Chapter 3:
Mura
“ARE THERE OTHER PEOPLE HERE?”
“No. I’m the last one alive,” she said, smiling.
“Same. That’s why I left my home”—I looked her in the eyes—“and came here.”
“Right.”
And so here we were.
However…
What I’d failed to notice while walking in circles was the massive crater right next to the town. It looked as if a gargantuan shovel had sunk deep, then scooped up an entire chunk of land. The flow of the local river had created a waterfall there…and when the girl first showed it to me, my legs almost gave out.
“If we fall, we’re dead meat, huh?”
Looking down, I saw no sign of a basin—only inky blackness. We’d traveled here in relative silence, so the water’s roar was practically deafening.
While I plugged my ears, however, the girl simply stood gazing at the scenery. “You get used to it.”
“Really?” Taking this view for granted would be an awful shame. I peeked over the edge again. “Maybe it’d be fun to jump in.”
“No, you’d die!” she replied with an exasperated laugh.
A few days had passed since we’d first set up camp at this waterfall town. Now I found myself crouching in the dim light of a passage I suspected the girl had spent a lot of time constructing all by herself. Using a series of footholds, I was able to descend about halfway down the crater. The girl must’ve created this path out of boredom or curiosity, because if all she’d wanted was water itself, she could’ve gotten it from the river more easily.
Maybe this giant hole contained some great secret about our planet. Alas, at the moment, I didn’t really care. And after three or four perilous adventures climbing down mega-sketchy rope ladders and across impossibly narrow stones in the cliff face, I had to admit…
“Yeah, I’m used to this.”
Behind the flowing water, a rock wall jutted forward slightly, creating a little roof. I was now crouched in that niche, the roar of the falls automatically filling my ears. Every time I got splashed, I felt as though I were submerged in an ice bath up to my chin.
Lately, whenever I had free time (not that I ever really did, hard as it was to live on this planet), I came here and zoned out. To be blunt, I wanted an escape from it all—a break from survival.
“I shouldn’t slack off…”
But that self-criticism didn’t weigh nearly as heavily on me as my fatigue did. Once I relaxed, it was impossible to get back up, as if the waterfall pinned me down.
“Oh. There you are.”
For some reason, not even the waterfall could drown out that little cryptid’s voice. She walked right up and crouched beside me. Her sparkle seemed all the more fleeting here in the dark.
“It’s not safe here, you know!” I shouted so that she’d hear me over the water.
“It isn’t?” Yashiro replied at her normal volume.
“If the rocks cave in, you’ll be crushed flat!” I pointed upward.
She craned her head back to look. “Hmmm…”
Yashiro leapt into the air—soundlessly, almost like she was floating—and touched the ceiling, then landed and sat back down like it was nothing. “It appears that we will be all right for the time being.”
“W-we will…?!”
She showed me her wet palm, her fingertips serving as little blue lamps illuminating her pale skin. When I touched them, they were as cold as the waterfall itself.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Nothing much! Just zoning out!”
“I see.”
Since she seemed to hear me just fine, I decided to forego the shouting. “What about you?”
“I have finished my mission, so I think I will move on,” she answered offhandedly. “This is goodbye.”
“Oh…”
It was so sudden.
“Well, okay,” I mumbled automatically, before I’d had time to decide whether it actually was okay. “That reminds me—what was your mission, anyway?”
“To guide you, Chito-san.”
Me? I pointed at myself, confused.
Yashiro nodded. “I wanted to uphold my end of the bargain, but of course, I knew you would inevitably find her,” she explained quietly. This was something she’d mentioned previously, as I recalled. “For, you see, you were born to meet her.”
My gaze shifted upward, in the vague direction of wherever she was right now. “For real?”
“For realsies.”
This proclamation was significantly weightier than the connection itself felt. I barely even knew how to talk to that girl, which was why I came down here to hide in the first place. After all, I could count the number of humans I’d ever met on one hand—and I wasn’t sure this gremlin counted.
When I smacked her over the head, it bobbled as if she were a toy. “Mmgh?!”
“If she’s that important, then…what am I supposed to say to her?” I couldn’t gauge the appropriate distance to hold between us, either figuratively or literally.
“You can say anything you like, of course. Perhaps ‘hello.’”
“I regret asking you. My mistake.” I’d forgotten this kid was useless.
“Now that you have met, you may make of it whatever you choose.”
“Is it really that simple?”
“Do you know what is essential to a ciiircle?”
On that last word, her finger moved through the air in a clockwise motion, her nail leaving a streak of blue motes that formed a visible circle before fading. Another mystery lost to the waterfall.
“What’s essential? Uh…” The sudden change of subject had, dare I say, thrown me for a loop.
I’d never been great at riddles, and before I thought of the answer, she supplied it herself. “An unbroken line.”
“Oh. You meant literally.”
“If even a single part is missing, it loses its shape.” She drew another circle; then her fingers plucked a piece from the bottom left. “What remains is too damaged to still be considered a circle.”
“Okay…?”
By some inexplicable magic, both ends of the broken circle forced themselves together, creating a warped, defective shape, then faded away. Yashiro’s logic was admittedly making sense so far.
“And? Your point?”
“That was my point.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Oh dear.” She paused for a moment, watching the flow of the falls. “Think of the circle as your world.”
“Okay?”
“Now think of that missing piece as Shima-san and yourself. That is all.”
Shima-san? Oh, right. Her. I had next to no experience calling people by name, so I wasn’t used to it. I thought about the circle and the piece that had been pulled out. Wasn’t this kind of a bold claim? “Are we really that important?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “To create the same shape requires the same pieces, each as essential as the last. And that includes you.”
“The same pieces,” I repeated, mulling it over as I thought about the red fruit we always ate. The appearance and flavor of each piece of fruit was slightly different, but they all consisted of more or less the same components. That was necessary to avoid food poisoning. Was that what Yashiro was trying to say?
“Therefore, whatever happens, it will all work out in the end. I believe that too is your destiny.”
“It is?” Every now and then, this useless lump spoke as though she understood the universe. What had she seen on her journey here, falling through the sky? Facing forward, I wiped mist from my face. “I just don’t get it.” Any of it.
“Perhaps you will understand when you are older, Chito-san.”
“Don’t you condescend to me, brat.”
Cupping her cheeks in my hands, I squished her face in, smooshing it like clay. Yet somehow that did nothing to muffle her laughter—so where was her voice coming from? When I let go, I noticed that my fingers were coated in blue. I watched sadly as it peeled away, fading before my eyes.
“There you have it. Now, I wish you a happy, fun life with Shima-san.”
As far as I was concerned, she hadn’t explained anything at all, but whatever. “Happy, huh…?”
In a world mired in ruin, how was anyone supposed to be happy? I’d known Shima several days now, and so far, nothing had changed.
“Well… I’ll at least try to have fun with her, to start,” I muttered aloud, rubbing my knee as the waterfall drowned my voice out. “I need a new goal, anyway.”
Lately, I’d found myself at something of a loss. Finding a living person had been my sole objective; now that I’d achieved it, I had no real desire to seek out another. And because I hadn’t mapped my travels, I probably had no way to find my way back home either. In other words, I was stuck here. But now someone else was with me.
The thought filled my chest with an antsy kind of restlessness.
“So where are you headed next?” I asked.
“Hmmm,” Yashiro responded flatly, making a pretense of contemplating with her empty head. “I do have a set destination in mind, but I think I will go to a hot spring first.”
“A what?”
“I find I like them much better than baths, despite their similarity.”
Was this some cultural element lost to our world? From the comparison she’d made, I could only assume it involved…water? Maybe a tub? “So a ‘hot spring’ is a good thing, I take it?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I have been to a hot spring exactly once before.”