Advancing deeper into the wind-swept interior of the carriage, the rhythmic sound of footsteps heralded the approach of the conductor, Sakuya.
His uniform bore an archaic design, with buttons that cast a dull, silver glint. Trailing behind him was Mio, a girl whose small frame belied an unsettling presence; clutched in her hands was a paper parcel stained a deep, seeping red. Upon spotting the trio, Sakuya adjusted his cap without a word, casting a sharp, piercing gaze from beneath its shadow.
His footsteps resonated with such clarity that they seemed to pierce through the howling gales thrashing the car. Each step carried an absolute weight, as if he were carving the very laws of existence into the floorboards. While the rest of the carriage was whipped by tempests of raw information, the hem of his uniform remained eerily still, as if the chaos was forbidden from even drawing near him. Mio clung to his shadow, walking half a step behind; her movements were unnaturally silent. She seemed to glide without ever touching the ground—a personification of stillness. From the parcel she held, a faint, sweet yet raw scent wafted out—an odor neither quite vermilion ink nor fresh blood—planting a seed of nameless dread deep within Koyoi’s chest.
“...Tickets, please.”
Sakuya’s voice was flat, mechanical, and low enough to blend into the wind. It held not a shred of courtesy for the passengers, only the cold, hard edge of a man performing a duty. Koyoi tried to pull the “ancient ticket” from his drawstring pouch, but his fingers felt frozen, as if turned to ice. Panic began to claw at him.
Mio silently held out her red parcel, the scent of vermilion tickling Koyoi’s nose. His fingers tangled in the cord of the pouch, refusing to obey. The more he rushed, the more the sensation in his fingertips faded. A terrifying feeling that his body was no longer his own surged up from the back of his throat. From beneath the brim of his hat, Sakuya’s eyes moved from one passenger to the next with the clinical severity of a judge determining the morality of the accused. The crimson of Mio’s parcel caught the flickering light of the lanterns, shimmering with a wet luster that made it look, to Koyoi’s frayed nerves, like a pulsing internal organ.
The very quality of the air changed with Sakuya’s arrival. The information-squalls that had been raging moments ago seemed to shrink back in his presence, cowed and diminished. In their place, a high-tension silence began to settle over the car, like the needle of a gauge trembling just before it snaps. The conductor’s punch in Sakuya’s hand glowed with the sheen of well-worn black iron, and from the gap between its blades, a pale blue light leaked out like silk threads—a concentrated essence of Universal Logic.
Kuon reverently spread the golden book across his lap—the Catalog of Truth—and focused the eerie blue light of his glass eye onto the metal tool in Sakuya’s hand.
“...Look. That is the ‘Guillotine of Logic.’ They use those shears to physically snip away a passenger’s ‘destination,’ redirecting them toward whatever convenient terminus they choose.”
Kuon’s lips thinned as he spoke. His voice was low and controlled, but the edges of his words trembled with the dregs of a long-simmered rage. As the blue light from his prosthetic eye illuminated the tool, minute patterns etched into the metal surfaced. They were not mere decorations, but a terrifying “Coordinate Severance Ritual” designed to physically enforce the laws of the world. As Kuon decoded the patterns, his expression grew grimmer, his jaw tight with tension. The pages of the Catalog fluttered violently despite the lack of wind, as if the book itself were shivering in fear.
Every time the blades of the punch clicked shut, a faint metallic ring echoed through the air. The sound carried the resonance of thousands of years of stolen destinations, vibrating ominously against the trio's eardrums.
“...Snip them away? Does that mean our tickets will be made useless here?” Koyoi asked, clutching his pouch. His voice shook, but beneath the tremor, a tiny spark of defiance was beginning to take root. Within the pouch, he felt the presence of the gods stir, sending a wave of warmth into his palm. It felt like a silent encouragement: Protect the ticket.
With trembling fingers, he opened the pouch and touched the edge of the paper. It was cold to the touch, yet deep within, it pulsed with the faint heat of every memory they had gathered on this journey. Without this ticket, they wouldn't have even made it this far. That single scrap of paper they had received at the Yoinami-hama station was their very right to exist in this world. To lose it was to have their journey—and their memories—erased entirely. A glint of moisture appeared in the corner of Koyoi's eye, but it was far too hot and fierce to be called a simple tear.
Asahi rested his right hand on the hilt of his sword, his eyes fixed on the darkness of the corridor behind Sakuya. He wasn't looking at the conductor as an individual, but rather trying to gauge the massive, cold will lurking in the shadows behind him. A fighting spirit radiated from Asahi’s body, much like when he had faced the gale earlier, causing the ambient temperature to rise slightly. His breathing was deep and rhythmic, creating a pocket of stillness within himself, the calm before the draw. He watched with sharpened senses for the slightest hint that Sakuya’s shears were moving toward Koyoi’s ticket.
“...I won’t let him cut it. This ticket is the ‘proof’ we earned with our own two feet. I won’t let anyone harm it.”
Asahi’s voice was a low rumble. His words were as sharp as a sword stroke, carrying enough weight to physically vibrate the air. As he stepped half a pace forward, the floorboards groaned, the vibration traveling down the aisle to Sakuya’s feet. He gripped his hilt tighter, the muscles of his forearms bulging beneath his sleeves. It wasn't a stance for an immediate strike, but rather the manifestation of a warrior's instinct—an iron-clad vow to be the shield for his comrades.
Sakuya narrowed his eyes beneath the brim of his hat for a fleeting second. Whether it was a flicker of agitation or a cold sneer at their defiance was impossible to tell. Mio’s parcel swayed slightly, the scent of vermilion growing even thicker. A tension like a pulled wire snapped taut between the three and the conductor; even the howling wind seemed to hold its breath for that single moment.
Koyoi gripped the ticket inside his pouch firmly. He swore to himself that he would never let go of the journey contained within that thin scrap of paper. Before the blades of the shears could snip away their future, they would have to choose their own destination, by their own will.