Chapter 13: Respite and Repose
Fading in and out of a deep fog, Ari could feel blades of grass tickling her nose. It stuck to the side of her face like old bandages. She tried opening her eyes, but the burning sensation caused by an unnaturally bright sky made her reconsider. The mixture of hot metal, burnt rubber, motor oil, and smoke coated the air in a dingy tinge, all the major signs of a massive bike wreck. From the dull ache in her side she assessed that, miraculously, there were no broken bones, though she was pretty sure she would have some nasty bruises and a concussion to match her pretty prison scars. Bits of displaced earth were clenched in-between Ari's fingers and as soon as she mustered enough strength, she tried lifting her head once more and was instantly struck with the overwhelming feeling of déjà vu, guilt, and failure.
Parts of the ground were scorched or displaced from the skid of tire tracks from the wreck, and in it laid the shrapnel of the Velocette Viper. The engine coughed and puttered weakly while the front axle of the bike was awkwardly bent to one side, currently wedged in between the roots of a tall tree with rope and paper chains tied around the base of the trunk.
"See kids, this is why y-you always wear a helmet..." Ari quipped humorlessly to herself to ease the tension. She considered herself fortunate in an ironic sense, having walked away from a bike wreck with only a mild concussion being the only lucky thing that had happened to her that day. As far as bike wrecks could go, it could have always been worse. Much worse.
She squinted at the surrounding environment. The area certainly looked like Earth, containing grass and a forest expanse that all held a natural green than the purple and black hues the flora and fauna of the Ghost Zone held, but it didn't resemble any part that she had ever since before. Perhaps she had entered another door in the Ghost Zone and was simply in another part of the realm; Sidney had said that portals from the Ghost Zone ranged in location and time. She let out a sigh, trying to halt her racing thoughts from spilling over into more unknowns. The main point was that it didn't look like the Ghost Zone and it wasn't Walker's prison, and right now that enough for her.
Ari picked herself up and felt a wave of nausea pass over her instantly. Unable to overcome the sensation, she leaned over and hurled, barely missing her shoes. Seems like inter-dimensional travel didn't sit well with her diet of ghost food. Having to lean on a nearby tree for support, she wiped her mouth and tried again to stand, this time managing to not feed the plants the rest of her breakfast. Somehow, that fact didn't erase the fact that she just had a massive spill or prevent the shaking that began to build in her hands. What was going on? It wasn't her usual adrenaline shakes. Those wouldn't cause her to feel so light-headed. It was like breathing was suddenly a foreign concept for her body to grasp- oh...! She paused in a surreal, out-of-body experience. She was going into shock.
You're okay, you're okay, it's fine, you're okay, you're okay...
As the shaking in her hands steadily grew worse, Ari recognized the signs to resemble her friend Sarah's panic attacks. Honestly, after all that had happened to her, she was surprised that she didn't have one earlier, but as she learned from her childhood friend, attacks didn't always have to have a reason. Mimicking her friend's behavior, Ari started kicking off her Birkenstocks to allow her feet experience the earth in order to help ground herself and regain her bearings. Normal breathes... In through the nose, out through the mouth...
"...okay, you're okay, you're okay, y-you're okay, you're okay..." she chanted like a calming mantra while riding through the motions and slowly rubbing her arms, trying to quell the tightness growing in her chest. Throughout the whole endeavor, Ari refused to label this as an official panic attack, since she wasn't a doctor and therefore couldn't officially diagnose this as a panic or anxiety attack, but she went through the motions that she used to help her friend Sarah anyways, for lack of a better option. A few moments later, the waves of panic and fear gradually began to lessen, along with the irrational feeling that her body was slowly trying to kill her. However, thoughts of Walker and what his goons would do to her when they found her was taxing on the mind and was what initially kept her from fully relaxing and brought her back to the present issue.
Okay, you need to focus, Ari! Pull yourself together and put as much distance between you and that Ghost Zone portal as possible, she told herself. Right now, you're in no immediate danger, but you need to go. Now.
Detached from the situation, she mechanically collected all her things, which were scattered haphazardly away from where she had been thrown from the bike, and clumsily shoved them into her backpack. Her Birkenstock sandals wedged awkwardly into the lip of the sack, causing a few of her belongings to tumble back out of her bag more than once. Then when she was positive everything was fully secure, she limped over towards the motorcycle and checked to see if it was salvageable. With how shaken up she had been earlier and her aversion to motorcycles, there was no way in hell she was going to be riding that thing again, but if she could at least get the wheels moving, she could at least stash the thing in a bush and hide the evidence. But the moment she was able to tug it upright, the bike flickered out of existence. It was like a video-game character that had just lost its last life before arriving at the 'Game Over' screen. Her astonishment was brief before she immediately started to switch gears, convincing herself that she no longer had the luxury of being surprised by every little thing- the motorcycle was probably totaled anyways -and started hobbling towards the woods.
Trekking through a forest with minor aches and pains brought back the nostalgia of running cross country. Granted, she wouldn't have been doing it barefoot, but pretending she was trying to catch up to the rest of the pack of runners kept her calm and helped her visualize her goal instead of feeding her anxiety. Having quit almost two years ago, she didn't nearly have the kind of endurance she used to, and with the amount of exhaustion she had built up in the past couple of days, it was a miracle she could move at all, let alone jog, but she remembered to keep a steady pace and that if she needed to, she could take breaks as long as she remained hidden.
The uncomfortable pain in her side from landing on the ground reminded her that the Fenton thermos was still in fact stashed inside her jacket. That one thought was the only thing that kept her going, that gave her any semblance of safety. Unfortunately, it was becoming harder to move, still being dizzy and a bit off-balance from the crash. The thermos was now a temptation to pause, to stop and wish herself home now than when she knew she was in the clear. Then she could finally rest. She was so tired...
Just a few more yards... Push yourself just a few more yards and you can whip out that thermos and wish for this whole nightmare to finally be over!
After she was sure her panic attack had completely subsided and not wanting to risk another one, she started rummaging around in her jacket. Ari ran her hand tentatively over her waist, careful not to irritate any sore areas or bruises, and gently tugged the canister out of her pocket, ready to go home and forget all of this had ever happened. Her fingers fumbled slightly with the lid, her thumb edging towards the button on the side she had seen Walker push before her hand froze mid-turn at the exposed wires. The unlock button was smashed to hell. She visibly paled as she frantically tried to uncap the thermos. She tried unscrewing it, holding it down, squeezing the cap, but it was no use. It refused to budge.
Then an eerie calm passed over her before she gripped the thermos in both hands and struck the lid on the back of a tree. A dull, metallic clunk reverberated hollowly through her hands. She did this systematically, over and over, each strike coming faster and fueled with more power. Her actions hardly put a dent into the thermos but it was successively making violent impressions in the tree bark as she viciously whacked the trunk, lost in the blind fury. A sharpness in her fingertips indicated that she had hit bone and she let out a frustrated cry of anguish and pain before hurling the thermos dozens of yards away out of sight into the underbrush. Her left hand cradled the smashed fingertips of her right as trails of salt began staining her cheeks.
That thermos was her only hope, her light at the end of the tunnel, and it had been snuffed out. Some god must have been toying with her, running her through this constant, sadistic cycle of giving her hope and watching it being snatched away right in front of her own eyes.
Splsssh!
Ari turned towards the noise, the sound of water feeling almost alien to her ears, and saw that it had been the direction she had thrown the thermos. Curiosity more than reason was what caused her to act, her feet acting on their own accord, blindly shuffling through the area. Had she had a clear mind and not been bludgeoning some poor ficus to death, she would have smelled a strong trace of sulfur in the air instead of having snot running from her nose; she had smelled faint hints of sulfur earlier, but she had assumed the scent had come from her bike. After she sniffled a bit of ugly-cry snot back was when the scent hit her full force, the forest path opening up to a rocky mountain spring. Soft fizzling bubbles babbled gently in a nearby pool of water while the rest was blanketed in a light fog of steam. Floating casually in the center of the pool was the Fenton thermos.
Numbly, Ari dropped her bag at the bank and immersed her feet in the hot water, not bothering to remove her clothes as she moved deeper in. Having her shower privileges revoked due to her being human, her clothes had become almost a second skin to her, and now every ounce of sweat, blood, grease, and indiscernible ghost-gunk that had collected on her over time seeped into the spring. The water surrounding her, which had been clear a few moments ago, was now tinged and cloudy from her filth. She let out a pained hiss as the warm water stung the tender bits of skin near her cuts and bruises, the heat finding its way into every crevice and injury acclimated over the last couple of days before she adjusted and relinquished herself to the scalding embrace of the hot spring. Like cauterizing a wound, the near-scalding water fell and burned out the infection and began to heal all her aches and pains.
Reluctantly, she plucked the thermos out of the water and examined it. She essentially had a magic genie, but couldn't get her out of the bottle, and something told her that rubbing it wouldn't have coaxed her out. Ari was stuck. She couldn't go back into the Ghost Zone now. Even if she knew how to navigate through it, dozens of Walker's goons would probably be looking for her now.
After tossing the thermos onto the bank where her backpack lay, she immersed herself back into the spring, acclimating to the searing temperature. As she floated on her back, her body adrift and arms out at her sides, Ari let her thoughts wander mindlessly to happier times and simpler pleasures: getting first pick for a dodge-ball team, eating Mom's chocolate-chip cookie fresh from the oven, making it to the elite eight of a state-wide basketball tournament, the escapism of a good book while sitting outside on a chained porch-swing. It was then that she felt a sudden kinship with the character Andy Dufresne and others, both real and fictional, who had experienced similar hells involving prison. Her thoughts then drifted back to Wulf. Despite not having known him long, she wished him the best for wherever he had fled to. Wonder what he would think, knowing it was all for nothing?
It wasn't a bad way to go, all things considered, being captured by ghosts after soaking in a hot spring. Not the most dignified way to go out, but at least she was relaxed and could be captured on her own terms. After accepting her fate, Ari realized that this was the most comfortable she had felt in days. All of her stress just melted away, as if evaporated by the steam. Some stirring splashes near the water alerted her that she was not alone, but she was too drowsy to care. It was only when her eyes lazily locked onto a pair of golden irises that her attention came back into focus. Clamoring near the water's edge a few feet away was a group of red-faced, tan colored monkeys. Parts of the family of macaques clamored amorously while others scattered into the forest foliage, and some simply didn't care, continuing to bask in the warmth of the hot spring like a bunch of lazy tourists who claimed dibs, albeit swimming a couple feet further away from her.
"Hell-o..." Ari said awkwardly to the monkey that had joined her in the hot spring. A couple of juveniles she spied on the bank regarded her bag with curiosity.
"Hey!" she cried out, startling the monkeys as she clumsily stumbled to leave the spring. "Those aren't yours!" The one that had been playing with the shoulder strap had taken off, but the one that had been chewing her bag of potato chips darted away and knocked over her backpack in a way that caused it to slowly descend towards the lake.
"No, no, no, no, no..." Ari waded through the water, hoping she was able to retrieve her belongings mostly intact, but part of the bag was now drenched from the dip into the pool. Despite being five times smaller than her, the monkey was agile and fled with her bag of chips in its clutches until he was out of her reach.
"Fine! Keep it!" Ari growled out of breathe, a couple pounds heavier and chafing badly between her upper thighs, being weighed down by wet clothes. Now a good distance away from the pool, she noticed her surroundings were less rural and more urban. It was another Torii gate, though not the one she had come out of. This one had a grey statue of some sort of canine on each side, followed by dirt roads and carved stone steps leading up to some sort of wooden structure.
Sitting inside the temple was a small altar of sorts, placed with strange exaggerated miniatures of the statues outside, only with thinner eyes and white ceramic. Sticks of incense burned in a circle of sand, standing straight up with smoke slowly wafting through the air in thin waves and curls. Next to it sat a vase or jug of some kind and a bowl of rice. Lifting the vase, a strange liquid swished around on the inside. Holding it up to face, her nose crinkled as the strong yet familiar scent of alcohol assaulted her nostrils. The jug was filled with saké.
Flammable chemical agents and so many sources of unsupervised, paper covered oil lamps, the area was a fire hazard just waiting to happen. To her stomach, that didn't seem to matter all that much, for even the smell of saké had triggered her hunger. The audible rumbles wracked her body like mini-earthquakes, her stomach the epicenter, reminding her of the hollow ache of a belly that had purged itself of nutrition earlier.
So hungry... Setting down the alcoholic beverage in favor of its main ingredient, Ari scooped a bit of white rice with her hands, having no utensil to eat it with, and began to gobble it down.
"Dare ga iru ka?" The man's deep bellow startled Ari, causing her to accidentally knock over the dish filled with saké. The jug toppled onto the ground, breaking into a thousand pieces and splattering the foul smelling liquid everywhere by her feet. The stench of alcohol coated her right foot and lower shin as she was careful to step around the shards. She looked up to see a man dressed in modest robes and a strange tall hat with hakama pants, who Ari watched warily. Strange clothing aside, he certainly appeared to be human. He wasn't floating and didn't have the complexion of gangrene, so there was that, but she didn't want to give herself any false hope. He spoke in a foreign language, one that sounded familiar to her ears but hard enough that she couldn't quite translate.
Taking far longer than she would care to admit, Ari finally recognize the language to be Japanese.
"W-Where am I? W-Who are y-you?" Ari asked him, hoping that he understood English, but she might as well have asked him if he wrote with his feet and chewed motor oil, judging from the perplexed expression he gave her. Given no other option, Ari took a breathe and brokenly replied with as much confidence as she could muster, "W-Watashi wa... Inari-sama," which she thought translated into 'my name is Inari.' Her mother occasionally spoke Japanese around the house, mostly when she was mad or talking with relatives, and growing up she had taught Ari the most basic of phrases, such as 'good morning' and 'thank you for the meal' and 'where's the bathroom?' along with a couple of choice swear words. However, despite her heritage, Ari's pronunciation and understanding of her native tongue was no better than an American tourist with a guidebook, and given that she had been put on the spot, using a language she was not fluent in, it was a miracle that she could say anything coherent.
Fortunately, she appeared to establish some form of communication because the man's eyes lit up and proceeded to immediately crouch down onto his hands and knees. "Watashi no mottomo shin'en'na shazai, Inari-sama! Watashi wa anata o okora seru tsumori wa arimasendeshita! Gomen'nasai!"
Unable to understand anything but her name and the words 'I am' and 'sorry' being spoken at the end of his sentence, Ari awkwardly gave the bowing man prostrating himself in front of her a light pat on the head, but he continued on, "Watashi to kite. Watashitachi wa anata ni heya o yōi shi, anata no meiyo ni enkai o hirakimasu."
Eying him carefully as he stood once more and gestured her to follow, Ari just responded with a nod and tread softly behind him. She saw others clothed in a similar dress with slight variances between the men and women. They must work here at the temple. They are probably monks or something... Ari mused before the monk she walked with spoke to two others and then pointed to her backpack. One of the men he approached seemed to offer their basket as he tugged slightly at her bag, but she shook her head and held fast to her belongings. He seemed to get the message, the others backing off as quickly as they had approached her. She quickly fell into the step with the monk in front of her as they ascended a long walk up a stone flight of stairs that lead to a large, red Torii gate. Drips of water fell with every step she took, her jeans now acting like sandpaper against her pruny skin.
How Ari had missed this grand Shinto shrine in the middle of the forest was beyond her. A young woman in red and white priestess robes, who was sweeping the top of the stone steps, paused in her chore to exchange hurried words with Ari's male companion that she couldn't make out. Her eyes seemed to shimmer and widen in the same excitement as the monk had given her earlier and hurriedly rushed off to some of the other shrine maidens and spoke in hushed tones. Two girls immediately disappeared into one of the other buildings before coming out with a folded piece of white fabric.
"Sorehodo ōku wa arimasenga, watashitachi wa anata ga watashitachi no seihin ni manzoku suru koto o negatte imasu," the main priestess held out her arms which were filled with folded garments and then offered her a low bow. "Zan'nen'nagara, kore dakedesu. Chīsana jinjananode, watashitachiha ishō ya sōgi igai ni wa takusan no fuku o teikyō shimasen. Mōshiwakearimasenga, soreijō no mono wa teikyō dekimasen."
"Err... kon'nich- I mean, arigatō," Ari corrected herself, almost saying 'hello' to the young woman instead of 'thank you' and returned her bow with a slight nod of the head. If the priestess had noticed her improper grammar, she showed no sign of it.
"Mōshiwakearimasenga, watashitachi ga riyō dekiru yuiitsu no kimono wa shiromukudesu," the priestess lowered her head, holding out her arm towards a building adjacent to the one the two younger girls had just ran out from. Guess she wants me to follow her then, Ari thought while noticing that while her hair was pinned back and wore intricate white robes and some form of red pants that were wide and pleaded like a long skirt, she appeared to be around her own age. After taking off her shoes, the shrine maiden then opened a sliding paper door to a room with wooden bars and lit by torches. Before she was allowed to step in the room, the maiden offered her a pair of white socks that resembled toe socks that only had an indent for the big toe. Ari felt a twinge of shame at the sight of her bare-feet, which she saw were caked in dirt and mud. How rude and disheveled she must have looked, some insane wild woman drenched in muck and spring water. She was surely going to taint and ruin these clean white socks as soon as she put them, but she didn't want to be impolite and refuse. So with some reluctance on her part, Ari placed the socks over her dirt covered feet and followed the maiden inside.
Nothing was in the room, save for a small altar with a jug, a sword, and a carved sphere of some kind. No one other than the shrine girl and herself had entered the room. She began tugging gently at her soaked jacket when Ari's hand flew to her gentle touch, which felt jarring and foreign.
"N-No! ..Th-Thank you, I'm fine!" Ari exclaimed, slipping back into English on instinct. The priestess paused, confused at her sudden refusal for assistance to undress but was unfazed, and then understood her gesture as she respectfully bowed her head and closed the door behind her. Ari let out a breathe she didn't know she was holding, feeling the tension in her shoulders ease at the allowance of privacy and prying eyes.
After gingerly peeling off her hoodie, Ari's body felt almost twenty pounds lighter. Having realizing the consequences of her impromptu bath, she shivered against the wind, which now felt sharp and cold against her wet, pink-tinged skin. Having nothing else to wear but wet clothes, Ari shed her clothing almost immediately in favor of the strange white robes. The shine of the scar on her lower right arm glinted against the torchlight. After wrapping the garment around her waist, she came to understand that what she was wearing was a kimono of some sort.
She thought back to her mother's instructions on how to properly don a kimono. What was it again? Under line underneath, then wrap the obi around the waist while having the end rest on your shoulder, and then...? Her brow furrowed as she wrapped the obi around her and only ended up with creases instead of flat, unwrinkled fabric. Tying it was the hardest part of wearing a kimono. Instead, she tried to settle standard bow behind her with the obihime managing to stay connected in the center of the obi.
"Errrmm... kon'nichiwa (hello)?" Ari called out softly to the door, hoping that the shrine maiden from earlier was still nearby.
"Hai, ojōsan?" Ari cracked the door open slightly, finally managing to find the words.
"T-Tasukete (Help)..." The priestess giggled softly at what was probably an embarrassing sight before regaining her composure and aiding Ari with her dressing. Ari felt her cheeks grow hot with shame as she felt the priestess undo and redo what she had spent what felt like hours of work. She felt like such a failure, an insult to her culture. The only thing she had gotten right was crossing the left side of the kimono over the right; right over the left was done only for the dead and invited bad luck. What would her Baba think of her?
"Umm... (wh-what is your name)?" Ari asked.
"(My name is Izumi)," the shrine maiden introduced herself and then said, "Watashi wa anata ga kamide wanai koto o shitte imasu..." which Ari couldn't translate at all. Izumi paused, noticing the pale look of distress on Ari's face before she offered her another giggle. "Daijōbudesu (It's okay). Koko wa subete dai kangeidesu."
"H-Hajimemashite..." Ari stammered as she bowed lowly, hoping she had said 'nice to meet you' correctly and bowed the appropriate length before foolishly realizing that she was still being wrapped. Why did her Japanese have to be so rusty? She was freaking Japanese!
The girl just stood there, perplexed for a moment, but continued to smile and bowed her head slightly. "(It's nice to meet you too)," was her reply. As Izumi helped her dress, she continued saying something that almost sounded musical in her native tongue, but Ari was unable to keep up with the sudden flurry of word dumps, instead gradually tuning it out. The language always acted like a calming white noise to her, even if she couldn't understand it. Perhaps, one day, she would go out and learn it. It was a beautiful language and her family spoke it enough, at least on her mother's side, and it would certainly make phone calls to her grandparents easier to understand.
"(Here). Otetsudai sa sete kudasai," Izumi offered and started helping her tie the final line around the obi around her chest, adding an obihime cord around it for decoration. "Kenkō ni kore o torimasu. Sore wa watashi no kōun'nōmamoridesu."
Izumi then held out a small pouch-like item she had stashed the sleeve of her kimono towards Ari. "Is that for me?" Ari asked pointing to herself, momentarily forgetting that the girl couldn't understand her. Izumi nodded and held out the fabric piece, somehow understanding the hand gesture, "A-Arigatō...(Thank you)." She didn't know what it was, but she was grateful for receiving it. The white piece of cloth had three black commas in a spiral pinwheel with red and gold kanji stitched on the back of it along with a circle icon made up of long strings of rice up where the bow and string connected to the pouch.
Ari softly stroked the piece of fabric with her thumb over the hand-stitched kanji, not even caring that the girl was now softly tugging at her wet strands of hair or that a few tears slipped from her eyes. Even when Izumi began the long staking process of having to brush the tangles out of her long hair, she did not flinch like before. This was more than just the kindness of strangers. It was like she was being rewarded for surviving long enough to enjoy being cared for by these kind priests and priestesses after going through a long standing series of trials and punishment; sometimes the universe just gives you a freebie. Perhaps it was part of their religion to help those in need, but Ari could scarcely begin to think of how to repay her caretakers who had taken care of her when she could barely understand them.
On top of having been given clothing and shelter, Ari was also gifted with a bountiful feast- thought really it was more of a humble table of simple rice dishes, slabs of some sort of meat, and jugs of saké, she was grateful for it all the same. The people of the shrine were so polite and welcoming, they refused to touch anything until she had eaten. It had been unnerving, having so many eyes on her as she fumbled awkwardly with her chopsticks to scoop the rice into her mouth. Gratefully, once she had given them a pleased smile, the atmosphere in the room lightened as the monks and priestesses ate their evening meal.
Listening to light dinner conversation, Ari tuned most of it out, having not understood a word between the shrine maidens and monks, while politely nodding and smiling at those who seemed to be talking in her direction. Occasionally, she would be given jugs and dishes of saké passed her way that she would pretend to drink before pouring it into a nearby vase or pass the container along; exhausted and drained as she was, she was still eighteen. Still, she didn't want to be rude to her hosts and refuse, so she tried to grin and bear it as best as she could. It was surprising how pretending that she understood their words while keeping an air of confidence could get her along so far; her parents did always say 'appearance is everything.' She imagined she appeared very laconic and mysterious from how little she spoke, when in fact she felt like the exact opposite. It wasn't very unlike the dinner parties her family would hold for friends and business associates.
She had to remind herself to sit like they were- when in Rome, do as the Romans, or in this case, do as the Japanese -with her knees on the ground and her feet awkwardly tucked under her butt, but it hurt to have to maintain perfect posture while doing so. By the end of the evening, all she wanted to do was sleep. When she couldn't bear it any longer, she gave her guests a rough 'thank you for the meal' and 'excuse me' in her roughest Japanese while blessing her lucky stars that her rudimentary knowledge had helped her make it through dinner, and stepped into the room she had been escorted to earlier to rest. Not much had changed since she had left it earlier, aside from bedding that had been left for her inside. They didn't have beds propped up on wooden bed frames like she was used to, rather a roll out futon mat made out of straw in the center of the room on tatami mats. A plain, kimono-shaped comforter was rolled up in the corner of the room. It helped her feel warm and secure, keeping in the heat as she undid the pins the shrine maidens had put in her hair. Her bunched up hair now hung loose and chilled her back once more, reminding her of the foolish dip in the hot springs she had taken earlier.
Even with her feet covered with dirt and her skin chilled, Ari felt a soft peaceful calm fall over her, like she was almost as pure as the white kimono she bore. Perhaps it was the fresh clothes or the cleansing bath in the hot springs, but after all the stress and anxiety she had gone through, it was the first spark of hope she had felt like in ages. Finally, she had felt human again. After so many restless nights, sleep quickly came to her that she barely remembered her head hitting the tatami mat or having noticed that the nightlife had gone quiet, having a full belly of rice and meat for dinner.
So for those who don't understand Romanji Japanese, basically what the priest asked Ari was, "who are you?" and was apologizing for not recognizing her and offering her a room and clothes to change into, which was a shiromuku, a kind of wedding kimono that most shrines have on-hand. I could have given it to you in Kanji, but I'm not going to lie and say I understand Japanese because I am admittedly using Google Translate; it doesn't really matter in the end. The point was to not understand what the strangers were saying but understand their actions, and besides I wanted to immerse the audience by letting them hear phonetically what the strangers were saying but not be able to translate it. It's sort of my way of trying not to insult the culture by butchering their language with Google translate, even though it's literally all I can do since I am not going to learn an entire language for one fanfiction story.
Also, fun facts: Andy Dufresne is a reference to The Shawshank Redemption and the place that Ari ended up was loosely based on the Takahashi Inari shrine in Kuramoto, Japan. The monkeys she encountered were Japanese macaque snow monkeys, monkeys that are infamous for bathing in hot springs. Also Izumi Shinoda, the shrine maiden, her name is taken from the location of an Inari shrine in a Japanese folktale about a fox spirit named Kuzunoha.