Chapter 7

The students at once organized themselves to clean their practice hall and store the mats and weights used during class. Naomi was going to help, but then she noticed someone by the door. A woman in her forties. One dressed in a rumpled business suit — and her bleary eyes told Naomi this woman had not slept well for days.

“Tanaka-kun, Imagawa-chan, you can manage this for me?”

The boy who had asked humorously how they had offended her gave her a thumbs-up. “Of course, sensei, don’t worry.”

“Thank you, gang. You’re such darlings, all of you.” She reached for a towel on a chair, dried her face a bit, then walked towards the woman. “Hello, miss. We haven’t met, have we?”

“No, we haven’t.” The woman sounded as tired as she looked — and there was an undercurrent of despair in her tone as well. Hope glittered briefly in her reddened eyes. “Can we talk?”

“Sure thing, let’s go outside.”

It was almost night outside the school by now. The streets of Komaba were busy with pedestrians and traffic as people returned home, looking forward to the weekend.

But this woman that had come looking for Naomi did not care for Friday night. “Please excuse me for imposing, but… I don’t know who else to call, and I heard… well… you’re someone I can talk to.”

A frown, then a nod, and Naomi switched on the spot from cheerful phys-ed teacher to professional expert. “If you don’t mind my asking, who told you?”

“Toudou-sensei. She gave me your contact info. And told me not to call you but to come and see you instead.” The woman bowed. “Please excuse my rudeness.”

“You’re not rude at all, miss… your name?”

“Satou Yoko. Pleased to meet you, Kurono-san.”

“I’m here to help, Satou-san. Let’s find ourselves a cafe and tell me what’s troubling you.”

At a café across the park, Naomi spoke. “Now, Satou-san—tell me what’s troubling you. Don’t think about how weird or outlandish what you have to say is. I’ll hear it all.”

Satou bowed her head. Her voice was almost a whisper. “My son is gone.”

A deep breath and a nod. “When people come to me like this, they usually have exhausted every possibility.”

“I did,” the woman said. “I went to the police. Investigators came, asked questions of the neighbors. They pulled the records from the cameras. They got the same from everything — my son walked into our apartment and didn’t walk out. I talked to his friends, to the school counselor, to his martial arts instructor… the only thing I got was that he was heartbroken — some girl he liked started dating a fellow student who injured him during practice.” Her gaze did not veer from her coffee cup. “I didn’t even get to see how he got injured.”

Naomi thought for a moment. “I suppose the police are investigating you.”

“I gave them everything,” Satou said at once. “I work as a safety consultant for the Yamanote line, I go to the office everyday, I don’t have a car. I haven’t taken a vacation for the last ten months.”

“Your husband?”

“I’m a widow.” Satou said this with her gaze still on her coffee.

“Oh.” Naomi winced. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry that I have to ask these questions, but they are necessary.” A shadow crossed her brow momentarily.

But Satou was too exhausted and too steeped in grief and worry to notice it. “Ask anything you need. Whatever helps.” Then she raised her eyes. There were tears in them. “Please tell me you can help. Please.”

Naomi thought for a few moments in silence, her own gaze now not moving away from her bottle. In the end she breathed, “I can’t say. I need to see his room.”

As a martial arts student herself, Naomi was used to some implements. Those she saw in the small room where Satou Tomoya had lived. Some racks on the walls for wooden swords and sticks of different lengths. Two gi on the closet, a third one on a laundry basket, still unwashed. Other items in the room had a different weight for her now that she had become friends with Rionne — some posters on the walls, manga volumes and some figures on bookshelves. One of those figures was the handsome swordsman clad in black with the filigreed rapier, Rionne’s paramour Lucern.

Then, of course, the mandatory laptop—

—and the phone next to it. “He didn’t take it with him.”

“The police investigated it.” Satou paled slightly. “I… looked into it myself. He seems to have been active in some forums. For… radicalized men. Male supremacists.”

“Shit.” Naomi shook her head. Got heartbroken and his girl stolen away by a rival? And he fell into the hands of those types? Poor boy.

Satou eyed her worriedly. “Are you—okay? Do you need some water?”

“Huh? Oh, no, I’m okay—sorry.” Naomi shook her head again. “I’ve seen lives destroyed. By shit like that.” She clenched her jaw briefly. “I run a workshop for vulnerable kids. This is the exact thing I try to protect them from.”

The woman looked downwards. “If only I’d heard about you earlier.”

Naomi closed her eyes for a moment. Then she turned away from the desk and glanced around the room. “I suppose you searched his drawers and closet already.”

“I did,” Satou muttered. “Nothing.”

“No alcohol, no drugs.”

Satou shook her head emphatically. “No. My son is a healthy boy. He exercises a lot.”

“Nothing strange, nothing weird at all? Not a single thing or item you can’t explain?”

The woman turned towards the desk and reached for a small cardboard box. “Well… these were on his bed.”

Naomi took the box. It felt surprisingly heavy in her hands. She opened it: there were some coins inside. A slight frown, then she took one between her fingers first, and then in her right palm.

It was no normal coin. Not round, but hexagonal-shaped; an exquisitely detailed icon of a sickle had been etched on it. The metal itself was strange; red, gleaming, clean, and very heavy. So heavy it just felt wrong for something of this size.

Satou observed her, noticing how Naomi’s frown deepened. “What’s it with those coins?”

Naomi took a few more moments before answering. “The police didn’t say anything about these, I guess.”

“No. They didn’t know either. An investigator took pictures and said she would get back to me if she found something. In her opinion, they are some kind of collectible.”

Naomi had to take the coin with both hands to look at it closely. “No. They’re not.” She put it back on the box, then pulled out her phone. “I’m starting to get a picture of what happened here, but I need a second opinion. Is it okay if I call someone?”

The woman nodded earnestly. “Yes—yes, go ahead.” Then she could not hold herself back any longer: “What was it? What happened to Tomoya-kun?”

Naomi considered her response carefully as she wrote her text. Then, after she sent her message, she looked at the coins again. “He was taken elsewhere.”

Roughly an hour later, the door rang. Satou went to see who that was, and returned to her son’s room followed by a slightly annoyed Rionne carrying a naginatajutsu case—in which her staff fit snugly, as it resembled one.

“There you are, Mion-san,” Naomi said, intentionally using her alias. “You seem upset. Did the trains cause you issues?”

Rionne shook her head slightly. “After our first excursion, I’ve understood the basics. It is this garment that bothers me. It is not suitable for long-term use.” Today the elf was wearing a hoodie, but she was not used to that kind of clothing, even if she had spent time and effort and magic fashioning herself one.

Naomi thought for a moment, considered what Satou had seen and what she would see next, then decided discretion was no longer necessary. “Then pull down your hood,” she said.

That earned her an attentive look: Are you sure?

Yes, I am sure.

‘Mion’ shrugged. “It is your territory.” Satou eyed the newcomer curiously, remaining quiet out of politeness.

But then Rionne pulled down her hood, and her elven ears were out in the open. She let out a relieved sigh. “By the Saint, this feels so much better.”

And Satou’s curiosity got the better of her. “That’s… excuse my rudeness, those are—”

Rionne closed her eyes briefly before speaking. “These are my real ears. It is not what people describe as ‘cosplay.’” She turned towards Naomi. “What vexes you?”

“This.” Naomi pointed at the coins spread on the desk.

Rionne eyed them briefly, then nodded to herself. “Begging your pardon,” she said to Satou, and laid her case on the bed.

Satou’s perplexity grew when she saw the contents of the case, then she frowned when she saw this newcomer wield it strangely—

Rionne pronounced words in an arcane language with the cadence of a ritual, then the coins started glowing fiercely—

Satou gasped in amazement, but she dared not speak as she watched the wizard at work. More chanting followed, then Rionne pointed the blade of her staff at the coins—

Ghastly green chains appeared floating in midair, each of them with one end attached to a coin.

Rionne inspected the chains closely, then pointed an index finger at the unattached ends. “Observe this.”

Naomi knelt and studied the links closely. “They’ve been cut.”

The elf nodded. “And very precisely at that. Whoever was bound to these coins is not bound anymore.”

Satou was now fully in shock. “What… who are you?”

“Proof that what I’m about to tell you is the truth.” Naomi stared at the woman. “Your son was summoned to another world. If I’m not wrong, and Mion-san here will correct me, these coins were anchors for your son to return once certain conditions were met. But something cut these chains. This could have guided us back to your son, but not anymore.”

“Not directly.” Rionne was studying the links, then the coins. Next she reached into a side pocket of her naginata case, took out a monocle carefully wrapped in silks, donned it, then examined the chains and the coins anew. “There should have been six bindings, yet here I count five.”

Satou was too much in overload to process what she was seeing. “I am asleep, am I?” She pinched herself until she winced. “No, I’m not… what are you? A… a sorcerer, a witch?”

“Rionne is an expert mage and spellcaster,” Naomi informed. “If she says a binding is missing, then a binding is missing.”

“But what—what does it mean?” Desperate hope flickered in the woman’s eyes. “If this—this ‘missing binding,’ whatever it is, was found—could it lead to Tomoya-kun? Back to my son?”

Rionne took a while to answer. “I cannot respond in either way.”

“But the chance exists, doesn’t it?” Tears spilled down Satou’s cheeks. “Please bring my son back. Please. I’m begging you. Please.”

“It’s not a matter of willingness, Satou-san.” Naomi shook her head. “If your son was pulled into another reality and these things can’t be used to track him, then somebody looking for him would have to search an entire planet for him.” Then by the corner of her eye she saw Rionne still focused on the coins, staring intensely at them through her monocle.

Then her already pale skin paled slightly further still. “What is it, Mion-san?”

The elf was staring at the coins as if trying to burn a hole through them. “This is familiar,” she said at last. “I was confronted with something with this kind of resonance only once. I surmise you have not forgotten my talk about magic not meant for mortal hands.”

Naomi blinked as her mind joined the dots. “You mean—Rokyyr broke the binding?”

“Not him, but something like him.” Rionne arranged the five coins in a pentacle, then her right index finger traced in glowing lines the figure of a sword-and-shield knight in the middle. “The last binding was woven into the target of this summoning by a divine entity.”

Naomi frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“It is… peculiar. If I fathom this correctly…” Oddly enough, Rionne sounded hesitant. She thought for a few moments, then gave her verdict. “A master in transmutation would be able to see that the target of the summoning has been permanently altered by the binding.”

Satou’s shock for the completely alien things in sight was being overridden by the desperate hope possessing her. “So, this thing you—you describe, it could be used, right? To find my son?”

“Rather than ‘find,’ tell him apart.”

“And you can, right? You are a master of this ‘transmutation’ thing?”

“I am, yes.” Rionne’s face changed, her composed expertise giving way to pity. “I could make an attempt, if I was in the same realm as your son. But the distances and barriers interfering are insurmountable at this point.”

Satou knelt before Naomi and Rionne. “I have no right to demand or ask for anything,” she muttered, “but you’re the only hope I have, the only ones who have told me something concrete.” She bowed to them until her forehead touched the floor. “Please, I’m begging you—help a poor, desperate mother. I don’t know what kind of payment would you ask for that, or even if I could pay the price, but—” Words failed her. Her voice broke. “Please find my son.”

Naomi thought for a few moments. “If I understood correctly, he was experiencing social problems.”

Satou nodded. “Yes…”

Naomi squatted to get to Satou’s level. “I’m not much of a religious person, but if Mion-san here says a god took your son to another realm, then I guess that kind of puts things under a different perspective. We don’t know anything else about whatever took him—” She turned briefly towards Rionne for confirmation; the elf shook her head. “So what I’m gonna say next is purely speculative. Stories about people being transported to another world are all over the place, nothing new with those, but there’s often a grain of truth to a good story.”

The woman glanced briefly at the manga volumes in the bookshelves. Rionne followed her glance, and spotted Lucern’s figure, but this time she said nothing. “You mean to say—the plots of manga could be true?”

Naomi gestured at the elf. “Mion-san’s real name is Rionne. You’ve seen she’s a real elf doing real magic. Her story has been told in a manga that’s sold millions here. So if her story is true, then why not one of someone being transported to another world?” Then she looked straight into Satou’s eyes. “Problem with that is, many of those stories tell of people given a new purpose there, given roles and places they did not have here. We can’t say that’s the case here, not yet. But it might be. So even if we found him, and that’s one big if, there’s a chance he might not want to come back.”

Satou dried her eyes. “If you came back to me and told me he’s safe and alive but won’t come back…” She breathed deeply. “I won’t say, ‘that would be enough.’ But at least I’d get some closure from that. And maybe a way to go to him.”

Satou closed her eyes. “I don’t have anything like the skills or experience required to go for my son myself. You do. Please help me. Whatever the price is, I’ll pay it.”

Rionne judged it was time to intervene. “If it is within my reach to help, I will. It would take a specific and despicable kind of selfishness to ignore the request of a mother.”