[MA 15+ — Supernatural horror, psychological trauma, graphic imagery, existential distress]
The rain had stopped by evening, leaving Neo-Tokyo glistening like a circuit board someone had spilled water on—beautiful and broken in equal measure.
Ushinau walked through District 12 without destination, without purpose. The Tanaka apartment felt too small to contain the grief expanding in his heart. School had ended hours ago, though he couldn't remember leaving. Couldn't remember if anyone had noticed him leave.
Probably not.
His reflection caught in a storefront window: a teenager in a damp uniform, yellow eyes too old for his face, surrounded by advertisements for products he didn't need and futures he'd never have. He looked away.
The city's navigation system pulsed gentle suggestions through public displays: RECOMMENDED ROUTE HOME. WEATHER ADVISORY. CURFEW IN 3 HOURS.
Ushinau ignored them all.
His feet carried him through familiar unfamiliar streets—familiar because he'd walked Tokyo's bones in every iteration, unfamiliar because each version rebuilt itself different, like a story told by someone who kept forgetting the original plot. Then he saw it.
KAMISAWA SHRINE HISTORICAL SITE - GRAND REOPENING
The holographic banner floated above a reconstructed torii gate, all gleaming synthetic wood and programmed authenticity. Tourist groups clustered around, taking photos, buying charms from automated vendors, experiencing carefully curated spirituality.
This was the place. Or rather, this was the place that had replaced the place that had replaced the original place. The shrine where everything had gone wrong. Where a desperate teenager had made a prayer the universe should have refused.
Ushinau's legs stopped working properly. "No," he whispered. "I can't—"
But his body was already moving forward, drawn by something deeper than conscious choice. Three hundred years of circling this wound, and he'd never been able to stay away for long.
The reconstructed shrine grounds were immaculate. Too immaculate. Every stone placed with algorithmic precision, every tree positioned for optimal aesthetic impact. It looked exactly like the historical records said it should look, which meant it looked nothing like the real thing.
The real thing had been wild. Dangerous. A place where the boundary between worlds grew thin enough to tear. Ushinau passed through the torii gate.
The world shifted. Not dramatically. Not obviously. Just a subtle wrongness in the air, like walking through a spider's web you couldn't quite see. The tourist crowds seemed farther away suddenly, their voices distant and muffled.
The modern shrine building ahead flickered—just for a moment—revealing something underneath. Something older. Something that had never stopped existing no matter how many times they'd torn it down and rebuilt it.
His heart burned. The scar—always the scar—pulsed with dark heat. "You came back." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Old. Patient. Hungry.
Ushinau's hands clenched into fists. "I didn't come back. I was walking and—" "You always come back. Every iteration. Every cycle. Like a moth to flame, like a child to parents, like a curse to its host."
The air around him thickened. Reality bent. The reconstructed shrine grounds peeled away like set pieces, revealing what lay beneath: the real shrine. Ancient. Rotting. Covered in three centuries of accumulated spiritual filth. The kind where gods love to endorse in.
And standing at its center—no. Not standing. Manifesting. The entity that had answered his prayer all those years ago. It wore the shape of a shrine entity, but wrong. To many changes. Too many shifts. Its face shifted between dozens of expressions—his mother's smile, his father's stern gaze, Kenji's innocent joy—all of them masks over something that had never ever truly been human. "Welcome home, Ushinau Subete," it said with his mother's voice. "Did you miss me? He he he!"
The shadows from his scar began to form even more than ever.
Edo Period — Winter, 1868 (Three Days After the Massacre)
Memory and present blurred together, time collapsing like a broken accordion.
Ushinau had crawled for seventy-two hours. Through snow. Through forest. Through the abandoned battlefields where other clans had fallen. His wound had stopped bleeding not because it was healing but because he'd simply run out of blood to lose.
He should have died on day one. Should have frozen in the snow. Should have been found by scavengers—human or animal, it barely mattered. But something had kept him moving. Some desperate animal part of his brain that refused to accept what the rest of him knew: that he was already dead, just too stupid to stop moving.
The shrine had appeared at dusk on the third day.
Not appeared, exactly. More like... revealed itself. As if it had been watching him crawl toward it, judging his worthiness, deciding whether he deserved what he sought.
The torii gate was cracked. The shrine building was ancient even then, wood so old it had forgotten what living trees felt like. Fox statues flanked the entrance—kitsune, guardians, tricksters—but their faces were wrong. Hungry in ways stone shouldn't be able to convey.
Ushinau had collapsed at the shrine's steps. "Please," he'd whispered through cracked lips. "Please. I need... strength. Power. Anything. I can't let them die for nothing. I can't be this weak. I can't—"
He'd pressed his forehead against frozen stone, blood from his wounds mixing with ice.
"I'll give anything. Do anything. Just... make me strong enough. Strong enough that I'll never lose anyone again. Never be helpless again. Never have to watch everyone I love die while I'm too weak to stop it."
The shrine had been silent. Then: a whisper. Soft. Almost kind in a sinister way. "Are you certain? The price of never losing is very high." "I don't care. I'll pay it." "You don't understand what you're offering."
"I understand that everyone I've ever loved is dead! I understand that I'm weak and useless and they died because I couldn't protect them!" Ushinau had screamed it, raw and breaking. "So yes! Take whatever you want! Just make me strong!"
A pause. Heavy. Terrible. The kind of silence that preceded catastrophes. Then: "Very well. You wish to never lose anything again?" "Yes!" "Then I grant your prayer, child of Subete. You will never age. Never die. Never lose anything ever again..."
The shrine's presence wrapped around him like a burial shroud. "...because you will never be able to keep anything in the first place." Too late, Ushinau understood.
Too late, he tried to take it back. Too late, the curse sank into his bones like poison, rewriting the fundamental code of his existence.
He'd screamed. Actually screamed. As his wounds healed wrong—sealing shut but not properly, leaving scars that would never fade, darkness that would never leave. As his body stopped aging, locked forever at fifteen. As the first change took effect—
His father's face in his memory flickered. Then stabilized. Then flickered again. "No," Ushinau gasped. "No, what did you—" "I gave you what you asked for," the shrine whispered. "Strength without end. Life without death. Power without limit. And wishes like that always have a price in store."
"But—"
"All you had to sacrifice was connection. Memory. Love. The world will forget you, Ushinau Subete. Over and over. And you will be powerless to stop it. You will watch everyone slip through your fingers like water. You will never lose anything..."
The voice became his mother's. His father's. Kenji's. Everyone he'd ever loved speaking in unison: "...because you will never have anything to lose."
Ushinau had tried to run. But the curse was already inside him. Already rewriting his existence. Already beginning the cycle that would trap him for centuries.
He'd collapsed in the snow outside the shrine, screaming at gods that didn't answer and demons that only laughed.
Present Day
"You remember," the entity said, still wearing stolen faces. "Good. I was worried you'd forgotten again. You do that sometimes, you know. Forget the details. The specifics. But your body always remembers. Your soul always remembers."
Ushinau forced himself to stand upright. Around them, the reconstructed shrine grounds had become fully transparent—tourists walking through like ghosts, unaware of the ancient horror bleeding through from underneath.
"Why?" Ushinau asked. His voice shook but held. "Why did you do this to me?"
The entity tilted its body forward as it lunged forward a bit. "Why? Because you asked. Because desperate fools like you make such interesting prayers. Because watching you suffer has sustained me for three delicious centuries."
It stepped closer. Its form flickered between shapes: shrine servant, soldier, his mother, Kenji, a thousand faces he'd forgotten and a thousand more he'd never forget.
"Every time you try to form attachments, I feast on your despair. Every time the world forgets you, I grow stronger. Every time you remember what you've lost, I taste the most exquisite anguish."
"You're a parasite," Ushinau spat.
"I'm an answer. You prayed for strength. I gave you immortality. You prayed to never lose anything. I gave you nothing to lose. I fulfilled your wish exactly as you requested."
The entity's smile—wearing his father's face now—was terrible in its gentleness. "It's not my fault you didn't read the terms and conditions." Rage. Pure, distilled, three-hundred-year-accumulated rage flooded through Ushinau's body.
His hand moved—not consciously, not planned—grabbing a piece of broken shrine stone. Old reflexes. Old training. Old muscle memory from when he'd been a samurai, a warrior, something more than this cursed child.
He lunged. The entity didn't move. Didn't defend. Just watched with something like amusement.
Ushinau's strike was perfect. Textbook. His father would have been proud. The stone should have connected with the entity's head, should have shattered its form, should have done something.
Instead, his hand passed through empty air. The entity was behind him suddenly. Its voice in his ear: "You can't kill me, child. I'm not alive. I'm a contract written in your bones. I'm the answer to a prayer you can't take back. I'm the curse you begged for."
Ushinau spun, tried again. Same result. The entity moved through space like water, never quite where it appeared to be.
"Three hundred years," it laughed. "Three hundred years and you still haven't learned. You can't fight me. You can't escape me. You can't even die to escape me."
"Then what do you WANT?" Ushinau screamed.
The entity stopped. Its form solidified. It wore his mother's face now, exactly as she'd looked that final moment—blood on her lips, love in her eyes, death stealing her away.
"I want you to accept it," it said softly. "Accept that this is your existence now. Accept that you will never be free. Accept that everyone you care for will forget you. Accept that you are alone. Have always been alone. Will always be alone."
It reached out with a hand that was and wasn't there, touched his face with fingers made of malice and old prayers. "Accept it, and maybe—maybe—I'll let you rest. In a century or two."
Ushinau's legs gave out. He fell to his knees on shrine grounds that existed in two times at once—modern reconstruction and ancient horror overlapping, reality too thin to hold its own shape.
"I can't," he whispered. "I can't accept this. I can't—"
"You already have. Every time you wake up. Every time you go to a new school. Every time you let another family take you in knowing they'll forget. You've accepted it a thousand times already."
The entity crouched beside him, still wearing his mother's face. "You just don't want to admit it." Something broke inside Ushinau. Something that had been cracking for three centuries finally shattered completely.
He collapsed forward, forehead touching the ground in a bow—not of respect but of defeat. Exhaustion. The kind of bone-deep weariness that came from carrying impossible weight for impossible time.
"I'm so tired," he said to the dirt. "I'm so tired of this. Of hurting. Of remembering. Of being forgotten. I just... I just want it to end."
The entity was silent for a long moment. Then: "Ending isn't part of our contract." It stood. Its form began dissolving back into the shrine's structure, seeping into wood and stone and the fundamental wrongness of this place.
"But perhaps... perhaps we can renegotiate. If you're willing to pay a steeper price." Ushinau looked up. "What price?" The entity's smile—his mother's smile—was the cruelest thing he'd ever seen.
"Come back when you've lost everything again. Come back when you're truly broken. Come back when you have nothing left to bargain with..." Its voice faded.
"...and maybe I'll show you mercy." Then it was gone.
The reconstructed shrine snapped back into place. Tourists walked past, laughing, taking pictures, completely unaware. The sun had set while he'd been trapped in that pocket of wrongness. Neo-Tokyo's lights blazed to life.
Ushinau remained on his knees, alone, surrounded by the cheerful commercialism of a place that had once ruined his entire existence. His phone buzzed. A message from Mrs. Tanaka: Where are you? We were worried. Please come home.
He stared at the message. Home. Such a meaningless word. He'd had a home once. Had had family. Had had a future. Now he had nothing but this curse and these memories and this endless cycle.
Ushinau stood. Brushed dirt from his uniform. Walked back through the torii gate into the normal world. Behind him, the shrine whispered its eternal promise: Over and over and over...
TO BE CONTINUED... [Next Episode: "The Curse of Being Forgotten"]