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YOLF:
Lubei

Not obsessed enough.

Bitter memories come rushing down like a river that's slipped from its shackles. It's true. The sardonic nun had a point. Perhaps in his last life Lubei was more like a demon king than he ever will be in this one. Is he doomed to always misread his surroundings? He doesn't want to acknowledge that. Everything so far has to have some value. He's fine with being a demon no monster aspires to be, if only he can do his duties right. And he realizes something, thanks to these thoughts. What he was feeling about her. Her wariness, this marrow-seated discomfort of expecting the world to blame her because she must deserve it, and any alternative is unclear at best, duplicitous at worst.

It hits a little too close to home for Lubei. He clears his throat. "Our respective demons may not be the same entities. Nor our gods." As for the rest, it is easier to answer. It doesn't fill him with vinegar.

"I am repaying my debts. I told you not to mind this kindness, because it is not my own. I'm merely the executor," he explains. But his eyes run from hers after, and he covers the shape of his mouth, lacking even a shitty fan to guard his expressions. There is a flutter of cold feathers at the edge of his vision; he chooses to ignore it. "And you looked miserable. Not by choice."

Umbra of Chaos:
Mai

She laughs. It's an awkward, throaty thing that soon breaks down into a slight cough. But a smile lingers on her face after. "That is a very foolish position to take, my lord. Would you say that a soldier who carries out the will of his master is blameless? Are his hands unsullied, no matter the crimes he commits?" Her hands gradually come together, and while her smiles diminishes it lingers. The slightest crack in a wall of politeness.

"If sin is a matter of one's own actions then virtue is the same. You cannot live under one while escaping the other. If we must judge ourselves, then we must keep an honest ledger, yes?" Her hands come apart, and her eyes are caught onto the way his shoulders bend under an unseen weight. How his hand guards his face from her, as if he was a noble lady in want of a veil.

And he sees the sympathy in his eyes reflected in her own. "It is hard to remember such things, I know. It would be better if it was more obvious." She draws her stained blade then, even as the gaze of the nuns fall on her like a hammer. She lays it across the table with all the grace it deserves. So it clatters and shakes when she drops it like a common tool. Her finger scrapes off a chunk of dried blood. "Like my sword. Everyone knows it is an ugly weapon by sight. They know it has taken the life from many men by the blood on it. But as shameful as I look, I will never be half as clear. Anyone who sees me would never know the evils I have committed unless I make it clear. I could live my life as shamelessly as I desire. So why is it that we desire others to see our sins?"

She looks at him, and her eyes are cold. They are still. Her gaze makes his soul ache with phantom chills, the emptiness reminiscent of a frozen eternity.

"We desire it," she begins with a slow intensity to her voice, "because we know that we are weak. We know we are cowardly. Because punishment awaits for me, my lord, just as it may for you. And I know that if I was not reminded I may very well run from it. I wish to be seen in all my unsightliness, if only so that their hateful eyes and barbed words can push me towards that punishment, towards redemption. And if we are anything alike, you will know that even that pain is fine. Because what we were before makes us sick simply to think about."

But her voice holds no dread, not even a trace of fear. It is almost airy, almost peaceful. "I've rambled, I know. But all of that was simply to tell you my understanding of the situation, my lord. There is no need to distance yourself from the good that you do." There is a pause then, and when she speaks again it holds all the certainty of a gallows victim. "It will not change your punishment, if that is what you face. It will not alleviate the slightest thorn of suffering. So if you will do good despite that, it will be the purest your kindness ever was. Because it will not save you."

YOLF:
Lubei

Lubei balks at her. It wasn't humbleness that motivated him, but he was ready to denounce a response that claimed anything of the sort. Not this. He barely pays attention to the blade, how it raises the hackles of everyone around them. His blood threatens to freeze over, but another voice keeps it flowing.

'Denying the good you do will not discount from your sins; denying yourself even the dignity of how you've changed will not alter what you owe.' His eternal shadow whispers.

Mai continues, and his throat grows tight, because this is so much more than he wanted to hear, but can't bring himself to interrupt. She holds his attention hostage as much as the scoldings of the raptor. If she knew every detail of the things he's seen and which await him, it would not feel more like knives. Indeed, it is like being seen, in all of its terror. What has she done, to be able to speak like this?

He wonders what she means, if punishment then, leads to redemption. If that was all, he should not be alive, should not have ever worried for penance. Should they not be ashamed? That is what their sentence tells them, what the brand for their crimes inflicts, whatever those may have been. If it's ambiguous, how can they know what to do with the temporary freedom of this life? It has nothing to do with his wishes for a birth he didn't choose.  Lubei cannot be satisfied if he does not see the length of his chains before they pull him down.

What he understands the least is how accepting she appears at the last of her argument. There is an important concept there. A revelation. It lies on the edge of his awareness, and he can almost make sense of it. This he knows, but he can't tell the shape of it.

'You wish to be demeaned,' the raptor says, sad and weary. 'Because you think there is nothing else for you; but that is not the meaning of this journey. Hearken unto my words - this was not compelled of you. Do you not wish for proof of the distance you have walked? It will not avail you to blame the self because it is less arduous than to look back with eyes purified and a mind opened. Bear with the repugnance. It has only ever been you.'

The demon glares weakly at the shoulder where it stands, as far as anyone else realizes merely angry at empty space. Shaking his head, he hisses for air.

The instant strains like a taut string, and Lubei raises his face to her. "How can punishment bring redemption? It is... compensation. But it is not amends, nor can it fix anything that is gone."

Umbra of Chaos:
Mai

Her smile is sad, but there is a glimmer in her eyes. She is not herself. In this instance, she is someone a tad wiser and much stronger. She is the sister who can tell this story, even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts. "Imagine," she begins, "two sisters. One is the moon and the other is the shadow. By her nature, the shadow cannot help but be drawn to the moon. Yet she is always lesser compared to her sibling. She grows to hate the moon, because the moon shows the shadow her own face. And the shadow hates herself more than she could ever hate the moon. But the moon is not free either. She is a mirror in the sky, and because of the light she reflects no one is interested in her true face. Not once has anyone thought to understand her."

She exhales then, a shuddering thing that makes her hands quake. "They suffer."

"One day, the shadow finds the answer to her suffering. So she kills the moon. She kills her father and her clansmen. She sullies her hands with the sin of kinslaying until they are stained beneath the skin. She embraces her own nothingness, and she never feels pain again. What punishment does the shadow deserve?"

Mai blinks away the tears before they can form, yet her smile is a sly and bright crescent. She shines like the moon. There is no room for an answer here. "One day, the shadow remembers what it feels to live, and she regrets her choice. Because she regrets, she becomes something human again. So she can be punished. The answer given to her is simple. Walk."

"At first, the shadow is confused. But she obliges the voice of heaven. She walks as the sun sets. She walks in the dead of night. She walks even as the sun rises once more. She walks as her sandles fray apart and crumble." The words become quicker, chained together by a rapid pace. "Her feet blister. They bleed. They are rubbed raw of skin. And she continues to walk. But then one day, she looks up and sees that her destination is no closer. And she remembers what it means to suffer again. She bemoans her fate. Did her regret lead to nothing more than empty cruelty? But that was not the case!"

There is a forcefulness to her voice, an intensity that is almost fearful to see. "She is asked to turn back instead. And behind her she sees herself when she began her journey. She fears this thing more than death, now that she can see it in its totality. She becomes impossibly glad that she has distanced herself from it, and yet she is still too close. Even if she cannot see her destination, she must hurtle herself towards it. It is a journey measured in the paces taken away from herself. So she keeps walking, even to this day. The meaning of this story may be different for you, my lord, but I assure you that it contains the answer to your question. You need only clarify the tale to know it." Her smile shifts into a neutral expression and the piercing quality in her gaze dulls. Yet something lingers in the air, like the heat from a coal taken from the fire. It will burn, even without light.

"Is punishment the steps taken from yourself, or is that redemption? Is redemption the steps taken towards your destination, or is that punishment? Once you answer, you will have solved the previous question as well, my lord."

YOLF:
Lubei

It is not such a strange story, in the broad strokes, and it is plain to him after the first act where she fits in it. It's no less horrid. Lubei keeps to himself the morbid question of how many times she has recounted it. He remembers driving a cousin to kinslaying for his sake, in his first life, and he's not confident he will be able to keep himself from mentioning it if he speaks now.

His fingers dig into the table, releasing splinters, as he is pulled between commiseration and an inexplicable fury for the suppressed sorrow under her eyes. The demon hears the echoes of Hell in her words, and he wants to scream before he's pulled under and silenced. And most of all, he hears the same plea, the same message as from his cursed phantom guide, and he feels sick to the stomach of riddles.

He begins to mouth words, then pauses. Shedding ice from the ugly lines furrowing his face, as he forces out a response. "To live modestly and pitifully, to accept judgement, to be struck down for every life I damned, all of these are simple. But I cannot trust my objectivity. Should I gamble eternity on the same thing that sent me to the depths of sin? Shit."

Lubei's voice is barely a whisper when he finishes, and it takes the shape of a confession. For an instant he doesn't know how they got here, where he is. But his raptor sits between the two, its croon soft and yet razored.

'Yet you must. It is not a trap, and it is not objectivity that you need, but reflection. Fear alone will take you from one uncertainty to another.'

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