Tokyo - Sae's High School

Sae crossed her hands behind her back and leaned into the wall next to the gate at her school. She was supposed to head to her dorm to get her things and prepare to take the train to meet Mayu and Mio at their uncle's new house, then they had a week's worth of shopping and hanging out planned.

There was something that was giving her pause, however; it was a strange, unsettling feeling that had started in her stomach sometime after lunch and spread upward to being a little voice in the back of her mind, reminding her of what had happened the last time she had slept over at Mio and Mayu's before the school year had started. Part of it was guilt, part of it was worry she'd do it again, and part of it... part of her knew that the nightmare would be coming again. It was there, just waiting for her to sleep again.

Sae sighed, biting the inside of her lip, and pushed off from the wall, staring at her feet as she walked to her dorm. One hand reached for her phone, lightly feeling the smooth plastic, the weight of it in her bag. All she would have to do was call Mio - one quick phone call, tell her that she couldn't...

... No, that wouldn't do. She'd have to make up something, wouldn't she? Something happened with her father and she had to go back home?

That sounded better. Sae pursed her lips together, and picked up her pace. But she didn't want to disappoint them - they were her best friends! Really, they were her only friends. She was so shy and withdrawn since her sister died, she knew she had a hard time making any new friends, so she had to keep the ones she had, and she really didn't want to disappoint them...

Her pace picked up just a bit more. She would decide when she got back to her dormitory, once and for all. She would either call and tell them she had something else come up, or she would go, and put to rest the anxiety once and for all.

She hardly noticed when she got stuck in a crowd walking down the street toward the bus stop for the dorms, behind someone moving far slower than she was. When she did come back to her senses, though, seeing the crowd move past her, she found herself confused. Something about the woman ahead of her had her attention caught. It wasn't really the long hair, or the blue pants the woman was wearing, it was something else, something that gave her a strange awareness of the person ahead of her, who moved with a slow, purposeful walk. It almost looked like the woman ahead of her was compensating for a leg injury.

Sae nearly walked into her back when she stopped, suddenly, then turned to step out the side of the crowd. The way the woman was looking around told she was lost, and Sae didn't quite get enough time to stare interestedly at her feet before the woman noticed she was looking.

At least, when the woman smiled, it was a kind, warm smile that didn't make Sae feel so on-edge. Sae's eye was similarly drawn to the mole near the woman's eye, and it distracted her from feeling too awkward. At least, until the woman spoke.

"Excuse me, do you know the easiest lines to take to get to Shibuya from here?" the woman's voice was similarly kind, but there was a strange, melancholy tone to it.

"Um, depends on where in Shibuya you want to go..." Sae said, quietly, and the woman leaned forward to hear her, but didn't request she repeat herself. The woman's smile became a little sympathetic; whoever this lady was, she was clearly used to dealing with people like Sae. Sae fidgeted a little, but continued, projecting her voice a bit better for the second try. "There's a bus up on the next block that leads to the station. There's a line that goes right to the edge of Shibuya from there. Don't stay on it too long, though, or you'll end up outside of Tokyo."

"Thank you very much," The woman said, and bowed graciously. Sae bowed in turn, a nervous jaunt of her head, and turned to get away as quickly as possible. Turning her back on the woman gave her the weirdest, unsettled feeling, like something was chasing her, but though she desperately threw a look back over her shoulder, she found the woman merely staring off across the street and partway up a building, looking nowhere near her.

It's my fault...

Sae choked on a sob, wondering where the unbidden image came from, and the sight of her sister's body, laying broken and still at the bottom of the hill.

It's my fault... I did it to her... I survived...

Sae broke into a run, eyes burning, barely able to see and so she bumped shoulders with more than a few passers-by. Luckily few of them had anything more than indignant growls to say under their breaths.

It's my fault. It's my fault she died. It's my fault they all died. It's my fault they're all going to die...

Sae sobbed, out loud, stumbling and catching herself on a wall, before she was up and running again. She could see the dormitory just a block over now, and the red brick facade was a welcome sight, even if it wasn't her home.

"Everyone's dead."

She heard the door thunk and rattle heavily as she burst through it, but didn't have time to check to see if she'd cracked the glass or dented the material in any way.

"She wanted to stay with her sister."

Sae fumbled with her keys, hands shaking, eyes blurry, sobbing so loud, but it couldn't drown out the voice in her head. The voice that sounded like someone, someone she knew, someone who...

As the key was finally found and shoved hard into the lock, and the door opened, someone started giggling, loud and clear. Who was laughing? Sae couldn't breathe, she stumbled into her dorm and barely had the presence of mind to shut the door behind her. Who was giggling? Who was still laughing? What was funny?

She looked over to the bathroom mirror, and saw her own face in it, lips upturned, eyes narrowed, laughing. Giggling. Her mind was horrified. Her body would not stop.

"Go ahead! Everyone!" she spoke, and then she sobbed, tears breaking and streaming down her cheeks. "Die!"

Sae collapsed on her bed, the giggling echoing in her mind, visions of her family, her friends, her fellow villagers from Minakami Village piled up in a mound of corpses.


She was awoken at nearly eleven o'clock by her phone ringing. Groggily, she reached for it, the only thing glowing in the otherwise dark room, and lifted it, wincing against the light emitted.

It was Mio. Suddenly, the thought that she was supposed to have been packed up and out in that part of Tokyo several hours ago overtook and, panicked, she sat up and answered the call.

"Mio?"

"Gods! Sae! I was worried about you, you weren't answering your phone. Did something happen?" Mio exclaimed, and from the surprised, if relieved gasp Sae could hear in the background was any indication, Mayu was listening closely as well.

"I'm... sorry, something came up today," Sae said, and her voice dipped sadly. She prayed Mio just thought it was the leftover sleepiness.

"Are you alright?"

"I think so," she couldn't keep the slight quiver out of her voice, but Sae tried, nonetheless.

"Are you... do you still want to come over? We waited at the train station for a couple hours, and called you, but you didn't answer. I'm just glad we were able to get a hold of you."

The guilt welled up again, but Sae pushed it back down. Something about the guilt from before had triggered that... episode, she was sure about it. She couldn't afford for it to happen again.

"I... I still want to come over. How about if we meet up at noon tomorrow at the station by your uncle's house?"

"Are you sure? We could come get you, and then all of us could go back to Uncle Kei's house if you want to, more. You sound... you sound really afraid of something, Sae. We could get Uncle Kei to come with us to get you now, even!"

"No! ... No, I'm... I'm alright for now. It was just... bad memories," Sae tried, and winced. It wasn't all just bad memories, but even the admission hurt.

"Are you sure? I'm sure Uncle Kei won't mind helping us come get you if something is wrong. He'll probably want to call your father, though, to let him know what happened."

Sae groaned. No, anything but that. "No... no it's alright. I'll be alright, really. I'm safe in my dorm, and there are people here that can help if anything comes up. I'll see... I'll see you tomorrow."

"If... you're sure," Mio didn't sound so sure - Sae didn't sound so sure, but she had to be. It would be no use to let her two friends see her in this state. The worst monster here was whatever was in her own mind, after all.

"Yeah. I'll be alright for now. Have... have a good night, Mio. I'll be over tomorrow, I promise."

"Alright, Sae. Tomorrow, then."

The line clicked dead, and Sae waited until long after the glow of her phone faded automatically with its task over before she attempted to lay herself back down, not even caring she was still in her school uniform. She had all summer to wash it and get the wrinkles out.

With that episode out of the way, though, Sae's worry that she'd have another nightmare welled up again. They weren't getting any worse, or any more frequent, but they were still bad. Terrible; night terrors. She didn't dare tell her father about it, either. It was too embarrassing - nightmares were for kids who had just seen a scary movie. Not for someone with only a few more years before she was an adult and had to live on her own, and gods knew she needed to get out on her own because Minakami Village was stifling and full of terrible memories. She didn't hate the people, nor did she really hate her father; it had been his idea for her to go to school in the city, away from the village and the bad memories with her sister. She just... hated the village because of the bad memories associated with it. She missed the people, though. Itsuki and Mutsuki and their little sister. The Osaka family. The old man at the Kiryuu house with his daughters that had both died a long time ago who liked to make dolls for the girls in the village because he missed his own daughters. They were all good people, nice people.

But the village just felt cursed, and it carried with it the heavy weight of knowing she would never see her sister again. All the places in the village that were theirs and theirs alone to explore, to sit in. To practice their 'secret rituals', to become closer in those quiet corners than any other sisters had before...

It was gone now.

Sae sobbed again, and curled up in her bed. She needed to stop remembering all those things. They would never come back, she needed to move on, even if she felt like she never would be able to.

Who was that woman, though? That question kept her awake for at least another twenty minutes, and she rolled over, restlessly, eyes squeezed shut, but unable to fall asleep with too many questions rolling through her mind.

Something about her presence wasn't a coincidence. Something about her had helped the memories resurface, but try as Sae might, she couldn't remember if she'd ever met the woman before. If she'd ever even seen her before. Some part of her wanted to ask the woman again; another part of hoped she never saw her again.