My next stop was the most complicated insofar as it was the only place I'd never actually visited before, and even entailed going to a part of town I wasn't particularly familiar with: The island's center of government, wedged awkwardly amidst the more profit-oriented sections of the town's core. Without knowing what you were looking at, you could mistake it for nothing more than a square of homes and office buildings - the Viceroy's estate was barely fancier than my grandmother's house, and even the colonial office itself looked more like a large, somewhat-regal post office than the kind of structure one tended to associate with an administrative center. The Kutuyan and Itanese flags (depicting a stylized green spiral and a golden fish respectively) were hanging beside the entrance, but that entrance was just a regular set of double-doors that fed right into the street, and there were no unique architectural fixtures like a protruding dome or fancy roof. It was just a boring wooden building.

About the only thing that distinguished the area was a bronze statue of the Kutuyan king Amaoshikoto - the man responsible for ordering the colony's foundation - accompanied with a commemorative plaque explaining the circumstances behind the event and how the island had been rechristened 'Itan' after his son, who had later been killed during a palace intrigue at age 12. Neither looked like they'd been polished recently.

I remembered hearing a story once about how, during the foundation, the settlers had come upon a serene songbird nesting inland with a unique mutation that gave it striking red and green feathers. Thinking of this as a good omen, they'd decided to capture the bird and present it to the prince as a ceremonial gift. But upon arrival in the royal palace, the creature had become so distressed from the journey that it had been in a state of illness and panic, resulting in it pecking madly at the prince as soon as it was released while defecating and urinating wildly. I chose to believe this recounting even though it was probably apocryphal.

In any case, the building I was actually here for - located in the corner of the square, at the terminus of the street which hosted most of the island's financial services - was even less spectacular than that: The Itan Registry and Archival Office, a two-story structure that looked like someone had taken a giant grey brick and painted windows and a door on it. This was where most of the government record-keeping in the city took place, which would hopefully point me towards my ultimate destination.

Honestly, it was ridiculous that I even needed to do this. Most places had converted their archives into echo format decades or even centuries ago. But like me, Itan was what it was, and would not be anything else.

I locked my bike up against the gate outside, then entered, finding the interior no less grim. Old, stained wallpaper enclosed an environment that seemed almost deliberately engineered to be claustrophobic; various wooden service desks were fed into by a dozen sets of wooden railings for queues, yet most of said desks were vacant, rendering the space useless. The only chairs were metal and uncomfortable looking, all three right by the entrance, and there were too many clocks; a big one on the wooden framing that shadowed the desks, but also smaller ones on each of them individually, plus another household one on the left, beside a stairwell. This was a place where I was sure it was possible to be very, very miserable.

Fortunately - presumably on account of some circumstantial or seasonal factor, or maybe just because there was much less demand than whenever the place had been built - when I came there was almost no queue at all. Just two desks, one of which was currently occupied by a visibly elderly woman talking jovially to a younger man who seemed to be on friendly terms with her, and another staffed by a bored looking girl with a black ponytail and chiton who was leafing through some documents. After finding the correct path, I approached the latter.

I stood at the counter. She didn't look up.

"Hi," I said.

The woman didn't look up from her papers, addressing me with obvious disinterest. "Hello. What can I do for you?"

"I'm, uh, looking to find a particular grave," I said uncomfortably.

Oh yeah. That's what I was doing.

She furrowed her brow in mild irritation, reaching her hand over to a logic bridge behind her, up against the wall. "Can you give me the name of the deceased?"

I bit my lip, then told her.

"And their DOD?" she added.

I frowned. "Deeohdee?"

She peered at me properly for the first time, making a skeptical face that seemed to suggest she thought I was an idiot. "Date of death," she clarified, slowly.

"Oh." I bit my lip, feeling accordingly stupid. "Sorry, I don't know. Sometime in early 1396."

"Not super recent, then." She sighed to herself. "Well, it sounds like an uncommon name, so maybe we won't need the exact date anyway." She leaned her head against her hand. "This'll take a minute."

"Sure," I replied, nodding.

After that, she was silent for about 90 seconds, presumably reviewing the information through their system. I held my hands together anxiously, listening to fragments of the conversation the other pair were having, which sounded like celebrity gossip.

This was the idea that had been the genesis for this entire venture. If I saw my own gravestone - my gravestone - and managed to process it as such, surely that, at least, would other my past self and brute force my self-perception into resetting; to see the 'category error', so to speak, that it was making. It probably wouldn't be that simple, but it would be a start, a way to harrow myself into the right mindset.

'That person is dead.' 'I am alive.' Those were the principles I needed to internalize.

But like I told you, this plan also went wrong essentially instantly.

"We don't have a record for a burial under that name within the last 50 years," she stated bluntly. "Are you sure their funeral was conducted here?"

I blinked sharply. "W-What? Oh. Uh, it should have been..."

She asked me whether I'd had next of kin on the mainland who might have received the remains and performed the ceremony instead. (I was so thrown off I didn't think to correct her that there were, in fact, no remains.)

"I... I don't think so," I said awkwardly.

Was it possible that the city had managed to contact my-- My old self's dad, and he'd decided to perform the ceremony wherever he was living instead? It didn't seem out of the question. As a kid I'd eventually convinced myself he was just a selfish asshole who'd never even cared about me and just used his breakdown over my mother's death as an excuse to cut ties with a liability, but it's not like I'd known the guy in any meaningful sense. Thinking about the situation again as an adult, his feelings were probably more complicated. Maybe he'd felt guilty for leaving me behind, but had just been too grief-stricken and afraid to handle being a single parent, with the shame compounding over the years. Maybe right up until the end he'd planned to reconnect. Maybe when he'd heard I'd gone missing, he'd been overwhelmed with guilt and held a proper funeral as the only way he could imagine coping.

I mean, yeah, he had joined a radical iconist group, and had spent our last conversation emphasizing how he was glad that I - an at-the-time seven year old - was being raised by a heterosexual Rhunbardic couple. But becoming a bloodthirsty identitarian didn't mean you were incapable of love. I mean. It probably didn't.

"Hold on," the woman mumbled at me, sounding a little annoyed. "I'm going to check something."

"Oh, go ahead," I told her.

But in those uncertain few moments, I allowed myself to consider even more fantastical scenarios. What if, for example, my old self hadn't actually died? Samium had told me the process was lethal and described it as an 'extraction' of my pneuma, but it wasn't as though I had any definitive proof of it having happened that way. In many ways, the whole scenario of him needing to sedate and transport me to a still undisclosed location was quite suspicious. Maybe the stuff about needing to physically crack open my brain had been a lie, and he'd just copied my pneuma, dumping my old self back where he'd found them unceremoniously. I had absolutely no reason to believe this was the case, let alone evidence to suggest why, or that it was even possible... Yet still, I couldn't say definitively it was impossible.

I tried to imagine it-- The idea of my old self just out there, living a separate life. It felt simultaneously liberating and horrifying on a visceral level. What would it be like to talk to them? What life would they have made for themselves after all these years, and how would they respond to the news of my existence? Would I murder them on the spot for what they'd done?

I bet she'd still see us as Shiko, no matter what we told her, a part of me mused. We were never able to look at her rationally or really listen to a fucking thing she said.

I snorted to myself. That was a darkly amusing thought. If nothing else, it would make an even cleaner break than reminding myself of my own death.

But another idea flashed through my mind, too. What if, instead, my old self had never existed in the first place? That I'd been Utsushikome and only Utsushikome all along, and had just been brainwashed by Samium in service of his plan? Given false memories of a life that had never even happened?

Or maybe Samium had never even been involved, the whole thing having just been a delusion I'd had; an imaginary friend taken too far. Nothing but 'thoughts'...

Just entertaining that concept, it felt so wonderful I can barely even describe it. Because if that were the case, there would be no sin to cleanse myself of in the first place. I wouldn't need to feel guilt or change myself because I wouldn't be an imposter. I would just be Utsushikome; fully, unambiguously, completely. Not an irredeemable life-stealing monster. Just a person with funny ideas in their head-- Or a victim, even, whose condition was the result of a great wrong done to them, or a mental illness that had been inflicted by fate.

And then... I would be permitted to feel any way I wanted. I could be angry about the fact I'd never be normal, self-righteously bitter about the way my mind had been twisted and warped by unnatural forces. I could be honest - in sentiment if not strict fact - with my friends and family, and make myself truly vulnerable before them, accepting their love without having to beg for their forgiveness. And I could define for myself what being 'me' meant, choosing which parts of my false self to internalize not from a perspective of needing to save particular parts, but with my own comfort in mind.

It was strange. Just imagining it gave my body a feeling of palpable lightness, like setting down a brick I'd been carrying for as long as I could remember. I felt a twinge of euphoria that almost made me tear up on the spot.

It was a beautiful fantasy. A world where I could be myself. A world where I'd never existed in the first place.

Why not just have it? A voice asked.

You don't need the answer. Just tell her to stop, and leave the building. Then for all you know, it'll be the truth.

I smirked. The fourth demon never really went away, no matter how much one knew its advice didn't actually work.

"Oh, I see what happened," the woman eventually said, her eyes narrowed slightly. "They did what's called an FOAC."

"Effohaysee...?" I asked, a little concerned that this was becoming a running bit.

"Funeral of administrative concern," she once again explained, her tone becoming mechanical. "Basically, if there's a situation where there are no remains to dispose of and no relatives of the deceased who declare an intent to buy a ceremonial plot, the state holds a purely 'administrative' funeral where the death registrar notes and respectfully eulogizes their passing in the archives in addition to their usual death record, while also reaching out to a priest for a written blessing if they have a declared religion. This is done in lieu of a physical funeral."

I processed this. "You mean... You have a record of the death, but there's no gravestone."

She nodded. "That's correct."

My expression became vacant. I stared into space.

I'm not sure, really, why I was surprised. What did I expect to be the policy? For the government to pay for a plot, headstone and empty casket, when there wasn't even anything to dispose of, to anchor the situation in humanitarian concern? Again, this was Itan we were talking about here. And it's not like I could think of anyone who would pay for it, setting aside the aforementioned dad-fantasy. The Isiyahlas certainly didn't care.

I suppose I'd just made a mindless assumption. Dead people got gravestones. That was how the world was supposed to work.

I guess all your pessimism back then was right, huh, my cynical side said. There really was nobody who cared about you, after all.

I didn't know what to think at this point. It'd been one thing for the house to be gone, but where the hell would I even go from here?

"If you're a friend or relative, it's been well over the five-year statute for belated claims, so I'm afraid it's too late to do a recorded burial through the formal system," the woman went on. "If you want to commission a grave site, you'll have to go to find a cemetery that takes private clients and talk to them directly-- Although, since there's no body, there's obviously nothing stopping you from erecting the memorial on your own private property." She leaned back in her chair. "Was there anything else?"

Was there?

"I..." I trailed off, feeling at a loss. I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes, trying to clear my head. "Could I-- Could I see it? The record you talked about?"

The woman flattened her lips into an expression of impatience. "You mean the registrar's note?"

"Yes." I nodded.

She clicked her tongue. "Under normal circumstances, I could offer to make you a certified copy for 2 luxury debt, but unfortunately our printer is currently out of order. Could you come back another time?"

"Actually, I'm only here for a few days," I replied, in a tone that somehow managed to come out stubborn and uncertain at the same time. "Could I just see the original record...? I don't need to take it with me or anything."

Her expression made it clear I was on the verge of becoming her enemy. "I don't know what your reasons are, but you're not going to get anything satisfying from it. It's just their basic details and a paragraph of template text."

"S-Still, I'd like to see it," I reaffirmed. "If that's allowed."

The woman grunted. She glanced around the room and, after seemingly confirming there was no excuse she could give about other pressing matters, slumped her shoulders in resignation. She smacked the paperwork down on the desk, then rose to her feet. "Come with me, please."

She opened a little wooden doorway in the counter and beckoned me to follow, which I did. We walked to the corner of the room and passed through a heavy metal door, whereupon I was greeted by the sight of a much larger yet similarly depressing chamber. This one was filled with what looked like hundreds of brassy filing cabinets, ordered in neat rows all the way along to the windows at the far side. They were labelled, but with a system of initials and numbers that were incomprehensible to me.

The woman led me down the second row of the things to one marked "MRE-2", right at the far end. She opened the top drawer, then leafed through the content for almost a minute, before finally producing a sheath of parchment.

"Here you go," she said. "Make it quick."

I took it from her, examining the text.

She hadn't been kidding. There barely was anything to see. All the document contained was my name, date of birth, the names of my parents, and literally four lines of the most generic summary of my life possible. All it said was that I was born in Itan and attended school here, that I'd sadly 'gone missing and been presumed to have passed away' at a young age, and that I'd 'honored Kutuy with a life lived honestly and diligently' and would be 'well-remembered by my community'. Oh, and the formal day my death was declared as February 23rd, 1404. I guess it took longer than I expected when you went missing.

Well-remembered. Using that as part of the template felt like a punchline, because obviously someone getting one of these wasn't well-remembered. The whole point was that no one had given a shit at all.

Looking down at those words, I felt none of the finality I'd hoped for, only a sense of empty resentment. I hadn't mattered. My life had no definitive ending, because things no one was invested in didn't need endings. They could just be dropped unceremoniously and left in a state of eternal ambiguity, like a bad book.

Looking at that sheet, for the first time in a long time, I felt viscerally like Kuroka. I thought to myself that the world despised me and was my enemy, and thus any action was permissible reciprocation, that I owed nothing to anyone. For just a fleeting moment, what I'd done felt just again.

But quickly, that feeling passed, leaving only a cold sadness.

"Are you done?" the woman asked.