Chapter Text
Stepping into the labyrinth, I feel time stop, and yet the air still whizzes around me. In the distance, a broken record plays looped with muttered phrases sung over it like a song long forgotten. The pitch black darkness morphs into a bloody red glow shining on my skin. Reminiscent of an abandoned orchard, the stench of rotting apples chokes me. It feels as if I’m walking on them, a soft crunch under my feet and oozing underneath with each step. Larvae swims within the mush, butchering the phrases heard in the distance, like a toddler butchers the lyrics to a song on the radio. Misshapen doves with wings not-quite-right flap past me, cawing like a crow from the dead instead of singing like an angel in the light.
“¡●̶︎̴□̸︎̸❖̶︎̸♏︎ ̸❍̶︎̴♏︎ ̵●̸︎̵□̷︎̵❖̵︎̸♏︎ ̷❍̸︎̸♏︎ ̶●̶︎̷□̷︎̷❖̸︎̵♏︎ ̶❍̷︎̵♏︎!”
I glare at the witch that lies ahead of me. Her head reads as a ribcage with no heart or lungs to breathe. She bares the thorax and body of a moth, without the freedom of wings. With doll-ish arms, her heart is branded onto her sleeve. She’s a sad sight to bear, but I cannot spare sympathy towards a witch.
Feeling the weight of my blades between my fingers, four held in each hand, I spin them out, striking her in the abdomen. She shrieks out in pain but doesn’t falter, and her minions scream along with her as if they feel the same pain she does.
“¡⬥︎♒︎⍓︎ ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♎︎□︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎!”
I summon a halo of daggers that circle around her neck, throttling towards it. The labyrinth stops spinning around me as her head totters off her body, a sickening thud echoes as it slams into the ground below. I wait for her body to fall behind it and leave a Grief Seed in its wake, but nothing happens. Without warning, the doves are all sat in a circle around me, staring at me with wide eyes, no longer cawing. With one step forward, they follow me without breaking formation. One step back, the same. I’m almost too preoccupied with the doves around me to notice the witch raise her arm without a single sound, and bring it back down to her thorax. The doves’ eyes follow her arm’s movement, and if doves could smile, I swore they did before focusing back on me. A beat of silence followed before the doves mimicked the movement of my daggers a few moments before, closing in on my body. I sail upwards and send a barrage of knives down towards them. Detached wings flutter to the ground and the doves are left wriggling on the floor.
They shouldn’t decompose so quickly but it reeks of rotten flesh already. I feel like the witch is trying to manipulate the environment to restrain me in any way possible and I’m not going to lie, the smell is getting to me.
“If the head won’t work, maybe the heart will.”
I don’t pay any attention to the new swarm of doves I see barreling towards me from the corner of my eye. A yari takes shape above me as I raise my hands, and I funnel it towards the witch’s exposed heart. This time, the doves and larvae immediately disintegrate, and the stench ebbs away.
Her body keels over this time, but I make sure to send another dagger straight into her head of a ribcage. The labyrinth falls around me and I’m back in the outskirts of the city’s streets. I snatch the Grief Seed from off the ground and cleanse my murky soul gem. It’s scary that it’s the first one I’ve gotten in a while.
The fresh wind ruffles my locks, the city’s breath washing over me like a sigh from God herself. There are some scattered lights in the distance, few awake in the 13th ward of Mitakihara. It's too late into the night for me to be out any longer. I decide to just head home. My body glows aquamarine as my magical girl outfit disappears, and my school clothes re-materialize. The humming from the power-lines ring in my ears, and each step I take is deafeningly loud in the stillness of the night compared to the chaos from before.
The trees cast an eerie shadow on the pavement, and I hear scuffling, and I still for a second, before opting to ignore it. The witch fight did put a drain on my body, but nothing that would affect me greatly, all thanks to being a magical girl. Despite that, I still just want to sleep. Sleep is what keeps me from going completely insane.
I made a wish I thought was perfect, and now I pay the price everyday by fighting witches and attempting to avoid my inevitable death. I wished that I would be freed from my parents. Every children’s story teaches you that wishes are finicky. Every word will be taken literally. What you say you want is exactly what you’ll get. I didn't realize my wish would just make them forget who I was, erase me from the family, but not take my siblings with me. I was suddenly a magical girl, and couldn’t reverse anything I had done. Too many days passed, and my siblings mustered up the strength to run away. I keep thinking that if I had just stuck through the abuse with them, that if I had never met Kyubey, maybe I would have been able to leave with them. No one knows where they are, including me. Recalling the day I learned they were gone made tears well up in my eyes because I know there’s no reality in which it isn’t my fault. They could have come with me if I wasn’t so selfish. If I wasn’t only thinking of the pain I felt in that moment, and not of the pain we were all experiencing.
I take a deep breath and try to compose myself.
I crawl up the steps to my apartment, fingers lingering on the doorknob. I push the door open, Kyubey’s red eyes glaring in the dark, staring at me from the ground.
“Move.” I kick him to the side and sink into my mattress. Every attempt I’ve made up until this point to calm down is for naught. One glance at the picture of them on my bed-side table pushes me over the edge and I sob. Soul-wracking sobs, chest screaming in the pain I knew they felt as they ran through the city streets, lungs heaving, limbs burning and face hot and prickly and painful. I feel like I can’t breathe, and I wonder if that’s how they felt everyday. I don’t know how far they could have ran, or if someone else had taken them. I couldn’t even keep them safe, and that’s what’s killing me.
Kyubey climbs onto my bed beside me.
“Incubators never cry or scream or experience pain, but the pure energy expelled from the whole of humanity’s emotions is quite the feat. It doesn’t make sense however, to continue to cry over what has been done, does it? It was long ago.”
I almost stop crying out of disbelief and anger.
“That’s the thing, Kyubey! It’s been two years and I can’t find them! Surely that’s something your omnipresent mind can understand.” I speak with my voice dripped in bitter venom, the sarcasm in my statement clear.
“Time has passed. Human bodies are weak, so either they’re dead or alive. Isn’t that just how things are here?”
“Shut up! Honestly! Please just shut up!” It feels like my chest is burning as I thrash my limbs around aimlessly, not even properly aiming for Kyubey’s body.
“You normally have great aim. It seems like for every human, emotions cloud judgment and accuracy.”
I sit up and conjure a knife before Kyubey can predict what I’m going to do with it, and aim it straight at his neck. He’s pinned up against the wall, blood dripping from the puncture, the light draining from his eyes. I climb over to his body to take the knife out. He falls to the ground with a wet plop and then everything is finally silent. Maybe he’ll leave me alone for a while.
I fall back onto my bed with bloody hands. I already know a new Kyubey will deal with the mess in the morning.
When I get to school the next day, my body feels as if it weighs a million tons after the stress of crying myself to sleep. I make a soft thud as I slump into my seat.
"Good morning!" I jump a little at the sound of Madoka's voice.
"Oh, good morning," I stumble a bit over my words as I greet Madoka and Sayaka. They both are standing next to my desk, having a seemingly interesting conversation that I can’t seem to pay too much attention to. Sayaka’s animated and waving her hands around as Madoka seems to be sheepishly smiling back at her. Her pink ponytails bounce as she giggles at whatever joke Sayaka had made. I smile back at the both of them because they just have that warming effect on people, no matter how hard you try to wallow in your own sadness.
Miss Saotome stumbles into class with a glare in her eyes. Madoka nods at me as if to say goodbye for the time being and drags Sayaka to their seats, as class is about to start. Everyone settles down and takes out their class materials as Miss Saotome takes her place at the front of the room.
“I have something important to discuss with all of you today. Make sure you pay attention."
She slams her foot on the ground and everyone faces forward, thinking maybe today we’ll have a real lesson.
"Should a sunny-side up be hard or soft?!"
And with that, my pencil goes away along with my attention. I swear the whole class groaned the second those words left her mouth. I look down at my notebook and scribble nonsense in it just to seem preoccupied. Today’s gonna be a long day.
"Hey." I jump again and swear lightly as Mami's voice rings through my head. Maybe if I had slept better I wouldn’t be as jittery.
“Yes, Mami?"
If I replied a bit late or seemed startled in my mental reply, Mami didn’t mention it. "I’m going witch hunting later today. Wanna come?"
I ponder for a bit, and tell her I'd think about it. I think I’m too tired to deal with that again today. I still need to catch up on homework, and pick up more shifts at work. Even though we’re not supposed to text in class, I slyly pull out my phone and keep it under the desk, away from the teacher’s view. My manager texted me my schedule earlier but I only work three days this week. It’s definitely not enough to keep up rent by myself, so I text him back asking for any shifts he could spare. Just then, Miss Saotome says, "Let's welcome the new student, shall we!" I wonder when she got tired of ranting about eggs.
Despite the gasps of excitement I hear coming from everyone’s mouths, I don’t glance up to look at who it might be. That was until I heard this one sentence that stopped my heart.
"I'm Homura Akemi."