Prelude: Year of Cat/Fear of Spider

The impact of the bookmobile felt like it broke every cell in Kenichi's body. The last thing he saw was Marumi holding the cat, her green eyes wide with surprise. Time stopped when the bookmobile hit him. He saw Marumi, the crowd, the distracted driver with his hand up, ready to slap a bee, then the cat.

The cat, black and skinny, matted fur, obviously a stray or a feral cat, had the most vibrant purple eyes. Kenichi looked into those eyes in this moment of liminality, and the purple orbs expanded into an entire universe. His vision only saw a field of purple with a smattering of unfamiliar stars plotting unrecognizable constellations. He felt the wind at his back.

He was falling. Something fell beside him. He turned his head and saw the battered, broken form of his guitar, the only recognizable part being the decal of a tired eye he had put on it. He reached out his hand and grasped the neck of the guitar, the only familiar thing in this otherwise unfamiliar existence.

Still he fell. It felt like an eternity. Was this death? Just eternal falling? He took a breath, then wondered why he still needed to breathe if he was dead, then slowly rolled over so he could see what he was falling toward.

The sea of purple with its speckles of stars eventually gave way to an ocean of blue. Kenichi held his arms and legs akimbo, feeling the wind rush past as he fell toward the great blue nothing. His body still ached from his close encounter with traffic, but he pushed past that to appreciate this once in a lifetime (or once in an after-lifetime) experience.

As he fell, the blue became more defined. Smaller, lighter specks of blue, like dewdrops on a spider web emerged from the blur. They were like the stars in their own way, scattered but meaningful in their placement. As he grew closer, he soon realized that they looked like dewdrops on a spider web because they, while not necessarily dewdrops, were in fact scattered across something that looked unsettlingly like a spider's web.

Then he fell into it, sticking to its strands. He struggled, but was unable to come unstuck. His struggles sent ripples up the web, like waves across an ocean's surface.

Then, stillness.

Then, all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Something large and spidery stood over him with far too many eyes like jade discs. It was bigger than the bookmobile. It was bigger than he wanted to imagine. It was big.

“What's this?” a voice said. It echoed across infinity. “Barely a meal.” The spider poked at Kenichi with one of its massive legs. When its carapace touched Kenichi, though, a jolt of energy ran through him and into the spider. It pulled back its leg quickly.

This is bad, Kenichi thought.

“This is bad,” said the spider. “We must dispose of it quickly.”

Sticky threads covered him, binding his arms and legs. The spider reached down with its legs to wrap him in a cocoon, possibly to save him for later, when whatever other food source this expanse had ran low. Possibly space ships or small planets, based on the size of the spider.

“Rapisugumo, stop!” said another voice. A cat, equally as massive as the spider, alighted onto the web. It stepped in a careful way, avoiding the sticky threads.

The spider turned to face the giant cat. “Nyara! I wondered who was trying to meddle!” said the spider. Kenichi saw the back of the spider. Like a black widow's red hourglass, it had a strange symbol on its back. It looked almost like a sword and two shields, and it was blue like the dewdrops on the web.

“This one is mine,” said the cat.

The spider looked back at Kenichi and blinked its millions of eyes. “Barely a snack, Nyara. Why would you want such a scrawny thing?”

The cat flicked its ears and blinked its purple eyes. Then it licked its paws. “I have my reasons,” it said.

The spider scrambled close to the cat, leaning toward it. “I won't let you meddle,” it said. “You and your kind.”

The cat said something back to the spider, but Kenichi didn't hear it, because the cat's voice was now speaking directly into his mind. “Now! Use your sword and cut yourself free while she's distracted.”

The cat and the spider continued to talk, expressing their different shows of strength and cunning. Sword? Kenichi thought. I don't have a sword! His hand tightened around the neck of his broken guitar. He struggled to move his head in the tangle of webs. He saw that he wasn't holding a guitar anymore. He was holding the hilt of a sword. The gem in the hilt looked just like the tired eye decal his guitar bore.

Is this my sword? He thought. He pulled his arm closer, and the blade reflected the infinity around him. Pushing past his pain and pulling past the threads that bound him, he raised the sword and sliced through the webs. He freed his head, his torso, and finally his legs. Still wrapped in some sticky threads, he fell headlong into the infinity beyond the web.

Is this what he had to look forward to for all eternity? He held Drowsysword close as everything turned to bright white light. Somewhere behind him, he heard the angry scream of a giant spider.