31 Down Where the Water Takes Us

  [Player: Kazuki Arata]

  [Level: 3]

  [Kegare: 50%]

  [Status: Drowning]

  [Location: Ocean Floor]

  ---

  He sinks, weightless in black water, salt stinging his mouth and eyes. The pressure is a crushing weight packing his ears with silence after the Umibozu’s final, thunderous WHY? Kazuki no longer feels the ocean’s biting cold; it has seeped past skin and muscle, settling into a deep, internal numbness that feels familiar.

  Only heaviness remains.

  And memories.

  Down, down, down.

  He tries to kick, a panicked, useless reflex. Which way is up? His limbs feel like anchors, pulling down. His senses spin, inverted, the world turned inside out.

  He’s alone. Utterly alone in the dark.

  And then… he’s no longer in the sea.

  Part 2: Kazuki

  He’s lying on his old futon in Sendai. Rain taps against the windowpane interrupting the silence of the apartment. It’s long after midnight. His mother should be home. She’s not.

  He stares blankly at his phone screen. No missed calls, no texts. This waiting has become typical these past few months: her vanishing at odd hours, returning pale and drawn, sometimes with bruises Kazuki wants to ignore, hidden beneath long sleeves. Haunted eyes that refused to meet him.

  Where do you go? Who hurts you?

  Finally, the unmistakable rattle of the front door lock turning. He stiffens, listening. She's home, framed by the doorway like a ghost in the damp night air. No umbrella, hair dripping, shoulders slumped. He pushes himself up, then walks to the genkan, standing there uncertainly, caught between the urge to rush to her and resentment.

  “You’re late,” he says, the words are sharper than he intends.

  She sighs. “I told you not to wait up, Kazuki.”

  Where were you? Are you okay? Please, just tell me. But the words are stuck behind a deep cold fear. He doesn't want to know.

  They stare at each other across the small space. Her gaze slides away first. She places something - an unmarked, plain white envelope? - onto the narrow shelf by the door.

  "What's that?"

  “It’s nothing important,” she says quietly. “Go back to bed. You have school.”

  He wants to ask again, but the words stick. They stare at each other.

  “It’s nothing,” she says quietly. “Go back to bed.”

  Heat rises in his chest. “You can’t just - Mom, you won’t tell me anything!” His voice wavers. He hates it.

  Her shoulders tense then he sees her try to smile - for him. “I’m dealing with it,”she says.

  He wants to push, demand the truth. Instead, he snaps, “Fine,” and storms off.

  Dealing with it. The phrase hangs there, empty.

  The next morning, she’s gone. The envelope from the shelf is gone too. No note, no explanation. Days stretch into a week. Finallyhe calls the police. He sits in the small interview room, the fluorescent lights bright overhead, and answers the officer’s questions. Shouldn’t he be frantic? Panicked? His mother is missing. Yet all he feels is a kind of dull, begrudging weight, as if reporting her disappearance is just another piece of unpleasant homework he’s put off for too long.

  The officer, a man with tired eyes of his own, asks all the questions Kazuki expects. Confirms, three times, that his mother is a foreigner, her visa status, her lack of family in Japan. Asks how she supported herself and Kazuki – vague answers about translation work and odd jobs tumble out of Kazuki’s mouth. Asks about friends, habits, enemies. Kazuki answers robotically. As soon as the conversation ends, it's forgotten. He walks out of the police station feeling strangely light, almost untethered. The world seems muted, distant.

  The apartment lease is in his name; he always handled the bills, the banking – she never quite mastered the complexities, or perhaps never wanted to. He remembers her stashing emergency cash in an old, chipped tea box kept under the kitchen sink, behind the cleaning supplies. Enough yen to last a few months if he’s careful. She’s gone. Does it even matter why anymore?

  He remembers her tired eyes.

  Weeks bleed into months. He tries to continue his college courses, sitting in lecture halls feeling like a ghost. The numbness deepens. Nothing matters. Eventually, he drops out, trading textbooks for mindless shifts stocking shelves at a convenience store and long, empty hours lost in video games where objectives are clear. His father left years ago. Now his mother.

  Water churns, yanking him forward in time. He’s older now, on a ferry to Tashirojima - “Cat Island.” Rain slicks the deck. A group trip planned by a coworker; everyone else canceled. He didn’t see the message, already had the ticket.

  Alone again.

  Rain slicks the deck. He shouldn’t even be here.

  Another random, meaningless day in a drifting life. Kazuki goes to the small upper deck and feels the light rain. Standing on the damp deck, watching the grey waves chop against the hull, another memory surfaces. His mother, dragging him out of the car whenever they passed some tiny, roadside shrine. They were always the same – little more than mossy stone, a leaning torii gate and a weathered donation box in front of a few scrawny cedar trees. She’d always stop, pull him out, make him toss a five-yen coin into the box. He’d asked her why once, exasperated. She was a foreigner. What could these forgotten Shinto shrines possibly mean to her? Most times she’d just offer that same tired smile. But one time, after dropping a fat 500-yen coin into the box of a particularly neglected shrine behind a supermarket just outside of Yokohama, she’d turned to him, a strange light in her eyes, and whispered, "It's my retirement plan, Kazuki."

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  And she had spoken of Tashirojima, although Kazuki had never been there. Had she?

  The small ferry, named the "See Cat," docks with a gentle bump. Kazuki disembarks with a handful of other passengers. Mist shrouds the port. Half-abandoned houses, vines spilling through walls. A sign points to the “Cat Shrine.” He follows it in the drizzle, drawn forward.

  A commotion: a man in a sleek jacket kicks at an orange cat shielding kittens. He flicks a lit cigarette at her. Something in Kazuki snaps. He picks up the smoldering butt, flicks it back in the man’s face. The man curses, stumbles away. The cats vanish. Kazuki’s heart pounds.

  Why did I do that?

  He finds the shrine: a small stone torii, moss-covered. Faded banners. A simple structure, ceramic cat figurines scattered around. He stands in the rain, thinking of his mother.

  He fishes out a fifty-yen coin. Bows twice, claps twice. Foolish, yet determined. She used to do this.

  He’s turning to leave, the brief sense of connection already fading, when a voice purrs from directly behind him, startling him badly. “Luck’s a scam, huh?”

  He whirls around. A young woman stands there, seemingly materialized from the mist and rain. Short, choppy black hair clinging damply to her head, wearing a simple, one-piece black dress and sturdy black boots. Around her slender neck hangs a small, incongruous brass bell, the kind you’d put on a cat's collar. It gives a tiny, muted tink as she shifts her weight. He hadn’t heard her footsteps on the gravel; it’s as if she simply appeared.

  “Did you just—Who are you?” he blurts out, unnerved.

  She offers a lazy, knowing smile, ignoring his question entirely. Her eyes, a shade of gold, seem to see right through him. “Kazuki Arata,” she says, her voice soft but carrying easily over the rain. “Bored stock-room boy from Sendai, adrift since your mother left you. You came here because you have no place else that feels like home anymore, do you?”

  “H-How do you know my name? How do you know about...?”

  But before he can finish, the ground beneath his feet lurches violently, as if the entire hill is convulsing. A brilliant, blinding flash of emerald green light erupts from the small wooden shrine, swallowing everything in its glare. Colors invert, the world turning into a photographic negative. Gravity twists, yanking him sideways, upwards, downwards all at once. Through the roaring chaos, he hears her voice again, sharp, urgent: “No time for questions now. Keep your eyes open, human. You’ll need them.”

  He lands hard, the impact jarring through his bones, on damp, unfamiliar forest earth. Pale, filtered light struggles through a thick canopy overhead. Fog coils around his ankles like spectral snakes. And then, impossibly, text flickers into existence in the air before him, crisp and digital against the ancient forest backdrop:

  [Player: Kazuki Arata]

  [Level Up: 1 - Open UI for Details- ]

  [Waza: None]

  [Kegare: 5%]

  [Status: Lost]

  He stares, utterly dumbfounded, unable to process the reality-breaking sight. A sleek black cat, identical to the ones often seen around the shrine, steps silently from the swirling fog. Its luminous golden eyes, reflecting his own shock, meet his. Then, in a fluid, impossible motion, the cat’s shape flows and stretches upwards, coalescing into the slender form of the girl from the shrine. The brass bell still hangs at her neck. She regards him with an unnerving smirk, the same knowing look in her golden eyes. “I'm Kuro,” she says, her tone laced with mocking amusement. “Yoroshiku.”

  The spiral begins right there: monstrous shapes glimpsed in the fog, raw panic clawing at his throat, the impossible text hanging in his vision, and a chilling sense that something inside him—this kegare—is pulsing like a hidden, spreading infection. He doesn’t understand any of it, but primal fear and a surge of adrenaline drive him forward, running blindly into a world that shouldn't exist.

  Down

  down

  d o w n

  Water, black and suffocating, floods his vision once more, pulling him violently back to the present. The pressure feels like his memories. Sinking deeper in the Yokai Realm sea. The Umibozu’s WHY? echoes again

  More memory, faster this time, a compressed montage: desperate days following Kuro, battered by lesser yokai, her abrupt disappearance leaving him stranded. Stumbling through endless, twilight forests. Then, meeting Suzume, her strength, a stark contrast to Kuro’s cynicism. Fleet, the young fox, like a candle lighting their way. The journey to the Grand Shrine on Karasu Peak. A blur of desperate battles, painful injuries, the slow, terrifying climb of his Kegare percentage, manifesting as dark stains creeping up his arms. New Waza learned through sheer survival.

  And always, behind every fight, every step forward, is the empty Sendai apartment. His mother’s face, smiling that tired smile. And the question: Could she have...?

  *No. I can't ask that.*

  The voice booms under the water:

  WHY?

  He has no breath to answer. Only the frantic, useless thrashing of a drowning man.

  Then,he’s back in the Grand Shrine courtyard on Karasu Peak, trembling not from cold, but from blood loss and exhaustion. The crisp mountain wind, smelling of pine and ozone, chills his face. Suzume kneels beside him, pressing a cloth to his temple, maternal. Lantern light flickers even though it's day.

  Is this a dream?

  “Kazuki,” she says gently. “You’re pushing too hard.”

  He tries to stand; she holds him with a worried frown. “You lost blood.”

  Kindness tears open his guilt. She’ll get hurt again because of me.

  He pulls away, stumbling up. “I... have to go,” he chokes out.

  Her eyes widen. “Where?”

  Kazuki's shoulders tense then he tries to smile—for her. “I’m dealing with it,”he says.

  The memory dissolves. Swirling sea returns. He’s sinking, falling through utter blackness. Then, his feet strike something solid. Not sand. Rock. Hard, uneven, unforgiving. The bottom of the ocean. He’s arrived.

  The impact isn’t jarring; it's a dull thud, absorbed by the immense pressure. He lies there, sprawled on the lightless seabed, the weight of all that of water pressing down on him. There's no pain anymore, just profound cold and a strange, terrifying stillness. The frantic need for air has subsided into a dull ache.

  And in this final, quiet moment, a strange thought surfaces. The cold, the pressure, the crushing weight, the isolation…

  This feels like home.

  Not Sendai. Not the Grand Shrine. This. This familiar burden of numbness, guilt, and unresolved pain he's carried since his mother vanished, since he stepped through that torii gate. It’s pressing in from all sides.

  But even as the darkness starts to claim him completely, something small, small but bright, ignites deep within. What is it?

  An alien firefly in this dark cold place. It's beautiful. Kazuki looks at the small light and slowly begins to understand what it is: A stubborn spark of defiance. The echo of Suzume's worry. Fleet's trusting face. Even Kuro's grudging reliance. The unanswered questions about his mother. The image of Yumi's cruel smile.

  No. The thought is weak, but sharp.

  This isn't home.

  He'd have to make home himself.

  ---

  Time freezes. Kazuki’s game UI opens up. For a moment he’s shocked by the lightness he feels - all of the cold, all of the weight of the sea is instantly gone.

  [Level Up: 5]

  [New Waza Unlocked: Adaptive Survival]

  [Activate? Y/N]

  ---

  [Achievement Unlocked: Rock Bottom]

  [Next Chapter: 32 A Fox’s Confession]

  Thanks for reading!

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  What do you think really happened to Kazuki's mother?

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