With such thoughts in her mind, Mitsuha reflexively stood up and checked her condition. Yes, “reflexively.” Whether it was habit or some sort of adaptation, Mitsuha had been like this for as long as she could remember. In most situations, she prioritized action─thought would come later. She didn’t feel it was entirely normal, but cursory attempts to label the condition had not been fruitful.
Imagine, for a moment, that there was a ball flying toward you. You’d generally have two choices: dodge or catch. You wouldn’t waste time thinking, Oh, look, there’s a ball coming. What should I do? Do I catch it? Or dodge it? To the left? Perhaps to the right?
On the other hand, you would never reflexively make a purchase. The way Mitsuha saw it, time was a luxury that allowed careful thought and strategy. In a pinch, you could rely on nothing more than intuition to process the information available to you and choose the best course of action. In her own words, reflexes were the first aid of movement. Such reflexes were generally limited to basic physical movements, but in her case, they seemed to apply to a wider range of actions, though she hadn’t entirely figured out why.
A friend had once told Mitsuha, “You only think about why you do stuff after you do it, huh?” This led to our dear protagonist receiving the nickname “Spex,” short for “spinal reflex.”
Take away one letter and it sounds lewd, damn it!
If one truly considered it, snap decisions and those that were the product of critical thinking didn’t seem so different. Perhaps all humans had the capacity to think and make decisions in an instant but defaulted to more thorough thought processes to understand why they had made them.
Ah, but we’ve gone off on a tangent now. Let’s rein it in and get back to what really matters, shall we?
Okay, I’m not hurt anywhere. Everything looks pretty much normal. Got my wallet, my house keys… But what about the student ID card I’ve carried for three years straight?! Oh, right. I graduated. Mitsuha also checked the large shoulder bag that had fallen along with her and found it still packed with her umbrella, tissues, and a plastic grocery bag. The latter, she felt, was a particularly undervalued item.
After ensuring she had all of her limbs and belongings, Mitsuha checked her surroundings. The forest was relatively dense, and the area she had landed in revealed no signs of human activity. She couldn’t see any footpaths or detect people nearby.
Guess I’ll walk, she thought, already walking.
Two hours passed, and Mitsuha was rapidly growing exhausted. A scant few rays of light trickled through the canopy overhead, barely enough to illuminate her path. With no idea where she was headed, all Mitsuha could do was walk onward, avoiding any trees and rocks in her way. She felt it entirely possible that she was walking in circles, so she began marking some of the objects she passed. When she didn’t encounter them again, she interpreted it as a good sign.
I have to get out of here before it gets dark. Who knows what kind of predators live in these woods? I guess I could sleep in a tree if I had to, but I can totally picture myself rolling over and falling right out of it. I’ve also gotta find some water… Is there a stream or something nearby? Some fruit would work, too.
“Boy, am I tired.” Mitsuha had been walking for around four hours. That span of time wouldn’t have been so strenuous on a proper, man-made pathway, but she was trudging through the forest’s wild undergrowth. Her muscles strained to move forward and her feet throbbed. The sun was also beginning to set, so she decided to climb into the first acceptable tree she encountered and stay the night.
Sure, I probably won’t sleep very well, but walking out here overnight is suicide. My body won’t make it, I can’t see jack in the dark, and I’d be a sweet little treat for any nighttime hunters lurking around…
Mitsuha positively oozed fatigue. She had resumed her walk at sunrise, three hours earlier. Hadn’t slept a wink. Not only was she terrified of falling out of her chosen tree, but she’d possessed no blanket or anything even remotely helpful to pad out the hard, knotty branches.
“Ah!” She let out a sharp cry upon hearing an unpleasant sound from her left ankle. Her bodily fatigue and drowsiness had made her absentminded, so she’d taken a misstep and twisted her ankle on some roots.
Damn, that hurts.
She endured, however; she had no other choice. To remain in place wouldn’t improve her situation, and it wasn’t as though she would miraculously heal if she rested. No, she wanted to push herself to keep walking until she found either a settlement or, at the very least, a man-made trail. It wouldn’t be an ideal choice for her leg, but it was better than death.
A few more hours came and went. Mitsuha didn’t stumble upon any food or water to ease her hunger or thirst, and the pain radiating from her left ankle only became more intense. She had spent so much time thinking about her situation that she’d gotten sick of it. She had all the time in the world, after all.
Yesterday, she’d only been unconscious for about twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. She had checked the time on her wristwatch the moment she’d woken up. What made this fact peculiar was that, from the cliff where Mitsuha had started, there was no forest of this size you could reasonably get to in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, Mitsuha had fallen off a cliff, so it was improbable for her to have come out unscathed. This led her to three possible conclusions:
One: I died, and this is the afterlife.
Two: I’m in a hospital somewhere, in a coma, and this is all a dream.
Three: I got abducted by aliens and taken far, far away… Hey, I’m into sci-fi too, y’know!
After a brief moment of contemplation, she thought, I-I’d really like it to be the third one! I’m not a fan of the other two!
Setting aside the mystery of her arrival, Mitsuha reaffirmed her desire to reach civilization. If she discovered she was still in Japan, she would seek out the police; if not, she would go to the nearest Japanese embassy.
By her third day in the forest, Mitsuha was very, very weary. She had awoken in the afternoon on the first day, and it was still morning, so only about a day and a half’s worth of time had passed. Desperate and deprived of food and water, she had taken a gamble by eating some plant leaves. The hunger she could tolerate, but the thirst was defeating her. At this rate, she felt that death couldn’t be far behind.
Man, I’ve had to rest way more than I did yesterday. I’m staggering so bad I feel like I’m tripping on every other rock or root. My arms and legs are covered in bruises, and the pain in my ankle is driving me crazy. Feels like it’s spread to the rest of my body. Despite it all, she mustered her willpower and kept moving. If she didn’t, she would die.
Finally, when her sense of time had long since departed and her consciousness was growing dim, she came across a path. It was just wide enough for one person, so she almost doubted it had been tamped flat by human feet.
Please don’t tell me it’s an animal trail, I’m begging you… The discovery caused her to relax so quickly that, after three days of near-constant motion, her legs gave out at last. She collapsed to the ground and instantly fell unconscious.
“I don’t recognize this ceiling,” Mitsuha murmured. Despite her confusion, some small part of her was elated at being able to utter one of the top thirty lines she’d always wanted to say.
Let me think… If I’m not totally bonkers at this point, I just spent days wandering around a forest that should never have been there in the first place, and then passed out as soon as I found a path. Now I’m lying in a stranger’s bed, looking at a ceiling I’ve never seen before.
After setting her thoughts─bizarre as they were─straight, she took in her surroundings. She was in the bedroom of a homely cabin decorated with shabby furniture. Humble as the room may have been, everything appeared to be clean and in order.
Did someone save me? she wondered. Her mind was still hazy, but she was aware of her strongest and most immediate need─sustenance.
“Water! Can someone please give me food and waaater?”
Just after raising her voice, Mitsuha heard hasty footsteps approach from the other side of the door. It swung open, revealing a small girl. She appeared to be no older than ten, with bright blue eyes and a shimmering crop of silver hair. Her dress, while plain, did nothing to diminish her adorable countenance. She lit up with a smile, and shouted in a language Mitsuha couldn’t understand.
Big Bro, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Japan anymore, Mitsuha thought. Doesn’t seem like I’m in the Anglosphere, either. So maybe I failed my college entrance exams, so what! I can still tell when somebody’s speaking English, as well as a couple other languages. As the girl chirped at her, Mitsuha quickly ruled out Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, German, French, and Italian. The girl’s exotic appearance was the only clue she had, and it merely told her she was nowhere in Asia.