Koji Suzuki - Edge

He sounded so beaten down that she forgot her own situation and felt she had to save him from whatever it was that had affected him so. She remembered how grateful she was for his visit when she was in the hospital at Ina, how much courage it had given her.

“Aaah … What should I do? I just …”

His weakened voice finally began to clear slightly. Saeko could make out sounds of a crowd in the background. He was probably shielding the phone with his hand but was unable to block out the noise completely. She heard female voices and what sounded like children. Immediately, Saeko realized what must be going on: Hashiba and the crew were at the herb gardens, and they had called their family and loved ones to join them. They had chosen whom to take with them, and Hashiba must have done the same; he had probably stolen away from the side of his wife and child to call her.

“Okay, try to calm down,” she said. “Can you tell me again what’s going on? I’m not sure the phone will work for too long here.” The signal was already being affected by the strange magnetic properties of the area. They had to use their time well.

In a steadier manner, Hashiba explained about the old grave at Machu Picchu and the numbers of the dead tallying exactly to the number of people in the park. He feared they were walking into a massacre. By the time he finished, he had regained himself enough to care about someone other than himself. “And you, are you okay?” he asked.

Saeko wasn’t confident she should even try to explain the circumstances under which she had been reunited with her father. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to go over everything in the time they had. She simply informed him that she was at the zero magnetic point at Bungui Pass, where a wormhole was supposed to open.

“You’re sure that’s the right place?” Hashiba pressed.

“Certain.”

“Where will it take you?”

“That, only God knows. You’re the one we’ve got to worry about here.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“You should go through.”

“Even if a harsh fate awaits?”

“If you die, it’s all over. You won’t even have the chance to grapple with a harsh fate.”

“But it’ll be less painful.”

“Whether you suffer or not isn’t the point. If there’s a path open to you, you have to go down it. It’s the law of life.”

“You could say so, but …”

“Isn’t that all life has done since the first organisms were formed? What do you think it was like for the creatures that first crawled out from the seas onto land? Those that first took to the skies? They all had to fight for survival in a harsh, unforgiving environment. It’s the same for us. We’ve scaled the highest mountains and lived on the Arctic. Anywhere there’s space, we’ve spread there. We can’t get stuck or languish. We’re destined to step forth.”

The words were meant for Hashiba, but Saeko increasingly got the feeling that they were for her own benefit. Even now she knew that it was thanks to her father’s upbringing that she could muster the courage to talk like this. He had taught her, and now she was passing on his teachings. The thought helped to build up her own courage.

“Life’s mission is all well and good, but—”

There was no time to waste on Hashiba’s moping, and she cut him off mid-sentence. “Listen. We’re not stuck in a single history. You may think so, but you’re wrong. There could be countless distinct universes just a millimeter away. In this world it may be that 173 people were killed at Machu Picchu 500 years ago. It may be that their limbs were severed from their bodies. But where you’re going, you have the power to change your future. Because you’ll be there, it will branch into a different world. Think about it. You know what’s going to happen, so you have the advantage. You’ll be able to prepare and find a way out. Come up with one, now that you know the grisly fact. Work together, find the gap and wedge it open with all your strength, and the world will change. If you’re just afraid and cringe, it won’t. So go, and be brave.”

Her words were followed by silence. She could hear Hashiba trying to control his breathing on the other side of the line. Eventually, he answered, his voice pained. “You’re right. I’ll do it, I’ll go. I have to. Can I ask one thing? Just where do you get your strength from, Saeko? What’s the secret?”

I’m not strong, I’m scared too , she thought, but I just want to know how things work and my curiosity keeps me going .

As she opened her mouth to speak, the call burst into a fuzz of static. Saeko tried to call back, but it was no use.

They hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye. Saeko felt that terrible sense of isolation return even stronger than before. It colluded with the cold air, numbing her senses to the outside world. Gradually she stopped feeling the cold. Her sense of hunger faded too, and she began to feel oddly light.

Her skin began to prickle, and she scratched at her arms, suddenly itchy. The wind mimicked her movements, blowing waves across the grass. She felt as though innumerable eyes were trained on her hidden among the dense surroundings of the clearing. When enough of the beasts groaned, it became a tremor to sunder the ground, and in the cracked earth, she could see the writhing of serpentine forms.

She was hallucinating. It was that knowledge that allowed Saeko to remain calm.

One of the trees next to the bench had split open, the bark peeling down and exposing a surface that looked like a Buddhist stupa. The whitewood tomb, with a smattering of wild flowers at the base, began to resemble a decomposing human face as she looked on.

Her father’s voice echoed in her mind. It came from the face in the tree. A transparent sheet of glass floated between her and the face in the trunk. In it, Saeko could make out her own reflection.

Perhaps her father’s voice, which she’d been able to recall at any time to gain courage, reflected nothing more than her own thinking.

She couldn’t tell if the source of the voice was inside or outside of her. The frame of reference shifted rapidly, and one moment the voice originated within her, the next, from without.

The wind streaming up from the valley began to take on a pleasant warmth that spread through her body and the bench she sat on. The chill flowed away, down from her waist through her legs, finally to be absorbed into the ground. With it went the overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness.

Saeko bathed in a sense of wellbeing. A sweet, citrus smell impregnated the air. She felt an expansive calm, a ticklish warmth and completeness, that she had not felt since her father had vanished.

The lights she had seen at the bottom of the valley began to shift, describing a circular trajectory until they stopped directly below from Saeko. The five bands of light that hung in the sky behind her became a vast searchlight; they, too, traced a line through the sky until they came to a stop before her and focused on a single point.

Saeko felt no suspicion as she observed the impossible movement of the lights below and in the sky. It was easy to just accept the experience.

These were no fireflies. The particles of light that cascaded from behind were stars. Dislodging from the horizon, they traced arcs above and around her to convene at a point ahead. It was a surprise that so many were still out there. She’d thought they were gone, but now they welled forth and sped past her to form a dense band of light.

Guided by a buoyance, she rose from the bench and took a small step forward. The band began to absorb all light from its surroundings until nothing but total darkness existed outside of it. Saeko felt an odd sensation below her waist, and when she reached down she noticed that the bench was no longer there. It hadn’t just gotten dark. Everything around her had ceased to be.