A low-hanging cloud, typically close to the ground in the form of fog
Skylark looked up at the sky. It was really, really close.[1]
“We’re in the fucking clouds!” yelled Luke, scrambling out of the portal from behind her, and before they knew it they were falling, straight through the white cloud right there at the portal exit and all was white and Skylark felt water in bits and sparkling pieces fly through her face and hair as she fell through the cloud—
“Jaceus!” she screamed, and she caught a glimpse of his feet as she turned, she thought she saw him kneel and put his hands to the cloud but he was becoming a pinpoint high above and she continued to fall through the cloud like water but soon she began to slow down, and the cloud around her started feeling thicker, light, thin ribbons and beams of scarlet were shooting through it, and soon she found herself sinking into it, lying back as if it were an enormous floafa all around her.
Her heart couldn’t stop thudding; taking several deep breaths, Skylark looked around her, and thought she saw Luke resting similarly some meters away; but through the cloud mix he seemed only a shadow.
“That was really close,” Cerise’s voice came from above as she descended through the cloud around them, her feet creating residues of the same pink and scarlet where she stepped.
“Yeah,” Skylark answered. She looked at Cerise, who didn’t look afraid at all. When they were somehow staying still inside a cloud, very, very high up in the air. She took several deep breaths. “What did Jaceus do?” Somehow, instinctually, she felt that Cerise would know.
“Skylark,” Cerise said, laughing, “Jaceus may be Emulus, arted, royal and all, but he isn’t his sister. From what I’ve heard.”
“His sister? You mean from—wait, you mean from—?”
“I did it, Skylark. I’m bodiesified, remember?” Cerise said, but more quietly. Skylark nodded. She thought that Cerise could only change the colors of objects though, and what Cerise had done was not just add colors to the cloud, but also change the cloud itself somehow, the water inside it. They never learned this kind of thing in school as weather was controlled—oh! She could just ask by receptor. She touched her receptor and accessed—her normal thoughts. She thought—there was no Thought-feed. Wow. Well, in Sector II—they were in Sector II—they might not even have receptors.
They were in Sector II. Ms. Darth would be shocked.
She thought about asking right then and there, but she saw that Cerise was looking at her, smiling and putting a finger to her lips. She mouthed something, it looked like water—no, it was later.
Skylark nodded again, smiling. Cerise had been using her trait far more often than Skylark ever did, she just knew that instinctually, and meanwhile Luke was struggling to get over, picking his way through the cloud-mass like an ancient wanderer of myth, using his hands to gingerly scrub away at the pink puffs.
“Whatever you did there, Cerise, that was amazing,” he said, gesturing all around them; they were completely surrounded by the cloud. Skylark wondered just how tall it was, they had been falling for only a few seconds, but she was glad she never got a glimpse of the empty sky below them.
Still. They were up in a cloud, far, far below was the land…
“Thank you, Luke,” Cerise replied. She seemed to be inspecting the cloud material, thrusting her hand through parts of it, removing her hand and examining her fingers. Skylark started to wonder if Cerise had been to Sector II before—no, Cerise was just really cool.
“Are you guys okay?” came Agate’s voice from above.
“Yeah! We’re alive! We’re sitting in the cloud!” Luke shouted back.
“Our receptors don’t work,” Cerise said. “Which is really interesting, because that means—”
“—we don’t have the Worldnet here,” Luke finished. “But we learned in school that the Worldnet was the whole world…” He scratched his dirty blonde hair. “That is interesting,” he said.
“Well, no not exactly, Sector II probably has the Worldnet. They just might use it differently,” Cerise said, putting her hands behind her head and leaning back on a part of the cloud that she had arranged into something like a floafa, complete with just air below it, and the cloud was slowly re-filling that space.
“Worldnet, but no receptors,” Skylark said.
“That’s right, Skylark,” Cerise said.
I felt satisfied at answering it correctly; wait, no, she wasn’t in school. Skylark shook her head. She. Was. Sitting. In a cloud. She thought she would be more shocked about it but looking at all the bright red and pink lines running through the material around them, keeping it warm, seeing how comfortable Cerise was, she knew that everything was fine.
Some small pieces of it were floating down from the ceiling; wow, she was already thinking of it as the ceiling, and a pair of feet showed, and with a wisp of cloud-stuff showering through, Jaceus arrived. He turned quickly and reached up to help someone else down; Mr. T, and lastly, Agate, who was clutching her arms.
“It’s a little cold,” she said.
Mr. T was shaking his head with delight.
Jaceus looked around at all of them and nodded. “It’s good we all made it,” he said. “Thank you, Cerise.”
Cerise touched her hairpin, pink, and it shot red and back to pink and back a few times.
“Always fun to color,” she said.
Always fun to color.
“Now, we are in a new place. Sector II denizens may live on the clouds. We may see some soon,” Jaceus said.
Skylark thought, then remembered that Jaceus said people could fly in Sector II. *
She tried to make herself comfortable on the cloud-part behind her; it was so strange to be moving it around with her hands.
“Well, maybe it’s normal in Sector II to be sitting in clouds,” Luke proposed. “Now I wish I’d brought my visorface. The people here might look completely different.”
“Jaceus, you told us that they have something called leave, right?” Agate asked.
Jaceus nodded. “I don’t know too much about it. But I believe it enables them to fly. They have portals that I believe are called skyports, atop of clouds. So they must have the technology to walk on them,” he said.
“Incredible,” Mr. T said. “We should take a look around, shall we?” He thrust his arm through the cloud wall next to him; he felt around a bit, and stuck his head in.
“HELLLLOOOO?” he called. It was muffled, and Skylark laughed. The whole situation was just so miraculous.
“OK, OK, I’ll go out to look,” Cerise said. “Everyone else, stay here,” and she disengaged herself from her seat, and fell through!
“No!” Luke exclaimed, and jumped over; Skylark almost bumped into him, she looked down through the gap in the cloud, and saw that Cerise was running on another cloud below, lines of pink streaming by her feet; she sighed with relief and then wonder. Again, she marveled at how confident Cerise was in an entirely different place, and just using her trait to move around in it.
Mr. T removed his head from the cloud wall. His hair was shot through with wet, making the black almost silver.
“Now that I haven’t done before,” he exclaimed. He reshaped his hair into a large T—Skylark realized that was what his hair had been supposed to look like. For his name, haha. “I can’t wait to tell my students all about it.”
“I feel like even if we returned to the portal, I mean, ‘skyport,’ we wouldn’t be able to go back,” Agate said. “Assuming that people who live in Sector II can’t go to Sector I.”
“An interesting question, Agate, but if that were possible, they’d be well concealed among us,” Mr. T answered. “I say we wait for now until Cerise tells us what she finds.”
Agate seemed satisfied with that and set to arranging some cloud-stuff up around her hair like a soft pillow, just as Cerise had done. Mr. T was a teacher, after all. Skylark forgot what he taught, but he’d mentioned it when they’d all gathered together under Jaceus and the Furies. Something about the stars? Or tech.
So, the five of them continued to wait. Agate had nearly covered herself with the cloud-stuff and appeared to be trying to sleep. Skylark wondered if Agate would be able to have her usual coffee here. Mr. T went to talk with Luke about something; it sounded like he was asking about how Luke came to join the Furies, back when they were.
Jaceus remained standing.
It was maybe ten minutes later that he spoke.
“Something must have happened,” he noted. He was very calm.
No, that can’t be, Skylark thought, and peered back again through the opening Cerise had left through; every minute or so she had parted away at it with her hands, keeping the space open; but by now the pink and red lines had faded on the cloud-surface below, which was still and empty.
She glanced at Agate; the older girl was fully asleep, her light yellow hair mixed with the cloud shaped around her head. Mr. T’s cheerful smile was halfway to a frown now, and Luke was looking outright concerned.
“I’ll go look,” he offered.
“No,” Jaceus said. “We know practically nothing about this place. Let’s wait ten more minutes.”
No one disagreed, and they waited; Skylark found herself slowly thinking about the students back at Restor, worrying about their midyear tests and the third years now knowing where they were going next year. Their troubles seemed very far away; and the more Skylark thought about it, the more she realized that she was never going back.
A flash of blue.
Skylark threw her head through the opening, focusing on the cloud-surface. It had been quick but she’d seen something.
She knew without a doubt that blue had nothing to do with Cerise.
“Jaceus, I saw something,” she said, pointing down as she came back up, and he walked over. He’d been standing there for almost twenty minutes.
“What did you see, Skylark?” he asked her.
“Uh, just something blue,” she said. “It went by really fast, I couldn’t see it.”
“Hmm. I think Cerise may have encountered their system of protection.” He moved over to touch the clouds surrounding Agate, causing them to dissipate into a thin fog, just like that; Agate opened her eyes, and almost slid off as she moved into a standing position, using the cloud to steady herself.
“We normally can’t access other Sectors,” Jaceus said. “But clearly we were able to, and they might have a protection system in place.” He seemed as if he was going to say something else on “protection system,” but didn’t. “Cerise is quite capable but we really know nothing about the people here, let alone the Scions here.”
Those words seemed to change the atmosphere; Mr. T’s frown became an expression of concentration, Luke became serious, and Agate nodded.
Skylark knew they were all thinking the same thing.
“Agents,” she said.
“Or that,” Jaceus said. Wait, he wasn’t thinking of that?
Jaceus looked at them; he then nodded, as if to himself. “But Cerise is one of us. We should all go down after her, and see exactly what Sector II is made of.”
“So far, clouds,” Mr. T said, and Luke forced a laugh.
Jaceus moved to sit over the opening, his legs hanging through.
“I’ll go first. Don’t worry—I’ll do something so that we can walk on the clouds like Cerise did.”
He glanced at Skylark; she gave what she hoped was a smile, and Jaceus fell through.
Eleanor Vyaedus Dorr
Acceptances
SECTOR UNIVERSITY
TOPPING MAE RUBI
U-ZONE DIFFERENCE
RESTOR INSTITUTE
UNIVERSITY LACONICA
Conditional Offers
None. An alter application.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Rejections
RAIDER HIGH UNIVERSITY
PEPPA PEPPA V
Eleanor sighed with what was almost relief; no, she was sighing with expectation. She knew that she would get into Sector. Topping Mae was somewhat tempting but guaranteed a Governorship… U-Zone was a joke apply but they took her… and she wasn’t interested in v-Art. Never.
She looked around her and saw that others were similarly satisfied, some trying miserably to conceal their shock, or even yelling and hugging each other. It was always a tiresome day in Blazon.[2] The chairs were going up and down. It was only after each year’s university admissions that third years could change their ranked seat settings by themselves during class. Some were clearly taking advantage of that. Eleanor remembered starting at the front, upon entering the levgion. It had been very brief.
Sector it was, then. She’d tell Father and Mother and then see how the others did—she couldn’t tell whether Anderi was tapping her fingers on her desk, still, in the pain of decision or an excited nervousness.
Entering the Thought-feed for Father she found herself thinking of somebody else who used to occupy that top spot—but she just couldn’t identify who it had been. Her thoughts didn’t seem to want to linger on the subject.
Father—I’ve made Sector. Tell Mother. In and out of the Thought-feed.
She rose from her seat and—she almost fell, but she held fast to her desk. She’d forgotten to lower herself. Sighing, she Thought to change the settings as more of the others around her began to react.
Proen iHiela was standing on two seats; they had one foot on one, one foot on the other. “I really don’t know, I really don’t know,” they chanted, moving from side to side, somehow staying aloft on the two desks. Eleanor almost—she struggled not to laugh. As another premier student of Blazon, Giya Igre Bis was likely announcing her achievement across the school Thought-feed, so unpermitted except by Heralds—students who had the lead position in at least two separate organizations.
She didn’t check.
Finally, she’d reached the floor. Eleanor left her seat and walked over to Klost. He was staring in front of him, not at Jule or Anderi or even Layra, her own chair settling slowly to the floor over by the window; just at an empty wall in front of him, a wall of nothing; Eleanor TM’d Jule.
He really wanted to get Laconica, didn’t he, she said.
No immediate response; but then Jule Thought back, with the slightest twange of annoyance: He just really likes mindo. There’s a school for that down in Might.
Jule wasn’t in this classroom, but Eleanor knew exactly what they meant. Oh, poor Klost… she walked over to block his view of nothingness. There were a few students between her and the holoscreen at the front of the classroom that was beginning to display their year’s admission numbers.
“Do you know where Jule is going?” she said; not talking down to Klost specifically, she was keeping her head turned towards the door; students were already leaving, giddy with their newfound futures.
“Ha huh, uh, yeah, they’re staying here,” he said. Now he was drawing circles across his desk with his fingers, but making no etches into the alter plastic.
“School isn’t over, really,” Eleanor responded.
“I just want to see the play,” Klost replied. “No, Eleanor, Jule’s actually also going to Laconica. Now they have to choose between me—between there and Peppa Peppa.”
“v-Art? No.” Jule was not becoming a v-Artist. Jule wanted to study food and—no, that was what Klost wanted. Did she even know what they wanted to go to university for? None of them were Giya, but Proen was now singing some High song about living up there with Netbanker-pre, of course they’d get that, and Anderi was also following along. Wow—she was actually cuing in, making Proen’s ditty a song with her receptor, and Eleanor made a brief Thoughtnote to take it off their study playlist.
No, she wouldn’t be studying with them next year. She saw instinctively that in her group, only she had made Sector.
“You can always see them again later,” she said.
Klost gave a weird upwards curve with his mouth. Smiling, or not smiling.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “Jule’s definitely going to v-Art.”
“Okay, Klost,” Eleanor said simply. She thought about doing a holoscreen right there, showing some of Mindolet, to distract them. But Klost wasn’t even in it and Blazon hadn’t put on Mindolet ever since.
Ever since—
—something—an idea—no, an image—a picture, of somebody at the front gates. Clinging to them. Or just touching—no, no that wasn’t it. Eleanor shook her head.
She liked her hair short, as it always had been.
“Klost, where did you actually get?” she asked, seating herself at the nearest chair. It was so low; she’d never sat that low before. Raider High University, she thought, as a joke. To herself—she wasn’t that sarcastic. Not even to him.
He gave a withering, almost tragic, sigh.
“Restor Institute,” he said. He turned his eyes to hers. “My only acceptance.” It seemed as if he was trying to hold back laughter or a resigned bout of weeping.
Eleanor laughed out loud. “Klost, Restor INSTITUTE that is an alter application!”
“No,” he said. No, he Thought to her. No, in their study feed.
They have hologram replicas of the Restor siblings, came a Thought, Layra’s.
I haven’t talked to her yet, Eleanor thought. Are you going? she asked. She looked back over there—Layra was talking and laughing with the surrounding students, her light black hair writhing.
Yes, came the reply. That was my dream placement. I am alter now.
Wow, ok Layra, she Thought back.
They also have—wait, our orientation is starting soon. Later. Layra vanished. Eleanor looked again, and Layra was seated, her face bent towards the window; Restor Institute already beginning to inculcate its future Restor alter imitators.
Klost would be late, she thought.
Eleanor got up from her chair and placed a palm on Klost’s desk in front of his sunken eyes. “Sector’s orientation is likely beginning as well,” she said, raising her voice just a bit—it was Sector, after all. Arguably the best university in the Sector. She knew this because every Alteryear the schools conducted a meeting led by their First Teachers and decided the full and complete and objective ranking. Every year since its founding Sector University was pure, unadulterated, cynosure number one.
“Go ahead, Eleanor,” Klost said, putting his head down between his arms. “I’m not going to mine,” he said, voice muffled.
Klost always wore those really thick sweaters, the Penguin model. It didn’t matter what the weather was—the thin material always adjusted per its wearer’s thoughts.
But Klost will have difficulty adjusting, Eleanor thought to herself.
As she left the classroom, continuing to observe how the other third years celebrated a decision made not truly by themselves but by the Plent system (modeled after High, as usual), she received a Thought.
Incoming Invite: Sender, Sector University.
I Accept, she thought.
Jaceus spread his arms, thought of the substance within him—matched to the material outside—and—there it was. All of Sector I lacked that condition of the world he was so used to in the air, the water, the land, the fire—except in the portals—but here, in the second Sector, here it was.
As he plunged into the cloud he reached out and took hold of it. It swum through his eye-canals and flickered like fire throughout his tendons. Thinking of home and the Myodor prisms, he sank into the silvery depths, lines running through it, clapped his hands, and with a shout of light green became his ground.
He’d almost fallen through. His right arm shook out through the mass of green-white; he pulled it back in, and with more effort than he anticipated brought himself up back to the surface of the cloud, which now looked like a great reflection of grass from the cloud above. He looked—Skylark and Luke were peering down. He waved to them. “It’s safe to go on,” he said.
Out of the corner of his eyes he caught a flash of blue.
“I’m jumping,” he heard Skylark say softly, but he focused his attention on the surroundings.
With a soft puh he felt Skylark land beside him; she laughed but he didn’t see anything on the vast cloud that stretched out from his feet. He saw some gaps in the sky, but almost entirely the full area on all ends, as he turned in a full circle, was cloud, whose surface continued to increase in green.
He didn’t think Scions knew about material and substance but, based on what she’d said, he felt that Cerise had not said everything on her trait, and could change more than just the colors of things she could touch. What he’d done was simply transform the material within the cloud into what he understood as grass. And so it changed color; which it still was.
Puh. “Jaceus, you saw something?” Luke asked, now on the cloud with them. Jaceus for a second thought their combined weight would push through, but the cloud held.
“Something blue,” he said. “As Skylark saw.”
By now Agate and Sterne had joined them. Still the cloud held.
“Wow,” the teacher uttered. “I don’t see—”
Jaceus attempted to summon his magpotis—but faster than his failure—a shoot of blue struck Sterne in the chest, and he collapsed onto the cloud surface. Jaceus whipped around—and now, standing at the far end but just barely visible, was a figure. Blue and green—holding something—or something was just next to it.
Even at that distance, he could tell that the person’s eyes were one blue, the other green.
He saw Agate almost instinctively attend to Sterne; Luke joined Jaceus, standing closest to the faraway figure. “That’s what you mean,” he said. Jaceus nodded; although, of course, he didn’t know. “Shit,” Luke muttered, pulling his hands through his shaky blonde hair.
“Oh alter he’s still alive,” Skylark was saying, “that wasn’t magic.”
She was right. It wasn’t magic but something told Jaceus that he had to be careful. Perhaps not a Porter or an Agent but something else.
The figure came closer.
Like her eyes, she seemed to be wearing a thick, deep jacket that went down over her knees, with the bottom portion of it separated into turquoise tufts or strands; above the separation, exactly one side of the jacket was a solid green and the other was a solid blue.
Her hair jutted out in one solid direction over her head like a flag. It was just blue.
“You’re disturbing the clens,” she said. “Contrail, I don’t want you here.” The thing that Jaceus had seen beside her was gone. The girl’s eyes shot over their group; the eyes moved separately.
Instinctively Jaceus made the gesture of the Nötr. Maybe the girl would know about his people, like Qumulo did.
“I don’t know what that means, but I also don’t know who any of you are,” the girl said instead. “Let’s start by giving names. My name by droplet is Cloud Ciruela de Velvet. But my sky name is Ultramarine.[3]”
“Okay, Ultramarine,” Jaceus answered. Without a doubt, they had already trespassed, disturbing the “clens,” and Sterne was merely unconscious.
“My name is Jaceus,” he said. “These are all my companions.”
“Agate Lide,” he said, passing his arm across them; “Sterne, Skylark li Agle, and Luke.”
“That’s a good cover. You all came by skyport. I heard Sector I doesn’t let you fly.”
Jaceus slowly nodded. So Sector II knew.
“I can’t fly either,” Ultramarine said. “But you’re disturbing the clens, and you’re on my eva.”
“Eva?” Agate asked; Sterne had awoken, helped up by her.
“Contrail, yes, you don’t know the lyrics. I run it with Calamus.”
Jaceus was taken back to the first months on Earth, or rather in Sector I; studying their language called Neo English, with all of its technological modifiers. He kept these new words in mind. By droplet, sky name. Eva, contrail. Clouds; “Is Eva abbreviated from ‘evaporate’?” he asked.
“You’re flurried,” Ultramarine replied. “Yes. I made sure to put my eva close to this waterstrip, our Porter likes this one. She has one of the greatest binds in the Sector—here, I’ll show you mine.”
She knelt. She put her fingers into the cloud; and with a poosh of water, a slim staff emerged, rising vertically; but it wasn’t quite a staff as it had tapered, blue-feathered wings across the hilt Ultramarine took, three pairs of wings, increasing in size; the wings gently quavered.
“I had to test him,” she said. “Sorry. I was aiming for you, Jaceus.”
Sterne came forward; he was peering closer at the winged weapon. “I give tests to people your age,” he said, his voice firm. Maybe he hadn’t actually been harmed.
“Not you. My bind.” Ultramarine tossed the “bind” up; it hovered, all six of its wings waving.
It sang a single, clear note.
“Yes, they’re not dangerous,” its holder said to it; or hummed. Ultramarine was humming softly; in sync with the bind.
“On every eva we grow many binds,” she said.
“Wow,” Jaceus said in reply. The others were in like shock or fear. For the people here grew their weapons.
“Oh, there’s Calamus,” Ultramarine said.
The bind returned to the cloud; and suddenly, the one named Calamus was there with them, coming over—he had tousled brown hair, a steep nose, and was tall. Taller even than Jaceus, although not by much. Unlike his companion he was wearing very simple clothing—his only marked design a clear, silver circle drawn across his shirt.
Jaceus realized that the people here had a clarity to their features; a sense of vivacity and lightness that looked different in its own way. Like the water visible through the glass of a cup.
“You must be the alter people,” Calamus said, his voice a slurred, nonchalant chant; he stood, his arms hanging at his sides in a manner that was a heavy mix of indolence and confidence. “I was born by droplet Topos Gallant Plume. My sky name—is Calamus Onekind.[4] I forgot where my bind is. She’s somewhere down below.”
“Which means it’s dead,” Ultramarine said.
“No,” came the reply. “Alter people. Porter Qumulo told us you’d be coming—told me you’d be coming. You see, Qumulo talks more to me than to Ciruela over here,” he said, laughing. “Before anyone jumps off let me just tell you, it is true that you alter people normally can’t come up here but Qumulo told us. She said you’d be coming.”
“You said that twice,” Skylark said. “Did you guys see somebody named Cerise Rain? She might have pink hair.”
Calamus glanced at Ultramarine; she nodded, and her green eye glinted.
“You all are together, then,” Calamus said.
Jaceus nodded.
“That’s wet,” Calamus exclaimed. He clapped his hands on his knees. Straightening back up, he grinned broadly and his eyes seemed to flutter. “She was really interesting. So that’s how you all aren’t falling. Wet and heavy. You must be Descended.”
When nobody said a response, Calamus kept smiling. “You must call it something else. You know, when somebody has a skein, and they can do things because of the special kind they were Descended from?”
Different words for Scion and trait. “The Agents of our Sector call us Descendants,” Jaceus said.
“Oh, we don’t have those, Agents, I mean,” Calamus replied. “We just have Qumulo.”
Skylark’s eyes widened.
It was astounding news… Jaceus remembered even more strongly the fact that Qumulo had not unsheathed her bind. The Porter Perry had not been too troublesome, but perhaps they had their own hierarchy. There always was…
“It’s refrain. So, you must be Descendants, come to journey.”
Ultramarine began humming again.
Jaceus immediately kept in mind that Qumulo must not have informed the two that he was Emulus in full. He also recognized what had to be done next.
He ran his eyes across his followers, making sure they met his eye. “Yes. All the Porters know of us and our purpose—can you take us to our sixth member?
“We are the Powers. We here—” Jaceus imbued his self with a touch of dayform—just a touch, not the full affect—and he knew that he shone to them.
He shone. “We represent the power of the sky. We represent the endless energy. We represent the stars. We represent the naming of weapons. We represent the different colors. We represent the forming of shapes.”
“You are proud,” Calamus said instead. “But it sounds to me like you know your song.” He grinned and stretched his arms into the sky. “Here. We’ll take you to our house.”
Jaceus nodded and beckoned for the others to walk after him. They stepped forward on the cloud; it continued to hold, swimming through with green flickers.
[1] Skylark’s theme: keudae’s piano cover of Porter Robinson’s “Look at the Sky,” released on YouTube on January 30, 2021.
[2] Eleanor’s theme for POP: “Give Me The Light” by uju, released on her 2017 Sunday Seoul Ep.1
[3] THEME OF ULTRAMARINE: the Seven Lions Remix of Velvetine’s “The Great Divide,” released as a single in 2012
[4] THEME OF CALAMUS: Patricia Taxxon’s Traveller released 2018; NewJeans’ Side B to “Ditto” released December 19, 2022; Navarone Boo’s February 25, 2021 “Late Night Anime Piano Livestream”; “HYPNOTIK” by Ken Arai, from the soundtrack to Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu