16 - No Regrets

Sakuto stared at Jackal. It was an awkward reunion, but they both felt comfortable around one another. Jackal was sitting on emptiness, and he got up and approached Sakuto, who was still laying down. Sakuto sat up.

“Somehow, even you made it here...I’m honestly not surprised.” Sakuto sighed.

“Bet ya missed talking to me.” Jackal said. “You somehow look more messed up than before. Looks like I got you real good in the eye.”

“Had a strange dream, that’s all.” Sakuto said. “What have you been up to?”

“Nothing much. The last thing I remember was some selfish prick killing me and now skulking over it.” Jackal chuckled. “Ya know, if I killed you, I would also be pretty sad. But there would still be a difference between us.”

“And...?”

“I’ll just keep it simple and lay everything out on the table - I wouldn’t have wasted my time crying over my regrets.” Jackal smirked. “Not because I’d ignore them, but because they wouldn’t be there to begin with.”

“...huh?”

“See, I realized this one thing about myself when you cut me in half.” Jackal continued. “The reason my name was Jackal wasn’t because it was a kickass name, it was also because in the eyes of an average person, I lived with the morals of a fucking animal.”

“Took you a while to realize that.” Sakuto said.

“I tried to look for some final words too,” Jackal said. “In the end, I remembered that in all those books and shows, people always talk about their regrets before dying or risking death. When I wanted to say some corny stuff like that, I realized that I really had nothing to say.”

“Just think about it, Sakuto.” Jackal said, leaning a little closer. “A lot of the shit that’s clogging up your arteries is a result of your past holding you back. Now would you want that? The Sakuto I know wouldn’t let that slide.”

“The Sakuto you know-”

“Is right in front of me.” Jackal smiled, interrupting him. “Why are you letting your regrets drown you like this? All they do is pull you deeper into the abyss, they’re like dead weight. You’re better than that.”

Sakuto didn’t know what to respond. At that moment, he understood Jackal, and Jackal understood him.

“It just makes sense. How do you think I was able to live the way I did?” Jackal asked. “Because I didn’t let anything hold me back. Doesn’t matter what happened. No one can travel into the past and undo the shit they did. Am I making sense?”

“You never felt bad for anything you did?” Sakuto asked.

“That’s different. I’m talking about thinking over things that have already happened.” Jackal explained. “Thinking and analyzing things is a good thing. But regrets are, like I said, just dead weight pulling you down. That’s what kept my heart beating all this time, and I didn’t even know how to put it into words until my last breath. The power to truly act upon your soul and never let it drown you.”

“And that’s why...” Sakuto’s eye was wide open.

“We are different from others, Sakuto.” Jackal said. A small spark appeared in his right palm. “From one madman rejected by the world to another, we are different from everyone else. While they corrode their brains over shit that happened in the past, we get to run around free, and we run faster than them. Way faster. Even if we’re high up on the mountains.”

“God damn it, you even called your divine acclamation just that.” Jackal laughed. “You got it in you, you just gotta bring it out. You opened my eyes back then, you’ll manage to open your own now.”

“Having...no...regrets?” Sakuto asked.

“You’re a soulful.” Jackal said. “And a pretty strong one too. Here. Get a grasp of it. Get your sense of self back. Leave it all behind, and embrace yourself. Live however you think is right. Trust yourself and never let go of yourself. The Sakuto I fought was a true soulful, just like the Sakuto right in front of me. All you need to do...”

“...is to awaken.”

“What... is this?” Sakuto asked.

“Now then...”

“ ✦ Let’s make a deal. ✦ ”

Jackal extended his hand. His crimson eyes shone brightly.

“ ✦ I’ll become your shadow. ✦ ”

“ ✦ And in exchange... ✦ ”

“✦ You’ll live with no regrets. ✦ ”

Without a second thought, Sakuto, who felt a rush of enlightenment and exhilaration, took his hand. The moment he took that vow, he felt a spark in his chest. It felt like a missing puzzle piece was finally put to place.

Sakuto opened his eye. It was in the school’s hallways, in front of the nurse’s office’s entrance. It was a setting familiar to him. Those familiar faces were blocking his way again. And Sakuto, who managed to regain the color in the grayness of his iris, swung his fist.

A powerful slashing shadow knocked him away.

“Holy shit...”

“So this is what it feels like?!”

“Shadow manipulation...”

Sakuto recollected the shadows into his hands, playing around with them as if they were playdough. He formed a fist with them and punched gaping holes through the rest of the guys in front of him. He reformed the fist into a series of blades and chopped them apart.

He recollected the shadows into one spot in his palms and fired off a concentrated arrow that pierced the last one in the head.

“My...God...” Sakuto said, amazed. “This is what he meant by becoming my shadow?!”

He tried to focus, but he couldn’t control any of the shadows in the environment. His own, however, felt smooth like water. He felt a rush of dopamine that almost made him forget about his previous predicaments.

“This feels similar to how I got Oskar’s electricity.”

“This version of shadow manipulation doesn’t use the shadows in the environment as fuel, it draws them from somewhere in my soul...it's like...it's gotten an upgrade too..."

“This is fucking amazing... it feels so great to have my soul prowess back, I never thought I’d miss it so much...”

Sakuto slowly let himself fall on his back, but the shadows captured him, and he sank inside of them. The sky was now covered in dark clouds. It was no longer colorless. It no longer felt hot and overwhelming outside...

Sakuto popped out a pool of shadows and found himself in the classroom. The boring class was still ongoing, and all those familiar faces were doing everything they usually did.

He quickly unleashed two massive shadow tentacles and started trashing the classroom - dismantling every unlucky human that he saw. The teacher tried to rush at him, but Sakuto punched him in the gut with enough force to make the latter throw up blood.

“You know what? I deserve to have some fun.”

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Sakuto grabbed the kneeling teacher by his hair and ripped his head off, tossing it away like worthless garbage.

“That’s what you get, you fucking jokester. You think all those group projects you gave us wouldn’t come back to bite you in the ass?”

A pair of students rushed into the classroom, charging at Sakuto. Sakuto dipped into the shadows and popped up right behind him, firing off a shadowy arrow to kill one of them. The other one looked a little too familiar to him.

“Just getting to do this...not to civilians during war, but to these assholes that were behind that dreadful loneliness...”

“You...” Sakuto grunted.

“You were the one who spread the rumors about me back then, weren’t you?”

“This is gonna feel so nice.”

“Part of me wishes it wasn’t a dream.”

“Let’s go, Jackal.” He told himself, manifesting a chainsaw with his shadows. He rushed at the student, who now appeared to be fearful and backing away. Sakuto turned him into a mushy pile of blood, bones and meat, laughing ecstatically as he did that. Despite the victim’s body almost completely losing its shaped, he kept

“Fuck everything, this feels so nice...”

“Having no regrets...and living for myself...”

“It all makes sense.”

He propelled himself into the air, breaking through the multiple ceilings of the school building. He lingered in the air with a pair of shadow wings, and soon began flying over the campus - unleashing hellfire in the form of small shadow daggers to everyone below.

“This is the most fun I’ve ever had...”

“Smallkuto? Where are ya?!” Sakuto called out, scouting the area. He suddenly felt something in his chest.

“Found him.”

...

Smallkuto was walking around the school building, awkwardly strolling outside the classroom, counting the seconds that felt like centuries and hoping that no one sees him like this.

He had his school bag on, he didn’t sleep well that night, and he looked rather sad. Everyone else was laughing in the classroom, he kept suspecting that the laughter was directed at him. The word that he detested being called was “weird”, and he knew that the stares his peers thought were invisible, were all directed at him.

But he heard a whooshing sound. Sakuto broke into the building’s wall, descending next to him.

“What? What are you-”

“Soulful power.” Sakuto said, crouching again. “Come on, get on my back.”

“Why?”

“I got to the part where things start getting better.” Sakuto said with a concerning smile. He wanted to fly away, but something forced him to stay.

“What are you waiting for?” Smallkuto asked, on his back.

“Where’s your classroom?”

“It’s over there...” Smallkuto said. “You remember it, don’t you?”

“Of course I fucking do.” He broke through the door. Everyone’s attention was on him.

“What are you doing? They’ll pay attention to us...they only do bad things when they do it.” Smallkuto said, alarmed.

“They’re all just kids...”

“But they carry so much maliciousness within them.”

“Basic games and taunting that traumatizes someone is entertainment for all the others. And if you don’t play along, you’ll become the next target.”

“That system of social norms...”

“It’s all so...”

“...soulless.”

Sakuto felt something click inside of him. He walked into the classroom and his shadows flared up behind him. One after another, he began mercilessly putting the children down. Ripping their limbs off, cracking their skulls on the class furniture, using the shadows to cut them down and crush them with overwhelming force. He was especially cruel to the children who were especially malicious towards Smallkuto, he even took a few moments to extend their instant deaths into painful, almost torturous murders. Nobody survived.

“I told you, things only get better.” Sakuto said, parts of his uniform covered in blood. Smallkuto was simply silent, clinging to himself, but he smiled.

“Thank you...” Smallkuto said. “I wish I was like you, I would’ve done that a while ago.”

“Hah, don’t wish for things like that.” Sakuto chuckled.

“Come on, you should get out now.” Smallkuto said. “I think you’re ready to go.”

“But if I get out, wouldn’t you be alone?” Sakuto asked.

“No. You make me happy.” Smallkuto said, smiling. “I don’t feel as alone anymore.”

“Then let’s have some more fun before this ends.” Sakuto said, dipping into the shadows again.

...

“Hey, Sakuto, did you do the homework?”

“Yeah, here.” Sakuto said, handing his classmates the notes with his homework. “Hah, I hope we get good grades...”

“You’re weird.” Another classmate said.

Sakuto, upset, stood up from his desk and punched his classmate, but nothing happened. He got shoved back, falling on the floor and crawling back.

He stood back up again, trying to fight to the best of his ability, but nothing worked. So instead, he chose to run away. He still had both eyes on his head, but both of them were blind.

“Get outta here, you weirdo!” Another classmate laughed.

“I don’t wanna be here anymore.”

“I have so much to do at home. No wait, I have to leave. I have to avoid them and leave. There’s only 5 minutes left, and then I’ll leave, and they won’t be with me anymore, they’ll leave me alone...”

“Yeah, that’s all I want right now-”

But the classmates were following him.

“Where is he running? He looks like a clown.” One of them said.

“Yeah, a weird clown.” His classmate laughed.

As Sakuto tried walking away even faster, in front of him, a pool of shadows appeared.

Sakuto got out, shoving the shadowy chainsaw into Sakuto’s body, eventually splitting him in half. Smallkuto was on his back, cheering him on.

Then, Sakuto turned his attention to the classmates. He charged at them, shoving the tool into the back of one and pulverizing his organs. The other one ran away, so Sakuto attached a long shadow string to the chainsaw and swung it like a kusarigama, decapitating him with one accurate attack.

Sakuto looked like he was about to experience an orgasm.

He kept going forward, in the classroom that was getting more and more stretched out and losing its shape. He sawed through all the familiar faces he saw, when he got tired of the chainsaw, he transformed his shadows into a blade, and used it alongside his own soul-bound weapon. He slashed and ripped through everything and everyone he saw.

“And you...?” Sakuto turned his attention to a face he only recently got to know. It was the jock that he had a brief confrontation with outside the university campus.

“Please...don’t...” he retreated, but to no avail. Sakuto caught up with him, wrapping shadowy tentacles around his feet and ripping them out. He later conjured a pair of blades in his hands, and started stabbing him.

He went for multiple piercing attacks at first, destroying his ribcage and lungs. Then, he carved an opening on the stomach and transformed his blades into sawblades - and he peppered the jock’s intestines until they became a dirty red sludge. The jock was still alive, by the way, somehow kept alive by the crystal despite the grueling torture. After destroying the digestive system like that, Sakuto reshaped the blades into knuckle covers and began bashing the jock’s skull into the ground.

“You’re everything that’s wrong with this world.”

“A monkey so incomprehensibly stupid it hurts my fucking head trying to visualize your line of thinking.”

“You were out to prove yourself, huh? To compete with similar dumbasses like you...”

He kept on punching. The skull was already broken, parts of the brain were leaking out of the face and the nostrils, and the face was completely unrecognizable. And yet, Sakuto kept going. Hammer fists, elbow strikes, he imagined he was training on a dummy and practicing his ground-and-pound.

“Fucking soulless...”

“Enjoying yourself?”

“I know that voice.” Sakuto said, not stopping his assault. “Who the hell are you?”

“You’ll meet me soon.”

“Can’t tell what this is, but... at least I can fight back now. Holy shit, I feel alive...”

“I can say ‘Regretless Soulscape’...and really mean it.”

“I’m free...”

At last, he stopped in his tracks, once there was nothing more left to beat up. He looked around, and the surroundings began to fade away.

He found himself on the school’s roof, but the area seemed larger than he remembered. And instead of being dull gray, the platform he stood on was glowing a little. His joy began to wear off.

He heard a familiar voice.

“Did you have your fun?” Oskar said, approaching him.

“Yeah.” Sakuto replied. “I’m guessing you’re here for the same purpose as everyone else is.”

"Yup". Oskar smiled. "To convince you to live."