Chapter 18: The Weight of the River

The first morning in the village begins before the sun has fully cleared the mountains. Hitane wakes me up with a sharp rap on my door frame. She is already dressed in a dark tracksuit, her hair slicked back, looking like she has been awake for hours.

"Training," she says simply. "Five minutes. By the river."

I groan, rolling off the futon. My body feels heavy, the gravity of this new reality pressing down on me. But the fear of losing control, of slipping back into the nightmare of teleportation, gets me moving.

I find them by the riverbank, a secluded stretch of smooth stones and rushing water behind the inn. The air is cold and smells of damp earth and cedar. Minaki is sitting on a large rock, her eyes closed, shivering slightly. Hitane is standing by the water's edge, staring at the current.

"The river," Hitane says as I approach, not turning around. "It is like time. It flows. It changes. You cannot step in the same river twice."

She turns to face me. "And you, Juiro, you are the stone. You are the thing that forces the river to move around it. You define where the river cannot go."

"I feel more like a leaf," I admit, rubbing my arms against the chill. "Just getting washed away."

"That is because you are not heavy enough," she says. "Metaphysically speaking. You are floating on the surface of reality because you are afraid to sink into it. You are afraid to say 'I am here' because you do not know who 'I' is."

She points to a spot on the gravel. "Stand there."

I obey.

"Close your eyes," she commands. "Do not think about the cold. Do not think about the village. Think about your feet. Think about the gravity holding you to the earth. Feel the connection."

I close my eyes. I try to focus. I feel the stones digging into my sneakers. I feel the wind on my face. But mostly, I feel the static. That low, humming vibration that has haunted me for weeks. It is louder here, near the water.

"It is buzzing," I whisper. "The world. It is buzzing."

"Good," Hitane's voice says, moving around me. "That static is the resonance. It is the raw energy of space. It is chaotic. It wants to move. It wants to throw you to Brazil or Paris. You have to grab it. You have to quiet it."

"How?"

"Visualize it," Minaki's voice chimes in, soft and melodic. "When I get overwhelmed by emotions, I visualize a wall. For you... maybe an anchor? A heavy iron chain?"

An anchor. It is a cliché, but it fits.

I imagine a massive, rusted iron chain extending from my chest, dropping down through the gravel, through the soil, locking into the bedrock of the earth. I imagine the humming static hitting that chain and stopping dead.

I am here. This is Osaka. This is the river. I am Juiro.

The buzzing spikes, fighting me. I feel a sudden wave of vertigo, the sensation of falling.

"Hold it!" Hitane barks. "Do not let go!"

I grit my teeth. I push back against the vertigo. I am not falling. The ground is solid. I am solid.

For a moment, the world goes silent. The rushing sound of the river seems to dampen. The wind stops. I feel heavy. Immovably heavy.

"Open your eyes," Hitane says quietly.

I open them. I am still standing on the gravel. But the water in the river... right in front of me, for a stretch of about three feet... is flat. It is calm. The water rushes around a circle of absolute stillness, as if an invisible glass cylinder has been dropped into the current.

I stare at it, my mouth open. "I... I did that?"

"You created a spatial lock," Hitane says, a flicker of approval in her dark eyes. "You told the space where the water was to stop moving. And it listened."

The moment I break my focus, the water crashes back in, splashing over the stones. I stumble back, exhausted, sweat trickling down my spine despite the cold.

"It is a start," Hitane says, checking her watch. "A small start. But you did not teleport. That is progress."

Minaki claps her hands, a small, delightful sound. "You were like a statue, Juiro! It felt... peaceful. For a second, the noise of the world just stopped."

I look at my hands. They are trembling. I have spent weeks being a victim of space. Today, for the first time, I made space listen to me.