Chapter Text
“No, no, no, please….”
“Tsukasa? Tsukasa, wake up!”
“Please, no—!”
“TSUKASA!”
Tsukasa sucked in a terrified breath, his eyes bursting open. “Saki?” He called out meekly, hastily scrambling up from his lying position on the bed, his forehead and neck drenched with cold sweat. His breathing was ragged, his heart was thundering, and his vision was bleary, he literally needed a few seconds to recognize the dim room he was in and remember that he wasn’t alone in it.
Saki’s here. As long as we’re together, we’re safe, we’re safe, we’re safe—
Right. He was in a two-beds room that he shared with his younger sister, Saki, at an inn on the outskirts of the forest. They were on their way to their next job in a small town at the foot of the mountains when night fell, and so they decided to rent a room in a nearby inn and rest before continuing their journey tomorrow at first light. Better not risk walking through the forest when the sun wasn’t there to be your ally. This way, they could get some good night sleep and still arrive at the town on time by midday. Everything was going according to plan. They were safe. He was safe. There were no houses made of cakes or breads or candies. There were no witches.
At least, here, there weren’t.
Tsukasa blinked rapidly, trying to shake the sleep off his watery eyes. It was because of the sudden brightness, he convinced himself, and not because the nightmare he’d just had was bad enough to make him bawl. The oil lantern on the bedside table was alight, Saki had left its flame on for the rest of the night. They both couldn’t sleep in a foreign place without a small source of light.
“We’re safe, we’re safe,” Saki, his little sister, chanted under her breath, as if voicing Tsukasa's thought could make it truer. She quickly moved from her own bed to his and put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay? Nightmare again?”
Tsukasa nodded absentmindedly, still in a daze. “Yeah….”
“The same one?”
Tsukasa didn’t reply, but Saki obviously already knew the answer.
She sat beside her brother and pulled him into her arms. “I’m here. We’re in this together. We always are, aren’t we?”
Tsukasa buried his face in his sister’s shoulder and nodded. “I’m just so tired, Saki. It’s been eighteen years, and still it haunts me. It feels like everything just happened yesterday. Mother and Father. That house. That—”
Saki shushed him. “It’s because of the wounds.” She stroked her brother’s hair. “The wounds that would never disappear.”
Tsukasa didn’t have an answer, because he knew that she was right. Both he and Saki carried the same wounds from those fateful days, just in different forms. Saki’s wounds weakened her. She was the strongest person Tsukasa knew, both physically and mentally, and the wounds left her with an Achilles’ heel. They made her dependent on medicines that she must take every day to keep on living.
Tsukasa’s wounds ate him from the inside. It crippled him and swallowed him with guilt, fear, and bitterness mixed into one, haunting his sleep, driving him half-mad.
Tsukasa shook his head to whisk the thoughts away. “Argh, sorry, Saki. I made you worry again, didn’t I?”
“You’re the only family I have left. It’s my job to worry about you.” Saki smiled.
He ruffled her hair with a half-hearted smile. “I know.”
Saki then climbed onto his bed, crawling under the blanket with him. “Move aside.”
“No need to sleep here with me, Saki—”
Saki gave him her distinctive sharp look that left no room for arguments. Tsukasa silently scooted aside, sharing his space on the cramped bed with Saki like they often did since they were little.
After Saki was comfortable, she tidied up the blanket to cover both of them and leaned on his shoulder. “What happened in your nightmares?”
“Not much different from usual.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Saki had listened to him recounting his nightmares countless times. Living up the tale alongside him herself eighteen years ago made Tsukasa certain that he didn’t actually need to tell her anything for her to know, and yet, he still did. Everytime Saki asked about his nightmares, he would tell her, she would comfort him, and then they would hug each other to sleep, sometimes while crying. This time was no different.
The nightmares always had the same premise: little Tsukasa and Saki, holding hands with their father, running on the footpath through the woods. Their father would bend down to say something inaudible, his face obscured by shadows, and then he would disappear. The scene dissolved.
This time, Tsukasa and Saki held hands, walking deeper into the forest, until they found a small house in a clearing—a house made of all sorts of breads and cakes and cookies. As children, naturally, they approached it.
Then the witch appeared, and things could only get worse from there.
She imprisoned Tsukasa and Saki inside the godsforsaken breadhouse. As the older one, Tsukasa felt responsible to protect Saki. He was loud and energetic, so he used that to make himself stand out and distract the witch. The witch fell for his charms. She only looked at him and nothing else.
She bestowed him the great honor of being her slave.
The witch put Saki in a cage. Tsukasa, she chained to a pillar like a dog. She would unchain him sometimes, just so he could do her biddings: cleaning up the house, heating up the fireplace, feeding Saki a lot of meat and candies. If he dared ask or act up, the witch would punish him—beat him up, burn his legs with a heated crowbar, or, one that still terrorized Tsukasa to this day and made him want to vomit just thinking about it, whip him. The witch would force Tsukasa to take off his clothes and ordered him to stand facing the wall, then whip him up over and over until his back was nothing but a bloody slab of meat. Saki, who witnessed it all, could only scream and cry from her cage. None of them could do anything even after the witch snuff out the lantern to tell them that the day was ending, Tsukasa lying unconscious on the floor and soaking in his own blood.
The scars from the whippings were still on his back even now.
Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. The witch had started to develop a disturbing habit of licking Tsukasa’s blood after punishing him. That was the moment Tsukasa realized the witch was planning to eat them. That was why she made him feed Saki so much, to fatten her up. The blood she drank from Tsukasa was merely an appetizer, the wine she drank before the main course.
After that, his dreams moved faster and ever-changing, it felt like running through liquid. Tsukasa prepared the oven like the witch ordered him to. She opened Saki’s cage and dragged her toward the fire. Tsukasa somehow managed to trip the witch, and she, instead of Saki, stumbled into the burning oven. It seemed that despair and survival instincts were strong enough to defeat even the most terrible monster.
He and Saki then watched hand in hand as the witch howled and rolled in the fire.
“A happy ending, then?” Saki said, like she always did everytime Tsukasa finished the retelling of his nightmares.
He shrugged. “In a way, I guess. It shapes us, makes us who we are now.”
Saki hummed, as if in agreement. “Tsukasa… if you weren’t a witch hunter, what would you be? Or… if there were no witches anymore, what would you do then?”
Tsukasa blinked. “I’ve… never given it much thought before,” he replied honestly, stroking Saki’s hair while staring at the ceiling, imagining a future so far away, so unreachable. He wanted to settle down for once, of course. When this was all over, when the world was witch-free, he’d like to have a taste of a normal life, maybe start his own family, but for now…. “I actually really love the traveling part of our job. The thrills, the suspense, the exhilaration and gratitude of the people after we killed the witches that terrorized their hometowns and villages, so maybe… I’ll become a member of a traveling performers troupe?”
“Oooh, that’s a good one. You always seem to be the center of attention everywhere we go, so becoming a performer suits you,” Saki teased.
Tsukasa rolled his eyes and nudged her playfully. She was talking about how the witches they hunted usually came after him first before actually attacking them both. “What about you?” he asked.
“Hmm… ah, I want to play the organ in a tavern!”
“A bard, then.”
“Perhaps.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Sleep, Saki,” Tsukasa said at last. “We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.”
Saki nodded and yawned. “Do you think we’re going to encounter a witch in the forest?”
“We’re crossing it when the sun’s up above, but because the forest is their domain, then… well, probably. But, honestly, don’t you think it’s better that way? All this walking without any actual action is starting to make me antsy.”
Saki chuckled. “Honestly, I think so, too.”
The siblings talked for a little while longer until they both fell asleep, and this time, with Saki snuggled up beside him, Tsukasa didn’t dream.