Searching for Relevance

Toyo peered out at the blue sky, watching the clouds slowly move across the expansive ocean above. As vibrant as the sky was, she always felt that there was something missing from it, but the feeling was always too abstract for her to place into words. With the Sun hitting its peak, its rays shined down, showering everything in its path with its scorching heat. Why can’t something different happen for once? Toyo silently wondered as sweat trickled down the side of her face.

Propping her head onto the palms of her hands, the humming cicadas funneled through to her ears like a soothing lullaby. Soon, she found herself dozing off, the weight of her exhaustion pulling down on her head as if gravity had wrapped its hands around the nape of her neck.

“Futamata-san!”

Toyo jerked her body upwards, blinking repeatedly as she attempted to bat away the lethargy from her eyes. “If the desk is that comfortable to you, then feel free to use it as much as you’d like once you’ve finished cleaning the classroom after school.

The room descended into muffled giggles and teasing glares. Letting out a deep sigh, Toyo fell back into her chair as she reluctantly faced the teacher. “Sumimasendeshita.”

As the bell echoed through the school halls, scores of students began dashing around with their lunchboxes in hand in search of their friends. Some grouped up in the halls chatting about their upcoming exams, while others made their way outside in a race to get to the patches of shade.

Collapsing her head onto her desk, Toyo let another ungodly sigh escape her mouth. Too tired to leave from her chair.

“Did you not sleep at all last night?” a voice called out from above. Straining her pupils upwards, Toyo found two classmates, Akari and Kuro, staring back down at her.

“Mmfmmfmmmfmmm,” Toyo muttered with her face planted back onto the desk.

“Huh?!” Akari barked, her eyebrows furled while Kuro chuckled off to the side.

Cranking her neck back, Toyo then howled, “The air conditioning in my room broke.” Rolling to the side with her head crashlanding onto her arm, she continued, “The humidity kept me up.”

Tilting her head to the side, Akari nonchalantly replied, “Why didn’t you just sleep in the living room or something? The air conditioning in there still works, right?”

Toyo shot up with her posture as straight as a pole, staring directly ahead as if possessed by the ghost of a mannequin. “Hai!” she sang with her right hand raised high, “I was too lazy to change rooms,” she then forfeited to more laughs from Kuro and a despised look from Akari.

Shaking her head, Akari pointedly murmured, “Whatever,” before propping herself up on top of Toyo’s desk. With a glimmer in her eyes, she then leaned in towards Toyo, determination cloaking her face.

“You know that old temple up the Kanmu-mori mountain? Kuro said his brother told him about a…” leaning in closely and lowering her voice to a whisper, she followed, “secret relic buried somewhere behind it.”

A sense of detachment grabbing hold of her thoughts, Toyo peered over at Kuro whose body was slumped into his own overflowing pool of irritation. “What does that even mean?” Toyo tiresomely probed, looking back towards Akari whose eyes were deadlocked with hers.

“I have no idea, but imagine we find something cool?” Akari implored.

“We?” Toyo challenged.

“She wants us to go look for it after school,” Kuro injected with a tired grimace, “I tried to tell her that my brother doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but…”

Before Toyo could get a word in, Akari jumped the gun and began immediately defending her unilateral plight. “Siblings always reject each other, so what you may think doesn’t matter… doesn’t matter,” she argued. “In fact, I actually looked it up.” Fishing her phone from her bag, she swiftly pulled up a conversation on the online message board, Shinrei-Channeru, where among a back-and-forth conversation debating proof on whether Japanese folklore was tied to truth or not, one poster specifically mentioned a secret hidden within Kanmu-mori.

“You see! That’s two sources. The chances of it being true are extremely high.”

Clearly tired from failing to talk Akari down, Kuro desperately pleaded with Toyo, “Tell this idiot that evidence doesn’t work that way.”

“Who are you calling an idiot?!”

“Clearly the person who wants to climb up to an abandoned temple in an overgrown forest looking for rusty, old, buried crap that don’t exist! What if we get attacked by a bear or something?”

“There are no bears in Kanmu-mori, you idiot!”

“Oh, now I’m the idiot!”

“Yes, only idiots spend all lunch break playing gacha games!”

As the two pestered on, Toyo found her eyes glued to Akari’s skirt which was spread across the top of her desk. Noticing her lack of a response, Kuro turned his attention towards Toyo, as did Akari. With her finger pointed at Akari’s thigh, Toyo’s lips began to quiver.

“I think I might’ve drooled on my desk earlier.”

Akari’s eyes ripped open wider than a canyon as she sprung up from the desk. Yanking her skirt up towards her eyeline, she peered down to the sight of saliva glazing the fabric of her uniform. As Kuro began to burst out in laughter, Akari wept like a lost child. Seeing how distraught Akari was, Toyo covered her mouth with her hand as she too fought the urge to break out in laughter.

It was nearing 5 p.m. and although the Sun had long since shifted from its peak in the sky, the humidity in the air had yet to cease its onslaught on the town, with Toyo, Akari, Kuro, and Kuro’s brother, Fukai, profusely wiping the sweat from their faces as they trekked up the mountain. Navigating their way up an overgrown path cascaded by hanging branches, rusted and torn lanterns, dingy and crumbling stone pillars, and ominous sounds emanating from all directions.

“I can’t believe I let you all drag me up this stupid mountain,” cried Toyo as she wacked a mosquito on her arm.

“Don’t suffer in silence,” Kuro argued, “I can’t believe I’m doing this either.”

Looking down over his shoulder at the two of them trailing behind, Fukai offered a few words of encouragement. “If we find what we’re looking for, it’ll all be worth it. If we don’t, it’ll be a fun memory to look back on.” He then pulled in a strong gust of air through his nose, “Besides, where else can you get a whiff of nature like this?”

Listening to Fukai’s flimsy words of encouragement, Toyo tugged Kuro closer towards her by the seam of his sleeve. “Your brother doesn’t seem that confident,” she complained. “Like I said, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about!” Kuro howled.

Pulling his arm from her grip, Kuro thrust his finger outright towards Toyo, “You were supposed to get Akari to give up.”

Playing the defense, Toyo bit back, “How was I supposed to convince her of anything?”

“She listens to you way more than she listens to me.”

“Are you serious?”

Finding her argument fruitless, Toyo simply shook her head as she quietly tagged along behind the rest of the group.

Continuing their climb up the, at times, barely visible path, Akari took note of a steep change in the dampness of the air. With the leaves of the trees rifling with the gust of an oddly chilling breeze, she gripped the sides of her arms and began peering around her with fear tickling her skin. “Nanka, zoku-zoku suru,” she whined as a faint chill ran down her spine, sending her body into a shiver. “I am starting to get goosebumps,” Fukai followed, brushing his glasses back into position with the back of his index finger.

Nonetheless, the group pushed forward, eager to get to the top and back down before sunset. The path at times growing increasingly dangerous as they wrapped around short cliffs, unstable ground, and even barely standing bridges.

After a few more minutes of seemingly endless travel up the mountain, the trees began to part as the sun leaking through the trees greeted them like a warm welcome at the finish line of an arduous journey.

“Whoa!” Akari bellowed as she stood above, stopped cold by the view before her. As Toyo and the others followed behind, they were met by the view of the old temple. Once the pride of Kanmu-mura, it was now merely an abandoned remnant known for superstitions and urban legends. But the group of students could never have imagined a sight like the one before them.

As though their reality had suddenly abandoned them…