami giant. “They’re only what you give them.”
Kazuki stared. It was true. The huge creature had halted too, swaying uncertainly. Behind them, Fleet stepped closer. “Kazuki?”
He froze, seeing his friend, knuckles white on the grips of his machete. He was covered with the pale dust of all the tatami matts and plaster walls he had been destroying. He looked like a ghost in the early morning light.
Fleet was there. He was safe.
[Kegare: 80% - Danger Level]
He looked down at his arms, the swirling black lines were creeping toward his neck. The power felt good but… too much. Like the ground was sliding away beneath him.
Time slowed. The collective of tsukumogami shuddered and piece by piece, the objects that made it began to fall.
Kazuki dropped his machetes.
He closed his eyes, exhaling raggedly. “I... I’m sorry.”
Then his legs buckled. He collapsed onto one knee, panting. The Kegare raged onward, inward, devouring.
[Kegare: 80% → 85%]
A strangled cry escaped him as black corruption crackled over his skin like dark fire. His body flickered, pieces of himself starting to dissolve into soot.
[Kegare: 85% → 88%]
---
[Achievement Unlocked: Defeating the Mirror]
[Next Chapter: 35 An Unbroken Thread]
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