She looked up, which was actually down. "You know, I should be 'mnjj,'" she said, shoving a rice ball into her mouth, "right?"
"Chew before you talk, would you?" I said, brushing off the crumbs falling on me. "Could you get down from there? I'm starting to feel dizzy."
"I asked if you know that I should be dead." She set her lunchbox aside and stood up lightly. "And by the way, I'm genuinely worried about how you're taking this situation so casually," she said, almost as if singing a melody, walking along the beam, step by step, headfirst, until she descended right beside me.
"You'd be surprised at how many things have made me question what's normal."
"Interesting... Like what?"
I took a breath. "For starters, for some reason, my neighbors, who I've never spoken to, decided to call the police right when I should have died. I ended up in a hospital I don't remember existing in this city, then a girl with huge claws forced me to shove a key into my chest, and somehow, I ended up here, ten years in the past." I finished, almost without pausing between words.
"Eiji... you realize that nothing you're saying sounds like something that could actually happen, right?"
"You were eating lunch upside down on that beam." I pointed. "On the list of things that couldn't happen in real life, THAT would be near the top."
"Not entirely, it's not something unreal, more like a matter of pers-pec-tive," she said, swaying her head side to side with each syllable.
"Uh-huh. What perspective?"
"Well, yours and mine." She replied, leaning slightly forward. She looked at me like I was stupid, the way a teacher looks at the slowest student in class.
Have you ever seen the walls of detective offices in noir films, full of photos and pins connecting all the loose ends? Exactly that was happening in my head. I could safely assume that I hadn't traveled back in time, just as I could assume that the person in front of me wasn't Anna. A twisted version? A jump to an alternate reality? The advantage of consuming so much fiction gave me the dumb ability to have multiple options for this situation.
"Can I ask you a few questions?"
"How many are 'a few?'" She asked, resuming her walk. Once again, her steps led her to the beam, slow and vertical steps, with a graceful spin when she reached the skeleton of the ceiling.
Once more, she was upside down. I knew she was looking at me, but I couldn't return the gaze. Something about her made me feel oppressed. Sure, she spoke warmly, but that was a façade, imitating how she thought Anna would be. To be honest, her presence was what threw me off, not her attempt to impersonate Anna—I barely remembered what Anna was like beyond her appearance.
"Three questions." I stepped closer to the edge of the beam and tried to take a step. As I had thought, there was no irregularity in the space around us, or else I would've been able to have a little fun defying gravity, too.
"Uhm... I'll only accept two."
"You're a real headache, you know..." I said, scratching my head, a small nervous tic I didn't even remember I had. "The clawed weirdo brought me here, I assume to stop Anna's suicide. Now, you're not Anna, so the 'hero game' falls apart."
"Haaa... what gave me away?" She almost asked it sarcastically, exaggerating her thoughtful tone.
I didn't answer. The question was dumb, and the answer was obvious, so I just stayed quiet. Sometimes the narrative needs a little push.
She dropped down in front of me, the distance almost nonexistent, close enough that I could feel her body heat. It was subtle, like a dancer's move, but the cracks in the tiles under her feet let me know there was more to her than just the ability to ignore gravity at will.
"I guess explaining things a little won't hurt, right?" she said as she unbuttoned the first two buttons of her shirt.
"What exactly are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious? What's the point of keeping an image that's not mine?... No matter how good it looks on me."
"Yeah, I get that," I said, grabbing her hand as she toyed with unbuttoning more, "but I don't think it's necessary to take your clothes off."
"Good observation, I see you're the type who doesn't like wasting time."
Though she gently pulled my hand from hers, she still felt threatening, much more so than the clawed girl. There was so much calm in her voice, but it transmitted the opposite, and my brain fired off warning signals one after another, as if a missile was about to strike me.
She brought her hands to her eyes, pinching at her lower eyelids. No, her skin wasn't elastic—she just started peeling off pieces of it, bit by bit. I couldn't do anything but watch silently, petrified. At that moment, Michelangelo's David had more mobility than I did. Blood splattered my face, thick, warm, as if it was raining directly in front of me while she tore away her lips, her torso, like someone removing a sweater when it's too hot.
I couldn't deny that it was a scene I hadn't even seen in the worst horror movies, but as strange as it sounds, I couldn't take my eyes off her. There was something hypnotic about the way she 'shed her skin' like a snake. The remains of skin and blood scattered across the floor, slipping through the cracks she had left in the tiles. I was witnessing an act of self-mutilation, but there was a faint fruity scent that seemed designed to stop me from running away or vomiting up my breakfast from two weeks ago.
"I think I've gotten rid of everything…" she repeated, extending her hand toward me, opening and closing it.
"I'm not shaking your hand, this is a bloodbath."
"Huh? It wasn't a greeting. Your jacket, give it to me—or do you want me to get sick? Because blood doesn't stay warm outside the body, you know?" Her tone felt lighter, as if she'd shed more than just her 'Anna costume.' "Oooh... or maybe you like how I look all naked and bloody?" she said, leaning even closer to catch my eyes with hers.
I was so caught up in watching how far she tossed the remnants of skin that I hadn't paid attention to her figure. She was certainly more, much more eccentric than the girl with the huge claws, in every sense of the word.
I stared for what felt like longer than I should have. Her skin was pale like a corpse, even more faded than her white hair that didn't reach her shoulders. Her eyes were as red as the abnormal sky in front of us, and the star-shaped pupils silently told me those eyes had seen more than I could ever comprehend.
"Give me your jacket, you pervert!" she said, clenching her fists and stomping on the tiles. "My sister was right, you're a disgusting pig." Her hand was still outstretched.
"Fine, here." I took off my jacket, resigned to the fact that she probably wouldn't give it back later, and draped it over her shoulders. "And I wouldn't even notice your body—I like them big."
"5 foot is average height in some places," she said with a frown, though not a threatening one, as if she'd taken a personal hit.
"I wasn't talking about height... I meant your chest..."
Her eyes widened like searchlights, and she wrapped herself tighter in my jacket, frowning but saying nothing. I could see her cheeks flush a little. She exhaled slowly, like I was a hopeless case, and after wiping the remaining blood from her hand on my jacket, she extended it again.
"Anyway... nice to meet you, Eiji. Nyar." She pointed to herself.
"...Nyar...?" I asked, making a cat paw gesture.
"You're such an idiot…" She stepped back and gave a bow, like a magician introducing herself to the audience. "Known for millennia as the face-eater..." She raised her gaze. "Nyarlathotep."