After she left, silence fell heavily on me.
With effort, I dragged myself slowly. My body still ached, but the desire to see and confirm was stronger.
I picked up the small ceramic bowl in the corner. And there he was. Black eyes, narrow as a line, sharp at the corners, as if they had been purposely stretched to the side. They were not like my old round Western eyes. These eyes...
they were really dark as black ink, even a little artificial. A genetic mutation, perhaps? I thought to myself.
I continued to watch. Long, black hair, falling like horsehair. Shaggy strands of straw stuck to the ends. The thin face, the childish chin.
My clothes... a dark kimono, patched several times on the sleeves, with dried stains of dirt and blood. My eyes fell to my hands. They were small, calloused, with thick skin on the knuckles and dried sores around the palms. Training marks, I remembered.
Then a memory came.
A little boy with eyes identical to mine now. Crying in the dark, his dirty fists clenching the hem of his own kimono. Children's voices mocking, laughing, calling him "snake eyes." And he was too sad to answer, just biting his lip in tears.
My new pupils contracted on their own, as if my eyes were still reacting to the humiliation. Pathetic. I rubbed my eyelids until I saw red lines in the darkness—nothing would erase that weakness, but I would smother it in the future.
The weakness wasn't mine. But now... everything he was, everything he suffered, is trapped inside me. I can't erase it, but I can fix it.
I took a deep breath.
The smell of sweat and damp straw.
"I crawled back onto the straw bed and let my heavy eyelids drift closed. My mind was still racing, but exhaustion was stronger. After all, I had just come back from the dead.