Pandemonium withdrew.

What once was disarray grew tangible.

A screech of iron came, sharp whistles followed, a heavy horn blared and drowned it all out.

Taps, scraping of heels; then a clutter of voices, all around him: gossips, yells, shouts, and sometimes from somewhere afar, came a laughter.

Someone knocked him on his shoulder.

“Ex… Me…”

He staggered. Or maybe not. After the first few seconds passed, he no longer felt sure.

He took in air. He felt his chest grow, his clothes go taut on over his body, and trepidation arise. The blinding light lifted, finally, and Hasegawa Satou saw for the first few moments what he could have only failed to comprehend.

He was lost in a crowd: but one so peculiar, and his vision of it so immersive, that it felt too surreal to outright disbelief. Behemoths of iron—trains, he could only presume—flanked him on either side and lumbered up to a halt. He saw a crowd part and enter it; and above, beyond an expanse of iron-cast vaulted roof, plein air of an early noon sky come in.

Something pulled him on his shoulder. A leather strap, he realized—of a satchel he himself had pulled on—resting on it was his hand, black gloved, that—no, not his hand… Not his? Then whose?

Where am I, Satou thought; and thought again, out loud: “Where–" only to eat his own words.

Colors left his vision. One to many questions arose for him to have enough mind to act, or even stand. He must’ve staggered—because someone saw it and came up to him.

A well-built man, who was easily twice his age, wearing a black overcoat, felt hat, came up to him and caught him by the arm in case he stooped too far and fell. The stranger, or foreigner, or whoever he was—he must’ve said something: his mouth moved; but Satou heard none of it, except, ‘Miss’. That one word, like a bold of lighting it struck him.

“Miss,” Satou murmured back.

Again, he heard his own voice—a woman’s tenor voice—and again he felt his heart skip a beat.

Satou nodded, and the man let go of his arm, then left with a look of doubt still on his face.

Something ran down his cheeks. He ran his hand over it, looked. They were tears. His tears? Was he crying? Why?

Swaying like a drunk, he kneaded his hands. The black gloves he was wearing were a little too thick. He felt the weight of his thumb pressed against his palm, but he wasn't sure as to whether if he truly felt it. Furtively he pinched his cheeks, and he felt… He wasn’t sure what he felt, or even if he felt at all.

I’m needlessly doubting myself, he thought, and thought so in his own voice: Hasegawa Satou: that was who he was, right? But that meant little to nothing in practice. His hair stood on their ends, and a shudder ran through him.

“A mirror,” he said. He brought up his fist and covered his mouth. I need a mirror… And if it was true, he dared not believe it, not without proof. Resigning himself to go wherever the crowd would take him, he let himself be led for the time being.

Novelty surrounded him here, wherever he went; he was immersed in it.

On his way he saw faces—all foreigners: caucasian, if he had to make a guess; but he knew he was wrong.

As for what they wore, he found that to be a lot harder to pin down. Not quite european—medieval, victorian, or georgian—but more so was it a pastiche of vogue that in his mind could only find their mark on one word: fantasy, and nothing else.

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Satou felt unnaturally light and agile as he took his strides, and somehow taller than he once was. The lethargy from living a sedentary life had left his body. His weight pressed against his boots; his posture, upright as he walked; his satchel, and how it swayed under his arm; or how his hair, longer, somehow, bobbed on his neck, caressed his ears—he was conscious of it all; except what expression he might’ve had on his face. He tried to ease it. Lord only knew if he did.

Only a little further had he gone when something else caught his eyes: Outside the entrance of a sleeper car, he saw a clique of five youths—one of them was a girl— who all distinctly stood out to him, at least in his eyes, from the rest of the crowd because of what they wore: Ornate embellishments and plenty of garters hung from their militaristic-looking uniforms; and swords—each had one—a thin and slender sword hung and sheathed at their waist.

Knights, was what Satou thought when he saw them: young aristocratic knights, scions of noble houses vowed by birth to serve their nation’s crown. An outlandish conjecture to make, he knew, but even to half-believe it… He must’ve been gawking at them without realizing it, because the haughty-looking one the blond hair suddenly looked up right at him.

Eyes met, and caught off-guard, Satou flushed.

He tried to look away, but did it too abrupt to be furtive, and for a fact he knew he was caught.

He passed them by as though what he had done he had done in passing, but when he heard said behind him: “What a beauty,” he nearly staggered then and there. “Did you see her? Outside the theaters, you don’t see such a beauty often,”

Words beyond that were drowned out by the crowd; but every word of it had tensed his body, rusted his stride, and made him conscious of how he took his next steps. He tried not to walk like a puppet, but for some reason found it needlessly difficult to do so; and only was it when he knew for certain that he was out of their sight did he regain back his bearing.

I need to see myself… Now…

He was struggling to tell apart if he was wading through a dream or not; and because he could not, he began to long for pain. Not the drunken sort of stifling pain he was in, but the sort of pain that brought you back to your senses, made you feel alive; and sharply so.

Trains arrived and departed east of him, as well as west under an intricate latticework of stained glass held up by lofty archways, seven stories high. Even though he could not see them, he could hear the trains come and go clearly. The place was almost deafening.

Far off in the distance, seven marble stairways led up somewhere else—hopefully outside. Satou leaned in to a trot towards it. Platform to platform he waded his way through the pandemonium until the voices stifled by thick marble walls grew muter, and muter, and muter. Only once he had set foot onto the landing did he let his eyes wander.

He stood at the mouth of an atrium, in no way inferior to a palace—loggias for floors upon floors peered down at him, above which, he saw sculptures of angels sitting dangerously close to the ledge—their life-like features and their loose white robes softly lit by sunlight that cascaded in from outside—studying him curiously under a beautifully muralled dome of what looked to be a mythologized atlas of the known world. Vintage signboards hung at every juncture—in english, no less—but when he studied them he found them to be little to no help.

Lost and overwhelmed, he sat down on a bench, but only for a short while. He felt vulnerable and exposed.

Somewhere I can be alone, and have some privacy, to think things through…

He headed up one of the stairwell that eventually took him to a floor that at first glace seemed scarcely treaded. The corridors west of him overlooking the train platforms softly echoed with the distant clamor from down below, but that was not where he went. He wandered on, looking for a restroom, when something caught his eyes, far in front of him.

Like a moth to a flame, his eyes did not stray from it once he saw it. The light at the other end.

With bated breaths, he walked up to it, and beyond it, there he saw it.

Satou stood there frozen, nonplussed; and he stood there lips parted for a very long time.

People busy with their own lives passed him by, paying him no heed—

"Hah..."

—until they saw him fall down to his knees.

Hands held onto the baluster, the closest thing he could grab a hold of, from his lips came something not quite a laughter nor a cry. He felt faint, incredibly faint, and on the verge of his whole world falling apart. Tears soon began to well his eyes. He felt dizzy; blood siphoned out of him entirely; and everywhere he looked, he saw everything go in and out of focus.

Barely, he held himself together.

Staring into the misty-distance, he heard the announcements come for the next schedule of trains—the few final words of which that seared deeply into him, Satou knew, that for the rest of his life he would never forget it:

“We welcome you to Ednin.”