Chapter Text
1: Colors
Getting sucked into another world surprisingly didn’t inflict much of a change on your life.
You remember the day you were hiking, you wandered off the trail for a bit, and ended up in a completely different world. You have no idea how it happened, at one point you were there, and now you’re here, on the other side of a border you never knew existed. You don’t remember a portal, a flash of light, a booming sound, nothing; you simply crossed over.
After a bit, you found a village full of other humans, even a few others who went through the same thing as you. Turns out it’s not an uncommon occurrence, apparently done to keep the population of humans in this world at a good level.
The other humans at the village warned you to not stray far, to not to go back into the woods, lest you come across any of the land’s man-eating youkai. You took their advice, and started a new life there. And so you settled in, and you got used to it. You managed to find work at the inn sweeping floors, serving stew, and performing all the duties associated with running it.
It was perfectly banal, and it suited you. Back in the ordinary world, you’d never been noticed either, for better or for worse, you never stuck out in people’s heads, and here that pattern is the same.
You sit alone in your room in the inn, lounging on your futon and watching the dancing shadows on the wall that the candle in front of you is casting. You’ve learned to be introspective, to appreciate the small details people usually pass over, a symptom of not connecting much with others.
You lower your head, rest your chin on your arms, and turn your attention to the candle’s flame itself, watching it lazily flicker and twirl in front of you. You watch the melted wax slowly cascade down the sides of the candle, coming to rest and cool in the basin at the bottom. You appreciate how the warm light of the flame leaves small, bright highlights in the melted wax and in the polished metal of the candle dish.
A knock on the door to your room interrupts your daydreaming, and as you get up and slide it open, you are greeted by the innkeeper, your boss.
“Why are you holed up in here with the window panel shut in candlelight? It’s a nice day outside,” he says with a concerned tone.
You shrug. You can’t tell him “I like watching the candle” since he’d probably think you were insane, as opposed to just boring.
“Well, I came to drop off your wages, there’s a little bit extra in there and I…”
You tune his words out, and get lost in staring at the kimono he’s wearing. It’s green. You don’t know why you feel compelled to acknowledge that, but you feel it’s important somehow. You look at the fibres of hemp woven together, forming neat rows of thread that remind you of hair. It looks so familiar, it gives you a feeling of something being at the tip of your tongue, but your mind fails to find the word. It’s green, why is that important? Everything in your mind stutters, you’ve seen that hue of green before.
“Uh, are you listening?”
You snap out of it, “yes, yes, sorry, thank you for dropping by, and thank you for the opportunity of employment.”
“Right,” he scratches his head before continuing to speak, “well, it’s all here, your wages and then some for all your work.” He hands you a small coinpurse, which has a satisfying weight. You thank him and then he takes his leave, allowing you to continue your daydreaming.
You close the sliding door and sit back down on your futon. You unfurl the coinpurse and produce a single golden coin. The candle light reflects a stark highlight on the coin, which you can’t help but stare at. It’s familiar. A nagging sensation tugs at the back of your mind, that pale yellow, it has to be something, it has a vivid warmth to it that’s too precise to be a coincidence.
And then, after a second, the thought vanishes; it’s just a coin lit by candlelight, nothing more. That feeling of remembrance, of nostalgia, is gone in a blink. You turn the coin over a few times in your hand, feeling its weight, examining its ridges and lettering, but it stirs up nothing in your mind.
You sigh and place the coin along with the rest you’ve saved up, and snuff out the candle. You leave your room to do the rest of your tasks for the day. You walk around and tidy up the inn, occasionally stopping to check new people into their rooms or to deliver food to patrons. Before long, the day is at its end, and the sky is flush with the colors of sunset.
Standing out in the courtyard, you stare into the sky. It’s bathed in yellow and orange hues, but one particular spot is the same pale yellow you got lost in before. The sun hurts your eyes, but you keep looking anyway, that feeling of nostalgia rising up in you again. It threatens to bubble up and spill over inside of you, but it never does; it sits just at the edge of comprehension.
You lean against the broom you’re carrying, not taking your eye off of the patch of yellow for a second. Eventually though, your eyes sting enough from the sun that you have to look away for a moment, and just like that, the feeling vanishes. It’s just a regular sky now.
• • •
You retire to your room for the night, and sliding the door shut behind you, you feel like you can finally relax. You unfurl the futon and undress from your day clothes, slipping into your nightwear instead. Your head falls onto the pillow, and it’s not long before you start to feel your eyelids grow heavy.
As you slowly begin to feel increasingly sleepy, you stare at the wood grain on the ceiling. You see a particular swirl that looks like a face, gazing down at you. You stare back at it, meeting its eyes with yours. You don’t know why, but it looks so vivid, like at any moment it will blink, or open its mouth and speak. It doesn’t though, and before long, you drift off to sleep, finally closing your eyes and keeping them that way.
All of the sudden however, they’re open. You are sitting up on the futon, and your palms and brow feel sweaty. Your mouth is agape, and your vocal cords feel strained, as if you had just been talking. A single phrase repeats in your head, almost as if you are shouting to yourself, don’t go. You don’t remember actually sitting up, or talking, or who or what you don’t want to go, but you feel something leave your mind, you have an unshakable feeling that something has been lost.
Your pulse hammers in your ears as you desperately search for what that might be. You sit there, breath ragged, once again staring at the pale wood above you. You can’t find that face again, and the room settles back into a familiar stillness, and you are forced to stomach the idea that you are in fact, alone.
You rest your head against the pillow, and oddly, you find yourself scanning the room, bracing yourself for a presence that isn’t actually there. You feel like every corner, every shadow could be hiding something, but you don’t know what.
Morning comes slow and uneasy, and as a sliver of daylight pierces through a gap in the shutters, your mind latches to its color, a yellow, filtered gold. This time however, the feeling doesn’t leave you; instead it clings to every one of your thoughts, underpinning your entire stream of consciousness. It stays there as you get ready, as you leave your room, and even while you work.
By Midday, the golden light seems to follow you, even inside the inn’s cool corridors, where the paper lamps shouldn’t glow so warmly. Everytime you pause at a doorway, you catch that same pale yellow shimmer in the corner of your vision, as if someone is watching you through a lens you can’t quite focus on. Each time, your eyes dart to try and catch it, because somewhere in your mind, beyond sight and sound, a presence looms in your thoughts.
When the inn grows quiet again, a resolve builds within you; a resolve to meet the source of those colors again. You smother the candle’s flame once more. The shadows retreat, and your room settles into silence and darkness once more, but you do not sleep. Instead, you wait, listening for the softest stutter of a voice or the faintest footstep that might indicate that you aren’t alone.
And then you hear it, the soft, otherworldly sound of gentle footsteps, slowly growing louder and louder. Your heart begins to thump and your mind begins to race with possibilities, but all becomes still and quiet as the footsteps stop just beyond the thin paper door. You slowly crane your neck and turn your gaze towards the door.
On the paper, a silhouette is cast: a silhouette of a woman in a frilled dress, and donning a wide brimmed hat.