a hollow perception (Fate/Zero × Demon Slayer)

fifth: a hollow perception - resurgence

some of the parts of this chapter is rushed because I wanted this to be done. Apologies in advance!

(Chapter unedited. There will be mistakes.)

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fifth: a hollow perception – resurgence

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Kanao listlessly walked around before finally arriving in a certain bench in the park. Thoughtlessly, she approached it and sat, facing the setting sun in the distance, watching the horizon of orange splash with some hue of reddish pink. She has been walking around during day, no longer opting to walk under the mana-filled night, finding it suffocating now. Seven days later since she sensed that muted explosion, the unseen Holy Grail War is still running. With mysterious incidents happening during night, especially the mind-boggling bridge incident that everyone should be talking, but the memories of that night was all but nonexistent.

And she wasn't spared of that mind wipe. The most vague memories she can conjure was Kotomine Kirei reaching out to her and a soothing warmth on her head, and then she was back to her boarding house, awake and confused how she got there.

Perhaps he did something to make her incline to not walk during night, Kanao assumed. She heard a certain magecraft about it. Suggestion, or perhaps something similar to that. She doesn't know how it precisely works, but she knew the effects. After all, Kanao presumed that the Clock Tower, or rather a certain Lord from Clock Tower had naturally applied it to her, which she had almost missed for how he did it to her. She can remember his smile when he saw her noticing what was happening to her.

No. Kanao casted it away in the back of her head. Not now. The suggestion of that... Lord was strange, she recalled, but they both had an agreement for secrecy. Not now, she told herself firmly, as a certain Truth was about to resurface. A memory of their conversation. To remind her. To make her remember what he told her.

Doing the Breathing Technique, she was able to calm Truth back to the Storage. For now, she is blank. An unwritten piece of paper. A smooth surface free of dirt. No thoughts, no worries. Nothing, free from everything. Free, of anything.

"Tsuyuri... Kanao?"

But a splash of ink dirtied the canvas.

Opening her eyes, she raised her attention to the person in front of her. Kanao stood up. "Matou Kariya," she greeted, bowing to him in courtesy.

"I see. So it was you," he said, which Kanao saw as disappointment.

"Were you expecting someone else?" she surmised, asking him bluntly.

"...yes," he replied hesitantly. "It... still made me impressed. That you can see what is going on with other people's thoughts."

"It is nothing amazing," she refuted. "I see that... you have gone through... a lot." She skimmed his appearance, of his white hair, of his thin figure, and his wrinkled face as if it was crushed in the left side.

"I did..." he said, defeated. "I have to do this or Sakura will..."

Kanao sharply turned at him. "Sakura is involved in this?"

Matou Kariya was silent at her side. Sighing, she sat back down in the bench, inviting him to sit, patting the space beside her. He mutely complied. "I'm... sure that you know that the old man is involved in this, right?" he said suddenly, whispering.

"I'm not sure what you are implying," she replied promptly.

"The Holy Grail War."

"You're..." she turned to him in surprise.