Severing the Red Strings of Fate

“I’m heading into town,” Hana announced with a tut. She turned to face the more developed main road, where traffic was flowing again toward the humble few blocks of modern buildings Minakasa boasted.

“Don’t you live near Arata?” Toma asked.

“Yeah, but I was meant to pick up some medicine for my grandpa. He was visiting before all this.”

“We can come with,” Arata offered.

“I’m good. It’s just round the corner.”

“Suit yourself.”

With that, Hana walked away. Arata caught himself watching her leave, and he turned abruptly, hoping he played it off well in front of Toma.

“It’s a long walk back to mine, man. You sure you’re up for it?” Arata said, fiddling with his bag strap.

“I’m in track and field,” Toma said, rolling his eyes. “This barely qualifies as a light warm-up.”

They set off, the dirt road crunching underfoot. Minakasa’s countryside stretched wide around them, endless green fields shimmering in the breeze.

Arata’s thoughts kept circling back to the visions. Could all these fields really disappear forever in less than a year?

“So, about that vision. The one with Hana,” Toma said slyly, breaking the quiet. “Were you really just standing there together?”

Arata flushed. “Y-yeah. I mean, it was quick. Vague.”

“Huh. Wonder if I was nearby. Was? Will be? Man, this tense stuff is gonna fry my brain.”

They shared a strained laugh, but it was interrupted by a chilling sound.

A familiar scream.

“That was Hana!” Arata gasped, leaping onto his dicycle.

Toma was already sprinting, his speed impressive as he tore down the road. His track and field practice was paying off, Arata thought as he pedaled hard, his heart pounding. They rounded a corner and froze.

There she was.

Hana, pressed against a wall, eyes wide with terror. Danza loomed over her, his thick brows contorted in a leer.

“C’mon! You know I’m right! If all that shit really is gonna happen in a year, we may as well cut loose and do what we want! You don’t wanna die a virgin, do ya?!”

He yanked at her skirt with one hand while a bloodied pocket knife gleamed in the other.

Arata moved before he could think. He pedaled full speed, head down. Danza noticed too late.

With a bone-jarring crunch, the dicycle smashed into Danza’s side. He cried out, toppling backward. Hana stumbled free, gasping.

The knife skidded across the road, and Toma kicked it away with precision.

Arata hit the ground hard, his side screaming in pain. Danza roared, scrambling up and landing a punch across Arata’s face. His vision swam, and it felt like his skull was about to explode as Danza raised his fist again.

“That’s enough!” Hana barked, slamming her foot into Danza’s groin, sending him sprawling to the ground in a flurry of curses. Toma ran up and gave him a full-on kick to the face to follow up. That seemed to do the trick, as Danza slumped down, clearly unconscious, his nose bloodied.

“You two okay?” Toma said, catching his breath.

Arata groaned, pushing himself up. Hana was hugging herself, nodding.

“We shouldn’t have left you alone... sorry,” Arata panted.

Hana shook her head, her eyes fixed on the crimson knife which had landed near her feet.

“Whose blood is that?” Toma asked, his features etched with confusion.

Hana could only point. She indicated a spot in the road just behind Arata’s shoulder.

The two turned slowly to see something they had both missed earlier. Their eyes had been too drawn to the knife to notice.

A small greenfox lay there in the road, its lime hide mangled and punctuated with red. Arata’s second vision had also come to pass.

Toma walked over and crouched by the crumpled greenfox, eyes narrowing. “Did he... do this?”

“I saw it and remembered the vision. I tried to shoo it away before anything happened to it,” Hana whispered, her voice thick with fury. “Then that psycho came and stabbed it. Thinking he was doing me an impressive favor…”

Arata’s stomach twisted. He stared at the small, lifeless body, bile rising in his throat. It was just like the one he saw before, and Hana saw it before she was attacked. Maybe his dad was right. Maybe they were cursed. Maybe he was cursed. Hana turned a concerned eye to him.

“Ara, I told you a million times back then. It’s just a dumb superstition. What your dad used to say... that was messed up and not even true.”

Toma raised a curious eyebrow. Arata shook his head, pulling out his pocket screen.

“Forget it. What matters is you’re okay. We should call the police.”

He dialed. He gave as detailed an explanation as he could, trying to keep his voice from becoming too shaky. The dispatcher promised to send someone soon, though it might be a while as they had officers out all over the place dealing with the fallout of the voice. They recommended that they tie the suspect up and wait.

Arata sighed, and they found an old scarf in Hana’s bag to do the deed. The three friends waited a few paces away in stunned silence as the sun continued to set. Arata supposed that they were lucky some officers hadn’t flocked home due to the vision, but then again, Minakasa was a small town. Such an intimate setting was bound to cause some sense of duty. It was still shocking for such violence to occur here.

He had heard of the occasional gang trouble, especially more downtown, but that was it really. It was something you heard about, not something you experienced. He looked at Danza’s unconscious form with spite.

Toma broke the quiet first, glancing at the fox’s body.

“A dead greenfox in the road... this is exactly the sight you saw in the vision, right?”

Arata nodded, throat dry. “Yeah. I guess... this proves it.”

A long silence.

“I’m sensing a pattern here. Both of the visions we’ve experienced so far were accompanied by danger to someone’s life,” Toma noted dryly. “Any other threats we should look out for?”

Arata looked blankly at the fox before replying. “Now that you mention it, there was a flash I saw where a pretty woman was pointing a gun in my direction…”

Toma stared at him, horrified. “How did you forget that?!”

“Sorry, it just happened so fast. There could be other things I saw and forgot, honestly…”

“I can’t believe it really happened,” Hana said simply.

A long pause came after that before Toma spoke up again.

“You’d tell me if you saw a vision of me about to get hit by a truck, right?”

Hana and Arata smiled at his attempt at irony, but no one was in a laughing mood just then.

"Do these visions happen in a particular order?" Hana asked. Arata recounted all of them in the order they occurred, so far it seemed like the pattern held, but Hana looked hesitant.

“C'mon, Hana. You gotta admit it now, right?" Toma began. “If Arata’s visions are like the ones we got, just more specific, the fact they came true shows that we can expect all that apocalyptic crap to actually happen.”

“No,” she said strongly. “I’ve been told all my life what my life was gonna be. By my parents, by our local priest. I proved them wrong. I’m on track to going to university and studying medicine. I’m making something happen and leaving this dump.”

Toma shook his head. “This proves the visions are the real deal and it’s not avoidable. I mean, you said you tried to shoo the fox’s hair away, but your attempt at preventing it is what brought that thug over. It made it happen, right? Don’t be dumb and live in denial.”

Hana snapped her head to regard Arata with a sharp stare.

“Ara,” she said, voice cold. “This vision of yours. What did I look like?”

“Huh? Look like?”

“Yeah. What was I wearing? How was my hair?”

Arata flinched. His cheeks burned. “I dunno. I wasn’t really looking... I think you had your hair in a ponytail. Like usual.”

Suddenly, without a word, Hana bent over and grabbed the blood-covered pocket knife Danza had dropped.

Toma raised his hands theatrically. “Whoa! I take it back! Don’t hurt me.”

Hana ignored this jibe, instead reaching behind her head and gripping her auburn ponytail tightly.

Then, she started sawing through it.

Arata and Toma started, speechless, as long strands tumbled down like falling leaves. The light caught them in just the right way to make them appear like red strings being severed from their friend’s once-neat head.

Her breathing was ragged, her eyes fierce.

“I won’t be a damsel. Not to a creep like him...” she said with a hard look at Danza’s unconscious form, “and not to fate either.”

She yanked the last strands free and blew them into the wind, her hair falling around her face in jagged tufts.

“You saw me with a ponytail in the vision. If I keep my hair too short for that, then that future can’t happen. And if any of your visions can be disproved... then maybe there’s hope that the rest of what we saw can be averted too.”

Arata and Toma exchanged stunned looks.

“I mean... that makes sense,” Toma said hesitantly, a note of impressed awe in his voice.

Arata nodded slowly, his heart thudding.

But deep down, he wasn’t so sure. 

The three of them continued to wait for the police, lost in thought. Part of Arata would be disappointed if Hana had averted the future where they shared a kiss, but on balance, he knew that was silly. The world was more important than his crush. Was it a crush? 

All he knew was he admired her determination and tenacity. He often found himself lacking in those departments. He grabbed his father’s ring hard, making a light imprint on his palm. 

He cursed his memory as he racked his brain trying to think back to the vision.

He honestly couldn’t say for sure how her hair had looked on that snowy cliffside.