September 16, 2016
Morinomiya, Joto-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka
The evening in Morinomiya fell gently. The late summer air had not yet cooled, and the sunset laid a warm, peach-tinted filter over the city. Children's laughter echoed from a narrow park by the side street, just behind a FamilyMart. The scent of takoyaki drifted lazily from a food stall around the corner, mixing with the faint iron tang of old train rails that crossed nearby.
Kayoko Nakahara walked slowly along the sidewalk, her white sneakers brushing lightly against the pavement. She had just left a small bookstore she visited often, its wooden door still ringing in her ears. Her tote bag contained a paperback novel and a small notebook she always carried. She wasn't reading it. She was walking simply to breathe.
Beside her, Sato trailed with measured grace. The white Khao Manee's paws were silent, and his odd eyes, one blue, one gold, flicked between Kayoko and the world around them. A few older women passing by smiled at the sight of the elegant cat without a leash, and Kayoko smiled politely back. She had always found it easier to smile at strangers than speak to them.
There was no wind to speak of, only a soft breath now and then that rustled the leaves in the low hedges. The traffic moved steadily, quietly. The city was neither asleep nor awake. It existed in a kind of lull, where everything felt held in place.
She looked up briefly at the sky. It was cloudless. A pale gradient from orange to violet stretched across the horizon.
No storm.
Not even the smell of rain.
She adjusted the strap on her shoulder and exhaled. Her body was calm, but her mind was far away. She had dreamt of light the night before, white and formless. It had lingered in her thoughts all day, though she hadn't mentioned it to anyone.
Then it happened.
A red rubber ball rolled across the narrow road ahead of her. A little boy, maybe five years old, followed it without hesitation. He laughed as he ran, unaware of the truck coming fast from the left. It was a delivery vehicle, large and green, marked with white characters on the side.
The honk came too late.
Kayoko moved without thinking. She dropped her tote bag. The cat froze behind her.
She stepped into the street and reached the child just as he bent to pick up the ball. She grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him firmly toward the sidewalk.
There was no crash.
No impact.
No screeching tires.
A flash of white light exploded from above, searing the air. It was pure and silent, and for a moment it seemed the world had gone still.
Kayoko collapsed to the ground.
The boy stumbled onto the curb. He landed on his knees, crying, unhurt.
The truck had come to a full stop several meters away, the driver staring wide-eyed in shock.
But Kayoko did not move.
She lay there in the middle of the road, arms slightly curled, her face turned upward, eyes closed.
Sato bolted from the sidewalk and rushed to her side, letting out a sharp, unnatural yowl. He pawed at her shoulder, circled, and lay beside her as if guarding her.
People gathered. Someone screamed. Another called for an ambulance. A salaryman in a gray suit tried to speak to her but found his voice hollow in his throat.
There were no burns on her skin.
No visible wounds.
She looked as though she had simply fallen asleep.
They moved her to the hospital quietly.
There was no headline.
No news alert.
No scientist knocking on her family's door.
The world went on as if nothing strange had occurred.
In the hospital room, machines beeped gently. Her pulse was weak but stable. Her lungs still filled and emptied with each breath. Nurses came and went with quiet shoes and practiced hands. They whispered to one another about what little they understood.
But her eyes did not open.
She did not speak.
The diagnosis was vague. The attending physician said something about "electrical disruption" and "neural trauma," but there were no bruises on her brain, no swelling, no cardiac arrest.
It was as if she had been paused.
Frozen in time.
Sato was not allowed inside the hospital, but he remained near the entrance of the building, sitting by the sliding glass doors every night until the guards tried to chase him away. Then he found a place just beyond the hospital garden, near a row of hydrangea bushes. He never wandered far.
He stopped eating, except for what little scraps the hospital staff offered him in secret. A nurse named Emi, who had grown fond of the cat, left him water in a ceramic dish marked with flowers. She thought about bringing him home but never did.
Kayoko's mother, a small woman with streaks of gray in her hair, visited every day. She brought warm cloths to wipe her daughter's arms and legs. Sometimes she read to her aloud, her voice cracking over favorite passages. On the fourth day, she sang a lullaby from Kayoko's childhood. By the seventh day, she began to pray softly, not out of ritual, but desperation.
On the eleventh day, she brought a photo of Kayoko as a child, holding Sato as a kitten, framed in a faded blue border.
No one told her what to hope for.
But she continued to hope.
What no one knew, not the doctors, not her family, not the friends who sent messages that remained unanswered, was that something had begun inside Kayoko the moment she was struck.
She had not vanished.
She had gone inward.
Somewhere deep in the folds of her unconscious mind, a spark waited.
It flickered now and then, catching shadows of things not yet real.
A girl in the Philippines dreaming of slowing time.
A boy whose hands would burn like the sun.
A woman watching the future behind closed eyes.
A voice calling her name from the far side of silence.
It would be years before Kayoko would speak of these dreams.
It would be years before she would awaken.
But it started here.
On a warm street in Osaka, under a sky that had betrayed no sign.
Sato blinked his gold and blue eyes at the window of her room, unmoving as the moon rose above the city.
He waited.
As if he knew.