【ᴛʜᴇ sᴇᴀʀᴄʜ】
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(Y/n) move her pencil tirelessly. Carbon particles blended into the paper fibers, lines accumulate, and the once-white sketchbook grows darker and darker. Even so, (Y/n) felt like she couldn't managed to completely capture the sights from her memory.
Every morning, she took the train to school during the commuter rush. She sat through boring classes, eat lunch with her closest friends, Aoi and Akane. The route then repeats.
(Y/n) walk through city, looking up at the sky. Somewhere along the way, she noticed how the blue has grown a little deeper. Bit by bit, the trees lining the streets begin to change color, too.
In her room at night, she would draw. Somehow her so called Artist's block disappeared once her mind was made up of what she was going to draw. On her desk, lies a few stack of mountain guidebooks that she had borrowed from the library. She search the ranges of Hida on her smartphone, then look for ridgelines that match the ones she remembered. She keep her pencil in motion, trying to copy the images down onto paper.
Days pass by. Some days, rain would falls, smelling like asphalt. Some days shine with billowing clouds reminiscent of a sheep. Some days, strong winds would blow, peppering Tokyo with yellow sand. Every morning, (Y/n) would ride crowded trains to school. She would go to my part-time job. Teru still worked with her on the same shift. (Y/n) would often show him, her best to look at him in the eye, to smile and talk normally. Firmly, (Y/n) wanted to be fair to everyone that she wanted to show them that she was alright.
Some nights were as hot and humid as midsummer, while the weather were cold enough that she would wear her track jacket.
But No matter the temperature, when she was drawing. (Y/n) would often feels so hot that it feels like she have a blanket wrapped around her head. Sweat fell audibly onto her sketchbook. It blurred the lines she had drawn. But even so, the sights of the town, she saw as Amane were finally taking shape. Coming together, little by little, just the way she wanted.
On the way home from school and on the way home from work, (Y/n) would skip the train and take long walks. The scenery of Tokyo changes by the day. Before she know it, there were rows of enormous cranes in Shinjuku and the Outer Garden area around Meiji Shrine and Yotsuya, at the foot of the Benkei Bridge and partway up Anchinzaka Hill. Little by little, steel frames and glass had stretch up toward the sky. Beyond them, there was a blank, waning half-moon.
Finally as the time passed, (Y/n) now finished several drawings of the lake town.
She mentally prepared that she would leave in the weekend. With that resolution in mind, the young girl finally felt the tension drain from her stiff body for the first time in a long while. Even as standing up already felt like too much work, so she decided to slump over her desk.
Just before she could fall asleep, she wished hard. It has become a common routine after the switch stopped.
But even though, (Y/n) didn't woke up as Amane.
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Three days. That was how long she would be leaving to find him. (Y/n) packed up three days worth of clothings and her sketchpad in her backpack. Thinking that it might be a little cold once she get there, she decided to put on a thick (f/c) jacket with a deep hood. She tied her hair into a low ponytail with the long lucky cord and ten headed out of her apartment.
It was earlier than she would generally leave for school, it was 5am so the sun wasn't rising yet. The train was empty, although Tokyo Station was still teeming with people. (Y/n) lined up after some foreigners with wheeled suitcases and bought a Shinkansen ticket to Nagoya from the automatic ticket machine, before heading for the Tokaido Shinkansen turnstile.
But she stopped from her tracks. She couldn't believe her eyes to see the two people, she had least expected to see.
"Wha...? What are you two doing here?!"
Infront of her was one of her bestfriends, the orange headed Aoi Akane and her co-worker and senior, Minamoto Teru. Standing together beside a pillar.
"Well, here we are..." Teru gave her one of his usual charming smile.
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Akane remained unfazed, staring back at (Y/n) who was currently glaring at him.. His expression was blank as if he was saying, "Is there a problem?"
"Akane, you jerk! I asked you to give me an alibi for my mom and to cover my shift at work, remember?!" (Y/n) berated him under her breath, who was sitting in the seat next to hers. Almost all the unreserved seats on the bullet train were filled with businessmen in suits.
"Ao-chan will be covering for you at work." Akane told her, his eyes then forming into hearts as he display his phone's screen to (Y/n)'s view. "Is she very kind?!"
"Don't worry, (N/n)-chan. I'll do it for you~" Aoi flashes a beautiful smile while watering the classroom plants in the video. "But please be careful out there!"
"You guys..." (Y/n) muttered sourly. Asking Akane was a mistake and she was regretting it. (Y/n) had planned to skip school today and spend the weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Hida. She had directly went to Akane yesterday and begged him for help. Telling him that she had something important to do and absolutely had to go see a friend, asking him to not ask questions and just let her use him as an excuse while she was gone.
"I came because I was worried about you. Most people these days are vile bastards" Akane said without a hint of penitence. He pushed his glasses upwards. "I couldn't just leave you alone, could I? What are you gonna do if it turns out to be a scam?"
"A scam?" (Y/n)'s eyebrows knit. Akane tend to be a little overprotective that his thoughts could literary create scenarios that often cause misunderstandings. But (Y/n) couldn't blame him. He was bestfriends with two girls that was often targets of perverts and people of the wrong crowd. Akane had been her older brother figure from the moment she befriended him.
Teru who was sitting on Akane' s opposite side, leaned in. "You're going to see a friend you met online, aren't you, (Y/n)?"
"Huh? No, the online thing was just an excuse..." (Y/n) trailed off. Yesterday, Akane had been frantic and worried that he became really persistent about asking who she was visiting. So (Y/n) told him the first thing that came out of her mind and vagued told him that it was somebody she met on a social networking site.
Apparently, Akane personally knew Teru that he informed everything she told him. Teru was worried that he decided to tag along.
"Frankly, I suspect it's a dating site." Akane gravely informed Teru that (Y/n) nearly do a spit take.
"It is not!"
"You've seemed really off lately, you know." Teru told her, concerned. "But you're still an underage to be traveling alone, so Aoi here asked me to come. We'll hang back and watch from a distance."
"What am I, a grade-schooler?!" (Y/n) retorted.
"(Y/n), we're middle schoolers." Akane told her.
(Y/n) groaned in fustration. The two had already made up their mind and it doesn't seems that it will be changing soon. 'This is gonna be one rough trip....'
"Approaching Nagoya." A lazy voice announced over the train's loudspeaker.
The switch with Amane started out of the blue one day and ended just as suddenly. No matter how much thought (Y/n) gave it, she could not figure out why. After several weeks, it got harder to shake the suspicion it could might just have been a string of extremely vivid dreams.
But (Y/n) knew that she got proof. She couldn't believe that the journal entries, Amane left on her phone came out of her mind. The date with Teru was a proof. It could never have happened if it been herself. She was convinced that Amane is a real boy.
His body heat. His pulse. The way he breathes. His voice. The red light dawned over his closed eyes. The vibrant sounds in his ears. She felt all of that herself. Experiencing his life was so intense, it convinced her. That If he wasn't alive, then nothing is. Amane is real.
Because of that, the abrupt way it had ended made (Y/n) feel oddly uneasy. She felt that something might have happened to him. (Y/n) wondered that maybe Amane had came down with a fever. Or that there was some sort of accident. She knew that she was overthinking things. But at the very least she got to know if Amane was worried about the situation, too. That is why she decided to go see him in person.
But there was a problem.
"Excuse me? You don't actually know where he is?" Akane asked as he ate from box lunch he bought up at the station. They were currently in a four-person box seat on the express train Hida.
"...Right."
"Your only clue is what the town looks like? You can't even contact this dude? Are you kidding me?!"
(Y/n) gave him a look. She didn't even ask him to come with her for him to blame her like this. She then look towards Teru, willing him to say something. In which he did after swallowing a bite of miso cutlet.
"I'm sorry, (Y/n). But you're an abysmal tour planner."
"This isn't a tour!" (Y/n) snapped. Now she felt like jumping off the moving train. She couldn't believe her two friends literary think that they were on some kind of field trip. She could read their expressions clearly.
"Well, never mind..." Teru said. Unexpectedly, he smiles. "Don't you worry, (Y/n). We'll help you look."
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"Ah! A crane? I never played this before." Teru grinned like an excited child as he stared at the lone crane game at the corner of the wall. He quickly inserted a coin and began playing, giggling as he tried to pick up a plush toy.
At they were now at a local station, The three finally reached it after noon. While Teru was occupying himself, Akane had gushed over the area's laid-back mascot. It was a full-body plush cow costume wearing a station employee cap. The camera on Akane's phone fires off click after click in the little terminal. "So cute! Ao-chan must've find this cute! Don't you Ao-chan?!"
"You guys are in the way." (Y/n) deadpanned as she glared at the local map posted in the station. Seeing that Teru was acting like a child and Akane simping over an imaginary Aoi while taking pictures of a mascot, she was even more convinced that the two are going to be no help whatsoever. (Y/n) decided that she would just have to find Amane herself.
She already have plan. Since she don't know exactly where Amane's town is, her and the two boys would have to take the train to a spot that seems close to the scenery from her memory. From that point, all they have to go on will be the landscape sketches she drew. They'll go around showing the drawings to residents, asking if anyone recognized them, slowly they will working their way north along the local line. There was a railroad crossing in one of the scenes she remembered, so following the tracks was an option.
It was a vague approach that to the point, (Y/n) can't really call it a plan at all. But she could not think of any other way. She only hope that there won't be that many towns built around lakes. She was convinced that she could probably find some kind of hint by tonight, but she wasn't that very sure.
(Y/n) took a deep breath before taking a confident first step, heading out to talk to the driver of the lone taxi parked outside the station.
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"...This isn't gonna work..." (Y/n) said as she slumped at a bus stop, her head drooping in depression. All the confidence she had when they started asking around has completely caved.
After the first taxi driver gave her a blunt "N-nope, dunno...", They tried police boxes, convenience stores, souvenir shops, guest houses, diners, and everyone from farmers to grade-school kids, oblivious to how they could probably looked. The results were solidly negative. The fact that there was only one local train every two hours made it harder for them to get around, so (Y/n) thought that they should try asking people on the bus. (Y/n) boarded in high spirits with the two but saw that they were the only passengers.
(Y/n) sighed in disappointment that she didn't even feel like asking the driver at that point. The last stop was out in the middle of nowhere, with no houses anywhere in sight.
The whole time, Teru and Akane decided to made the most of their day trip, playing word games, cards, phone games, variations on rock-paper-scissors, and eating snacks. Eventually, the two ended up on either side of (Y/n) on the bus, leaning against her shoulders and dozing peacefully.
Now, as the two of them guzzle cola in front of the bus stop, (Y/n) sighed. The two seems to have heard it and react together.
"Oh, come on, (Y/n). You're giving up already?" Teru asked in disbelief.
"What about all our hard work?! Don't tell me it's for nothing?!" Akane exaggerated.
(Y/n) heaved another sigh, so deep it almost brought her lungs up with it. Teru was wearing oddly gung ho clothes meant for serious hiking. In contrast, Akane's in chinos like he was just strolling around the neighborhood. Just by staring at both outfits really irritated her.
“You guys have been zero help."
Teru and Akane only gave her an innocent look.
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"I'll have a Takayama ramen, please."
"One Takayama ramen here."
"Uh, okay, then I'll have the same, too."
"You betcha. Three ramen!" The sixteen year old server said cheerily as he made his way into the kitchen. He was too optimistic that (Y/n) somehow felt a little jealous. She wished that she could somehow be like him, unlike the pink haired boy who was wiping the tables in disgused.
On their fruitless way to the next abnormally distant station, the trio found a ramen shop that was miraculously open and made a beeline inside. Thats when wearing an teenage brown haired male greeted them with a huge friendly smile. "C'mon in!"
The ramen was quite delicious. Contrary to its name, it was a perfectly ordinary ramen but as soon as (Y/n) ate the noodles and veggies, she could feel my body recharging. After draining the soup bowl dry and drinking two cups of water, she finally take a breather.
"Do you think we'll be able to get back to Tokyo today?" (Y/n) asked Akane.
"Hmm... I don't know. We may be cutting it close. Want me to check?"
Akane apparently did not expect this but nevertheless pulls out his phone and starts looking up how to get home.
"Thanks..." (Y/n) gave him a small smile.
"(Y/n), you're sure that's all right?" Teru asked
Teru was sitting across the table from her and was not quite finished eating yet. (Y/n) was not immediately sure how to answer, so she just look out the window. The sun was just barely caught on the edge of the mountains, shining peacefully over the fields along the prefectural highway.
"I can't explain it, but it's starting to feel like I'm on the wrong track." She muttered half to herself. She thought that it might be better to go back to Tokyo and rework on her strategy. It would be one thing if she could have photos, but expecting to find the town with sketches like the ones she drew might have been asking too much. At least, that was how it started to seem when she decided to pick up her sketchbook and gaze at it.
She haven't shown it to Teru and Akane just yet, so maybe they might know something? She should have shown it to them from the very beginning but, she was quite shy to show anything she had drawn to anyone.
It was a completely ordinary country town, with the sort of houses that one could see everywhere scattered around a round lake. Even though it felt so solid to her when she finished drawing it, it looks like an anonymous, mediocre landscape now.
"That's old Itomori, ain't it?"
"Huh?" (Y/n) turned around and see the leaning figure of the worker that was wiping the table, she could see his features closely now. His pink hair was tied into a small ponytail and some was falling infront of his pink eyes. (Y/n) read his name tag on his left side of his chest which read 'Sousuke'. Apparently he was just passing by towards the next table when he saw the sketch. "Yokoo-kun. Come see this!"
"Woah! Did you draw that, miss? Say, can we have a look?" The worker who took their order, Yokoo, from what the pink haired called and on his name tag said. (Y/n) allowed him to take the sketchbook
from her for a closer look. "Ahhh...You're right, Mitsuba. This is a real good picture. Hey, Satou! Come here!"
Yokoo shouted back toward the kitchen. The trio watch him with their mouths in agape.
Another boy came out of the kitchen and considered the sketch, smiling a little. "Oh, yeah. That was Itomori, for sure. Can't believe it's been a while..."
"We were actually born in Itomori." Yokoo told them, rubbing the back of his head.
Itomori. Suddenly, (Y/n) remembered. Itomori is the name of the town, Amane was in. She start up out of her chair. "Itomori... Yeah, Itomori! Of course, why couldn't I remember that? It's Itomori! It's near here, isn't it?!"
The trio workers looks mystified, exchanging perplexed glances. Sousuke opened his mouth, answering her question with a little bit of sass. "Did you live under a rock or something, miss?... You know about Itomori, don't you? That's where—"
Teru gasped, his blue eyes widening to it's full as his irises trembled, seemingly remembering a trauma from the past. He interrupts loudly. "Itomori?! (Y/n), don't tell me-"
"What, wait-? You mean, the one where the comet...?!" Akane spoke up too, his eyes wide, from behind his glasses.
"Huh.?"
(Y/n) didn't understand what was going on and look around at the others. All the boys were watching her dubiously. The shadow of something that was been trying to surface in my mind this whole time rustles stealthily, growing more and more ominous.
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The cry of a kite trails through the atmosphere, lonely enough to freeze the blood. A row of 'Do Not Enter' barricades extends as far as the eye can see, throwing long shadows over the cracked asphalt.
A sign with vines tangled around it reads, In accordance with the Disaster Counter measures Basic Act, this area is off-limits. KEEP OUT. By the Reconstruction Agency.
And below lies Itomori, devastated by some unimaginable force and mostly swallowed up by the lake. (Y/n) ran up ahead infront, her eyes widening at the sight. She couldn't believe of what she was seeing.
"Is this really the place?" Akane walked up behind (Y/n), his voice trembling. Teru was oddly quiet, during the ride in Satou's pick up truck until now. Without waiting for her to respond, Akane spoke again, sounding desperately cheerful unlike from before. "It can't be! Like I've been saying, (Y/n)'s confused."
"...This is it." (Y/n) tear her eyes away from the ruins below her, scanning her surroundings. "It isn't just the town. I remember this schoolyard, the mountains around us, the middle school... I remember all of it perfectly!"
She have to shout the words to convince herself. Behind them is the school building, black and sooty, with some of its windows broken. They were currently standing on the grounds of Itomori Middle School, looking out across the lake.
"So you're saying this is the town you were looking for? The one where your friend online lives?" Akane shouted, the parched smile still clinging to his voice. "That's not even possible! That disaster was three years ago. Hundreds of people died! You remember it, right, (Y/n)?!"
At that statement, (Y/n) finally turn toward Akane.
"...Died?"She meant to look at his face, but her gaze goes right through him, then through the high school behind him, only to dissipate into the distance. "Three years ago...he died?"
Abruptly, she remembered. The comet she saw over Tokyo three years earlier. Countless shooting stars falling through the western sky. (Y/n) thought it was beautiful, like something out of a dream. She even got all excited about it.
But that day, were also when Amane died?
'Don't...' (Y/n) clenched her fist. She won't acknowledge that. She search for words. For proof. "That can't be true... I mean, look, I've got the journal entries he wrote."
The young girl quickly retrieve her phone out of her pocket. Spurred on by the inane fear that the battery will die forever if she take too long. (Y/n) flipped through it in a panic and pull up Amane's journal entries. They we really there.
She rubbed her eyes, hard. Because for a moment, the letters seemed to writhe.
"Wha...?"
First one letter, then another. The words Amane wrote began to dissolve into meaningless symbols. Before long, the text flickered like a candle flame, and then it was gone. One by one, his entries disappear entirely. It was as if an invisible man is holding down delete. (Y/n) could only watch as all Amane's written sentences vanish.
"Why...?" She asked very quietly.
The cry of the kite echoes again, high and distant.
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Three years ago in October, Tiamat, a comet with a solar orbital period of twelve hundred years, made it's closest approach to Earth. It was a satellite on a grand scale; its super-long orbital period put Halley's Comet's seventy-six to shame, and it had an orbital radius of 10.4 billion miles.
Not only that, but it was projected to pass within roughly seventy-five thousand miles of Earth, closer than the moon. The tail of the shining blue comet would stream across the dome of the night sky for the first time in twelve hundred years. The mood of the entire world was festive as it welcomed Comet Tiamat.
Until the very moment it happened, no one anticipated that the comet's nucleus would split in Earth's vicinity. Or that a rocky mass about 130 feet in diameter was buried in its icy core. The comet fragment became a meteorite, plummeting to Earth at the devastating speed of almost twenty miles per second. Tragically, it struck Japan on a residential area called Itomori.
The town happened to be holding its autumn festival that day. The collision occurred at 8:42 pm. The point of impact was near Yugi Shrine, which must have been lined with festival stalls and teeming with people.
The meteorite instantly destroyed a wide area, centered on the shrine. The destruction wasn't limited to houses and the forest. The impact gouged a huge hole in the ground, forming a crater nearly half a mile across. One second later, magnitude 4.8 tremors rocked locations three miles away. Fifteen seconds later, the blast wind tore through, inflicting enormous damage on the greater part of the town. The final death toll was more than five hundred, a third of the town's population. Itomori became the site of the worst meteorite disaster in human history.
Since the crater had formed right beside Itomori Lake, water rushed in, ultimately creating a gourd-shaped body of water, New Itomori Lake.
Damage to the southern side of the town was relatively light, but even the thousand or so residents who escaped injury moved away, one after another. In less than a year, the town was having trouble functioning as a municipality. Fourteen months after the meteorite fell, for all intents and purposes, Itomori was gone.
(Y/n) closed the book. What she read was all textbook facts and she ofcourse, already knew most of them already. Three years ago, she was in her last year in elementary school. She could remember actually watching Comet Tiamat from the rooftop of her apartment building.
But (Y/n) thought that it was weird. She lived in Itomori as Amane several times, right up until last month. She was beginning to think that what she saw, the place where he lived, was not Itomori. Or The comet and her swapping with Amane had nothing to do with each other.
It was normal to think that. That's what she want to think. Her, Teru and Akane were currently paging through books in the city library near Itomori. She was hopelessly confused. For a while now, in the deepest corner of her mind there was someone who been whispering. Saying that this is where she was suppose to be.
Vanished Itomori: Complete Records
Itomori: The Village That Sank in a Night
The Tragedy of Comet Tiamat
She flipped through tome after tome with titles the same titles. The photos of bygone days in Itomori unmistakably show places where she have been.
Yugi Shrine is where their grandma is the chief priestess. The pointlessly big parking lot, the two snack bars right next to each other, the convenience store that looks like a barn, the little railroad crossing on the mountain road, and Itomori middle School.
At this point, (Y/n) could recognize all of them clearly. Seeing those ruined streets with her own eyes had sharpened her memories. It was hard to breathe. Her heart was struggling. Beating irregularly, and refused to calm down. It felt as though the vivid photos are silently absorbing the air and any sense of reality.
'Itomori middle school Final Sports Festival'
The photo above the caption shows middle schoolers in the middle of a three-legged race. The pair on the end was seems very familiar. They were twins with raven black hair and determined sunset yellow eyes. The only difference between them was their height, one was taller from the other.
The air got even thinner. (Y/n) felt as though hot blood is oozing down the back of her neck, but when she wiped it away with her hand, it was just transparent sweat.
"(Y/n)."
The young girl look up to see Akane and Teru standing behind her. The two hand her a single book. Foil letters in a weighty font are stamped on its thick cover:
Itomori Comet Disaster List and Catalog of Victims
She turned the pages. The victims' names and addresses are given by district. She run her finger down them. She keep turning pages. Finally, her finger stops on names she recognized.
Minamoto, Kou (13)
Yashiro, Nene (14)
"Kou.... Nene..."
As she murmured those names, she could have sworn she heard Teru suck in his breath, she could feel him tensing up too.
Then she found the names that prove it all.
Yugi, Tsubasa (82)
Yugi, Amane(13)
Yugi, Tsukasa (13)
The other two peered over her shoulder at the list.
"That's him? It has to be some kind of mistake! I mean, he's-" Akane trailed off, as if debating of whether continuing his words. "He's been dead for three years."
Trying to deny her friend's words, (Y/n) shouted. "Just two or three weeks ago, he-!"
It was hard to breathe. She inhale desperately and continued. This time, it only came out as a whisper. "He told me... We'd be able to see the comet."
Somehow, (Y/n) manage to tear her eyes away from the letters that spell out, Amane.
"So...!"
When she raise her head, her face was reflected in the dark window in front of
her.
'Who are you?' She thought, out of nowhere.
From deep in her mind, she could hear a very far away hoarse voice. "My...My... You're dreaming, aren't you?"
She then felt a wave of confusion, drowning her.
'What in the world... am I doing?'
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In the next room, (Y/n) could hear the sounds of a dinner party. Someone said something and there was a burst of laughter, followed by the echoes of applauses. It had been happening over and over for a while now. (Y/n) strained her ears, wondering what sort of group they are. But no matter how hard she tried to listen, she can't seem to make out a single word.
(Y/n) slumped over with her head on the desk and closed her eyes. She was really tired. No matter how much she read the reduced-size editions of old newspapers and magazine back issues, she can't seem to get the text into her mind anymore. She checked her phone several times, but not one of his journal entries was on it. Every trace was gone.
With her head down, she open her eyes. Glaring at the desk a fraction of an inch in front of her, she had tried putting into words the conclusion she had reached over the past few hours.
"It was all just a dream, and..."
'Do I want to believe that or not?'
"The scenery looked familiar because I subconsciously remembered the news from three years ago. Meaning, he was... A ghost? Or, no... It was all a...Delusion?"
With a start, she raised her head. Something was disappearing. It was as if she forgetting something important.
"What was his name...?"
There was then a sudden knock, and the thin wooden door opens.
"Aoi says he's going down to take a bath." Teru enters wearing one of the inn's light robes. The atmosphere in the room, which had seemed cold and isolated, suddenly softens. (Y/n) felt terribly relieved.
"Uh, Minamoto-senpai?" She stood up from her chair. Teru was crouched down in front of his backpack. "I've been saying all sorts of weird stuff... I'm sorry about today."
"It's fine..." Teru said shaking his head with a faint smile. He stood up from his bag before looking at the young girl.
(Y/n) tilted her head in confusion. Teru's expression, looks as if he was remembering something. "Minamoto-senpai?"
"Did you know?.....I was born in Itomori too." Teru started as he sat with (Y/n), facing each other across the little table by the window. (Y/n)'s eyes widened, but she remained quiet and let Teru continued.
"When it happened three years ago, I was already in Tokyo. A second year highschooler in Kamome academy."
(Y/n) could only listen as Teru spoke fondly about his life in Itomori. He was quite shock to learn that (Y/n) knew his little brother, which was why he was tense earlier. He left Itomori to study in Tokyo, apparently Itomori Highschool couldn't afford to give him the education he needed. It was hard to be away from his family and finding out that the comet killed them was devastating enough for him to forget how to take care of himself.
In the end, Teru realized that mourning would never do anything good. So he tried his best to move and live on his life like he used to.
"Look at here. Itomori used to make braided cords." Teru told (Y/n), flipping through a volume of local Itomori materials. It was one of the books she borrowed from the library. "As far as I could remember, the Yugi shrine could make cords, better than anyone around the town. My little sister sometimes wear kimonos, so we have several of these at home. My brother got them from a friend of his who lived in the shrine."
Lifting her teacup, (Y/n)'s hand paused. She noticed Teru, examining the tie on her ponytail.
"That one on your hair, (Y/n). Is that a braided cord?"
"Oh, this is..."
(Y/n) set the cup down on the table and reached for the cord on her hair.. The cord was her good-luck charm: a vivid orange cord, thicker than a thread, in her hair in a bow like tie.
"I think somebody gave it to me a long time ago. I wear it all the time, for good luck..."
The deepest part of her mind prickled.
"Who was it?" She muttered. She can't seem to remember the person who gave her the cord. But deep down, she felt that if she follow this cord, it feels like she might find something.
"-You, too, (Y/n)." The gentle voice made her raise her head to see the concern on Teru's face. "Why don't you go take a bath?"
"A bath... Right..."
But almost immediately her attention returned to the braided cord. (Y/n) felt as though she might lose something forever if she let go here, and she desperately ransack her memories.
The dinner party was over, though (Y/n) didn't know when it ended. The quiet song of autumn insects filled the room.
"Somebody who made braided cords told me something once." (Y/n) subconciously said. Her mind wandering to the hoarse voice that one spoke about folktales. "They said that cords are the flow of time itself. They twist and tangle, come apart and reunite. They said that's time. That's-..."
A mountain in autumn. The sound of a brook. The smell of water. The taste of sweet barley tea.
"-That's musubi..."
A scene bursted into (Y/n)'s mind. The body of the god on top of the mountain. The sake she and his twin offered to it.
"...That place...!"
The young artist quickly pulled a map out from under the pile of books and open it. It was a map of Itomori from three years ago that she found in a small independent shop, covered in dust. The topography from back when there was just one lake. (Y/n) knew that the place where she offered the sake should be far outside the area the meteorite destroyed. She wanted to see if she could go there, the sake should be there.
(Y/n) pick up her pencil, searching for a landform that looks likely. It was the way north of the shrine, a place like a caldera. Desperately, she tried to find something along those lines.
The (h/c) haired girl might be hearing Teru's voice, distantly. But by now, She couldn't tear her eyes off the map.
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"...-N)...(Y/n)."
(Y/n) could hear a voice calling out her name. It was a boy's voice.
"(Y/n)....(Y/n)...."
The voice is earnest, pleading, as if the one who owns the voice was about to cry. The voice trembling with loneliness, heart ache was hidden in his tone.
"Don't you remember me?"
She woke up. Memories of the previous events suddenly came flooding into her mind. (Y/n) remembered that she was currently in an inn. She have been sleeping slumped over the table by the window, with a blanket drape on her shoulders. (E/c) colored eyes could sense her childhood friend Akane and her senior Teru beyond the sliding door, asleep on their futons. The room was strangely quiet that (Y/n) could not hear any insects or cars. The wind wasn't blowing, either.
She sat up. The rustle of her clothes and the falling of the blanket off her shoulders were loud enough to startle her. Outside the window, the world is just beginning to shake off the darkness.
(Y/n) could feel the jiggling of the cord tied on her now loose ponytail. The faint echoes of the boy's voice linger in her ears. She mentally asked him who he was. She didn't even know his name.
Naturally, there was no answer.
'Minamoto-senpai and Akane,
There's a place I need to check, no matter what. Please go back to Tokyo ahead of me. I'm sorry for being selfish. I swear I'll come back later. Thanks.
~(Y/n)'
She wrote a note for them. As an afterthought, she then took out a five thousand yen bill out of her anime themed wallet and placed it under a teacup along with the memo.
'We've never met, but I'm about to come looking for you.'
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Satou was a really quiet but was a nice guy who offered (Y/n) a ride in his pickup truck. At first she tried to refuse but he insist that despite he was a minor but he already have his student drivers license. Yokoo, who she last remembered was the cheerful one with a positive energy, was currently in a whiny and sleepy mood next to her. Apparently, he wasn't a morning person.
(Y/n) have been studying the guy driving along his two other friends who decided to tag along.
Mitsuba Sousuke was a foul mouthed teen with a sassy personality. But deep down, despite his cocky attitude, he was actually caring. According to Satou, he was the one who spotted her walking alone when they were on their way to the ramen shop.
The three ramen workers were the ones who took (Y/n) and the two boys to Itomori High School yesterday, and to the city library. It was by luck that (Y/n) found them again and offered to do her a favor.
From the passenger-side window, (Y/n) have a view down to the edge of New Itomori Lake. Half-demolished houses and broken asphalt languish in the water. Even a good ways offshore, she could see telephone poles and iron beams jutting out of the lake. It should be a very disconcerting sight, but (Y/n) thought that she must have gotten used to seeing it on TV and in photos. Because she started having a feeling as if the place has always been like this. For that reason, she don’t really know how to process of what she was seeing. Should she get mad, grieve, get scared, or lament on her own helplessness? The reality of losing an entire town was probably too much for ordinary people to get their heads around. She decided to give up looking at the scene to the sky. Gray clouds hang over their heads, it was going to rain soon.
They travel north along the lake, and when the car can't go any higher, Satou sets the parking brake. Yokoo was asleep during the entire ride until now.
"Looks like rain..." Satou said, glancing up through the windshield, he then turn to face the younger girl. "This mountain is not really steep, but don't push your luck. If anything happens, you can call us."
"Ofcourse. Thank you."
"Hey, desperate tourist girl, here-" From the passenger seat, Sousuke held out a big lunch box to her with a bored look on his face. "Eat this up on top."
Automatically, (Y/n) accepted it with both hands. It was quite heavy.
"Th-thank you very much..."
'For everything...' (Y/n) was really grateful. Why would these three do so much for her? A total stranger who just happen to pass by and ate from the shop they worked in. She didn't know what to say but only to thank them again. "Thanks. Really....."
"I dunno what's going on with you." Sousuke said, avoiding her gaze. His cheeks were tinted in light pink. "But that picture of ltomori you made. That was good."
There was a lump in her throat. Distant thunder rumbles softly. (Y/n) waswalking up a path to the shrine that was as vague as a deer track.
She was getting closer. The surrounding
scenery looks sort of familiar, but she only climbed this mountain once, in a dream. She not very sure about it. For now, all she could do was follow the map.
After (Y/n) got out of the truck, she bowed low and stayed that way until her ride was completely out of sight. As she did, she thought about both Akane and Teru, too. In the end, the three part timers and her two friends came all the way out here because they were worried for her.
(Y/n) thought that she looked really pathetic. Have they thought that she was about to cry the whole time? She thought that she was probably so aggressively distracted that, even if they wanted to ditch her, they could not have the hearts to do it.
(Y/n) sighed. She can't keep acting like that forever. She really can't keep taking advantage of the help people offer her. Thinking firmly, she glace at New Itomori Lake through the gaps in the trees.
Suddenly, a big raindrop hit her face. The leaves around her start to rustle and shake. (Y/n) quickly pulled up the hood of her jacket and broke into a run.
The rain kept on falling, pouring down with enough force to carve the dirt away. The temperature was falling rapidly, absorbed by the rain. (Y/n) could feel it on her skin.
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(Y/n) was now eating her lunch, inside a little cave while waiting for the weather to let up. There were three big rice balls the size of a fist and lots of side dishes. The thick-sliced braised pork and bean sprouts stir-fried in sesame oil make it look like
such a stereotypical ramen-shop lunch. Her was body shaking of cold, but as she eat, she could feel her body gradually warming up again. Chewing the grains of rice and swallowing, She could somehow sense exactly where her throat and stomach are.
Musubi. That was the one word she was thinking.
"Putting anything in your body, whether it's water, rice, or sake, is also called musubi. What you put in your body binds to your soul, you see."
That day, (Y/n) did decided that she would try to remember those words even after she woke up. So she decided to recite it outloud.
"...They twist and tangle, sometimes come undone and reunite. That's musubi. Tha's time."
She reached a hand towards the cord tied to her hair. It hasn't worn through yet. The connection she felt was still there.
She continued hiking. Before she know it, the trees have vanished, and she was now walking in a mossy, rocky area. Below her, was some fragments of the gourd-shaped lake through gaps in the thick clouds. She had finally reached the peak.
"...It's there!"
Beyond her, was the crater-shaped basin and the giant sacred tree. The same scene she saw as the boy she swapped bodies with.
"It's really there! It wasn't a dream!"
The rain had subsided to a drizzle, dripping down to her cheeks like tears. (Y/n) scrubbed roughly at her face with her jacket sleeve, then started down the slope into the caldera.
In front of her, what was a little stream in her memories was now a decent size pond. It seems that it was swollen from the rain. (Y/n) thought that it must have been enough time passed since that dream that the landscape changed.
From what she remembered, this was the edge of the next world. She remembered someone telling her that once.
(Y/n) stepped into the water. There came a big, echoing splash. The heavy water was above her knees, and every step she took made a loud sloshing sound. The young girl felt that as if she was tromping all over something pure and white with muddy feet, defiling it. Until she had arrived, the place had been perfectly silent. (Y/n) felt herself not worthy to be welcome in such sacret place. Her body heat was being sucked away again, into the cold water. Before long, the water was up to her chest, but (Y/n) manage to get across.
The massive tree stood with its roots twined around a big slab of rock.
The Body of the god. (Y/n) didn't know if it was the tree, the rock, or whether the shape of the two of them tangled together was what the people worship. There was a little stairway in the gap between the roots and the stone. (Y/n) found herself going down it, to see a wide open space.
The silence down there was even deeper than it was outside.
(Y/n) unzipped her jacket with her freezing hands and took out her phone. She went to check to make sure that the small piece of technology didn't got wet, then turn it on. In the darkness, every single movement sounded violently loud. The phone comes alive, and she used it as a flashlight. The entire place was wholly devoid of color and warmth.
There in the center was a tiny shrine, the light revealed it as completely gray. On a small stone altar, was three four-inch urns infront.
"It's the sake we carried up here."
Gently, (Y/n) touch the surface. So suddenly, she was not feeling cold anymore.
"This is his twin brother's....And their cousin's..."
Her hand closes around the urn on the left, confirming the shape. When she decided to pick it up, there was a slight resistance and a faint, dry tearing noise. The moss had put down roots.
"And this is the one I brought...."
(Y/n) sat down from where she was standing. She then brought the urn close to her face, and shine the light on it. The porcelain was shiny from when she first brought it her, but now it was thickly covered with moss. It have been a very long time.
"...Then I was swapping with Amane from three years ago?..."
She untied the braided cord sealing the lid. Underneath, there was a cork stopper.
"Were we three years out of sync? Did the swapping stop because he died three years ago when the meteorite fell?"
She pulled out the cork. The faint scent of alcohol rises as she poured the sake into the lid.
"Half of him..."
(Y/n) brought the light closer to it. The sake was clear, with several tiny particles floating in it. They reflect the light, glittering in the liquid.
"Musubi... Twisting and tangling, sometimes coming undone, then reuniting..."
She raised the lidful of sake to her lips.
"If time really can 'come undone', then... Please, just one more time..."
'Take me to him!' (Y/n) wished as she down it in all one gulp. When she swallowed, the sound was so conspicuous that it startled her. A lump of heat travels through her body. As it hits the bottom of her stomach, it bursted and scattered through her.
But nothing happened. For a little while, (Y/n) sat there very still.
She was not used to alcohol, she was still a minor after all. She then felt a little warm and her head felt slightly vague and dizzy
That's all. It wasn't good. It didn't work. (Y/n) felt discouraged.
(Y/n) then stood up. But abruptly, her feet tangled as her vision spins. She suddenly felt herself falling.
But for some reason, her back didn't hit the ground. Her field of view rotates, slowly, up to the roof of the cave. Her phone was still on her left hand. The light illuminated the ceiling.
"The comet...!" (Y/n) loudly said. There was a drawing of an enormous comet on the cave's ceiling. A very old picture, carved into the rock: a giant traveling star, trailing its long tail across the heavens. The red and blue pigments catch the light and shimmer. Gradually, the picture began rising away from the ceiling of the cave.
(Y/n) stare. The image of the illustrated comet, was falling toward her. Slowly, it bears down until it was nearly on top of her. It blazes with the heat of its friction against the atmosphere, and the lump of rock fuses into glass, shining like a jewel. The details were really clear to her.
She fell backwards. Her head hit the rock at the exact moment the comet strikes her body.
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Funfact: Author-chan here actually went and re-acted the scene where Taki drank the sake. But only with a cup of whiskey, cause I want to write what was the feeling of having alcohol goes down the throat.
And I'm honestly regretting it! :’D