Special treat since I've been gone so long, and the last chapter was filler. Updates will continue to be on Tuesday, I think. Enjoy!
The next few days came and went, leaving Watanuki with a strong sense of déjà vu. They seemed to have a great deal in common with the departure from Kyle's manor, save of course that this time they were generally uninjured and lacked a destination.
The journey itself was not particularly strenuous, however. The food that Doumeki had found probably would not have lasted long, but at this time of year there was plenty of edible flora, about which Doumeki had proved himself to be an unlikely source of information. On the second day, they encountered a stream, which Watanuki decided they would follow with the same sense of surety as when he had known that they had to move on quickly. Beyond leading them somewhere, the stream was also a source of occasional food.
Doumeki also turned out to be disgustingly proficient with his bow. Though it had seemed rather redundant in the context of self-defense, where a gun would have been much more sensible, after the first few unfortunate birds caught as they walked there had not been much room for Watanuki's complaint. He was forced to mutter sullenly that he would have no part in the skinning or plucking of anything, and glowered all the more when Doumeki simply presented him with the results of his labour.
After about four days of travel, they crested a hill and Watanuki could see the end of the forest, only about a mile or so away. Mist still clung to the forest, but this was nothing new; it had not abated since they had first crash-landed near the lake. Whatever lay beyond the forest was blurred and mysterious in the fog.
"Don't just stop here," complained Watanuki, more to drown out the sudden sense of foreboding that had gripped him. The compulsion to go on and the desire to stay away from whatever lurked beyond the treeline pulled at his head. It was Doumeki who decided him by doing as suggested and beginning to walk again, taking hold of Watanuki's arm and pulling him along behind. When the latter sputtered and protested, Doumeki simply shrugged.
"You said not to stop," he replied.
They continued on. The path began to slope sharply downwards after a few minutes, slowing them down as they tried not to slip downhill. After a while of this they were both muddy in more places than they were not, and Watanuki's glasses were becoming too grimy see through properly.
"Stop for a moment," he said, leaning against a tree and futilely wiping his hands on his pants. "I need to clean these things."
Doumeki glanced back at him. "They're going to get dirty again."
"Easy for you to say," Watanuki grumbled. "I can't see!" The inside of the jacket he wore wasn't too muddy, and took enough of the grime off to render the spectacles useful again. Satisfied, Watanuki jammed them back on his face, and stepped out after Doumeki again. "Now we can –"
The earth beneath him crumbled away, and Watanuki toppled forward, catching himself with both arms and his left foot in a root that had been bared when the trail gave way. His leg ached warningly, sharply, and then he kicked it free as he rolled downhill. There was no way to stop his descent, no real way to avoid the inevitable outcome but tuck his head in and hope for the best.
His head and back collided with something hard and rough, and for a moment Watanuki saw stars. When the disorientation cleared, he observed that he'd collided with a tree, which had kept him from rolling further, and that Doumeki was making his way down the slope as quickly as possible without suffering the same fate, both bags in hand.
"Are you all right?" he asked when he drew close enough to be heard.
Watanuki snorted. "What kind of a question is that?! I just fell downhill ten meters or so, cracked my head on a tree! Do you think I'm all right?"
Doumeki shrugged. "You're yelling at me. It can't be that bad."
The worst part was that Watanuki actually didn't feel too badly. His head ached terribly, but he didn't feel at all disoriented anymore and he didn't think he had a concussion. Which was strange – shouldn't he have been in a lot more pain, given how far he had fallen?
It was probably one of those things that was better left unanswered. "Let's go," Watanuki grumbled, pulling one of the bags out of Doumeki's grasp. "The sooner we get out of the forest, the sooner I can get all this mud off."
The slope of the hillside began to gradually even out, and after about fifteen more minutes of careful hiking, Watanuki could see the edge of the forest and the soft brightness of the sky beyond it. Glancing to his left to ascertain that the river was somewhere in the vicinity, he picked up speed and jogged the rest of the way out.
Outside of the forest, the sense of foreboding returned to nibble at the edge of Watanuki's brain. The trees cut off very definitely, but for one or two gnarled specimens. Most of the ground was occupied by yellow grass, odd for this time of year, and sporadic outcroppings of dark stone. Adorning the nearest such rock was a spattering of red and gold-yellow lichen. The stream curved nearby; it was easily discernable by the amount of green that crowded at its edges.
It looked like grasslands in the midst of a drought, which could have been believable – Watanuki had no way of knowing how far they were from his old place of living. But the forest had not seemed particularly troubled by lack of water. Something was wrong here, and Watanuki had an unsettling suspicion that he knew the caliber of this problem.
He couldn't worry about that now. They had to go onward. And before that, he really needed to wash off the mud that now coated him.
Doumeki did not object to the request to make camp early, in the shadow of the nearby outcropping of rock. He likewise did not protest the command that he stay away from the river until Watanuki returned, and was dispassionately collecting wood when the latter left.
The river was surrounded by only a narrow strip of greenery, no more than a screen, and was dotted with sizeable rocks. It also flowed rather quickly for a stream of such small size, but after a short expedition Watanuki was able to locate a place where the water was relatively calm. He didn't bother undressing, simply removing his shoes and carefully stepping in.
He almost jumped out again, biting back a yelp at the frigid water. The water had never been this cold in the forest portion of the stream; this felt like snow melt. But there was nothing for it but to scrub as rapidly as possible. Once out of the water again – and twice as cold as before – Watanuki peeled off his saturated clothing and clambered into the cleaner set. He was struggling with the shirt, which clung to his damp skin, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
"Who's there?" Watanuki all but shrieked, nearly tipping back into the water as he whirled to face the intruder. If this was Doumeki's idea of a joke…
It wasn't, thankfully. Two rather befuddled-looking people swathed in coats were gazing earnestly at him. "We're very sorry to bother you," said one, apparently a woman by her high voice. Her accent was distinctly foreign, though Watanuki could not place its origin. "But could you perhaps direct us to Tokyo?"
Watanuki blinked, pulling his shirt into place. He had heard the name somewhere, a long time ago, but what this 'Tokyo' was he had no idea. "What is that?" he inquired politely, having calmed down from his initial alarm.
Both strangers stared at him in a varying mixture of shock and confusion. "Tokyo. The largest city in Japan. We are in Japan, aren't we? It's just that we've got to meet someone there, and we're already rather late."
With a sinking feeling, Watanuki made himself ask. "How late are you?" He still had no idea what Tokyo was – but he was familiar with the term 'Japan'. It had been the name of the country that once had been located here, back when there had actually been regional divisions. No one bothered with them, these days, as most people generally kept to themselves. But Watanuki had met fairly old ghosts before, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to meet some now who dated back to the days of division.
"Oh, I've lost track by now," said the one who had been speaking. "Evan, dear, how about you?"
"I dunno," said the other in a raspy voice, as if he had been ill. "There were a lot more trees back then."
"Then all those people came here, didn't they?" responded the woman.
"Didn't last long, though."
That settled the matter, then. If there had been trees here – a plain where there were not even traces of former forest – then these two had been here far longer than a normal human's lifetime would permit. "There's no Tokyo here," he said. "If there was, it's gone now."
The two ghosts glanced at each other. "Oh," said the woman. "Well… I guess that's not an option anymore, then, is it?"
"Do you know where we could go instead?" asked the man, presumably Evan.
Watanuki considered. Fai's sister – brother – Yuui had mentioned something about moving on, or some sort of place where the dead went. "You could keep going?" he suggested. "Shuffle off this mortal coil? That sort of thing."
The couple exchanged glances again. "You're allowed to do that?" asked the woman.
"Don't see why not," replied Evan.
"Well, thank you," the woman told Watanuki. "And do be careful around these parts. The others aren't nearly so civilised as ourselves, I'm sorry to say." She smiled apologetically, and then both ghosts faded away, leaving Watanuki with widened eyes, frozen where he stood, bending down to fasten his rescued boots.
He ran back to the camp as soon as he'd finished, hair still dripping down his neck and back. Doumeki looked up from the fire-in-progress and somehow managed to ask the inevitable question without saying a word or changing his expression. "There were – well, there people there. It's not something you would understand," Watanuki muttered, sitting down on the other side of the fire and draping his wet clothes over another rock.
Doumeki gave him one of those long, inscrutable glances where it was impossible to tell where his thoughts were tending, but only that Watanuki was definitely involved somehow. "Tell me," he said presently, without dropping his eyes.
Watanuki wasn't entirely sure why he complied, especially when the truth was completely unbelievable. But it was only fair to let Doumeki know what they were up against. Whether he ignored the warning or not was out of Watanuki's control. "Ghosts," Watanuki snapped. "Dead people. I see them everywhere – or rather they see me, and for some reason they follow me or attack me or stuff like that. Anyway, there were two there, and they were nice enough to let me know that there are more who aren't very friendly. Which means they'll all be after me." He glowered at Doumeki's yet impassive expression. "Not like you're going to believe me or anything."
"I believe you," Doumeki replied.
"You what?"
"I believe you," Doumeki repeated. "I met Yuui, after you told me he died."
Watanuki was unable to form a coherent sentence for a few seconds. Doumeki, ever the skeptic, was simply accepting the idea of life after death without contest. But he'd never seen any of the ghosts at Kyle's manor, had he? "You see ghosts?" Watanuki demanded.
"No," replied Doumeki.
"But you saw Yuui!" protested Watanuki.
"It was something Yuui did," Doumeki said. "It was nothing to do with me. Is there anything you can do about unfriendly spirits?"
Thrown yet again by the sudden change in topic, Watanuki just shook his head. There were ways, of course; small rituals that he'd grown up learning from a superstitious family. Salt over the left shoulder. But they only worked for spirits who didn't have enough motivation to overcome them. If a ghost was really determined to attack, there wasn't much to stop it, beyond crossing a significant - and pure - source of running water.
"Can they hurt you?" Doumeki persisted.
"Yes," said Watanuki.
"Other people?"
"Sometimes." It depended again on the motivation; as Watanuki understood it, ghosts couldn't see most living people very clearly. Not so with Watanuki, but at least other people were generally safe from unseen threats.
"Can you see them now?"
Watanuki turned his face from the fire, to scan the land around them. There it was, the twinge that normally accompanied the appearance of ghosts or other such things. And there – in the fog, in the distance, the shadowy forms that would not resolve until they got too close. "Yes," he said, trying to ignore the fear that lit up and twisted his insides. "I can see them."
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then a branch in the fire popped and both looked down at the flames. "Do we keep going this way?" Doumeki asked.
There was no question there. "Yes."
Doumeki reached out about a foot to grip the top of his bow, perhaps in reassurance – however unlikely that seemed. "We'll have to deal with that as it comes," he said, and his expression slowly shifted to one of concentration, of concern.