The following day, I left the Forgotten Village through its southwestern gate and, ten minutes later, found a worn wooden sign planted along the south-going road. According to the Captain, I should wait by the sign for a carriage that could transport me to a faraway region, which was plagued by internal struggle and whose leaders were hiring foreign mercenaries to aid in their conflict. Apparently, three separate factions were vying for the control of an ancient city and it was said that so many warriors had died that their blood flowed like rivers and even the rain had turned crimson.
It seemed this was the only option forward, which, along with everything I’d learn the last few days, confirmed my guess that this trial was designed to be progressed through linearly, though I couldn’t rule out the possibility of skipping ahead through some secret means.[1] I decided to just take everything in stride and not lose my head trying to predict all the possibilities. All that mattered was that I didn’t stop progressing, so that I could leave this fabricated reality behind, and once again see the real world and remember all the things I’d forgotten.
A-minute-or-two later, I saw a carriage on the horizon, approaching with frantic speed. As it came nearer, I noticed that it was pulled by two emaciated and panicked horses, its carriage consisting of rotting wood and rusted metal, and its driver cloaked in a dark-grey shawl, which covered his hair, nose, and mouth, and also draped over the rest of his hunched body, obscuring it from sight.
The carriage came to an instant halt in front of me and the door creaked open on its own. With some hesitation, I entered and sat down on the spotted-and-torn cushions inside. The door slammed shut immediately after and the ramshackle horse-drawn death-trap took off immediately. I shuddered as part of the ceiling shook itself loose and fell down onto my head.[2]
Through the holed curtains covering the window in the door, I watched the world pass by rapidly and then the strangest thing happened:
The light of the sun grew brighter and then darkened an instant later, like watching the day pass by in less than a second. This weird phenomenon repeated again-and-again, rapidly speeding up, until it became a pulsing strobe-light of night and day. The rush of the carriage pulled me into my seat and it felt like the air was ripped from my lungs, as though I was suddenly in freefall.
I looked around the carriage as it was lit by a rainbow of colours, then covered in darkness, then lit-up, over-and-over. My eyes started swimming and I blinked, for just an instant, and—
“Now leaving World ‘The Forlorn Kingdom’.”
In the void that swallowed me, a voice, which I immediately recognised, addressed me with its warbling, mind-addling, and melodic tones.
I have watched you and you have done well. As promised, here is your reward:
My mom handed me a stack of printed-out papers. They were still warm and smelled toasty. Without asking what they were, I looked at them.
After glancing over the first page, I felt agitation take me and I quickly leafed through the rest, before looking up at her in outrage.
“Why are you doing this!?”
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“As you can see, we found a small apartment for you near the school. It is just a short walk from Enmachi Station. This way you won’t need to commute so far every day. Now, go pack your bags, I have scheduled for the taxi to be here in about twenty minutes.”
Knowing her, the bags would already be in my room. She liked to keep everything neat and prim.
“What did I do!? Why are you kicking me out!?”
“You know why!” she exclaimed, then immediately calmed herself. Like a fucking robot switching between moods to fit the situation.
I was crying by this point, grasping onto her ironed, blue dress, but, like the housewife-dictator she was, this had no effect on her. She didn’t even blink as she grabbed my wrists and pushed me off of her.
The brief, but rough, grip on my bandaged wrists flared up the pain that’d been barely-noticeable for weeks. Or maybe it was just the situation that did it. After all, those wounds were as much emotional as they were physical.
“Just tell me what I did!”
A great puff of air came out of her nostrils in the heavy sigh that followed. It felt like I was watching her try to convince herself not to slap me.
“We cannot handle this anymore, Aiko. It’s too much. Your poor father has gone down with stress because of it. You know that!”
“We? WE?? What about me!? What about how I feel?? Have you ever once thought about how I feel?? Dad is too weak to tell you this, but you’re a psychotic OCD maniac who cares more about her fucking vacuum cleaner than her own family!” I wanted to scream back at her, but I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. I never actually told her how I really felt. Instead, I slumped my shoulders and said, “I’ll go pack.”
The apartment they’d bought me was four decades past its prime, with its only luxury item being the beeping-and-singing toilet. It had three rooms: the bathroom with the aforementioned toilet; a closet that narrowly fit my bed; and the living room that held a kotatsu twice my age, which saw much use during winters, not to mention a kitchen with a sink, a hot-plate, and a mini fridge. It was a shithole compared to my parents’ suburban two-storey, but at least it was close to a 7/11, and the neighbours, all elderly and half-senile, were nice and welcoming.
The first few nights in that cold and unknown place, I cried myself to sleep, cursing the unfair life I’d been given and my own impotence to change it into something better.
I opened my eyes and found a completely different environment surrounding me. I was no longer sitting in the carriage, but instead stood in the middle of a wide dirt path, surrounded on all sides by a vast forest. The soft earth only had my footprints marking my journey, which was strange, considering I didn’t remember walking here.
The trees around me were a cascade of colours, as if a giant had vomited forth a rainbow and the colours stuck to the trees, flowers, and land. The flora before me were in full bloom, ignorant to the seasons and the natural order of such things. I saw spring-time cherry-blossom trees in white, pink, and red. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and white flowers and bushes were everywhere. Amid these were also orange and white autumn-blooming Osmanthus trees, which filled the air with an overpoweringly-sweet apricot aroma. There were many more plants beyond these, but my knowledge of such things was limited, so I could only name a few. One thing I did notice though, was that the majority of plants were ones I’d seen enough of for them to be innately familiar to me, almost nostalgic.
I decided to continue walking along the road which ventured further into the colourful forest. The air above me, as I walked along the trail, was clear of any foliage, as if the trees did not dare to block the sky above the road.
Five minutes into my journey I felt a drop of rain on my head, but I didn’t stray from the road, even though the trees would offer me shelter from the light shower that slowly formed. Something about the unnatural appearance of the flora made me hesitant to even approach them.
The rain peacefully continued to fall down upon my armour, the soft earth, and the trees, filling the air with a chorus of pitter-patter sounds.
I felt rather light-headed and confused. The trip in the carriage had done something to me beyond just transporting me to this strange place. I had the feeling that I was forgetting something important.
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[1] Especially not after Iberius revealing to me that it was possible to ‘bypass’ a Stage.
[2] What I mean by “shuddered”, is that my whole body spasmed with repulsion and dread. I then proceeded to ruffle the ever-living crap out of my hair, trying to remove it. You know, just like any normal person mortified by bugs.