Chapter 8

Mitsuha woke, sluggishly bringing her arms up to protect her face from the dull light filtering through the curtains. Rolling to one side to hide from the vicious sun, she stretched out her arm…only to lose her balance on the edge of the bed and tumble onto the floor in an undignified heap of duvet and bed head, landing with a muffled yelp and a bump.

"Damn beds…give me a futon any day of the week…" It took her a few seconds to finally break the surface of her covers, before finding new comfort on the floor and shutting her eyes again. It's the weekend anyway, a few more minutes won't hurt…

…it's the weekend? Suddenly Mitsuha couldn't bear to keep her eyes closed any longer, and she rose so fast she made herself dizzy. Of course, today was the day! The day everything would come together – two months of research, culminating in the one visit she would be making today!

Ever since she'd moved to Tokyo, Mitsuha had had a theory – a theory as to why she'd suddenly jumped on a train and come to Tokyo the day before Itomori had been destroyed. The only logical conclusion, she had thought, was that she'd somehow found some information about the comet that had founded Itomori and had come to Tokyo to verify that it was in fact comet Tiamat. Of course, since she'd lost all memory of the weeks leading up to the Itomori incident, that theory would have to be verified the hard way – retracing her steps.

There was just one problem – the more research Mitsuha did, the more she learnt and discovered, the less sure she was of herself. Over time, she'd begun to remember more and more fragments of those lost weeks, and nothing struck out at her as being in any way related to Tiamat. In fact, by now she could remember almost everything about her trip to Tokyo, and she recalled spending most of the day wandering around Shinjuku and riding trains to various, seemingly random, destinations. Of course, there were still some holes in her memory here and there, but right now her initial hypothesis seemed downright impossible.

That was, until she received that fateful phone call just a few days ago.

〈◇〉

The sun was bright as Mitsuha stepped from the street to the visitors' entrance of the National Diet Library. Over the last couple of months she'd had multiple correspondences with a researcher here, and their combined work had yielded what they would be seeing today. It had been a long road to finally arrive at the documents she had been looking for, and they had been just a short subway ride away the entire time. It was…exhilarating, to finally be here.

"Good afternoon, can I help you?" the receptionist asked. Mitsuha barely caught a glimpse of two women walking round the corner as she entered, but now she was alone save the man in front of her.

"Yes, I have a meeting arranged with Tokumaru-sensei. My name is Miyamizu, I called a few days ago." Tokumaru-sensei was the one Mitsuha had been emailing to, and she was almost more nervous about finally meeting the professor than actually seeing what she came for.

"One moment…yes, I have you registered here. Please wait for a minute while I make you a day pass," the receptionist responded, looking at his computer screen for a few seconds before going to what must be the card fabrication machine.

Mitsuha heard footsteps from where she'd entered from, but before she could turn to look, she recognised the voice that called out to her. "Mitsuha?" Her face must surely be as surprised as his; he was the last person she was expecting to meet today. "What are you doing here?"

Mitsuha crossed her arms and threw the question right back at him, and Taki stumbled to backtrack over what he'd just asked. After he answered his own question, Mitsuha relented and gave her own answer. "I need to look at some old manuscripts and things, and as far as I know, this library has the only copies."

"Manuscripts?" She could see the curiosity on his face before he even asked. "What kind of stuff?"

"…Eighteenth century." Mitsuha cleanly dodged the question, and asked Taki the same to keep the conversation off her. Not that it did any good – from his vague answer, it seemed that Taki didn't want to say what he was here for either. Well, that was fine by her; considering the own secrets she was keeping, it would be hypocritical to assume others would be completely forthcoming in information.

The receptionist handed Mitsuha her ID card, valid for that day only, and proceeded to renew Taki's. "The librarian you spoke to a few days ago will be here soon," he informed Mitsuha, before turning back to his computer monitor and continuing with…whatever receptionists do when there aren't any visitors. Taki and Mitsuha tried to make some conversation, but since both were clearly not comfortable with speaking about what they'd come for, Taki made to leave and find a catalogue.

Mitsuha watched him go, a small smile on her face. Even when they were both being so awkward, being with Taki felt…comfortable. There had been some connection, some long-forgotten memories and feelings between them, that they had discovered as soon as they'd met. But despite not discussing those things at all, there was no unease or wariness around the other, only a strange sense of trust. Being around Taki made Mitsuha relaxed, in a nervous way – if that makes any sense at all.

Just as she was beginning to space out, Taki turned and caught her smiling at him – which almost caused her to smile even more, in embarrassment. Instead, Mitsuha questioningly raised her eyebrows at him, and he responded with something she hadn't realised she'd been wanting to hear. "Do you…do you want to meet up later? After you're done? Since we're here and all…"

Mitsuha finally let her smile get the better of her, for once letting her emotions genuinely show on her face. "Yes, I would be delighted." I wonder how long I've been waiting for him to ask me that…

〈◇〉

"Good afternoon, I'm Tokumaru Satsuki. It's so lovely to finally meet you." The woman who'd introduced herself stood before Mitsuha in the main lobby, just past the receptionist's desk. She was very tall, with hair slightly curled at the ends falling to just below her shoulders, and on her sharp features were perched a pair of stylish red glasses. Her eyes smiled along with her mouth, as she held out her hand for Mitsuha to shake.

"I'm Miyamizu Mitsuha. Nice to meet you," she replied, taking the offered hand and shaking it; or rather, having it shaken, as the researcher had a much firmer grip than she did.

"Come on, let's go upstairs. I can't wait!" Turning and walking back the way she'd come, Mitsuha had to hurry to keep up with her long strides. "It's been terribly interesting talking to you, you've really opened me up to a different area of research I haven't been involved in for quite some time. And I think you're in a perfect position to shed some light on the documents I'm about to show you." As Mitsuha was led up many flights of stairs, the excitable Tokumaru continued on.

"Originally I was fairly certain we didn't have the kind of manuscripts you were looking for. But you just seemed so…focused, I suppose is the word, that I decided I should have a closer look. For some reason you seemed really adamant that they should be here, and sure enough, I managed to find something that may match what you're searching for." Finally reaching their destination floor, Mitsuha was led down a short corridor and into a hallway that seemed to have some sort of restricted access to it. "A lot of what I'm about to show you has become horribly corroded, and many words are completely illegible, which is why it was all particularly hard to find. It seems we'll be the first to properly examine and categorise these particular items. Oh, how wonderful!"

Tokumaru then opened a side door, leading them into a small room clearly used for examining old documents. Around the central table were two trolleys and a number of instruments, most of which Mitsuha couldn't even recognise. On the table itself was a large lamp, and below it were a number of closed cases, similar to flight cases but slightly thinner.

"So, here we are. But before we start, there's something I'd like to know," Tokumaru said, turning around and sitting on the edge of the desk. "I'd very much like you to tell me how you came to know that these documents existed at all, let alone that they were housed here. I run this department and I didn't even know their contents until a few days ago, so I really am quite curious."

Mitsuha swallowed, not because she was nervous, but because the look in the scholar's eyes had become very bright, almost predatory. "Well, as you know, Tokumaru-sensei-"

"Oh please, just Satsuki," she interjected. "No need to be so formal anymore."

"…as I said in the emails, I'm from Itomori myself." Mitsuha's audience of one nodded eagerly, so she ploughed on. "Well, there's a very old legend in Itomori. You know about its destruction, of course?"

"Oh, naturally. It was a miracle, both the town's destruction and its successful evacuation. I daresay there's nobody in Japan who doesn't know of it."

"Well, actually, the old legend I mentioned is about Itomori's founding. The town is built around a lake called Lake Itomori, and the story passed down in my family is that the lake was made by a falling comet."

"Wait, seriously? Are you actually implying…"

"From the stories, it seems that the comet that created Itomori back then was the same comet – Tiamat – that destroyed it this time around."

"Incredible! But you mentioned the story is passed down in your family specifically. Why is that?"

"Because I come from a family of shrine maidens, who have served Miyamizu shrine in Itomori since its founding twelve centuries ago. All the history and legends of Itomori have been passed down through us. So it should be simple enough to show that the comets are the same just by looking at the old records. The problem is, two hundred years ago," and here Mitsuha paused for a moment, "the sandal-maker Mayuguro's bathroom caught on fire and burned down the entire shrine!" she suddenly revealed.

This did not have the effect that Mitsuha was hoping for. "Mmhm" was the only response from Satsuki. "So all the documents were destroyed, I presume. An annoyingly common occurrence, unfortunately."

"Is that so…" Mitsuha had been hoping for a more dramatic reaction, but so be it. "Anyway, all our history was lost, so although all the traditions and practices of the shrine have been passed on, all of its meaning has been lost. That includes pretty much everything about Itomori's founding. But, a few documents that were kept in the village hall instead of the shrine did survive, and one of them mentioned a visit by Empress Go-Sakuramachi."

"Ah yes, you did mention this. I was wondering how you managed to get that kind of information. So that's how you knew. But what has that got to do with these documents? How did you make the link?"

"It took a long time. First I learned about the reason for her visit – there was a comet called Lexell's comet that passed by during her reign, and it's famous because it's the closest a visible comet has ever gotten to Earth. Since she visited Itomori during that time, and since there are many records of the comet throughout Japan, I thought it likely that she'd visited Itomori to learn more about it, since we have that strange link with Tiamat."

Satsuki's face was impassive, silently absorbing and processing Mitsuha's hypothesis, so she continued. "Since my Dad was mayor, he was in charge of those records and could remember what some of them said. Apparently they mentioned that the empress had specifically requested access to some of the shrine's oldest and most secret documents. I don't know how familiar you are with shrines…?" Satsuki shook her head, so Mitsuha decided a full explanation was in order. "There are certain rituals and documents that aren't shared with others outside the shrine, except perhaps to other shrines. But since this was the empress, she would definitely be given access. I suspected that she'd read and made copies of some of the information we had on comet Tiamat, since comets were quite a supernatural event back in those days, so it would make sense that people would want to know as much as possible about them."

"And you're saying these documents," and here she patted the cases on the table, "are those copies? Isn't that a bit of a stretch? I mean, they could be anywhere in Japan."

Now the adventure begins. "Well, at first I thought they would most likely be here since this is the largest library in Japan. But then I realised that they were probably sent to the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, since this was before the Meiji restoration, so the empress would be living in Kyoto, not Tokyo. So I did some research, and I found a museum in Kyoto that had some very promising manuscripts. But when I visited, I found that the Imperial Palace had been destroyed by a typhoon during Empress Go-Sakuramachi's reign, and a lot of important things had been relocated to all over the country. Luckily, while the museum didn't have what I was looking for, I did manage to verify that the empress had visited Itomori, and that many old documents had been sent to Tokyo for preservation."

"But how did you pinpoint their location to be here?" Satsuki was still not quite convinced.

"It was…a lucky guess, really," Mitsuha sheepishly explained. "It just happened to all work out. If I were to guess one place in Japan where they might be, I would guess here."

"…well, I must say, you are one lucky girl. Because what I'm about to tell you will really blow your mind." Satsuki stood up and turned on the lamp above the desk, before checking the cases on the desk and trolley. "You see, Kyoto Imperial Palace wasn't the only place that disaster struck during that particular empress' reign. Do you know the nickname given to the ninth year of her reign?" Mitsuha shook her head, so Satsuki told her. "Meiwaku."

Mitsuha thought for a moment. "Meiwaku? Isn't that just a concatenation of Meiwa and ku, meaning ninth year of Meiwa?" Then she got it. "Ah, you mean meiwaku, as in trouble?"

"That's right. Within four months, there was a fire and two massive storms, bringing floods and strong winds and destroying thousands of houses in Edo – that is, Tokyo. Museums, shrines and libraries lost many artefacts, pieces of art…a lot of things. So, the people of the time nicknamed the year meiwaku. The documents I have here," she patted the case she now had open in front of her, "have been through a lot, and aren't exactly unscathed. Most of them have probably been destroyed completely, it's a miracle even this much survived. You're incredibly lucky that there's anything even remotely legible left to examine." And with that, she donned a pair of gloves, beckoned Mitsuha over to her side of the desk, angled the lamp just so, and carefully extracted from the open case before her the most delicate piece of paper Mitsuha had ever seen.

It was roughly one foot square, mostly yellowed with frayed edges. In the top-left corner, much of the parchment had become corroded or eaten by insects, and there were small holes all over the finely written black text that covered the page. There was luckily a large margin, which meant that the flaky edges near the top and bottom didn't obscure the beginnings and ends of each line.

There was also a massive gaping hole, clearly the work of fire judging by its black edges, smack bang in the centre of the ancient piece. "Well, that's going to be a bit hard to read…" Mitsuha murmured. A cursory glance at the writing revealed some fairly old characters – archaic, even. "This seems much older than it should be."

Satsuki gently centred the old document under the lamp, making sure not to further damage the decrepit thing. "Well, we are talking about royalty here. In their time, emperors and empresses were hailed as gods. We couldn't have them using regular old speech like all us peasants now, could we? When it comes to texts written by nobles or emperors, you can expect the writing to be much more sophisticated and, well, old." The researcher shrugged. "I'm not too good with old Japanese – my area of focus is the Meiji restoration, and by then the language was already very similar to what we use today. For now, I just wanted to show you a few important manuscripts and have you verify that they are in fact what we think them to be."

"So, let's start with this one then. This particular document was the one that tipped me off. Judging by the age of the material and style of writing, as well as some of the language used, it can be dated to around the time we're looking at – sometime between 1730 and 1800, I'd say. And Meiwaku sits right in the middle of that, at 1772. The geography mentioned seems to match the area, but the name of the place that this document is, well, documenting, is never noted. But there are a few curious phrases…"

Satsuki began to point out a few areas of interest. There were quite a few words Mitsuha didn't understand, and some characters she didn't even recognise. Since the top-left corner was completely gone, the first few sentences were incomprehensible, and so was the majority of the middle section of the text. In fact, putting it all together, Mitsuha couldn't even work out what it was trying to describe. Something about a town…some natural disaster? No, that's a different word…wait, here it says something about mountains. But there are mountains all over Japan…hang on, what's this? Mitsuha peered closely to one particular sentence, left mostly unscathed by the weathering of time, and gasped.

"What is it?" Satsuki asked. Mitsuha pointed to the place she'd found.

"Here. Do you see it? These characters…"

The researcher didn't see anything special about what Mitsuha was pointing at and frowned. "I don't understand. I mean, I didn't when I first read it either. It seemed like a strange phrase-"

"No, no! This makes complete sense!" Mitsuha's voice was firm, yet her finger was shaking. "Right here, see this sentence? 'A town, born from the heart of a god, protected by the threads of time.' The wording is slightly strange, but the characters are spot on. Itomori…it's written with the characters for thread, protect, and town. 'Itomori' literally means 'town protected by thread!'"

"Wait, seriously? Oh my goodness, it is, it is! How did I not spot this earlier?!" The sparkle was back in Satsuki's eyes as she eagerly scrutinised the page for any more hints she may have missed. "So this really is…and there are so many more mentions of thread and hearts. Falling hearts, burning hearts, dragon hearts, knotted threads, weaving threads…most of the documents I have reference them one way or another."

"That's because making braided cords is the tradition passed down through Miyamizu shrine, it's been kept going by my family ever since Itomori's inception! And as for the heart of a god, the comet that hit Itomori was called Tiamat, which is also the name-"

"-of the Babylon goddess of chaos, whose body was used to create the earth!" Both women were practically shaking with excitement. For the researcher, it was the excitement of a new discovery – this was the thrill she so seldom found yet had nevertheless dedicated her life to. It was for moments like these that she had entered this profession. But for the schoolgirl, there was a healthy dose of fear mixed in as well. Fear that her memories and dreams may be uncovered as liars, anxiousness towards the secrets of Itomori she may uncover today…but most of all, Mitsuha saw Taki's face, framed by a mirror. And above all else, she feared that today might be the day she finds out that whatever she thought they had, might be nothing at all. If these documents amount to nothing…then it was all most likely just a fantasy.

But I have no choice…no, that's wrong. I can choose to walk away now. But I won't. Because I want to know the truth. About Itomori, and Tiamat, and musubi, and kakuriyo, and…I want to know what these feelings truly mean…

〈◇〉

They'd only been going for half an hour, but already Mitsuha felt exhausted. She was completely mentally and emotionally drained, and Satsuki could tell. In fact, it was so obvious that the researcher had insisted that they stop for the day and continue another time – Mitsuha could barely stand, let alone focus on and understand the old writings in front of her.

"Are you absolutely sure? I can get you a glass of water if you like?" The two of them had left the room and sat down in a quiet, more open area on the same floor, surrounded by bookshelves and completely deserted of visitors.

"I'm fine, I think. It's just…I'm beginning to remember things. About the incident."

"Oh dear, it's not PTSD is it? I imagine an event like that would be very traumatic…"

"Oh no, it's not that at all. I wouldn't call it traumatic, just frantic and a bit scary. I was knocked unconscious immediately. I'm just remembering a lot of things, and…well, it's all really confusing and a bit sudden."

Each manuscript they'd looked at had brought more back, caused old memories and dreams to resurface. The language was old and complex, and a lot of it was meaningless drabble, but there were fragments of important, forgotten history hidden away between the lines. When they'd got to one specific document detailing the appearance of comet Tiamat, Mitsuha had almost fallen to the floor, the flashbacks had been so real. It was still an unordered mess and she couldn't tell fact from fiction, but one thing was for sure – she could remember not one life, but two.

One was in Itomori, as Mitsuha. She would be her usual self, but everyone around her would act cautiously, as if she was liable to flip and become somebody else entirely. It was really strange. Life just got on as normal, but there was this feeling of longing and excitement, as if every day as Mitsuha was spent waiting for a chance to live a day as someone else.

The other was in Tokyo, as…well, as Taki. Dreams vivid enough to be reality. And from what she knew of him, the details were all correct. The school, where he lived, the train he took each morning and afternoon, the café he ate at, the restaurant he worked at…some of these things Mitsuha still didn't know from real life, only from the dreams. It was incredible. Incredibly confusing, that is.

But what had really given her a scare was the trip to Tokyo. She could remember now. All those holes in that day's memory, they were filled, and one in particular was very interesting. Mitsuha could remember meeting Taki on the train. For some reason she recognised him, but he didn't recognise her. Then she'd given him her braided cord, which made even less sense as that was the very same cord she was fiddling with right now, keeping her hair up in her signature style. How could she have possibly given it to him if it was on her head at this very moment?

"I think it would be best if you go on home for today. Besides, I've spent so much time on this I've been neglecting my other work." Mitsuha looked at the woman apologetically. "Oh, don't be like that," Satsuki laughed. "It's my own choice. After all, that's why I'm here on a Sunday! Tell you what – since I probably won't have time to look at all of this in detail, and you clearly understand a lot more of what it all means than I do, I'll scan all the documents this afternoon and email them over to you. You can have a look and point out which ones you think are interesting, and you can come in sometime next week to have a proper look at them."

"That would…actually, yeah, that would be really useful. Thanks. I didn't know you were allowed to do that."

"Let's just call it a spot of collaborative research. Now, are you sure you're absolutely fine?"

"Yes, I'm fine now, thank you. I was just a bit flustered before, was all." Mitsuha stood and bowed deeply. "Thank you so much for allowing me to see those documents. I have a feeling they're going to answer a lot of my questions about Itomori."

"It's no problem at all – in fact, it's quite exciting for me as well. Please drop in whenever you like, and expect an email from me soon." And with that, Mitsuha took the stairs back down to the main lobby, her mind still spinning. A lot of what she'd seen today was stuff she already knew, but there were some very interesting passages that seemed to trigger a lot of suppressed memories. What she needed right now was a good lie-down, and lots of time. Time to think, and read everything Satsuki was going to send her…

Then Mitsuha entered the lobby and all thoughts of a peaceful afternoon were shattered from her mind, as she saw the person she simultaneously wanted most and least to see. For there was Taki, sitting in a chair with a contemplative look on his face; he hadn't noticed her yet, but she couldn't leave him hanging. She'd completely forgotten about their agreement to meet up, and it was too late to back down now. Buckle up Mitsuha, you don't want Taki to see you like this. Just purge what you've learned from your mind and enjoy the date.

…oh my goodness, it's a date, isn't it?!

A/N

I'm so sorry for the late chapter – life got ahead of me and it ended up getting delayed. Not to mention that the day I planned to upload this, FFN gave me (and many other users) errors whenever trying to access a user profile, hence making it impossible to upload. Well, it's out now, although it's not as good as I'd hoped. I tried to cut out some of the repeated dialogue while still giving the same conversation from Mitsuha's point of view, but I don't think it worked that well, and it's kind of a lot of exposition. I made a choice earlier on to cut straight from week one to this point right here, but that does unfortunately cut out a lot of the slow build-up of Mitsuha's research and all that. Still, I think it's better than the alternative of two months of relatively boring nothingness. Things are really coming together now, but there's still a fair ways to go.

Remember that play I mentioned? So, this coming week is show week, as well as the deadline for the mega coursework I've been working on for over a month now. Which means that from now onwards I shall have a lot more time on my hands! I'm hoping to see Mirai no Mirai on Wednesday, a recent anime film from the creator of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, so we'll see how that goes. Also, remember the book Mitsuha was reading, I Am a Cat? Well, over the last few weeks I've exchanged my morning commute's fanfic reading with said book, and I have to say it's absolutely hilarious. Here is one short poem from the book, with Waverhouse's version of the final line (the characters call it a 'new-style haiku'):

On this face are held Nose Festivals
At which one offers sacred wine
So deep no hairs appear

If you haven't guessed, it's about someone with an abnormally large nose (there are actually several pages in chapter three devoted purely to the aesthetics of noses). So, here's my challenge to you: if you leave a review, then add a haiku about noses.

Happy reading!

Talndir