“Where am I?” Yori asked himself aloud. It had a bit of a rhetorical element to it. While he khat he was inside his sister’s sind, it was easy tet. The familiar was something very familiar. A weird sense of reality and fantasy. Things appeared real and his body khat they were real. Yet his mind knew better. It did everything it could to prove it was right.

  That effort left him feeling almost queasy like he had a stomach flu. Yori tried to keep from throwing up. He didn’t remember feeling that part before. ‘Everything in here feels heightened. Like everything wants me to leave.’ A very hostile i hovered through the air. It took getting through the unease for him to pick up on it.

  “This is very wrong. Yumi isn’t like this.”

  The space suddenly ged, housed with fire and burning buildings. Smoke filled up his lungs making him curl over in a coughing fit. For not being real, it certainly seemed to feel that way. His body couldn’t help reag to it. The smoke was thid impossible to see through as it rolled in on waves. Light highlights of red and e lined edges of the smoke as the only sight of the fmes ing everything. It was impossibly oppressive.

  “Because it isn’t just her in here,” answered a woman with a very unfamiliar voibsp; There was a dark and mature to filled with menace, but still powerful. A voice that demanded resped easily found it.

  Amongst the smoke Yori could see nothing of the woman. “Who’s there?” His mind started to run through who it could be. An immediate answer came to him. “It’s you! The one trolling my sister!”

  “You don’t belong here.”

  “It’s you that doesn’t belong! Give my sister bae!”

  “You’re as annoying as they said.”

  “Who said?” He started to think that this wasn’t the same person he had fought with before. It made his mind spin with doubt and questions. ‘It’s not that woman? Another?’ Then he remembered the meeting that they had with Yuki. ‘The unnamed one we don’t know. Is that who this is?’

  “Leave if you know what’s good for you.”

  “I’m not leaving without my sister!”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  A sudden bst of wind pulled all of the smoke away from around Yori. It dragged on him, making his feet slide babsp; “I’m not…leaving!” But he couldn’t hold himself against the wind. Each sed only made it grow stronger and stronger. Before long his feet lost tact with the ground and he flew up into the air cast away from everything.

  He crashed into the ground seeing a road stretched out before him. “Huh? I’m somewhere else now…” It took him a moment seeing something familiar that he hadn’t seen in so long once more. It was almost weling. Until he felt something stabbed through his back.

  Pain jumped through his body after the shock of it wore off for him. It paralyzed him sharply. He couldn’t even look to see who had attacked him. “…n-no…” Yori breathed heavily with his face crushed against the pavement as his body felt impossibly heavy.

  Nothing moved.

  He was dead.

  Yasped for air suddenly nearly going lightheaded with it happening so fast. He looked around to see that he returo his sister’s side at the bed. Reality disappointedly returned. He stared down trying to figure out the wet sensation.

  Blood. He wiped it away from his mouth and h his sleeve. Then turned back to her not losing his determination.

  “You succeed?” Seiji asked quickly, wanting to stop him again.

  Saki held Seiji back while Yori leaned in again to her. “I’m not finished. I’m going ba.”

  Chapter 381 – The Uninvited

  “Yumi!” Yori shouted within her mind again. He had no clue what he was doing. He promised himself to find her and bring her back, but he had no way of knowing how to do it. It wasn’t something that he really focused on at the start. But now that her mind fought back against him, it made him wonder what he was supposed to do.

  Unlike before, a rge room with nterns casting light across well polished wood floors stretched out before him. It had a very distinctive traditional Japanese feel to it. He didn’t reize the pbsp; It couldn’t be from Yumi’s mind. “Whie of you is it this time?”

  “You really don’t know when to quit.”

  “You!” He had never heard her voice before that wasn’t from his sister’s lips, but he reized it immediately. The superior and fident tohat effortlessly stood above all else without peer. They were so far into the sky it seemed like no one could evehem.

  It was the woman that Yuki dubbed the Tacti. He k without her having to tell him. However, he couldn’t find her. Yori walked forward in the well lit room towards the voibsp; The room never ended. It tio grow as he walked in an endless repeating pattern of ns, nterns and wood. “Where are you?! I’ll settle this with you now!”

  “Fighting me won’t find your sister.”

  “It’s not about that!”

  “You’re in our mind. You have no power here.”

  “You expect that to stop me! You don’t know me as well as you like to cim.”

  “No, I know you very well. That’s why you’re there. You will tihis futile and fruitless case even to your owh. You believe your selfishness and ego-tric reasons will bear you results if you keep smashing your head against the wall. Foolishness.”

  Yori turned around in search of the womaing the feeling that he was being misdirected by her. Her voice couldn’t be trusted. But she kept out of his sight. The distanly repeated what surrounded him. No walls or doors appeared in all of his walking. Being in the mind, su impossible space was normal.

  They had him trapped.

  “Then e out and face me!”

  “That’s unnecessary.”

  Once more something stabbed him in the babsp; He fell down colpsing to the wood pnks spilling out his blood over the floor. In her mind, he really was helpless. They could do anything to him. He struggled to fight ba the only way that he could.

  Surviving.

  Though even that might have its limits. The sed death came just as painful as the first. However, after the ninth he started to have trouble remembering each from the past. And thearted to lose their weight. He just felt tired and exhausted.

  “Where am I?” he asked aloud, staring at a foggy space that he couldn’t make out. “It must be bad if I ’t everaight anymore…” But he wasn’t dyiedly so he found some fort in that. Yori fell on his baot even feeling it anymore. Everything became so numb for him. “I just need a moment to rest…”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” replied an oddly familiar voice that he reized, but couldn’t pce it.

  He turned his head about trying to find where the voice came from. Nothing. “Another one of those persona...” Yori closed his eyes ready to deal with more death. A sharp jolt went through his body f him up. It felt different from all of the other attacks. “Something new now?”

  “I told you, you shouldn’t sleep.”

  “I haven’t listeo any of the voices in here, I’m not about to listen to you. I’m doing what I want.” He tried to close his eyes again to get mueeded rest, but the jolt came again. Because it was sn to everything else that he had felt in the deaths, it actually hurt. “Just kill me already.”

  “I’ve got no i in doing that.”

  And now they had his attention, though still blurry-eyed from all of the death-dealing. “Then what do you want?”

  “I’ve e to let you know that I found her.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Yori immediately jumped to his feet looking in the first dire that he saw. “Yumi!? Who are you? Why are you helping me?”

  “Because we share a on i.”

  “on i?” Yori found the voice puzzling and it clearly wa that way. The mysteriousness was annoying, but any clue about her he was going to jump at. “Where is she?”

  “It won’t be easy, but I trust you’ll be fine.” There was an odd sense of a ugh in their words even though they remained restrained.

  He ran out into the haze without . He just expected to get his answer. “I don’t care about how hard it is. Just take me to her!” The fog in his eyes started to clear with his mind finding focus once more.

  It was a room, a white normal appearing room. At the ter was a table with a single chair. There was something very familiar to the sight that uled Yori a bit. However, he didn’t dwell on it. His attentioo the voibsp; “Show me!”

  “Since you’re awake now…let’s go!” The room faded away sharply along with his footing. Yori flew through space led by the voice to where he might find her. He still didn’t know what to expe the other side. He hoped for something that wasn’t so out of pce as what the persona’s presented.

  Yet that seemed to be the most normal. The bess gave way to light and light fell into darkness. Out of the darkness crept a massive doate. A hulking behemoth of a structure that went far beyond his own sight. ected to the gate ran a wall equally as imposing. But that was the normal part. Standing out in front of the gate encil as a guard on the right. To the left, that bastard Yuki stood as though it was pletely normal. Though with how screwed up he was he might not have found the surroundings strange. But Yori found it unnerving seeing papers, books, animals, desks, bentos, trees and dust paddles just flying around with life of their own.

  It looked like a mess as though it was someone’s room. Yet it also appeared like a dream, as things that weren’t alive looked and moved as though they were. Yori didn’t know what he was seeing. “Yumi’s here?”

  “Of course, idiot. This is subscious yer one. The part of her that’s closest to be awake. What you see is just a refle of what’s just below the surface of her thoughts. It tends to be filled with ret things.”

  “And what about the guards?” He just accepted the expnation without any questioning. More important matters were at hand and he had to know how to open that gate to get through to her. This physical maion had to hold his sister and the key to waking her up.

  “While I put them asleep you’ll sneak in. The rest will be on you, buddy.”

  That n he could work with. He put everything into his legs ready to sprint for the gate once he had the opening. There was no clue how long it would st. This was her mind and she robably going to resist him. But he didn’t even put that in his mind. Yori zeroed in oe and nothing else. He could picture his sister being behind it.

  First the clutter came to a stop and then the guards looked dizzy. Then they colpsed to the grass. The moment he heard the thud of them hittih, Yori flew out from his spot ung himself at the door. He hit the gate doors with an immovable crash. “I didn’t expect it to be easy. But this won’t stop me!”

  Screaming his lung hoarse, Yori put all of his muscles in his body into moving the gate door. It seemed to be pletely stone and impossible to move. Yet it didn’t stop him fr. He k would open if he pushed hard enough. His sister wouldn’t be held from him any longer. “Yumi! I’m ing!”

  Suddenly, the door cracked and then shattered. Yori stumbled through crashing into the stone floor. But he didn’t have time to think about his pain. He pulled his head back to look at what the inside was. “What the hell is this?!”

  “The byrinth of the subscious! Good luck!”

  Laid out before him wasn’t just some walls that turned and twisted in a maze. The entire space was ed by the so-called byrinth. Twisting and turning pieever ended and pockets into the endless void dotted the sights. It was like someone was trying to solve a Rubiks Cube. Everything was in a stant state of movement with no clear beginning or end. He couldn’t even uand what or down as it eveed under him. “Where are you, Yumi…”