Tracy Tamago texted her Canadian friends as she was taken away further and further away from home. She told Lucy to stop watching Grey's Anatomy until her return, let Reese know she missed her and then released her dread onto Delilah. Once her dairyer was in a seat inside an airplane, Tracy was on her own. She did not love to fly in general but this particular plane found a way under her skin. Filled with rows of obnoxious passengers who snored loudly, chewed loudly and sang loudly. Jack was among them, he babbled about the ideas he had thinking about Japan.
The motels in Hokkaido were much more pleasant than their Canadian counterparts. Even the inexpensive one that the Tamagos selected was as good as any Trump hotel. A line of exotic painted artwork hung over the head of their Samsung television set. The only part of the room that Tracy took issue with were the beds, because she thought futons were uncomfortable. But it came with the territory and they had to assimilate to Japanese customs. At the very least, she did not have to share; her parents would sleep side by side on one futon while she would take the other, leaving Jack with his sleeping bag. Tracy wasted no time setting camp and emptied out her backpack. She plugged her battery-depleted smartphone into the wall outlet behind her bed.
The outside of their room met the match of the inside, complete with a bench for train spotting attendees. Tracy sat down on it to watch the wonderful greenery of the village but all Jack cared for was the vending machine that accompanied it nearby. Instead of snacks and bottled drinks, it provided him with toys and card packets. They were of the baseball (strictly Japanese teams he wouldn't be familiar with, however), Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon variety.
"I want to get that banned Misty card where she's naked." Jack smiled and inserted a dollar bill in the slot that the machine rejected a second afterwards. He repeated his action but it refused to accept the money for payment.
"It only takes yen, stupid," Tracy connived. She pondered when exactly will her parents will exchange their Japan inappropriate money for the foreign cash that they need.
When asked, Mrs. Tamago said she intends to do so when her children are keeping themselves busy on a tour. She dropped the pair off by a bus stop and told them to watch out for a tall yellow. Their mother and father will use the opportunity to prepare themselves like responsible tourists as long as Tracy and Jack do the same. Mr. Tamago says it was essential for them to be educated on their roots but this was going to be a chore for both of the children. Jack only wanted to enjoy himself by having access to everything he wished to have or do but couldn't in Toronto, and Tracy didn't even want to be on the trip in the first place. All because she let her brother take an unreliable ancestry test on the internet.
An enormous bus the color of Big Bird came rolling by Tracy and Jack. The tour instruction almost ignored them and assumed they were average citizens due to their race, but once Tracy called for him to stop in perfect English, he parked. The doors of the bus swung open for them to board it as the driver invited the siblings. If Tracy did not live in Canada, she would feel out of place being surrounded by mostly white and non-Asian people.
The guide basically summarized the various characteristics of Hokkaido as he passed them. Every landmark had a name, every bird, tree and rainbow had a name. Everything had a name except a peculiar shrine that tried to hide in the falling leaves of a forest. A place like that should be the first thing to indicate but he didn't even name it. It went completely ignored by all except Tracy who had her eyes follow it all the way out of her sight.
Just when Tracy and Jack thought the tour was over, the instructor leads the bus passengers to yet another landmark where they are given permission to enter. They formed a line that trailed towards the door of a small building that he heard like a flock of sheep. One person at a time was to go through the door unless they were with a friend to go inside together.
Tracy was next on line. "Sir, we didn't pay for this. We have to go home."
He angles himself to her level and said with a smile, "this part of the tour is also one-hundred percent free. Please enjoy yourself."
She was quite the suspicious one for a girl her age, but her parents have yet to call. Tracy would go through the door with her brother and persuade herself that she was being foolish. When inside, Jack whispering "do you think the gift shop is free too?" to Tracy prompted her to roll her eyes.
The building was a museum founded on the history and myths surrounding Hokkaido. The sign outside advertises it as a museum but was unreadable to the monolingual English speakers. Reading letters that spelled Japanese words was difficult enough but reading kanji symbols was a whole other step of difficulty. Luckily, the tour instructor translated anything that mattered enough to be translated. The most notable was an ancient sword that jutted out of a stone like Excalibur. An evil version of Excalibur.
"Do you all know the story of Queen Orochi?" He quizzes with a hand floating over the hilt.
"Isn't that the creepy dude from Naruto?" Jack responded. Tracy clasped her face, God does he think about anything besides Anime?
Unlike Tracy, the audience of tourist got a kick out of his joke. The guide awaited for the laughs to clear away to continue the exhibit. Queen Orochi, also known as Demon Snake Queen Orochi, was not a fictional character. The figure was a queen whose reign was in feudal Japan who was believed to be possessed. In retrospect, the woman was likely severely mentally ill. She would be diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder if she were alive today.
"This sword holds her tormented soul," the instructor says, "if a future descendant were to touch it, Orochi will use them as a link so she can be freed."
Tracy felt like she was about to go blind - she fell into a deep sleep standing up but no one noticed her faded eyes. The rooms darkening seemed like an illusion and not the result of the lights adjusting. No one asked her if she was alright as she screamed in agony, because that was an illusion too. Lost in a dream that she knew was a dream.
In this darkness, she can't see where that "thhhhsss" came from. It sounded too harsh to be the purring of a slim stream of water, water being the source made sense as she was standing in a flood that reached halfway up her calf. The museum was over flowing until it will eventually became an oceanic metropolis. But no one was running around shouting in terror, there was no one around at all.
"Little girl, little girl."
Someone called out for her, it was an overlap of a man and a woman's voice and the "thhhhsss" in the background. The closer Tracy was the sound, the more she was starting to figure out that it was one singular voice. It was a woman speaking with the echoes of the elusive distant walls powering it to sound deeper and masculine. The seductive purr juxtaposed the flickering tongue of a cannibal that hissed like a fire.
Tracy found herself standing before a set of steel pillars where the water seeped through. The darkness was even blacker beyond them but she dare not follow the stream. If fact, she took many steps back to get ready to evade whatever lied in the shadows. Standing afar from them will display a cage fit for an enormous animal. She was not incorrect, the prisoner let its eyes be seen through the threshold of the bars. They lit up the darkness like yellow lanterns the size of two minivans. Their glow radiated the bottom of its face from the mile-long twin fangs to the leathery chin of indistinguishable color.
"Be my friend, little girl... free me from here." It, or she rather, begged.
How? Tracy didn't have the slightest clue how, not that she thought it was a smart idea to release a monster. She's in a cage for a reason. The dragon licked her chops with a red ribbon of a tongue that was forked at the tip.
"Little girl!" Said someone other than the monster.
Tracy blinked, and all the lights turned back on. There was no cage, no dragon, no hissing. Tracy was alone in the last museum exhibit she occupied, Queen Orochi's prison. Her trembling hand was loose around the hilt of the sealed blade. The finger digits were spidery yet tied up around it in knots. Much to the horror of a man she's never seen before.
He was dressed head to toe in black garbs with only a blood colored oni mark giving his appearance color. His black gloved hand twisted her arm with a firm rotating squeeze. Her bare arms were dirtied with inky markings that traveled all over her skin. Those gloves must be filthy, Tracy thinks.
"You've released the Demon Queen!"