Chapter Nine

The Doll Hypothesis

 

 

For the remainder of the day, Nekohiko waited for Kataji to come back. He waited in vain.

Kataji didn't come back the next day either. The workshop stood cold and drafty throughout the night, yet Kataji seemingly didn't give a damn. Instead, Aomi showed up, swinging inside early next morning and tiptoeing to Nekohiko over the saw-dust and wood chip littered on the floor.

Her hand lay warm and soft over his surface. "Hey."

"Is he busy? How is he doing?" Nekohiko asked her as casually as he could. "Will he come down soon?"

Aomi slid to the floor with her back against him.

"He's really pissed, and that's coming from me," she stressed. "I've never seen him so angry at anyone other than myself before, and so reluctant to talk about it."

Spirits.

Nekohiko did feel bad about it, but back then, when he and Kataji had erupted in their stupid argument, Nekohiko couldn't stop himself. The pain had lodged in every last particle of his body and mind; he wasn't even thinking straight.

And now Kataji didn't want to see him.

"I shouldn't have pushed him so hard," Nekohiko confessed. "Honestly, I thought cutting myself up into doll parts will be much easier. Everything about this is terrible."

What further torment would being carved and whetted bring on? The idea made him ache already.

"Eh, he'll calm down sooner or later. Don't overthink it." Aomi shot Nekohiko a cute little smile and hopped up to take a stroll around the workshop, studying the many scattered parts of Nekohiko on the shelves and the floor. At last, with a delighted squeak, she grabbed a chunk she could comfortably fit in her hands. She gave it a small push from hand to hand, like tossing a game ball.

Vertigo attacked Nekohiko with passion.

"Stop that," he begged.

She stuck a finger into him. "So you feel that? Now, this is amazing. I finally have a piece of you I can take anywhere I want! And Elder Brother isn't even here to stop me. Itsuki, do you have any idea what that means?"

"No. I really do n--"

"From this day on, you'll sleep in my bed with me."

Nekohiko fought a desire to widen his eyes in a "please, kill me all over again" stare, but no matter how much he tried, Aomi still noticed his reaction.

"You're paling. Actually paling -- you look like a ghost of a tree log now!" She rolled into rude laughter, slapping the block in her hands. "I was just kidding. I mean, I will take you to my room, because this dusty place is no place to live for a human being. But I know not to seduce you." She winked with intense ambiguity. "Trust me, I do."

He couldn't even begin to decipher that. "Aomi, please, I need to talk to Kataji. I really should apologize to him," he began, only to be shushed.

"Nah, he's still all huffy and puffy. Also, if I do that, he'll stop me from abusing you the way I want today. Duh." She hopped on the spot, mischievous. "Anyway, guess! Guess what you and I will be doing this entire day!"

The way her lips were stretched thin over her toothy grin didn't promise anything remotely good.

Outside was hot and dazzling, and Nekohiko had to shut his freshly-drawn eyes under the blazing sun. The skies were so brilliant in azure, with not a single cloud in sight, that he didn't even feel like grumbling about the fact that Aomi had just kidnapped his future skull to drag him hell knew where.

The chunk she carried in a loosely-netted bag over her shoulder had a full face drawn on it so that Nekohiko could observe everything Aomi wanted to show him. She rushed down the house steps like a hurricane, through the flowering garden and into the front yard where her Great Aunt and Uncle kept horses, donkeys, and a pair of tightly-covered mechanized vehicles Aomi didn't even glance at. She slapped the Bound Servant who waited by the stable's gates and ordered it to bring out Coalback.

But before the dummy managed to make a single step, a sleepy-looking groom-girl ventured out of the adjacent small house. Her moon-like face was a picture of surprise.

"Lady?" she gaped at Aomi. "You're going out alone? But where are your guard dummies--"

"I'm not alone. This is my newest guard dummy." Aomi popped her hip to show off Nekohiko's crude head swinging in her bag. "Now prepare Coalback for the ride. My dummy boyfriend and I are going to party the whole day away in Sai-town!"

The groom-girl watched her with a hushed, scared expression, not in any hurry to leave for the stables.

"Your boyfriend...?"

"He and Kataji had a spat and aren't talking now, so he's depressed," Aomi went on chatting as she patted Nekohiko's head with her hand. She rambled on even as the pitch-dark gorgeous horse was pulled up to her by the reins. And further more, as she was clumsily mounting the horse's back, with Nekohiko swaying all around her in the flimsy net. "Being stuffed in that musty workshop all day long, no wonder my cute boyfriend is so gloomy. Time to change up the root-ine, don't you agree?"

And without waiting for the girl's reply, Aomi heeled the horse in the sides and rushed out the estate gates in a cloud of road dust.

Nekohiko didn't care to stop her. He actually did want to go out of the stale workshop that, by now, he mostly associated with pain and loneliness. The weather was lovely and the brisk trot of Coalback down the ruined road along the picturesque mountains was a breath of delight. So he didn't mind being called anyone's boyfriend, and he didn't mind that the two of them were surely misbehaving, venturing out of the estate all alone, without dummies to guard them or without asking permission from the grown-ups first.

But that was all on Aomi. Surely nobody would blame him for being kidnapped?

The full-speed gallop to the bustling town of Sai was only about an hour or so, but Nekohiko didn't let Aomi abuse the horse like that.

"Why not? We'll get more time to have fun later," she whined but agreed to slow down a little.

"It's a live horse, not a bound one. You'll kill it," Nekohiko said, slightly vexed with how such obvious things needed to be explained to anyone, to begin with. "If you wanted speed, you should have taken the mechanized horses."

"Nooo. Auntie would kill me if I did. All Spirit-bound stuff is expensive and precious -- do you know how much a simple wooden horse costs?"

He didn't. Wooden horses had never attracted his attention in the previous life; he'd usually bought bronze ones for himself, and even those rarely -- when a winged vehicle wasn't available. But he could still guess the sky-high price of a quality wooden horse.

He smiled. "A live horse has feelings, though."

"Yeah, but feelings are cheap. And so are live beings," Aomi said in the most refined, wisest tone imaginable. "Take Kataji and his wooden animals. You know how many times Auntie offered to buy him a real cat or a dog? He always refuses to. It's too messy, he says.He even has a hypothesis about it. What if the real cat dies or gets sick? What if a dog he trusts turns on him and bites him? He prefers the fake ones because they're more reliable and will last him a lifetime without any misery or pain if they break. He'll just replace the broken parts, and they're brand new. I kind of agree..."

Nekohiko listened, hushed, and guilty for some reason. "You agree? I thought you and Kataji never agree on anything."

Coalback's slow sway gave their ride a gentle, soothing lull. The trees and hills rocking by under the sirupy glow of the sun also lent a good flow to any conversation.

Aomi shrugged. "You know, our Eldest Brother had been very gravely hurt by his best friend when Kataji and I were young."

Nekohiko's hearing must have failed him. Did he... hear that correctly just now?

Either Abihiko had other "best friends" outside of Nekohiko, or... that bastard dared to claim that it had been Nekohiko's throat that -- oh no! -- hurt his poor knife instead?

The gall of it. The insult!

"We lost our parents when we were children, too. And with how Eldest Brother later had been taken away from us with all these worldly... Imperial obligations..." Aomi paused. Her voice was uncharacteristically forlorn. It felt wrong, to hear her like this. "So, to keep us safe from any further suffering related to loss and betrayal, Eldest Brother forbid Kataji and me to go to any schools or to befriend any people of our age outside our family. To protect us from what had harmed him once."

"He forbade you to befriend people to... protect you two?"

Sure. Sounded like the sanest thing ever.

"So, there you go," Aomi brightened again, although Nekohiko doubted she felt as cheery as she looked. "You are not a human person who can hurt us by breaking down, because we'll always manage to repair you! You can't run, you can't hide, and you can't betray us either. But at the same time, you're much better than any wooden dummy because you're still kind of human. Isn't it perfect? Now Eldest Brother can't even get mad at us for befriending you, can he?"

"..."

He didn't know if he should pity these weird siblings, or to feel threatened by their friendship with him. Perhaps, both?

Aomi cringed, looking at his conflicted face. "Ugh, stop being so sappy."

Sai was a boisterous, lively town perched on top of the seashore cliffs and breathing in the bitter crispness of the northern waters. The natural beauty of the place aside, Nekohiko should have hated the town's overwhelming buzz and motion. He absolutely would have hated it in his previous life. Even Abihiko's attempts to have him fall in love with bright and cheery places had never truly succeeded.

But now, after years of loneliness and darkness he'd experienced after dying... he didn't find the town so atrocious anymore. In fact, when Aomi pulled Coalback into the first line of its streets high above the shore, Nekohiko held his breath with anticipation. The rock of the cliffs was bound into sinuous, undulating buildings without breaking up the natural mountainous pattern. The pine trees and shrubs had been fused together to form street levels and bridges that laced above the ground in three, sometimes four levels of the town streets. A beautiful house masterfully bound from flowers and unmelting snow hit him so hard with reminiscences from his previous life, he almost couldn't bear seeing it.

"Pearl-fused cloth! Carapace-hair foil!"

"Motorized hovers from Bishu!"

"Sea anemone fur, a limited offer!"

Aomi rode past the open, busy stores bound of so many classic materials fit for bustling advertisement -- fur, bone, quartz and mica, sand, fish scales, hazelnut shells. The town was obviously not as rowdy or important as most towns and even cities in the south, but it had its charm. Nekohiko drank up all the garish colors and sights like a traveler dying of thirst. The bumbling people, the hawking street sellers, the homey atmosphere of neighbors and friends waving or talking to each other on all sides...

He missed these kinds of things, too? He'd never suspected.

"...and there we go to buy clams," Aomi prattled, pointing here, there, everywhere -- too fast for Nekohiko to take note of any specific place. "And there Elder Brother goes to a woodcarving tutor. And here I browse for bound patterns for my clothes?" And she made Nekohiko look at the hem of her typically-black robe, this time infused with striking blue cornflower petals. "Ohhh, I can't wait till when you have a body. I will be in charge of your wardrobe. I hope that's clear to everyone, yes?"

"My... wardrobe?"

"You'll be a doll, right? So, of course, you'll have a wardrobe. And a sense of style. And class. All -- by me. In fact," she paused, squinting up to an ivy bridge on a level above. "Let's go check out the human doll merchant! He probably can give us pointers about how to approach doll-making. I mean, Kataji is an absolute amateur in this. All he ever makes is... cats and bunnies and chickens."

And wooden landscape panels for His Majesty's bedroom, Nekohiko reminded himself as Aomi spurred Coalback to trot faster down the road to find the nearest way up to the next street level. The hooves beat the cobbles with cozy, reverberating claps, only highlighting the buzz of the city on the background.

"Say, Aomi," Nekohiko tried to sound natural. "Did you know that your Great Aunt asked Kataji to do some interior artwork for your Eldest Brother? For the Emperor?" He dawdled, uncomfortable. "An artwork out of my lumber parts?"

At first, Aomi only shrugged, by after the last sentence, her eyebrows and lips quirked up. "Oh?"

"Yes. Kataji obviously promised me he'd only use the dead matter segments of myself to make them."

"Obviously." She nodded, savoring Nekohiko's shyness.

And he was shy. Shy and desperate. He had no one else to ask. No one but her. She was his last and only chance.

"But I wondered if there was, after all, something I could do for you to repay your kindness toward me... After all, you are going so many things for me. It makes me feel like I have nothing to offer you back."

"Uh-hm," she crooned. "I like where this is going."

"You said you were worried about your Eldest Brother and his private life into which you aren't invited?" Spirits, he hated every second of this! "I mean... there might be a way for me to solve... that. Somehow. If instead of dead matter, the panel to put into your Eldest Brother's private rooms would be made out of... a conscious part of myself. And I mean it in a completely impersonal way, of course."

"Completely 'unperverted way' is what you want to call it," she corrected.

"You read my mind. I'm not interested in any individual's personal life, make no mistake. But I really want to help you, so... this seems like a sure way to do th--"

"Deal."

Already? So easily?

Nekohiko was taken aback by such speed, but he would never complain. "The only real issue then is how to not only trick a piece of myself into Kataji's work on that panel but also sneak in the drawings of an eye or at least an ear on it so that I can spy on your Eldest Brother Abihiko." Anything, to make that happen. "I would gladly do that for you," Nekohiko added after a moment.

"Pff. Don't sweat it. I'll come up with some trick. But first -- something else you and I are going to do for meeee."

All of a sudden, Nekohiko felt a chill of apprehension. Something else for Aomi? Did he want to know what that possibly was? The way she sounded, gleeful yet somehow menacing, didn't bode well with him at all.

"Aomi, where are we now?" he asked, worried.

"We?" She smirked in pure pleasure. "In the shop for wooden sex-dolls, of course. To pick a body model for you."

...!

"Please tell me you're joking."

"Kind of. I mean, a real sex-doll shop wouldn't let a fourteen-year-old like me in." She let out a disappointed sigh. "But it isn't entirely a non-sex-doll shop either."

"That... doesn't make any sense to me," Nekohiko said.

Humming, she hopped off Coalback and gave Nekohiko a nudge with her elbow. "Ah. You'll see."