Chapter 3: 9

                8:06 AM. The clock on the wall told me that I was horribly late for school. The warnings had woke me up the previous night and I’d had trouble getting back to sleep. I grabbed my backpack from where it sat by the sofa and headed toward the door.

                “Ai! Did you make your lunch?” My mom called from the kitchen. Gah! I scowled. Lunch! Dammit!

                “I don’t have time today, mom!” I called back. “I’ll get something from Akane!”

                “I know for a fact Akane’s family doesn’t have any to spare! Why do you- “I couldn’t hear the rest of what she said as I was already through the door and running down the street toward our high school. The air was clear after the morning fog had lifted and promised to be yet another in a seemingly endless series of hot summer days. Even the breath of wind off the ocean felt stifled and unpleasant.

                I ran along the river road until I reached the bridge leading toward the center of town, a thin, unpleasant sheen of sweat covered my legs and arms. My sailor uniform, sturdy and made from thick wool made me thoroughly miserable. The streets were packed with people hurrying to the market and work and I soon found myself amongst the throngs going to and fro. As I hurried onto the bridge, I heard a distant sound I’d become all too familiar with, the sound of propellers.

                 There were those among the adults who tried their best to hide the reality from us kids. The reality we had lost the war. We knew well, the end was near, though. I wasn’t sure but I didn’t think anyone ever really won a war. If you could ask the dead lying where they fell on sandy beaches in faraway lands or sunk with their ships of a winning side would they be pleased? Somehow, I didn’t think so.

               Each time ships sailed from the once bustling port which was now out of metal and fuel and people to build the engines of war fewer and fewer were coming back. While not here in Hiroshima where I lived, the other cities in Japan were being bombed into charcoal. Women, children, the elderly, all were being killed with impunity by the swarming American bombers.

              The last normal thing I remembered was my sister getting married a few years earlier. She had moved to Tottori to be with his family while he had left on Ayanami. When Ayanami never returned, she sunk into a depression deeper than the waters Ayanami’s metal bones rested in. I had not heard from her since, nor had my mom. That, for me, was the first niggling things were not going well for Japan and the end of what I thought normal meant.

                Yet each day the radio crowed about our myriad victories. Our daring feats against the enemies threatening to tear down our culture and replace it with something entirely alien. Our victories at sea sending the Americans to the depths while our mighty navy steamed on into glorious sunsets. All lies, of course. But lies we seemed inclined to believe because the reality was too horrid to imagine. And now, once again, the reality had shown up in the sky above the clouds. The air raid warning had been lifted, though, so it was most likely a scout plane I reasoned.

                I glanced up at the clock on the bank building and silently cursed. 8:15 already. I was so doomed. I had nearly reached the end of the bridge when a sudden, cold fog sprang up around me, obscuring everything almost instantly. The fog immediately cooled the sweat on my legs and arms and I shivered at its touch.

                “I’m glad I caught you in time,” A voice said behind me. I turned sharply, holding my bag protectively in front of me. A woman of indeterminable age stepped out of the mist, the smile on her face seemingly out of place, like she’d sat in front of the mirror for several hours to get it to sit right on her lips and had still managed to get it wrong. It was the smile of someone who did not smile from mirth often or even at all.

                “I-I don’t have any food, I’m sorry,” I stammered.

                “Oh, my, I’m not after your food, Ai Ito. Or should I call you Ai Ashikaga?” She asked, cocking her head to the side slightly. I noticed that her clothes were traditional and looked to be made of brightly-colored silk. Her wooden geta were barely visible beneath the carefully folded cloth and her fingers idly toyed with a small silk fan, folding and unfolding it with a flip.

                “Um, my name’s Ai Ito, not Ashikaga so…” I said before realizing I had no idea who she was. Could this be the ‘stranger’ my mom was always warning me about? I stepped back and held my backpack up more defensively than before, narrowing my eyes as I stared at her suspiciously. Her long black hair was pinned intricately atop her head and braids fell on either side of her pale face like waterfalls. She was pretty and I was certain I’d have remembered her if I’d seen her before. She is definitely a strange stranger. A strangerer? I almost chuckled and would have if I hadn’t also been rather scared.

                “Well, your family name on your great great great…well, 15 generations ago was Ashikaga so in reality that is you also, is it not?” I stepped back, glancing over my shoulder slightly to get my bearings. Unfortunately, all of the familiar landmarks were gone, replaced by swirling, roiling mists that dampened all sound and movement. It was like nothing in the world existed except her and I and the fog. It frightened me.

                “I-I don’t mean to be rude but I’m very late for school,” I stammered, taking another step backward. The woman waved her hand dismissively and stepped forward to account for my step backward.

                “You don’t have to worry about that. In 9 seconds it won’t exist anymore. In fact, in 9 seconds, everything you’ve ever known will cease to exist, including you.” The woman said trying and failing to sound empathetic.

                “What are you talking about?” I demanded, scowling. I always tried my best to be polite but she had gone beyond the point of being rude.

                “What is the date today?” She asked me, looking down at her wrist as if searching for a watch that wasn’t there.

                “Monday?” I replied hesitantly.

                “Not day. Date, girl,” she sighed in exasperation. “Did that school teach you nothing?” I scowled, my anger rising like a wave that I had to struggle to ride out.

                “You talk very quietly and are quite suspicious and it’s hard to hear in this mist,” I snapped, sounding exactly like the petulant child I’d been trying not to appear to be.

                “Yes, yes,” The woman sighed irritably. “What is the date?”

                “August 6,” I replied.

                “Ah, yes,” she answered. “Two days before your birthday.”

                “Wha…how…,”I stammered. “How did you know that? Who are you?”

                “Showa 20, correct?” She ignored me completely.

                “Yes,” I snapped, angry and afraid, now.

                “And you hail from Hiroshima, yes?” She pressed, ignoring my anger and frustration to pick a piece of dust from her kimono.

                “You know that since we’re there,” I snapped.

                “Well, we’re there but we’re not. It’s very complicated and I am rather displeased with you right now so I have no interest in explaining,” the woman sniffed as if I’d insulted her dining room chairs or something. “I will simply say that the propellers you heard as you reached the river belonged to an American bomber called the Enola Gay and that plane was carrying a 3 meter long bomb. One that in 9 seconds will visit hell upon this city.

                “It’s unlike anything the world has ever seen but it won’t be the last time the world sees it. In 9 seconds it will explode and erase you and thousands of others from existence. Literally. The shadows of people will be burned into the concrete and wood. Yours will be right at the end of the bridge, frozen in stone. That faint shadow and your name scrawled on a stone plaque will be your only legacy to humanity if you don’t listen to me.”

                “You’re sick,” I muttered, shuddering at the cavalier way she talked about destruction. The government, of course, told us nothing but it was obvious what was happening. Everyone but some men in Tokyo knew we’d lost the war. Everyone had lost someone. Some had lost everyone. My father, a sailor on the aircraft carrier Akagi; had died when she’d sunk. My uncle had died in a jungle down in Indonesia and now it was just my mom and I, my sister and her child having vanished to Tottori or maybe even gone to their grave for all we knew.

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                 This woman’s tone irked me, seemingly making light of the suffering we’d already endured, not to mention talking about stupid horror tales in the middle of a war. Like horror needed any more exposition after all this time.

                “Ah,” she replied, sighing again in annoyance. “A skeptic. How delightfully droll and yet thoroughly expected.” I wasn’t sure who she was actually talking to as, even though her strange, gold flecked eyes stared at me, it was as if I wasn’t there at all. “Should I let you see the sun erupt over you? I’m not sure I can hit the point in time again and I only have really one more chance and if I miss we’re all doomed. Not to mention even if I do let you get vaporized and can hit the point again you still wouldn’t remember as it wouldn’t have happened, yet. Time is so bothersome like this. Like that? What’s the proper tense in this situation anyway?”

                “What are you talking about?” I demanded, glancing about me for any sign of escape. She was obviously not well mentally.

                “Shh,” she admonished me. “I’m trying to figure out a way to let you get annihilated while still having you remember it and you’re distracting me.”

                “Sorry,” I found myself saying, feeling chastised. Wait. What the hell? Finally, with a long, heaving sigh the woman shook her head and focused her strange eyes on mine, locking me into place with her gaze.

                “Well, it can’t be helped. The truth is the world and I need you and I can’t just compel you to do it,” she said with a hint of sadness in her voice. “More’s the pity. Oh, well, Let’s go.”

                “Go?” I asked in a small voice. “I can’t go with you! I-“

                “Watch your stomach,” she warned, cutting me off. With a wave of her hand the concrete beneath my feet gave way to mist and I was falling through tendrils of fog. I tried to scream but my lungs couldn’t find the air to push out so I merely gasped, my throat only managing strangled gurgling sounds of alarm. A moment later the world spun and whirled and I was sitting on a luxurious leather sofa in a well-appointed living room. My stomach, however, was still falling it seemed, even though I was sitting still. I tried to regain my composure and control myself but my stomach rebelled and I threw up what little was left in my belly.

                “Not on the floor!” The woman moaned miserably. “I just had it waxed. Damn it.” I wanted to apologize but my body wasn’t done, yet, and I vomited again. The woman’s shoulders slumped and she sighed in exasperation. “Bothersome.” She muttered. “Wholly bothersome.” I looked up through watery eyes to apologize but she waved my apology away and pushed a button on the wall near the large double doors with intricate dragons battling in relief on them. A moment later and a young woman in a maid outfit appeared.

                “You called, madam?” The woman said in a soft, soothing voice. Her outfit was adorable, made moreso by the pair of cat ears twitching nervously atop her head, the long tail behind her swishing attentively. Wait. What? My jaw dropped open wide and I stared at the maid in awe.

                “Sara, our guest has made a mess, could you please have this taken care of while we go to the theater?” The woman directed her. The maid bowed her head.

                “Of course, mistress,” the maid, whose name was, presumably, Sara replied.

                “Come along, Ai,” the woman said, turning back to me. I sat still on the sofa, staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed at the cat girl as she moved toward me. “Ai!” The woman exclaimed again, louder.

                “The mistress is calling you, my lady,” Sara cooed helpfully.

                “I threw up,” I replied blankly, my mind desperately trying to get a handle on everything that was happening to it right now and failing miserably.

                “Yes, my lady,” Sara replied with a helpful smile, her ears swiveling slightly. My eyes followed the movement of her ears and I reached out hesitantly, determined to touch them.

                “Let’s go, Ai!” The woman snapped irritably. I broke my gaze away from the maid and blinked, my brain nearly getting a foothold on the situation.

                “Ah,” I managed, Sara helping me to my feet with a smile.

                “You can touch them some other time, my lady,” Sara whispered with a smile. I smiled broadly and followed after the woman giddy at the proposition.

                “You mustn’t assume you are allowed to touch things all willy nilly, you know,” the woman said as she led me through magnificent hallways made of deep brown wood, sublimely decorated with articles from many different regions and time periods. Medieval suits of armor stood silent guard in close proximity to ancient Greek and Egyptian artifacts, all looked nearly pristine. Though there were no windows in the hall light filtered through panels in the ceiling, lending a more natural atmosphere to the halls than mere lights could achieve on their own. “Not all Nekomimi take kindly to being ogled, you know.”

                “Neko-“I murmured as we hurried down first one hall and then turned and headed down another, closed doors spaced along the length of the walls. How big was this place?

                “Nekomimi. It’s their race,” the woman sighed in frustration. “Are you racist?”

                “What?” I gasped. “Of course not!”

                “Good thing,” she snapped. “There’s no room for that foolishness in civilized company. Ah, here we are.” She opened a pair of double doors onto a spacious, well-appointed theater. The screen at the far end of the room was larger than the side of my house and I walked inside in awe. Dark purple curtains lined the walls and each of the chairs was similarly upholstered in dark purple. I ran my fingers over the back of one chair. It was an amazing room and I couldn’t seem to close my mouth as I stared about me. In fact, most of the past few minutes had been spent with my mouth agape and my brain attempting to process things it was not capable of fathoming. “Go sit down while I find the Netflix password.” With that she strode out of the room and vanished down the hall.

                I had seen a movie once. Well, sort of. The theater had left the doors open in the early summer heat the previous year and I had managed to watch several minutes of it before being shooed away by the manager of the theater so I had the very basic idea of what was happening. I sat hesitantly and settled back into the seat.

                The surreal nature of what was happening to me was most assuredly not lost to my mind. Twenty minutes ago I had been leaving my house for school in Hiroshima. Now I was sitting in a luxurious chair that felt as if it had been made exclusively for me and me alone in a darkened theater listening to the strange woman who had abducted (Had she? Yes. I was pretty sure I was officially a statistic by this point.) me from my home spewing very unladylike obscenities from somewhere nearby.

                “I can never figure out these phones! Where is the cast button again?” She yelled at someone I couldn’t see. The person obviously answered her in a way she found even more infuriating. “What app? Why can’t I just cast it from the browser? I cast everything else from the browser!” I fidgeted uncomfortably as the woman continued to rage against the object of her ire. I had no idea what she was talking about and was certain I never would. It sounded like she was speaking a completely different language altogether. Whoever she’d been railing at must have answered her which sent her into a fresh fit of anger. “Just let me do it my way, dammit!” A few moments later my host reappeared and sat beside me, fiddling about with a strange rectangular notebook. I peered at it curiously, trying desperately to look without appearing to look.

                It was hypnotizing. Words and images appeared, flashed and disappeared only to be replaced by other images. It was like a very tiny television, but colorful and bright. The woman seemed to control the flow of these images with only her finger, swiping across the surface of the notebook to summon a new image. I glanced around me, trying to find the source of projector.

                “Japan: June 1945,” A voice boomed from all around me at once, causing me to yelp in fear and throw myself under the chair in front of me for cover.

                “Oh, wow, sorry about that,” the woman sniggered, not sounding sorry in the least, as I huddled in fear. “Volume’s up to 11, I guess.” The booming voice lowered to a more tolerable level, and I hesitantly picked myself up and peered over the back of the chair toward the giant screen at the far end of the room.

                 “Now pay attention, the woman chastised me. This is how you die.”

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