A week before Eli came home, Nozomi had cleaned the apartment. She'd lit some candles, and shaved, more out of habit than concern. Trimmed her dark internal down, her legs, clipped her fingernails. Manicures and pedicures. Nozomi screamed to herself internally that Eli deserved no such consideration, and if Eli came home to takeout boxes and dirty ragged fingernails and stale laundry, it'd be more than she deserved. Eli is sick, Nozomi though. Eli is a dead woman. It does not matter if she finds me attractive, or unattractive, because we are both doomed. (Nozomi put the nice serum on her face, and put product in her hair regardless.)

There was a secondary reason for her cleaning: for the spiritual journey she was about to take.

Nozomi had prepared for her astral travels for a week, drinking only water and wine, eating only fruit, surrounded in a cloak of smoke and fire. She hummed: her thoughts, her prayers, her wishes, her curses. Syllables rolled around in her mouth, too heavy, all she could expend was a low sweet vibration.

And Nozomi vibrated her vocal cords, she studied the painting of the lighthouse.

Nozomi had bought Hanayo's painting of the lighthouse and the beach, although she had done so anonymously, and at greater expense than the painting was listed for. The painting was large, almost as tall as Nozomi, and dominated the living room with its presence. Thick, swirled layers of paint that made up the ocean tides. (Impasto.) Splashes of cobalt. Heavy chopping waves, desatured in cerulean and white. Foam rising up in a malicious gesture. The lighthouse was done with a heavy, almost shining, texture, perhaps Hanayo had used a medium for the paint.

Nozomi had known this beach her whole life. She'd never been there.

Nozomi's supplies were in the spare bedroom. (Eli had kept her crafting supplies in there. Tiny glass bottles of periwinkle beads and pearls. A sketch of a piece of jewelry Eli had conceived.) Nozomi had banished the area, and had set up the floor markings and unlit candles to begin. That day, she'd worn a simple priestess robe

Nozomi took a deep breath and lit each candle in a clockwise motion. Nine candles. Nine twisted nine threads together, each a different color. She hummed to herself as she braided and spun. The strings held a nervous energy within the yarn, vibrating and pulsing and then going quiet at odd intervals. The life force shouldn't have been this erratic.

She'd already ground the herbs for the incense. Her hand had ached, but she did not cease. The moon's phase and the position of the planets were in perfect alignment and she was going to the world's edge tonight. The incense was going to take her on her journey.

Scene: A dark haired woman sat in the lobby, a nice lobby, with a bouquet of lilies in a gold-veined vase. The woman's clothing was simple and of high quality. The woman's eyes were closed, but her posture suggested meditation rather than rest. The Seer was waiting.

The sharp click of uneasily-worn heels came closer and closer.

"Miss? That shop you mentioned had everything you asked."

Green eyes snapped open: an idol's eyes, bright and glossy with thick eyelashes. There was the assistant with several plastic bags. The dark haired woman smiled at her with a professional impersonal smile. "Thank you, Hana. I'll be retiring now."

"Miss, it's not too late to book your flight with everyone else-"

The dark haired woman's face lost some of its energy. Her smile did not fade, but for a moment her mask had cracked. She took the bags. "No, that's quite alright. I'll meet with everyone at the concert in San Francisco. Thank you, Hana."

The assistant watched the dark haired woman enter the elevator with a mixture of awe and an unexplained sadness. Why had she separated from the others? The group were supposed to be practicing the newest release.

The Seer pretended not to notice the tired business man on the elevator ride; pretended not to hear his thoughts. Tojo home again, out here. She's away from the group, limited intel on The Project. She knows something, she knew we had an agent waiting for her back in Vancouver. Nozomi yawned. Doesn't know her assistant's boyfriend works for us..

Strange, the Seer thought. Hana must not be aware, then.

The man ruminated: I thought this was a normal security job. I should never have trusted

Andrei with anything; I knew I should never have gotten back into this.

Andrei. Nozomi had heard that name before.

This is above my paygrade, this is for Ayase. He snorted to himself. Well, maybe not for Ayase.

Nozomi knew this. It just hurt to hear.

Nozomi's wine glass felt heavy in her hand, the special glass she'd bought with Eli on vacation once. Eli would be home soon. Nozomi glanced towards the door. A dead woman, real and not real, lurked over the threshold. Dead eyes. A limp body. Like she was floating in space.

Incense lingered in the air. Candles were still burning. Nozomi had already cleansed the space again, after that morning, after her spiritual journal.

So what, Nozomi thought. So what if my other self is alone. I will always be alone.

Scene: A shot above Nozomi and Eli, laying in bed together, bare chested but covered in comforters: PG-13.

Nozomi's eyes are closed. She twitches, once, twice, whimpering.

"Where do you go?" Eli asked Nozomi, when she opened her eyes.

"Elsewhere." Nozomi said, and kissed Eli.

Eli was in trouble; Eli was truly cursed. Nozomi did not talk to her about this. They made love and bought furniture and went to music festivals. It was easier for Nozomi to love a doomed woman, to know that sooner or later things would come to an end. Nozomi knew about Umi, she knew it was not Eli's fault, not really.

A psychic could love a spy in a way no one else could

Scene: Overhear shot, Nozomi in the triple-aroma spray penthouse shower.

Nozomi stands for a long time under the water. The camera pans on scars, quiet tattoos that were not there before, the hollows of Nozomi's cheeks and eyes, the wrinkled hand.

Was there a way out of this? Nozomi asks herself. She knew Maki was doing something that altered fate, that Honoka was right along with her. And what was worse, Umi and Eli were closing in on them - and maybe, it wasn't wrong to stop them.

Something about the new show was wrong. The music hurt

There were many possible futures. Most of those futures being a lightning-struck tower. Nozomi would no longer get consistent fortunes for the future, but she was beginning to hear patterns, in the song of the universe. The patterns leapt and pirouetted themselves into oblivion, an erratic ballet for a doomed audience. For every horrific bad ending there were five mundane atrocities waiting for all of them, at the beach, at the tower, in a small town, in a large city, in the slow decay of idols into mundane, unpleasant, adults.


She saw herself going underground, in a corridor of compacted earth with gold veins glistening. Figures were etched into the walls in little hollow earthen shrines. Women were depicted in formal garments with talismans between their palms, women behind endless barriers, women being chased by devils. The only lights were torches below the shrines that burned a low blue; flickering and wavering lights that projected wild shadows on their uneasy movements.

To Nozomi's left was an etched woman in elaborate robes. The etching was speaking to a group of followers. A real woman stood at the end of the hall. A woman, in her late 20's, maybe. She had long orange hair, dressed in a white kimono.

"Why did you come here?"

Nozomi had not expected her to speak. "To know the truth."

"You know the truth, Seer, of what you need to know. You seek to understand your own heart."

Outside, Nozomi heard a downpour beginning. Snow and sleet.

"My heart? I know of it, yes. I hold no mystery within my breast to be developed into-"

The woman took her hand and pulled her into the darkness, through veil after veil, webs of gossamer catching in her hands and feet–

There was nothing. There was gauze and pain. Fabrics that made up the entire world. A womb of silk and tulle. Where was she?

The woman in grey robes had taken her to a forest.

Nozomi looked up into the canopy. Flowering trees held their branches towards the sun; honeysuckle bushes burst with fragrance. It was spring. She walked forward. In the depths of the darker forest, she saw a glow.

At the source of the light, Nozomi knelt down. It was an egg in a bed of violets.

Nozomi looked back to her guide, but the woman had vanished.

Two beautiful swans returned to her egg. White shining fur. Elegant necks in graceful curves dove into a full body of angelic feathers. Nozomi watched with a certain awe as the swans opened their beaks, as if they were kissing.

Then the beaks began to stab.

Nozomi screamed. Blood stained their glossy white feathers, turning the swans into red monsters. Nozomi felt a stab of heartbreak, familiar but now so new and fresh-

-Nozomi was pulled through another web. Dim eggshells littered the ground. A beaten bloodied creature pawed its way forward. It looked rough, but it was still there. Its claws held a wand within them.

Nozomi saw another woman staring back at her. Her eyes, her face. The woman was a normal person; beautiful and gifted, a true psychic, but not an adept, not a superstar. Not the embodiment of prescience. Their eyes met.

"You're on the right path." Nozomi whispered to her. "Yours is the only right path."

"There is nothing going right. There is no hope. There is only bleakness. We are about to be annihilated. All of us."

"In every other future, you have already been annihilated, or will be annihilated. Your future has a string of fate that has not yet unraveled. The thread has not yet been cut."

"Is your thread cut?"

"It will be." Nozomi knew how it would happen. She would die, on the beach, next to Eli's broken body. "But yours will not."

"What should I do?"

Nozomi wanted to tell her to look at the tree, but her other self's future was even murkier than her own. She looked across the threshold into the other world: a dark room, candles, snow coming down on the window. It was a nice, but normal room. She knew her own self would see the high-rise apartment, the city lights, the dark storm clouds holding their rains in for another hour. If her other self looked closely, she might see the familiar Tiffany lamps, the tea cups, the comforter Nozomi still had from college. She might see the subtle changes in Nozomi's face, filler and lashes. Nozomi still resisted more invasive cosmetic changes, but why, she didn't know anymore. Behind her was an original Hilma af Klint painting of two swans, black and white, embracing. The living room had White on White. Malevich. (Eli liked abstract Russian painters.)

Nozomi could feel her own terror, and adrenaline. Her other self had come so far across the abyss into the past. Did she have an answer for herself?

"We are whole." She said, gesturing to her own body. "We have whole souls, we are complete, even separated, like this. We are in harmony. We can speak to each other, like this, because we are so attuned, even across timelines. We are not ghosts. But not everyone is whole. Some of you will have ghosts."

"Yes." The other Nozomi responded, to herself. "Yes, I know."

Nozomi looked up into her metaphoric psychic tree, looking for the golden ending. The upper branches were covered in thorns and feathers, but a single bough stood out, away from all of the others, not quite a promise, but a possibility.

"Attune them. Look for the ghosts."

Her other self nodded, and left.

Nozomi opened her eyes. Snow built outside. Nozomi watched it fall down, like an endless droning sound. Eli would be here in less than a day. Eli loved snow.