Still, there was one point that I was curious about. "How do you even know Karasuba anyway? You two," I tried to find a polite way to say that they seemed to have absolutely nothing in common, and settled finally on, "don't seem like a likely couple."
"Oh!" Musubi chirped, smiling innocently. "That's because I was saved by her."
I blinked, not having expected such a simple response. "Saved?" I repeated. I couldn't help but focus on that particular word. 'Saved' and I have always had a long and strange relationship after all. "From what?"
Musubi grinned. "A long time ago Musubi was kidnapped!" she proclaimed as though mentioning something like having stubbed a toe or tripped in the sand. "It was Karasuba-sama and Yume-sama who saved me. But Yume-sama isn't here anymore," she admitted, still smiling at me. "I think that Yume-sama was Karasuba-sama's best friend, so she used to visit me while I was recovering."
A wave of vertigo struck me, and I tried my best not to let it show. "Recovering?" I echoed, feeling like a broken record as I did so. Musubi nodded.
"Yes. When I was kidnapped, they did all kinds of things to me. If it wasn't for Yume-sama, then I would have surely died." A shudder swept through me as Musubi elaborated. "It was thanks to Yume-sama that I… Shirou-san?" the shrine girl trailed off, giving me an innocently curious look as I stood silently.
"You were saved," I repeated. That word again: saved. A distant memory, a hellish landscape, the scent of smoke and the sounds of screams and weeping, my body failing me, hope disappearing, my inevitable death a welcome release, and then a face, so happy to see me, weeping at having found me, overcome with relief at having been able to rescue one soul from the inferno he had been the cause of, of the thought of wanting to be as happy as that man was at that very moment….
I should be used to this. I really should be. This was the second time Musubi's innocent words had literally shattered my confidence in my understanding of the situation. I should have seen this coming. A belief so strong that even when forced to act in a way that was contradictory to it the act would be committed in its name. To casually dismiss the horrors and agony and death that must have happened in their life, despite how much those thoughts should linger. That blatant inconsistencies, the strange responses to casual stimuli. It all added up to a horrible conclusion, one I shouldn't have had to see coming, but was experienced with nonetheless.
"Musubi-chan," I murmured, staring at the shrine girl who was looking at me in curiosity at my response to her story. "You're distorted."
Distorted. Was this what Rin felt, so long ago, when she labeled me so? The sudden realization that it wasn't just an abnormal character trait that caused the person you were addressing to act like they did, and that there truly was something seriously wrong with the person, something they couldn't see, something they wouldn't see, or something they did see and simply didn't care about?
"Distorted?" Musubi repeated, tilting her head to the side curiously. "Is that like 'discretion'?" she ventured cautiously. "If it is, I don't think I'm quite ready for it. We haven't even gotten started on 'discretion' yet."
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Originally Posted by RadiantBeam
