“Karen!” I screamed, whirling around.
Karen wasn’t there. Nor did any trace remain of the wooden door, or the dazzling sunlight, or the white sandy beach, or even the lingering scent of salt water. It was just an infinite tunnel again, stretching out in both directions. It felt like all the air had been vacuumed out from my lungs. I started walking deeper into the tunnel, trying desperately to find the door to that dreamy shore once again.
Then I heard a voice ring out in my head. “Go out there and live like you mean it. Just like you told her.”
Just like I told her. It went without saying who “her” was. Karen was telling me to stop letting myself be dragged down by the past and start looking toward the future—to find my place in the world, right alongside Anzu. That was her final message to me as my little sister.
“Nnngh…!”
I held my head in my hands, digging my fingers into my scalp. I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, yet still the tears found a way out.
“Nnnnnngh…!”
Some small part of me deep down had nursed an inkling that things would turn out like this. The Urashima Tunnel’s true power was to help you retrieve what you’d lost, after all. It had given me the chance to see Karen, as well as my right to love another person. It had given me something else too, without me realizing it: my ability to stand tall and look reality in the face. To leave the pain of the past behind and start living in the now. In order to do that, though, I would have to actually learn to move on from my sister’s death, which was diametrically opposed to my original goal of bringing her out of the tunnel with me. I had to choose one or the other.
I was confident that the tunnel had no will of its own, let alone ill will. My guess was that its manifestations of the things I’d lost were all automatic. So if a contradiction like this was occurring inside it, I had to assume it could only mean that there was already a part of me, deep down, that had unconsciously chosen to start facing reality again. A part of me that had accepted Karen’s death. I should have known. I just hadn’t been able to let go of that last sliver of hope I’d clung to for so long—that maybe one day, a miracle would occur, and those happy days we shared as a family would return.
It was a naive, starry-eyed dream, to be sure. But it was finally time for me to wake up. I gritted my teeth so hard that it felt like they might fissure and crack. I tensed my abs, trying my best to seal off the emotions billowing up inside of me and threatening to explode. I forced them down, deeper and deeper, then shut the lid tight, locked them away behind padlock after padlock, and threw away the keys. I wiped my eyes with my forearm from side to side and cried out at the top of my lungs.
“Karennn! I’m headed out noooow!”
With that, I turned and started running as fast as I could toward the exit.
“Okay. Love you,” I could almost hear her calling back.
TOTAL TIME ELAPSED: 29 HRS 35 MINS (OUTSIDE: 8 YEARS, 36 DAYS)
I sprinted desperately through the darkness, throwing myself downhill at nearly the fastest speed my legs could manage. The weight of my backpack, its straps chafing my shoulders as it bounced up and down, was definitely draining my stamina faster than it would have otherwise, but it also made me feel a lot more reassured than I had coming in. I knew that I had enough water and food to make it out, so I didn’t have to worry about starving to death. It was purely a question of stamina and how fast I could make it outside.
My heart pounded so loudly that I could hear it in my ears. With each step, a pain shot through my knees that made me worry they might crack and crumble to bits. My throat was hoarse and raw from the intense rate at which I huffed air in and out of my lungs. I was in pain. I was exhausted. Nevertheless, I couldn’t rest. Maybe at some point I would let myself stop to take a single breather along the way, sure, but it was still too early for that.
Anzu was waiting for me outside, and I couldn’t wait to see her again. Assuming she’d never tried to enter the tunnel, she was twenty-five years old by this point. Though I had told her that she shouldn’t feel like she had to wait around for me, so I assumed she hadn’t. Maybe she already had a boyfriend. Maybe she’d forgotten all about me. Hell, maybe she was married with kids. I didn’t care. I wanted to know what sort of life she’d led over the months and years I’d spent running around in this musty old cave. Perhaps more than anything, I wanted to read whatever new stories she had written. God, there were so many things I wanted to do!
With a firm next step, I kicked off the ground and picked up the pace. I didn’t feel any pain or exhaustion at this point—my hopes and dreams for the future served as a powerful anesthetic to numb me from both. I hoped this adrenaline rush would last me long enough to make it all the way outside.
It was strange, though. It was almost like the more I ran, the more stamina I gained and the faster I went. This momentum didn’t last for long, because just then, as I rushed downhill, my legs got caught on one another, and I went tumbling forward. My vision spun into a dizzy blur as my body rolled down the steep incline, battered and bruised by the rocky floor with every rotation, and only stopping when my head crashed hard into a pillar of one of the torii. Even then, I got right back up and started running again. A trickle of liquid dripped into my eye. Thinking it was sweat, I reached up to wipe it away—but my fingers came back red. I was bleeding from my skull, apparently. I paid it no mind. I kept on running.
I had to hurry. The world wasn’t going to wait for me any longer. I needed to go faster. Then faster still. I didn’t care how black and blue, how bloodied and bruised I got. Nothing would stop me. Nothing would get in my way. For as long as the flow of time kept moving forward, I would keep running. Even if my legs gave out from under me, I would keep on going. I would claw myself out until my fingernails were shredded if I had to.
“Graaaagh!” I screamed. I knew it was nothing but a waste of valuable energy, but I couldn’t help it. I had to let out the raging whirlwind of emotions inside me. Yet still my legs strove frantically onward, even when my vision began to blur and I couldn’t make out where I was going. I tripped and fell again and again. However, each and every time, I got right back up. No matter what happened, I refused to give in.
I kept on running.