I own nothing.
For her seventeenth birthday, Mito's grandfather gives her the present of having the run of his library. The Uzumaki patriarch had watched his granddaughter's zeal for books and learning grow more intense with each year, and she'd been pressing him to let her read his books for more than a year now. On the dawn of the day Mito turns seventeen, Takumi gives in and just decides to make a present of her use of his library in the Governmental Offices.
"Be careful of the books, Mito. Many of them are quite old, and may not be able to be repaired if you damage them."
"I will, Grandfather. Don't worry."
Mito is struck, once again, by how warm it is in this room, as she wanders about the labyrinthine bookshelves and winces at the bright sunlight pouring through the windows at the far end of the room, looking out from five stories up upon the bustling city of Uzushiogakure. Mito has a January birthday, and outside the temperature is, in her mind, unpleasantly cold. But here, the air is hot and thick with dazzling sunlight and glittering dust motes, like constellations caught in a sunbeam. Ah well. Mito leaves her haori lying over the back of a chair. If I'm not going to have to be cold, I certainly won't complain about it.
The silence is broken only by her light footfalls as she wanders about her grandfather's library, trying to find a book that might catch her eye and hold her interest. All of these books… I never knew Grandfather had so many. There must be books in here that are interesting to read—after all, some of them look like they must be a thousand years old.
Finally, walking along the very last row, sunlight burning on her back, Mito spots something.
On the very top row of a bookshelf, there is a thin volume with a yellow leather spine. Mito can't reach it when she's on the ground, not even when she stands on her tiptoes; Mito has to stand on a chair dragged over from a nearby table (all the while praying it won't break beneath her) to pull this book off the shelf. Running her smooth, unblemished white hands over the cracked yellow leather cover, Mito goes to sit at a table in a patch of sunlight, and read.
She flips open to what appears to be a letter, written by one man to another.
There was once a great nation, according to the letter, an island favored by a god of the sea. The kings of this land were warlike and wise; the nation was advanced and far above the rest of the world in technology and learning. It prospered for many eons, growing to become a vast empire on the mainland as well.
But then, the people of this island disobeyed an injunction of the gods, to never sail out towards the western horizon.
After that, the island and its empire was engulfed in a bitterly fought war against the peoples of the lands it had conquered. The war raged on for decades, costing countless lives. And at the very peak of this war, in a great cataclysm, the ocean opened up, and swallowed the island whole.
Mito closes the book and stares out at the window upon the city and beyond that, the sea, her lightheartedness gone. What she looks at is the western horizon. For Uzu no Kuni, it is the eastern horizon that represents the unknown, the endless ocean that has never been widely explored. The people of Uzu no Kuni knows what lies west. But when Mito reads this story, she understands the deep desire within the people of that other island to see what laid over the western horizon. She has long held that desire herself, though she tries to quell it by devoting herself to her life and responsibilities here.
She has long desired to go west.
In a way, this story seems like a record of her own life.