Chapter Text
So, get this.
You’re seven types of funky, with sweet taste and swagger that’s got moxy on the Devil. Heads turn so fast that they topple to the ground. Their eyes spinning tops; you’re the tops.
Some poxy altar was built back when men slept in mud and had fetishes of Gods so old we don’t remember their names. Whatever rhapsody they sang around it, whatever sticks they shook — they set the ball rolling so that one day you’d start rocking this thing we call Earth. Pulled outta the muck of the ages: that’s you. The shining, the spit-cleaned, the rapturous…
A little beacon sat on the edge of a midnight sea.
Or, well, that’s what she’d like to think.
Ba-dump!
Wheels groan as they rolled over another speed bump — the city limits defined by the hoops and hurdles civilization demanded for the sake of self protection. The towers grew shorter, the traffic thinned: the stacked cities of the center of her world started to form a silverite wall of fire behind them. A glacier burning with solar light, an enormous edifice of mankind’s presence on Earth, that familiar skyline was vanishing into the sky. The rest of the world apparently wasn’t so hazy. Instead, it’s green. Shockingly so.
The dividing line between Yokohama and Tokyo was nonexistent, really. It was all concrete and cityscape as far as a normal person was concerned. But to watch as grey, so much grey, petered out as vibrant greens and sprawling thickets of trees, rolling plains, and vistas became more common — that was magical, truly so. They hadn’t quite met that, not yet. Still, the shorter the buildings got, the closer to nature you knew you were.
Cramped city streets. Underground crossings and buried malls. Streets lined by colorful signage, posters and banners as far as the eye can see, each peacocking as loudly as possible in hopes to catch your eye. Everyone, some masked, some wearing big bags, some rushing, many more stalled and waiting; an endless parade of the young and the old, lost in the procession of the city. They were all life. Life was spending 200 yen to hop on a train that only went 2 kilometers away; if you’d chosen to walk, drive, or ride a bike that same distance it’d be a day’s travel with how congested the roads were, with how complicated the city sprawl was to navigate, and just how many roadside salespeople were to be avoided along the way. Tokyo was all Shibuya, Shinjuku, Shimokita… a whirlwind of similar sounding names that left even her, a city girl, completely dazed.
Growing up in Yokohama but commuting to school in Tokyo would do that to a person. Well, it did it to her. Maybe that’s part of the confusion she felt now. In the back seat of a car, she watched the city march into the background; the whole thing felt so perplexing.
Why did she have to leave? She looked down at her hands as they reflexively clenched against her legs, grabbing up the shiny material of her bright pink tracksuit like a safety blanket. It felt like something popped in her inner ear as she saw that.
She was on her knees. Her face was wet. The world was dark. Something smiled at her. A woman?
She grabbed the side of her head as cold talons sunk into its side, leaving an icy sensation to spider throughout the leftward portion of her head. She really didn’t understand why she had to leave. One moment, she was going to school. The next, she was in an office with her parents, the two of them ashen and grim faced, explaining the details of her own transfer out of the district and to… Chiba? Way down at the tip of the Bōsō Peninsula, even.
The morning had been met in a daze… had she done something bad? That’d make sense. They were finally exiling her from her home for being a weird, creepy loner. It was only right.
‘Hitori Gotoh! How do you plead to the seventeen charges of ‘looking at normal girls with your creepy dead fish looking eyes’?’
Say not guilty! Say not guilty! You just wanted to be friends with them! The chains on your wrists and around your ankles are unjust! The muzzle, too! You’re not Cannibal Hector!
‘G-guilty!’ Damnit! If you had the strength of courage to deny your charges, you’d’ve never been charged in the first place!
‘Then the court orders that you be exiled posthaste! Begone from sight, weirdo!’
She imagined herself in the back of an armored vehicle, surrounded by cops in riot gear… but then she blinked and saw leather seats and a half empty cola swishing around in a cup holder. Right. That probably hadn’t happened, then. Feeling a bit queasy, she took a look out of the window, hoping to steady herself a bit by staring towards the seemingly unchanging horizon line. Though residential buildings, rest stops, and other obstacles barred her view on it, she still mostly managed to keep her eyes fixed on something distant enough as to feel like it was solitary.
It must’ve been the soda. It always gave her the jitters when she drank it on an empty stomach. Must’ve also been why she was sort of nauseous. Eating was pretty good at staving those sorts of feelings away, after all.
Why’d she been in so much of a rush? Her crimes must’ve been serious enough to deny her breakfast…. Did she forget to return a book to the library? Had she sent her number and chat ID to the wrong person and given them the ick? The same as ever, as always, she had no perception whatsoever as to why the world treated her so unfairly. Only death can cure a fool.
Her fingers casually sought out the above handhold in the car only for her hand to mostly miss. What gave? Muscle memory shouldn’t have failed her like that… Unless, of course, she wasn’t in her family’s car.
The revelation didn’t shock her. She simply adjusted her hand correctly to reach and hold onto the handhold, then letting her arm fall slack when she did.
She should’ve been shaken, but in her haziest recollection, she remembered a shiny red car roll on up — that had been the Toyoto she currently was sitting in. A nice car. Sort of new, it had that new car smell that you’d expected, though somewhat tinged by second hand smoke and boot polish.
That connected back to the man in the front seat, then.
His age was somewhat hard to pin down, as he held a rather youthful vigor, even despite his otherwise mature preenings. The short goatee, the professional looking glasses, even the navy blue suit with the maroon tie and the patterned white and blue button up underneath. He was probably wearing slacks and, by the smell, boots. Boots and a suit? Sort of odd, but maybe he liked the weight.
The thing that tied him back to her, of course, was the color of his hair. Dark pink… just like her dad’s. An uncommon hair color on the list of already uncommon hair colors in Japan that weren’t ‘black’ or ‘some deep dark shade of brown’.
That man was her uncle. She hadn’t heard of him, nor any of the other Gotohs for that matter, until very recently. Her dad simply had never brought them up. And her mom? She’d always said something on the lines of ‘It’s like Naoki Gotoh appeared fully formed out of the sea foam — playing the music of the muses, but he himself had no muse.’
…So much for that, huh. He was just a man and men often had siblings. Here was his older brother, driving her away from her home.
He peered up at the rear view mirror a couple of times as they continued along the route to wherever it was they were going. The frequency of it was enough to make Hitori imagine them crashing into a river or something. And yet, they didn’t.
People only did that sort of thing if they had something to say. Hitori was a plain thing, after all; nobody had any real reason to give her a second look (or so she believed). So she geared herself for the thing she disliked, and yet equally yearned for, the most. An interaction with a new person. The shine of his glasses signified that he’d yet again turned his head her way. This time, he developed the means in which to bridge the silence. “This must be awkward for you. Heh, I know. What a way to start a conversation, eh? It puts a person in a real spot to have to acknowledge something like that. It's an expectation being set. If you say ‘yeah, it’s awkward alright’, you’re committing to a real cockeyed atmosphere. But then, if you say ‘no, I’m alright’... I know you’re lying. Is that too strong? Ah, forgive my manners…”
“I’m Ryosuke. I used to be the principal of Omitsuno High School, down in Daidara Town. It’s in Chiba! These days I’m just a school counselor, so you can refer to me however you want to! It’s not as though I’m important enough to deserve anything too honorable, hahah,” His voice, though full of warmth and kindness, existed in negation with itself. To hear that voice was to hear the familiar kind-hearted supportive voice of her father, and well, he wasn’t here. She shrank in her seat as he continued to speak, “I’ll be honest with you, Hitori-chan. When I received that letter from my younger brother, I was surprised! I suppose he never mentioned me?”
He peered into the rear view mirror only to boggle as, before his very eyes, what was once his niece, Hitori Gotoh, had transformed into what appeared to be a single, fuzzy pink pixel that levitated mid air. He coughed a little at the sight. Before she could terrorize the man much longer, the shame of being strange caught up to her, and she reformed. The overcast eyes of the backseat passenger unveiled the true story well enough, though her stuttering voice clarified it as well, “N-n-no…”
“I can’t be too shocked.” He sighed and leaned against the driver side door, keeping one hand adroit on the wheel. Ryosuke tapped the side of his face with his index finger as he held his cheek and half-grumbled out a, “He was a troubled soul. Then again, so was the whole family. To hear that he went on to snag a comfortable life, a loving wife, and two good daughters? It was… good to hear. Your ol’ man and I might not see eye-to-eye, but I’m truly glad to house you.”
He sounded nice. Well-meaning. But that was the modus operandi of just about anyone who was trying to get into your good graces. The cynical, skeptical part of her mind that’d developed as a defense mechanism against teleprompters and roadside salesmen was alarmed by it all, frankly. Never brought up by her dad? Never reached out, never showed up – nothing at all? He hadn’t even been aware she existed until her dad reached out! It sent up a few red flags. Enough to make Hitori feel as though she’d accidentally stumbled over the Kurils to end up, somehow, in the USSR. Getting so lost as to travel through time? It feels like something that’d just happen to her, knowing her luck. Her mind reoriented itself. She needed to think less about the ‘who’ and more about the ‘why’. Why should she doubt her dad’s choice in sending her to live with this man? More importantly: why had she been sent to live with him at all? She liked her home! Her mom, her dad, her dog… and her kid sister, even if she was a bit of a pain. The trek to school was surprisingly nice, given how long it was, and school was, well, school. She couldn’t really do anything about that.
Her closet. And suddenly, her eyes flung open. Maybe Ryosuke noticed the wild flail of her arms as she thought about it: no closet meant no laptop, meant no headphones, and meant… no guitar! Her life was over. All of those years she’d toiled… the OhTube channel… her passion and her hope for meeting new people! Alas. So ended the pathetic saga of a certain Hitori Gotoh. May her ashes be brought delicately to the soil, as to repay her for the indelicate treatment of the world.
Just as the few particles that remained of her were lowered into her grave, Ryosuke snapped his fingers. She jolted with an “Eyagh!” and stared at him like she’d been zapped.
He looked apologetic, at least, in the mirror. “Ah, oh. My bad. I was trying to get your attention – you’re a real jumpy thing, huh? I never would’ve figured that a child of my brother’s could be so…” He rotated his wrist. “Meek. That’s no insult, of course – it’s just surprising, is all.”
No words could form in her mouth even though she so desperately wanted to speak. Questions were a tricky thing. While true that a question asked could be an answer made, the search for answers often dredged up more than the truth. With answers came revelations. And sometimes, one preferred to be kept in the dark on certain things. Darkness, often feared and reviled as a dangerous place, was secretly among the safest harbors to find. Nothing is exposed. It is cold, calm, and quiet. At peace with itself, as the light had yet to unveil what hid within it. Hitori was a passenger within the shadows. Never had she ever felt safe illuminated by light, as it was just a reminder of her life so fallow. At least she was unseen in the dark. To be invisible even in the light? It was as if she did not even exist.
How, then, was she supposed to ask him anything? To speak to him at all was to threaten the light, to question the bond she had with her father, and to question her own personhood – that memory refused to surface, after all. What had she done that she was not even conscious about?
Ryosuke stopped trying to have a conversation with her as she retreated inwards. He simply whistled along to a tune on the radio, some sort of jazzy classic with saucy horns and a dancing piano, and minded his own business as he navigated the long road.
Her life had ended, then. She was being pulled down to Jigoku in a chariot helmed by a glasses-wearing oni who swore that he was family. Gone were her aspirations to play music, and gone were the scant comforts she’d accumulated through the years. Hitori truly soon would be collocated with ‘bocchi’, as this journey to the South would finally transform her into a perpetual loner, for her punishment was the Loner’s Jigoku (which she had just made up).
She mimed grabbing a pick and soon took hold of the neck of an imaginary Les Paul guitar. She started strumming at the invisible strings with a wanton energy, and inside of her head she saw her memories of her musical career flicker through her head. Playing on stage at the Budokan. Shaking hands with the Emperor. Meeting Jimi Hendrix… oh, right. Fantasies. What had she actually done, again?
Oh, that’s right. Nothing.
She set her fake pick down and exhaled through her nose. Her memories all started with her kneeling on a tatami floor, strumming away to nobody, whilst she recorded another song for her mildly popular OhTube channel called ‘guitarhero’. Wiling away the late hours on her DAW, all to clean up and organize her guitar playing into something sharable, only to hit the hay immediately afterwards – not speaking to a soul during the whole process. Days after days burned away for this singular thing. And it hadn’t even been her true goal, nor close to it. Perhaps the comments and the views on her vids made her feel something, but that ‘something’ was hardly tangible. The realization hit her hard. Deprived from her guitar, she was no further away from her goals now than she was when she had it. She wanted to join a band. To make friends.
What she’d made were lies in the descriptions of her videos. Not even her fans were aware of who she actually was behind the curtain.
All on her lonesome. It was rather miserable, wasn’t it? Her life had been a cycle of nothing. Perhaps this was true enlightenment. To know nothing, to be nothing. But she probably also had to be satisfied with nothing, and well…
“Nothing” terrified her. The darkness was at least something. Though you could not see, you had your other senses, and you knew well enough that there were other things with you in the dark. Nothing? True oblivion? It was nonexistence. Even she was not so keen on facing such a thing. She quite liked being alive, even if it was a struggle at times.
Before she could spiral further, the car came to a gradual stop. She looked up and saw Ryosuke adjusting the mirror. He turned fully around to face her, though he did so slowly. If he’d suddenly faced her, Hitori wouldn’t have known what to do, and might have exploded. This way, she at least got a view of his side profile before having to contend with the full thing. He smiled that way only dads could. The twinkle in his eyes and the way their corners crinkled, the smile that was toothy in a goofy way, and the small, light-hearted chuckle that followed it. “We’ll be stopping for a minute. I’m going to pop into town to get a bite to eat. Feel free to follow me if you’re hungry or just want to stretch your legs – though don’t let me pull your arm. Stay here if you’d like. The seats are quite comfortable.”
And like that, he opened the car door with a “clunk”, and stepped out into the open air. She saw him wait just beyond the window. An exercise in trust, perhaps? He was bold to try it so soon. Then again, she was noticing a lot of bold behavior from the man. They’d driven away from Yokohama AND Tokyo, meaning that they’d driven past Kawaski too, completely avoiding the Aqua Tunnel that took you across Tokyo Bay into Chiba.
How long had they been driving, then? Her legs were a bit sore… and the Sun was lingering somewhat low in the West. Then, they must have left in the morning. What kind of state had she been in? She shook her head… And then her eyes caught the sea. Tokyo Bay, certainly. And so, she scanned the city outside her window, and spotted a thin, blue-windowed tower. That was the Port Tower, meaning that they’d driven as far as Chiba City. Given what Ryosuke had said, it didn’t sound like he’d intended on stopping here. Was he going to drive through the night? Hitori, on reflex, bolted from the car like a bat out of hell. She hated the idea of being cooped up for that long so badly that she needed to run into the unfamiliar ‘wilds’ beyond the doors, as she’d surely get cabin-fever and lose her mind if she had to withstand a full day’s worth of sitting in the seat of a car.
Ryosuke glanced back and tried not to stare at the strange creature that’d crawled out of his back seat. He scratched at his goatee. “Soooo… what sounds good for dinner?”
‘Anything,’ Her tortured brain screamed out, ‘Anything so long as I don’t have to be trapped in there forever.’
But Hitori, herself, answered with a voice that only water bears could hear, “A-ah… uhm… ch-cheeseburger…?!”
Ryosuke bobbed his head. “OK!” He said that in English. “Cheeseburger!” He also said that in English. To Hitori’s untrained ear, his accent sounded pretty good! Maybe that was the high skill of an ex-principal.
So, off they went. Chiba was a bit more familiar to her, as while it was by no means a small city, it wasn’t Tokyo. Few things were Tokyo. That wasn’t to say that Chiba was flat, but it was moreso that Tokyo felt like a glass model of the Himalayas. It was remarkably like Yokohama in that way. If they hadn’t been satellites to the grand beating heart of Japan, they’d’ve probably seemed more impressive. But, wasn’t that the nature of things? Comparison was always a proven method to make even the most monumental sites become mundane, close to second nature.
They’d parked pretty deep into the city, having come to a stop beneath the Chiba Urban Monorail. A sight that likely had become commonplace for the denizens therein, it was rather eyecatching for Hitori herself, and filled her mind with imagination. To think that something like that, so grandiose and far-reaching, could become mundane – it was almost unthinkable! And yet, Hitori knew that it naturally had to become mundane. Humans operated like that. Well, for the most part. Adaptation was the way of mankind. If they hadn’t the means to adapt to extreme situations, then the insane forward progression of this century alone would’ve taken them lifetimes. And yet, in 17 years since the start of the new millennium (15 of which she’d been alive for), the leaps and bounds that had been made by their collective efforts made even 70 years ago look prehistoric.
She didn’t think she’d ever not marvel at something like the monorail. 15 kilometers, so high up off of the ground – such a thing looked like the future. And yet, it had been born of the past. A past so distant to her now that she wasn’t even sure if her parents were alive back when the ground was broken for the project.
And so she kept her eyes trained on it as she and her uncle navigated a short distance, passing through a narrow straight-way as they sought out Hitori’s rather perfunctory desire. He looked back, occasionally, to check if she was still behind him. He hadn’t yet learned what kind of person she was, so it was fair to be somewhat worrisome about her nature. A quiet person with no desire to be somewhere? She may have disappeared if he took his eyes off of her.
He’d learn in due time that the mere thought of running away was so frightening to Hitori that she’d sooner try public speaking than that. Providing for herself? On her own? In this big and scary world? A hawk would swoop down and finally prey upon her, now that she’s no longer safeguarded by stronger people. A feast to the birds of prey…
And then they were at a WcDonalds. What had felt like mere moments had actually been at least 20 minutes of silent walking. Hitori looked down at her hands as they waited in line. Her teriyaki burger (not even something she really liked, but she ordered it because it was popular) went down somewhat easily, and she silently sipped on a straw to drink her cola whilst her uncle chatted over the phone. He proffered a french fry in the air like it was a conductor’s baton whilst he spoke to this person. She tried not to pry, but she picked up a few stray beats. He said with vigor, “... Again, my deepest apologies for not calling sooner. I do not seek to excuse my behavior, as certainly a man of my background should be able to make time for it, but the day’s been rather hectic. Ah! Where am I?”
Ryosuke peered at Hitori. She met his eyes in his reflection against the window, and for some curious reason, she chose to nod her head at him. He looked like he needed it. He continued speaking, “I am in Chiba City. Yes, I know, a bit far from home – that’s because I’m actually meeting with family. I know! Ah, mhm… right. My niece. I didn’t even know I had one. I’ll be housing her for the foreseeable future. Why? Well, mind my manners, but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for family? They’re in crisis, so you stand up for them.”
“N-no. No. Nothing like that. Her parents just thought she needed time away from the big city. Oh? Yes, right. Yokohama, and she commuted to Tokyo for school.” He cupped his hand over the receiver and looked at Hitori. He leaned forward and spoke directly to her, “I hope you don’t mind me talking about you. The person on the other end, well, is the principal of the school you’ll be going to.”
All she offered him was a rather placid nod of her head, her attention still fixed on the indistinct ‘outdoors’. She wasn’t looking at anything in particular. More importantly, she was looking ‘away’.
A new school, a new principal, a new home, a new life… new, new, new, new… it repeated in her head enough to stop sounding like an actual word. She remained in this trance through them leaving the WcDonalds, through retracing their steps through Chiba, up until they reached Ryosuke’s car.
Her mind, all trapped up in a bohemian haze, travel’d far away from the habitual places. It tilted and teetered and tottered over the edge of the line. While her body reached that metal chariot towards her new life, her head was higher; she was a goner, trapped in a lonesome place. When she shook her head free of the surreptitious stingers that had riddled it along the way, she blinked and saw that the car now bordered the edge of a yawning walkway. At its mouth was a towering torii gate, its red legs only lamely visible in the pitiful light as the Sun had lazily sank ‘low the horizon line.
How odd. She blinked away sleep, as though she’d napped for the whole day. Why shouldn’t she investigate what lay behind the walkway? It wasn’t as if she had much choice if she got into that car, plus… with a torii came a shrine. She needed the guidance, to be frank.
Inside her head, she apologized to Ryosuke for dipping out so suddenly. She supposed she was running away, if just for a moment or few, to clear her head and find the clarity she’s felt so deprived of. What had happened? Why had she been given away? What pulled her towards Daidara at the edge of Chiba, at the southernmost tip of Bōsō? So many questions with answers that had yet to reveal themselves. Perhaps the kami would know. The patron kami of Chiba was Myōken, the Venerable Lord of the Stars. So as her eyes flittered skyward, where she expected pitch black shadow due to the city lights, she was struck dumb by the causeway of the stars that formed a path above her head. There it was – the universe.
And shining chiefly was the North Star. She staggered towards it. Up the shrine’s trail she went, her legs crying out as they were unused to such activity. Though the exhaustive effort had begun to strain the limit of the physical exertion that Hitori could stomach, she felt a pull – like gravity – that urged her to keep climbing. Foot over foot, she chose to continue the climb.
The last step taken led her foot to fall into a ring of water that reflected the shimmering ceiling of the world. And so did the foundation mirror the firmament. The ripple caused by her unsteady footstep went for quite a way, and it soon illustrated the outlines of great shapes in the water. Things far too massive to be hidden in such a thin pool; thousands of eyes now peered up at her. A terrible nightmare. She wasn’t ready to be seen like that. Not by people, and especially not by… whatever they were. A part of her mind now stepped back. The supernatural beings were less troublesome than the attention they were now giving her? She wasn’t even slightly disturbed by the sights of the divine?
Who knew? Hitori pushed her fingers together and remained at the edge of the reflecting pool, left uneasy by her sudden entry into a place that mortals should not go. She took a wrong turn and fell into the Realm of Gods. Just her luck.
She thought to turn and leave. There was no need for her, as small and pitiful as she was, to disturb the majestic and the mighty. Was she even sure that she hadn’t fallen asleep in the back of her uncle’s car, and that this was anything but a delusion born of salt and sugar? As Hitori turned around, however, she saw the reflecting pool suddenly take on a vast array of lights and colors. She fell back in shock. Gold, like the rising sun. Deep blue, like the unvarnished sky at night. And then a bright red, the color of passion and anger. They circled her and, for some reason, her legs no longer wished to move.
And then, from behind…
“And so the dreamer has returned to us. What a pity that it took so long, I feared that we’d never reunite.”
Hitori needn’t turn her head to see what was behind her. With wings illuminated by a sublime pink glow, an angel had descended to visit her. This was a far cry from Jigoku.
The eyes of Heaven now were upon her.