⚜ AUTHOR'S NOTE ⚜
Author here. 🥸
Being out of high school is harder than I thought, what with there being too much freedom and none at the same time! I swear it's some kind of curse! 😭
For those that have been following this story already. I added a new chapter — ⚙️ Karasu Ni Meirareta — to look more into what Ogami is doing, seeing as she is the main instigator for this arc's events. 🥸
Otherwise, I hope you've found the chapters I've put out thus far riveting. I'm trying my best to juggle multiple errands, all while battling a crippling sense of laziness, disorganised ideas, and mild depression, so please bear with me! 😭
I promise I'll try to do better in coming arcs! 😭
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⚜ EVENING, 25TH JULY, 1990, THE ASTRAL PLANE ⚜
"DECIDE?" JASMINE REPEATED, blinking at Mordred like she'd just been handed a detonator. "What do you mean, decide?"
Mordred sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose — the universal gesture of someone explaining basic math for the tenth time to a stubborn child.
"I mean, darling," she drawled, with the weariness of someone too aware, "you're the axis of a collapsing continuum. The lynchpin of a paradox that's been unraveling threads long before you even knew how to spell your name. And now? The system — what's left of it — wants resolution. Closure. Finality."
The words ricocheted inside Jasmine's skull like loose bullets. "You're saying I have to choose how it ends?"
"No," Mordred said, sharply now, like a slap. "I'm saying you have to choose if it ends. Or if it loops. Or shatters. Or burns it all down."
A silence stretched between them, as Jasmine tried to process Mordred's words. "But… I don't understand the rules."
Mordred tilted her head, her expression blasé. "The rules are dead. Or dying. Reality is running on echoes now — ghost protocols, recursive scaffolding, and whatever metaphysical duct tape the cosmos could slap together to keep the whole thing from imploding."
Jasmine felt something cold coil in her chest. "I didn't choose to be this."
Mordred's expression shifted — not pity, but an ancient exhaustion. "None of us did, kiddo. But here we are."
"What happens if I don't decide?" Jasmine asked, even though some part of her already knew.
Mordred reclined again, draping herself across the seat like a cat in a sunbeam, her expression returning to one of lazy indifference.
"Then reality keeps trying. Over and over. Until it succeeds. Or you die. Or everything else does." She shrugged. "Whichever comes first."
Jasmine pressed her palms to her face, dread curling beneath her ribs. "And if I do decide? How do I know the right choice?"
Mordred rested her chin on her hand, her gaze drifting absently toward the landscape beyond window. "It's a gamble. No matter what you choose. The outcome's anyone's guess."
She paused, something almost wistful flickering across her expression before it vanished. Her voice dropped, smooth as silk, "Either way, I'll have a front row seat."
Jasmine watched Mordred for a moment longer, then turned to the window. Without looking back at her, she asked quietly, "Where are we right now?"
Mordred let out a quiet huff. "In transit," she said. "Not quite life. Not quite death."
Jasmine's frown deepened, her mind struggling to process the disorienting reality. "And I'm here because of the curse?"
Mordred gave a slow, almost bored nod, her eyes casually scanning the shifting landscape outside. "Exactly. You're stuck in limbo. Reality doesn't know what to do with you. It's... waiting. Not that it matters. It's not like you have much say in the matter."
Jasmine's grip on the windowsill tightened, her knuckles whitening. "Waiting for what?"
Mordred tilted her head, glancing at Jasmine with an air of indifference. "For permission," she drawled, as though explaining something ridiculously simple. "You didn't think you'd just get to waltz back to your little life, did you? No, no... Not until they say so."
Jasmine blinked, confused. "Permission?" she repeated, her voice trembling slightly. "For what?"
Mordred chuckled softly, her tone light and airy as if they were chatting over tea and scones. "Oh, you didn't think you were just going to waltz back home, did you? You haven't even met them yet. That's the fun part."
Jasmine's confusion deepened, the weight of Mordred's words settling in. "'Them'?"
"The ones we're about to meet," Mordred replied, her eyes still trained on the world outside the window. "They're the ones who get to decide if you can go back as you are, or if they'll need to… stepin." She stretched out the last two words, her tone almost playful.
Jasmine's heart quickened as her unease grew. "What does them needing to 'step in' entail?" she asked cautiously, her voice barely a whisper.
Mordred's gaze snapped back to Jasmine, her expression shifting in an instant, though still carrying that strange nonchalance. "Oh, nothing you'd like," she said, a dismissive shrug accentuating her words.
Jasmine's eyes widened, a flicker of worry crossing her face. She looked away. "How do I stop them from 'stepping in' if it comes to that?"
Mordred shrugged, haughty insouciance oozing from every word. "You can try, but ultimately, it's not up to you. You're just a piece on the board — a particularly shiny one, sure, but still a piece. If it comes down to it, you would need quite the deus ex machina to stop them."
She smirked lazily. "Anyways, you'll figure it out. Or not. Either way, I'm very invested in the entertainment value."
She didn't elaborate further, a silence descending between them. Jasmine peeked at her from the corner of her eye, but Mordred remained as unreadably detached as ever — like this was all just a dull matinee she'd sat through too many times to care.
And it was only now, in this heavy stillness between them, that Jasmine realized what truly terrified her wasn't any sense of malice. It was the indifference — that cold, eldritch kind that didn't even need cruelty to unsettle.
There was something deeply wrong about how composed Mordred was. Too unfazed. Too poised. It had nagged at Jasmine since the beginning of their conversation, but now the shape of that unease sharpened.
This wasn't just aloofness. It was vacancy. An elegance with no humanity behind it. Like watching a doll hold court — perfect in its posture, flawless in its design, and utterly, terrifyingly hollow.
Mordred didn't seem to carry anything. Not fear, not guilt, not hope. Just that eerie stillness, and it unsettled Jasmine far more than she wanted to admit. And yet, Jasmine couldn't help but wonder what had made her that way.
No one was born like that. Even monsters had origin stories. Had she seen too much of the world's rot to care anymore, or had something older gotten to her first — cracked her open and filled the empty spaces with something cold and alien?
Even her arrogant bullying felt… manufactured. As if Mordred were playing out the role of a villainess from some half-remembered novel — the exaggerated arrogance, the careless flicks of superiority, the languid drawl of someone above it all.
It wasn't real cruelty, not even real amusement. It was just mimicry. Like a mask painted onto something that didn't really know what it was supposed to feel. Something trying to be human — or at least trying to pass for it.
Jasmine felt her throat tighten. Deep down, buried beneath layers of duty to those she loved and the endless performance for the rest of society, she recognized the temptation of that kind of apathy. The siren song of emotional distance.
When you were expected to be unbreakable, when you lived with a curse whispering your name every night, when you carried the weight of a generation's hopes on your back — wouldn't it be easier to just... stop feeling?
Wouldn't it be easier to become just like Mordred? Detached. Untouched by the world around her. Detached from all the chaos and misery, living beyond it all. To be completely free from the problems of the world.
To shut everything down. To stop caring about every single thing that was expected of you. Every burden, every weight, every fragile thread holding together your identity. All of it could be dismissed as beneath oneself, couldn't it?
But as Jasmine sat across from her — from this… entity draped in human skin, more doll than person, more echo than original — a creeping dread began to bloom in her chest, wrestling with the quiet, shameful desire to be just like her.
Because to be that way could only mean one of two things: to be something far more than human… or something far, far less. And even then — was there truly a difference between the two? Or was it, as always, as above, so below?
"What happened to you?" Jasmine asked softly, unable to stop herself.
Mordred didn't answer at first. For a moment, the silence stretched thin — a taut wire humming between them. The shifting light from the window painted sharp lines across her face, but her expression didn't change. Still poised. Still hollow.
Then, finally, she turned her head slightly, just enough to glance at Jasmine from the corner of her eye. She smiled, wide and predatory, more like an uncanny sculpture than a human expression, yet it was the most genuine smile Jasmine had seen from her thus far.
"What does it matter?" she murmured, her voice lazy, detached, like someone half-listening to a joke they'd already heard before. "It's all just a theater of dolls and dust anyway."
Jasmine sighed lightly reclining in her seat, her head pounding. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Who are 'they' anyway?"
Mordred chortled, amused by some private joke. "They specifically asked to be kept anonymous so as to, quote, 'build suspense', unquote. Bunch of weirdos with a flair for dramatics."
Jasmine stared at her, trying to decide whether this was a fever dream or just Mordred's usual brand of maddening surrealism. "That sounds… ridiculous."
"Oh, it is," Mordred said, then gave Jasmine a mock-conspiratorial whisper. "But between you and me, ridiculous is the closest thing to real you're going to get around here."
Suddenly, the train rumbled. Mordred raised her eyebrows with mild, hollow curiosity, her voice light. "Oh? It would seem that we're almost there."
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Drop them stones and reviews, please. 🥸