Is she still alive?

 I blinked and clenched my teeth to hold in a gasp.

The pale brown walls of the shop switched to grey brick walls. The scent of herbs was stronger than it had been back then but not powerful enough to distract me from the scene I had just witnessed.

Uchi had been racist against the human with animal-like features. Did they call it racism here too or did they have another word for it? Either way, the elderly hands on my head were suddenly a lot less welcome than they had been a second ago. Not that I had been comfortable with their position in the first place.

“Someone stop Toshi,” said the woman behind me.

Tatsuya's arm shot out and hooked around the abdomen of the younger woman who had been about to throw herself on me.

“What're you doing?” she exclaimed as he pulled her away towards his other side. “It's Shizu!”

“The ritual isn't over yet,” he said, sitting back down again and keeping his other hand raised in front of her cautiously.

My skin crawled as if trying to escape the clingy touch of the smoke and I turned away from the smouldering hand-shape that was still pointing at me. Yua's turquoise eyes cut through the fumes, holding both questions and plans that I knew I couldn't escape. I avoided looking at the other two but their stares burned my face, hotter than the candle before me.

“You, who speak for the nature of all things, living and everlasting,” continued Uchi, twisting my face back towards the hand. The motion made my neck ache. “You are above mistakes but we lesser beings doubt eternally. Please show us once again where the soul of Shizuka Spirit-hands wanders.”

A tongue of rippling flame snaked around the wrist of the hand and highlighted its extended finger as it moved towards me. I pulled my hands out of my sleeves but Tatsuya touched my left arm, just below the crease of my elbow, and shook his head faintly. I had no reason to trust his small smile. For all I knew, I was sitting there waiting for that smoke to yank my soul out of my chest and drag it back to earth, and it wouldn't even have any feet or a mouth to kick and scream all the way there.

The breathe I drew in shook audibly, embarrassingly, and I placed my unsteady fists in my lap. The smoke stopped moving, the tip of its index finger inches away from my hammering heart, leaving no doubt about its message.

“We thank you, oh speaker of fate,” rumbled Uchi. “And promise to dedicate our hands to your service and our feet to the paths you paint for us forever. For we are one with nature and to nature we all return.”

The smoke collapsed back on itself and dissipated, its movement as unnatural as ever, and the candle went out. Its wick spewed thin curls of vapour along with the incense sticks that formed the points of the triangle on the table.

“Open the windows,” said Uchi as she released my head.

I wanted to curl in on myself, if only to avoid seeing the thoughts of the people around me, but it didn't make a difference. I could feel them all, like a shoal of curious fish swimming in the air, nibbling at my clothes, my hair, my flesh. Some of them harmless, others like potential piranhas waiting for my reaction.

The evidence in this world was in favour of me being Shizuka.

But the me who came from another still couldn't align with such as admission.

Even if those memories felt like my own. Even if everyone in this world wanted me to be Shizuka, for better or worse. Even if rejecting the apparent truth of this existence could lead to me being thrown back into a world that had given up on me already.

I wasn't Shizuka. I was Sheila.

But there was no reason they needed to know I still thought that.

Kohaku and Washi had cracked opened two windows on either side of the room and the smoked cleared, taking the overwhelming musk of the smouldering incense with it. Toshi quivered like a chihuahua in my peripheral vision, waiting to unleash herself on me as soon as I accepted my fate. Tatsuya's hand remained on my arm but he didn't say anything. They were all waiting for me to pick a path and then speak.

“Well, that was scary,” I said as soon as I trusted my voice to emerge in one piece. “We don't have smoky hands like that in my world. Not that I've seen, at any rate.”

“Your world?” asked Yua. I wondered if I had imagined the stiffness in her tone.

“The one where I was known as Sheila.” I examined my hands but that didn't block out the wave of misplaced relief that crashed over me from all sides. “I don't think I'll forget about it for a long time but I did remember something else.”

“What did you remember?” asked Uchi, walking around the chairs to stand at an angle to me.

“I saved someone – a shifted one – the day I met Kohaku.” Despite my decision, the act weighed down my muscles, my gaze, and even my voice. The muscular woman's attention was fixed on me. “Is she still alive?”

She laughed and closed her eyes for a second. The low yet sweet sound melted away the apprehension that had been clogging the room.

“She is,” she said, moving away from the open window and holding a hand out to me once she was standing next to Uchi. “She'll still got the scars though so we never forget.”

“You all seem very good at remembering things.” I grinned and hated my own performance with a passion, bracing myself as I took her hand. “Unlike someone we know.”

She pulled me out of the chair and into yet another hug that was only slightly less breathtaking than the last, her chuckles genuine enough to make my eyes water.

“Welcome back, Shizu,” she said.

“Don't say that like I've remembered everything,” I blinked the tears away, hidden by her shoulder, then tried to pull away.

“But you remembered me,” she replied smoothly, tilting my face upwards with a crooked forefinger.

My heart stuttered and I wondered if Shizuka handled Kohaku's seemingly unintentional flirting better than I did.

“She remembered me first,” said Tatsuya, pulling her hands away from my chin and back, his lips pressed into an warning line.

I stepped back and tried to breathe, failing as Toshi took advantage of the distraction and flung herself at me.

“Why don't you remember me?” she whined, holding onto me tightly.

“I'm sure it'll all come back to me eventually,” I said breathlessly as I tried to pull her off.

I could have sworn my ribs creaked under the pressure and my eyes were still blurry.

“Don't take it personally.” This time it was Washi that peeled her off me, shaking his head with a knowing grin. “She doesn't remember me either.”

“You can't say I didn't want you,” I told him as soon as I had enough air in my lungs to form a sentence.

“I don't mind,” he said, holding Toshi back. “Take all the time you need. I can wait.”

“Thanks.” I backed off even further and the door was so close I almost felt the grass beneath my feet.

But I couldn't run off now. Not after I had made them all believe I was their long lost friend and definitely not before I had gathered all the information I needed to survive in Nippo. I had to find out if Nippo was a town or the name of this new world. If the first, were there other towns? If the second, how did people make a living here?

Despite the feigned success of the ritual, I wasn't sure if I could live here as Shizuka indefinitely. No matter how happy my companions were, I couldn't forget the hatred that had warped Ras' face before he attacked me. The way he hadn't been willing to confirm who I was nor hear me out. Shizuka had done something to him and possibly to someone else. Someone who could make a flying wagon lose control.

“He's right, Shizuka,” said Yua. “We're happy to wait and make new memories in the meantime. What we have to do now is decide how to bring you safely back to Nippo.”

“About that,” I replied, turning my back on Uchi who had still hadn't responded to me indirect confession. “You can tell me now, right?”

“About what?” Her careful articulation told me that she already knew what I meant.

“Why Ras wants me dead,” I said bluntly. “And why it's not safe for me to go back there.”