Misaki’s knees went weak as her stomach backflipped. Already larger than a mid-sized car, the frozen ball of fire had claimed its first victim, their silhouette barely visible within the ferocity of the silently roaring flame. But it wouldn’t stop with one. Fiery claws reached with hungry intent towards the oblivious crowd around it, only a bare handful aware of what was happening. Most wouldn’t even see it coming.

They’d simply be gone with the passing of the next second. As long as Misaki stayed in Borrowed Time, they would ‘live’. As soon as she left Borrowed Time, they’d be dead. Charred. Obliterated. It was that simple. It was that unchangeable.

And yet, she couldn’t turn away as her mind ran the angles and plotted the progression of the blast. Was there any hope?

Like an old silent movie, frames flashing with every blink, her mind played out the bomb’s merciless rampage. She ‘watched’ as the fireball consumed a nearby family, all five generations dead in an instant. As the shrapnel cut down a couple embraced in a loving hug, a brother and sister hunched over a smartphone, and an elderly couple in ‘Okinawa’ T-shirts. Like a scythe through chaff, it didn’t slow. It didn’t hesitate.

The two cosplaying men didn’t reach the exit, the blast slamming them into each other before it rolled over them. Smothered them. Consumed them. The gaijin woman, so pretty in her dress, stained a deeper shade of crimson by the shrapnel, her perfect flesh seared to the bone by the flames.

Distracted, the pudgy businessman didn’t even react until the blast wave hurled him back into a pair of elderly ladies. Complaints on their lips, they were dead before they voiced them.

The father with outstretched arms shielded his daughter from the brunt of the explosion. Enough that she might even survive the terrible burns and lifelong trauma, if she was…lucky. But she’d be alone. Both her parents taken in a flash.

In a way, the girls from the tennis club suffered the worst, the edge of the blast barely reaching them. The bodies that fell like dominos, shredded by shrapnel, shielded the girls from the worst of it. But not completely. Those that didn’t die were maimed by what made it through, leaving them weeping and calling for friends that would never answer back.

It all played out so vividly Misaki could hear them crying for their fallen club-mates, the ‘silent film’ no longer so silent. Their screams filled her ears, deafened her, as death flowed through the airport like a tsunami. She slammed her eyes shut to block out the sights. Covered her ears with her hands to silence the sobbing. But none of it worked. She couldn’t escape what was in her head.

“Tasukete,” she whispered, salt tickling her tongue as she did.

Salt on her lips. Why was there…?

Her eyes opened, everything still around her.

Because she was the one crying. She was the one screaming.

Was this what her mother had gone through?

The simple question was too much.

Misaki doubled over and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the cold, tile floor. Tears dripped from her wide eyes to mix with the vomit before both decayed into nothing. Shoulders heaving, she struggled to stay upright on shaky legs, but eventually sagged to her knees.

Just like her mother, all those people she’d sketched, and so very many more, were gone. Standing before her now were nothing more than ghosts. Ghosts she couldn’t save.

Save? No, maybe not, but there was something she could do. That only she could do. And she couldn’t do that slumped on the floor crying.

Cheeks still wet from her tears, Misaki closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

‘When there is chaos outside, find calm inside,’ her father’s voice told her.

In through the nose, hold to the count of three, and then slowly out through the mouth.

Repeat.

Five times, five breaths, and she regained her composure. What would her coworkers think if they saw her like this? So undignified.

But, as she looked at those standing around her, she shook her head. Her tears were the least these people deserved. The sleeve of her jacket wiped aside the moisture around her eyes well enough, and deft fingers tied back the loose strands of hair in her face. She had a job to do, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t, waste another second.

Even with the extended amount of Borrowed Time all officers had, twenty-four hours compared to a civilian’s eight, Misaki still had to sketch every face in the terminal.

It wasn’t just about finding the bomber any more. Now it was about making sure each of these people was accounted for. About making sure their families knew what had happened to them. While she couldn’t save the people around her, at least she could give their loved ones some semblance of closure. Misaki understood all too well the pain of not knowing, and she’d do anything to spare others that suffering.

A quick check, almost an hour of her Borrowed Time was gone. That left her just twenty-three hours to finish everybody in the terminal. And, to get outside the blast radius of the bomb. Guilt at planning her escape threatened to take hold in her chest, but she pushed it right back down. This was what she could do right now. What she had to.

Another calming breath brought her the composure to come up with a plan. Eyes closed, Misaki mentally retraced the layout of the arrivals terminal. The far corners might escape the worst of it, so her first priority needed to be the people nearest the bomb.

The bomb. She hadn’t even really looked at it. In fact, she’d gone out of her way to not look at it in light of the extent of what was happening. But there could be information that would help identify who did this. Why they did this. And to bring justice for the lives lost.

Misaki looked at the faces all around her. Was justice what was important? Maybe. It was also her job.

“Sumimasen, chotto matte kudosai,” she said with a bow to the people around her. A few minutes, just a few, to gather information on the bomb, then she would focus her attention on sketching the victims.

Taking one more deep, calming breath, Misaki turned to face the stark, unavoidable truth, her analytical mind burying her emotions under a mountain of observations and facts.

What?

The size of a mid-size car already, the bomb had to be powerful. The flames, frozen in Borrowed Time, were a myriad of oranges and reds. Oddly beautiful, and impossible to see any details through. There was the silhouette of the first victim engulfed by the blast, but little else beyond that. No indication of the shape of the explosive device.

Misaki’s hand reached out of its own accord. The fire even felt solid for a moment before her continued touch brought a wisp of it in sync with her time. She repressed a yelp as she snatched her hand away, though not before getting burned.

“Baka,” she said to herself as she stuck her finger in her mouth to try to sooth the pain. She wasn’t an expert on the Laws of Borrowed Time, but she should at least know better than to touch fire.

Her finger still in her mouth, despite how childish it was, she walked around the fire, this time giving it a wide berth.

Where?

The explosion originated beside luggage carousel number four. Shi. Death. Misaki wasn’t superstitious, but could this just be coincidental? Did the bomb come off a plane, or did somebody bring it here?

No, not off the plane; the luggage belt was empty and there were too many people standing around. Everybody was still waiting for their baggage. So, somebody purposely brought the bomb to this location.

Why?

Carousel four was central. If maximum damage was the goal, that would be an excellent place to plant the bomb.

When?

It was possible the silhouette in the flame wasn’t a victim, but in fact the bomber. That would suggest the bomb had only just arrived before detonating. Security footage would confirm that one way or the other.

Who?

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Misaki couldn’t assume the silhouette belonged to the bomber, and scanned the crowd for anything that stood out. It didn’t take long. While most people hadn’t consciously registered the bomb’s presence, perhaps hidden in a suitcase, two people were clearly aware of it.

The first was a young boy, perhaps five or six, in a blue school uniform, one small hand pointed directly at the bomb. Curiosity painted his features, indicating he’d noticed the bomb before it exploded, though it must not have been anything threatening.

Misaki captured his image in her notepad, making sure to quickly outline the others around the boy so she could place him when she reviewed the security footage. That done, the boy wasn’t a suspect, she turned to the second of the two people who’d seen the bomb.

A foreign man sat on the edge of the carousel, looking directly at the bomb. His face was devoid of any signs of shock, and in fact, seemed surprisingly calm.

Elbows rested casually on his knees, and hands clasped in front of him as he stared ahead, he had to see the bomb. But, like the boy, he was calm. More evidence the bomb was hidden in something to make it inconspicuous?

Unless he was the bomber.

Misaki crouched in front of the man, careful to keep her back well away from the frozen flame. Striking blue eyes, like the depths of a lake in summer, stared back at her from behind frameless glasses, but gave no clue as to the thoughts beyond.

Mid-fifties, maybe, gaijin always looked older to her, well dressed, and a touch on the heavy side, he wasn’t the stereotypical bomber. A stub of a paper, perhaps a boarding-pass, protruded ever so slightly from the inside pocket of his navy-blue jacket. Locked in place by Borrowed Time, she wouldn’t be able to remove it, so she moved on to capturing every detail of him in her sketchbook.

He obviously cared about his appearance, Misaki could practically see her reflection in the shine of his shoes, though the scruff on his face signalled he hadn’t shaved recently. That, plus the wrinkled suit pants, suggested a long flight. His watch was expensive, and the branded, leather shoulder-bag at his feet was well-used, so he had money, but was practical about how he spent it.

“You came a long way, didn’t you? Why? To do this? Or are you another unfortunate victim?” she asked the man in English as she finished her drawing. He didn’t answer.

As Misaki had done with the others, she didn’t limit this sketch to just his face. She needed to capture every detail possible. The smallest thing could help them figure out the man’s motive, from the bags under his eyes to his yellow shoelaces, if he was involved. She couldn’t miss a thing.

But it didn’t add up. He looked like he just got off a plane, but the bomb had to have been brought here. There wasn’t any other luggage on the carousel. Unless…unless the man, and the bomb, had come off another plane, another carousel, and he’d brought it to number four?

Misaki tried to run the probabilities, to play out the man’s actions, as she had earlier, but she was missing too many contributing factors. Every time a logical chain leading up to the explosion started to form, the variables created too many divergent paths where a small detail could vastly change the course of events. Without those details, she couldn’t predict what the man had done, no matter how much she willed it. Or if he was even involved at all.

Precious seconds ticked by as she played out a dozen different scenarios, each of them leading to almost infinite possibilities, before she finally let the threads go. They fell around her, a tangled mess of ‘could be’ and ‘might have been’. One of them, surely, led to the truth. But, she didn’t have time for that; the still faces all around her demanded her attention.

Just to be sure, Misaki double-checked the image of the man sitting on the carousel. Impeccable work, as usual. With one last glance at him, and a nod that her sketch was accurate, she turned the page and moved on to drawing the people around him. She had hundreds, if not thousands of people to draw before she ran out of time.

“Yoshi,” she told herself, and got to work.

Three hours later, and mid-way through the second book, it became clear Misaki didn’t have enough paper to give each person their own page. Four, and then six, faces began crowding each page, like some multi-headed beasts of fancy. Space was at a premium, and every square inch was filled before Misaki turned to the next sheet. The people deserved better than that, but it was the only way she’d ever have enough paper. Almost three hundred sketches completed, and she’d barely dented the surface.

By the time Misaki filled her third notebook, she was exhausted. Up since six that morning, she’d gotten the call to go to the airport near the end of her shift. And after seven more hours in Borrowed Time, her cramped hand attested to the work she’d put in. Brief stops to eat one of the small power-bars she kept in her vest for long workdays, and to flex and bend her fingers to work the kinks out, were little relief.

As the most recent power-bar wrapper fell from her hand, her Japanese sensibilities screaming at her for littering, she absently watched it decay into nothingness before it even hit the ground. Her eyes lingered on the spot where the wrapper would have been while her tired mind pondered the waste of it all. Not of the wrapper, but of all the people around her. Like the wrapper, they would simply be gone.

She shook her head and forced those thoughts away. They weren’t doing her any good. So, with another stretch of her hand, she took up her pencil, the sixth one today, and got back to work.

Hours wore on, seven turning into twelve, and then eighteen. The unchanging light, and the unmoving sun outside, spun a web of confusion around her addled mind. Was it really day? Or was it night? Shouldn’t she be in bed? Thoughts of sleep teased and tantalized her, but she dared not doze.

While the TimeSlip device embedded in her head counted down the hours, minutes, and seconds she had left in Borrowed Time painfully quickly, Misaki moved from one group to the next. Faces filled her pages as she spun imaginary tales of their lives to keep herself awake.

“What’s your name?” Misaki asked a slightly older woman, forcing herself to speak in English to try and keep her mind alert. “You look like a Kazumi. Kazumi-san, I’m just going to draw you in my book if you don’t mind…” Misaki mumbled as she drew. She’d have to remember later that the names on some of her pages weren’t the people’s actual names.

“Is this your son, Kazumi-san? He looks very cool,” she continued as she crouched down in front of a small boy about five years old. “What’s your name? Oh, Jun-kun? That’s a good, strong name. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Misaki’s hand stopped as the words passed her lips, the pain and fatigue of the past twenty-three hours threatening to overwhelm her. Tears built behind her eyes, like a dam ready to burst, and she slammed her eyelids shut to hold them in.

“Keep it together,” she told herself. “You have to be strong in front of Jun-kun. How will he feel if he sees you cry?” She took a deep breath and quickly wiped aside the single errant tear that had snuck its way onto her cheek.

“We have to both be strong Jun-kun, for your mother’s sake. Can you do that for me? Thanks…now let’s see that smile.” Misaki’s hand picked up where it had left off, sketching the boy’s dark eyes, the cow-lick defiantly presenting itself to the world, and the small gap where one of his front teeth was missing.

After drawing the fourth person in the group, Misaki’s eyes narrowed at images on the pages. The whole group was related, not just Kazumi-san and Jun-kun. Wits dulled by the long hours, she should have noticed it sooner. But, no matter how hard she tried to focus, her thoughts moved like a unicycle through thick mud.

She repressed a tired giggle at the thought of herself riding a unicycle through the thick mud behind her childhood home and…no. Focus.

Misaki rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and forced her thoughts into order. Almost there. Keep it together. One more person in this family. You can do it.

Masao-jii-san, she named him while she finished his portrait and complimented him on his good-looking family. He took the praise with typical Japanese stoicism, not even a curve of his lips as she spoke.

“Thank you,” she said with a small bow, and moved on to the next person beside Masao-jii-san. Somehow, this person looked familiar too? Another family member? No, no definitely not; the nose was all wrong. And the eyes were too far apart.

But how did she know him? Even the mole on his chin was exactly where she expected it to be. Misaki leaned in close, far closer than she ever would in normal time, and inspected the mole. Two hairs growing out of it in opposite directions. How did she know she’d find those?

Because she’d already drawn him! He looked familiar because she’d sketched him a few hours earlier.

The map flew by in Misaki’s head as she mentally retraced her steps. Faces flashed before her, thousands of them, from one end of the terminal to the other, every nook and cranny accounted for. Somehow, miraculously, she’d done it; everybody had a place in one of her notebooks.

“Did I miss anybody?” she called out as loudly as she could, just to be sure. “Raise your hand if I haven’t sketched you yet.”

Only silence answered her.

She breathed a sigh of deep exhaustion and leaned against the man with the mole. “I hope you don’t mind,” she muttered to him. He didn’t complain.

All that was left to do was exit the terminal and hand over her sketches to her supervisor after she left Borrowed Time.

Speaking of which, how much time did she have left?

Misaki did a quick check, then a second one when her tired brain couldn’t quite comprehend the answer.

Fifty-eight seconds. Seconds!

Fifty-seven.

Fifty-six.

And then she was running. Running like her life depended on it, because it did. Dignity went out the window as she slid between legs and vaulted a pair of small children fighting over a chocolate bar. As the crowd thinned, Misaki picked up speed, her exhausted body suddenly brimming with adrenaline-fueled, desperate energy.

Thirty seconds. Almost there.

A long line of people ahead, the only break around another ‘Wet Floor’ sign. Misaki didn’t slow, and leapt into the air. Her lead foot cleared the sign with ease, but her back toe caught the flimsy object. In normal time, she would’ve stumbled, at the worst, with the sign toppling to the ground. In Borrowed Time, the sign might as well of been a concrete block, and she toppled, hard.

The tile floor met her with a jarring impact that blasted the air from her lungs and brought tears to her eyes.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Lungs full of rusty razors with every breath, Misaki pushed herself to her knees, her pencil rolling out of her hand in the process. It didn’t even get six inches before it decayed into nothingness.

Twenty-four seconds.

The door was practically within spitting distance from where she struggled to her feet. Her first step, and she crumpled, pain lancing from her ankle. Twisted? Broken? Misaki eyed the offending appendage, scowling through blurry eyes.

Twenty-one seconds.

It didn’t matter how much it hurt. Or if it was broken, twisted, or outright missing. She needed to move. And if there was one thing her father’s dojo had taught her, it was how to fight through pain.

Grimacing, but as stubborn as her obaa-chan in the supermarket, Misaki found her feet.

Eighteen seconds.

She took a step. Pain. Ignored. Another step. More pain. Also ignored. Then she was running again.

Fourteen seconds.

One more obstacle, a couple, hand-in-hand, with enough luggage to fill an airplane by itself. Misaki had learned her lesson with the ‘Wet-Floor’ sign and weaved around them, despite the extra second it took. Why did two people need so much luggage?

Eight seconds.

She cleared the couple, and the door, and ran straight across the street to where her captain stood.

Two seconds.

Misaki dove behind the large police van as her timer hit zero.

After the silence of spending a full day in Borrowed Time, the explosion was deafening. The ground bucked. Glass shattered. People screamed. Chaos erupted. Misaki buried her head in her arms as every face she’d sketched flashed before her eyes.

Then she passed out.