Why was she doing this? There was no telling how much trouble she'd get in if her father found out she was sabotaging another's spiritual healing. Sabotage - she threw away the word. She wasn't sabotaging anything. Lillie wasn't as sick as those who had harassed Mizune that day. She had demonstrated she had at least some concept of a moral compass. Besides, how would having a Pokemon plushie with her impede her growth in any way? And her diary - wouldn't it only aid her to have a log of how far she'd come?

  She steeled herself. Deep breaths. Deep thoughts. Count to ten... then back to one... then recite the alphabet... the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence, zero, one, one, two, three, five... and so on. Nature hates entropy... nature lives for order. Everything happens for a reason. Lillie washed up on that beach for a reason.

  Because the west hall played host to the Children's most sensitive documents, there were several built-in defenses to ward potential trespassers away. The door to the entrance was marked "JANITOR'S CLOSET" - someone unaware of the hall's existence would simply dismiss it at first glance and never think of it again. The atmosphere in the hall had been carefully crafted to be as oppressive as possible: the doors were all the color of stormclouds and distinguished from one another only by the white block lettering across each one: E101, E102, and so on. The hallway, claustrophobic and poorly lit, called to mind the photographs of the catacombs underneath Lumiose City she had once seen in a book. They kept the temperature in the wing several degrees below the rest of the building's, and Mizuki rubbed the gooseflesh on her exposed arms.

  E130. E130 was the disposal room. The moment her eyes landed upon it she lunged for the door handle and flung it open.

  The first thing to catch her eye was the bag sitting innocently atop the motionless conveyor belt. She put her hand on her heart and sighed in relief. The open incinerator gaped at her like a wild beast's jaws, ready to gnash and swallow and digest at a moment's notice. Reflexively she peered into the abyss, and nothing stared back.

  As she took a step forward her foot collided with something soft. Stray pieces of latex - she blinked. A popped helium balloon? She wasn't aware they came in jet black.

  Only then did she notice the collapsed man beside the dais. His yellow safety helmet had fallen off and rolled a little ways away. On his left hand was a single black latex glove, with a slight protrusion over his ring finger.

  Had Mizuki had a companion with her, she might have felt a morsel of shame as she reached into the man's pocket for his faux-leather wallet. Alone she knew none. There were a few categories of items she expected to find as she undid its clasp: a driver's license, a credit card, a roll of personal photos - but the empty wallet subverted her. The flip phone in his pocket surprised her less; it was the same model as her own. No Poke Balls, of course.

  "Hey," she said, keeping her voice low and gentle, as if she were speaking to a wounded Pokemon. "Sir? Are you..."

  She took his hand in hers, intending to check his pulse - she didn't need to. His skin was pale and waxy, as if no blood had ever flowed inside him.

  She stepped back, letting the useless limb slip from her grip and flop to the floor.

  "Oh my - oh my - "

  There weren't any signs of injury on him: no bruises or gashes indicating a struggle, no crimson pool staining him red. Whatever had taken him had done so without a trace, like a thief in the night.

  She looked around. Then to the far wall. Only an analog clock and a brick of a landline phone clung on. According to the clock, the service had started a few minutes ago. It would be quite some time before anyone else would stumble upon the fallen worker.

  There was also a back door leading to the outside, where the bag had been initially brought through. She took a cursory look through the small rectangular slit and saw fragments of an old storage shed framed by a cluster of forest. Despite the snarling maw churning on the other side of the parallel wall, a chill passed over her, and she gripped the door handle to prevent herself from toppling over.

  As she seized Lillie's bag, her hand brushed over something warm. She didn't have the time to investigate its source. No time for thoughts or for tears. If she hurried away now, she could forget it; ascribe it to a stray daydream she'd tangled herself up in. She would.

  The devotees' chanting had managed to penetrate even this deep into the hall, fervent and explosive, as if they'd had it bottled up for a lifetime and had finally been granted release.

  T, T, T, tuh tuh tuh

  "TEN-SHI-RO! TEN-SHI-RO! TEN-SHI-RO!"

  He wouldn't be happy with those, she mused. If you could still hear your own thoughts through the maelstrom of adoration, it wasn't loud enough. Absently she noticed the clicks of her sneakers on the tile - mi-zu-ki! mi-zu-ki! - and grinned despite herself. Someday.

  As she skipped down the east wing, a question entered her brain - which room, exactly, was Lillie's? While the atmosphere here may have been much more hospitable than that of the west hall's, the silver doors were still laid out in a similar pattern. Mind-numbing to catalogue. The room number was particularly essential to her because there were no locks on any of the residential doors to prevent her from barging into the wrong room. The presence of locks would be a silent, but significant, concession to the dark forces of fear and mistrust. It was wrong - the Children of Starlight had nothing to fear, and every last one could rest easy with the knowledge they were sleeping in the safest place in all Alola. Every last one.

  Her instincts called her to swat at her ear, thinking a gnat must have been calling her name. Her nose hairs curled at the strong scent of iron, and she looked down to discover she was ankle-deep in some unidentified red sludge. The incoming tide swelled around her, and by the time she had reached the very end of the hall where she believed Lillie's room to be, it had risen to her waist.

  The liquid sloshed and guttered almost to the height of the bag, and she wrested its strap off her shoulder and placed it atop her head. The act may have been moot, however, because as soon as she opened Lillie's door the liquid flooded the room and ruined everything. The mattress rose to float atop the viscous substance.

  At a peculiar sensation of surreal touch, she glanced down. A blotch of the liquid had splashed onto her lower arm, and it rippled and rearranged itself into a muddy clump of graphemes.

  >hello mizuki

  She ignored it for now and crossed the room to the closet. She hung the bag on a lone wire coat-hanger, where it dangled like a baby Chimchar clinging for its life to a tree branch above floodwaters. The chimes of tinnitus in her ears increased in pitch, forcing her to swallow back acrid bile. Tinnitus like Sun and Hau jeering at her over something trivial and inane. She grit her teeth.

  "Sorry, my friend," she declared to the stain, "but I'm the captain of my own soul." Then she went to exit the room.

  The door would not open.

  She shook her head, wiped her hand on the adjacent wall, and jiggled the doorknob once more.

  The door would not open.

  She summoned every last morsel of strength left in her to yank the handle as hard as she possibly could.

  The door still would not open.

  "Mizuki. You need to admit it to yourself."

  A man was dead and she was locked behind a door without a lock. There was a voice in her head and it was quite sweet; familiar, even. Like the taste of Nomel cake. Sort of yearning, she thought. But defiant. A note of sourness buried under a mountain of sugar.

  "I'm a friend of a friend," the voice started, "and it's plain to see you need help. You're struggling against yourself. I have but a simple proposition: once you accept the truth instead of thrashing against it, I'll open the door."

  "I'm not afraid of you," she spat, "whatever you are."

  The voice wilted. "I'm aware. But you're assuming it's 'fear' I'm intending to evoke. Really, your kind requires a sort of compassion..."

  "Compassion?" She kicked the door to no avail. "If you had any compassion for me, you wouldn't want me to get in trouble for no reason. Now let me go."

  "You don't really want to return to the service, do you? You don't want to join the army massaging your father's ego. You're too much like him, and you're heading down a dark, dark path. But it isn't too late for you to turn back still."

  "I wish I were anything like my dad," Mizuki said. "I wish I were virtuous. I wish I - I wish I - "

  In lieu of finishing her sentence, she delivered another violent kick to the door. Cursing herself: failure. Failure, failure, failure. She reached into the bag at her hip and extracted a Poke Ball.

  "Come on out, Harmony! Break down this door!"

  "You know just as well as I she won't be able to do anything," the voice taunted as Harmony materialized into the ocean of blood. The Popplio cast Mizuki a quizzical look as she fought to stay afloat in the thick liquid, but performed a series of Pounds on the door regardless.

  "Come on, Harmony. You can do this," she said. She knew it as fact. Harmony repeated the attacks again, and again, and again, and Mizuki joined her. Yet as the voice had predicted, nothing happened. Several dents and dings had formed at the critical points their limbs had struck, but there was no sign the door would budge.

  Finally, Mizuki took a step back, wiping her brow as if she had just given some deep and perseverant effort. In reality, it was only that a throbbing in her hand cried and cried at her like a colicky Mirai. Amid this tempest of anxiety, she had reverted to using her forbidden left hand to pummel the door.

  "I'm trapped," she said. "We - I'm - we're - "

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  She laughed at the walls white as nothing. She laughed at her hands red as hellfire.

  "I can't stay here," she said, trying to force herself into submission. Racking her brain for potential explanations - perhaps she'd wandered into a Munna or Musharna's dreamscape and would have to negotiate with it to allow her to leave. As much as she hated the thought of groveling to a Pokémon of all things, she feared she may be left no other option. "Just tell me what you want with me."

  "I've already told you. If you admit it to yourself, I'll let you leave. Stop struggling."

  The walls were closing in on her. The height the fluid had bubbled to triggered her claustrophobia; her vision swirled with triangles of red, blue, and green, as if she had held her eye to a kaleidoscope. The oblivion in her mind sucked away her willpower and held her thoughts in its vice-grip.

  Held her thoughts - she steeled herself. What a silly notion. She was Mizuki, and her brain was all her own. She would think about what she liked, and would punch straight through any such block. Neurons and synapses tore asunder against the unstoppable forces of her flying fists. She could flatten time into a number line to view it in its entirety: the farther back she went, the fuzzier her imagery got.

  Go back. Go back. There was something bedded deep in those shadows. A flicker of memory. An aftershock deep below the earth, from the eternal war between light and dark.

  "You're so close. Nearly there..."

  There was... there had been... her father, and he had taken her by her left hand. The red one.

  Why had her hand been red that day?

  Harmony's squeak tore her from her thoughts, and she cursed under her breath. The Popplio had struggled over to the floating mattress and settled herself atop it. Mizuki was tempted to join her, but feared it would sink under her weight.

  All out of options.

  "I can't - " her throat tightened, and she gasped for air - "I can't be here like this, I told you, I can't, I can't, I'm serious! "

  Think. Think. She again tried to recall her calculations. Six or seven years ago. The 'zero' on the memory line, the moment she'd achieved true awareness, was the day her family had moved out of the compound to their house on Route One; she was hurtling far past it into the negatives. Back then, the compound had been even more sterile than it was at present. They had only just started to hang the kids' art, but none of Mizuki's because

  Because I was…

  >clearly the product of a profoundly diseased mind

  She flinched as the memory snapped back like a rubber band stretched too tight. "Harmony," she mumbled, as if reciting a mantra. "Harmony, Harmony, Harmony…"

  Get a grip, Mizuki.

  She directed her words to Harmony, as if it were she who had put the thought in her brain. "That's easier said than done." The Popplio continued to cower.

  "All you need to do is stop lying to yourself," the voice said, exasperated. The red fluid had restarted its slow ascent, and as it reached her shoulders Mizuki flailed for the mattress. Her hyperventilating slowed not because she had calmed down, but because the liquid's pressure forced her lungs tight. Harmony barked in despair, as if to echo the voice's wishes.

  "You're a demon," Mizuki snarled as she scrambled up onto the mattress. She could only hope now the liquid wouldn't swell high enough to either crush them against the ceiling or submerge them under. "My family loves me," she declared, "and I love them back, and I write with my right hand, and..."

  Her heart softened as she met Harmony's big pleading eyes, but her back brushed against the ceiling and the world fell away. She clawed at the comforter, glowering into the glistening abyss below.

  "Everything's fine here, and it always has been. I've done everything I can to keep myself pure. You won't ever get me to disobey him, so go back to whatever hell you crawled up out of!"

  M, M, M, mi mi mi

  MI-ZU-KI! MI-ZU-KI! MI-ZU-KI!

  “What’s my name?”

  MI-ZU-KI! MI-ZU-KI! MI-ZU-KI!

  “What’s my goddamned name?”

  MI-ZU-KI! MI-ZU-KI! MI-ZU-KI!

  “WHAT’S MY GODDAMNED NAME??”

  "Mizuki?"

  Mizuki blinked her eyes open to see Lillie's face, knotted with concern, inches away from her own. The blood had all drained away, and with the pressure gone, she could breathe again. For a moment, the silhouettes lurking behind Lillie appeared flat and faceless, as if they had come from the old book of paper dolls she had played with as a child. Then Mizuki's vision cleared, and they filled out into three-dimensional shapes. Her family.

  "I'm sorry," she pleaded as soon as her voice returned. "I'm sorry. The door got stuck, and I couldn't get it open."

  I'm too weak, was the implication, and she wanted to swallow back her words.

  She wiped away unreal tears and uncurled herself from the fetal position. Lillie came to rest her hand on Mizuki's forehead, but to her surprise, she found she didn't want to swat it away. Harmony nestled in the crook of her elbow, and the combination of the two points of contact triggered in her the desire to return to her uneasy rest.

  "Mizuki," Dad said, "we need to talk."

  The lack of visible anger in him didn't mean anything. Dad held mastery over himself in the way her wretched self so hopelessly lacked, and thus would never betray such significant emotion.

  Lillie moved aside as he took her into his ever so gracious embrace. She pawed at his long sleeve, acquiescent, but still avoided his eyes.

  "Don't take her away yet," Minami whimpered, now changed back into her plainclothes. "I wanna show her my shalingua!"

  "Soliloquy," Miki corrected.

  "Yeah," Minami said, flopping down on the floor before them. Lillie helped Mizuki upright as the group made space for the famous Gilgamesh death speech. It was from the end of the play, after the Almighty Rayquaza had defeated the titular hero in battle.

  "O You beast, great and tyrannical in equal measure! It is an honor to be cut down by You! The deep and merciless torrents of samsara tug at me, O Beast, but I know our paths will, uh, cross again…"

  Minami froze, staring up at her audience with big coal-black eyes.

  "For the heroes," Mizuki recited.

  Minami nodded. "Um, for the heroes of past and future, in all their legions, pale against You, O arbiter of justice! The sky cracks open against Your will…"

  She lolled her head back, releasing a string of guttural noises in her attempt to mimic a death-rattle.

  "Um, if I may ask," Lillie said, brushing a stray hair behind her ear, "isn’t it actually a monologue? Because he’s addressing Rayquaza."

  "That was great," Mizuki said, refusing to indulge Lillie's pedantry. This was a white lie. An acting career was not in the cards for Minami.

  Minami sprung to her feet. "Thank you, Mizuki! Now we can play 'Go Fish'!!"

  The girls filtered out of the room, leaving Mizuki with her parents and Lillie. Mizuki cast her gaze down at the very spot where Minami had lain. The bristles of the white and pristine carpet furled into themselves like flower petals, but scratched at the undersides of her now bare feet like thorns.

  "Mizuki, why did you lie to your mother?"

  That was Dad: always going straight for the jugular. Mizuki brought her knees to her chest, rocking herself back and forth.

  "I thought I had left something in here," she lied. "I didn’t know if Mom would let me go get it if I told her the truth. I know it was wrong."

  She hadn’t meant to allow such helplessness to leak into her voice, and as much as it wounded her to expose it, she hoped it would elicit sympathy from her parents.

  "It sets a terrible example for your sisters, Mizuki," Dad said. "You need to be the best role model to them you can be. They're looking to you to show them the light."

  Mizuki could only stare down at her left palm. Tracing the creases; the scar and stitches of some long-forgotten childhood injury. The big M .

  "Your mother and I will discuss this further," he continued. "Go play with your sisters for now. You too, Lillie."

  "Um, Mizuki? May I ask you something?"

  Lillie hovered by the roll of paper towels in the restroom, waiting for the other girl to finish washing her hands. Mizuki lowered her head.

  "Sure."

  "Why -" Lillie blushed. "Why were you crying before?"

  "I wasn't," Mizuki said blandly; automatically. It felt like the truth, so it was. Frustration sparked in her at Lillie's visible apprehension, but she ever-so-graciously pushed through it.

  "You know, you didn't have to go check on my bag. If that's what you went there for."

  "I know," Mizuki said, and a bit of her came back, like the return of feeling to frost-nipped fingertips. "But I had to. I'm a good person."

  The pleasant scent of lavender hand soap felt to her a reward for being a very good person indeed. The warmth of the water pleased her and she washed them until her hands stopped quaking and the skin cracked and stung with needle-pricks. Lillie held out her own hand for her to take as the two exited the restroom, but Mizuki shook her head.

  "I don't want you holding my hand."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it’s sensitive," Mizuki stated, as if Lillie should have known this. She should have.

  Lillie solemnly rummaged through the deck of cards Mom had given her, pulling out two jokers. "Hold these," she commanded with an uncharacteristic authority.

  Mizuki obeyed. As her parents guided Lillie away to call the professor, she slumped against the cold cinderblock wall, examining the cards. Two Mr. Mimes, stylized in the manner of a medieval painting, leered up at her with wild eyes and ghoulish grins.

  What's even the point of a joker, she thought. She fingered the cards’ edges, wishing to tear them to shreds, but something stayed her hand. She stared at them as a Pyroar might into the eyes of a pinned Girafarig, and only released her grip when the others came back for her.

  In the recreation room, permitted only to the council members and their families, there were a few dingy couches, a foosball table, and an old-style kitchenette. Miki, Minami, and Misao gathered in a circle on the rug, cards in hand. By now the adults all knew and her parents had bolted on veneers of nonchalance, feigning interest in her sisters' game. Mom, pallid and willowy, clasped her hands together, on occasion glancing longingly back at the oven.

  "Do you have... em..." Miki rifled through her cards. "Any sixes?"

  Misao smiled wickedly. "Go fish!"

  Mizuki, with full view of Misao's hand, could see that the girl had not only one six, but three. But she said nothing.

  Over on the other side of the room, Dad had taken out his Lucario and began to run his hand down the canine Pokemon's snout in long, hesitant strokes. They didn't speak, but she guessed Lucario knew too. Lucario knew all.

  Before she knew it, she had gotten up and wandered over to them, tugging at her father's right sleeve. His glassy stare turned from the Pokemon to her.

  "Hey, Dad."

  "Yes, dear?"

  She took a deep inhale. Paused.

  "Do you love me?"

  "I love you as I love all things."

  It was grace, she told herself. It was so gracious of him to love her in spite of her being sinister; in spite of the doubt contaminating her.

  "Dad, I…" she swallowed. "Somebody tried to tempt me today. In my dreams, I think. But I…"

  >need to kill the part of myself that questions

  "But I held fast to my beliefs. I wouldn't ever betray you. I love you too much."

  "Mizuki," Dad said. Like a museum intercom reminding you it was twenty minutes to closing. Depriving her of the validation she so desperately craved. So desperately deserved.

  "I know you're stressed," she heard herself say, and stood down. She wiped a dribble of saliva from her lower lip. "I’m sorry. I know your heart's crying, but..."

  Her hand was cleansed. The thorns pricked her as she rustled through the rosebush of memory, but she pressed on.

  "I remember. The finger paint."

  Dad said her name once more. Mi zu ki. みずき. He put his hand at the base of her neck, and she melted like a shard of ice against his body heat. "Mizuki. Your mother and I have spoken together, and we think it would be best for you to stay here at the compound for a little while. Just so you can get your bearings straight."

  >just so you can remember what you are

  But I need to practice, and my strategy guides are all back at the house -

  But I don't want her to see me like this. She doesn't deserve this either -

  But I can't stay here one moment longer. My heart breaks more with every passing second -

  "I - I -" she wanted to struggle but she was already a puddle at his feet. "Yes, Dad. You know what's right."

  He nodded and let go. She felt naked when Lucario looked through her, aware of her lurking insecurity; she turned away to her other family members, still struggling to reconstitute herself.

  The cake was ready, but even as hunger scrabbled at the pit of Mizuki's stomach, she couldn't imagine digging in. Mom was no master baker - her cakes always crumbled to bits at the slightest touch, and stuck to the roof of the mouth of anyone unlucky enough to consume them. And somehow, in their own insidious, vexing little ways, crunchy bits of eggshell always found their way inside. All this, despite her following the instructions on the back of the box to the letter.

  Now Mom looked on as an oblivious Lillie drew the serving knife through the cake. "I don't usually enjoy large gatherings," the girl was saying, "but I was very fond of the music tonight. It moved me, I felt. And your interpretation of the Epic of Gilgamesh was... inventive, to say the least."

  "It's our very own," Mizuki said as she pulled out a chair, "so it's better."

  Only when Lillie raised an eyebrow did she catch her mistake. She had meant to say, ' and it's better'. But either way, she was right. She remembered what she was. She was Mizuki Kazakami, daughter and beloved heir to Tenshiro Kazakami, child of the stars.

  How sweet the sound.