Snake in Worm's Clothing 4 (Patreon)

Snake in Worm’s Clothing 4 - or ‘This feels familiar, and yet Shinji does get some Ws against Zouken’ (Fateverse, Shinji!SI)

“Why can’t I… feel the need to kill you?”

This was not the greeting I was expecting while talking with someone like Ryougi Shiki, but I have a feeling it was the best one I could hear. To put it in a blunt way, Shiki has a thing that made her want to kill anything alive and, for some reason I wasn’t aware of but that I was glad of, I wasn’t in that list.

…Why?

“Dunno. How did you find me?”

The girl blinked, her glowing eyes following my movements as I sluggishly got up from the table I had been set on and shifted to get back to the ground.

“I saw you before you were kidnapped. Then I tracked you and your kidnappers here.”

She… ‘saw’ me?

Glancing at the corpses, I saw all of them wearing similar jackets- gang members. Possibly the ones that would have kidnapped Fujino and… yeah, I risked big time. My ass’ purity would have been torn apart by the reality that is the cynical world of the Nasuverse.

“Where are we?” I asked quietly, and the girl blinked.

“Abandoned warehouse. I don't know where in Misaki.”

I slowly nodded at this, walking up to one of the members and retrieving a knife that he still held within his right hand’s hold. A weapon was a weapon and… I had to leave. And I needed answers.

“Well, I am not interested in wasting time in this decrepit place… fancy walking with me?”

I didn’t even hear her speak as I saw Shiki just pick up the place as we both started to wander through the only entrance to this room. The tunnel it was connected with led to an upper floor through a small staircase and-

“What are you?”

Shiki’s voice was still calm, yet intrigued by what her eyes were showing her. And it was creeping me up a lot. I never considered the chance of my soul being considered as a different entity compared to a normal soul- the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception worked around the notion of providing their user with the means to know the ‘Death Lines’ of anything and anyone that possessed the ‘concept of death’.

And when Shiki says that she can’t ‘feel the need to kill me’, it means she can’t see any Lines on me. Even ‘inanimate objects’ had lines on them, and, if I didn’t have any then… My body was not registered by her gaze as death.

For some reason, I was ‘dead’ to the world because of how the Mystic Eyes perceived me. And yet not since I still lived without facing the consequences of being an ‘outright anomaly’ that would warrant the intervention of the Counter-Force.

I was tempted to say that maybe, just maybe, the insertion had resulted in a similar case as Ciel. I was deemed ‘Dead’ to the World, but also not. [Matou Shinji], the original, had perished and I existed as another individual that bore that name.

It was something I hadn’t considered due to how this very general scenario had never crossed my mind and… this is frustrating. The Nasuverse is frustrating!

“An issue in the system from what little speech you’re making about me. An anomaly, even.”

She merely blinked. “Explain.”

“Let’s just say that my soul is a stranger to this body due to an abnormal circumstance of the extradimensional kind. In small words, I am a reincarnating soul from a different reality akin to this one.”

She frowned, ready to call me out on what sounded like bullshit but-

“Your grandfather told you that killing senselessly can be a curse right before he died, Shiki.”

The young woman paused and I did too. Her Mystic Eyes vanished and she harshly frowned at me.

“How?”

“I know a lot, and I will leave it to that just now,” I remarked and I knew I had to play with ‘half truths’ to keep alive without being an absolute tool on how much I divulged. “Enough to give you a full-on cinematic summary of how your future will shape up.”

“...If you know this much, then why don’t you use it to do more?”

“I am what you could call a ‘pragmatic individual’. I am currently busy helping someone that deserves help. You? You are going to be fine even without a cheaty view into the future.”

I resumed walking, and Shiki followed through with a flat look on her face that betrayed one thing that I had briefly forgotten about, but mostly because I barely noticed the difference if I didn’t keep an eye on how she used the Japanese pronouns for herself.

Shiki has three personalities. Her main feminine one (Shiki), a masculine one (SHIKI) that was implanted since her brother couldn’t bear the main function of heir of the Ryougi family and… a third personality that mattered very little at this very moment.

Early on, I had the ‘pleasure’ of talking with SHIKI, but now I was talking with Shiki. Very confusing but… oh well, this is the Nasuverse. Since then one can’t get confused with standard knowledge of the world of Kara no Kyoukai.

Still, the lack of Mystic Eyes and the lack of murderous intent coupled with the use of the gender-neutral ‘Watashi’ rather than the masculine ‘Ore’ to identify her ‘I’ suggested that she was indeed in her ‘natural’ personality.

“Then you know if I can succeed at this. To find… happiness.”

I sighed. “Shiki, I will be quite blunt about this because it spares you and I a bit of a headache. Do you want to give up regardless of what I have to say?”

“...No.”

“Then do what you think is right. In the end, you will find out if you are happy with what actions you took or not,” I reasoned calmly, somewhat feeling this conversation while we ignored a few more corpses around near the entrance of the warehouse… cathartic. “Then again, the future is odd. Your concept of happiness will change over time. Your core personality is, after all, far from fully matured.”

“And?”

“And that’s all I have to say.”

“I see…”

…

“What is your… name?”

For a brief moment, I caught a hint of nervousness in her voice.

“Matou Shinji. And if you plan to look into my family, do know that my roots are tainted by monstrous worms. So, don’t expose yourself. Or anyone in your family. It wouldn’t be pleasant regardless of my own affection towards your curious nature.”

We were stepping out of the warehouse as we split, with me steadily walking towards familiar streets to catch a cab and get back to my sister, while Shiki stood there and… blinked in surprise.

I was long gone as her thoughts took a very strange degree of interest and confusion mixed with curiosity and dread. But one thing persisted through it all, something odd and mysterious to someone like Shiki, and SHIKI.

Her cheeks took a tiny hint of red due to the weird compliment the one known but also not as Matou Shinji told her.

—----d-d-d-d—-------

AN

Shiki the Cat found a new playmate in Shinji the Lil’ Snek. Papa Ryougi may have something to say about it.