Capítulo 1183: Chapter 119: Tangze Asuka
“Gululu…”
“Gululu…”
With vacant eyes, Tangze Asuka sank into the pool enveloped in the aura of death, like an abyss.
Above, the intense sounds of battle, the hysterical screams, and the irritating, hateful cries of a baby all drifted away bit by bit from her ears, like peeling an egg, piece by piece, layer by layer.
She remained motionless, descending, allowing strands of crimson mist to ooze from the wound on her abdon. The lighter blood fog rose upward while the heavier she sank downward. At this mont, it seed as if she was walking on the road to death, distancing herself from everything above, everything that caused her to die.
What was she thinking at this mont?
Regret? Anger? Sadness?
Perhaps nothing at all…
Tangze Asuka felt unexpectedly numb, as if accustod to it, as if she didn’t care at all…
At this mont, she only felt cold, darkness, and silence.
So cold… so cold…
In the company of seemingly endless cold and silence, Tangze Asuka thought in such a dull and monotonous way.
“Dong… dong… dong…”
Simultaneously, in her ears, there ca the sound of a wooden fish, seemingly distant, yet uninterrupted.
Even though it was as if she was hearing this sound for the first ti, Tangze Asuka found it especially endearing and familiar.
Ah…
I rember now, it’s the sound of a wooden fish from my dad’s temple.
When this thought appeared, not only the sound, but the sense of suffocation at her nose disappeared as well. As a subtle, pleasant Buddhist incense diffused, her vision quickly beca bright again.
At this mont, what appeared before her was a tiny room, rely a few tatami mats wide.
On the cool tatami, she knelt by the sliding wooden door, staring blankly at the howork on the small table in front of her.
“Thus have I heard… there was a ti… Buddha in Savatthi…”
The small TV with snowy static, the recitation sound faintly audible from outside the door, the wooden fish sound seemingly close in her ear…
“Asuka…”
Outside the door, a calm female voice suddenly erged, exploding in Tangze Asuka’s mind like thunder, slowly bringing her dull expression back to life.
She kept gasping, her body shaking as if it were sifting grain. While tears kept falling from her eyes, her brown pupils shrank to the extre, slowly turning to look at the tightly closed sliding door beside her.
Beyond the wooden and fabric-covered door, a shadow of a woman with perd curls sat quietly outside. Her facial outline seed to watch Tangze Asuka from a distance, calmly gazing at her.
The woman’s calm, ordinary female voice resonated again from the shadow. She said,
“Asuka…”
“Mom… Mama…”
Tangze Asuka’s face was filled with terror, streaming with tears. She stared straight at the shadow beyond the door, her mind blank.
“Asuka… open the door…”
“But… but Dad said… not to open the door…”
“Dad said that…?”
“Yes.”
The wooden fish sound resonated endlessly. The woman’s shadow outside the door remained motionless. After a long pause, her voice, carrying a smile, resonated again,
“…Asuka, wasn’t it you who closed the door?”
“?”
“Ah, that’s right…”
“Kaka… kaka!!”
As the woman’s voice continued, the entire door trembled suddenly. Though no one touched it, it seed to be perpetually opened and then blocked by another force…
“Did you forget? You closed it with [Magic], didn’t you?”
Tangze Asuka’s eyes suddenly contracted, and the next mont, the wooden door could no longer contain its tremor, crashing open in front of her, exposing the darkness outside.
At this mont, Tangze Asuka’s consciousness continued to sink. She seed to return to the skyscraper-filled, glitzy streets of Tokyo, back to that vast yet extrely cold house.
The house had no lights on, because Mother said turning on the lights would waste electricity.
A small girl in elentary school uniform sat dazedly in the corner of the living room, clutching her schoolbag. Her face was pale, shivering slightly because of the prematurely chilly winter temperature.
“Gululu~”
On the wall, the clock slowly ticked toward nine. The little girl’s stomach kept rumbling, causing intense cramps, reminding its owner that it was very, very hungry.
But Mother hadn’t co back yet, and she didn’t want to give her any money, but she was so hungry, so very hungry…
The little girl, her hunger causing stomach pain, couldn’t think of any solutions. She glanced around the empty room, unable to resist breaking her mother’s rule—she took one of Mother’s clothes strewn across the sofa and draped it over herself. Then, casting furtive glances, she approached the television, hesitating for a long, long ti before finally pressing the power button…
Oh dear, turning on the TV and wearing the clothes Mother only wore in sumr made the little girl’s heart race and filled her with panic.
However, Mother wouldn’t be ho until ten in the evening, so she could simply turn the TV off beforehand and she wouldn’t find out…
The TV subscription hadn’t been paid, and there were only a few channels unfamiliar to the little girl. Among them, one was broadcasting an animation.
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