The second sun drew its afternoon like a sermon that seemed to know no end.
We had just returned from mailing my letter — Dōngzhi and I — and the heat felt like the world itself was sweating out some buried truth. If I were asked to describe the walk to the post office in one word, it'd be hot, though that doesn't quite capture the sting of sunlight that could peel paint or melt willpower. Still, the city had its charm. The clatter of carts, the music of distant bells, the chatter of merchants — all alive, all different, all watching. Even the air felt thicker with meaning.
My parasol helped a little, but I still felt half-cooked when we returned. "You walk like the sun personally offended you," Dōngzhi teased, her tail flicking lazily behind her as she fanned herself.
Now, beneath the maple tree, I sat with a book — a novel Dōngzhi had handed me when I complained of boredom.
"Not really what I was hoping for," I'd muttered, thumbing the worn cover.
Her lips curled in that quiet, mischievous smile that always felt like she knew more than she'd ever say. "You are supposed to read the words inside the book, not argue with the cover," she said, her smile stretching like frost spreading across glass.
After an hour of trying (and failing) to care about whatever tragic hero lived within those pages, I gave up and started rubbing the fur of one of the shrine's foxes — a lazy, clever little creature who'd adopted me for my snacks. He was half-asleep, tail flicking in lazy rhythm, when I broke the quiet.
"Hey, Dōngzhi…" I began, clearing my throat.
She paused mid-note, her koto humming into silence. The faint twitch of her ears told me I had her attention.
"Can you teach me — like, magic?" I asked, the words spilling out like a guilty confession.
She turned, posture perfect and deliberate, the kind of grace that made even stillness look choreographed. "Why, yes," she said lightly, "of course."
There was a long pause before she pulled something from her sleeve — a book. Another one.
I looked from the book to her, to the one I already had, and then back again. "…Seriously?"
Her expression didn't change, but her silence said everything. "Absolutely," it replied, even without words.
She placed the book beside her and folded her hands. "Unlike mages," she said at last, "contractees do not learn spells. They remember themselves. They don't command power — they interpret it."
Her tone shifted, a rhythm like recitation, or maybe a prayer:
"For the Arcana do not teach. They translate.
They are not the givers of power — they are interpreters of self.
To contract with one is to hand your soul a language too vast for sanity… and then be forced to understand your own words."
I stared, trying to find the right question but settling for the wrong one. "So, it's like… having a gun?"
She smiled faintly. "No. It's more like being given a key to a door you built yourself — without knowing when or why you built it."
Her voice drifted softer, like a hymn fading into air.
"Those who expect commandments are disappointed.
Those who expect salvation are devoured.
Only those who expect nothing find truth."
The fox yawned beside me. I envied him.
"When the veil is signed and the bond sealed," she continued, "the Arcana does not ask, 'What do you wish to be?'
It asks, 'What have you already become?'"
She turned a page, eyes tracing lines that probably weren't even written there.
"A witch versed in circles will find Death speaking in whispers of spirits — her ink turning grave-cold, her rituals echoing beyond the veil.
A scholar of light will see entropy in the equations of stars, the universe burning itself orderly to death.
A soldier will call down stillness — bullets that deny heartbeat and breath."
"So, this is about Death contractees?" I asked, already guessing the answer.
She tilted her head, that sly half-smile returning. "Each believes they have learned something. They have not. They have remembered."
My throat tightened. The air felt heavier.
"The Arcana are not ladders to climb," she read on, "but oceans to drown in.
You do not ascend. You dissolve.
You shed illusion until what remains is concept — and concept is indistinguishable from godhood or what is beyond that."
Cold ran its fingers down my spine. It wasn't fear — more like standing too close to something you shouldn't be able to touch.
"Some call it enlightenment.
Others, damnation.
The truth is neither — it is recognition."
Her voice changed then — not tone, but texture. As if she spoke through the air rather than into it.
"And so, when one says they have a 'Death contract,' it is not Death they wield, but the meaning they've given to it.
The mark does not change the world; it changes how the world must answer you."
My breath caught. The sound of birdsong suddenly seemed distant, too bright, too alive.
"The Arcana do not grant power," she whispered. "They reveal what was always there."
The silence after that line stretched — soft, sacred, unbearable.
"To walk beneath an Arcana's gaze is to drown in knowing," she said finally. "The unready mind bursts like glass under pressure; the ready one learns restraint."
The fox had long fallen asleep. I envied him even more now.
"For every contractee must learn the sacred balance between knowledge and ignorance," she said, looking directly at me. "Else the truth they sought will consume them whole."
"That's… not really what I meant when I said I wanted a lesson," I muttered.
Her lips twitched upward. "The wise know this," she went on, ignoring me:
"Ignorance is not weakness — it is armor.
To know everything is to dissolve into what is known.
To know nothing is to wander blind.
But to choose what not to know — that is wisdom."
The breeze shifted, brushing through the maple branches like unseen hands. The scent of incense and earth mixed in the air.
"Thus," she finished, "each contractee builds their own boundary between the self and the infinite."
Her gaze lingered on me, steady and searching — as though she were waiting for me to crack.
I inhaled. Exhaled. Tried to play it cool. "Not the angle I was aiming for when I asked for magic lessons," I said, attempting to sound unfazed.
She laughed softly, almost pityingly. "And yet," she said, "you've already begun."
The Second Sun finally began its descent cloaking all in shadows.
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