RIN |||| THREE OF PENTACLES
Rin was having post-hangover bubble tea with Hanayo when her girlfriend dropped the most unlikely sentence to be ever uttered from someone's lips.
"So Nico wants to have some sort of... game night, next week in her ladyfriend's private jet?"
Rin almost swallowed a mango pop boba.
Hanayo had been sitting there in the cafe next to the window, in her chunky gray sweater and pleated skirt and thigh highs with a braided knot along the sides, looking like she was ready for a photo shoot, the sexiest woman Rin had ever met, even hung over and having thrown on some old clothing. Hanayo been drinking a honeydew flavored bubble tea and had ordered a pair of mochi for them.
Rin and Hanayo hadn't known what to do when Nozomi had started unraveling at the restaurant. They'd asked the waiter for a large glass of water, let her sleep over, and sent her back to Sapporo with a full stomach and a promise to call. They'd gone out for tea after dropping Nozomi off at the station.
"Game night?" Rin coughed up a boba. "Ladyfriend? Private jet?"
"You got the text, too. And yeah. You know, Mari. She's beautiful, blonde, wealthy. And she's some sort of idol enthusiast? She knows all of our songs. All of them. Went to our lives and everything. Nico's one of her favorites. They met at the only gay bar in a 50 mile radius of either of them."
"Oh, right." Rin had a hazy picture of a blonde woman that appeared in Nico's snapchat "Let's do it! Can they pick us up? What are we playing, anyways?"
Hanayo laughed. "Of course. And uh. I have no idea. Nico suggested stripping games but I vetoed that."
Rin blushed and tried not to imagine her girlfriend half naked with a bunch of other naked people around.
They sat together in the sunlight, sipping at their drinks, talking around last night. They didn't talk about what Nozomi had said. About the future being gone. About not remembering anything. Nozomi's omens hadn't sunken in, yet, the warning was still the slurred words of a party gone on too long.
Looking back, sitting at the cafe was one of the last normal moments Rin had with her girlfriend. Before her thoughts became engulfed of the mantra of void.
Everything is void. The words crept into Rin's head as she got ready for class. Prepared for her midterm. Ran sprints at the park. Those futures are erased, now. My fortunes are void. Everything is void. Each moment of preparation towards the future brought with it the prediction of ruin. Rin told herself that Nozomi had just been drunk. That she hadn't meant anything. But... Rin thought of the ring, hidden in her keepsake box under the bed. She wanted to marry Hanayo, even if they were young, even if they hadn't finished college yet. Rin knew. But...
She kept picturing the tower card, a lightening-struck pillar jutting out of the bare sand like Hanayo's lighthouse along the beach.
Could Rin really ask Hanayo to marry her? If nothing they did mattered in the end?
Nozomi's words repeated over and over in Rin's head: everything is void. When she took a shower, when she went to class, when she laid next to Hanayo on the couch after getting takeout. The words echoed again and again: everything is void. Rin would look at the mirror and frown. Her face hadn't shifted, she looked as she always did, bright-eyed and full of energy. Her hands could still immerse themselves into hot water. She could still breath, think, feel. How could everything be void?
"I don't know what to do with myself." Hanayo said, a few days later. She paced the bedroom, making a loop towards the unmade bed again.
"Nya?"
"About... what Nozomi said. That you and I had some... grand fate together, and now we're... now the world as we know it is over! We're not even going to remember anything." Hanayo's eyes were misty. "I just wanted to be an artist and live with you and have everything be okay... and now we're being told the world is ending! What are we going to do? How am I supposed to go to class, work on my projects, go to game night... when this is hanging over my head?"
Rin stood up and wrapped her arms around her girlfriend. "I know... we'll... we'll do something."
"I mean. Nozomi is probably just messing with us.. there's no way any of this can be real, right? She had to have been messing with us. That's it, right? How could the world be ending?"
Rin wasn't sure what to believe about Nozomi's verity. On the surface, it was absurd to think any of this could be real. but... Rin remembered her stomach sinking every time she watched Hanayo paint that grim beach, not knowing why. She remembered the night in the tunnel. The incomprehensible images. The hours missing. Rin's fingers grasped at Hanayo's jacket. "I don't know, Kayochin... I wish I did."
Hanayo sniffled. "This is terrible."
"Yeah." Rin didn't know what to say. She looked the knick-knacks and art supplies all over their dresser. Like relics of another time, of Before. Fancy pink chopsticks. Some watercolor brushes. Jewelry. Hanayo had bought Rin some beautiful hair clips clips last month, with real emeralds. She had wanted to take Rin to a local garden for their anniversary, they were going to dress up and go out to a fancy ramen place afterwards. Rin was going to propose. But now... "It sucks a lot."
Her girlfriend clutched her. "I wouldn't believe Nozomi, if it weren't for the paintings. She knew what the paintings meant, somehow. How could she know that? I don't even know what it means. It's as if... the painting were coming through me, rather than something I made."
"Maybe Nozomi knows through spiritual power?"
Hanayo gave her a humorless exhale.
"But really..." Rin continued, "I felt something too, looking at your work. Your skill is amazing, and the paintings are beautiful, but... there's something there that makes me uneasy."
Hanayo pulled away a little, frowning. "Why?"
"It... it's like a bad dream. It makes me think about something that I'm not supposed to think about. Or. That's what it feels like. Whatever that means."
"A bad dream..." Hanayo looked away, out the window. It was raining again, a cold autumn rain. "I wonder what that means for me. Or you. Any of us. Nozomi must feel it too.." Her words trailed off at the end, little more than a whisper.
"Hey, so..." Rin started, and stopped. "So..."
"Rin? What's up?"
Was she going to do it? Tell Hanayo about what had happened? "Something... happened, a few months ago."
Hanayo flickered out of her reverie, her lavender eyes focused entirely on Rin. "What happened?"
"Er..." Where to begin? It was a trick of the light. This was ridiculous. Rin must have fallen asleep, was all. "I... uh. It's silly. Don't worry about it."
"I'm sure it's not silly." She stroked Rin's hair. "It can't be sillier than being told we're soul mates, right?"
Rin sighed. "At least that's something, right? That we're soul mates? Even if the world is ending?"
Hanayo kissed her forehead, her cheek. "Yeah, that's something. At least I'm spending it with you."
Rin had called Nozomi, a week later. Nozomi didn't speak of what had happened since – telling Rin and Hanayo that the future was void - but only talked in vague terms; she was preparing for some kind of ritual, she'd said, preparing to make a "spiritual journey".
Rin had stared at the kitchen floor, wondering how she had found herself having this conversation. The green tiled floor was dirty; but it was dirty when she'd moved into the college loft. The nagging sensation tingled at the back of her head. An image of a figure in light and rain. "Spiritual journey, nyan?"
Nozomi sort of made a fuzzy laugh through the phone. "Ah. Rin. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be talking about this. Especially out here in the park, of all places. My neighbors will think I'm ridiculous... I know I shouldn't be talking about this, but I... don't have anyone else to tell."
Rin wondered where Eli was, why Nozomi didn't tell her, why Nozomi was having a phone conversation in a public park. She decided not to ask. "What's a spiritual journey like?"
"It's..." Nozomi paused for a moment. Gentle static filled the silence. "It's... like a daydream." She said, finally, in a low voice. "A lucid dream. Somewhere in between them. But it's somehow more than that. You slide out of the moment and into another world."
Rin remembered the moment in the tunnel, so long ago. She remembered the voices of a familiar lover, that wasn't supposed to be there, a woman who was just a glitch of the eyes.
It took Rin a few seconds to strengthen her resolve. But if anyone knew what had happened to Rin that night, it was Nozomi. "Do you ever see... anything strange?
"Of course. I have had many inward journeys."
"What about seeing things in real life? Outside of your head?"
"Sometimes I see real things." Nozomi hummed, no tune. "It depends. Sometimes I see things that other people can't see, sometimes everyone can see it."
"Nyan?"
"Once, someone showed me a strange metal that isn't supposed to exist. The material is supposed to be impossible, but someone made it anyways. It was just a lab oddity – nothing truly groundbreaking. But anyone could have perceived it, if they looked, even though it was impossible."
"So that's like... a rare animal? A black hole? A dinosaur?"
"If someone could make a dinosaur, somehow, yes. But then there's something like... ghosts. Not everyone can see a ghost. Sometimes people can feel ghosts more than others, but can't see them. So seeing something strange can mean a lot of things. It just depends on what... channel you're on."
"That sounds hard."
"Most people have some odd experience or another. The people will tell themselves there's no way it could have happened, that they were tired and their eyes were playing tricks on them, that they must have imagined it. And perhaps it wasn't that exciting to begin with. It was just one odd moment in a lifetime of mundane moments. So they don't trouble themselves with it."
"Huh." Rin got off the kitchen chair and began to pace. She walked from square to square, avoiding the smaller white square pattern in between. Rin wondered if she'd picked the pacing habit up from Kayochin. "So, um..."
"Hmm?"
"What if someone did see something?" A feeling of dread rose into Rin's chest, like cold water, like she'd asked something wrong. "What would that mean?"
"That would mean that a person saw something."
"But... what if they weren't that sort of person? What if they were just an average person who saw something weird?"
A cold breeze was coming in from the kitchen window, promising rain.
Nozomi laughed. "It happens all the time. It's nothing to worry about."
"I..." Rin's voice wavered. "I saw something. A few months ago. Back in June." Rin was silent, for several moments. "I was running through this tunnel and I kept seeing these weird images. Like... my brain was playing tricks on me. I didn't pay that much attention – I was just running, my brain goes all sorts of places when I'm running. But... this was different. The images kept shifting, somehow. And then.."
The words jumbled in her throat, poking and scratching at her, fighting to stay inside.
Nozomi didn't say anything, but hummed again, a quiet little song this time. It was comforting, somehow.
"You won't... laugh at me, will you?"
"Of course not. I'm your friend, right?
"Yeah." Rin coughed. "So... I saw something. Like. Inside my brain. But I didn't imagine it. It was just... there. But it's not that weird. I see little images when I run. Just... keeps me amused, I guess, to make patterns. But these were weird images. Scary ones. And then... I saw myself. With Hanayo. But we weren't us. We were... other people. Us but not us. Older, maybe. Different."
Rin heard the distant moan of thunder.
"That sounds really bizarre and scary, Rin. Are you okay?"
"I'm... you know. I'm fine. I'll be okay. It was just once. But yeah isn't it bizarre? I'd... never had anything like it happen before."
"These things happen. The... veil is thinner is some places."
"I... saw someone. Not in my mind. For real. In the tunnel. She looked like someone I know."
Nozomi made an affirmative noise.
"It was so scary. That she was there. Watching me. Why... why would she watching me? She's... not the person I know. She's someone else."
"Maybe she cares about you, still." Nozomi said, her voice low. "Maybe she's worried. And looking in when she can."
Rin shuddered. That was creepier, somehow.
"When I snapped out of it... over an hour had passed. I had been there for so long and I didn't even remember it."
"I'm... I'm sorry, Rin. That sounds really scary."
Tears welled in Rin's eyes. "It was."
"I would be scared too, if I saw someone appear like that."
Nozomi, scared? Who knew so much about this stuff? "R-really?"
"Really."
"What do you... think it was?" Coldness seeped into Rin's skin with every word, but she had to know. "What happened?"
Branches rapped against the windows, crying out in the wind.
Nozomi sighed. "This might sound... odd, to you, Rin."
"Ha. I don't think it can get any weirder, nyan."
There was a flash.
"That's true. I... think what happened is that you're seeing... another possibility of yourself, the woman you saw. Another dimension. You and Hanayo are still connected to them, somehow. You share the same souls. Those moments and memories come out when you're in a trance state. That's why Hanayo saw the beach when she painted, and why you saw the memories when you ran. You're... cracking open a doorway, taking a little peak through."
"What do you mean, to another dimension?"
A strike of thunder hit the ground outside. Rin jumped into the air.
"Oh my. Thunder? So close. So loud."
Rin looked outside, as if the sky could hear them talking about the massive "Yeah. Really close."
Nozomi coughed. "Dimensions are... out of my area of expertise. I'm just a Seer, Rin, nothing more. I can't tell you the ways or hows of other dimensions. I can make guesses. I know more than most. I'll... try to confirm those guesses, soon. But until then... just know you're not imaging it. And... I don't think you were in any danger, as frightening as it was. At least from another you, or another Hanayo."
Another Hanayo. What a strange concept.
They talked for an hour afterwards, and when Rin hung up she wasn't happy, but she knew a moment of peace.
"Hey."
Hanayo looked up from her drawing. A woman in a veil and dress. She'd gone back to fashion illustration, for her final. "Hey."
The thunder had turned to a full-fledged storm, with rain dashing against the windowpanes.
"Can we talk?"
Hanayo put the drawing on her chair. "Sure, is everything okay?"
Rin nodded. Her throat rebelled, her watering eyes rebelled, but she was going to say something. "So... something happened a few months ago."
Hanayo stroked Rin's hair as they lay in bed together. Rin nestled into the soft swell of Hanayo's curves and spaces, letting the warmth of her girlfriend lull her into safety.
"Thank you for telling me." Hanayo kissed Rin's hand. "That must have been really difficult."
"Yeah."
"It's... over, now. Whatever it was. I think."
Rin's stomach churned. Pricks of memory still stung her. The feeling of wrongness had not yet faded. Another Rin. Another Hanayo. Looking in at them, their own selves, but different. "Is it?"
"Well... maybe not. But whatever we're going to do, it'll be together." They grasped hands together, fingers interlocking. "And we'll do it with our friends."
"With board game night. On a private jet."
"That too."