Where I found you

 Like someone caught in a lie, the first person I looked at was the one who would probably be most bothered by it.

“Wait.” Tatsuya's pale eyebrows raised as soon as we shared a glance. “Did you remember something?”

I rubbed my forehead, mostly to block out the triumphant glitter in the narrow eyes of Shizuka's guardian. “I wouldn't say it was a memory exactly.”

Not my memory, at any rate.

“When?” he asked, twisting towards me with way too much enthusiasm. “Why didn't you say so?”

“One question at time please.” I lifted the same hand, palm facing his direction. He pressed his lips together but didn't bombard me with any more. “Just now, when I was falling, I kind of saw something.”

He still didn't say anything but impatience radiated from him in heatwaves,

“Where?” asked Yua.

In my head. I kept the silent response to myself.

“It was just a quick flash of something,” I said. “Nothing important.”

“Stop flapping around the flames, child,” said Uchi, lowering her finger until it prodded the centre of my chest. My shoulders rounded instantly to create space between her nail and my breastbone. “What or who did you see?”

My gaze flicked towards Tatsuya, who couldn't seem to hold in his indignation.

“Me?” he said, a delightful redness dusting his cheekbones. “I thought you said it wasn't important.”

Everyone else except Yua and Uchi tried to stifle their laughter as I turned away from him.

“My bad,” I muttered, “Well, you seemed important enough to Shizuka.”

“Wh-why are you saying?” He cleared his throat but the panic joined the impatience rolling off him. “What did you see?”

“What is there to see, hmmm?” jeered Toshi with a strained smile. “Did you and Shizu do something naughty?”

“We did not,” he huffed but I felt him turn away from me too.

“I don't know if it was your first meeting with her,” I said. “But you were hiding outside her shop under some hay and you were cr-”

“– It was.” He grabbed upper arm with both of his and let go of it just as fast. The dull redness has reached the tip of his ears. “That's where we first met.”

“Aww, you remembered Tatsu before you remembered me? Traitor,” drawled Kohaku, her hand hovering over Uchi's until the old woman stopped pointing at me.

“It's not my memory,” I began.

“Don't be daft, child,” said Uchi at once, turning away. “It's a memory in your own head. Who else is it going to belong to?”

“This isn't my own head though,” I shot back, taking step after her. “This isn't even my real body.”

She paused and looked back at me with a sardonic smile. “Where's your body then?”

“I don't know,” I said quietly. Yua met my eyes and nodded. “I thought you could help us find out.”

“I track souls, not bodies,” said Uchi, her face stiffening as if she could hide the grief etched into every single wrinkle. “But I haven't been able to find Shizuka's for the last ten years.”

“Then how are you going to find out what happened to mine?” I asked, willing my heartbeat to slow down under her intense scrutiny.

“By checking to see if that's changed now that you're here,” she replied, walking back to her home. “Come inside. We have a lot to talk about.”

“Let's go,” murmured Tatsuya beside me, apprehension weighing down his tone even as hope illuminated his eyes.

I followed Uchi, nauseated by the vision of smothering that light for good.

- - -

“Just so we're all on the same pathway,” said Uchi. “You've lived your whole life so far believing your name is Sheila in a world completely different from this one, correct?”

I nodded and thanked Tatsuya as he handed me a glass mug shaped like a colourful pile of books and filled with some kind of herbal tea. It smelt like the rest of Uchi's house, only with a faintly bitter aftertaste once I took a sip.

One rounded wall displayed an vast array of plants, vegetables, fruits, and even things that might have been spices on shelves or in drawers. The other wall boasted a large desk, bookshelves, and pigeon holes overflowing with rolled up parchment, well worn books, and random decorations that seemed to be paperweights of all shapes and sizes.

“And you died in that world because you were hit by something called a car?” she continued from the battered leathery beanbag opposite the chairs Toshi and Washi had pulled up for us. “Correct?”

They sat on two other beanbags, that looked like smaller versions of the first, to my right and Tatsuya took the other chair on my left. Kohaku had dragged the heavier looking chair over from the desk, much to Uchi's apparent disapproval, and Yua had been placed next to our host, most likely to keep the peace.

“That's right. It moves like a wagon but faster,” I replied. “And on the floor.”

She didn't need to know about the tumour just yet, already arranging items on the low table between us. In the dim lighting caused by half drawn, deep grey curtains, they appeared even more occult in nature. Scraps of material, pieces of paper with illegible words scrawled across them, a lock of black hair, and the kind of stuff you might find in a gothic shop tucked away at the back of a mall somewhere.

“Did anything strange happen right before you died?” she asked, scraping shapes and symbols around and between the items with sticks of charcoal and chalk.

“I don't know. It was my first time dying.” I drank some of the tea as her silver eyes darted to my face and tried not to choke on its bitterness. Tatsuya cleared his throat and patted my upper back inefficiently. “Not really.”

Somehow telling her that I heard Shizuka's name at that point felt like admitting defeat and, even though I knew it was better to share all the clues I had, the words stayed stuck in my chest.

“No or not really?” Uchi's strong voice grew thorns. “Those are two very different things, child. I'd appreciate your accuracy right now.”

“There was a tree in my world,” I said. “It looks almost exactly like the one where Kohaku found me, except it wasn't dead. I touched it right before I – woke up here and it was hot. Most trees are kind of cold where I come from.”

Tatsuya coughed into his forearm and Yua covered her smile with a delicate pale blue teacup. Toshi and Washi stifled chuckles with widened eyes. Uchi looked at me for a second like I was an idiot but then her lips parted in sync with the sudden spark behind her stare.

“A tree?” she repeated. I nodded. “And it looks like one we have here? Where?”

“She means the Spiritless Tree,” said Kohaku from the desk chair. “By the Jaw.”

“Aaah, the Spiritless Tree, you say?” murmured Uchi, smiling the way a starving cat might after catching sight of a careless bird. “How very intriguing.”

“Yeah, I thought it was weird too,” I replied, preferring my own barely visible reflection in the mug over the sight of her amusement. I had seen that look on my parents' faces one time too many and it had never come before anything pleasant. “Like, what are the chances, eh?”

“Do you know why it's called that?” she asked, picking up a bundle of matchsticks from the table and carefully selecting a pair of them.

“I don't even know what this world is called.” I shrugged. “Feel free to enlighten me.”

“It was the biggest, most beautiful tree in Nippo,” she said. “People would come to visit it from miles around. Some would pray for its health, some for their own. Others would come just to enjoy the peace and pleasure brought by its pink blossoms and the sounds of the wind in its boughs.”

Something no one could enjoy these days, I guessed silently.

“That was until the tree stopped flowering all of a sudden and its trunk started to age. As if something had stolen its heart.” Uchi lifted her head to stare at me, and I had no idea why both Kohaku and Tatsuya started fidgeting in their seats. “Around the same time, a child was found crying at its roots.”

“A child?” I didn't like the way this story was going.

“I always thought it was strange –” she said softly. “– how you died almost exactly where I found you all those years ago.”