Episode 205: Yae’s Awakening
Kuon came to a sudden halt.
He held the Catalog open with both hands, the pale blue pulse of his artificial eye sinking deep into the pages. This was no ordinary reading; he wasn’t scanning the page so much as peering into the binding itself. The glow permeated the parchment, bleeding through to the other side.
"What is it?" Koyoi asked.
"Quiet."
His voice was clipped. Kuon only told him to be quiet when he was truly concentrated. Koyoi fell silent. Asahi wordlessly scanned their surroundings, his thumb resting against the hilt of his sword, ready to draw.
Three shadows stretched long across the sandy road. The sun had begun its descent.
Kuon’s artificial eye flickered. The light pulsed—brightening, dimming, then brightening again—like a beating heart.
The binding threads of the Catalog trembled faintly. Each individual strand shivered in response to the azure flicker. Even Koyoi could see it if he leaned in close.
"...It’s Yae."
Koyoi’s heart gave a leap. "A record of Yae-san?"
"Not a record."
Kuon looked up from the Catalog. The pale glow still clung to his eye socket, trembling slightly. His expression was grim, but surprise flickered in the depths of his gaze.
"It’s a signal. Faint, but unbroken. It isn't on the pages; it's flowing through the binding threads—behind the records themselves."
Asahi eased his blade from its sheath, the metal giving a short, sharp rasp. "An enemy?"
"No. It’s Yae’s signal. There’s no mistaking it."
Kuon tilted the Catalog, adjusting the angle of the glow. The threads seemed to swell as they drank in the light. It was subtle—a glimmer only his artificial eye could truly catch. But within that light was a rhythmic pulse.
"I thought she was gone. I judged that when the Observer sealed the records, every trace of Yae had been completely erased."
There was a rare trace of heat in Kuon’s voice. The flicker in his eye was brighter than usual.
"She wasn't gone. She was only erased from the surface. She wove her signal into the fibers of the binding—the very skeleton of the records. Before she could be deleted, she carved her existence into the structure of the Catalog itself."
Kuon let out a breath—an exhale that sat somewhere between a sigh of admiration and one of relief.
Koyoi looked down at the drawstring pouch at his waist. He felt the Drops through the fabric.
They were warm—a different kind of warmth than usual. The Drops were vibrating from within. It wasn't the swaying motion of the wind, but a resonance. There was a pulsing rhythm to it, matching the flickering threads of Kuon’s Catalog.
"The Drops are reacting."
"They’re resonating with Yae’s signal. The gods in the pouch remember her."
The Drop of the Moon God pulsed with a silver light. While the others remained still, the Moon God reacted with intensity. A cold radiance seeped through the cloth, illuminating Koyoi’s palm. Glimmering silver specks leaked through the weave of the pouch and scattered into the air.
"Kuon-kun... is Yae-san alive?"
"I don't know if she’s 'alive.' But she exists. In the very place she was supposed to have been erased, she is still broadcasting. Inside the Observer’s web... no, she’s using the structure of the web itself."
Kuon closed the Catalog, and the blue light faded. He pressed his fingers against the edge of his eye socket; the fatigue of overusing the artificial eye showed in the tension beneath his thin skin.
"It’s not just lingering. The signal has a direction. It’s stretching toward us."
"To us?"
"Yeah. Whether it can reach us, I don’t know. The Observer’s web runs deep. But Yae..."
Kuon trailed off. He remained silent for a moment, hand still shielding his eye.
"She is reaching out her hand to us."
Asahi sheathed his sword. The dry click of the scabbard echoed on the quiet road. "Will it reach?"
"Not yet. The web runs too deep."
"Then, when we reach the Sutra Library?"
Kuon didn’t nod. Perhaps it wasn't something he could say for certain. He simply tucked the Catalog back against his chest. When his hand brushed the binding, the azure glow returned for a fleeting second before vanishing. His artificial eye had responded instinctively to Yae’s signal.
Koyoi cradled the pouch with both hands. The silver light had faded, but the warmth remained, as if the Drops remembered the path the signal had taken.
The three of them began to walk again.
They spoke little, but their pace was synchronized. Three sets of footsteps struck the sand in perfect unison.
Deep inside the pouch, the Drops continued to shiver.