Her slightly wavy blonde hair. Her straight nose. Her pale, smooth skin. Her long arms and legs, and a figure I could tell was impressive even through her clothes. She wore an olive colored jacket zipped up to her neck, along with jeans and lace-up boots.
I think she was my age, or maybe a little younger. Looking down at me with her sparkling indigo eyes, she asked, “Is it already messed up?”
“I-Is what?”
“Your head.”
“I-I think I’m still fine.”
Or so I replied—But was I?
Maybe my head was already messed up. A beauty like this saving me on the verge of death? If you thought about it, it really was too convenient. What was this? A middle-schooler’s delusion, or a hallucination I was seeing on the brink of death?
While my mind was still spinning, she said, “So, where is it? The thing that messes you up if you see it?”
She asked in such an easy-going tone, I pointed despite myself. Before I’d realized it, sensation had returned to my limbs. They were still numb, but I could move them somehow.
“That way... Uh, hold on, what are you planning to do?”
Once she had sat me up in the water, she stood up in the middle of the grass.
“No, I’m telling you. It’s dangerous!”
“Blech, you’re right,” she said, squinting and sticking out her tongue at something unpleasant. “That’s it, huh? Gross.”
“No, not ‘gross.’ I’m telling you, you can’t look.”
When I grabbed her arm and tried to pull her to a crouching position, I ended up looking directly at it again.
The faded sea of grass spread out as far as the eye could see. In the fields of the Otherside, dotted with dark groves of trees and ruins, there was just one thing that stood out, moving.
It was shaped like a person, if you stretched them vertically.
It was an inscrutable shape, like a long shadow cast on the ground by the setting sun had been peeled from the ground and then stood up.
It was white in color. A dirty white, reminiscent of smoke.
That white, lanky figure stood in the middle of the waterlogged, grassy field, twisting its body around. Was it dancing, or was it in pain? Kunekune, kunekune. It wriggled.
While watching those movements, my mind gradually went blank, and I started to feel sick. Despite that, I still had the feeling that I had to see more.
It felt similar to trying to remember a half-forgotten dream when you wake up in the morning. That niggling sense that you should remember it, and you almost can. It torments your brain.
“Urgh...” I groaned, letting go of her arm. With a lurch, my body began to fall over, and I leaned on her jeans-covered leg for support.
While I was taking shallow, repeated breaths, she plopped a hand down on my head.
“Hey, looking at that thing makes you feel super weird, huh?”
“Urgh.”
“What happens if you keep looking?”
“I-I dunno...”
“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”
Her tone made it sound like it was no big deal for her, but there was no way she was fine. Huff, huff. I could hear her breathing quickly.
“Ahh, this is rough. Whew... But I think I’m starting to get it... I wonder what’s waiting at the end of this feeling...?”
“Eagh...” I couldn’t even respond properly anymore. Her breathing was getting more and more ragged, too. It felt like her body was swaying just a little, but I couldn’t be sure whether it was her or me doing it.
“It—It’s closer... than before... we’ve gotta... run.” I just barely managed to get those words out.
The white shadow had surprisingly little depth, so it was hard to grasp how far away it was, but I felt like it was closer than when I’d first encountered it.
My vision wobbled. The scenery in front of me looked unreal, as if it were being projected on smoke floating in the air. My head felt heavy, and I was about to lose consciousness, when the blonde-haired woman did a big windup and threw something.
The shining, sparkling, angular rock-like thing traced a parabola as it flew towards the white shadow.
The next instant, the white shadow twisted in place—then it vanished.
“Huh?” I said despite myself.
“What?! I... did it?”
From the way the blonde woman spoke, I wasn’t the only one who was shocked here. Letting out a sigh, she looked down at me as I clung to her leg, and cocked her head to the side.
“That just hit it, right?”
I nodded. You could say it hit it, or more like it dispelled the smoke-like stuff that white figure had been projected on entirely.
“Wh... what did you throw?”
“A lump of rock salt. Rumor is, it works on things like that, so I gave it a try. It really had an effect, huh. Color me surprised.”
Was that like spreading salt to exorcise spirits? It seemed too commonplace, so I wasn’t sure that it made sense to me...
“Whoa, oh, oh,” she stumbled, nearly falling over backwards.
If I hadn’t supported her, she’d have ended up on her back in the water. Having regained her balance, she turned back to me and grinned.
“Thanks. You okay? That sure felt gross, huh?”
“Y-Yeah.” The sickening feeling, the dizziness, and the numbness still lingering in my limbs rapidly dissipated. That feeling like I could almost remember something was gone, too.
“Can you stand?”
“Oh, yeah.”
When I realized I was still clinging to her leg, I hurriedly moved away from her. I was a little unsteady on my feet when I stood, but it looked like I’d be fine. My soaked clothes were clinging to my skin and it felt gross.
“Um, thanks for saving me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving it off generously, and then introduced herself. “I’m Toriko Nishina. You?”
“Uh, erm. My name is Sorawo Kamikoshi.”
“So, listen, Sorawo. The place you came to this side from, is it close?”
Woah. She was suddenly addressing me with no honorific. Though I was put off by how forward she was being, I nodded.
“Yeah. Real close.”
“Nice. Can you take me there? I was a bit lost, you know?”
“Sure... T-Toriko.”
When I addressed her with the same lack of honorific, her face broke into a beaming smile.
“Hold on a moment. I’m going to go pick that thing up.”
With that said, “Toriko” went rooting through the grass near where the rock salt fell.