Pre episode 12, "The Soul Piper and the Mischievous Little Soul".


Lost

When Mayu woke up, the first thing she became aware of was the sound of a flute. It was a pretty sound, one that invoked in her memories of games of chase with her friends and listening to avidly to the bedtime stories of her mother. Mayu wanted to go to that sound, to follow it, but something kept her back.

It was dark, where she was. Dark and close and the air smelled like burnt wood. It was hot, far too hot and although she tried, she could not find her way out of that place. She was lost in the heat and the darkness.

She knew the flute music was trying to lead her away from that dark and terrible place, but Mayu found herself resisting its call. Because she remembered that there had been something else in the dark. A sound far more familiar then the flute music; the sound of her mother's voice.

Mama.

With the memory of her mother everything else fell into place. The hot and dark place was the closet in which she had burned to death. Mayu was dead and her mother had not tried to save her. She'd saved Satoru, but not her.

The flute music became softer, but no less insistent. It wanted her to come to it, to leave the darkness of her memories. The music wanted to save her from being lost.

But Mayu wasn't lost. Quite the contrary; she knew exactly where she was. She was in the room where she died. And as she gazed around the blackened remains, she also knew where she wanted to be. And her will made it so and she gazed down at Satoru's face, sleeping peacefully, while her mother sat beside him at his hospital bed, holding his hand. And as fury filled her at the injustice of it all, Mayu also knew what she wanted. She wanted to make them pay.

And because she was still only a little girl and because she was angry and bitter all at once, Mayu did not recongnize the danger she was in. But the Soul Piper did and watched her carefully, its eyes opening wider to watch all the better as the little girl's soul lost its way and wandered further and further towards damnation. But it kept on playing its flute, hoping the song would lead the girl back, away from the dark.