Chapter Three

Earthbound

1

Soundlessly, Yotsuha Miyamizu opened the sliding door and peeked into her big sister’s room. Her mouth warped into a dissatisfied line.

It was the beginning of a weekday. Yotsuha was very much a morning person. Once again, she’d woken right at six, leaped to her feet, hopped up to stand on her futon, and rattled open both the inner window and the old, wood-framed outer window of the sliding glass door. Satisfied that the weather was fine, she’d draped her futon coverlet over the windowsill.

She’d washed her face ferociously (with soap and a lot of splashing) at the dressing room sink, finished changing in a minute or so, run a brush through her hair, parted it, and tied it into two pigtails above her ears.

Once she’d finished that…

Ohh, I’m hungry…

At Itomori Elementary, Yotsuha’s school, there was an elderly teacher from the village of Shirakawa who’d once been a monk.

This teacher always said, “This is another of life’s trials.”

Since he said it every day, every child at Itomori Elementary had mimicked him at least once.

Yotsuha mused to herself. When your stomach starts grumbling and you murmur Ohh, I’m hungry, but there’s no sign that breakfast will be ready anytime soon or even for quite a while…was that yet another of “life’s trials”?

As a grade-schooler, Yotsuha hadn’t thought about it exactly that way, but her elementary-school-age mind had settled on something along those lines.

“Oh, it’s one of life’s trials.”

When she said it out loud, her grandmother, who’d come to put laundry into the washing machine, asked, “What’s that about?” Yotsuha gave her a general explanation of the situation then and there, and her grandmother said, “Well then, go wake up ‘breakfast.’”

Why wouldn’t breakfast be ready for a while? Because 1) her older sister Mitsuha was in charge of cooking today, and 2) Mitsuha wasn’t up yet.

Even to the younger of the sisters, Yotsuha, Mitsuha seemed really absentminded. It wasn’t that she forgot to do her homework or anything, and her grades were apparently good. Nevertheless, she appeared to be a beat behind the rest of the world’s rhythm.

Saying she was quiet and gentle made it sound like a good thing, but sometimes she spaced out to an uncommon degree, to the point where she might be receiving instructions from aliens, and that was scary. Incidentally, it had been Tesshi—a neighborhood high school guy with a slightly bigger-than-average build—who’d planted the idea of aliens in Yotsuha’s head.

She was at a sensitive age, and some nights she seemed unable to sleep. In fact, Mitsuha had actually told Yotsuha, “I’m at a sensitive age, so there are nights when I can’t sleep.”

It was true that she just couldn’t get to sleep sometimes. When Yotsuha had gone down the hall past Mitsuha’s room on her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, she’d heard something rolling around on the tatami.

What’s she doin’? she wondered, and when she’d almost passed by, she abruptly heard her sister muttering inside the room.

“…Life is so hard…”

Never mind that, just go to sleep already, Yotsuha had considered saying, but the situation was a little too creepy. Plus, she hadn’t wanted to open the sliding door, so she’d abandoned the idea.

Once this older sister of hers did finally fall asleep, she just wouldn’t wake up. Yotsuha’d tried to wake her once when she was napping in the sitting room (Mitsuha had been in the way while she was cleaning), but even shaking or slapping didn’t wake her (and Yotsuha actually had slapped her). Then she’d tried ringing the bells and banging the drums they used in kagura dances right by her big sister’s ears, but it still wasn’t enough. Yotsuha could have jammed earphones into her ears and played death metal music at max volume, and that still probably wouldn’t have done it.

Right now, Yotsuha was on her way to wake up Mitsuha, her late-rising sister who refused to rise and shine.

Walking down the hall and wondering if jabbing the pressure points in her feet as hard as possible would wake Mitsuha, Yotsuha heard rustling from her sister’s room.

Is she up already? Guess I could just talk to her, then. Aw, I missed my chance to poke her pressure points, she thought, setting her hand on the sliding door. Then she noticed that something on the other side was off somehow.

Agh. Again?

Opening the door quietly, just enough to see inside, she found exactly what she expected.

Her big sister sprawled on her futon.

Squeezing and massaging her chest through her dark-pink pajamas.

Yikes.

Hence Yotsuha’s grimace.

These days, this sort of thing happened a lot. In the morning, Mitsuha’d spend forever feeling herself up with both hands.

Her expression while doing so seemed to declare that having boobs was wonderful, and it made Yotsuha wonder if her sister had gone funny in the head. She’d always had those.

Sometimes she’d hug herself and roll around, too.

I don’t get it. Does she like her body that much?

It was all well and good if she was satisfied with her own body, but she wasn’t gonna start grabbing Yotsuha from behind and feeling her up one of these days, was she?

No, just imagining that was actually really scary.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to start working on countermeasures now.

Would jamming an elbow into her side work? What about stomping a heel down on her foot as hard as she could?

“Graaaaan!”

When Yotsuha scrambled down the hall into the kitchen, her grandmother admonished her with a “Settle down.” Yotsuha stopped abruptly to a sound effect of squealing brakes in her head and stood at attention. Her grandmother had started fixing breakfast in Mitsuha’s place.

“Gran, Sis’s funny again today.”

“Oh dear.”

“It’s more than ‘Oh dear.’ It’s gettin’ pretty bad.”

“Is it?”

“Rrgh, don’t just say ‘Is it?’…”

Lately, Yotsuha’s big sister had been really weird about everything. She’d always been strange on some level, but now it was like a switch sometimes got flipped that changed her into a completely different person. She was like that today.

What was her strange sister like when she was in “weirdo mode”?

Her hair got messy. She wore it tied back carelessly with a single elastic, and her face made it obvious that taking care of it was a total pain in the neck.

The way she generally carried herself got sloppy. She sat with her legs apart and got scolded by her grandmother.

For some reason, there were more days when she didn’t take baths.

Sometimes she talked like a guy.

Before Yotsuha knew it, Mitsuha’d be touching and patting her own body all over.

Why’s she doing that?

It was bizarre that her big sister, usually almost overly proper about everything so that no one would talk about her behind her back, had seemingly overnight acquired such rough edges.

It was also strange that her weirdo spells regularly alternated with her normal ones.

“What do you think it is?” she asked her grandmother.

“That’s a good question…”

The response she got was extremely blasé.

Yotsuha didn’t think this was any time to be laid-back, but her grandmother didn’t seem particularly concerned.

Since her grandmother was generally pretty easygoing, the impressionable Yotsuha tended to think, Huh? Maybe it really doesn’t matter, and let herself be convinced.

Was that really how it was?

Maybe so, but she did think they should be at least somewhat mindful of her sister’s behavior.

Speaking of…

Come to think of it, the sisters had shared an odd exchange the other day.

Yotsuha had just gotten out of the bath when Mitsuha caught the shoulder of her pajamas and, out of nowhere, insisted, “Listen, watch me real close and see whether I do anythin’ weird. Report it later.”

Anything weird?

“Report it to who?” Yotsuha asked.

“To me.”

“Huh?”

2

That afternoon, when Sayaka Natori was walking alone on the way home from school, Yotsuha managed to catch her.

“Huh? Where’s Tesshi today?”

Yotsuha asked because she knew Sayaka always went to and from school with Tesshi.

“Somebody from the company came to pick him up, and he got in a truck and went off somewhere. He said somethin’ about how he was goin’ to Matsumoto on an errand.”

“Matsumoto? In Nagano?”

“Right. I bet it’s some sort of skeevy game.” Sayaka lowered her voice.

“Huh? A skeevy game? Like what?”

“Umm, I don’t really know, but it’s prob’ly the sort of thing pure-hearted, upstandin’ people like us can’t even imagine.”

“Wow. I’d like to see somethin’ so bad I can’t even imagine it.”

“You’re tellin’ me. What do you think they’re doin’ out there with just guys? I really don’t understand the world boys live in,” Sayaka murmured, sighing.

“Really?” Yotsuha said, angling her head to one side, puzzled.

Watching the herd of elementary school boys around her, she’d developed a sense that the world of males was so simple that it wasn’t worth bothering to try to understand it.

She figured you could sum up everything about it with a single word: “dumb.” In the world of boys, there was a simple rule that the dumber you were, the higher you ranked, and they cheered in raucous delight at the incredibly stupid things they did in their inner circles. Then they tried to climb even higher on the social ladder, and the result was a vicious cycle of ever-more-concentrated stupidity.

For that reason, all a virtuous girl had to do was watch from the sidelines and say, “You’re so dumb.” To boys, the word dumb was a badge of honor, so the more they heard it, the more they squirmed with glee. When she really thought about it, the concept was fundamentally twisted.

When she provided Sayaka with her elementary-school-level assessment, the older girl stood up straighter and said, “Yotsuha, girl, you’re amazin’.”

Sayaka’s attitude made it clear that she wasn’t teasing. She was genuinely impressed.

Yotsuha really loved this about Sayaka. She never, ever talked down to somebody just because they were younger than her.

She had an excellent heart, and she was pretty, too.

Yotsuha had no idea why a girl like that was on the verge of getting together with a two-bit clown like Tesshi. The younger girl really didn’t understand the world her big sister and her friends lived in.

Yotsuha had flagged Sayaka down for intel about the current state of that incomprehensible realm.

“How’s my sister been doin’ at school lately?”

“What do you mean, ‘how’?”

“Has she been actin’ funny?”

“Funny?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Mm, well, she’s always been a little funny, y’know…”

Her appraisal aligned with Yotsuha’s. She’d expected no less from her sister’s best friend.

After some cute hemming and hawing and a little consideration, Sayaka said, “It’s like she doesn’t wanna care what other people think about her, maybe.”

“Huh?”

“She’s started actin’ like that a lot more. Even though she always used to do the total opposite.”

“Um, what do you mean? Like she’s desperate?”

“Mm, I guess you could call it that. Sort of…reckless. Y’know?”

After she and Sayaka waved and parted ways, Yotsuha rested on the stone steps in front of the Miyamizu Shrine torii gate, resting her chin on her hands and cogitating.

Refusing to care what other people thought.

That really was reckless.

Why was her sister so harebrained lately?

Had something bad happened? Something that had triggered such a drastic change?

What could it have been? And where? When?

What could twist a person like that?

Like— Yes.

Losing something really important and with it the will to go on.

Yes, that definitely could’ve happened.

Does Sis treasure anything that much, though?

She got the feeling that even if somebody accidentally threw away the mountain of hedgehog stuff Mitsuha had been madly collecting lately, she’d only scream or yell “Noooooo!” Yotsuha doubted she’d go this far off the rails.

Hmmm…

That really couldn’t be it.

Oh!

Her heart thumped as if it’d been struck. The impact in her chest dislodged a critical memory in her head.

Not long ago, she’d accidentally eaten some ice cream her sister had put in the freezer.

Just out of the bath, she’d thought, Hey, there’s ice cream. I’ll have that, and casually started digging in. It wasn’t until after that she noticed the Mitsuha written on the wrapper.

Her immediate reaction had been, Uh-oh, but it wasn’t like stopping there and putting it back in the freezer would’ve helped, so she’d decisively polished it off, disposing of the incriminating evidence.

Come to think of it, after that…

The inevitable Where’s my ice cream? Who ate it?! had never happened. Why?

Strange.

Maybe the shock had been so severe that Mitsuha hadn’t been up for a cross-examination.

Her big sister usually put up a brave front, but she was got hurt easily, and it wasn’t inconceivable that the smallest thing might shatter her heart. This was awful.

Yotsuha slowly rose to her feet, ran down the stone steps, and sprinted for the Miyamizu house.

There was a set of stone steps in front of the house’s entryway, too, and she dashed to the top. She flung open the sliding door, kicked off her shoes, and stepped into the house, and even when her shoulder bounced off the pillar in the hall, she kept running.

Her sister, Mitsuha, was standing in the covered walkway to the outbuilding, leaning on the railing and looking at the garden.

Yotsuha briefly wondered what was so fascinating about their own garden, but it was just a passing thought. She instantly attached herself to Mitsuha.

“Siiiiis! I ate your Häagen-Dazs Tahitian Vanilla Crispy Sandwich, and I’m real sorry!!”

Awful visions polluted her mind, and her eyes were teary.

She’d slammed into Mitsuha at full tilt, but Mitsuha took it in stride as if to say, Hey, c’mon, what’s the matter? The one thing she did was raise her hands gingerly, as if having decided that she mustn’t touch girls, even if the girl in question was her little sister.

Mitsuha replied indifferently. “You did? That’s fine. I don’t care.”

Yotsuha’s eyes widened and locked on her sister’s face.

“It’s fine? Really, really?”

“You like ice cream? I’ll buy some and stick it in the freezer for you next time.”

“Huh? Seriously? You’ll buy me some? You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. She’s blowing my money on whatever she wants, so this’ll make us even.”

Yotsuha’s eyebrows knotted at that, suspicion clouding her expression.

“Even? With who?”

“Um, ‘who’ isn’t really, uh… With the other me, maybe?”

“’Scuse me?”

This was starting to sound like something out of a kids’ fantasy novel. The “aliens” explanation was slowly gaining credibility.

The next night, when Yotsuha opened the freezer to get ice for some barley tea after her bath, she discovered a cup of Glico ice cream.

Oh, she did it right away.

Abandoning the idea of barley tea, she made some green tea using the electric kettle. She took a teaspoon from the dish cupboard and began silently eating her ice cream at the kitchen table.

Yotsuha was still in elementary school, and though acutely attuned to what she did and didn’t like, she didn’t have a solid grasp of what constituted joy or misery yet.

She was aware of her lack of understanding. Still, she did think that maybe, just maybe, opening the freezer right after a bath and finding ice cream there as if by magic might constitute true happiness. She supposed this state was very close to what the world termed “bliss.” She was bound to experience all sorts of things in the future, but she felt as if all her happy experiences to come would be an extension of this “post-bath ice cream” sensation.

To Yotsuha, this was only a soft, vague intuition. Simply put, her thought had been Oh, I’m real happy.

In her opinion, ice cream in a cup tasted best if you let it slowly melt as you ate it.

Ideally, half of each bite should be soft and liquid, and the other half frozen. If you ate the solid parts just as they were, you couldn’t really tell what they tasted like. That meant you shouldn’t hurry.

As she ate her way through it, no matter what she did, the inside of her mouth would begin to numb. That prevented her from tasting the flavors, too, so it was a good idea to thaw it out with warm tea.

This was knowledge Yotsuha had acquired from previous experiences with ice cream.

As Yotsuha silently and slowly enjoyed her treat, the door that led to the bathroom rattled open behind her, and…

“Aaaaaaah!”

A scream stabbed her in the back, and instinctively, Yotsuha bolted upright. Mitsuha, in pajamas with her hair wrapped up in a towel, clapped both hands on Yotsuha’s shoulders from behind, half leaning on her. She craned forward over Yotsuha, practically shoving her face into the object on the table.

“My ice cream!”

“Huh?” Turning just her head, Yotsuha looked back.

“Why are you eating it?!”

“Huh? But you said I could.”

“Waaaaaaah, I’ve lost the will to liiiiive…”

Mitsuha sank down weakly.

Your will to live runs on pretty cheap fuel, Yotsuha thought, but at the last second, she managed to find the good sense not to say it.

Mitsuha sat on the floor for a little while, but finally, she put a hand on the back of a chair and dragged herself to her feet. The towel slipped from her head, and her long, black hair swished slowly. It looked like seaweed.

“…Yotsuha.”

“Um, I’m sorry.”

“I’ll curse you.”

“You’re scary!”

She’d have greatly preferred a shrine maiden not threaten people with curses so casually.

Mitsuha, sans will to live, retreated into her room like a ghost and apparently went to bed in a huff. Thanks to that, Yotsuha endured no further questions or bullying.

She was relieved to have escaped with such light consequences. Mitsuha’s anger hardly ever lasted. Even after the ice-cream incident that day, she only sulked in bed for a while. When she woke the next morning, it was like a fever had broken, and she acted as if nothing had happened. She’d always been that way.

The only exception was how she felt about their father. Mitsuha had an obstinate, seething, permanent anger toward him. When it came to their father—and only him—she could be unbelievably stubborn.

Why? It seemed strange to Yotsuha.

They should just apologize to each other, shake hands, and make up, she thought.

She’d actually said this to her sister aloud once.

“It’s an adult problem!”

At times like that, Mitsuha always pushed her away, leaving her speechless. She’s so stubborn…, Yotsuha thought.

Yotsuha was pretty smart, and her instincts were sharp. Even so, she still saw the world like an elementary-schooler. She didn’t know that knotted human relationships couldn’t be straightened out the way you’d untangle an earphone cord. In that sense, it was fair to say it really was an adult problem.

In any case, she was relieved her big sister wasn’t predisposed to hold a seething, lingering grudge toward her just then.

Yotsuha knew Mitusha’d never steal and eat her snacks as payback.

She really trusted her on that point. Sis really is a big sister, she mused.

A soft, gentle warmth spread through her at the notion.

Still, when she saw her off-kilter sister appear in the living room after sleeping in and skipping her breakfast duties yet again, dragging herself along listlessly with absolutely no memory of the previous day’s events, that deep emotion evaporated almost immediately.

3

During her third-period class, when the Indian summer sunshine streamed in through the thin white curtains, Yotsuha broke her mechanical pencil lead. She’d ejected too much from the tip.

She clicked it over and over, but with no lead forthcoming, she went to her pencil case to refill it. She shook out a new lead, replaced the extras that had come with it, removed the cap of her mechanical pencil, and tried to slide the replacement into the thin tip, but…

Huh?

It didn’t go in, and the extra lead fell into the crack of her notebook.

She retrieved it immediately and tried inserting it in again but this time accidentally broke it.

Agh.

After that, Yotsuha kept dropping or breaking leads. It made her really cranky, but then something occurred to her that elicited a quiet chuckle.

What if this is Sis’s curse?

Really, if her sister tried to use psychokinesis, this would be about the best she could manage. Yotsuha imagined Mitsuha actively focusing her will: Break, Yotsuha’s pencil leads!! It was cute. Weirdly so.

In any case, this was the first time she’d messed up something this simple several times in a row.

I bet it’s because Sis is sorta funny, and it’s throwin’ me off and makin’ me weird, too. That has to be it.

She felt no clear symptoms herself, but maybe she was stressed out because her sister was acting odd. She’d heard somebody on an NHK health program say that when people were under stress or pressure, they sometimes lost abilities they’d taken for granted.

Watching the program, Yotsuha’d found the phenomenon familiar.

She had a friend, Kano, who’d been in her class at school up until last year. Kano really hadn’t gotten along with their second-grade teacher, to the point where she had struggled to enter the classroom every morning, and she’d started completely forgetting things she’d been told to bring to school the next day. When they’d moved up a year and gotten a new teacher, Yotsuha’d heard that those problems had vanished.

Because she’d seen it in action, Yotsuha understood the inability to perform little tasks when there was some sort of burden in your life.

Just then, she was struck by an important revelation, and she ended up scattering the batch of new pencil leads she’d just shaken out all over her notebook.

Was that the root of her sister’s sporadic weird behavior?

Maybe she’s gone funny because of stress!

That had to be it.

Come to think of it, listening to rumors and the neighborhood ladies’ gossip, she’d happened to overhear that eldest daughters and sons had troubles that their younger siblings had a hard time understanding.

Maybe I’ve been takin’ life too easy and leavin’ too much to Sis.

Unbidden feelings of self-reproach surfaced.

That’s right. Sis has to think about inheritin’ the shrine and stuff like that. She’ll need to get married, too. People may already be tryin’ to set her up. Oh, and just a little while ago, she was yellin’ about wantin’ to leave home and go to Tokyo.

That was it.

Yotsuha was firmly convinced.

When school let out and she got home, her sister wasn’t there. When she asked their grandmother, she said, “She came home a bit ago, got changed, and went out to the shrine.”

The Miyamizu family still ran a shrine. It had been in Itomori since the age of myths and legends, and the Miyamizu family had been in charge of it since it was founded. Under modern law, the shrine was a religious corporation and its land and buildings were juristic personal property, but Yotsuha didn’t understand finicky details like that. To her, it was “our shrine.”

When she’d climbed the stone steps on the path to reach “our shrine,” there was her big sister in her street clothes, sweeping the premises with a bamboo broom.

Hearing footsteps running toward her, Mitsuha turned around just as Yotsuha tackled her about the waist. Yotsuha’d been planning to hug her, but excess momentum turned it into more of an American football play.

“Sis!” Yotsuha pleaded in a strained voice. “Sis, you can do anythin’ you want! I’ll get a husband and take care of all the family stuff! It’ll be fine! Lots of boys wanna marry me!”

After struggling a bit, still holding the bamboo broom, Mitsuha grabbed Yotsuha’s head and pushed her away.

“What are you babblin’ about all of a sudden?”

“Huh? Isn’t that it?”

“Isn’t what what?”

“Then that isn’t it…”

“I don’t know what this is about, but I’m gonna do as I please without worryin’ about you. Don’t talk about husbands and stuff, either, Yotsuha. You just go ahead and do whatever you like.”

“Huh? It’s okay to do that?”

Don’t just do as you please was a basic tenet that had been drummed into her in elementary school. To Yotsuha the grade-schooler, the idea of flatly declaring “I’ll do whatever I want” set her heart pounding at a rapid tempo.

“It’s not a question of whether it’s okay or not. You just do it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. There’s no tellin’ whether that’s really possible, though. Sometimes, when it gets right down to it, you end up not bein’ able to.”

Mitsuha raised her eyes to the conifers surrounding the shrine. After casually scanning the trees, which she should have been used to, her eyes abruptly returned to her little sister.

“And? There are lots of boys who want to marry you?”

“There are.”

“Are there?”

“Of course. Why?”

Mitsuha stood with the broom head planted on the ground, holding the handle upright like a spear, but…

Without warning, she opened her hand and let go.

The broom fell over and whacked Yotsuha on the forehead.

“Owww! What are you doin’?!”

“Pickin’ on you.”

After that, whenever Yotsuha came up with a new theory, she went running to Mitsuha, again and again.

Waiting her turn in the art room, to kill time she started reading a women’s magazine that was lying around, and the answer struck her like lightning.

I see! She changed her style all of a sudden ’cause she’s got a boyfriend, and she’s tryin’ to please him.

I bet her cooking suddenly turned all fancy and Western and stuff ’cause that’s what her boyfriend likes. That’s what it was.

Come to think of it, wasn’t that long ago when she was stompin’ down the hall goin’, “That guy’s such a— Argh!”

She hurried home. Mitsuha was in the kitchen making bonito broth, and Yotsuha hurled questions at her. “Sis! Who on earth is it? Where’s he from? How old is he? What’s he like?! Is he tall or lean or chubby? Is he handsome? Don’t tell me he’s ugly?!”

“What’s the matter with you? Are you a mad dog or somethin’?”

You really latched on to that is what Mitsuha meant.

“You got yourself a boyfriend, right?” Yotsuha zeroed in on the heart of the matter.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?!”

“Oh, wait, no: It’s not that… I don’t have one— I’m just not looking!”

“You really haven’t got one? For real?”

“I really don’t. Really.”

“It’s not that you’re too embarrassed to tell people it’s Tesshi, right?”

“Quit jokin’ around.”

“You only go for handsome guys, Sis, so I guess that wouldn’t happen, huh…”

Yotsuha nearly always said a few words too many.

Driven out of the kitchen, Yotsuha wandered out into the garden, feeling oddly unconvinced. The trees seemed dry, so she pulled out the hose and watered them.

Sis was makin’ broth today…

She’d clearly made too much for just soup, so she probably intended to stew something with it.

Which meant they’d be having Japanese side dishes.

Her sister had never been able to make anything but Japanese food, so this was par for the course—normal.

Every once in a while, though, she acted like a totally different person and made extremely elaborate Western-style dishes.

The other day, she’d made paella, a jelly with little shrimp and okra, and warm vegetables with lots of cauliflower, broccoli, and olives. Rather than being impressed, Yotsuha’d been a little frightened. Seriously? Parenthetically, everything had been lightly seasoned so it wouldn’t be overwhelming for a meal at home and had been delicious. The scorched layer of rice on the bottom of the paella pot had been super-good. Overall, she’d been put off at first sight but completely satisfied once she’d tried it.

That’s funny. Her cookin’ changed that much, and it’s not because she has a sweetheart?

Yotsuha really wasn’t convinced.

Still conflicted, she swung the hose from side to side, and the stream of water wriggled like a snake. Then, with a jolt, her thoughts veered off in a new direction.

If her cookin’ changed ’cause of a guy, doesn’t that mean she went to his house to cook?!

In that case, the matter was a little more advanced.

Being able to go to his place to make dinner meant he wasn’t a classmate. Usually, people had someone at home who cooked for them. At least, Yotsuha hadn’t heard of any boys in her sister’s circle of friends who were struggling because they didn’t have anyone to help with that.

Could it be a college kid living alone? …Except, there were no colleges nearby, which meant there wasn’t a single college student around, either. Itomori was too remote, and no matter which college you went to, it wasn’t possible to commute from home. She’d have about as much luck finding a Morlock as a college kid around here. If the young people of Itomori wanted an education beyond high school, their only option was to leave town.

That meant it had to be an adult.

Is it a grown-up man?!

Yotsuha’s lips moved in a silent “Geh!”

From her grade school perspective, it was impossible to imagine a full-grown adult dating a high school girl. That had to be the sort of thing that only happened in manga. If it happened in real life, it would be the most repulsive thing imaginable. Was her sister being taken for a ride by a con man?

I wonder if his job transferred him away from home.

Her face still warped in disgust, Yotsuha kept thinking. In the world of dramas, “business bachelors” were always paired with adultery. They were as inseparable as takoyaki and bonito powder, as green peas and shumai dumplings, as flan and caramel sauce.

Yotsuha didn’t have a clear concept of adultery, but she did get the general idea. It seemed like something very, very bad.

Oh!

Suddenly, everything clicked.

That’s why she’s hiding it.

By this point, Yotsuha had completely forgotten that this scenario—how it might be if her sister had a boyfriend—was purely hypothetical.

She twisted the faucet to shut off the water, flung the hose away, clambered up onto the veranda knees-first, then flew into the kitchen again.

“Sis! You can’t!”

“Huh?”

Mitsuha Miyamizu, who’d been chopping something on a cutting board, turned.

Yotsuha’s mad dash screeched to a halt.

She stopped breathing, too.

Light was streaming down through the kitchen window, illuminating Mitsuha from behind.

In the light from that pale sky…

For just a moment, as her big sister turned, she’d looked like their mother.

The girls’ mother had died when Yotsuha was really young, so she didn’t have any well-defined memories of her and didn’t remember what sort of person she’d been. She only knew what she looked like from photographs.

Even so.

Her mother turning around with a “What, dear?” as Yotsuha came running into the kitchen…

She sensed that it had happened before.

She thought it had.

Inside Yotsuha, a connection formed.

She felt a threadlike something soaring away until its end connected with some invisible world.

“What’s the matter, Yotsuha?”

Not even the voice brought her back to her senses. Her mother must have said that, too.

“What can’t I do?”

Those words, finally, returned her focus to the present little by little.

The person in front of her was her sister.

The voice was her sister’s, too.

“Honestly. What’s wrong?”

That sensible manner of speech was unique to Mitsuha Miyamizu. Yotsuha blinked a few times before answering.

“Oh, um, nothing, really.”

“I see. So it’s nothing, hmm?”

“Right.”

“In that case, you don’t seem busy, so peel the taro roots. Here you go.”

Mitsuha briskly set a bowl full of taro roots, a mini cutting board, and a kitchen knife down on the table.

“What?! But that’s the worst job!”

“Yes, it is. It’s very grown-up of you to help me like this. Heh-heh-heh.”

That had backfired.

Still, when Yotsuha tried working in the kitchen with the big sister who’d briefly resembled her mother, it wasn’t bad at all.

4

That incident stunned Yotsuha enough to calm her down a little. However, seeing Mitsuha’s merry morning boob kneading a couple more times started her brooding again.

Seriously, what’s that about?

Yotsuha pondered. She sat cross-legged on a floor cushion in the living room with her elbows propped on the low table and her chin in her hands. It wasn’t evening yet, and there was a historical drama rerun on TV. The magistrate was just about to reveal the blizzard of cherry blossoms tattooed on his shoulder.

Sis really does like her boobs an awful lot.

…Was it okay to just accept it and leave it at that?

The show ended, replaced by a detergent commercial, so she used the remote to click over to the local station’s evening news and entertainment program. Yotsuha’s eyes were on the TV, but she wasn’t really watching.

She’d spent so long sitting with her chin in her hands that her cheekbones had gotten sore, so she shifted positions and massaged her cheeks with her fingers. Her face, which even she thought was pretty soft, shifted and distorted the whole time. Then, in shock, Yotsuha shrieked, yanking away her right hand.

I caught Sis’s bad habit…

It was so creepy it gave her chills, and she smacked her fingertips against the low table.

Her sister, Mitsuha Miyamizu, had a curious sort of magnetism about her. When Yotsuha was near her, she felt her influence, as if it dragged her mind in a particular direction. Yotsuha couldn’t articulate it well, but that was more or less her impression.

Before long, I might be feelin’ myself up every mornin’, too.

That would be scary.

What a troublesome person.

Why did she knead her boobs?

Was there an actual, logical reason behind the action?

On TV, people of ambiguous gender commonly known as “big sister talents” were giving a weirdly hyper, giggly report on dining out. Watching absently, Yotsuha pushed and prodded her unruly thoughts.

As she did, a possibly related notion—though possibly unrelated—popped into her head.

If you knead your boobs, they’ll get bigger.

She’d heard that theory before.

It was the sort of rumor you picked up from all kinds of places, but was it true?

Yotsuha wasn’t convinced.

If you kneaded them too much, wouldn’t they get flabby and flat?

The stuffed animal Yotsuha had played with constantly since she was little, hugging it every night when she went to sleep, was getting pretty worn out, its stuffing disappearing.

If you used pillows for a long time, they wore out and flattened, too.

In other words, if you kept kneading them and squeezing them, boobs should actually shrink. Logically, that would happen no matter what. I really don’t buy that theory about your boobs gettin’ bigger if you knead ’em. Yeah, that’s right. Yotsuha made her declaration and chimed in to agree with herself.

What happened for real?

That wasn’t clear.

It would have been nice if she could check for herself, but unfortunately, she’d probably have to wait a long time before she found her answer.

Besides, to be perfectly frank, even once she was able to do it, she didn’t want to experiment on herself.

Well, then.

Does Sis want to make ’em bigger, or is she tryin’ to make ’em smaller? …Or is she experimentin’ on herself?

As usual, Yotsuha had forgotten that the explanation was a hypothetical one.

A few days later, when Yotsuha and her grandmother were polishing the railing of the Miyamizu Shrine hall of worship, Sayaka Natori padded up the stone stairway on the way home from school. Yotsuha tossed her polishing rag aside and climbed down onto the shrine grounds, which had been filled in with fine white pebbles.

“Saya, what is it?”

“Mm. I came to make a donation.”

“You have things you want to ask the gods for, too, Saya?”

“Well, sure. I’ve got lots of worries at my age.”

For some reason, Sayaka threw out her chest as if she were bragging.

Of course! I can just ask her, Yotsuha thought, although she had no idea how to bring it up.

“Saya, um…”

Yotsuha hesitated.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“Um, I’d like to ask you a question, and I’m completely serious.”

“Why’d you get polite all of a sudden?”

“Listen, if you knead your breasts, do they get bigger? Or do they shrink?”

“Huh?” Sayaka made a weird noise deep in her throat and fell silent. After a little while, she started to speak again. “Well, um, I’m not sure myself.”

She was smiling faintly.

“You don’t know, either, Saya?”

“You do tend to hear that they’ll get bigger if you knead them.”

“Do they?”

“That’s the thing. I really don’t know,” Sayaka hemmed in a cute little voice. “Although, there’s a theory that eating chicken will make them bigger.”

“Ohhh.”

“I hear eating cabbage is good for them, too.”

“Huh.”

“They say push-ups work well.”

“Seriously?”

“I hear all kinds of ideas like that, but I haven’t tested a single one of them. Really.”

“Why not?”

“They just seem sorta superstitious, y’know? Besides, the real value of a person has nothin’ to do with size, or at least I’d like to think so.”

This was very true. Yotsuha had never once worried that her boobs might not get bigger in the future. She couldn’t say that she didn’t care at all, but she didn’t care much.

Besides, when she saw the boys in her classroom cheerfully clamoring about “Boobs, boobs,” she despised them. Even as an elementary-schooler, she was familiar with the desire for them to leave the issue alone.

Should she gently tell her sister, There’s no real value in those?

The next day, Yotsuha was in charge of making dinner.

Ordinarily, her grandmother and Mitsuha took turns doing the cooking, but when they were both busy, the job fell to Yotsuha. The Miyamizu family refrigerator was always stocked with side dishes they’d made ahead of time, so she didn’t have to fix too many things.

Yotsuha could already make simple recipes. Specifically, she could handle broiling and simple boiling, but stewed things were still difficult. She wasn’t allowed to fry anything. Even with those limited methods, she could prepare a dinner that counted as solid home cooking.

According to Yotsuha’s basic understanding, to cook all you really had to do was heat something thoroughly and then season it. As far as the fundamentals went, she was right. No one would be ashamed to serve a properly roasted fish with salt sprinkled over it. Additionally, if you cooked slices of mackerel in a frying pan, salted them lightly, and added store-bought seasoned miso sauce, you had miso-style mackerel. Once you thought up a few clever tricks, daily menu variations presented themselves naturally.

Where had she learned that mindset? From her sister, come to think of it. She wondered where Mitsuha had picked that up.

Um, chicken and…cabbage?

They’d bought a lot of chicken thigh meat from the farmers’ co-op while it was cheap and stocked the freezer with it, and people from the neighboring farms brought them cabbage so often she couldn’t remember ever having bought any.

Yotsuha thawed the chicken thighs in the microwave and cut them into bite-size pieces. She shredded the cabbage roughly by hand. She covered the bottom of the frying pan with kombu seaweed that had already been stewed to make broth, put the chicken on top of that, salted it almost imperceptibly, then surrounded the whole thing with cabbage. She set it on the gas stove at medium heat, and she was just about to add a little hot water and put the lid on it when the broth for the soup came to a boil, so she tossed in a ladleful of that instead. It was pan-roasted chicken and cabbage. Yotsuha hadn’t thought it up herself; she’d seen her sister make steamed salmon this way and had adapted the method. She thought she’d also seen a similar dish on a cooking program on TV.

For flavoring, she turned to store-bought seasonings. She’d intended to serve it with mustard-mayonnaise, but after finding bottles of ponzu sauce and white sesame paste in the fridge, she muttered, “Oh, this, this” and changed plans.

She prepared the rice and some miso soup with Okuhida miso (and tofu), plus leftovers from the fridge: stewed lotus root and celery cooked kinpira-style, sautéed and simmered. Then came the tomatoes and pickled vegetables (turnip, mini eggplant, and cucumber).

Once she’d lined everything up on the big, low table in the living room, their usual family dinner began without any particular reaction. Her sister said, “This is pretty elaborate (for you),” but that was all. There was no praise to speak of, and no one said anything disparaging, either. Since Yotsuha had made it in order to see how her sister reacted, this lack of response was too much for her.

As a result, she cautiously decided to prompt her a little.

“Um, excuse me, but do you like it?”

“What’s this ‘excuse me’ business all of a sudden?”

“I hear this is, um, good for your body.”

“Is it?”

Her sister was devouring her rice with gusto, and she didn’t seem to care. She was one of those people who never got fat no matter how much they ate.

She didn’t seem to be trying to make them bigger, and if she wanted to make them smaller, she probably would eat a bit less.

So that wasn’t it…? Then why?

It was as unclear as ever.

Leaving the question unanswered made her uncomfortable, and finally, Yotsuha asked her straight-out.

“Why do you feel up your boobs, Sis?”

For an instant, her sister froze. The next moment, still holding her chopsticks, she leaned in very close.

“Tell me about that. In detail.”

The way she phrased it as a firm order was scary, and the fact that she still held her chopsticks poised in her hand was alarming, but her face was the most chilling of all. Apparently, when her big sister wanted to, she could intimidate with the best of them.

Since she’d been asked for all the details, she explained everything she’d seen. While this was going on, their grandmother continued her meal with perfect composure.

Yotsuha had answered every question honestly and completely. After Mitsuha was done interrogating her, she quickly finished eating and stalked down the hall to the bathroom. Her heels thudded firmly against the floor as she went.

Why was she mad?

She did all that herself.

Since that was the case, Yotsuha didn’t think she needed to go out of her way to cross-examine other people about it, but from what she picked up from her sister’s behavior, she had some fairly obvious memory loss.

Mitsuha had always been a bit absentminded. Had she finally deteriorated so far?

“What do you think, Gran?”

Once her sister was out of sight, Yotsuha seized the chance to consult her grandmother, who’d finished her leisurely dinner and was just pouring hot water from the electric kettle into the teapot.

“Well, let’s see…”

A long, thoughtful spell followed. The animal variety show on TV was showing a special feature about cute cats that were popular on the Internet. A soft, fluffy cat with faint stripes—maybe a Chinchilla?—climbed a set of window blinds until it finally tangled itself up in them and got stuck. “It’s so cute,” a female commentator noted, something absolutely everyone was bound to think. Another cat video started, and about the time an enormous Maine Coon with sleepy eyes opened its mouth in a big yawn, her grandmother’s mouth moved, too.

“I think she might be dreamin’.”

Her grandmother’s idea was as fuzzy as the cat.

“Dreamin’? What do you mean? You mean she’s half-asleep?”

“She’s not half-asleep, she’s dreamin’.”

The discussion circled back on itself.

“They call the god ‘Musubi,’ you know.”

The conversation was like trying to grasp clouds, but her grandmother paid no attention to Yotsuha’s growing impatience. She started a new conversation, taking things at her own pace.

“It’s the same word as the one in omusubi, rice balls.”

“Gran, are you sayin’ rice balls are gods?”

“No, rice balls aren’t gods.”

“Urgh, I don’t get it.”

“Is ‘I don’t get it’ a popular expression among children these days?” her grandmother murmured before continuing. “Yotsuha, what are rice balls made of?”

“Rice.”

“Who grows the rice?”

“People like Saya’s granddad. Farmers.”

“I make the rice balls, and you eat them, so you and I are connected. Rice is the primary element of rice balls. Therefore, the people who grew that rice, you, and I are connected. The rice grows because of the soil, the water, and the sun. Now we’re all connected: you, me, the farmer, the soil, the water, and the sun. Rice balls aren’t gods, but musubi—connections—are.”

“Wait, wait.”

She really didn’t understand.

Noticing that her grandchild was thoroughly bewildered, the grandmother put it in slightly simpler terms.

“The gods are relationships, you see. Words bind people to one another. The words themselves aren’t gods, but our bonds are. The rice balls link the land and water that nourished the rice, the people who planted and harvested it, the people who steamed it and formed it into balls with their hands, and the people who received and ate them. The gods are in these relationships, which were created by the rice balls.”

“Umm, so, what did you mean by dreamin’?”

“Well, dreams tie you to somewhere beyond reason, to places and times unknown. I guess you’d call it another sort of musubi.”

“Huh? So when Sis is dreamin’ while she’s awake, she’s a god?”

“I don’t recall my granddaughter bein’ a god. I meant that dreams themselves aren’t gods, but havin’ dreams is.”

“Urgh…”

Yotsuha moaned as if she were having a nightmare herself and flopped her top half over sideways like a gymnast might.

She was using the best body language she could manage to broadcast her confusion.

“Maybe that was a little too complicated… Well, just treasure the gods.”

Now she was bewildered through and through.

Talking with her grandmother made Yotsuha feel as if she’d wandered into a maze of mirrors.

She was increasingly unsure whether her sister was the one dreaming or whether she herself was just dreaming that her sister was weird. The burden of the information was too great, and Yotsuha forgot most of what her grandmother had told her.

5

On Sunday, Yotsuha Miyamizu was in the shrine’s hall of worship very early. Every morning and evening, Miyamizu Shrine made offerings of food and alcohol to the gods. This was usually something their grandmother did, but when she was serving visitors, Mitsuha or Yotsuha sometimes took care of it in her place.

Carrying them reverentially in both hands, Yotsuha placed round, lacquered stands heaped with all manner of offerings before the altar in the correct order. Today’s offerings consisted of rice, sake, salt, water, kombu, and eggs, along with the small watermelons, sweet potatoes, and Asian pears they’d received from the people who belonged to their shrine. After these had been removed from the altar, the Miyamizu family would eat them. In Shinto, it was very important that humans consume whatever had been offered to the gods.

Then Yotsuha stood in front of the altar and straightened her back. That alone was enough to lend some tension to the air.

She bowed twice.

After drawing a breath, Yotsuha recited a petition in a clear voice:

“In the presence of the most august Miyamizu shrine of the gods, I speak in fear and trembling. Through the workings of thy vast, generous power, O gods, grant us all, chiefly sustenance, garments, and shelter, when we are in want of it. Grant us success in our work. May our family and kin be friendly and at peace. Comfort and protect us so that we may pass each new day pleasantly and without worry. After our souls depart this mortal realm, reign over them and bless them forever. Grant us a place among the ranks of the gods in the system of the hidden realm, so that we may guard and gladden distant generations of our descendants. Help us, save us, so that pleasure and joy shall persist unchanging, unending, in both this mortal realm and the hidden realm. We are undeserving, yet pleased beyond measure that thou hast granted us thy blessings and thy love, and as I praise and worship thee, I pray that thou hearest me with a serene heart. Soul of blessings, soul of wonders, protect and gladden us. Soul of blessings, soul of wonders, protect and gladden us. Soul of blessings, soul of wonders, protect and gladden us…”

At Miyamizu Shrine, the Shinto prayers that were generally known as norito were referred to as “petitions.” This was a very basic petition. Her grandmother recited a different, longer one.

Yotsuha had been told to learn this one to start with and simply memorized it along with her multiplication tables, so she didn’t really know what it meant.

Even so, from the vague understanding her instincts gave her, she thought she was probably saying something like:

Gods, we’re able to live in peace and abundance again today, and it’s all because of you. Thanks very much. When I go to the next world someday, make me a god, too, okay? Then I’ll help protect my descendants so well, you won’t even believe it. It would be terrific if both worlds were happy. Please make that happen, ’kay? Ciao.

She bowed twice and then clapped twice.

Yotsuha bent low in a beautiful bow. It was a stately example of the gesture, the sort that only professionals could manage without great effort. After standing immobile, head lowered, for several seconds, Yotsuha relaxed her whole body. She put her hands on her hips and sighed. Whew. Good grief. That’s one job finished.

The air in the hall of worship was as silent as if it had been frozen.

A casual glance around showed that the cleaning had been done perfectly, and the whole place sparkled.

Of the offerings arranged in front of the altar, only the fruits and vegetables were colorful, and those isolated spots seemed oddly bright and trendy.

Behind the offerings sat two square stands made of unvarnished wood, and a small measuring box lay on each. Each container was covered with paper and sealed with a braided cord.

Inside was the mouth-brewed sake that Mitsuha and Yotsuha had made by chewing rice at the harvest festival the other day.

They planned to take this sake to the body of the shrine’s god, deep in the mountains, before the autumn festival. Miyamizu Shrine didn’t have an inner shrine that housed the god’s body on its precincts. There was an old, hidden inner sanctum at the peak of Mount Ryuujin behind the shrine, and the entire mountain belonged to Miyamizu Shrine.

Apparently, if you chewed rice up real well, spit it out, and let it sit around for a while, it turned into sake. At the harvest festival, over and over, Yotsuha had put rice in her mouth, ground it down, and spit it into the measuring box before sealing it with the paper and cord. Her big sister had done the same thing. The results were sitting there. If it was acting as advertised, the contents of the boxes should be on the brink of turning into sake.

However, Yotsuha thought the idea was a bunch of hooey.

According to a slightly more detailed explanation, when rice mixed with saliva, the saliva made the rice sweet. As time passed, that sweetness turned into alcohol.

If that was true, then apple juice and other things should turn into alcohol if you took the cap off and left them sitting around, but she hadn’t heard of that happening.

Not only that, but if a mixture of rice and saliva made sake, people should get drunk when the rice they ate became sake in their stomachs.

I don’t get it.

Neither her grandmother nor the shrine parishioners nor the worshipers seemed to have the slightest suspicion that this stuff might not be transforming into sake.

Since the people around her had complete faith in this method, entirely confident that this would become sake…

Will it really?

It almost made her accept it in spite of herself.

At present, Miyamizu Shrine was about the only place that made sacred sake this way, but she’d heard that long ago (about a thousand years or so), shrines all around Japan had made it mouth-brewed.

Did the enduring legacy of the tradition mean it really did turn into sake? If not, it seemed likely that in the course of that long history, someone would have checked it and said, “Hey, this isn’t sake!” and raised a fuss…

Oh. Of course.

Walking slowly, Yotsuha detoured around the offerings to stand before the altar. Right in front of her were the two stands that held the special sake.

The color and pattern of the braided cords sealing the boxes showed which one each sister had made.

She’d covered it with paper and tied the braided cord herself, so it wouldn’t be hard to undo nor to retie it and make it look normal again. She could even bring a spare braided cord from the drawer in her room.

In other words, it would be easy to stealthily lift the lid and put it back without leaving any traces…

She strained her ears, listening.

She couldn’t sense anyone coming.

Yotsuha set her small fingers on the knot in the braided cord. They moved dexterously, untying the knot without much difficulty.

She removed the paper covering the measuring box, exposing the surface of the liquid. It was gloppy and cloudy, like unrefined sake.

Yotsuha stuck her right pinky finger into that liquid.

Then she licked her finger.

The second she did, Yotsuha’s entire face scrunched up.

Nas…ty…

She could state, categorically, that this was nothing anyone could call a beverage.

The only words for it were disgustingly sour, but that wasn’t nearly enough to adequately describe it. Both sides of her tongue prickled. The roof of her mouth felt viscous and sticky.

And yet she couldn’t sense the presence of alcohol at all. Yotsuha had poured sake for the men at post-festival banquets, so she knew what sake smelled like. In other words, this wasn’t—or wasn’t yet—sake or anything like it.

Ugh…

Yotsuha wanted to do something about the inside of her mouth right that instant, but she was sensible enough to know that concealing her tampering came first. She arranged the paper over the measuring box again, carefully bound up the braided cord, and retied it just the way it had been before.

Once she’d quickly finished, she clamped a hand over her mouth, hurried down the covered walkway, and emerged near the shrine office. She washed her hands in the kitchenette sink and gargled thoroughly. She shook Frisk breath mints into her palm and crunched them between her teeth. Even after all that, the muscles in her face still wouldn’t relax.

That day, Yotsuha practiced the kaguras beginning at eight in the morning. She was in the kagura hall on the left side of the shrine grounds, and her grandmother stayed with her the entire time. Mitsuha was on duty in the window of the shrine office, waiting for visitors.

During festivals, the walls of the kagura hall were opened on three sides, exposing the space to the elements, but now the lattice doors were closed, making it impossible for guests to see from outside. However, this made the interior rather cramped, so practices here were always one-on-one.

Her grandmother was fairly strict about rehearsals. She’d say, “Review this for next time,” and if her granddaughters hadn’t learned the indicated choreography by the next session, she got angry.

It wasn’t enough for Yotsuha and Mitsuha to perform the wide variety of dances handed down at Miyamizu Shrine. They had to be able to teach them to their own children and grandchildren, their nieces and nephews, and their children as well.

If Mitsuha and Yotsuha’s mother had lived, she could have taught the sisters, but unfortunately, at present, their grandmother was the only one who knew Miyamizu Shrine’s traditions. If anything happened to her at this point, many kagura dances, petitions, and ritual processes would be lost. Her severity might have been due to anxious impatience.

In a corner of the kagura hall, attached to an old Aiwa radio-cassette deck, there was a voice recorder with the kagura melodies.

Her back straightened, moving her body in time with the music, Yotsuha danced.

And danced.

Ringing the bells, trailing the braided cords attached to them…

She turned, and she danced.

When she made mistakes, her grandmother fixed them.

The elderly woman performed the moves herself as a demonstration.

Yotsuha straightened up, rang her bells, and danced again.

This happened over and over for three hours, with a break in the middle.

As she was practicing, for a moment, her consciousness cut out. The moment was so brief that her grandmother didn’t notice, and even Yotsuha thought she must have mistaken it for something else. It felt like flipping an electric switch off and immediately back on.

Huh?

Her grandmother was correcting Yotsuha’s performance, and during their conversation, it happened again. Like the flickering of an old fluorescent light, Yotsuha’s mind blinked on and off, too.

This is weird.

She wanted to crouch down, but she couldn’t. There was a cord attached to the top of her head, and the cord was bound to the beams on the ceiling, pulling at her. There was no way that was the case, but she couldn’t imagine what else the sensation might be. She couldn’t even fall over, like she was a strung-up fish.

Her grandmother didn’t notice the change in Yotsuha.

“All right, now you try it.”

Just as she heard her grandmother’s voice, she heard a metallic click in the back of her head, as if a breaker had flipped, and Yotsuha’s consciousness switched off entirely.

The sensation was like being washed down a thick tube filled with warm water. It wasn’t unpleasant, and she wasn’t afraid, but she felt terribly unsteady. Abruptly, her vision left the tube and climbed high, high in the air. Her perspective rose at a breakneck speed, and the scenery below expanded and grew distant. The height was beyond the distance needed to survey a country or a continent—this was the viewpoint of a spaceship over Earth. However, she wasn’t looking at the planet. What spread far below her was an extremely complex, exquisitely precise twill fabric. The fibers were twisted together into thread, which were plaited together to form slightly thicker threads with simple patterns in them, and those threads were braided together into cords with intricate patterns. Those cords were woven together into a cloth sheet. The fabric seemed to go on forever, and she was looking out over its expanse. She couldn’t explain the pattern in words; the design was constantly rippling, shining, collapsing, splitting, transforming, multiplying, perpetually changing shape, and never holding a permanent form. The pattern was a comprehensive depiction of the time, history, and facts of the universe, as well as the feelings of each individual within it. And when she realized that the threads composing this cosmic tapestry—strands so small they hardly existed, gossamer so thin and fragile as to vanish in the next moment—were warm tubes like the one she’d occupied a moment before, her perspective returned to the cylinder once more. Abruptly, she was enveloped in a light so white and bright it almost hurt, and she nearly lost consciousness. She realized that it was possible to faint when you were already unconscious. The mind that had arrived at this understanding also disappeared, as though someone had placed a lid over it.

And thus, she was flung off into the unknown.

Yotsuha became aware that she was standing in a gloomy, spacious, wooden-floored room.

It wasn’t the one she’d been in a moment before, but she knew, without knowing how she knew, that this was another kagura hall somewhere. It was spacious. She figured ten people would be able to perform kagura dances in it at once without bumping into one another. Three of the walls were top-hinged lattices, and right now, they were all closed. Instead of being shut completely, they had been lowered so that small gaps remained, and the brilliant white rays of the afternoon sun streamed through.

A woman stood in front of her.

She was watching Yotsuha carefully.

The woman was dressed in a white kimono and crimson hakama trousers, and she wore her old-fashioned, loose, dark-mauve jacket with familiar ease. Her hair was incredibly black and long, enough to completely cover her back.

Her skin was very white. Her features resembled her big sister’s, and she also looked a bit like the mother she knew from photos. The woman was older than her sister, but younger than her mother.

Huh? Do we have a cousin or an aunt like this? I don’t think we do…, Yotsuha pondered, but her doubts remained minimal.

For some reason, the situation didn’t feel strange—maybe because her circumstances were no different than before. She was in a kagura hall, and her teacher was there in front of her.

Just then, out of nowhere, she realized that her eyes were higher than usual. When she moved her neck, her head felt heavy, and she knew it was because of her almost impossibly long hair.

When she let her eyes fall to her hands, they weren’t her own. There was nothing plump about them, and on the whole, they were terribly thin. However, they were beautiful, long-fingered, and didn’t have a scratch on them. At the very least, they didn’t belong to an elementary-schooler who climbed trees and played soccer outside and cut herself when she was cooking. Those hands emerged from the sleeves of a spring-green jacket. She was probably dressed the same way as the woman in front of her.

When she looked farther down…

She had gently swelling breasts.

Hmm?

Boobs.

Huh?

It wasn’t a very generous bosom, but it was enough to make her think, Huh! Boobs, in a place like this…

Yotsuha’s delicate hands had been positioned as if they were holding something reverently in front of her, but…

Slowly, she brought them to her chest…

…and pushed them against it.

Oh. I kneaded them.

They were less solid than she’d imagined they would be. They felt soft, a little bit fragile. She’d thought they’d be stiffer, as if they were being stretched from the inside, but that wasn’t the case. A light squeeze was enough to change their shape without resistance, and when she let go, they returned to their former contour on their own. The tiny shivery motion they made in the instant they bounced back was really adorable. The kimono was made of a silk so thin it was nearly transparent, so she could clearly feel their texture and movement even through her clothes.

Looking mildly surprised, the woman put the edge of her folding fan against her lips.

“Do you fancy your own bosom that much?”

Yotsuha’s consciousness blinked in and out. It was the same sensation as before, the one of cycling between unconsciousness and wakefulness.

“Come, do as I’ve taught you.”

The woman held out her bells, prompting her. The hands Yotsuha moved, the ones that weren’t her own, took the bells. Pursing her lips, the woman hummed a kagura melody. It was the same melody Yotsuha had just been learning from her grandmother.

As prompted, using a complete stranger’s body, Yotsuha danced.

She felt no desire to struggle against the situation. It was just like in dreams, where it never occurred to her to fight what was happening.

Yotsuha danced.

She froze in place…

Then began again.

When she finished her performance and relaxed her posture, she could almost see the echoes of the bells spreading through the wide, wood-floored room. It was pleasant to Yotsuha, but the woman tilted her head to one side, deliberately and obviously.

“What’s the matter? That’s much different from what I taught you.”

Just as her grandmother usually did, the woman corrected Yotsuha’s movements. Where Yotsuha had simply given a downward flourish with her hand, she added two turns of the wrist. The bells jingled once, twice, and the adornments of motion and sound transformed Yotsuha’s dance into something a little more exquisite.

Thus the woman corrected her dance bit by bit. While this was happening, Yotsuha’s consciousness continued to flicker.

The woman seemed to notice, and suddenly…

“My, are you dreaming?” she asked. “It’s because you drank your own sake. That’s sure to upset your soul. There’s no telling what sort of strange place it’ll bind you to.”

The woman’s troubled tone had been lightly reproving, but the next moment, her expression seemed to say, Ah, I’ve been careless.

“I suppose there’s no sense in saying it to you, who’s been brought here through the switch.”

For some reason, Yotsuha felt no desire to say anything to this person. She wasn’t even being intentionally silent. It was as if she’d completely lost the concept of vocal and verbal communication.

The woman had been slowly waving her half-opened fan, but then her eyes widened as if she’d thought of something, and she nodded.

“I see. If you dance the Miyamizu kaguras, then no matter where you’ve come from, you must be a Miyamizu as well. I expect that means you also did mischief to your sacred sake.”

The woman smiled in amusement.

As before, the idea of replying didn’t occur to Yotsuha. The woman didn’t seem to be expecting a response, either. Something other than words must have been getting through to her.

The light that streamed through the gaps in the lattice walls dimmed abruptly, then brightened again. Outside, clouds must have hidden the sun for just a moment. The square kagura hall was enclosed on all four sides by windowless walls. The darkness that filled it felt serene, and several fingers of light lanced through the shadows.

The feeling was nostalgic. It tickled her heart.

Oh, I get it.

It looks a lot like half-light.

Generally, in ancient Japanese, that time of day was called kawatare-doki, the time when one might ask, ‘Who goes there?’ However, in the town of Itomori, they called it kataware-doki, or half-light. Yotsuha didn’t understand complicated words like kawatare-doki, but she knew kataware-doki. It meant the time when she thought, I’ve got to go home, and her chest tightened inside. It was the atmosphere of the final lingering light that shone through the darkness.

Her chest constricted.

Yotsuha moved forward. The sound of her footsteps on the floorboards felt like distant knocking.

She clung to the wall, caressed the lattice.

The feel of the light, dry grate was pleasant. Beloved.

She put her arm against the lattice wall, gently pushing it up from below.

The moment she did—

A flood of light washed over her.

There was so much pressure in the brightness that she nearly reeled backward.

When the force receded, Yotsuha opened her eyes. Or, no, maybe they’d been open all along, and she’d just acclimated to the brightness. Either way, the scenery outside unfolded like a panorama, and the whole breadth of it seemed to leap out at her.

It was…

The shapes of the mountains in the distance, the curve of Itomori Lake a little ways in front, and other familiar things—this was definitely Itomori, but it looked very different.

The terrain was what she was used to seeing, but the paucity of fields felt strange. Instead, the land was dotted with groves and thickets. She could see a few sparsely scattered houses, but they were very nearly huts, and there wasn’t a single tiled roof.

The white smoke of cook fires rose from the houses in straight columns, mingling with the blue sky at a great height. It was almost as if they were slender pillars that supported the sky, keeping it from falling.

This place where Yotsuha stood was the shrine precincts, but its location wasn’t the same as the Miyamizu Shrine she knew. The view was subtly different.

In terms of space, she thought the grounds might be five times as large as the precincts of her family’s shrine. There was a big hall of worship with a sharply sloping roof built in the oldest of the ancient styles and a stately one-story residence a short distance away. Its gabled roof was thatched with cypress bark, and only the ridge was tiled.

Of course, the kagura hall where Yotsuha stood was also part of the precincts.

The shrine garden, which spread in front of the hall of worship and included the path to the shrine’s entrance, was mossy. It was studded with large rocks, and spring water welled up from it.

About ten men and women were cleaning the garden very thoroughly.

Some of the men wore the robes and hoods of the old warrior class, while others were in the loose garments of common workers. However, there were some who’d cut holes in pieces of cloth, put them over their heads and sewn up both sides, and secured them with strings around their waists.

Some of the women wore their long hair tied back, while others had clipped theirs to hang evenly at their shoulders. All were dressed casually in unpatterned kimonos that came down to their ankles. Some had wrapped something like a loincloth over the top, while others hadn’t. Some wore straw sandals, while others were barefoot.

At the very least, this wasn’t the way they’d dressed in the Edo period. It looked nothing like the historical dramas.

This was much farther back.

I wonder how long ago this is…

Yotsuha was too young, and she knew far too little.

If, at this moment, she’d been an adult and more or less retained her basic education…

She might have thought, I wonder if this view I’m seeing would be the Itomori I know with another thousand years of development.

She might have been able to think, These people look a whole lot like the common people you see in old picture scrolls from a thousand years ago.

However, even without that sort of information for comparison, she felt something instinctively. She tried to assess it somehow and understand it. Using a brain that wasn’t her own, Yotsuha’s mind and unconscious automatically began feverish calculations.

This is—

This is…

Just then.

Yotsuha…

…felt a clear surge of dizziness.

The focus of her field of vision slipped off-center, almost comically.

Slowly, she tipped over backward.

The woman quickly strode to Yotsuha and supported her back.

Reassured by that touch, Yotsuha began to let her consciousness go.

A curtain fell over her vision, and it gradually faded to black.

From behind her, right behind her ear, she heard a voice.

Remember this: People are bound to the places of their birth. Why do the people of Itomori not abandon it, though the tailed star fell on this dreadfully ill-omened land and stole everything away? The only answer is that they are tied to it, and it draws them. Their hearts have put down roots here. They are bound to it. And because the peoples’ hearts are unable to leave this land, we Miyamizu exist.

The Miyamizu are descendants of Shitori-no-Kami, the god of weaving. We offer prayers to Musubi. We reel in the fabric of time, bringing the past and future near to our hearts. Know that behind you, all the women of the Miyamizu are near you in the flow of time.

She sensed something like a wistful smile behind her ear.

Even if I tell you to remember, you’ll forget.

With that, she was dragged into a vortex, just as if something had pulled a cord tied to her.

6

When she returned to herself, Yotsuha completely forgot what had transpired. She didn’t even feel as if anything had left her memory. A switch flipped with a click, and she was in the kagura hall at Miyamizu Shrine, facing her grandmother. The lights on the ceiling were LEDs the color of incandescent bulbs.

The woman was watching her. Her mouth hung open.

“What’s wrong?” Yotsuha asked.

“Where did you learn that?”

“‘That’?”

“That, the dance.”

Yotsuha made an indecisive noise, somewhere between a “huh” and a “hmm.”

“That’s right—that was how the choreography for this kagura was really supposed to go. When I was smaller than you are now, my gran’s mother danced it like… Yes, exactly like that.”

“Huh? Your gran’s mom was here when you were little?”

The part of the story that startled Yotsuha was an irrelevant detail.

“She was. I remembered my great-grandmother danced the way you did just now, Yotsuha.”

Her grandmother seemed startled. She looked at Yotsuha with that stunned expression, then broke into a soft, happy smile. Before long, sadness began to steal into that smile.

“Things were so lively back then.”

The look Yotsuha saw on her grandmother’s face spoke of how lonely her life had become. In that moment, the words Yotsuha needed to say came to her naturally, though to her they seemed entirely out of character. They were an adult’s words, through and through. She didn’t know why the comment had popped into her head. It was like a mysterious text message, sent from some unknown place.

Gently, Yotsuha nestled close to her grandmother and said:

“I’m here, you know.”

That night, Yotsuha had a dream. She was in the midst of a torrent of time.

She drifted in that flow, neither swimming nor being pushed along by it. She felt as if she might be moving downstream, and also as if she might be traveling upstream, but she was always below the water’s surface as it carried her somewhere.

The moment she thought, I wonder if this is the Milky Way, she saw an image of a falling star being tangled in a net of braided cords. The vision seemed very right to her, somehow, but she didn’t know why.

She was caught in that net, too. Just as she felt this, although Yotsuha was still in the stream, she was up on land at the same time. Her father was there, a bit younger than he was now; her mother was there, strongly resembling the photographs at the end of the album; and her big sister was there, too, about the same age as Yotsuha was now. Then Yotsuha saw herself, a newborn, held in her mother’s arms.

“May this child’s fortune hold nothing but happiness. May she never suffer all alone.”

The words her father spoke sounded like a prayer. She knew he was able to write and read traditional Shinto prayers on his own, but because he was using plain, modern language, she could tell that the words were genuine, straight from his heart.

Her mother smiled, as gently as sunlight thawing the ice.

“This child, you, me, and Mitsuha are connected by Musubi’s threads. Miyamizu shrine maidens have never once been friendless.”

Sis is lookin’ at the newborn me.

This scenery, the people, her newborn self, and the self watching them—all of it was pulled into something like a whirlpool where it stretched and thinned, then blended with the torrent of time.

Morning came, and Yotsuha awoke. The moment her eyes blinked open, every trace of sleepiness vanished. A pleasant morning light came in through the sliding glass door.

Swaying lightly, Yotsuha went into the dressing room and washed her face carefully with soap at the sink. She stripped off her pajamas, tossed them into the washing machine, and changed into her everyday clothes. Yotsuha had decided that except for the times when she helped out with the family business, she’d only wear clothes she could play soccer in. She dried her wet bangs with the hair dryer, ran a brush through her hair, then parted it and tied it up in two bunches. She thought it made her look like a bunny, but the dumb boys said they looked like brush attachments on vacuum cleaners.

Mitsuha opened the dressing room door, still in her pajamas, her head moving unsteadily. Yotsuha moved over to make room, and she trudged inside. The heavy fatigue she dragged behind her seemed almost palpable.

I wonder if I’ll see Sis knead her boobs, she thought, and she watched her closely, but it didn’t seem as if she was going to do anything of the sort.

Instead, she saw something that startled her.

Her big sister, who’d been bogged down with sleepiness, washed her face with cold water and brushed her teeth thoroughly (even though it was before breakfast), rapidly refreshing herself. She stripped out of her pajamas, quickly changed into her school uniform, dried her wet hair, then braided it and tied it up with exquisitely dexterous fingers, becoming a splendid example of “the eldest of the young Miyamizu ladies” before her very eyes.

It was like watching something shine brighter and brighter.

Wow. She’s beautiful, she thought. When I’m Sis’s age, will I be this pretty?

She didn’t care about boob size, but she did want to be a beauty.

Just then, Yotsuha realized…

…that she loved this big sister of hers.

She hadn’t known she felt that way.

She’d thought she knew, but she hadn’t understood.

Wanting to express those feelings, Yotsuha went over to her sister.

“Sis.”

“What?”

“We’re not friendless, you know.”

As she looked into the mirror and straightened her hair, Mitsuha Miyamizu tilted her head and glanced at Yotsuha.

“Hmm… ‘Friendless’ isn’t a word people use much. Where’d you hear it?”

“Huh? Um…”

The question left Yotsuha perplexed.

“Who was it? Where was it? What was it? Umm…”

She wasn’t even sure why she’d said that.

Trying to remember, Yotsuha looked up and rolled her head around. She figured that if she shook her head, the answer might come tumbling out.

For a little while, Yotsuha groped blindly for an unknown thing in an unseen place. Mitsuha, who was using a pair of tiny scissors to trim her eyebrows, seemed to be keeping the reflection of Yotsuha’s face in the corner of her eye. Finally, Yotsuha gave up and relaxed the hand she’d stretched into that nonexistent void. For a moment, she felt a sense of sorrow, as if she’d let something go, but it might have been just her imagination. Then Yotsuha looked at her sister’s face in the mirror and gave her a childlike, carefree smile.

“I forgot.”