Yui must have sensed the change in the air as well, as she pressed closer to my side, looking around us nervously. I could feel her hands trembling as she tugged on the cloth of my sweater.

“Hinata...somethings wrong...wrong wrong...I don’t know...I feel like we shouldn’t be here,” she whispered up at me frantically. Her eyes were wide, darting from side to side even as she attempted to look into my own. She was right, I felt unwelcome as well. As though the very land we stood on wanted us gone. And the emotions, those that were not mine, seemed to be growing, almost palpable in their intensity.

“Kaede,” I hissed, “we should continue moving.”

“Yes yes, hold on. There’s something strange about these patterns…” her mumbled response faded as she rubbed a finger across the moons decorating the overhang. I didn’t care what she might be seeing, that sense of anger and hate that surrounded us was still growing, even more rapidly, drowning out everything else. It seemed to hum and buzz, almost like it was hissing silently into the night.

Yui’s breathing was becoming rapid, the raggedness of her bad health quickly startling me. We needed to get away from here for her safety. Even if we wrote off what I was feeling as simple graveyard fear, we could not ignore that we were far away from anything we knew and Yui’s health took precedence. I was not sure if there was a hospital or clinic nearby. By this point I was no longer sure if we were in a place that would have one.

“Kaede,” I managed to steady my voice, and drop it down enough to force her to turn. “We need to walk away. Now.”

Kaede looked at me, confusion overlapping with her disappointment at being interrupted in her studies again. She opened her mouth as if to retort, but I quickly raised my hand.

“You are usually so good at this, but I know how excited you must be seeing something so foriegn and intriguing. So I will point it out this time,” I turned to reveal a whimpering Yui, out of breath with tears building in her eyes. Kaede’s face twisted up in despair, and she quickly walked over.

“Oh no no no no. Yui...I…” her words caught in her throat and I saw her eyes moisten as well. She and Yui had been neighbors since birth, and their parents were close. Kaede had always been put in charge of ensuring her safety when they traveled to and from school, and Yui had never once let the act go without some form of thanks. They had formed a bond only sisters usually knew, with Kaede always trampling any threat to her precious cargo.

To be the cause of Yui’s fears and worries, not once, but twice in the same night must have weighed very heavily on Kaede’s mind. I quickly grabbed her shoulder and gave it a little shake. As Kaede ripped her eyes away from her shaking little sister, I gestured with my head to lead the way up the hill again. I, too, wanted to be away from the crypt. But I wanted to de-escalate the emotions of my two friends, and avoid another breakdown as best I could.

For her part, Kaede accepted her blunder and the need to show change. She gave a stiff nod, quickly wiped her eyes with her sweater, turned back to the path and moved ahead. Being allowed to take charge of supporting Yui like this was something that had only happened in the last year or two. Kaede would have never trusted me enough before with what she saw as such an immense responsibility. What had changed I did not know, but I would see that Yui was taken care of as best I could. And that meant guiding her away from the crypt now.

“Yui,” I whispered gently, turning around pulling her into my chest. “We must remain strong. If we break down now, how will we continue forward? Life is a series of adversities that we have to overcome to the best of our abilities.” She gave a small nod of her head as I stroked her hair.

“Kaede is just trying to overcome this with her own strengths. She’s interested in all this, but it’s born from the desire to pro…”

“Run...awa...y…” the whispered voice of a child. My blood froze. I felt my eyes widen and my breath catch. Yui tensed and let out a small squeak. I jerked my head up in time to see the shadow of a small child standing over a tombstone, arm raised towards me. The shadow seemed to dissolve, like smoke carried away by the wind.

I kept my eyes locked to the spot I had seen the other. It had told me to run away, but it seemed to be pleading rather than threatening. There had been no malice in the words, no feeling of danger. It sounded similar to my little sister begging me to do her hair before school. This, more than hearing the voice itself, was what worried me.

Yui began shaking like a leaf, and her legs gave out on her. Arms still around my waist, I felt the full weight of her tiny frame hang from me even as her arms seemed to slowly lose their grip. I quickly knelt down, tearing my eyes away from the tombstone the child had appeared over. Yui’s eyes were half closed,her breathing rapid and shallow. My nervous energy quickly turned to worry as I picked my closest friend up.

Light I thought. It really drove home how fragile Yui was, that I could pick her up princess style without any struggle. I glanced up, checking for the other one more time, and quickly chased after Kaede. She was still rubbing at her face when I caught up with her some thirty yards up the hill. She faced us as we approached, eyes immediately bulging at the sight of Yui in my arms.

Yui’s breathing had regained a more normal rhythm, and her face had regained some of its color, but her eyes remained screwed shut, her head turned so the world outside my arms was behind her. She gripped me once again, hands quivering as she fought her own fears. I sat down, feeling exhausted by the events of the night. Kaede sat similarly in front of me, her own tired face wrought with worry.

“Yui…” Kaede reached one hand for her shoulder, the other to release Yui’s grip on me.

“NO!” she screamed, pushing her face into the cloth over my chest. This startled both of us, as Yui typically went to Kaede whenever she was upset.

“Yui...what’s wrong. What happened to you guys?” Kaede had a pained appearance as she asked the question. I can’t imagine how hard this was all becoming for her.

“I heard a…a voice. A child's voice telling me to run. When I looked up a...a shadow stood there. But then it just...vanished on the wind I guess,” I finished, confused about the events myself. I didn’t know how else to verbalise it. Kaede gazed into my eyes for a long moment, scrutinizing my face. She simply nodded slowly, an unexpected movement.

“I don’t doubt you saw or heard something, but…”she trailed off, not wanting to question my sanity. Of course she didn’t believe me, ghosts were impossible in her eyes. There was no scholarly literature to back them up; scientifically implausible. I knew, in the back of my mind, it wasn’t me she doubted. It was the very idea of ghosts. However, that did nothing to quell the venom I felt rising up.

Does she really think I would make something up? I don’t want to admit I randomly see this shit either! I could feel my emotions boiling in my gut. Perhaps this was simply the final straw, all the emotions of the last few hours reaching their pinnacle.

“But maybe I’m just some crazy hafu, is that it?” I snapped viciously at her. The regret I felt was immediate, and overwhelming. Her face screwed up in horror, and her eyes became uncharacteristically wet. She had never said anything so terrible to me, and I had even witnessed times where she admonished others for referring to me as such. The anger I had felt dissipated as disgust twisted my stomach in a heavy knot. Self-loathing suffocated me, my throat tightening as I felt tears in my own eyes.

“I’m…” I had to set this right immediately. “I’m sorry Kaede, I shouldn’t have...put that on you.” She was one of the only people I had any trust in; one of the only ones who looked past my appearance. She had never used my genetics as an explanation for why I was or wasn’t able to accomplish. She accepted I had differences from the average Japanese, and had even told me she enjoyed many of those differences. “You’re like a breath of fresh air at times.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I’m sure part of my frustration was the constant questioning about my looks I received. An aspect of myself I couldn’t control, that brought me struggles I didn’t want. But it was unfair to push those onto someone who never once judged me based on those differences. And I’m sure the situation had stressed me far more than my own mind was willing to let on.

“I heard it too,” Yui cut in. Kaede and I both gave a small start of surprise. We looked down at our friend curled in my arms, face still turned away from the outside world. Kaede jumped on the opportunity to turn the conversation away from the unpleasant curveball I had thrown out.

“You heard it? What exactly did you hear, Yui?” she asked quickly, a slight, desperate, strain in her voice. I felt another pang of guilt. I would have to bring this up again; to properly fix what I had just broken.

“A child...tell us to...run,” Yui whispered, made all the harder to hear by my clothing blocking her mouth. Despite knowing what I had heard, Yui’s confirmation of it added an unexpected weight. It hadn’t just been me, I hadn’t been crazy. If another was experiencing the same, then it had to be true, right? Kaede took her thinking stance, working her lower lip furiously. She glanced at the sky, over my shoulder at the town behind us, the crypt below, and finally her eyes came to rest on Yui.

“This just isn’t possible. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes,” she said after almost a minute. “I don’t recognize a single star in the sky. At first I thought, perhaps, I was just getting lost in all the extras you can’t see in Japan. But then, the moon seems to be moving in a rather odd manner. It’s still far too low in the sky considering how long we’ve been wandering around.” She paused as if debating whether to continue.

“Then on that crypt,” Yui gave a small flinch in my arms, “there appeared to be writing on it, however it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I noticed what looked like similar...runes I guess you could call them, on a few of the tombstones and on some of the stones in the town. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing something or not, since the weathering on them all is so extreme.” She lapsed into silence. Was she actually giving thought to what we had said? I had expected her to continue dismissing us outright, even if Yui and I both expressed a similar experience. Further, what was this talk about stars and moons and writing?

She’s not seriously contemplating what Yui said is she? That’s the realm of light novels and anime, not reality. Not for the first time that night, I stated the obvious to myself. In any case, if this was an Isekai, wouldn’t we have stats and skills, or at least be in the “town of beginnings”? If she was thinking about it however, then I had more worry to fear than I initially thought.

The silence stretched on for several minutes, Kaede sighing and grumbling to herself intermittently. Yui had calmed again, her trembling hands slowly loosening their grip. I smiled to myself, gently patting her on the head. She looked up at me, her eyes massive for her petite frame. She had a worried, questioning look on her face. I tried my best to make my small smile warm and reassuring. She looked down and nodded gently. As she sat up from my arms, Kaede gave a huff of frustration and began rubbing her temples.

“We really need to get to the top, no more distractions or sidetracks,” she announced, standing rather suddenly. She looked at us for only a second before making for the crest of the hill, her gait filled with determination. I stood up, patted my skirt off, and reached a hand to Yui. Her hand felt so small, so much like a childs’ in my own. I had to push the ever present fear for her health aside. After she brushed herself off, we made our way up the hill.

By the time the crest was only some hundred feet away, the others had made their presence well and truly known to us. “Run...escape...flee,” everything they threw at us seemed desperate, pleading and wrought with fear. Yui was out of breath and for the umpteenth time that night, and had her face pressed into my sweater. Kaede, for her part, was doing her best to act as though the voices were not there.

“It is just the wind,” she had said to the first one she could hear. Typical of extreme skeptics. Her actions betrayed her, however, as she had slowed significantly. She now marched up the hill, head locked forward, only a few feet in front of me. Several shadows had stood just outside my focus, always evaporating like steam from an onsen when I made to look.

My own fear was maddening. I had experienced the “others” before. One of the worst times had been in a small town called Jerome. It had been part of a family vacation to visit my grandparents in Arizona, when I was thirteen. The town was known as the most haunted place in the state, and the grand hotel we had stayed at had lived up to its reputation. But the small bangs, moans and the rocking chair that moved on its own paled in comparison to this. And they were growing louder.

“Turn...back...NOW!” a particularly loud voice yelled at us as we came to the edge of the last graves. A distinct shape of a tall, lean man coalesced from the mist on the ground directly in front of us. Kaede yelped, jumping back into me. I, too, let out a startled sound, and made to catch Kaede with one hand, wrapping the other behind me to hold Yui up as she squealed into my back.

I stumbled a single step, jamming my foot into the ground to avoid falling onto my tiny friend. I looked at the shadow for a long moment. Every warning flag imaginable was going off in my head. My hair stood on end, heart suffocated me from where it beat in my throat, a true cold seeped into my limbs down to the very bones, and my head grew light as my breathing threatened hyperventilation.

I could almost make out details on its face. But they were mired in darkness and the swirling nature of the shadow itself. There seemed to be no proper edge to its form, instead a strange decrease in the saturation of whatever formed its body. It was stock still, limbs seemingly pressed against its sides. It suddenly wavered, fading out from left to right, whispering as it went “Must...leave...”

All was quiet. The whispering, the moaning, the warnings all stopped. The others I had just barely been able to notice in the corners of my eyes vanished, and the world seemed to come to a sudden stop. Not so much as a breeze remained. I held my breath for a second longer, before letting it out as slowly and silently as I could. I looked at Kaede, leaned back against my shoulder, her hands over her face, fingers cracked just enough for her to see events unfold.

Perhaps now she will believe in ghosts, I thought dryly. Then another thought occurred to me. If this were an Isekai, wouldn’t it make sense for ghosts to be more… My stomach dropped straight through the ground. No no no. Is this the type of thought Kaede had been having? “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” I remembered the famous quote by the fictional detective. The only way to make all these impossibilities a reality, would be to accept the idea that we had been thrown into another world, however improbable that might be.

“Kaede...are we really in anoth...” I started, desperate to hear otherwise.

“We shall save that...as the final option,” she whispered back at me through her hands, the one eye I could see locking with mine. We were only perhaps thirty yards from the tree, it was right above us, and yet we stood frozen in place. I don’t know how long we stood there with baited breath, ears straining for any sign of the others’ return. It felt to me an hour or more, but it was perhaps only a few minutes. I was the first to move, gently nudging Kaede in the back.

“We need to move, standing here in fear will do us no good.” I whispered. I could hear my fathers voice instructing me “Fear can be crippling, and the longer you give in to inaction, the deeper it sinks it’s claws, until you can no longer bring yourself to move.” His words, as ever, were proving to be right. My legs were unwilling to move as if roots had sprung from my feet, anchoring them to the ground.

“Come on, get off,” I grumbled, nudging the other girl again. As she pulled her weight off me I stepped forward and around her, still holding onto Yui. My gut told me Kaede would take too and allow the fear to set back in. If I was to take the lead she would be forced to follow or be left to stand by herself. I felt a second pair of hands grab my sweater from behind, opposite to the side Yui was holding. I sighed internally, doing my best to trick myself into believing everything was fine.

The moonlight shone from behind us, illuminating the old, weathered tree at the top of the hill as we approached. Despite how green the rest of the world seemed, not a single leaf or bud clung to the branches. It’s bark must have been stripped off, as it’s side looked almost flawlessly smooth. The grey wood was pockmarked by the odd hole or two, signs it had once been alive and perhaps the home to a few birds. The grass here was lush and long, enough to sway as the air pushed it around.

We looked back out over the town. From our vantage point we could make out the outlines of more buildings spanning out from the center of the town. The place seemed to have been quite a bit larger than I initially thought. I could make out a river some distance from the hill to our left, more of the giant trees to our right. Nothing that made much of a difference in my own understanding of our whereabouts. I hoped Kaede was a different story.

“Maybe the other side?” Kaede asked, her voice wavering and uncertain.

“Mmm,” I responded after a moment, scanning this side of the hill one last time. Yui hadn’t faced away from me, keeping her back to the graves. She was looking up at me with hopeful, puppy dog eyes. I could only manage a half hearted smile before I again faced the tree and began walking around it’s large trunk. As I rounded it, I inhaled sharply.

There, at the crest of the hill, the tree and moon to his back, stood a lone man, mist rising from the ground around him.