Wa Ga Fushigi

Ri Keifu's Prologue

Author Notes: Sierra Omega here! Gomen to everyone, especially to Kryillion_dono for taking so long to post… and as for a reviewer with appreciated criticism, we will attempt to tone down the vocabulary for our readers' convenience in following chapters.

I had barely made it to the bus that morning, so I hadn't had the time to fidget with my hair, my brother calling it girlish in the background. Only pure determination kept me from playing with it now, even more concentration was required to prevent me from dozing off in class. I'd gotten less sleep than usual, my teacher had given me a bit more homework than usual, and I had snatched a mere moment of sleep, or so it felt like. Thank God tomorrow was Sunday, and I'd only need to concentrate for four more hours, the half day of school releasing around twelve thirty.

So, I had around a half-hour to get ready for just a little more time of focus after a rather sleepless night. That is, if Ryuurei -- I called her Taregami-chan to annoy her -- got up on time.

I had referred to her as Taregami ever since her first boyfriend had been so smitten as to write a love poem calling her Bijo na taregami-- "beautiful woman of the long flowing hair," in every possible chance. Of course, I'd no right to speak about such things, being occasionally impulsive myself, as my mother could loudly agree to. I chuckled at the thought of that boyfriend who'd overwhelmed Ryuurei so much that they'd both immediately hated one another at her first temper tantrum - ironically over him doting over her too much.

I at last met her at our usual spot, and hurriedly made our way down to the school. Not a long trip, but each step felt like we were heading towards looming doom. Upon reaching the classroom I unceremoniously plopped down into my seat, unaware of our instructor's raised eyebrow in our direction; we'd rushed in just as the bell had rung.

Later, remotely detached from the professor's high nasal monotone I took a covert glance to my left to see how Ryuurei was holding up. It looks like she's bursting to get out of here, I surmised thoughtfully. Waving every so often to try and get her attention - Sensei-san had the inhuman perception of a falcon - I got her attention after a few minutes and some wrong moves where I'd gotten some other person's focus. Of course, she'd ignored me when I called her Taregami-chan, but another girl who *did* have the long hair to fit the nickname had responded, and I got the feeling she was offended when I said it wasn't she who I was talking to. Leaning over in the smallest amount, I whispered so only she could hear.

"Daijoubu?" I asked, wincing as I felt Sensei-san's raking glance pass over me. Ryuurei he excluded from his gaze due to the fact she was acing this and the advanced science course he was also teaching. Everyone was envious of her as teacher's favorite and her ability to score the highest marks with less effort that the rest. Then again, they conveniently fanned the flame of jealousy by remembering that she freely tutored the others without thought of reward.

"I'm fine," she responded, though she looked tired. Such was the phrase: Sleep four hours, and fail; sleep three hours, and pass. It reigned over her and everyone else, even if it originated in Korea like my family. Her especially, since proud parents had done exactly the opposite of their child's wish to keep school in school, and had signed her up her in many study academies as a result.

Realizing she probably hadn't slept much, I gave her an unmistakable glare that my mother gave me when she found I had worked through the night. She had a bad habit of sacrificing her health, and I knew she'd not slept more than an hour every night that week.

Suddenly, I thought of that quiet and somewhat empty American pizza parlor near the Ginza, and gave her a curious glance. She knew what I meant, to my relief, and she whispered silently when sensei-san had turned around to draw a diagram and a few scribbled, barely legible Japanese characters to one side - I noticed with a grin that she had failed to draw them herself in her notes.

"After class," she breathed. Sleep could be caught in between mouthfuls; it was always quiet in that small café due to the small minority of Japanese who like one of America's most greasy "delights."

With a jolt, the bell rang, and interrupted sensei-san's droning.

Thank Kami, I thought, Any more of that and I would have lost my mind!

"Settle down," he exhaled quickly, preparing to assign us more torture. "Your assignment is to do the geometry chapters 16 and 17 review questions 1 through 50, and to read and answer the fourth and fifth sections of your algebra text. Next time you will have a practice exam on the entire material."

Oh, great, I groaned, sensei-san continuing on as if class was not dismissed, as if he wanted so badly to punish us for getting out of our chairs without permission even though the course was officially over. Being pushed and shoved out of the classroom by the solid current of students, I nearly tripped over another person I'd never even seen in the school my whole life before catching sight of Ryuurei. Finally able to get to each other past the groups we were close enough to talk…

"Aiya!" I exclaimed. My brother teased me for it, but since my mother and I were close, I'd picked up the purely natural Korean habit of saying it whenever the situation allowed.

"Where to?" Ryuurei hollered, characteristically speaking much louder than necessary. . . I'd not gotten notes from her during one of the evil math sensei's classes without the ability to read lips like most Japanese children had become adept in.

Finally we reach the bottom of the stairs, pushing through idiot airhead groups of more intelligence-lacking people who couldn't realize there was a reason for hallways as well as for rooms or telephones. A few of them were even prejudiced and stupid enough to try and trip Ryuurei; she's always been a bit of a target for that. Being highly intelligent didn't help her, and most of the people at this school were idiots. We emerged from the supposed safety of the school to the open skies of Tokyo, the pizza parlor only about a fifteen-minute walk away. Then . . . I didn't know what happened, but it was like a blurry camera lens suddenly covered my vision. I nearly stumbled from lost balance, but my eyes compensated quickly.

I knew it was there, and it was annoying, but that was all. Then, the fogginess . . . it's hard to describe. I saw one man in detail, and what I saw brought mixed emotions of anger, fear, and hatred. Then . . . something clicked, and I knew that man. Like I knew the back of my head in a picture: I'd never seen it properly, but still I knew him. And then, overwhelming as the flash flood it could very well be similar to, emotions and memories I didn't understand flashed by too quickly to see clearly and then was gone. What . . . what was that? My vision… instantly became normal. Wait… when had it ever gone bad? Why were my eyes searching the crowd, and finding no one, even though every time I passed over a certain moving location I felt as if I had found my target, and yet I saw nothing familiar? Then, though, I saw that Ryuurei had noticed something too . . . by the steady movement of her eyes, I could tell she was focused on a moving person, one in her memory, one that had already gone past and she was remembering at this moment.

"Who was it?" I was sure she could hear, or perceive, at least, the trembling in my voice, my senses alert, watchful, looking for something my mind could not comprehend. She hesitated, and in that moment I knew. It was those dreams, again. I sighed mentally. They had been beautiful at first, she had said, but one of them had been a horrific nightmare of war, and another the aftermath. She had gained a haunt to her eyes; one that was not unlike the shadow over the eyes of a veteran soldier long living with his nightmares. Except, she'd no right to those shadows, one so young and fragile as she…

At last her voice came to her. "I… I'm not sure. I've seen him before, but I don't really know where." I knew exactly what to ask her, although I knew she would not want to answer. . . it had to be faced. Such dreams were not natural, not safe for normal minds. We needed to figure out what was causing them, especially the nightmares of the horrors of war, and somehow find some psychologist who didn't think Ryuurei was insane - she wasn't! - and heal her scarred mind.

"Is it those weird dreams again?" Already I felt my thirty-minute nap vanish into the void between the stars, for all the ability I might have to access them now. I knew her answer before she even nodded her head in affirmation, the admission drawing a deep sigh from me.

"What do you think they mean?" My voice was somber, unlike me, whom quietness and happiness were both the standard. She seemed to be weighing her words, a sign of either confusion or deep thought in the face of it.

"I don't know, Ri. But they are coming more and more frequently, though I only remember bits and pieces. It's not just the man you saw in my notebook today… there were others… Last night, I even started to feel conscious of myself in the vision. Like I was really there. I saw, felt, heard, and smelled everything around me… and it was as if I knew it all well."

I had started to worry when she had first come with bloodshot eyes, her dreams turning to war for the first time. Now, if she was included in the dreams themselves… I shuddered, because if she ever dreamt of war again, her mind might be caught up in the experience. If she died in her dream in the midst of a battle which had never existed… I did not know if she would live in the world if she did not in her mind.

"What about you?" The question was unexpected, and I was slightly caught off guard. "Do you remember anything?" Lacking anything else or any other mood to answer, I shook my head with a gravity my mind did not fully comprehend.

"No dreams. Just… I just have a kind of déjà vu. Whenever you draw those people from your dreams, I feel all weird inside like I know them… and the strangest thing is the emotion I feel… anger and even hatred at them. I don't know what it all means."

"Neither do I," she concurred. I wasn't normally this confused with my words, and I could not remember the last time I was not able to speak with some amount of confidence what I felt. But, the thoughts and emotions I held right now . . . I hadn't ever experienced them, as if my mind had always had a small part shrouded in mist, a vaporous void that I could now pass, and the ghost of thoughts I had. . . I just didn't understand it at all.

"We passed the parlor a long time ago," Ryuurei said, suddenly. I looked around, and was shocked to find she was right… We weren't even near the Ginza. How had its crowds gone so unnoticed? We were . . . nowhere close to Michael's Pizza, we were…

"We're at the library," I said, stating the obvious. We stared at each other quite moronically for a few moments, but I found that Ryuurei's mind was somewhere else: she started up the stairs for no observable reason. I look at her, frustrated, and I don't think she even notices I've not followed yet. With a barely suppressed sigh, I follow her, catching up on the fourth step or so. She seems driven, almost, and even though I've no feeling of a selfsame sirensong - the reminder of such mystical creatures makes me shiver, that their songs caught many and allured them to their deaths - I'm not exactly resisting following her myself. It feels right, for some reason, and I haven't the faintest idea why.

"You feel that," she asks, as if I was supposed to feel something. But, with a flash of insight uncommon to me, I realize that she isn't talking about the feeling that is rapidly overtaking me, that I'm supposed to be doing this... saying no, however, would be . . . the absolutely wrong thing to do. All at once, I am reminded of puppets, or dogs on a leash like in American imported movies. Then, we are moving towards the back of the National Library; strange, I never noticed entering. It must be the back we're going to… unless fate wanted us to read Shugenndo, State Shinto, and other extinct religions. Then, all of a sudden, I feel something else . . . something stronger. Like an echo, but no less potent because of it.

~

"Yeah . . . I think . . . it's a feeling like you're being drawn to something, right? Like an echo in the halls, of a siren singing." She remained thoughtful for a moment, then pensive, then she suddenly went past the books, their spines meaningless to me as they were on the day I was first born. Shaking off the ennui, I look around suddenly, and feel as if time has passed … where was Ryuurei?

"Taregami-chan!" I whisper harshly, since this is a library. From the hallways, I hear a resounding click, maybe from a door opening or unlocking, much louder and far-reaching than a normal door, as if someone was pushing the sound waves along mercilessly, frantic for me to hear them. Walking brusquely, I feel like I'm wandering, still, going where I don't belong. Then I see her, and she's standing stricken, as if she's seeing a ghost.

I can't believe this! I decide, it's like some kind of nightmare anyway.

"Ryuurei!" I exclaim, discarding library rules where the library patrons couldn't hear us anyway. She doesn't answer. Moving instead like a dead thing, mindless intent framing her every step and breath. Her gait scares me, so I call out again; "Ryuurei!" it elicits no response, once more. Then, with another frightening and disturbing shift of vision, I realize we are at the end of a doorway, and Ryuurei is walking still mindlessly around… I look for her all the more desperately, ignoring the sign of warning and the olden books with almost Chinese names. Then, I see her, and she looks like she's drowning in her own mind.

"Ryuurei? What's wrong!" I call, "What are you seeing?" This call seems to snap her out of something, and for a moment I am afraid she might collapse . . . thankfully, she didn't, but her body was still tense.

"You- . . . you mean that you didn't see it?" her expression frightens me, like most of the last few moments have, her face is like that of a stranded person finding that her place of abandonment has a city within sight.

"Nani ga?" I ask, confused. "See what? You lost your contact with reality for a second, and we ended up here! Daijoubu??"

"Nandemonai," She responds, too quickly. "I'm all right. I saw just now . . . a red bird . . . it kind of looked like a phoenix. It was calling out to me and I followed it here."

"A phoenix?" I raised my eyebrow, putting as much disbelief as I could muster into my voice: rightfully so, I felt disbelieving at the moment.

"Are you sure you're all right? You're not sick? First the dreams, now this…"

"Hey!" She says angrily, surprising me. "You're the one who has the deja-vu thing going on! You recognize people I describe and draw . . . so it's not just me!"

"Okay! Okay!" I said, raising my hands to apologize. "You're not crazy! Next question . . . where could a bird go, in the National Library…?"

But my question is not finished. I look around me, and almost take a few steps back. We aren't in some musty room with old books anymore, we're right outside it, as if we never went it. I was truly frightened now, we were moving around without our feet taking us there, and our minds not noticing. Ryuurei, at least, seemed to still not notice that she wasn't in the back library room.

"Weren't . . .we just . . ." I flail helplessly against whatever fates are doing this to us, and utter frustrated breath of air. Ryuurei, for her part, acts like any normal person would in the face of such an odd action that hadn't seemed to take place. I gave her an angry glare of my own, and sigh, letting the anger out with the air.

"Look around you. We're not in the back library room anymore." Then, reality seems to blur again. Like a movie director wanted to splice some scenes together, but botched the affair entirely. Again, she was walking towards the library. . . The next thing I see with remembrance of the moments immediately preceding is when a book drops out of the shelves and opens. I get a faint glance at some Chinese calligraphy, but that is all, and then, all I see is red energy, and it seems to draw out my terrified voice with a penetrating hold.

Not obligingly, the decibels rip from me with the intensity of a man in pain. And then, the crimson is replaced by darkness…

Author's Notes: End of Prologues! Now, on to the REAL story…