June 13th, 2021

Humans had long forgotten the strength of the natural forces that they had thrust away from their cities and kept at bay –to them, they became things of childhood, a half-forgotten dream of some threat that loomed but never crashed down, an impotent promise.

That was the folly of those that lived in cities, however, lived safe behind the bulwark of thousands of miles of steel and concrete and copper, of spikes that thrust up into the air to catch lightning and a forest of thick buildings to take the bite out of rain, to blunt the teeth of wind and left it as a brisk gust eddying around sharp corners and perhaps blasting down a street if it was lucky. They had heating, electricity, even air conditioning, had a thousand artifices to keep weather at bay and turn it into nothing more than a child's fantasy.

To Miyoko –in these mountains, without those devices– it was a nightmare.

Rain pelted down hard enough to sting, smacking into her bare skin and soaking her clothes, and the wind tossed her and the branches around her every which way, tearing and pulling at her tiny body as the rain looped and billowed in sheets that she could actually see, carried on that vicious wind. Thunder cracked and boomed overhead, roaring in a voice so loud she could feel her bones humming under her icy skin, feel the vibrations shake her heart against her small chest. Blinding forks of lightning plunged out of the sky, briefly illuminating the water-washed nightmare she was staggering through at a pace that was half a run and half a limp. She tasted blood in her mouth, and she was so very, very scared.

Death coursed behind her like a pack of hunting dogs, carried on adult voices, angry voices, the voices of the men who would come to take her back. After biting down in such a frenzy, Miyoko knew that whatever particles of mercy they might normally extend would have vanished in a heartbeat: if they caught her, she was going to die. Maybe she wouldn't be physically killed, but the punishments they inflicted –the thirsty duck, the dismembered pig, the squashed caterpillar, things whispered in the knowing dark between bunks– those were things she never would come out of intact. Maybe she'd still be alive, maybe her body would still take in air and beat its heart, but her mind would be dead, shattered, gone. Miyoko knew, bone-deep, that she wouldn't be able to survive what they'd do to her if she was caught.

So I won't get caught!

A fine sentiment, that, but it did little good as she plunged heedlessly through the rain, half-sobbing as she went. At first, she'd tried to pick out a direction, tried to run for the river and the house of love, the good orphanage that was supposed to be on the other side, but now she was just wandering aimlessly, a thought echoing like a prayer, over and over again in her heart.

Don't let them catch me, don't let them catch me, don't let them catch me…

Miyoko would wander forever if they never caught her, would wander even with her bare feet scratched by stones and hard twigs and stained up to the ankles with mud, she would wander with her soaked clothes and scraped limbs forever, just as long as she wasn't caught and taken back to that place where her mind and soul –maybe even her body– would die. She would wander as long as it took, and maybe if she got lost enough inside the mountains, she'd find someone like in the stories, someone who didn't have any children and would be kind to her, take her in and adopt her as their own.

The idea was like a fairytale, and it was what she clung to as she staggered through the rain, tasting ozone in the air and feeling her temples ache from the nearness of the lightning blasts. Here, it was all too easy to imagine being struck by one of those bolts of divine wrath, with only the thin and fragile trees poking up around her to protect her from being flash-fired by lightning. Miyoko's lips quivered as she tried and failed to think of a joke about that, a joke of being fried and crispy like some kind of chicken. There was no one around but herself to hear, and no one to laugh.

The storm roared and clawed at her as Miyoko staggered on, feeling cold and hot as icy rain streamed down her body and the inflamed red patches of her scrapes burned under her skin. After a while, her head started to feel light, and she started to feel numb, like she was swaying like a dancer in a dream through this tempest-tossed landscape, not sure if she was walking or swimming, floating or fleeing, as she stepped and stepped and stepped, feeling like she never moved anywhere, feeling like this nightmarish landscape never changed.

If she lay down here and died, plastering cool mud to her front as she just closed her eyes and let the storm take her, would that be okay? Miyoko had nothing and no one left to live for, no family to go home to, no friends that would miss her, no ambitions to achieve. All she wanted was peace and safety, but she didn't know how to find them, not staggering around in the storm like this. Only the fear of being found before she died had kept her from lying down before this –had she gone far enough that they wouldn't find her now?

Miyoko paused for a moment beneath a tree, swaying and pressing a hand to the broad trunk as she tried to steady herself. Her head was spinning, and she realized that she had no way to know if her feet had been doing the same thing. Had she taken herself in circles? Where were the men that would find and punish her? Were they ahead? Behind? Around?

Her lip wobbled as Miyoko sank to her knees under the spreading tree, trying not to cry. She was a very young child, after all, and not equipped to deal with problems like this. She wanted to be home, be safe, be warm, but the storm and the fear had worn through her determination and left her aching and empty and cold, wanting only for it to stop, for the dread that spiked every time she heard a rough shout to go away. She just wanted it all to end, but couldn't see a way, didn't dare, to find one.

A fiery hiss split the skies, and the world flashed white and sharp as thunder crashed almost directly overhead, shaking the tree and Miyoko both as lightning struck quite close by indeed.

Wait…

Of course!

Rain dripping like tears down her chin, Miyoko tilted her head back to the skies, watching and waiting for more lightning. That was a way to end it all, to make this fear and this pain and this cold go away. She would make a bet with God, a little bet –if she had ever done anything deserving of this misery, Miyoko certainly couldn't remember it, and so she refused to acknowledge this as her fate.

"If this is my destiny and I'm meant to spend the rest of my life like this, than I don't want to live this life!" she screamed at the sky, getting to her feet. "But if you refuse to even give me that much mercy, then in exchange, you have to change my fate!"

One step, two, staggering out from under the branches of the tree and onto open ground as she looked fiercely up into the clouds. To die or to change her fate, that was all she could accept, all she could allow. She couldn't continue in this misery. She refused to.

"So, take aim. Kill me." Miyoko hissed, spreading her arms wide in welcome as she looked up at the storm. "Take me to my parents! But if you still refuse me that, then I demand you turn my fortune around instead!"

The very air screamed and cracked as lightning flashed down out of the sky, blinding her as it forked down directly towards the clearing she was in, and belatedly, Miyoko closed her eyes –but even at this last second, she didn't flinch away, instead waiting for the event that would decide her fate. If she was killed, she would welcome it, because then there wouldn't be this misery –and if it missed her, then it meant that God had accepted her bet, that He had looked at her life and realized that this really was too much suffering to heap on the plate of an ordinary little girl. Either way, she would no longer be living in this Hell.

In a way, Miyoko had been right. On that day, as the lightning missed her by mere feet in that forest clearing, a seed of something had been planted in the little girl. That seed grew and grew after she had been rescued by Hifumi Takano, and erased the Miyoko Tanashi that had been, leaving only Miyo Takano in its place –meaning that indeed, when the orphanage workers found her in that phone booth and dragged her back, Miyoko Tanashi did not survive past her return to that hellish orphanage.

9.36 PM, USA Central Time