Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Farewell

When I first started first grade, I had no one. My family had just moved to the United States, and I didn’t speak English. No one talked to me. Nor did I understand the lectures. Hours passed, months passed, as I sat trapped there in confusion and solitude.

Then, one recess, my classmate Hei found me. And he called my name. Sophia, Sophia. He somehow managed to invite me to a hike in the mountains at the edge of our city. There, we chased each other across the fields and dirt trails, and together we explored the wild, green-maned slopes. There we were free. When we exhausted ourselves by dusk, Hei took me to his home to play Final Fantasy 7. Our party’s mage-girl died, I got upset and cried, and we called it a night at that point. Since then, we had kept each other company.

That is, until Hei wound up in a different high school. At middle school graduation, we had sworn we'd keep in touch, sealing our promise with a hug. But we inevitably drifted apart over the years, though neither of us would admit that.

We both finished high school two months ago. I'd be taking a gap year to figure my life out. But in just four days, Hei would head off to college overseas.

And that was why I asked him to do a one-day hiking trip up the mountains. Just the two of us. One last chance at rekindling our bond before we part ways.

 

Hei climbed the dirt trail ahead of me. He rounded a rocky bend in the mountainous path, then navigated through a patch of pines and untamed flora.

"Wait up," I panted. The morning sun was climbing higher now, and I was both out of breath and overheating, even with my hat shading me. Hei stopped, and he looked back at me with his deep, dark eyes. He held back a smirk.

"What?" I asked with mock indignation. I must've looked sheepish. Back in elementary school, I had been the taller of us two, and the more athletic. Now when we spoke, I had to look up at him a little.

"It's getting hot so early," I said. I jokingly held his hand up to my forehead to let him feel my temperature. He did, then he gave a light pat on my hat. These were the sort of little things we used to play at back in middle school. Our dynamic hadn't aged much since those distant days, as though it had been frozen and preserved while we were apart. In a way, this trip felt like a mutual apology to make up for all the time we didn't spend together since then.

"I'm getting tired too," he said. "How much farther until we reach the top?"

"I dunno. We've been walking for, what? Two hours now? Should be soon."

I checked my phone GPS to make sure. Unfortunately, there was no signal up here in these remote mountains. No Wi-Fi, no cellular data, no GPS.

"There's no GPS up here," I sighed.

Hei furrowed his brows. "What? Does GPS not work in the wild?"

I realized he had a point. The Global Positioning System, as I've read once, was made up of satellites orbiting the entire planet. It didn't rely on cell towers or Wi-Fi stations or whatever, and you'd get satellite reception even in the middle of the ocean. This was strange.

"Can you check on your phone?" I asked.

He did. Just like mine, his phone had no signal for anything.

"I hope our satellite system didn't get hacked," I said.

"Do you want to head back? We could go down and get cheeseburgers for lunch instead."

"What, why would we? Are you worried?"

We had been planning this trip for weeks. One last day together, at the mountains. The same place that first brought us together. I was a little surprised he got this unnerved about hiking without GPS. I mean, cheeseburgers had a special place in my heart, but still.

Hei scanned the landscape beneath the mountains. Trees and rolling slopes stretched far away, until they met the sky at the far rim of the horizon.

He squinted. "I don't think we've been here before."

"This is the same path we took on our last hike," I reminded him.

"Then we should be seeing the city."

The realization hit me as well. At two hours into the hike, and at this elevation, we would be looking outward upon the city. But instead of sprawling roads and buildings, the foot of the mountain only continued off into forest-like wilderness.

"Did we get lost?" I asked.

"Let's follow the trail back," Hei said.

I agreed, and we made a U-turn to head back to ground level. I was still a bit bummed out, but things weren't too bad. This was going to be a memorable day, after all. I could feel a rush of adrenaline from the pseudo-danger we were in, and it made the whole world crisp and real and unforgettable – the sunlight on my skin, the notes of each birdsong. And though I had been tired, this change of plans somehow perked me up again.

It was almost like going on an adventure. And once we made it down the mountain, he'd drive us to get cheeseburgers. And then we could go to his house, and binge-watch Attack on Titan, or take a food-coma nap, or play video games. We wouldn't have time to do everything today, sadly. And we wouldn't get another chance to do anything together for a while.

I glanced at him as we walked. He always seemed lost in thought this past year, with his brows faintly furrowed. And now he had been silent for minutes, just staring into nowhere. It didn't feel like he was here, present at the hike. He wasn't even panting or sweating. And his black, messy hair, naturally stiff, jutted out in tufts that did not move as the wind blew.

The trail snaked along the side of the mountain. An earthen wall bordered it on the left, and the mountain's steep, downward slope bordered it on the right. We kept looking out for a sign of the city but found none. And strangely, no one crossed our path on the way down. It took an hour or so downhill before we saw something on the path. Not a person, but a wild mountain animal, like a coyote or wolf. We stopped a stone's toss away, careful not to startle it.

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"Pssst," I whispered to Hei. "Wolves aren't aggressive towards humans, right?"

"I'd hope not."

It wasn't that big, only about the size of a husky. It could seriously injure us if it wanted to, not to mention infect us with rabies. If worse came to worst, I could maybe take my backpack off, and swing that around as impromptu self-defense. Hei bent down and picked up a couple pebbles. The wolf parked itself at the edge of our mountain road, silently observing us. It was just standing there...menacingly.

"It looks scared," Hei said. Not that I could tell.

"Throw a rock maybe," I said. "See if it runs away."

 

 

Hei pinched a small pebble in his grip and hurled it towards the side of the wolf. It landed several feet away from the beast. But instead of running away, the wolf approached us.

At the same moment, I heard footfall from behind us. I ventured a quick look around. My heart sank.

A second wolf was charging at us, descending from uphill. This one was massive, easily bigger than Hei and I combined, and more like a bear than anything else. I screamed. Hei turned around and saw the gigantic wolf as well.

Before I knew it, I had taken off in a sprint running downhill, away from the monstrous beast with teeth like knives. If there had been any plans or forethought in my head, they were all gone by now.

Crap! Did we just attack its baby?

As I sprinted past, the smaller wolf sprang at me, knocking me to the ground. I fell on my back. As I struggled to get up with the weight of my pack, the small wolf jumped on top of me. Its fangs snapped at my face. Instinctively, I rolled away...

Only to find myself rolling off the path, and violently down the slope of the mountain. Rocks battered against me as I crashed into them, and coarse earth tore at my skin. I tried to stop my descent, but my limbs flailed about uselessly while I tumbled down the far-too-steep decline.

"Hei!" I screamed. I didn't know whether it was a cry for help, or a plea for him to run away and save himself. And I screamed his name again.

An agonizing impact shook my skull. I had crashed head-first into a boulder. My body limply crumpled in a pile on top of itself, and my vision faded in and out. As I tried to force myself to get up through the pain, I realized I couldn't move beyond the barest twitch of a finger. Several joints were probably dislocated. Out of the corner of my darkening sight, I caught a glimpse of the giant wolf heading my way, snarling hatefully as it approached.

I couldn't believe how quickly it all happened. How easily and senselessly my life was ending. Over the past weeks I had been thinking hard about my future, about what major I'd enroll in after I finish my gap year, and whether I wanted to pursue my childhood dream of being a scientist. But I'd never get there.

I wanted to speak to my parents again. To see my friends again. Don't be too sad, I wished to tell them. I hoped they'd comfort Hei, if he made it back. Perhaps we'd meet again in the world to come.

Someone please, help me. Please help me.

The noises around me faded away.

It didn't hurt anymore. I looked around. By this point, I could no longer see anything. The world was dark and empty, and I floated weightlessly in a nondescript void. I wondered if this was the place I'd be spending my afterlife in, for the rest of eternity. It certainly looked like I had departed from the world of the living.

「How will you overcome?」 a voice asked me.

No one was out there. I wasn't sure what "out there" meant anymore. Did anything even exist here, in this strange place, besides myself?

「How will you overcome?」 the voice probed again. It was a woman's voice, distant and detached. Yet it sounded hopeful and defiant, as though she was offering me a second chance.

"I want to survive," I whispered. "I want to escape with Hei."

As those words left my lips, I felt a rush of blood through my body. It felt hot. Pressure built up beneath the skin of my back, as though something grand was sprouting out of both my shoulder blades. The energy of it all made me want to move, to run. To...fly, as though I had been born to fly all along. It felt powerful. And in some way, it felt familiar.

In fact, the whole series of events leading up to this had all been eerily familiar. Going on a mountain, getting lost, my GPS failing, being attacked by gigantic beasts. And now, having some disembodied voice apparently grant me wings…

I connected the dots. It all came together.

"Hold on!" I shouted at the female voice. "Am I getting transported to a fantasy world? Wait! Let me pick a different superpower!"

The heat and pressure on my back dissipated. No wings grew out of me. And I heard, just barely, an impatient sigh in the distance.

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