Kuroshiraga Arufa came into consciousness and found himself wrapped in a thick, grey blanket.
His back leaned against the wall of a building near the periphery of the crater.
The scent of coffee filled the air, as a slow, cool, relaxing wind blew by.
He looked up and noticed the clear blue skies. He pondered to himself... he remembered the course of strange, bizarre and unusual events.
He was sitting upright. His back was against the outer wall of a building, with old paint over older paint.
The thick grey blanket had been tucked around him, heavy and slightly soft, and had a faint fluorescent scent to it. His legs were stretched out in front of him on the patio's tiled floor.
A small round table stood a half-metre to his right, with a cylindrical cup on it, steam still rising from it.
He took a deep breath in, and gave out a long sigh.
Kuro then decided to check on the state of his body.
*Alright.*
He did a quiet inventory. He moved his fingers first, rolled his wrists, and pressed two fingers to the side of his neck. His pulse was steady, maybe slightly elevated, though nothing alarming.
He shifted his weight experimentally and felt no sharp complaints from his ribs, which was more than he'd expected given the last thing he remembered clearly was being on fire.
"You're awake."
He turned his head.
She was sitting in one of the patio chairs at the table - a girl his age, maybe slightly younger, with her hair pulled back and a cup held in both hands.
She had two long blonde braids that cascaded from the back of her head, then over her shoulders to the front of her chest, two on each side.
Her forehead was covered by simple bangs. She wore ordinary, casual, black clothes. They were a simple black, long-sleeved turtleneck shirt, loosely tucked into high-waist black sweatpants.
On top of her head was a stylish wide-brimmed black hat. The sort of thing considered casual dressing, nothing special.
She was watching him with a calm, ordinary expression, in the ordinary clothes she wore.
He didn't recognise the ordinary girl that stared at him.
"May I know who you might be?" he said.
"I'm the heroine that saved you from drowning. You are heavier than you look," she replied, with a playful but soothing tone that was not a complaint. "The blanket was from the cafe."
He looked at the building behind him. Through the window he could see the interior... chairs upturned on tables, the lights off, a closed sign facing out, void of any living soul.
"It's closed, though."
"The owner let me in. I helped her carry some boxes last week as a favour. She said she doesn't mind."
Kuro looked at her, while she looked at him. The wind moved between them, carrying coffee steam.
"...Who are you," Kuro pressed.
"Tami," she said. "We go to the same school. You probably haven't noticed me. You always seemed... well, rather distant and robotic."
He considered arguing this point, however, he chose not to. "How did you know there was a body at the centre of the crater?"
"My mentor told me to go to that location at that time." She said it plainly.
"She had quite a strong premonition that something was going to happen there. She told me to look out for someone and bring them somewhere they could sit down."
"Your mentor?"
"Yes."
"And she knew about me specifically?"
"She knew about the general situation." A slight pause. "Not the details. She's... cautious about what she tells me, though."
Kuro processed this. He looked at the second cup on the table. "Are you expecting someone?"
"If you want the cup you can take it. It's meant for you anyway."
While wrapped in the thick grey blanket, he reached over and picked it up. It was still warm to the touch.
He brought the cup of coffee close to his mouth, tipped the cup and drank some. It was black, with a creamy aroma that filled his nostrils and a slight bitter but sweet taste, which didn't bother him.
"I'm not going to ask you everything at once," Kuro said with a stern tone.
"I actually appreciate that."
"But I will ask eventually."
"It's only natural." She didn't seem bothered by it. She drank from her own cup. The patio was quiet with no traffic or voices, the city holding a kind of stillness that Kuro had noticed before, in the wake of things he hadn't entirely understood.
"How are you feeling so far?"
"Normal, I guess..." he said. "I somehow healed rather quickly."
She nodded once, as though this confirmed something rather than surprised her. "Have you ever been told your soul body is quite unusual?"
He looked toward the empty street in front of them, as a signal for Tami to continue.
She held the look without blinking. "Most Auramancers are able to tell the structure of the soul body of others from just a glance." A small pause. "I'm not appraising you. I'm just explaining why I'm not alarmed that you're upright after what I found you in."
"What exactly did you find me in?"
"A rather exaggerated crater. You were at the centre, unconscious, with lots of water rushing in from underground pipes." She tilted her head slightly. "I also noticed those unique birthmarks."
He looked down at the grey blanket that wrapped him.
"I was born with them. Like you said, 'birthmarks'," he said.
"Not many people are born with body-wide birthmarks. I have some ideas of what might have caused them." She set her cup down and turned slightly to face Kuro, leaning closer while putting her right hand against her left cheek.
"You know what a soul body is, yeah?"
"Generally."
"Then you know that you have the presence of three soul bodies, no?" She pointed it out.
"Maybe, just maybe, you are an amalgamation of three different soul bodies... yourself and two others."
"And the body is like water that takes the form of its container, until it's frozen to maintain its own shape."
"So your soul body's unique composition influenced the form of your physical body while you were still in your mother's womb!"
He retracted his gaze from the empty street to look at her with piqued interest.
"But if this were the case then..." she looked down and pinched her chin, taking the posture and pose of someone in thought.
However, she thought aloud this time. "...then, perhaps... this would make you a rather unstable individual."
"Apart from the stabbing and burning, something might have happened to the intricate balance you had with your other soul bodies."
He took another sip of the warm coffee he held with both his hands, then looked to the sky obstructed by ordinary buildings of different heights and aesthetics.
"I'm not going to be able to explain most of it," Kuro pressed.
"You don't have to."
"I don't actually know most of it. I'm just speculating here."
Tami was quiet for a moment. Then: "How much do you know about your own soul body?"
"Basics," he continued. "I know the terminology. I know the rough mechanics, like the purification cycle, ignition core, how Ryoku moves through a specified system. My brother taught me the theory."
He turned the cup in his hands. "Application is different, though. Depending on the individual, with some exceptions."
"Indeed it is," she agreed. She pulled her chair slightly forward, elbows on the table, chin resting on her folded hands. Her posture was of someone shifting into a different mode.
"Can I ask you something first?"
"Go ahead."
"What is your full name?"
"Kuroshiraga Arufa, in the flesh."
"Arufa is quite a common name," she added. "Anyway, do you need help with anything? I have enough resources at my disposal."
*What is her motive here? Willing to waste her resources on a random stranger... wait, she mentioned earlier that her mentor asked her to assist me... this might be what they call a fruitful encounter.* Kuro pondered.
"I can't remember quite a majority of my memories."
"I wasn't able to remember the previous day for the past eleven years... but after what happened, not all my memories came back to me..."
"I would like to use your resources to recall what I've lost."
"And also hone my craft, if it's not too much trouble."
She didn't react with sympathy. She just nodded, like a doctor noting a symptom.
"My mentor mentioned that," she said. "That was part of why she sent me here. Not just to make sure you were sitting upright..."
"...If you want, I can help. With the memories, and with the basics, if you want to actually understand what you're working with instead of just carrying it."
He looked at her with relaxed eyes.
She met the look with the same steadiness she'd had since he woke up. There was nothing behind it that he could identify as an angle. She was either very good at concealing one, or there simply wasn't one present.
Kuro had been around enough people trying to get something from him... through his family, through the Association's peripheral interest in anything Arufa-adjacent... to know the texture of an agenda.
"Why," Kuro pressed.
"Because I was asked to," Tami said, without a hint of emotion.
He sat with that for a moment.
*At least come up with a better reason to convince me! Are you really playing the lapdog card?* Kuro pondered inwardly.
The wind came through again. Someone's awning down the street rattled. A black bird landed on the table for half a second, looked at both of them with professional suspicion, and left.
"Alright," he said with an equally blank expression.
She nodded once. "We don't have to start today."
"We can start today," he said. "I'm already sitting down."
Something shifted at the corner of her mouth.
She reached into her jacket pocket and produced a small, ordinary notebook... the cheap kind, with a soft cover, slightly bent from being carried.
She set it on the table between them and smoothed it open to a blank page.
"Then let's start with what you actually know," she said, "and go from there..."
"Also..." she glanced at him. "Let's find you some clothes to wear."
Kuro looked down and came to an unbecoming realisation. The thick grey blanket was the only thing safeguarding his dignity.
He felt his face turn hot and flustered with embarrassment. He wanted to bury himself on the spot.
...
---
In a vast white plane, with large pillars spaced through the landscape and extending to the white haze above:
A wide floor of pale stone with no visible edges. Above it, the structural, gargantuan pillars gave off an ancient feeling...
Positioned near the centre of that floor, where she had chosen to sit, was a floating display that held a projection of a memory made visible, held in place by the authority she had over her own realm.
Seated in front of this large display was Noburu Tenjo, who sat on a white, high-backed chair.
Oliver Kurosu stood several paces to her left. To his side was an equally sized seat. He had not been invited to sit.
He had the specific quality of someone who did not need to be offered a seat to be comfortable... a quality Tenjo had always found faintly irritating.
"From the beginning," he said with a stern tone but gentlemanly demeanour.
Tenjo looked at the display and began.
"I had a premonition that a suitable candidate would appear at a crossing location."
"I became aware of the crossing location through a divination," she said. "The result was unusually vague... with interference of an origin I chose not to investigate."
She kept her voice even. "The divination provided a location and a time, and I positioned the living artifact, Truck-kun, accordingly."
Oliver stood, saying nothing.
"The area, when Truck-kun arrived, was already distorted. Multiple presences of a significant soul body status had converged on a single civilian intersection."
"I had no visual clarity because I hold no authority over Earth's realm... only perceptual access through the contract I have with the living artifact."
She moved the display forward. "I identified the candidate. White and black hair, with a composite presence of three soul bodies in one. And I directed the living artifact to lock on."
"However, it didn't."
"It locked on the girl instead." She said it without inflection.
"An avatar of the First Mother Balisca. Carrying the partially living artifact, the Fukitsu zipper. An artifact that acted autonomously... with no external direction.
The zipper's own instinct was a distorted fate-switch."
Oliver's expression did not change. This was normal. She had never seen it change significantly.
"I was unaware of the avatar's identity until the soul was transferred to my domain, as this was an automatic process."
Tenjo continued. "At that point I recognised her affiliation and her seniority. We exchanged information..."
"She told me what she had observed of the candidate, while I told her what I knew of the other presences at the time... which was limited to the fact of a secondary entity holding a portion of the authority of perception, observing from a future fixed point."
"Mnemoscopus," Oliver said.
"Presumably. I didn't know at the time." She let the display shift.
"The avatar's connection severed before I could ask any further questions. Her body had already finished reforming in the real world."
Tenjo paused again. "I turned my perception back to the candidate's location. And found an empty, exaggerated crater."
The display settled on the image of it. The exaggerated excavation in the middle of an ordinary city street, the size of it, the radius, and the way the surrounding area had simply been displaced... as the exaggerated crater filled slowly with water.
"I lost track of time," she said. "Between the avatar's departure and the moment I was able to look again, my perception had skewed. The conversation was longer than it should have been, or the event moved faster. I don't know which." She said it plainly.
"What I missed were the sequence from the mob, to the fire, to the discharge."
Oliver looked at the crater's image. "And you have since reconstructed it."
"Partially. Through Mnemoscopus's nested domain. The sequence confirms what I suspected. The instability of his soul body triggered something of a failsafe response when his physical vessel was critically damaged. All three soul bodies synchronised." She did not linger on the details of it. They both understood what that meant, structurally.
"The discharge radius and depth are consistent with someone carrying that volume of Ryoku and then releasing it without any prior experience."
"He was shouting at the mob to run," Oliver said. "Before it happened."
"He probably suspected something was wrong with himself," Tenjo added.
Oliver looked at the crater for another moment. Then: "And Mnemoscopus chose to observe this too..."
"Mnemoscopus is curious, and chooses to observe many things." She closed the display with a small motion.
"The more relevant question is what the domain is currently showing... and to whom."
Oliver turned to look at her.
"The Engram Chōra," she said quietly. "It's still running."
"..."
"Then we wait," Oliver said.
Tenjo said nothing. She looked at where the display had been, now just empty air above pale stone. The pillars stood at their distance, with their gargantuan and ancient splendour.
...
Somewhere, through the initial contract Noburu Tenjo had made with Kuroshiraga Arufa, she maintained a loose perceptual thread.
A boy in a grey blanket was sitting on a cafe patio, drinking coffee that was slightly bitter but sweet, learning the basics of something he had been carrying his whole life without proper introduction.
The goddess, Noburu Tenjo, watched the scenes unfold with piqued intrigue.
...
Within Mnemoscopus's domain, in the deep watching structure that surrounded the scene like water around a lit lamp, something vast and many-eyed contracted its attention to a single point.
And beside it, Ryo Itsukizu, who had been still and silent as the edge of a blade, said:
"Kuroshiraga Arufa's presence changed."
Mnemoscopus did not answer immediately. Its central eye, cross-shaped pupil, ancient and lidless, adjusted its focus. The orbiting satellites of its smaller eyes drew slightly inward. When it spoke, the resonance was different from its usual cadence.
"The presence," it said, "is not Kuroshiraga."
Inside the morderately large eyeball , a figure with a miniature black hole in his palm looked up.
He had Kuro's face. He had the same markings and the specific stillness that Kuro carried.
But the quality behind the eyes had changed. His black hair had grown significantly longer, as though time had quietly moved through him while everything else stayed still. He did not bother concerning himself with where he was, nor did he have the intention of asking.
He closed his palm slowly. The black hole folded inward and was gone.
"Who are you?" Mnemoscopus asked, with its curiosity piqued.
The young man looked at the space where Mnemoscopus watched from... with the acknowledgement of someone recognising a presence without being moved by it.
"Well... my name,"
"...is Kurael."