Bandages for Her Soul

Professor Aionia, or Dr. Hana Reiss, gave Mirai and her brothers a comforting hug.

"I give you my heart. I swear upon MITHRA that you shall not meet a terrible fate."

She clenched her teeth and flew down into the open city below, her soul full of fire and fury, against the enemies that poisoned men's souls, and used children as games in their fuligin design. 

One news was good, and it gave her great hope: that Mirai had witnessed the Enemy of All Enemies, but not fallen to his power. The power he possessed was not something mere children could resist nor disdain, and Professor Aionia knew the magnitude of his strength; Mirai must have possessed a caliber of soul far beyond others to have survived the ordeal.

Professor Aionia and her people worked tirelessly to mitigate the severity of the sentence, and, like a torch piercing the night, was ultimately successful in stemming the worst of destinies.

The Blood Punishment was reduced to forfeiture of all of the Hinozawa family's property, scattering of their kin, and permanent suspension of their Quanmaster's licenses. They would never again be able to forge a Quan, unless permitted under special circumstances in certain places.

While the Hinozawas avoided death, they were driven from their ancestral home. With their livelihood lost and reputation marred, they fell to abject poverty, and for a long time, Professor Aionia personally paid out of her own pocket every month to support their lives. The days ink-pressed upon Mirai what suffering entailed, but she in her heart resolved never to hear the voice of that terrible divinity, and never to seek his power, and for that, she mustered a wordless fire and did everything she could to support the only family she had.

During the day, she tended vegetables in clay-pots salvaged from the street, and tended to thin stews stretched for weeks at a time to mask the dearth of ingredients; she was always thankful for that rare bag of white rice or wheat flour on the 1st and 20th of every month, when Professor Aionia's monthly stipend came, and her little brothers did not complain of their hunger before sleep. Offal was a luxury, and fish even so; for the prosecutors, misguided into thinking they were right, insisted on resettling the Hinozawa family away from the Heian shores.

At night, she washed the dishes, taught her brothers to properly read, and sung them lullabies to sleep; when they finally fell to slumber, she sat alone in a dimly lit shed, making little cricket cages and wooden handicrafts to sell on the weekend markets. And as she sat there, she never forgot how far her family had fallen; she never forgot the injustices the world threw to her family like bones to chew. When time came, she would bring those all to the judgment of the Sun. And she would do it her own way, without the power of that divine being from beyond, so that only the peoples who conspired against her family would be brought to justice, and no one could command her how to do it.

Her father, disgraced by the peoples of Heian, worked as a waste disposal workman in one of the new Quan manufactories; ones in which machinery and the assembly line replaced the sensibilities of the Quanmaster, the ones which cockroached their way into Heian at his fall from grace.

He worked in a peg leg and arm that Mirai carved out for him, and the machinery often caught and tore his wooden appendages apart; even though he had the courage to be thankful that it wasn't his real arm or leg, the bleakness of their situation always destroyed him, rebuilt him, and destroyed him again.

But never the valley of despair, he was always kind to his children. He never indulged in drunkenness or gambled away any money he had; even if he wished to perish, he always stayed his hand, because his children needed a father. Such a man of virtue was hard found elsewhere – perhaps it was possible because his duties as Hinozawa Yamato kept him alive. But it'd be wrong to say that there weren't times where he wished to die, to that wordless comfort of nothingness beyond time; where he would not be haunted by shame to be the last Quanmaster of the Hinozawa lineage.

"You dare apply to Tokubetsu Kissei, who looks for loyalty? Your family should have faced proper justice instead of being permitted to cling to their anemic existence. It is to you that we've lost our Chancellor, our freedom from those tyrants to the west! Traitors are not welcome here – Begone!"

The chief examiner spat at her paper and shoved it back at her, leaflets flying.

Mirai lowered her head and walked out of the examination room.

Though she was born there in Heian, and before the fall she experienced fully its culture, cuisine, and dress, and came to love it all, she found herself avoiding its people, constricted by its traditions and loyalism. Everywhere she went, she was deemed a public enemy, a traitor to the Republics by association with her family name; she burdened on her shoulders a sentence to a crime which she did not commit, nor had any part, but because she shared the same blood. She often hid her name at the markets and at the streets; but at school her identity was laid bare, and always shamed, always shunned, always punished. She saw what demons people could be, and unknowingly, she began to fear everyone there was – and even began to doubt her own innocence.

Mirai wanted to escape that wretched world, to make life anew, and on a cloudless day in the winter of 1882, the same day which Elwin had solved his father's riddle, Mirai learned of Aeternitas National Academy for the first time in depth. There, the ambassador said, people from all walks of life were given an equal start, and they could prove themselves free from the prejudices of the lives they once led. They could become great again; she could even be able to forge her own Quan there under federal amity, and continue the legacy of her ancestors.

And upon learning that your future could be changed, that there was a way to steer it again, to reclaim the paradise lost, won't the fires of your soul be stoked and breathed anew, like a phoenix from its ashes?

Mirai dedicated the entirety of her hours outside of supporting her family to preparing for the entrance exams. She will have that paradise, that power, and she will achieve it by the strength of her own soul and not by power lent by anyone else – she would never again fall to that voice, that demon-being from the abyssal depths.

After striking true the Trial of Instinct, administered by who she came to know as Professor William, and scaling the mountains of the Maht Exam at the capital, the day came to her departure before Aeternitas.

"Yes, Papa?"

"I wished to tell you something before you left."

"What is it?" Mirai brought out a thin cushion and sat in front of her father, now aged, his hair turned completely white and face full of wrinkles from the father she remembered in the realm of his soul. Tears welled up from her heart, but she held it back.

"Your future is now different and above. I am ashamed that I could not have done more, so you could enjoy the gift of childhood."

"And with that... I ask you no longer to sacrifice for me, or for our family; I ask you rather to lead an honorable life for yourself, a life freed from regret. A life where you are happy, and unchained from the spectres of the past."

"Why tell this now, papa? I don't plan to abandon you, nor Makoto or Masato."

"I do not command you to abandon us. I know that there is no way to make you do that. What I mean instead is that... I've watched your heart and soul ever since you were born, full of the nobility of the Sun. But I see now a great sorrow and anger in you. By all means you are right to have those emotions. If you did not, you wouldn't be a human being. But I fear that your quest to reclaim our paradise lost will eventually consume you."

"How do you know?"

Mirai held her breath, trying to banish the memory of that demon-being and his words from her mind. She swallowed her fear.

"Because there were those with wills as powerful as yours who, upon their grief, turned to unleash destruction upon themselves and others."

She grit her teeth.

"I won't do that."

"Can you promise me?" Hinozawa Yamato leaned in.

Mirai was deep in thought. Her father continued.

"We are free to choose our own destinies. Ask yourself at Aeternitas if restoring the paradise of the family is really what means the world to you. If you ask, and you cannot find any other answer than that, can you promise me to turn the vermillion will of your soul into a force of creation, and not as a force to end the world? That you shall be true to yourself, and not be enslaved by any will or MAHA from the beyond, and ask yourself: what is the shape of my soul?"

Mirai halted her breath. Her father knew. He always knew.

"Mirai, your name means Beauty of That which shall come. I named you thus so you could forge your own destiny. Now, more than ever, is the time to make that true."

And yet, he was asking Mirai to throw away the furnace that had fueled her being. No person on earth could do that at a glance.

"I'm sorry, papa. I can't promise you now that I will not avenge my family. But I'll try. I'll try to find my own meaning. But in the light of all that exists, I swear that I will never seek the MAHA from the beyond, nor his promise of forever."

She placed her hand over her heart, tears in eyes.

Hinozawa Yamato let out a deep, long sigh.

"Then I am satisfied."

Her father took out a small, palm-sized book of many leaflets and handed it to her.

"Take this with you. It is a poem-book, where you can write out your sentiments. The written word has the power to clarify and neutralize, to make thoughts objective. The best way to come to peace is by writing of your sorrows and banishing it there."

"Thank you, papa."

"Go well, and go true. Towards your own future, and beyond."

Father and daughter hugged in a bittersweet embrace.

"I love you. Please be safe."

And thus with a heavy heart, not knowing whether or not to restore her paradise lost, and what future she wished to make, Mirai set off on her voyage to the City of Lights.

Like Elwin, she needed bandages for her soul.