82 The Watcher, a glimpse (2/2)

'What the hell was that thing? Am I really sane?' Orisa pondered. As she tried to question the reality and recollect the event, every word of the discussion appeared in her mind with ease. It felt as if she had spent numerous hours memorizing the speech, and now sentences and paragraphs were jumping in her head, ready to be spoken out.

'Oh, so he didn't lie about engraving them, huh? Guess I'll think about it later, then.'

Orisa closed her eyes, and her mind began to drift inside a haze. For her, an unknown amount of time passed. She had seen visions during this semi-dream that she couldn't remember well when a scream woke her up:

”Satoru! Satoru, where are you!? Satoru, please! Answer me! Where are you?!”

'Oh, I know that voice...' thought Orisa, slowly opening her eyes.

”Please, Satoru, where are you!?”

Focusing her attention upward, Orisa released several bright sparks in quick succession and then repeated the same thing thrice after a short pause. When Kanai's Mana began to move in her direction, Orisa finally allowed herself to relax. Her mind slipped as she began to dream.

~~~

”Tia, please, we are out of time,” Orisa pleaded to her friend, although her voice surprised her. It sounded alien, wrong, but quite familiar at the same time.

”That's not my name, stop calling me that!” yelled a girl in front of Orisa. She brushed her short blonde hair to the side, revealing angry eyes looking at Orisa with a mixture of defiance and betrayal. A mask she had torn from her face a moment ago was clutched in her hand. ”I have a name that my mother gave me! I have no need for this... this insult! I hate it, but you still keep calling me that! You keep insisting that I play along with this madness. You dragged me here, but all you do is order me around or look down upon me!”

”I'm sorry, I... I know it's all my fault, but please let's continue it some other time, not here,” Orisa begged once more, feeling her soul tearing apart from a burning sense of guilt.

”You are always like that, always thinking about grand things. I told you I didn't want to go! I told you this isn't for me! But you dragged me here, you begged, clutched onto me, cried at my feet. What a fool I was, how little I knew, how naive I was to trust you.” She looked at Orisa, her eyes wet with tears and full of pain as she kept screaming: ”You all betrayed me! I don't know you! I don't want to know you!”

When Orisa was about to answer, a metal door behind her opened loudly. That made her realize her surroundings - they stood on a roof of a very tall building, a skyscraper, surrounded by the lights of a bustling night megapolis.

”Orion, what are-. Oh, Tia, where is your mask!?” A familiar and dear voice ran pleasantly through Orisa's ears, but she couldn't look away from her friend.

”To hell with the mask, and with your schemes and games!” Tia threw the mask down, then pulled out a phone from her back pocket and smashed it to the concrete floor, blasting it into pieces. ”I'm sick of it all!”

The next moment, her figure turned blue, then white. A gust of wind blew over the roof, shattering the silhouette and turning it into a cloud of snow that flew away, leaving only the mask and the broken phone.

Orisa let out a long and tired sigh, torn by the event, her feelings of grief and guilt growing even bigger.

”Don't worry, she'll be back by tomorrow anyway,” a warm palm squeezed Orisa's shoulder, calming her a bit. ”I know that you blame yourself, but even I think it was the right thing to do. For now, let's focus on the mission.”

~~~

Orisa woke up in a complete dark. The air felt dusty and cold, but her body was warm despite that. And something heavy was pressing her down, making it hard to move. She shuffled uncomfortably, still feeling awful from the dream she saw.

'Where was I? Who were these people? It all looked so real and familiar.'

Memories of the recent events surfaced quickly in her mind, and Orisa almost yelled, remembering what had happened earlier - the fight, the revelation from the ghostly figure. And Mirai. She jolted but couldn't get up as something heavy was obstructing her movements. Remembering who she was, Orisa focused her mind and produced a sphere of light, illuminating her surroundings.

She was inside the cave that they made together with Kanai. She knew for sure since numerous hours spent in the tunnel made every crack here familiar to her. The warm and comfy place was, indeed, her sleeping bag and a blanket. And she was pinned down by Kanai, who was sleeping soundly by her side with his right hand and leg both hugging Orisa. She couldn't help but chuckle.

A piece of paper was clutched in his hand, and Orisa overcome by curiosity carefully pulled it out. Numerous identical Japanese hieroglyphs filled the page, which made its hilarious content even funnier and endearing:

'Idiot Satoru Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot I love you Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot Idiot.'

With a huge smile plastered over her face, Orisa went back to sleep.