Everything hurt.

Kosuke’s first reaction was to puke, but nothing came up.

The stillness was almost alien, like heat on frostbitten bones. All his senses were overloaded. A high tone rang in his ears. He was dizzy, and his head left like it weighed a thousand kilograms. Gravity was all wrong. Instead of keeping him in his seat, it tried to pull him out of it. Only his seatbelt strap, grinding into his chest, kept him from plummeting into the sky.

Where’s the floor?

Forward was down. Back was up.

Kosuke’s legs dangled beneath him. The bus’ sun-drenched brushed the underside of his legs, warming him through the seat of his uniform’s pants.

He moaned.

Breath shot through Kosuke’s lungs. Fear raced through his blood. He had to get out. He had to get somewhere safe. Trying to free himself, he scrambled his legs, but that only succeeded in scraping his shoes against the ridged floor space that should have been underfoot, but wasn’t.

Closing his eyes, Kosuke shook his head, as if this was just a bad dream. But then he looked around for a second time and realized that it wasn’t, and, gradually, awareness dawned in him.

The bus wasn’t the only warm thing against his body.

He looked to the side.

“H-Hajime…” Kosuke muttered.

His friend was stuck with him, dangling from his seat. There was a laceration on his face, but, other than that, he seemed unharmed.

“H-Hajime!” Kosuke said, louder than before.

Hajime stirred. With a groan, he shook his head. “What… what happened?”

“There was an earthquake. I think… we… crashed?”

Kosuke started to piece together what his senses were telling him.

It felt like he was stuck at the top of a roller-coaster’s loop-de-loop. The window beside him pointed forward rather than up. Looking out, he could see the side of the gorge. The dizziness was because he was upside down. Closing his eyes once more, Kosuke tried to visualize the bus’ position.

Thankfully, he was good at visualizing.

A pit sank into his stomach, though it wouldn’t get very far, not with the way his seatbelt pushed into his chest. Everything hurt, but especially his chest—and his neck.

“Shit!” Hajime cursed. “Shit!”

The bus was doing a handstand, precariously balanced atop its front. Its roof pressed flush against the ravine’s steep incline.

The backs of the seats ahead of Kosuke and Hajime now lay beneath the boys like steps on a staircase, descending away.

Knowing the position he was in helped make keeping his eyes open a little more tolerable, though it did nothing to stop the mounting lightheadedness as blood rushed to his head. Nor did it diminish the horror of what he saw.

Somewhere in the distance, a woodpecker hammered away at a tree trunk. It hit Kosuke’s head like a mallet.

The bus wasn’t doing its handstand on its own. It had gotten help in the form of a massive branching ginkgo tree that had impaled the bus from the windshield nearly all the way to the emergency exit in the back.

It was a nightmare of red and gold. Blood dripped onto the tree’s branches and its golden, fan-shaped leaves, fresh from the fatal wounds the tree had torn into several of Kosuke’s classmates. The fluid trickled slowly, like a silent fountain, weeping its way down the massive branch down to a patch of unbroken windshield far below where it had begun to gather in a broadening pool.

The boy looked around, dazed and confused. A shell of faint lights seemed to swirl around him. He figured that meant he had a concussion.

Don’t fall asleep! he told himself, don’t fall asleep.

Kosuke shook his head again. He fought off the woozy feeling and the ringing in his ears. It was like the woodpecker had drilled a hole in his head. There were so many sounds. He couldn’t shake them away. The engine hissed. The bus’ metal frame groaned and squeaked. There was a pressure coming from within Kosuke’s fingertips. For a second, he thought his digits would explode, but then he realized it was just his pulse racing through his veins.

And the screams…

The voices hit him all at once. Kosuke felt like any one of them might be enough to knock the bus over.

“No no no!”

“I don’t want to die!”

“Help! Hellllllp!”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

And the smells…

Fluid splattered. The bus’ creaking innards filled with the stench of fresh vomit and urine.

“Grandma! Grandpa! I don’t wanna die!”

“Saki! Reiko! Ryota! They’re dead! They’re dead!”

Kosuke turned his head. Gravity strained his neck. He couldn’t see much ahead or behind him.

“Everybody, shut up!” someone yelled. “Nobody move!” The speaker was trying to sound commanding. It would have helped if his words weren’t trembling in fear.

“Koji?” Moriko said. “Is—is that you?”

“Of course it’s me!” Koji said.

Honda Koji was the vice-president of the Student Council for second years’, and was the closest thing Class 23 had to a celebrity.

Not that it mattered now.

“What happened to Yamago-sensei?” Osamu said. “I can’t see him!”

Kosuke couldn’t see their teacher either. From where Kosuke dangled between Hajime at his left and the window at the right, if he bent his head forward, he could see beneath the seats on the left side of the bus, but the view didn’t go very far.

Oh no…

“Yamago-sensei!” Hana screamed, “He’s… he’s—”

There was a fluid-drowned cough. “Kids… you…” The familiar voice moaned in agony. Shards of glass tinkled as they fell away. “you have to call… for help…”

Multiple voices screamed: “Yamago-sensei!”

“The driver’s… dead, and I’m… I…” Their teacher’s voice trailed into a pitiful gurgle that stopped a couple seconds later.

“No!” Aimi screamed, “No!”

Sobs broke out.

In the distance, another woodpecker hammered.

“Can we get out through the windows?” Kosuke asked.

“No,” Hana said. “We’re too high up; too close to the back of the bus.”

“There’s an emergency exit on the roof,” Hajime said.

“No!” Koji yelled. “Look at the roof: it’s nearly vertical! You want to end up like Yamago-sensei?”

“People!” Moriko shrieked, “we’re stuck on a fucking tree! If we move, we die. If the roots give way, we die.”

“Shit!” Hiro said, crying openly. “Shit! We’re gonna die!”

“Shut up, Hiro!” Koji screamed. “Shut up!”

Osamu wept. “If there’s an aftershock, the tree will likely give way, and the bus will—“

The bus wobbled side to side. Tree branches scraped against the windows. Metal creaked.

Everyone cried.

Multiple voices screamed: “—Shut up, Osamu!”

Kosuke took a deep breath. The friction burn on his chest stung as his seatbelt jostled about.

“Did anyone else hear that sound!?” he said, in a yell.

“W-What sound?” Hajime asked.

“It went mwirrmwirrmwirrmwirr,” Kosuke said, “getting louder and louder, and then quiet again. And then someone yelled. I’m sure of it.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Himichi!?” Moriko asked.

“Oh, shit,” Hana yelled. “The blood is going to our heads. We’re gonna have strokes!”

Kosuke turned to his friend, who simply shook his head. “I—I don’t know, man. I didn’t hear anything like that.” Hajime winced and groaned. “Dammit…” He fought back tears. “I’m seeing lights. I think I’m brain damaged.”

Kosuke stammered. “L-Lights?” He squinted his eyes and looked around.

The lights from before, they were still there. It was like an eggshell of faint pollen, glistening in the light of a sunset. It didn’t stay in place, but instead moved and swirled.

He was about to mention it when Osamu brought up a far more important point: “Does anyone have a phone?”

Explanations in the negative went out all around. Hiro screamed that it wouldn’t make a difference.

“My tablet was…” Kosuke shook his head, “it fell when we crashed.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter!” Moriko swore. “There’s nothing we can do. The tree is going to give way. It’s only a matter of time, then we die.”

“You talked about having a satellite phone,” Aimi said.

“Yeah, in my bag, which fell when we crashed. It’s probably down on the windshield, past Saki’s dead body, and Reiko’s and Ryota’s, and…” her voice broke, “Yamago-sensei’s… and that’s assuming it didn’t fall through and break.”

Aimi screamed and wept. “I told you, Moriko. Dammit! I told you you should have stored it in the bins up top!”

“Aimi,” Moriko snapped, “the bins are over our heads. We’re dangling from our seats like lampreys! Even if I had, we wouldn’t be able to reach them!”

The girls’ words planted a thought in Kosuke’s head. Were they not trapped in a bus speared on a ginkgo tree on the side of a ravine one hundred meters in the air, he’d have dismissed the idea as crazy. But doing nothing meant certain death.

“Earthquakes are often followed by aftershocks!” Osamu said.

Most everyone screamed.

“No,” Kosuke said, “he’s right. If we don’t do something, we’re gonna die for sure.”

Kosuke rolled out his shoulders and stretched his limbs as best he could, flexing his legs a couple times, just to make sure they still worked properly. With his legs, Kosuke gripped the edge of the seat as tightly as he could, grunting as he tried to pull himself up with his legs.

Even a couple of centimeters would be a big help.

“What are you doing?” Hajime asked.

“I’m in rock-climbing club, Hajime,” Kosuke explained. “If I can land onto the back of the seat underneath us, I can try to climb down, one seat at a time.” He glanced at the ginkgo’s trunk. “Or maybe I could use the tree…”

In the south, the ginkgos grew tall and narrow. The northern species branched much like the maple trees. Climbing them was definitely feasible.

“But—”

Kosuke looked Hajime in the eyes: “—Someone needs to get Moriko’s satellite phone!”

“W-What?” Moriko screamed. “Are you nuts!?”

“Probably,” Kosuke said.

He took one last deep breath before pressing the release button on the seatbelt.

He hoped his ancestors were watching.

Kosuke yelped as he slipped out of his seat, reaching out with his arms and legs to stop his fall, only to land with a thud on the back of the seats immediately below, slamming his face onto the rough synthetic fabric.

“Dude, are you okay?”

Hajime’s shout spritzed spit on the back of Kosuke’s neck.

Kosuke groaned. “Please don’t spit on me.” He craned his neck back to look up at his friend.

“Sorry, sorry,” Hajime said, repeatedly bowing his head.

Slowly—constantly looking over the edge to remind himself what was what—Kosuke gently, carefully positioned himself on the back of the chair. He crawled across its back like a slug with legs, not stopping until he’d fastened his grip to the bottom of the seat.

The metal groaned.

One wrong step, and he could send them all plummeting to their deaths.

For a moment, Kosuke leaned toward the branch of the branching ginkgo with his arm outstretched, weighing whether to descend it. But he decided against it.

I don’t want to put any additional weight directly on the tree.

With a gulp, he crept over to the edge of the top of the seat and dangled his over, stretching them as far as he could go before he began his descent. He moved as carefully as he could, sliding his grip down the armrest one hand at a time. He wiggled his legs back and forth until the tip of one of his shoes made contact with the edge of the back of the next set of seats. It was like climbing down a giant’s ladder, step by step—rung by rung. He tensed his legs as his feet landed on the seat below, terrified something would give way. For a moment, he held his breath, and didn’t let it out until the sound of another woodpecker reminded him that he was still alive. The sound shocked him into looking down over his shoulder, and what he saw froze his breath at the back of his throat.

Yamago-sensei…