In his dreams, Shin could never escape the memories. Even knowing that everything he saw was a figment of his imagination, a part of a long-abandoned past, he couldn't move a muscle to stop it.
He was a child again—barely six years old—standing in the kitchen of his home. A broken mug was lying in front of him, and his hand was bleeding over it. The cut stung, but Shin barely felt it.
The white of the ceramics and the red of Shin's blood… It looked like a shattered skull.
"Shin! Can't you at least drink without creating me problems?!" his mother shouted. "Now look at this, I have to clean things up! And what's this? Are you bleeding, Shin? Do you plan on bleeding to death so everybody would blame me for being a terrible mother?!"
Shin shook his head wordlessly. He didn't know what to say, but in his desperation, pleaded anyway. "I'm s-sorry… I didn't—" He sniffed.
"Don't you dare to start crying, maggot!" His mother hissed, leaning forward. She raised her hand, and Shin flinched. He bit his lip to not cry, because he knew that the threat was real.
"I don't know how I have the patience to deal with you every day. Not only you ruined my youth, you ruined every single day since then," the woman said, glaring at Shin.
Her eyes were pitch black all over, with only green pinpricks of pupils.
Shin just wanted to wake up. But paralyzed by this dream, where past and present bled together, he couldn't move at all.
"How pathetic," his mother said. "And this person calls himself my creator. Without your demon, you wouldn't have lived for two hours here, even if you didn't know your name."
Shin stared at his mother's face in shock and saw his own instead—the face of his 24-year-old self. Suddenly, he was standing in the bathroom of his apartment, in front of a mirror.
His reflection smiled at him condescendingly.
"What? Did you think I won't find you, now that you have a Contract? We are connected, you and I. You know it. Who am I? What is my name?"
With a start, Shin understood. The dream wasn't just a dream anymore.
"You are the Fourth God. You are Aratanawaru." He frowned, trying to put together what he knew about his powers and not give in to emotion. "You still can't do anything to me besides talking. What did you come for?"
"To talk, obviously. To look at you face to face, boy. Can't say I like what I see."
Shin snorted. "At the moment, you look exactly like me."
Aratanawaru's grin didn't falter. "Oh, you bite back. I expected you to plead with me to return you back… But you'd know better than anyone that they would fall on deaf ears. Hmm… I suppose you have some moxie, after all."
Shin's frown deepened. "If you only came to study me, do it in silence."
"Oh, I'm done with this. Since you are not a complete maggot of a human, I will give you a warning. Kugutsu Shin, the writer of stories that gave me life, the person who gave me my power and my name—you are cursed to die."
Shin didn't flinch at the words of his mother thrown at him and didn't flinch at the 'warning'. Instead, he raised his brows skeptically.
"Really?"
If he was truly cursed, then Tetsu would've felt something. Demons were highly attuned to magic of all kinds.
"Not by magic, but by the very existence you created, Kugutsu Shin. This world is still unfinished. Its laws are those of a story. In your story, the character whose body you now inhibit died off-screen. You changed his destiny, but the weight of it stayed, bringing you to your doom. The world will kill you, and I won't have to lift a finger!"
'Is that why I met that toilet slime? Not just poor luck, but a curse? But why would Aratanawaru warn me about it… Just to gloat? He was a human once—of all four gods, he's the only one that still thinks like a human. It's not impossible.'
"Don't be ahead of yourself," Shin said darkly. "I killed everyone who attacked me so far. You are on top of that list, too."
Aratanawaru laughed with Shin's voice, and the mirror cracked. Shin's face in the mirror multiplied, with each divided part having its own reflection—and they all laughed. More and more cracks appeared in the mirror, and each made the laughter louder.
When it cut off, Shin held his hands clamped on his ears to escape the terrible sound. The silence after it was just as deafening.
"Try. Just try it," Aratanawaru finally said with utmost calm. "Prove that you are worthy of being my creator, just the smallest bit."
And then the dream cut off and Shin became aware that he was lying asleep on a couch, with TV murmuring something nearby.