A village was in sight. It nearly made her cry to see such a welcome sight. She didn’t think it would make her so emotional to see something that should be expected, but she couldn’t help herself. Three days of being stuck in a virtual world without any sort of hope of life brought this on. After so long of being on the road, she had begun to doubt if there was actually anything to be found. To know that there was and she wasn’t wrong for following it was a strange sort of emotion that she didn’t know.

Yumi looked back at Yuki and his injuries. They weren’t healing very quickly. He was able to walk mostly on his own, but slowly. Which probably affected why it took them so long to find the village. But it wasn’t really something that Yumi dwelled on. It bothered her more that he still needed time to recover. It was slow for being aided. ‘I hope nothing’s wrong with him and this digital world. If another demon attacks he won’t be able to help. I’m going to have to protect him still.’

Other thoughts came to her as she looked back at the village. Where they came from. She didn’t want a repeat of what happened before. “We should try to keep a low profile. Neither of us should use our powers.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

“This might still be a fake world, but we have to deal with it until Phoibe frees us.” Internally, she kept telling herself that it was fake. So she shouldn’t care about what happens, but the reality was she had to care to some degree if they were going to have a smooth experience. There was no avoiding the world forced upon her. “I’m not planning on developing a reputation as a demon.”

“Just have to be careful.”

“I know. I’m just not used to games like you are.”

“I don’t really play games, Yumi. I’m just used to being in a different world than others.”

‘Maybe that’s it then…ever since he’s been here he hasn’t really been bothered by any of it. And it’s not even because he enjoys stuff like this and this is like a dream come true for him. It goes beyond that, that sort of thing wears off after a while. But he’s relaxed and comfortable here like he has no worries despite having no better understanding of what’s happening or why than me. I don’t know how he can be so calm about it all. So maybe that’s it…’

It was a thought anyway. Yumi still didn’t understand it. She thought when it came to Yuki she knew some of how he worked and thought, but there was still plenty as she was finding that she didn’t understand. There was always going to be more for her to learn about him. But that excited her.

Yumi took a step forward to resume their trek. The village remained at least an hour away still, since it was only her that could see it and not Yuki. But they had a defined end point to their destination finally and she welcomed that. “We’re almost there. Let’s go and see if we can finally get somewhere nice to sleep for a night.”

“There were a few nights in Atlantis we had to sleep out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to do it if I can avoid it.”

“I’m not sure we’re always going to have such luxury with the way our lives are going.”

“You planning on fighting your whole life?”

“No, but our current situation isn’t going away any time soon and Japan’s pretty screwed up. That’s not a simple fix. I doubt that our future is going to be easy.”

“I guess you’re right about that…”

Chapter 391 – Village of Silence

Did it take an hour? Or was it two? Yumi had no idea. She did question her original assessment. She really had no good experience judging distance based off her new vision. So it was very likely that she got it wrong. Because it really didn’t feel like an hour. The lack of that watch consistently came back to hurt her. She couldn’t really get a grasp of time without one. The sun did only so much to tell her in the passing of time. But she felt certain it was like half a day of walking before they arrived.

At the village entrance, which was really hard to even call an entrance. It was merely a point that she made in her mind when she crossed a line that matched up with the first house. The village was wildly spread out over the area with no real sense of planning or organization done. It just sort of felt like everyone just built their homes where they wanted and if it took a little walking to get around then that was what it took. She had trouble seeing it as a community since there was barely even the notion of neighbors with such a layout.

She looked around at people loosely spread around. Since it was already late in the day, it looked like they stopped farming for the day. ‘I don’t even know where to start. I can’t tell who might be the one in charge. What am I supposed to even say? I need them to help us, but we’ve got no money or skills to offer them.’

Yumi started to curse to herself that she had no forethought to plan ahead for this inevitability. She knew it was going to happen. She took the two of them to the village with the intent to find help and rest. But that was as far as she took the thought. Now she was kicking herself for not having continued the thought. ‘I need a plan…’

Their approach was met with some stares and silent judging. Though she didn’t know what they judged them on. They had nothing out of the ordinary about them apart from Yuki’s injured condition, which was less apparent now. It didn’t feel as bad as the last group of people that they faced. Given that they appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the farms, it only made sense that they would be treated harsher. Now though, Yumi struggled to understand their distrust.

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‘Hesitating isn’t going to get us anywhere though. I’ve got to just start talking. They should be friendly, right? They’re just villagers.’ That was what she hoped anyway. She took the first step and approached the next person that came near them.

It was a middle aged woman that looked tired from a long day of work and with harsh lines around her face from a less than ideal life. Her face had rough scowl carved into it, which never really seemed to change. “Excuse me, I’m looking for some help.”

The woman passed Yumi without even giving her a glance. Yumi tried calling out to the woman again, but it proved completely pointless. She no doubt heard Yumi’s pleas, but didn’t care to even give her an acknowledgement that she even existed. ‘Why did she ignore me? What’s wrong? Was it something I did?’

Yumi turned back to move forward to the next person. A younger man walking with someone older. She guessed it was a son and father. No doubt in this sort of life, the family stuck closely together. “Excuse me! Can you help us? I need…” They ignored her again. She did get a momentary bit of eye contact from the father, but that was lost the moment she opened her mouth.

She stared as they walked away without even missing a beat. ‘It’s almost like I’m invisible to them. Though I know they can see me. I’m getting a reaction from them. But what’s going on? Why are they unwilling to talk to me?’ Nothing made sense about it. ‘Thought they would be friendly. They’re just villagers right? Aren’t they supposed to be welcoming and closely knit?’

A few more failures left Yumi standing out in the village completely lost and dejected. ‘No one’s listened to me. I can’t even get them to reply to me. Why? No one is even willing to listen to me. Almost no one will even look at me. What’s wrong with these people?’

None of it made any sense to Yumi. She saw them walking about helping out each other and talking between others, but completely ignoring them. There wasn’t even a sign of them gossiping or being suspicious about their words because she tried to talk to them. They just completely wiped their presence from the village. It really was like they were invisible to everyone. ‘This is more than just strange. There is something going on here…’

The longer that she stared around at the village the more she became convinced of it. ‘This isn’t right. They aren’t acting normal in any way. If they just distrusted me, then they should be acting in a way that seemed like they were suspicious of me. They would be looking at me. Or running away something that would make it seem like they wanted me away. But it’s not even that. This isn’t distrust at all. This is just non-existence.’

Finding a mystery in the first village that they ran across after arriving in this world wasn’t what she expected. But she had completely different expectations for the whole thing. And the more she thought about it, if it was a game this sort of made sense. She didn’t like it. But there might be some strange point to the whole thing. ‘Yuki seems to believe there’s a reason for this. Maybe he’s right… But I’m not sure what’s the point of it.’

She looked around the village again trying to get a read on the place. When she arrived she didn’t try to dig in too closely to what was happening. None of it was really that important to her. She expected to find help, not be ignored. Now she was having to dig for clues. Reasons for things happening and being the way they were.

This meant she needed to watch and read people, something she was already admitted to being bad at. So she struggled in finding anything of note. All she could see was people going about their daily lives as they might in a village that was so far back in time that their lives were very simple. It was the short cycle of work, eat and sleep. There didn’t really seem to be room for much more in their lives from what she could observe. Though part of that was just an assumption on her part. She had only been watching them for a few minutes. That was hardly enough time to learn all of that. But they did very little that she could see.

‘There’s not a lot I’m going to learn from just watching them. I need to find something more useful…’ Yumi started wandering around the village looking for clues. It sort of felt like she was a detective investigating a murder. Though if she had been doing that she felt there would have been more clues to find. What hurt the most was her lack of knowing what she was looking for. There was something wrong in the village, but none of it stood out to her as being out of place.

All the people ignored her, but they otherwise went about normal lives. Their homes and what they did seem to fit into that. There was really nothing out of place with the village. It was completely normal as far as she could tell. Though her knowledge of what might be normal for a village was skewed as this wasn’t her sort of life. She grew up in a city and even villages in the modern era of Japan didn’t really fit this sort of vision.

Yumi parked herself out on a rock that rested near the edge of the village. Only two other houses were close by, and by close she guessed that they were at least a hundred meters apart from each other. It was also getting late and the villagers were starting to wrap up the last bits of whatever they were doing to turn in for the night. She was running out of time for them to get a place to sleep that wasn’t the ground once more.

She rested her chin on her hand and looked over at Yuki, who sat on the ground trying to keep off his legs she imagined. “Got any ideas you’re willing to share?”

“It’s just as confusing to me,” he replied with his current trend of being less than helpful to her. She expected so much more from him and he suddenly started completely lacking any sort of guesses or speculations. He had a wealth of experience from his reading that he always relied on for his theories. And they regularly paid off for him. She expected to be able to rely on his surprisingly useful set of knowledge to make things easier.

‘I’m really starting to wonder if he’s doing this intentionally. He has a theory, but he’s keeping it to himself because this is supposed to be about me. But I don’t care. I just want answers!’ She really didn’t want to be stuck going in circles because she didn’t understand anything and he held all of the answers.

Unfortunately, she was running out of time as she already knew. She needed to make a move. Sitting on the rock doing nothing but bemoaning her troubles got her nowhere. So Yumi jumped off the rock and rushed out to the first person she could find. ‘I’m done being passive…’

She stepped directly in front of them, a middle aged man. In a village of so few people, she already started to recognize faces. They seemed to be alone from what she saw from the different interactions. The man kept to himself the entire time she watched. He seemed to do very little other than eat his dinner and then walk out of the village. Since she didn’t follow him, she didn’t know what he did outside, but none of it really mattered. She planned to get something more than being ignored from him, from anyone.

“Excuse me, sir! I wanted to talk to you for a moment!” Yumi took a wide stance so that she could react to whichever way he moved. Since they were all just ignoring her, she expected him to just walk around her. Which he did as she foresaw. He tried to go left, but she got in his way.

A flicker of annoyance seemed to dig into the wrinkles of his face as she refused to make it easy for him. However, he kept pushing on by ignoring her completely. They fought over ground for a minute before he just pushed straight through, giving up on trying to just be polite and go around, since she stopped being polite a while ago.

‘No you don’t! I’m not letting you go that easy!’ As he brushed past her, she grabbed his arm to keep him from leaving now that it had come to this. “I said I wanted to talk to you! Stop ignoring me!”

She got a reaction from the man, just not the one that she expected. A deep hatred carved through every wrinkle in his face creating a menacing aura for her to witness. “I want nothing to do with your kind.” He then snapped his arm free from her loosened grip taken back by the completely unfiltered hate directed at her.

‘Kind? What’s going on?!’ Unfortunately, Yumi didn’t have much time to ponder the new mystery as she heard something behind her hit the ground with an awkward thud. She turned back to see Yuki on the ground breathing heavily for some reason. “Yuki?!”

Yumi ran to his side, turning him over trying to understand what happened to him. “Yuki?! What happened? Are you hurt? Did something attack you? Yuki?!” He quickly became unresponsive as he passed out in her arms. “Someone help me!”