Chest burning, muscles aching, Takeru sprinted down the avenue of cherry trees in the grey, predawn light. Unsurprisingly, nobody else was in the park at that time of morning. There were only the trees streaming away into the distance on either side. They had stopped flowering a long time ago, the bloom killed by the heat of summer. The archway of pink, fragrant blossom was now one of glossy, green leaves.

Sprinting through the dappled shadows, he forced himself to pick up speed. Sharp spikes of agony shot up his calves, protesting his acceleration. His lungs felt as if they were about to burst in his chest.

Twisting in his tracks, he glanced over his shoulder. She was running after him, laughing, her cheeks pink, her hands full of blossoms. He increased his speed to get away from her . . . .NO. Run faster.

Wildly, he vaulted over the low fence that bordered the avenue of trees. From there, a green, lush hill sloped down to the lake. Putting down his head, he stretched out his legs and let the slope do what his body could not. The wind slapped his clothes and stung his skin. He felt as if he were about to trip and fall onto his face, his feet going too fast for his body to keep pace. The landscape flowed away from him, dizzyingly rapid.

And she was hunched over on the grass, her hair dark with sweat, her cheeks as pink as sakura, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. And his heart leapt into his throat because he was so afraid that she was hurt and that . . . Shit. He stopped on the bridge, hands on his knees, coughing and panting. I can’t run any faster.

"You’d better eat your omelet, mom," Taichi said gently, nudging the plate closer towards her. She stared back at him with blank, incurious eyes, picking up her fork and mechanically beginning to eat the food he had prepared her. He doubted she tasted a bite of it. She had been like this ever since Hikari had left, and he suspected it had everything to do with the bottle of little, blue pills that the doctor had prescribed ‘to help her sleep’. They had certainly been successful in doing that. His mother had fallen asleep three months ago and had not woken up since, leaving him and his father to look after her, as if she were the child.

Hot anger surged up in him as he looked at her expressionless, dead face. Did Hiruko think she was the only one who missed Hikari? Did she think she was the only one who was suffering because of it? Both he and his father had to live everyday with the pain of not knowing where Hikari was, whether she was alive or dead, or when she would come back to them. They had to cope with it, had to carry on with their lives without her, but his mother swallowed forgetfulness in a glass of water every morning.

He stood, slamming the chair back into place beneath the table. His mother did not even flinch at the loud noise, continuing to push her omelet around on her plate and stare blankly out the window. Nonetheless, Taichi felt remorse for his fit of temper. Hiruko looked so small and thin in her white, linen robe. She had lost a lot of weight since Hikari had left. He could see the bones in her hands, as fine as those of a bird’s wing. Her cheekbones jutted out from her face as well, and her throat was sunken. She looked like a china-doll, delicate and breakable.

"I’ve got soccer practise today, so I’ll be back late. And I promised Yamato I’d help him carry amplifiers to the concert hall this morning, so I’ve got to leave this early," he told in a calmer voice, even though he knew she was not listening to him. He stooped to kiss her cheek, feeling its dry paperiness beneath his lips, "Goodbye, mom. See you later!"

"Help me! Takeru!"

With a start, the sleeper awoke and looked around herself with a shiver. Initially, she could not see much, but her eyes soon adjusted to the dimness. The room would have been completely dark, had it not been for a soft phosphorescence that seemed to be coming from the walls. They themselves looked almost as if they had grown organically, rather than had been built or carved by any workmen. They were oddly sinuous, rippling upwards from the floor, like waves or tentacles. In the sickly light, they looked as white and as stark as bone, apart from jarring flecks of mineral orange and red and green embedded in them.

Stranger still, on the natural shelves formed by the walls, someone seemed to have collected an odd assortment of objects. She frowned in puzzlement as she looked at them. There was a music-box, rusted into silence by the ocean, and a collection of priceless necklaces on a decayed cushion. Collected with no less care were salt-blackened knives and forks, neatly arranged in their cutlery box. On either side of them stood delicate, jade statuettes, carved to look like horses or men playing the kinnokoto. Below them, a sinister-looking, china doll stared at her with gaping eyes and mouth. Its hair, the paint on its face, its clothes had all been scoured off by the sand or corroded by the seawater.

Shuddering, she looked away from it and realised that she herself was sitting in a four-poster bed that had been grand once, but had been ruined by the ocean. The wood was swollen and splitting; the silk sheets and canopies had rotted to tatters.

Sudden panic welled up in her, quick and acidic. Where am I? How did I get here?

Desperately, she tried to think back, but her head was heavy and fuzzy as if she had been sleeping for a long time. It felt as if there were thick, grey fog where her memory should have been. She could not seem to remember anything before waking up with a name on her lips. Whose name did I call? Takeru? That’s a boy’s name, but who is he? Who is Takeru? Curiously, she tested the name on her lips. She felt as if she should have known the boy, but she could not dredge his face out of the chaotic swirl that was her memory. She had a brief, vague impression of a shooting star, but her head began to throb painfully before it could resolve into anything.

She pressed her hands to her forehead, rubbing her aching temples. I have to be able to remember something, don’t I? My name . . . What is my name? She realised with a sudden, sharp shock that she could not even remember her name. It was not that she had just forgotten where she was or how she got there, but she had forgotten everything about herself and about her past. She felt cold and it had nothing to do with the temperature. Desperately, she tugged aside her sheets and swung onto the floor. My face. If I see my face, maybe I will remember.

Hugging her bare arms against the chill, she walked to the bowl of water on a stand in the corner of the room. She pulled her hair away from her face and leaned over the dish. Mirror-still, the water inside it reflected her face perfectly, even though it felt she was looking at a stranger. Whoever she was, she was pale and thin with large, brown eyes and bobbed, dark hair. She could not have been older than thirteen. The greenish light made her look oddly sickly. She blinked at the strange girl who was herself, eyes prickling with tears.

"Who am I?" she asked the reflection, her tears falling into the water and distorting the face in it, "And how do I get home?"

Even though he knew he would be late for school if he did not go home and change immediately, Takeru leaned on the railings of the bridge and stared down at the lake beneath him. In the morning light, the water looked grey and murky. It was more like fog than water, moving slowly underneath him. He stooped to pick up a stone and skipped it lightly across the surface with a flick of his wrist. It hopped seven times, before vanishing with a liquid ripple. He smiled in satisfaction. Still got the trick, Takaishi.

Sighing, he began to turn from the bridge towards the path home, when a movement on the lake’s surface caught his eye. He frowned in puzzlement. It was physically impossible, but ripples were still spreading slowly out from the place where his stone had sunk. They seemed to be growing larger and stronger too, crossing and breaking, where he would have expected them to be disappearing. There has to be a rational explanation. Air trapped in pondweed, underwater creatures, blah blah blah. Still, I don’t think my science teacher will care about any of that, if I’m late for her lesson. Twenty minutes to get home, shower and get to school. . . Piece of cake!

With a tug to his laces to ensure his sneakers were secure, Takeru kicked off from the bridge and sprinted across the field in the direction of his apartment. Behind him, in the distance, he heard a high, female voice asking for directions home. He felt his stomach give a queasy hop. It sounded almost like Hikari, but he knew that was impossible. Hikari was gone. She had been gone for three months now. And she was never, never, never coming home.

Putting down his head, telling himself it was just the wind that caused his eyes to tear, he ran all the faster.

TO BE CONTINUED

* The kinnokoto (or gu ghim to give it the Chinese name) is a seven-stringed instrument. Dalby describes its sound as "singing, whispering, plaintive". Having heard it, I’d agree with that description. (Quite incidentally, when I’m finished one of my stories, how many would be interested in one set in the Heian era? Think medieval Takari, but actually Japanese and not pseudo-English. ^.^)

* Japanese summers are really hot. Wow, what a revelation! I bet none of you knew that before reading this story! ^.^ Anyway, I’ll put up some funny pictures from the 4th movie of Mimi standing in front of a fan, if you want to see them. ^.^

* As Hikari’s seiyuu, Araki Kae has an incredibly high voice. Think helium high. If you haven’t heard her, I’ll put some clips from Fushigi Yuugi up on my webpage. Or I do have the infamous "Tasukete! Taichi-san! Tailmon! Takeru-kun!" file which I downloaded from another webpage. Please note: it’s obligatory to yell "Not the bloody National Guard!" at the end of listening to it! ^.~

* The title is taken from a Plath poem, as is one line of the story that I rather liked. If you’re interested, the full stanza reads "O sister, mother, wife \ Sweet Lethe is my life. \ I am never, never, never coming home!". There’s no real connection between the poem and this story, of course. I just have been reading Plath recently as a counterpoint to my Hughes’ course, and thought those lines might work.