I'm not Shizuka

“Where?” I asked but I wasn't entirely sure the words had made it out of my head.

The muscular stranger reached into a black belt bag and pulled out something that looked like a paper crane outlined by thin metal wires. Something flexible and pale followed the crane out of her bag, and she twisted it around the base of the bird's neck.

“Is that hair?” I mumbled, kneading my forehead with the heel of my right hand.

I blamed the aggressive brain tumour for the range of pure nonsense in this weirdly hyper realistic dream. I couldn't have come up with the creepy canyon, the elemental power usage, and the aura of the stranger beside me all on my own. Not after being hit by a car.

“I'll get Toshi and the others to meet us there,” she said as if I was supposed to know who that was. She murmured into the paper, then tossed it into the sky. The crane flew away like a soundless drone. “Tatsu's going to lose it.”

“Who – whoa!” I exclaimed as she picked me up princess-style and my face warmed like an overused Christmas decoration.

“We'll get there faster this way.” She gently eased my head down against her collarbone, the rough edge of her sleeveless grey shirt tickling the tip of my nose. “We can't let anyone else see you before that.”

At that moment, I might have been a tiny bit jealous of this Shizuka, whoever she was. But now was as good a time as any to process what had happened in the last ten minutes of my questionable death. The fact that I could do so within a pair of protective arms, surrounded by a scent that simultaneously reminded me of iron gummies and cocoa butter, was just a pleasant coincidence.

If I didn't know better, I'd think I had woken up in an entirely new world.

But I had been run down by a car, not invited to go sightseeing by some alien species. It was impossible. However I couldn't deny that clothes I wore certainly weren't my own, nor were they from the country – perhaps not even from the era – that I was familiar with.

My body felt lighter, swathed in a long white cotton kimono with a delicate black cherry blossom pattern embroidered up its left side instead of my usual dark T-shirt and baggy leggings. A fist sized lump felt like it had been scooped out of my head and, despite the dizziness, my thoughts were clearer than they had been in months.

If this place truly was the afterlife, I had seriously overestimated heaven or hell.

“So where are we going again?” I still couldn't believe I was being carried by another person without being placed into a coffin first.

Snapshots of the changing scenery reached me from beyond the curve of my saviour's neck. She jogged through a short but dense strip of trees. Now we were out in the open again, following the line of what sounded like a swift river. Her boots left marks in the dirt path beneath us. We passed the occasional hut tucked away on a distant hill or on the riverside. Some of them seemed occupied, others were clearly dilapidated.

“Toshi's old place,” she answered. “They probably won't think of looking for us there. At least not straight away.”

“Uh huh.” I needed to tell her that I wasn't who she thought I was, even if I looked the same as that person.

The longer I took, the angrier she would get when I finally told her the truth. As much as I admired the evident power in her fists, I didn't fancy greeting one personally with my face but right now the river was closer than I liked.

“They'll get suspicious if we all leave town at once,” she continued. “Ras isn't going to keep quiet about this. He'll run straight to the guards as soon as he wakes up. We need to make sure they don't have any reason to believe him.”

“How sure are we that he's waking up again?” I swallowed a taut chuckle.

“He covers himself in rock all the time. He'll have a massive headache but he'll be fine. Eventually.” She shook her head and squinted at something I couldn't see. “Looks like the guards are out of the way but keep your head down for now just in case, okay?”

Despite her words, I didn't spot any distracted guards. Just a loose diverse crowd that wasn't entirely made up of human. A high wall stained orange by the sun distracted me from someone who had switched from a gazelle to a person when I blinked as we crossed the wooden bridge leading to a pair of gates at its base. Like the canyon, the wall ran on for a while before it curved out of sight. The lady carrying me slowed down once we reached the other side of the bridge and ignored the gates.

I considered pointing this out to her but her gaze seemed focused on a location beyond my own sight as we entered yet another wood, drawing away from the wall until I couldn't see it through the leaves and bushes. The burbling of the river faded, replaced by birdsong and the steady rustle of wind breezing through the leaves. Between the natural ambience and the parental rocking motion caused by her steps, my eyelids were tempted to flutter downwards and stay there. I jerked my head up before I could embarrass myself by snoring into the ear of a stranger.

“Uh, you can put me down now,” I said.

I wasn't particularly worried about being a burden. She hadn't even broken a sweat, despite the distance we had covered and her previously rapid pace. If anything, I was the more breathless one.

“We're almost there,” she replied.

I caught the tail end of what might have been a questioning glance and I tried to loosen my grip around her neck without tumbling out of her arms, gulping as we drew closer to the moment of truth. To the mental crossroads where we'd have to make potentially life altering decisions. Or death altering, in my case.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked, kicking open the door of a small, stone hut that had definitely seen better times.

“I never expected to be carried over the threshold by anyone,” I said, covering my eyes. “Let alone by another lady.”

She stifled a chuckle but her amusement vibrated through my ribcage and found one more reason to envy Shizuka.

“I always told you all you had to do was ask,” she said, finally setting me down. “Can you stand?”

“I think so.” I said coolly as my heart rate spiked. Were her and Shizuka a thing? If so, things were either about to get inhumanely awkward or I was about to learn a mind-blowing fact about myself. I stepped back and realised just how isolated we were in the abandoned hut. “So here's the thing –”

She hugged me and any words I had crumbled to dust. There wasn't anything romantic about the gesture but the last person that I remembered hugging me had been one of my grandparents during another grandparent's funeral and it had been nothing like this.

If a smile could mean a thousand words, then a hug could mean a million. The lack of space between us spoke of comfort levels I hadn't been able to dream of before. The position of her hands on my upper back and neck felt like she was brandishing an invisible sword and shield behind me. And the pressure of her embrace told me that something inside her was on the verge of breaking but she was still fighting the urge to let whatever it was shatter her completely.

“Uh, wait a sec –” I flapped my hands lightly against her ample shoulder blades.

She stopped hugging me at once, though her hands lingered on my shoulders and her eyes stayed fixed on my face.

“Seriously how did you come back?” She shook her head. The remnants of a traumatic experience haunted her features. “Back then we all saw what happ –”

The door flew open and crashed against the wall beside it. My soul nearly left my body for the second time as a new pair of arms wrapped around me tightly enough to steal my breath, and with enough force to make me stumble back several steps.

“Holy crap,” I hissed, hands half raised as if I were being held at gun point, suffocated by a particularly bushy straw-coloured ponytail. “What now –?”

“You're back,” whimpered the young woman who had arrived like a flash of fluffy lightning and fastened herself to me. “Thank the powers, you're back.”

What had Shizuka done to become this popular? If that Ras guy had been telling the truth, it seemed like the last thing she had done was lie to them. Why were they so happy to see her again?

“There's something I need to tell you,” I said. “Both of you.”

The lady who had saved me gently prised the second off my torso and patted the top of her head when the latter looked confused.

“I'm not one to talk but let's give her a moment, okay?” she said, and they both turned to me. “Are you going to tell us how you're still alive?”

“I don't know how I'm still alive,” I admitted, stepping back with my hands still raised. “I also don't know who you are because … I'm not Shizuka.”